‘Good aardvark, with a long nose and a hairy snout.’

I could hear the words coming out of my friend’s mouth, but assumed my ears were deceiving me. Surely I misheard him.

Most of Jacob’s victims were pretty baffled, but he always got away with it. Their usual response was a very polite delivery of something like, ‘Very well, thank you.’ Or ‘Oh yes, good afternoon to you too.’ As intended, they had interpreted his ambiguous cacophony as, ‘Good afternoon, babble, friendly babble …’ And would end up blaming themselves for not hearing correctly.