Let's talk about it over a Lynx burger

"Hey."

"Hey, game warden."

"What's that over by your fireplace?"

"Where?

"Right over there. The thing that looks like a big mutant cat, but stuffed."

"Oh, that."

"That's not an endangered Canada lynx, is it?

"No."

"No?"

" ... no ... idea why you stopped by my house this morning! Such a lovely day, shouldn't you be outside? Enjoying the woodland habitats?"

"Well, I saw this ad on a taxidermy Web site for animal pelts. Thought I'd see if that thing that looked like a lynx was, you know, a lynx."

"William Shakespeare."

"What?"

"William Shakespeare said a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

"So?"

"So does it really matter what name we call things? You say 'critically endangered lynx,' I say 'fuzzy footstool with ears.'"

"That is a lynx, isn't it?"

"If by 'lynx' you mean 'imperiled animal that University of Minnesota Duluth researchers had been tracking before it wound up stuffed in my house as a taxidermy project,' then I suppose you could say it's a lynx, yeah."

"You know you'll get probation for this. Two years probation."

"A small price to pay for my silent protest against non-stuffed species. Let my people go."

"Think I'll take the stuffed lynx first, thanks."