23 Replacement Similes For Humans To Use Once All The Animals Are Dead And No One Knows What...

23 Replacement Similes For Humans To Use Once All The Animals Are Dead And No One Knows What “Animals” Were

Now that we’re well on into our planet’s sixth mass extinction event, and with recent news that we’re charging towards environmental catastrophe faster than ever, it’s time we start thinking about contingencies not in terms of “if” but in terms of “when.” Let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that the human species will survive. Some people, like Annalee Newitz, author of Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive A Mass Extinction, think we will! But even if she’s right, certainly, there will be changes we’ll have to get used to. Besides the hilarious “Great, I’ll have beachfront property” jokes the wittier among us will continue to make, our lexicon is sure to change. For example, similes that use animal imagery — we’ll need some new ones, since no one will no understand what most “animals” are (or were). Here’s a start, with future generations in mind.

1) Busy as a bee = Busy as the phone line when you try to call Time Warner customer service

2) Angry as a hornet = Angry as someone who has to call Time Warner customer service

3) Blind as a bat = Blind as Jamie Foxx in that movie about that piano player

4) Gentle as a lamb = Gentle as a Spring acid rain on our acid-proof bio-dome

5) Drunk as a skunk = Drunk as an oil tanker captain

6) Graceful as a gazelle = Graceful as an algorithm

7) Quiet as a mouse = Quiet as a news broadcast about global warming

8) Quick as a bunny rabbit = Quick as an airborne viral pandemic

9) Free as a bird = Free as a Wikileak

10) Eager as a beaver = Eager as Grindr

11) Sly as a fox = Sly as a FOX news executive

12) Proud as a peacock = Proud as Drake

13) Happy as a lark = Happy as a copywriter for a Geico ad campaign

14) Slow as a snail = Slow as the old person ahead of you in line at Rite-Aid checking the coupon flyer (stacks of which they keep, for some unknowable reason, BY THE CASH REGISTERS and not, say, by the door where people come in to the store) for discounts

15) Strong as a horse = Strong as plastic

16) Big as an elephant = Big as the garage for my four SUVs

17) Tall as a giraffe = Tall as Jonah on “Veep.”

18) Brave as a lion = Brave as a freelancer

19) Fierce as a tiger = Fierce as president Nixon

20) Crazy as a loon = Crazy as a Hollywood wedding

21) Hungry as a wolf = Hungry as someone who doesn’t like the taste of bio-engineered insect larvae protein

22) Hefty as a hippopotamus = Hefty as someone who REALLY likes the taste of bio-engineered insect larvae protein

23) Dead as a dodo = Dead as all the species of animals that used to exist on earth