Word: squirrel
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Able and Baker were female monkeys, Able a rhesus and Baker a squirrel monkey. From Cape Canaveral, in the nose cone of a Jupiter missile, they had soared 360 miles into space before being plucked from the sea. Their journey beggared imagination, for Able and Baker were the first living creatures to travel through space and return from it alive...
...every 30 seconds. Before Abie's eyes was the light that would flash red. and close to her skinny fingers was the button that she had been trained to push. Monkey Baker, a graduate of the Naval Aviation School of Medicine at Pensacola, was a fluffy South American squirrel-monkey weighing only 11 oz. Wearing a tiny helmet, she rode in a smaller cylindrical capsule and lay on a molded bed of silicone rubber covered for her comfort with a thin mattress of rubber foam...
White's The Cage, set in an extravagantly funny frame of tangled step-ladders and window-casings, concerns an encounter between a stranger and the residents of a thoroughly inhabited apartment house. The stranger has assumed responsibility for the continued existence of a squirrel, who has a careless habit of jumping off the apartment roof--always into the stranger's arms...
While waiting for the squirrel's next leap, the stranger becomes involved in a moralistic debate with the apartment denizens. He claims he always does what he likes; yet as the play develops, he emerges as the altruist responsible for the welfare of all living things. The squabbling and moody apartment dwellers serve as a foil to his Christianity. When through the (perhaps) jealousy, or pique, of one of them, the squirrel plunges to his death, the Christian exits to bury his prey, and the denizens resume their static gaze heavenward, half expecting to see a new squirrel take...
...long talk session leading to the squirrel's leap, White rather clearly delineates the opposing points of view: passivity vs. action, selfishness vs. altruism, irresponsibility vs. concern. And he does it quickly and lightly so his meaning is never a burden...