World History
That reminded her. Could she spray? That wasn’t something she was willing to experiment inside her apartment. Another quick google search revealed that most skunks had their glands removed upon birth. In fact, there was an entire political debate on bodily autonomy which confronted the tradition. Without going so far as to check herself physically, Jasmine assumed her glands had been removed, which was kind of a bummer.
That wasn’t the end of her investigation. There was so much else to unpack and ask. Thank God that all of this had happened to Jared in the modern age when there was all of the world’s secrets at her fingertips. She slogged through a book series’ worth of Wikipedia pages that included both history and anatomy. Skunk history followed human history more or less to a tee. There were more paintings of skunk Jesus to giggle at as well as other religious and historic figures. Skunk Abe Lincoln, skunk Joan of Arc, skunk Napoleon, skunk Ceasar. Fuck, there was even a skunk Hitler. Jasmine would’ve laughed her ass if off if it wasn’t so messed up.
That brought her back to the political sphere. Issues were similar and the parties followed the same format of Left wing vs. Right wing and Liberal vs. Conservative. There were a few added issues that were interesting. There was the aforementioned bodily autonomy debate regarding the removal of stink glands. Race divides were not done by color of skin but pattern of stripes. Geez. I guess the concept of race in the human world is more nebulous than I thought.
Politics aside, there was the issue of human existence. Maria had never heard of them, but could they have existed in this universe like skunks did in the human universe? She typed “human” into the search bar. To his surprise, there were in fact a few suggestions. She hit enter and was subject to the most bafflingly hilarious set of images he had ever laid eyes on. There were several artist’s renditions of humans based on their skeletal remains. Apparently, they had gone extinct hundreds of thousands of years ago, never evolving past the Homo erectus stage. Jared had learned that there was a human bias of what people thought dinosaurs and other fossils looked like when they were alive. Artist renditions humans made tended to exclude dinosaur feathers and thus were incomplete pictures of what they may have looked like.
Skunk bias of what humans looked like, on the other hand, had the exact opposite problem. Each human was covered head to toe in thick fur just like any other animal. What were supposed to be serious renditions of what humans lived like on planet earth were instead a gut-busting comedy of errors. Jasmine found herself in another fit of hysteric giggles. Scrolling down the selection of hairy humans had tears rolling down her cheeks. It reminded her of Cats, the God awful 2019 movie.
“Oh shit!” She had to look the movie up. To her surprise, the film actually did much better in the skunk universe. Apparently skunks made to look like cats had a much less severe uncanny valley effect given the better similarity between the two animals. That did not save the movie from having a nonsensical plot and a star-studded cast of actors who didn’t care about performing.
There was so much more to delve into and gawk at, but Jasmine couldn’t let it distract her from the fact she still had a life to live as a skunkette. Jared’s job as a host at a restaurant most likely carried over to Jasmine. Was working in that environment going to be much different? Jared had been working there for over a year; maybe Jasmine could perform it like nothing had changed. She could only hope. She checked her calendar on her phone and confirmed that she had work the next morning. The rest of her work schedule reflected what Jared’s had been. Maybe she could get away with this after all.
Written by TheGreatJaceyGee on 03 February 2023
