The Tortilla

With its tiny bobwhite's head on its graceful manta ray's body, this animal is a bob-'n'-ray. We kept one specimen on board ship for a while, but after coughing up a lot of dry humor, it gave a last, plaintive mating call--"Wa-lee-balooo!"--and died. We were sorry to see it go--it had been a good skate. However, we found it had left us two bob-'n'-ray eggs in the crow's-nest; and when they hatched, we nursed the infants on a diet of Piel's beer. We named one of them Bob and the other Ray, but no one could ever remember which was which.

During the mating season, these animals skim across the water like giant Frisbees. They will mate with anything, a habit they have inherited from their manta-ray ancestor, one of the most promiscuous species in the postwar world.* We saw one manta ray making eyes at a Portuguese man-of-war. If there is an offspring, we will call it the Man o' la Manta.

*Our royal geneticist has been able to mate manta rays successfully with sugar cane (producing the sugar ray), with a TV tube (the cathode ray) and with Charley the Tuna (the ray charles, of course).