 Why is the story's setting important for the plot?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The only kind of gag worth pulling, I always maintained, was a cosmic one—till I learned the Cosmos has a really nasty sense of humor! I heard my daughter's running feet in the animal rooms and her rollerskates banging at her side. Yet I had always been so sure I could create them that I had been calling them volplas for ten years. No, twelve. I had called them volplas since the day old Nijinsky's elongated arms and his cousin's lateral skin folds had given me the idea of a flying mutant. "Tell your mother that I retaliate. Again in the laboratory, I entered the metabolic accelerator and withdrew the intravenous needles from my first volplas. The accelerator had forced them almost to adulthood in less than a month. It would be several hours before they would begin to move, to learn to feed and play, perhaps to learn to fly. Meanwhile, it was clear that here was no war of dominant mutations. I flipped a hamburger and a slice of onion onto a plate and picked up the ketchup and said, "I've reached the dangerous age." I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth and said aloud, "Yes, sir, the dangerous age. I kissed her until I heard rollerskates coming across the terrace from one direction and a horse galloping toward the terrace from the other direction.
 The narrator's ranch is so big it can conceal its inhabitants.
 The narrator's ranch is so big it can conceal its inhabitants.  The volplas can only survive in California.  There are sparrows for the volplas to eat at the narrator's ranch.  The volplas originally lived in a similar landscape.