Over the Hedge by T Lewis and Michael Fry for September 22, 2015

RJ that was the point !

This would have been more effective if the whole toon weren’t in all caps …

don’t need no freekin caps key

When you call 9-whine-whine, do you get a whambulance?

I thought he was going to sprain his spleen.

I thought 999 got you Scotland Yard.

Wrong country. In the US. 911 gets the emergency operator. I don’t know if this was because 999 was already taken or that 911 was considered better in the old days. E.g., on the old rotary phones, 911 can be dialed much faster; 9 was transmitted by 9 clicks and 1 by 1 click, and by the time you got through 27 clicks, Hannibal Lector could already be cooking your liver.

111 would have been ideal, but anything starting with 1 already had a special meaning and codes starting with 2 through 8 could all be the start of a normal phone number. So 9 was the only initial number available.