A Prairie Escape

Thousands of blog readers are requesting, no demanding, I continue the amazing story of my journey from ferality to running a prestigious psychiatric institute, and though I hadn't wanted this humble endeavour to focus on me, I do understand their interest, as most people still stumble blindly in the dark when it comes the their fourleg brethren, the majority actually doubting that there are indeed men and women among them, many prominent and even famous, who were raised by animals. My life is devoted in large measure to combating this prejudicial attitude, part of which suggests, sadly, willful blindness, and another part bald incredulity. I excuse the latter and condemn the former. Period.

Who, you may ask, are some famous people who were raised in a fourleg home? Given my profession and the fact that many patients at the Balzac Institute have ferality in their background, I shall only share the names of celebrities who have outed themselves, in person, in print, or by legend. In no particular order, these include:

1) Romulus and Remus, historic founders of Rome, and raised and suckled by a wolf.

2) Beatrix Potter, brought up by the hedgehogs Josiah Thumpleton Crotchtitty and his wife, Penelope Higglety Pizzleberry-Crotchtitty.

3) JK Rowling, nursed by a griffon and nurtured by a phoenix.

4) Rudyard Kipling, improbably raised by a cobra, a mongoose, a tiger and Penelope Higglety Pizzleberry-Crotchtitty.

5) Wyatt Earp, armadillo parents.

6) Jane Goodall, had a sea cucumber as a governess.

7) Cameron Diaz, coyote mother (yes!).

8) Jimmy Carter, a pair of turkey vultures captured him as an infant and raised him in their nest.

9) Fitty Cent, racing pigeons sheltered him in their coop.

10) Charles Nelson Reilly, entire childhood spent with peafowl.

I could provide you with another three-score celebrity names but won't, as it isn't germane to this posting. I'm procrastinating sharing my personal story with you, as the memories are as bitter as a wormwood and quince smoothie. But my personal mission statement is "No fear!", and so I must plod on.

After crucifying Seminole, my father, I left the house and ran naked through the streets of Sourdough toward the Sourdough River, which bisects the town into what some local wag named the "Left Bank" and the "Not Left Bank." The names stuck, unfortunately, thanks largely to students at the town's two colleges, which occupy prime riverfront territory, Melancthon College on the Left Bank and Lost Souls College on the Not Left Bank. My entire confrontation with Seminole took little over ten minutes, so it was still barely after dawn, a time coyotes refer to as "treetop sun" for the obvious reason of where the sun resides at this important time of the day: young coyotes nurse then, after which they fall sleep. My coyote mother, Ki, always loved treetop sun, when the air was crisp, the shadows long, and creatures of the night crossed paths with creatures of the day, some returning to sleep while others stirred and rose. Ki often composed poetry in the early morning hours, chanting it in her lovely warbling voice. While a translation fails to do justice to the oral complexities of her spoken verse, I offer one of my favorites below, which I call "Sparrows":

Chittering they fly so free,
Over land and over tree.
Flapping wings they take to flight,
How wondrous is their aerial sight!
While mud-bound stays the coyote,
Emburrowed must our tenure be.
Yet we fly, too, when we perceive,
The sparrows flitting o'er the leaves.

I'm crying as I write this, at the memory of my dearest mother, Ki, killed by a twoleg trapper. What would she think, were she alive, of my murderous intentions toward Emmeline, Seminole and Claude? Forgiveness is the sole commandment of the coyote moral universe, expressed usually as: "Forgive your neighbor as you would yourself, for everyone fucks up a lot."

So I let Ki down, probably, by my actions toward my twoleg family. We'd talk about them through my years of loneliness on the prairie, as I watched Ki's litters come and go, my own siblings with whom I'd play, and over whom I'd watch, and though I was older than my brothers and sisters chronologically, my own development was perforce slower, given my species and our protracted human childhood, and Ki forbade me from leaving before I was ready, I had so much to learn about life as a coyote, and so few instinctual resources to draw upon to help me naturally that Ki feared, with good reason, I'd simply die on my own, and on occasion she'd broach the possibility of my returning to the twoleg world once I was of mating age, despite the sly looks I'd get from a few of the girls from the burrows around us, Greet and Lala in particular watched me with deep aching lust shimmering in their eyes, and Ki would chase them away, fangs bared and dripping, fangs snapping. "You musn't donk those bitches," she'd order, and I obeyed Ki as I never have any being before or since—that is, until I met my beloved future wife, Whiski Rae Shamrock, MD, who could insist I extinguish a burning brand by thrusting it up my fundament, a command she's issued me more than once, only to stop me right before I fully comply, much as YHWH stopped Abraham from plunging a knife into his son, Isaac's, chest.

