It has struck me how many animals there are in the shorts of the Three Stooges. There are horses, mules, cows, dogs, cats, goats, gorillas, lions, chickens, ducks, parrots, and many others. Often they play an important role in the plot. What are your favorite animals in the Stooge shorts, or your favorite bits in which an animal plays an essential role?
By the way, please don't count Curly barking or snarling like a dog or other beast as an animal. Actors dressed as animals (e.g., in gorilla suits) count as animals when they are actually supposed to be animals in the action of the short.
My own favorites are these:
(1) The "cow," actually a bull, that Moe and Larry send Curly to milk in Busy Buddies. The animal itself doesn't do much of interest on screen, but the sequence in which we repeatedly hear it lowing off screen, followed by a crunching sound, followed by Curly flying over the fence and landing on his head, makes me laugh every time.
(2) The gunpowder-eating duck in Flat Foot Stooges. It is bizarre enough that this animal shows such an appetite for the gunpowder that villain Dick Curtis trails behind him from the leaky keg that he carries under his arm. The contrived absurdity reaches its peak when, at a crucial moment, the duck, having for some reason settled on a second-floor window sill, lays an egg that rolls off, hits the ground, and explodes, setting the firehouse on fire!
