Synaloepha (sin-a-lif’-a): Omitting one of two vowels which occur together at the end of one word and the beginning of another. A contraction of neighboring syllables. A kind of metaplasm.
Yo’ are a total dog! Skipper wagged his tail, making his signature whipping sound, barking and bowing down on his front paws. It was like Skipper understood me. I had a laundry list of commands that he would unfailingly follow. My favorite was “speak.” He would say what sounded like “lightbulb” when I told him to speak. He was more articulate than Scooby Doo.
Then one day when he was doing the “speak” trick he said “fu*k you.” I was shocked. He said “Just kidding.” I thought I was losing my mind. I told my mother and she thought so too. She took me to see a psychiatrist. I told him my story and he told me I was going crazy like I thought I was. He prescribed me some anti-psychotic drugs to take three times a day. They didn’t work.
Skipper became more and more articulate. I would read him books and we would discuss them. He loved Plato’s dialogues. He loved Plato’s Phaedrus and its depiction of love. He asked me if I loved him. I didn’t know what to say, so I said yes. He told me he never thought of me as his master, instead, he thought of me as his friend. I was moved so deeply by this, I almost cried. He said, “Let’s go for a walk. I feel like letting one go in the park in the grass by the baseball field.”
When we got back home, Skipper told me he wanted to start a blog. I thought it was a great idea. He could talk and nobody would know he was a dog. Skipper had converted to Christianity after I read Paul’s “Epistles to the Corinthians” to him. So, he titled his blog: “Straight Talk: No Bells or Whistles.”
His most famous episode was on vivisection. He has fist hand experience. His best friend at the time, Butch, had had his nose amputated and then plied with different scents to see if he would sniff them and wag his stubby little tail. It was a heartbreaking story. Then, there was the Raccoon who had its front paws replaced with hooks to see if the Raccoon would adapt and walk on the hooks, reducing its scent trail and enabling its escape from hound dogs. This was another tear jerker.
Skipper was reviled by the pro-vivisectionists. Without even knowing he was a dog, they vowed to “neuter” him and give him a “special nose job.”
Then, there was the day of horror. The “Vivisectionist Vigilantes” found out where our podcast studios were located. One day, they raided us wearing balaclavas. There was Skipper sitting there with his headphones on. The Vigilantes flipped out. They shot Skipper to death. After he was dead they kept shooting until they ran out of ammunition. I was lucky they didn’t shoot me.
My heart was broken into little pieces. When the police arrived, the Vigilantes told them they had come for a tour of the studio and they were attacked by the vicious dog that they shot in self defense. The police told me to clean up the mess and left.
Since then, I’ve become “The Avenger.” I liberate animals from vivisectionist laboratories and find them loving homes before they’re “operated on” in the name of so-called science. The array of oddities produced by the labs is both infuriating and heartbreaking. For example: the six-legged rabbit, the toothless donkey, finless fish, the cow with 25 udders. The list goes on and on, and I can’t help them, but, I can help the others.
Please send me $500 in memory of Skipper.
POSTSCRIPT
It was determined that this story is fake and provides a foundation for an egregious scam. Skipper is alive and well and his podcast is flourishing.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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