The Well Overfloweth With Oral Tradition...and Donkeys

Take a trip down memory lane with me for a moment and harken yourself back to whatever period it was that you were in high school. I'm picking high school as a point in time just to be safe since one can never be too sure of the level of education that some receive in middle school. Now that I think about it, chances are some of you out there probably didn't learn all that much in high school either, so go ahead and just think back to college, assuming you went. Those that didn't go, think about bricklaying school or whatever it was that held so much allure that you couldn't bring yourself to even attend the local state school.

OK, now the point was to recall that, somewhere along the line, some English teacher of yours taught you all about archetypes and that all stories, regardless of time period or context, contain parallels to each other in that there is a finite amount of archetypical story lines. Compare, say, The Bible and The Matrix. Jesus and Neo, chosen by a higher power to safe humanity, death and resurrection and the like. That was an overly simple example but, again, I'm trying to be safe here.

The point of the above, besides to take up space (OK, mostly to take up space), was to bring the question around even further....do archetypes exist in other species? Putting aside for the moment the fact that who the hell knows what dogs communicate about, assuming they communicate at all, do their communications parallel the archetypes of humans? For example, when Lassie would "tell" the family that Timmy fell down the well, did she then relay this to other dogs later, and they would all nod knowingly? It seems that for as long as there's been wells, people have been falling down them, leading us to tell each other stories about it. Hell, look at recent filmmaking: "The Ring", "Batman Begins", "CyberDildos 8: Well Penetrated". These are just the culmination of oral traditions throughout history. Certainly, animals must do the same.

I vote yes, all species that exist near wells have rich oral histories of well fallings. As proof, here's a great little piece of reporting out of Maine, Minnesota about a donkey that fell down a well. When that ass fell in, he no doubt was well aware of his plight, given the countless stories of well dangers he had been told. The lead-in of the story is the best: "Bryan Nelson had to look twice Thursday when he looked down his abandoned well. 'A donkey was the last thing I expected to see,' Nelson said." The donkey, name either Amos or Andy, the owner doesn't know which, probably went on to tell other members of the Donkey Community about his travails. The only question is who he told first, Julian "Donkey Boy" Tavarez (l.) or John P. Creegan (r.)