JULY 15th - The DBP Brings Hope of the UHR

On this day in 1922, the first exhibit of the duck-billed platypus in these United States of America occurred at the Bronx Zoo. The duck-billed platypus or DBP is a strange amalgamation of an egg-laying mammal with characteristics of a duck (the bill, geniuses), beaver (tail) and otter (feet). Oh, and it’s also one of the few venomous mammals around. The little critter is so unbelievable, when it was first discovered Down Under, people thought it was a hoax. Which might have been cooler than the actual discovery, am I right? I mean, let’s say somebody was able to capture a beaver or an otter and doctor that little guy with a duck-bill and either otter feet or a beaver tail and still have that thing able to function in the Australian wild. Okay maybe “cool” was a bad word, because unless this trickster was also a brilliant geneticist who started work on creating strange looking mutant animals that weren’t at the summit of the food chain many years before in an effort to live up the vow he made to his dead mother that he would change the world in a mild and totally non-dangerous way, I don’t see how such a hoax could have been performed without some animal bloodshed. So I guess the DBP being real is the cooler story. In any event, DBP’s realness makes you think that Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and the Chupacabra could be real. Maybe even Unicorns. And if Unicorns could be real, than perhaps the Unicorn of the Human Race (UHR) could be real. Seriously, in the history of mankind on this planet there had to have been at least one Albino Midget. I just hope he or she didn’t exist before photography or written language. That would be a waste. Kind of like bringing the DBP to NYC in 1922. Poor thing couldn’t survive. But about 80 years later DBPs were the opening punch line in a Kevin Smith movie about Angels starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Kind of a big deal. Does that happen if DBP wasn’t brought here in 1922? Probably. Thanks to John T. Smith and George Brooks and the corkboard that was the predecessor to Al Gore’s World Wide Web. DBP coming to NYC probably had little bearing on the WWW. Whatever. It’s a very interesting animal that gives me hope that similarly interesting animals (or people) are lurking out there. And hope, my friends, well hope springs eternal.

This day has been Marked.

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