I adore Whiski Rae's bossiness, as I find it sexy, much as I admired Ki's take-charge attitude, though not for Oedipal reasons, but because it kept me alive. The very best example I can offer is my escape from Sourdough after attacking Seminole. As I noted above, I ran immediately to the Sourdough River and dove in, I was a good swimmer and the heat I felt was like a grass fire, not heat from the day, which hadn't yet built, but heat from passion's furnace, in my case the passion of hate and revenge. I swam into the river's main channel, where the current was swift and the river a good eight feet deep. The water cooled me at once, and I felt my limbs loosen up as I drifted through the heart of the town, allowing only my face to surface, lest the assorted loiterers on the river's banks spy me and shout Huzzah! But I needn't worry, for I could tell that the few twolegs who were up and about were already mired deep in the day's relentless minutiae, their brows furrowed in pointless contemplation of their mean and sorry existence. My temptation was to roll onto my back and relax completely, my arms and legs floating as though weightless while I pondered the bottomless sky above and tried to think past all that blue. Although I'd lived the life of a coyote for nine years, I hadn't been cut off from the human world completely, as I'd sometimes sneak into Williston, North Dakota, the closest town to our burrow, and watch television through some family's window. Thus I was familiar with a little of the news of the day, and was especially interested in the moon landings, which had occurred some five or six years before. I knew the names of the first lunar explorers, Armstrong and Aldrin and Collins, and I even sent them a fan letter, recalling dimly how to spell and mail things, much as I occasionally sent hate mail to my twoleg family, addressing them as "The Poopheads," which was the sole scatological rebuke I remembered from my human childhood. To my delight the three astronauts, or more likely, their lackeys, sent me a signed photo, which I hung in the burrow above the ledge I'd dug for himself below our home's family room. For a return address I used the communal P.O. box shared by the area's coyotes, as several of them enjoyed buying dog sweaters from L.L Bean, the prairie winters being severe, and paying for the garments with stolen checks I'd complete for them . Greet's father fancied the Casco Bay polo shirts as well, and often trotted about wearing a pink one, sometimes even sporting a pair of Madras shorts he favored when the lesions on his rear end festered and ran, as he was very vain and hated to be seen in such a state.

But anyway: I didn't dare relax my guard until I left the town's environs, which didn't take long, Sourdough being small. I stayed in the river until I reached a little county park a few miles from town, then swam to shore and, after scanning the grounds for twolegs, stretched out in the long grass and let the sun beat down on my face and slept, surrounded by the sound of the rushing water, the calls of yellow-headed blackbirds, bobolinks and coots, and the distant whine of traffic on a county road. I was hidden, more or less, by the tall grasses, which also absorbed some of the water that beaded up on my greasy filthy skin. The peace of nature infilitrated my very core, and I felt an incredible rush of understanding rattle my soul. My soul! I was an avowed atheist and rationalist, unusual for a fourleg, especially one raised by coyotes, who are mystics to the bone, they believe in the Great Meadow, as I've mentioned, an idea that appeals even if I don't believe it myself, but they are also fond of the teachings of St. Theresa, Hildegaard von Bingen and Teilhard de Chardin, or the bastardized corruptions thereof told by my one sworn feral enemy, Claudetta Jean Tomattino, who at fourteen escaped the convent of Our Precious Lady of Weeping Sores in Sioux Falls in the midst of a roaring Great Plains blizzard, running shoeless through the mounting drifts, abandoning her wimple and habit for the thin shift she wore underneath, a vision ostensibly compelling her to escape into "nature," she expected Hildegaard to protect and succour her, instead she slowed and staggered and fell shivering into the deep snows, spent and frightened, her whimpering oddly coyote-like, leading Skuse the Grand to leave his comfortable burrow and investigate, he found the poor deluded girl and dragged her from the storms into his home, where his wives, Neetz and Woofle, licked and cosseted and nursed the trembling novitiate, who recovered by and by, then flourished, she remained with her adoptive parents until their deaths, then stayed in their den and took a series of coyote lovers, mating openly and loudly with them in violation of every tenet of fourleggedness, her egregious disregard of this more abided chiefly because she was a superb if dishonest storyteller, she convinced many coyotes to embrace the inexplicable and seek within it special messages and epiphanies that appealed as if a narcotic, indeed there was something addictive about her, she grew tremendously fat off of antelope marrow, brains, kidneys and liver, spending her days in shady repose under a tremendous cottonwood tree on the banks of the Niobrara River, eating and receiving oral pleasuring from a series of rank young male coyotes, Ki despised them and she hated Claudetta Jean, warning me away from her on our annual trips to South Dakota to visit relatives, which she needn't, I found the fat nun contemptible, not because of her lewd corpulence, which was merely disgusting, but rather her mystical maunderings, which struck me as being ad hoc, cynical, manipulative and frankly dumb. I had in fact intended to kill Claudetta Jean, as she threatened to destroy the coyote community in the Dakotas, dozens of young males in particular were drawn to her for obvious reasons, she was large enough to accomodate the urgent humpings of six at a time, provided each first bring her a freshly killed pronghorn, she'd spout her puerile blather to the legion panting acolytes lolling at her feet, worn out by their erotic exertions and unquestioning of her philosophies. But I was spared the role of executioner when she choked to death on an enormous gallstone lodged in one of the hepars she'd downed. She was in her fifties by then, toothless and weighing nearly a quarter-ton, and though gone her influence continues, if attenuated with the passing generations, there is still much pointless talk of the soul and the numinous and the possibility of sudden revelation through a self-induced emotional delirium. Bah!

