1. You have a roommate, and he looks like a dead cassowary.

2. Your roommate never moves, and he is a cassowary.

3. You wake up from a dream about a dead cassowary, and you think, "Now where'd I put that cassowary? Oh yeah, it's dead. And it's my roommate!"

4. You go to the movies with your roommate, and you have to carry him because he's dead. Also, he is a cassowary.

5. Your roommate suggests that you make some stew. You ask him what you should put in it. "Me!" replies your roommate. "Dead cassowary stew!" you exclaim. Your roommate nods.

6. You go to Belgium for three weeks, and after some time away you begin to miss talking to cassowaries. You decide to call your roommate, but he doesn't pick up the phone because he is dead.

7. You accidentally go to a bar. At the bar, you begin talking with a young child about the way the clouds looked after a rainstorm that occurred recently. The bartender interrupts your conversation to ask how the child got into the bar without being caught (usually only adults are allowed in bars), implying with his manner of speech that you may have brought him in somehow. Then the bartender recognizes the child and corrects himself. "Oh, yeah," he says, "I let you in because I thought you were just a cassowary." The child laughs. "A cassowary? I don't look anything like a cassowary. If you want to know what a cassowary looks like, check out this guy's roommate!" "My roommate's dead!" you add.

8. You have a date with someone you don't really like, and you don't have a very good set of directions to their house. You drive around a bit, looking for their street, and minutes tick by until you're rather late. You eventually give up, and just keep going in whatever direction you happen to be headed. Shortly you arrive at a shopping mall, and opt to spend a couple of hours walking around by yourself, peering about in the stores and watching all the people go by. On the upper level, you're surprised to find your roommate working on some sort of garden. It is a largish garden. The mall's proprietors have allowed him to construct a tall, thin canvas wall around the garden, building a makeshift greenhouse in the sunbeams that shine in from the skylights. Wondering if this setup will really yield any significant benefit, you find yourself a little skeptical, but you poke your head in for a brief moment and find the temperature noticeably higher than outside, and the air slightly more humid. Not wanting to be noticed, you back out and find a bench outside the canvas, from which you can watch your roommate work. Since the canvas obscures his view, you figure that he will only be able to notice you from inside if he pauses his work and looks directly toward the bench, which isn't likely. "Now I didn't know a cassowary could do a thing like that," the elderly lady next to you comments. "In all my years, I've never seen a cassowary try to plant a garden!" Your roommate overhears the woman's comment and looks up. "It doesn't help that I'm dead!" he says.

Diagram

Cassowary

Dead cassowary