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"The Mammyth"  
Chicksandbalances
First Appearance Chicks and Balances
Publisher Baen
Editor Esther Friesner and John Helfers
Collected The Best of Harry Turtledove
Genre(s) Fantasy
Publication date July, 2015

"The Mammyth" is a short comedic-fantasy story by Harry Turtledove, first published by Baen in Chicks and Balances, edited by Esther Friesner and John Helfers, in July 2015. It may be read in preview form at Baen's website. It was reprinted in the collection The Best of Harry Turtledove (2021).

The story briefly begins with the narrator describing the mammyth, a fictional animal that resembles the elephant, but with fantasy elements. The description includes allusions to Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark", Hans Christian Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes", and a fictional work by the historical travel writer Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer.

The story then jumps to the story's main protagonists, who are all puppets, and each of whom is based on a character from Sesame Street: the main hero, Tundra Dawn (based on Prairie Dawn), and her two sidekicks, Cleveland (based on Grover the monster) and Tremendous Ptarmigan (based on Big Bird). During their trek, the arrive in the city of Metropolis, the capital city of King Wolcott's realm. After a rather complicated trip by subway, the three meet with the king, who gives them some supplies for their quest.

A few days after leaving Metropolis, the group encounters a herd of cheeseheads (a riff on fans of the Green Bay Packers). They soon find mammyth tracks in the snow, and while following those, they encounter Lewis Carroll's Walrus and Carpenter, who direct them to the mammyth. When they find it, however, they promptly vanish, meeting the same fate that the Baker did in "The Hunting of the Snark", as the narrator assures us that the mammyth was a Boojum, you see.

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