card playing bats (was Interim)

[Toby G Levy]

Sorry Tim,

I just don't see the poker playing dogs as having much to do with the
pinochle playing worms in Vineland.  On the other hand, the bats from
Pogo were tiny, usually discovered on the scene of the comic strip,
popping up out of nowhere, deeply involved in their card game, completely
oblivious to everything going on around them. Surfing around the web I
couldn't find much about them, except one fan's memory of a typical
conversation among the three bats in the later years of the strip, after
they became more fully fleshed out characters with the names listed
below,

Toby

extracted from a UGA Humor list archive:

>From Walt Kelly's "POGO" comic strip, the Three Bats (Bewitched,
Bothered,
and Bewildered ["How do you spell that, Bemildred?"]) trying to determine
if all three of them are present for a meeting, since each one counts
only
the other two:     (from memory, may be a little off)

First:  The way to solve this is with algebra. Here's my old algebra
        textbook.  It says, "Let X equal the unknown."
Second: The unknown, huh?  That would be Snorbert Zangox over in
Waycross.
First:  He's unknown?
Third:  The best! I've never heard of him.
Second:  Neither have I.  Put me down as one not knowin' him.
Third:  I don't know him, either.
First:  Neither me. Now I adds up how many don't know him, and I gets
"three!"
Second: Meaning three of us don't know him, so there's three of us here!
First:  Man, that algebra is terrific!
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