Though few animals can shoot billiards with the same deftness and ability as the famous palomino in “Ed the Pool Player” from the television series Mr. Ed, the talking equine is not alone in its anthropomorphic pool prowess. On the contrary, the past half century has witnessed a number of animated animals pick up the cue stick, whether with wing, flipper, or cloven hoof, oh my!
At the top of the list for pure pool showmanship is the famous Picadae with the unmistakable laugh, Woody Woodpecker. The red-white-and-blue avian, created in 1940 by Walter Lantz and Ben “Bugs” Hardaway, and the star of almost 200 episodes before calling it quits in 1972, re-emerged in 1999 on a new cartoon entitled The New Woody Woodpecker Show.
In “Cue the Pool Shark,” the six-minute segment kicking off the third and final 2002 season of that new series, Woody saunters into Buzz Buzzard’s Billiards Pool Emporium to play some pool, not realizing the proprietor, Buzz Buzzard (voiced by Jedi warrior Mark Hamill) sees him as “a new customer to con.” After Buzz’s lackey convinces Woody (with some duplicity involving magnetized balls) that his game is quite good, Woody agrees to compete with Buzz in a $79 winner-takes-all game of straight pool to 100 points. But, only a few shots later, Woody suspects he’s been hustled, especially when Buzz successfully calls “all the balls in the corner pocket, bank it off the lamp,” racking up 15 points in a single shot.
That’s when Woody decides to turn the tables by hoodwinking Buzz into squaring off on a series of comically improbable trick shots, from “off the jukebox, over the moose, out the door, and into the mailbox” to “down the (telephone) wire, staircase, waste basket.” But, the raptor doesn’t realize that Woody is using the shots to lure him from “desk, off the clock, up the stairs, down the sink…” and into a jail cell.
It’s a shame that the otherwise humorous episode ends with Woody’s painful lament, “I think I’ll celebrate by playing some golf, Chinese checkers, anything but pool!” – and that’s even after reclaiming his $79. The full episode is available to watch here.
From Buzzards’ Billiards, we can swim over to Neptune Bay, where Wanda the octopus recently purchased a pool table, thinking it might “boost business.” That is the set-up for the 11-minute 2000 “Pool Shark” episode of Rainbow Fish, a children’s animated television series, based on the children’s book Rainbow Fish, written and drawn by Marcus Pfister in 1992.
In “Pool Shark” the baize has barely had time to soak before Chomper’s cousin Slick, a beret-and-shades wearing shark, has taken center stage, effortlessly dispatching his opponents and winning kelp gushers. Rainbow’s not a bad shot, but he’s easily seduced by his fellow piscine pool player, and quickly swears his allegiance as a personal assistant, thereby blowing off his other friends, including Blue, a blue fish, who disdainfully suggests “pool is not even a real sport.” (Boo!!!)
Uttering a line that might have come right from Finnegan on TruTV’s The Hustlers, Slick shares with Rainbow that the key to winning in billiards is “getting the edge on your opponent.” But, much like Woody, Rainbow starts to suspect that Slick is cheating, especially after he sees him exchange cue balls (an old hustling technique). The key is to catch him in the act. The opportunity surfaces when Rainbow challenges Slick to a game of Pacific 9-Ball (players alternate shots, winner is the first to clear the table), in which the stakes are the “winner stays at Wanda’s, the loser finds a new game.” Slick’s hustle is ultimately foiled when Wanda spies his sleight-of-hand, and the phony cue ball is cracked open revealing a disgruntled fish who is tired of swimming inside the ball and acting as its internal GPS. Slick is quickly forced to leave Neptune Bay, proving once again, kids, that crime doesn’t pay.
The “Pool Shark” episode of Rainbow Fish is available to download from the iTunes store.
Finally, back on dry land, in the “Shaun Goes Potty” episode of Shaun the Sheep, a flock of sheep are delighted to learn that the Farmer has had a new billiards table shipped to Mossy Bottom Farm, where he resides. Shaun the Sheep is a British stop-motion animated series that was spun off from the Wallace and Gromit franchise. The series first aired in 2007 and is currently entering its fifth season after 130 seven-minute episodes.
In the second season “Shaun Goes Potty” episode from 2010, Shaun, the mischievous but clever ovine, challenges Bitzer, the Farmer’s sheepdog, to a game of blackball on the new table. (For the uninitiated, blackball, a game of pool popular in the United Kingdom, is a variant of 8-ball, with 15 solid, unnumbered red and yellow balls replacing their American solid-and-stripe numbered counterparts.) Shaun is a reasonable shot, demonstrating some masse and making a two-in-one carom, before pocketing the cue. He is well-matched by the cocky Bitzer, who runs a handful of balls and even attempts a no-look, before scratching. Down to just the blackball, Bitzer distracts Shaun with an air horn, resulting in a shot (similar to those in The New Woody Woodpecker episode) that goes off a tree, down a roof, down a gutter, into a gopher hole, before being ejected by the angry rodent and thrown back onto the table. Seemingly to have the game in hand, Bitzer confidently lines up his shot, only to get equally distracted by the horn of the Farmer’s approaching auto, and in the process, rips the table’s felt. Fortunately, the animal farm rallies to the rescue, patching the rip with some lawn and mowing it to verdant perfection. The full episode is available to watch here.
https://youtu.be/gjNAc-Wi6CY
So, there you have it…a regular menagerie of pool players, from sharks and rainbow fish to sheep and sheepdogs to woodpeckers and buzzards. Throw in the talking horse, a cat and mouse (cf. Tom and Jerry – “Cue Ball Cat”), and maybe a famous duck (cf. Donald in Mathmagic Land), and we’ve got the founding membership of the future Billiards Congress of America Zoo of Fame.
