What's Up with Zucchini?

Dear Give a Gripe,

What's up with the Zucchini? Why must it look so much like the Cucumber?

Sincerely, Moo

Dear Moo,

You can find the answer to your question by parallelling it to the animal kingdom. Why does a king snake look so much like a coral snake? Why do zebras look so much like tigers? Why does Michael Jackson look like a white guy?

Camoflauge. Just as animals use camoflauge to prevent becoming prey, so do vegetables to prevent becoming pureed. (Play on words fully intended)

Zucchini is considered the bane of the vegetable kingdom. It's squishy, slimy and has a bitter aftertaste. It is so bad in fact, that I used to cry when forced to eat it. Because it hasn't been working this last week, I've come up with a better tactic to rid myself of the evil squash. I point behind my parents head and exclaim, "Look! A 3 headed monkey!" and then promptly scrape my zucchini onto my brothers plate.

Cucumber, on the contrary, is much more refreshing and goes quite well on salads. However, kids still don't like cucumber. Why? Because it reminds them of zucchini. I hated cucumber before I even got the chance to try it, and stayed away from it until curiousity got the best of me.

So you see that the reason for the similarity between zucchini and cucumber is just another survival tactic. Cucumber disguises itself as a nasty vegetable to prevent being eaten. Though seeing that cucumbers end up on dinner salads daily, one could argue that their method doesn't work very well....

But they don't need to know that...

~Hol