00:00Scrambled Eggs Super by Dr. Seuss
00:29I don't like to brag, and I don't like to boast, said Peter T. Hooper. But speaking
00:44of toast, and speaking of kitchens, and ketchup and cake, and kettles and stoves and the stuff
00:50people bake, well, I don't like to brag, but I'm telling you, Liz, that speaking of cooks,
00:56I'm the best that there is. Why, only last Tuesday, when Mother was out, I really cooked
01:02something worth talking about. You see, I was sitting here, resting my legs, and I happened
01:11to pick up a couple of eggs. And I sort of got thinking, it's sort of a shame that scrambled
01:17eggs always taste always the same. And that's because, ever since goodness knows when, they've
01:24always been made from the eggs of a hen, just a plain common hen. What a dumb thing to use,
01:30with all of the other fine eggs you could choose. And so I decided that just for a change, I'd
01:40scramble a new kind of egg on the range, some fine fancy egg that no other cook cooks, like the eggs
01:47of the ruffled necked salamagooks. A salamagookses say they should be good. So I went out and found
01:55some as quick as I could. And while I was lugging them back to the house, I happened to notice a
02:05tizzle topped grouse in a tree down the street. And I knew from her looks that her egg and the
02:10egg of the salamagooks ought to mix mighty well, ought to taste simply super, when scrambled
02:16together by Peter T. Hooper. So I took those eggs home and I frizzled them up. And I added some sugar,
02:27two-thirds of a cup, and a small pinch of pepper, and also a pound of horseradish sauce that was
02:33sitting around, and also some nuts. Then I tasted this stuff, and it tasted quite fine, but not quite
02:40fine enough. To make the best scramble that's ever been made, a cook has to hook the best
02:49eggs ever laid. So I drove to the country, quite rather far out, and I studied the birds that were
02:56flitting about. I looked with great care at a mop-noodled finch. I looked at a beagle-beaked,
03:02bald-headed grinch. And also I looked at a shade-roosting quail, who was roosting right
03:08under a lasso-laxed tail. And I looked at a spritz and a flannel-winged jay. But I just didn't stop.
03:15I kept right on my way, because they didn't have eggs. They weren't laying that day.
03:23Then suddenly, boy, up that hill a short space, birds! They were laying all over the place.
03:30Great happy families with uncles and cousins, all laying fine, strictly fresh eggs by the dozens.
03:37Why, I'd have a scramble more super than super.
03:40Scrambled eggs super de-duper de-booper special deluxe a la Peter T. Hooper.
03:50I picked out the eggs in a most careful way. I only picked those that I knew were grade A.
03:56I took only eggs from the very best fowls, so I didn't take eggs from the twiddler owls,
04:01because I knew that the eggs of those fellows who twiddle taste sort of like dust from inside a base fiddle.
04:11I went for the kind that were mellow and sweet. And the world's sweetest eggs are the eggs of the
04:17queet, which is due to those very sweet trout that they eat. And those trout, well, they're sweet
04:23because they only eat wogs. And wogs, after all, are the world's sweetest frogs. And the reason
04:29they're sweet is whenever they lunch, it's always the world's sweetest bees that they munch.
04:35And the reason no bees can be sweeter than these, they only eat blossoms of beaselnut trees.
04:42And these beaselnut blossoms are sweeter than sweet, and that's why I nabbed several eggs from the queet.
04:51But I passed up the eggs of a bird called a strudel, who's sort of a stork but with fur
04:57like a poodle. For they say that the eggs of this kind of stork are gooey like glue, and they stick
05:03to your fork. And the yolks of these eggs, I am told, taste like fleece, while the whites taste like
05:09very old bicycle grease. The places I hiked to, the roads that I rambled to find the best eggs
05:20that have ever been scrambled. I hunted new birds along wild tangled trails, through gullies and
05:27gulches, down dingles and dales. I wriggled my way, and I crawled at a creep, through a forest of
05:33ferns that was 40 miles deep. And I mushed through the brush till I found a fine quigger, whose eggs
05:40are as big as a pinhead, no bigger. Then I went for the eggs of a longlegger quong. Now this quong,
05:50well, she's built just a little bit wrong, for her legs are so terribly terribly long,
05:56that she has to lay eggs 20 feet in the air, and they drop with a plop to the ground from up there.
06:03So unless you can catch them before the eggs crash, you haven't got eggs, you've got longlegger hash.
