A group of firemen suddenly grew bored with the sound of the siren on their fire engine.  They decided to replace the siren with a small yak, which they kidnaped from a shelter that houses hobos and animals that are not indigenous to metropolitan domains.

After removing the siren and superglueing the yak’s hooves to the roof of the fire engine, the firemen stared at each other and waited for a fire to start somewhere in the city.

No fire started.

Annoyed, the firemen disguised themselves as arsonists, snuck a few blocks down the street and set a building on fire.  Then they ran back to the fire station, took off their disguises, put on their big red hats and uniforms, and piled into the fire engine.

“Scream!” the fireman behind the steering wheel said to the yak as the garage door creaked open and they pulled onto the street.  His head was sticking out the window and he was looking up and glaring hatefully at the yak.  “I said scream, you!”

The yak didn’t respond.  It didn’t even look down at the driver and blink.

The driver told the fireman in the passenger’s seat to get up there on the roof and make that yak scream.  The fireman hesitated at first but then he climbed up on the roof, adopted the stance and voice of a drill sergeant, and screamed in the yak’s ear.  “Scream you sonuvabitch!  Scream you evil motherfucker!” he screamed.

The yak made a noise that sounded like a baby burping.

“We need a new yak!” the fireman blurted before the yak nudged him in the belly with its shoulder and sent him flying off the fire engine and through the front window of a haberdasher’s shop.  Bowler and fedora hats spilled onto the sidewalk and street in a hysterical mudslide.

Irate, the driver told a fireman in the back seat to go make the yak scream.  The fireman said he was scared of heights.  The driver swore at him and told him that acrophobic fireman are oxymoronic and can’t possibly exist.  Reluctantly the fireman agreed, then clambered onto the roof and tried his best to scare the yak into screaming submission, but the yak nudged him off the fire engine and he flew through the front window of a haberdasher’s shop, too.  This time it was tando and ten gallon hats that flooded the sidewalk and street.

(Having a special penchant for ten gallon hats, the driver peered at his rear view mirror in envy of the pedestrians that fell on the hats like sharks on floating, bleeding carcasses.)

The same thing kept happening after that.  One by one the firemen were ordered to climb up on the roof and so they did it and screamed at the yak and were nudged off of the fire engine into a haberdasher’s shop until the only fireman left was the driver, who promptly abandoned the wheel, crawled out of his window and onto the roof.  He crossed his arms over his chest and frowned at the yak.  The fire engine was out of control.  Cars, people and pets were leaping out of its way as it soundlessly, recklessly swerved down the street.

The fireman grabbed the yak by the neck and nearly stuck his whole face into its ear.  “What’s your problem!” he said.  “We’re almost at the fire and you haven’t made a peep yet!  You’re embarrassing me!  How are people supposed to know we’re coming?”

The yak shrugged—not in response to the question that had been posed to it but in a fruitless attempt to free its glued hooves from the roof—before throwing its shoulder into the fireman’s rib cage.

“Sound off!” said the fireman in a last-gasp effort to activate the yak as he sailed through the air towards that window full of hats.  The effort, of course, was in vain.  The fire engine rambled past the burning building and it was not until much later, when the vehicle had left the city in its dust, that the yak broke its silence.  Cruising across fields of deep empty green, the animal opened its mouth and discharged a noise loud enough to shatter reality...