So I got this story idea when I learned of the Carmen Sandiego game Carmen Sandiego Word Detective in which Carmen is attempting to steal language itself, and I realized this kind of strikes to the heart of the Humanimals because while they were given hands with opposable thumbs, bipedial stance it is language the ability to speak it, or at least the ability to comprihend it if the child should have the misfortune to be born deaf and/or mute that gives them the ability to truly be like human beings now when choosing the species of the protaganist I really was straining to think of something that wasn't a canine but then I thought of the name 'Willy Coyote' sounding like classic cartoon character 'Wile E Coyote' and as I'm trying to have the character's species fit the themes of the story (Which admittedly is hard if you're an obscure species that doesn't have a lot of lore around you like say...A Tuatara) But as this opening chapter will establish a character arc of a character who isn't doing well academically despite their race being steretyped as intelligent and over the course of the story learning to utalize their racial gift of cleverness

Willard 'Willy' Coyote was a Coyote Humanimal who lived in the town of Hyacinth a town slightly North of the Original Fertile Valley where the Earthlings first landed, a land of many vinyards as this was the equivilent of California's wine country on Earth. Willy who ever since he began school had heard the 'Wile E Coyote' jokes and most of the time he would just shrug and be like 'Haven't heard that one before' but all in all Willy seemed as far from 'Wily' as you could get, in fact he seemed more like a 'Dumb Jock' his passion was skateboarding he would much rather be at the skate park than sitting around in class he was one of those children who were of the opinion school was thought up by the same grown ups who were in charge of the Spanish Inquistion.

It was in English Class that Willy was once again beginning to fall asleep in class, the Teacher Mrs. Longtail an White Rat-Woman once again heard the distinct sound of snoring and turned her head to see Willy drooling on his desk.

Mrs. Longtail scowled "Mr. Coyote..." She first said softly

Willy kept on snoring

"Mr. Coyote..." She said again

"Willard Coyote!" She yelled

That got his attention.

"Willy it troubles me to see you contantly sleeping in class..." Mrs. Longtail said trying to be sympathetic "...Especially since Coyotes are famed for their cleverness."

Willy grambled he hated to keep hearing about how he wasn't living up to the Coyote stereotype...

"English is just so boring..." He finally said

"I'm very sorry to hear you feel that way..." Mrs. Longtail said which is one of the most condesending things you can say to anyone "...Because the reason you're sitting here in this nice clean air conditioned classroom and not wandering the wilderness eating the guts out of your still living prey is because long ago the generous humans decided to give their power of language to our ancestors thus seperating them from mere animals!"

The entire class groaned this was a story they had heard a million times before not just in history class almost all of them had heard from their parents about how great the humans were to make their ancestors more similar to them and how this great act of generosity meant they weren't even worthy to look at the great and benevolent humans!

"Now class..." Mrs. Longtail said writing something new on the chalkboard "When humans say 'Dumb Animals' they don't mean dumb as in stupid although our ancestors were certainly that compared to humans by 'Dumb' they meant unable to speak although we know animals can communicate with sounds and gestures and even scents this is not true language, my 'squeak' and a coyote's 'howl' can only communicate the most basic of things base emotions like fear and pain or signaling that this territory is claimed but only humans have developed a system of language to truly name things..."

So suffice to say most of the fifth grade calss was pretty annoyed at Willy for getting them a lecture about how they needed to be grateful to the humans for giving them language. Willy took his skateboard and rode off to the skate park he needed to take his mind off his troubles his parents were already telling him if he didn't start improving his grades he'd have to go to summer school again.

So already Willy's story is turning out a bit stronger than some previous Mizzer Humanimals because there is already a conflict and something to learn, I tend to have a bad habit of making my characters a bit to perfect at the start despite knowing that flawed characters with something to learn often end up having stories with much better direction