Polly Wanna a Craker?

The best dystopian novel, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, moved into second place in my opinion after I read Oryx and Crake. Surprise -- O & C is also by Margaret Atwood.

I was inspired to read Oryx and Crake after the recent death of Alex, the "thinking" African Grey parrot, who makes a cameo in O&C. Alex, like most parrots, talked. But his handler and many others argued that he didn't just parrot; he reasoned. When presented with an new object, an almond in a shell, Alex coined a new word for it: "corknut". Makes sense to me.

The protagonist of Oryx and Crake is a bit of a corknut himself. Jimmy/Snowman, apparently the world's sole human survivor, is the guardian of the creatures created by the genius-mad scientist, Crake. The offspring are known as Crakers.

Snowman, like Alex, got pleasure from making up words. Snowman snuck his invented words into advertising copy. (His job before everyone else went bye-bye.)

But the award for clever, linguistic hi jinks by an animal goes to Washoe, the famous, ASL-signing chimpanzee. An example: Washoe saw a swan and identified it by signing "water" and "bird" in American Sign Language. That's one smart chimp.