Don’t you hate it when you’re picking nits and you find something that isn’t a nit? You have your nit-picking comb, towel, and shampoo ready. You comb. You inspect. A nit! You grab your nit-picking tweezers and look under your magnifying glass and … it’s a poppy seed.
Such was the case with poor Lelia Raley, one of 181 clever Fake Adders who spotted Yurtle the Turtle Outfitters on page 55. “Easy peasy,” she wrote. “BUT YOU SPELLED YERTLE WRONG!! Sigh, it’s not easy being a nitpicker.”
Apparently not. ‘Yurtle’ isn’t spelled wrong. We made it up. We could spell it with a number, a hashtag, and a knapsack full of umlauts and it would be spelled correctly, because when you create something, you make the rules. Also, it’s on purpose. You think we aren’t familiar with Yertle the Turtle? We’ve been through the Theodor Seuss Geisel exhibit in Dartmouth’s Baker Library. Twice. Three times, if you count the time we were mostly asleep and a little bit drunk. (And if you don’t count that, then we’ve only been through once.)
It’s a pun. See, campers might stay in yurts (originally portable, round tents covered with skins). Get it? The store has a name similar to the Dr. Seuss book, but it’s an outfitter, so we spelled it like yurt.
Bottom line, the nit you thought you picked turned out to be a poppy seed.
Also? You won. That’s right. Raley is our winner. She’s taking her certificate to the Michigan Theater.
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