I slept for hours that day by the river, the deepest sleep of my life, satisfied I'd castrated my brother and fixed my father to a cross of thorns, and that I'd indirectly tormented my mother through the sufferings of Claude and Seminole. Yet when I woke to the hooting of an owl and saw the dark sky reaching towards me there in the rolling countryside, a fat moon bruised and bright above, its face mottled but proud and refusing to look away even once during the past three billion years, unflinching as it regarded, and was regarded in turn, by its showy blue overseer, I felt ill, my throat raw, my scalp and groin itching, my limbs exhausted, a fever burning my brow, my lungs rigid and dense, the breath slipping from me, and a sharp pang of terror seized me by the scruff and shook me rudely. I was dying! I had intended to kill, and now was being killed myself, by what I had no idea, were Ki still alive she might be able to diagnosis me from the stench of my breath, the taste of my urine, the aroma and consistency of my stool, her veterinary skills were celebrated, creatures came from all around to attend her healing clinics, there was amnesty for all within eyeshot of our burrow, the fattest chipmunks could come with impunity to be ministered to by my coyote mother, though were she to come across them an hour later while hunting she'd break their little necks without mercy, this was understood by all species, the arbitrary nature of rules saying this is fine here but not there, or you can do this in this way but not that, for no more reason than order must be imposed, anarchy benefiting only the cagiest and strongest, those crafty enough to get away, quite literally, with murder, while all else goes to hell all around, until eventually the utter and complete collapse of critter culture comes with the sudden, avenging force of a volcanic explosion, or more insidiously in the manner of some grave and unstoppable epidemic, the whiskey shits, say, which eradicated over ninety per cent of Great Plains coyotes back when the Toadbellies first populated the prairie, this being the coyote name for European twolegs, referencing the sickly pale hue of their skin, and their intestinal malady which was likely cholera but was colloquially named after the intoxicant the Toadbellies introduced to our land. Damn them, and damn me for being their descendent!

How long I lay shivering after I slept I can't say for sure, but I believe there passed at least three treetop times, during which period I could neither eat nor drink nor even move, other than roll first to one side, than to the other. I was concealed more completely than I had realized at first, for occasionally visitors roamed the park, teens, mainly, to party and to mate, and at one point five or six peace officers to search for me. How did I know this was their purpose? They came close enough that I could hear them, and in the case of one heavyset fellow with flame red hair and an unkempt moustache, see him. How he couldn't see me I can't fathom, for I could see the reflection of myself frozen in fear in the lenses of his oversized mirrored sunglasses. Yet the deputy seemed to perceive nothing even as he peered seemingly right at me, his breathing stertorous, the buttons threatening to pop off of the cheap brown uniform shirt that barely covered his proud hard belly and fatty chest. I lay very still, willling myself not even to breathe, as the cop chewed the inside of his lip and hummed to himself a tuneless ditty, and sang a little as well, something about muskrats copulating, a song I later learned was a pop sensation of the era, obviously written by someone who'd not witnessed such fornication directly, as I had myself, there was nothing romantic about the fast and mildly gruesome screwing of two water rodents, who are tasty, admittedly, I'd eaten many a muskrat myself, some of whom I'd killed while they were in the midst of their outlandish and perfervid coition. Muskrat love indeed.

