The Big Lie

Claude and Nelson were nervous – they had never been on television before. But, then again, no lemming had ever been interviewed on television, so they bore the weight of knowing they were species pioneers, speaking for the first time to the viewing public. Usually, lemmings only showed up in nature films, with the predictable footage of thousands of their brothers and sisters hurdling suicidally off cliffs to their deaths in a varmint Jonestown, so they put aside their nervousness for the chance to set the record straight.

“Claude, Nelson, it’s a pleasure to have you both here today,” the interviewer began. “But before we begin, Claude – you are Claude, right?” he said to the one on the right, “there is no smoking in the studio.”

Claude put out his cigarette. For a creature only six inches long, he handled his smoke adroitly. Both he and Nelson had attractive, short black snouts that gave way to white jaws and bellies and lustrous brown coats.

“Thanks,” the interviewer said. “Now, let’s get right to it. Mass suicide. Thousands of you racing for a cliff, leaping over the edge to a certain death. What’s that all about?”

Nelson spoke first. “It’s nonsense.” he said. “It’s a calumny that affects every lemming every day of his or her life. This ‘lemmings commit mass suicide’ stuff is not true and never has been true. It’s the Big Lie.”

“#Don’t Jump!” Claude injected. He was smaller and more agitated than his colleague – no wonder he still hadn’t quit smoking.

“But,” the interviewer probed gently, “we’ve all seen the movies –”

We’ve all seen a movie,” Nelson said, determined to maintain his composure. “In fact, it all goes back to one movie, a pseudo-documentary called White Wilderness made by Walt Disney in 1958, which intentionally and maliciously created the myth that lemmings engage in mass suicides by jumping off cliffs and into the Arctic Sea as a matter of course, like Inuit Granny without the ice floe.”

“That’s a weighty accusation,” the interviewer said cautiously. “You’re saying that’s not true? That lemmings don’t race suicidally off cliffs by the thousands?”

“An out-and-out lie,” Claude replied, his very small cup of coffee kicking in. “I would say ‘fake news,’ but unlike most other ‘fake news,’ it’s actually fake. And not only is it completely fraudulent, but it’s a slander against our species, against all rodents, in fact, as if rodents haven’t been smeared enough already.”

The interviewer’s brow gathered inquisitively. “You think rodents haven’t been given a fair shake?”

“Well, think about it,” Nelson picked up on the point. “A European sailing ship laden with cargo -- or perhaps enslaved humanity plundered from their ancestral homes -- anchors at some port somewhere to fulfill its imperialist design and it’s the rat who was trapped in its hold for however many weeks and months looking for something to eat that gets blamed for spreading disease when it runs down a hawser, as if the rat was in charge.”

The interviewer paused. “I suppose I never thought of it that way.”

Nelson sighed to compose himself. “Very few do.”

“But how did this falsehood take root?”

“I’ll tell you how,” Claude interrupted angrily. “Disney’s producers went to an Inuit village in Manitoba and paid the local kids a quarter a piece for a few dozen of our brothers and sisters.”

“Well, wait,” Nelson said sensitively. “Inuit children very often keep lemmings as pets, the way your American children might keep a pet hamster, or their iPhone. They’re very nice children, we have no quarrel with them.”

“Another oppressed rodent!” Claude spat, unable to share Nelson’s tact. “It’s all around us and we accept it as if it were normal! One creature running in a wheel all day for the amusement of another! What barbary! And then one day Aunt Florence shows up as the trim on someone’s anorak. Fur is murder!”

“That’s a separate matter,” Nelson said, cutting off Claude’s tirade in the interest of getting his message across. “So, the producers abducted the kidnapped Inuit lemmings to Calgary – that’s a thousand kilometers away, look it up -- and rigged them up on a turntable up so they’d go flying off a cliff on cue. Just flung them off the cliff, as if Romans were throwing larcenous slaves off the Tarpeian Rock. Murdered to fake a documentary for the producer’s personal profit! And then they dumped another bunch of the poor creatures -- the ones they claimed had survived the plunge from the cliff, as if they hadn’t been subjected to enough! -- in what they said was the Arctic Ocean, but was really the Bow River, which runs right through downtown Calgary, nowhere near the Arctic Ocean, unless you live in the Lower 48. A complete fabrication, a con job. They just herded them into the icy river to drown.”

