BOUVET ISLAND, NORWAY — Living on Bouvet Island, my interaction with other humans is limited at best. I sit at home, alone, and eat the Island’s specialty treat, Crack Popsicles. They come in many flavors. Here is a picture of some:
They’re really good. There’s just something about them. I think my popsicle dealer adds a “special” ingredient, though what it would be I’m not really sure.
But anyway, within my igloo I do have a small TV which receives the most important channels. I am able to watch programs such as The Jersey Shore, which I can safely assume to be an accurate representation of life for everyone else in the world. The genre of that show, after all, is Reality. I believe I probably live outside of Reality, since the depictions of life in shows such as this one do not resemble my life at all.
But this is all rather beside the point.
I have come here to discuss unicorns and how they are represented inaccurately in myth.
Unicorns are thought of as gentle, beautiful creatures of magic who each have a single, apparently useless, rainbow-colored horn protruding from their forehead. Generally, if a use is ever attributed to their horns, it is said that the horns are some kind of magical thing that does magical stuff like shoot glittery rays of sunlight across people to make them feel happy, or something.
But this is the gravest mistake for people who encounter unicorns in real life.
Because their horns are not as innocent, nor as magical, as they are made out to be. Not at all.
Think about this for a moment. What do rhinos use their horns for? And bison? Mountain goats? Gaur? Yaks?
Not pretty, magical, rainbow-light emissions, that’s for sure. Touching the horn of a gnu does not invoke mental images of cherubs tumbling in clouds, or of smiling fluffball Corgi puppies. Encountering a triceratops is not a beautiful experience that makes you realize the glory of the world and grants you a magical connection to the earth.
All of these animals, given the chance, would gut you and eat you alive.
Now think about unicorns again. Their horns are pretty pointy. That pinkish fur on their faces is not just pinkish fur, it is white fur stained with the blood of innocent people. The silky braids of their long tails are whips or, in some unicorn species, ropes that act in much the same way as the body of a boa constrictor.
Just saying.