Odie - Odie's Intelligence and Tongue

Odie's Intelligence and Tongue

A running gag throughout the strip is Odie's idiocy. Garfield frequently calls him a moron, to the point where Odie was completely shocked one day when Garfield didn't insult him. He is mostly viewed as an idiot, but in rare cases, it is shown that he hides his high intelligence. For example: once while he, Garfield, and Jon were camping, he locked himself in the car. Garfield and Jon then gets suspicious when Odie turns on the radio and the lights and start eating chips, smiling while Jon and Garfield were trapped outside with no food or shelter during a thunderstorm. Another time, when Garfield and Jon were out, Odie was reading a huge book, smoking a pipe, and listening to classical music. Another running gag is Odie's impossibly long tongue. In one strip, when Garfield taunted Odie for not being able to write with his paws, he was completely bewildered when Odie's tongue grabbed a pen and wrote, "Hi there." In another strip, Odie is running around the family room, and Garfield grabs on to his tongue to see how long it is. The next panel shows Odie right next to Garfield, but with his tongue literally wrapped around all the furniture, going through the hallway, wrapping around Odie himself and Garfield, and with room to spare, much to Garfield's shock. Another strip shows Garfield theorizing how he can have such a long tongue, and store it in his mouth. He then guesses that he has the rest of his tongue stored in where his brain should be, also stating how much of an idiot he is. Also, in one winter themed Sunday strip, Odie's tongue is stuck to a lamp post stretched from two blocks to Jon's dining room, prompting Garfield to tell Jon, "We need a blow dryer and a really, really long extension cord. Another comic is where Jon, Garfield & Odie are painting a wall & Jon yells at Garfield because he's using the end of Odie's tongue as a paintbrush.

In The Garfield Show Odie's tongue is once again shown to be very long and stretchy. In the episode "Out on a Limb" Odie uses his tongue, in an attempt to lower Garfield down a very high tree.