The interviewer was genuinely surprised. “That’s shocking! Especially coming from a company such as Disney –”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be that shocked,” Nelson said sardonically. “Look at what they did to that poor mouse, dressing him up in those silly jumpers with the big buttons and the white gloves –”

“Mickey Mouse?”

“Yes! That’s his name!” Nelson said. “The poor bugger.”

“But he’s just a cartoon,” the interviewer said. “He’s not real.”

The two lemmings looked at each other bewilderedly. “A…what?”

“A cartoon,” the interviewer repeated. “That’s not a real mouse, it was just a drawing, you know, animation?”

The lemmings were confused, so they hastily got back on message. “Well, genocide was what it was,” Nelson said. “A vicious smear of lemmings everywhere, a rodent snuff movie. And lemmings everywhere have suffered as a consequence.”

The interviewer adopted an inquisitive air. “In what way?”

“For one, people think we’re idiots,” Claude blurted with a sneer. “And imagine how you’d feel if a species that invented disco music, angel dust, New Coke, and the Holocaust considered you an idiot!” He wanted another cigarette.

“But it goes deeper than that,” Nelson said diplomatically, framing with his tiny paws. “It has to do with the way lemmings see themselves. Sure, there are some lemmings whose consciousness has been raised, who see through what’s been done to us. And every now and then you’ll find an old hand who had an ancestor in the Bow River Massacre –”]

“Never again!” Claude shouted, his tiny, clawed paw making a fist in the air.

“But for the vast majority of lemmings, it hangs over them like a cloud. ‘Oh,’ they think, ‘I’m prone to mass suicides, I’d best be careful.’ And as a result, they don’t do what they’re supposed to do, what every lemming is born to do!”

“And what is that?!” the interviewer asked.

“It’s to migrate!” Nelson cried triumphantly. “The very essence of being a lemming is to migrate, because our place in the ecosystem is so fluid. If the winter’s a hard one, or if the raptor bird population had a good spring, then it will take us quite a while to restore our herd and we usually stay put. But a mild winter, easier access to grasses, roots, willow buds , maybe even an insect or two for protein -- and we’ll respond with prodigious breeding – it’s as if we were multiplication tables with nasty bits attached. And when there get to be too many of us for the environment to support, well, it’s time to move on.”

“Ah! Move on, meaning…suicide?”

“No,” Nelson admonished calmly, “migration.”

The interviewer felt foolish. “And what’s that like?”

“It’s gas!” Claude exclaimed. “You got to imagine – thousands of us, tens of thousands, racing alongside each other towards some unknown destination. Each one part of the whole, part of the mass, everybody on the Jones, you know? Imagine everyone around you racing in the same direction –”

“Not to a cliff,” Nelson added.

“Yeah, yeah, not to a cliff,” Claude continued. “But, you start to hear the music, it’s like drums playing, man!” His cute little black nose twitched excitedly. “Are you sure I can’t smoke in here?” he asked in a quiet voice.

“Yes,” the interviewer replied.

Nelson sighed. “Well, let’s just say that unless you’ve been one of ten thousand lemmings rampaging across the tundra like a herd of tiny buffalo at ground level, you haven’t lived. The feeling, the exhilaration – it’s hard to put into words. But that’s the point – migration is central to the lemming experience, but now there are lemmings out there who think, ‘I’d better not migrate, because we might all race over a cliff and plunge to our deaths, or swim out into the icy depths of the Arctic Ocean until we’re too exhausted to continue and drown.’ And it’s all because of the Myth of the Drowning Lemming.”

“And that’s our message, particularly to the young ‘uns,” Claude said. “Keep migrating, keep moving, don’t be afraid. A lemmings gotta do what a lemming’s got to do.”

And with that, the producer announced “Cut” and interview was over. The studio lights went down and the production crew came over and took the mics off the two. “You guys were good,” one of them said. “I didn’t know any of that stuff.”

Claude and Nelson smiled appreciatively as Claude took out a smoke. “Got a light?” he asked a crew member.

He took a deep drag and blew out a jet of smoke. “And they call us suicidal,” he muttered, shaking his head.