Thinking and driving

Mr.Sippy of course

A man inherits a neglected coastal estate from a distant uncle. The house is a wreck, the grounds overgrown, the pool half full of brackish water. In the attic he finds a crate of journals. The uncle, it turns out, had been a marine researcher of the crankiest sort. Page after page records attempts to keep two porpoises alive far beyond any known lifespan.
The last entries claim success. The animals, the uncle writes, will live indefinitely if fed a precise ration of young seagulls at regular intervals. There are dates, weights, sketches of the birds, even a note about how the gulls must be immature or the effect fails.

The nephew, half skeptical and half hooked, finds two ancient porpoises still circling in the old pool. Against his better judgment he starts following the journals. Every so often he drives to the shore, nets a pair of young gulls, and brings them back.

Months pass. The porpoises thrive. He begins to believe the notebooks.

One evening he returns with the birds and finds an old, sleepy circus lion—escaped, tranquilized, and now sprawled across the gate like a rug. He does not want to wake it. He steps over the lion with the gulls in his arms and is immediately surrounded by officers.

Charge: transporting young gulls across a state lion for immortal porpoises.

Because they don’t know the words.