Whenever a doggy or kitty get up on their hind legs and stand like a person, I refer to that as "doing a wheelie". When I said that last night, my mind wandered for a bit. What if animals did have wheels instead of feet? I drew a cartoon some years ago called "Wheel-a-saurus" which displayed the site of an archaeological dig. Above ground were the diggers, and below the Earth's surface were the giant remains of a Brontosaurus-looking creature with wheels instead of legs. So.. what about other animals?If cats had wheels, when they'd jump up onto your lap to curl up and take a nap, they'd roll right off. I'm quite fond of having my cat Devo sit on my lap, and would likely have to install wheel locks on his legs.. er.. wheels to ensure he'd remain safely on my lap. Or maybe I'd replace his front wheels with the bottom halves of crutches so at least he'd have a little stability.
Snakes don't have feet, but if they had wheels, I've got to admit that would look pretty damned cool. A regular pet snake is a pretty useless thing, but a pet snake with wheels? Hell yes. It would be fun to watch it chase after the little mice with wheel feet that you'd have to feed them.
Kimb brought up a very good point that if animals had wheels, when running around the house they wouldn't be able to stop and would end up wiping out a lot - think of the damage that ones living quarters would sustain with that problem alone. Lots and lots of holes in the walls from being rammed into head first.
Fish with wheels... now that would be a site. An all-terrain fish. They'd be zooming along underwater and if they weren't paying close enough attention, would swim too close towards the shore. Once those wheels hit the bottom of the lake, momentum would cause the fish to zoom up onto the beach and die. Fishing as we know it would come to an end - it would just consist of a bunch of dudes sitting on the shorelines slamming nets over the immobile beached fish. Then once they cleaned them, they could use the wheels for projects like building remote control cars or something.
A giraffe with wheels. Actually, in the Uptown area we have a bunch of dirty punk rockers who modify bicycles to make them ridiculously tall and ride them around.. they sort of resemble giraffes with wheels (although I have a feeling that the giraffes probably smell better). Last year a girl was riding one of those over a bridge and the wind caught her off guard. Punk rock girl went head over teakettle right off the bridge and crossed over to that mighty bike trail in the sky. True story!
If elephants had wheels, I imagine they'd be doubled up sort of like the ones on semi truck trailers. If they blew a tire, they'd have backup. No one would hear a herd of elephants coming either - it would just be a bunch of smooth rolling and all of a sudden villagers would look up in surprise wondering where the f*&k all those elephants came from.
Back to the domesticated animals for a second. Think of how ugly things could get on stairways. Yeowch.. I'm envisioning something like the scene in "The Untouchables" when the baby carriage goes wrecklessly bouncing down the stairs, only a dog on the wheels instead of a baby carriage. I guess all you could do is leave a mattress against the wall at the bottom of the stairs and hope for the best.
Now that I think about it, it's probably a good thing that animals don't have wheels...
