One way you can judge a person is by looking at their friends . . . and their enemies. I have wonderful friends.

And terrible enemies.

The one with Area ~51~ 91.

This is such a silly book.

All the conspiracy theories are right (more or less)! So of course the Yeerks need a way in to learn the truth–and the obvious answer isn’t to take over anyone on the base. I guess that’s why they take over high school basketball players and assistant principals. They can’t get anyone higher placed…

Anyway, the Yeerks are going in, so of course the Animorphs have to as well.

Whee!

Random thoughts (only minor spoilers):

<Marco, just how dumb are you?> Rachel asked. <We know about the real aliens. We know they don’t look like E.T. or the guys you always see on alien books. And we know the real aliens, the Yeerks, don’t go around kidnapping backwoods goobers and doing medical experiments on them.>

<Maybe there are two different bunches of aliens,> Marco said.

Or maybe even more! We already know about the Chee (tens of thousands of years). And []Roswell Grays sound a lot like Na (of the Skrit Na).

He laughed. “Nope. Sorry, Rachel. I need Cassie. Crazy Helen called and we have a sick horse way out on the edge of the Dry Lands.”

So… the Dry Lands / Area ~51~ 91 are in the deserts of the American Southwest, right? I’d previously thought these books were probably set somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, but it would be more than a few hour drive. So would this push us more towards LA/San Diego?

Especially, when you have:

Yes, I said the band. Because, you see, the nightly Gardens Parade of Characters was swinging up the main street. There was a brass band. In fact there were three. There were dance teams. There were clowns. There were floats. And best of all, there were cartoon characters.

Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety Bird, Sylvester, the Tasmanian Devil, and Pepe Le Pew. They were all there in bigger-than-life costumes, dancing amidst a blaze of colored lights that blotted out the stars.

So… when exactly would Disney license these characters out for a parade at another theme park in (probably) California? So does that make ’the Gardens’ more or less Disney Land? Leads some credence to the LA adjacent idea.

Also, we get this lovely scene:

Suddenly, out jumped a Daffy Duck! Right in Visser Three’s path. The Yeerk visser snapped his deadly tail. It flew through the air and Daffy’s head went rolling across the ground.

<Noooo!> I cried.

The girl wearing the costume stuck her head up and said, “Hey! What’s the matter with you?”

<Aaaahhhh!> the visser moaned. <What kind of creature is that?>

Also:

“Why do they have that extra o in opossum?” Marco wondered. “What’s the point of it if it’s silent?”

Fun fact: [[wiki:oppossum]] are native to the Americas (mostly South America, only one species made it to and is still in North America). [[wiki:ppossum]] are an Australian species named because of their similar physical appearance to the former, although they’re relatively distantly related.

Also, it’s originally a Powhatan word and the ‘o’ (possibly originally closer to an ‘a’ sound) was not silent!

Linguistics and etymology are fun.