06:09Eggs! I collected 302, but I needed still more, and I suddenly knew that the job was too big for
06:21one fellow to do. So I telegraphed north to some friends near Fazol, which is 10 miles or so just
06:28beyond the North Pole. And they all of them jumped in their catamacide, which is sort of a boat made
06:34of sea leopards hide, which they sailed out to sea to go looking for grice, which is sort of a
06:40bird which lays eggs on the ice, which they grabbed with a tool which is known as a switch,
06:46because those eggs are too cold to be touched without which. And while they were sending those
06:54eggs, I got word of a bird that does something that's almost unheard of. It's hard to believe,
07:00but the bird called the pelf lays eggs that are three times as big as herself.
07:06How that pelf ever learned such a difficult trick, I never found out. But I found that egg quick,
07:12and I managed to get it down out of the nest and home to the kitchen along with the rest.
07:21But I didn't stop then, because I knew of some ducks by the name of the single file
07:26Zumzian Zucks, who stroll single file through the mountains of Zumz, quite oddly enough with
07:32their eggs on their thumbs. And some fellows in Zumz, whom I happen to know, just happened to
07:38capture a thousand or so, and they wrapped up their eggs and they mailed them by air,
07:43marked special delivery, handle with care. I needed more helpers, and so for assistance,
07:53I called up a fellow named Ali long distance. And Ali, as soon as he hung up the phone,
07:59picked up a small basket and started alone to climb the steep crags and the jags of Mount Struku
08:05to fetch me the egg of a Mount Struku Cuckoo. Now these Mount Struku Cuckoos are rather small gals,
08:12but these Mount Struku Cuckoos have lots of big pals. They died from the skies with wild
08:23cackling shrieks, and they jabbed at his legs, and they stabbed at his cheeks with their yammering,
08:29clamoring, hammering beaks. But Ali, brave Ali, he fought his way through, and he sent me that egg as
08:36I knew he would do for my scrambled egg super de duper de booper special deluxe a la Peter T.
08:42Hooper. In the meanwhile, of course, I was keeping real busy, collecting the eggs of a three-eyelash
08:52tizzy. They're quite hard to reach, so I wrote on the top of a hammock, a shnimmick, a shnamick,
08:58a schnop. Then I found a great flock of southwest-facing cranes, and I guess they've
09:08got something that's wrong with their brains, for this kind of a crane, when she's guarding her nest,
09:13will always stand facing precisely southwest. So to get at those eggs wasn't hard in the least.
09:20I came from behind, from precisely northeast.
09:27And I captured the egg of a grickly gractus, who lays them up high in a prickly cactus.
09:36Then I went for some ziffs. They're exactly like zuffs, but the ziffs live on cliffs, and the
09:42zuffs live on bluffs. And seeing how bluffs are exactly like cliffs, it's mighty hard telling
09:48the zuffs from the ziffs. But I know that the egg that I got from the bluffs, if it wasn't a ziffs
09:54from the cliffs, was a zuffs. Now I needed the egg of a moth-watching sneth, who's a bird who's so big
10:04she scares people to death. And this awful big bird, well, the reason they name her the moth-watching
10:11sneth is because that's how they tame her. She likes watching moths, sort of quiets her mind,
10:17and while she's watching, you sneak up behind and you yank out her egg.
10:21So I got one, of course, with the help of some friends and a very fast horse.
10:29If you want to get eggs you can't buy at a store, you have to do things never thought of before.
10:35Why, to get at the egg of one very small doff, we had to pry all of one mountaintop off.
10:41Then I heard of some birds who lay eggs, if you please, that taste like the air in the holes in
10:46Swiss cheese, and they live in big zinzibar zanzibar trees. So I ordered a treeful,
10:53the job was immense, but I needed those eggs and said hang the expense.
11:01I still needed one more, and I saved it for last, the egg of the frightful bombastic aghast.
11:08The egg of the frightful bombastic aghast, and that bird is so mean, and that bird is so fast,
11:14that I had to escape on a jellica jast, a fleet-footed beast who can run like a deer,
11:19but looks sort of different, you steer him by ear.
11:26All through with the searching, all through with the looking, I had all I needed, and now for the
11:32cooking. I rushed to the kitchen, the place where I'd stacked them. I rolled up my sleeves,
11:37I unpacked them, and cracked them, and shucked them, and chucked them in 99 pans.
11:42Then I mixed in some beans, I used 55 cans. Then I mixed in some ginger, nine prunes,
11:48and three figs, and parsley, quite sparsely, just 22 sprigs. Then I added six cinnamon
11:55sticks and a clove, and my scramble was ready to go on the stove.
12:03And you know how they tasted? They tasted just like, well, they tasted exactly, exactly just like,
12:10like scrambled egg super-de-duper-de-booper, special deluxe a la Peter T. Hooper.
12:21I hope you enjoyed that story. If you would like to see these books uploaded daily,
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12:29are already uploaded. Thank you so much for watching.
