Hey. It’s me. The wombat whose perfect, square-shaped turds you heard about. Maybe you first saw me on the Discovery Channel, or Animal Planet, or outside your window, but how you met me doesn’t matter. What matters is your pain. Your torment. My pleasure.
Over the years, scientists have proposed several explanations as to why I poop the way I do. Some claim that I’m trying to mark my territory. Others say that this is a highly-specialized means of attracting mates, or a way to communicate secret messages to other wombats.
All of that is—pardon the pun—a load of crap.
The only reason I poop these perfect, square-shaped turds is to make you, a human, insecure about the way you shit.
I’ve seen you. Sobbing in your restroom about the miserable state of your amorphous, barely-presentable feces. Your rectum couldn’t craft a single right angle if it tried. Meanwhile, my rectum is able to craft four, beautiful, perfectly right angles without an ounce of effort. If I were a kinder creature, I might feel bad for you. Maybe I’d let out some soupy diarrhea on your kitchen floor, or huddle up next to you in faux-constipation as a gesture of good faith. Maybe I’d offer a kind word to let you know that you’re not alone.
Of course, I am no such creature. You have no idea how much delight I extract from your suffering.
Evolutionary biologists might wonder what fitness advantage I could possibly acquire from evolving to take pleasure from your pain. How does inspiring insecurity in you help me produce more offspring or pass on my genes at a higher rate? The answer is: it doesn’t. There is no Darwinian incentive for my sadism. However, I would argue that schadenfreude is its own reward. Certainly, your perpetual self-doubt has made my life significantly more enjoyable.
‘But what about my opposable thumbs?’ you ask yourself. ‘Surely, they’re interesting? Surely, I’m not completely worthless?’
Ah, the predictable cries of the weak struggling to reconcile with their own inferiority. Music to my ears. I won’t even make the effort to reject your claims, because I know you don’t believe them yourself. I recognize the hollowness in your voice. The subtle whimper at the end of your sentences. Oh, is there a more beautiful noise in the whole wide world? Yes, there is—the noise I make whenever I expel one of my perfect, square-shaped turds. But you knew that already.
So, go ahead. Try. Maybe that wheatgrass-and-kale diet will be just the thing to get you shitting rhombuses. Maybe that yoga course or those daily kegels will give you just enough pelvic floor strength to shape a right angle. Anything to prevent you from confronting the reality that the evolutionary wall that divides us is unscalable, unshakeable, and unbreakable. You’re pathetic, but I tolerate these occasional moments of hope because they make your despair all the more sweet. There is nothing I relish more than the flavor of your dead dreams.
And ooh… I can taste it now. Your rage. Your contempt. Your jealousy. Yes, yes, yes! Give in to it—your anger, your hatred, your dismay at the ceaseless unfairness of life! It nourishes me to see you like this. Every frenzied flush makes me stronger; every slam of the toilet lid adds a year to my lifespan. You think your violent outburst will stop me, but no! It only makes me more powerful! While you cope and seethe on your so-called porcelain ‘throne,’ I reign as God of the Australian Wilderness, drunk with the kind of power you can only dream of! You will never be anything more than a toy in my play chest, a jester in my court! Everything you’ve ever done and ever will do means nothing in the face of the one, incontrovertible truth: I can poop squares and you cannot. You hate that, you resent that, it drives you mad, and it makes me feel oh-so-good.
Anyway, I hope this clears up any misconceptions. I’ve got to get going, but to thank you for the time you’ve spent reading this, I’ve left a present on your doorstep. Forgive me, it’s not in a box. It is, however, shaped like one.