After the lawmen left I determined I must again move on. I now suspected I had both distemper and mange, and knew if I were to survive, I'd need to make my way to a ranch outside of Dickinson, North Dakota, and see Dr. Ken. Dr. Ken was a man of legend and mystery. He was a fourleg by way of California, where a cougar killed his parents, then abducted the young Ken who grew up to be a medical doctor, a veterinary surgeon, a dentist and a notary public. Now is not the time to recount his story, which would take a thousand and one postings; instead I will merely note that all wild creatures between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains know that if one of their young needs health care, he's the man to see. When Ki had an especially tough case, she'd summon Dr. Ken using the Coyote Express, which permits the rapid transmission of messages in emergencies through serial yipping. But I had no such service available to me now, for the Express didn't extend into Minnesota. Instead I would have to steal a car or a truck and drive myself westward.

You may wonder how I knew how to drive, given that I was only seven when Emmeline and Seminole cast me off. The answer is that I was a bit of a juvenile delinquent, often going to a truck stop off the interstate, which coyotes call the Hard River, and sneaking into idling vehicles whose owners had run into the store to pay for gas or buy some pork rinds and condoms. I was always a watcher as a boy, and possessed a photographic memory, and I'd slip behind the steering wheel and close my eyes, imaging what Emmeline or Seminole did when they drove, then opening my eyes I'd emulate their actions. In this way I learned, by and by, how to operate vehicles with automatic transmissions, though the intricacies of clutching and shifting eluded me, and I sometimes stole a car and would drive for hours at night, often with several of my friends aboard, they seemed fascinated by this exposure to twoleg culture, and enjoyed especially listening to the radio and, even more, watching the windshield wipers sweeping back and forth.

I pulled myself to my feet, flush now with a fever, the sweat coursing down my flanks in steaming rivulets, the day's heat high and the air drenched with humidity. The last thing I wanted to do (excluding another hearing of the deputy trilling "Muskrat Love") was move, yet I had no choice. I mustn't die, so I must see Dr. Ken. I decided that trotting might be easier than merely strolling, and found I had a little more strength than I expected, so I ran down the lane leading out of the park in search of a car to steal. I had run only a few yards when I rounded a bend and dove immediately into a ditch. A sheriff's cruiser was pulled off to the side, but the officer wasn't in sight. I waited for a minute and heard, in the distance, loud chewing interspersed with a few strangled snatches of that hideous song about the schtupping rats. I climbed from the ditch and headed toward the noise, dropping to all fours to keep close to the ground. There lay before me a gentle hill I surmounted, atop which I spied some grazing cattle, several of whom were lowing plaintively, while the rotund redheaded flatfoot was himself on hands and knees eating grass with obvious relish and enthusiasm. Fatso was a fourleg!

There is a signal we fourlegs have which permits us to identify one another, irrespective of which kind of animal raised us. I hurried to the deputy, tapped him on the shoulder, and immediately identified myself to him as belonging to the feral community. He rejoiced to see this and signaled me back accordingly, and we fell into an easy and warm colloquy, talking for hours, he explained to me that his twoleg mother, who was an orphaned milkmaid on a dairy farm near Brattleboro, Vermont, was impregnated at age fourteen by a vile herdsman who then fired her, giving her $75 and a one-way bus ticket to Waxahatchie, Texas, in the Big Bend country, where his brother ran a livestock inseminating service. This latter man was an outright psychopath who mainlined sheep dip and smoked jimson weed, and the pregnant young girl lived in terror, as the addled inseminator spent hours describing to her how he'd skin and eat her baby at its birth. He had fashioned a pair of leg cuffs linked by a stout chain, which he affixed one end to her ankle and the other to his. The chain was only a dozen feet in length, so she effectively shadowed him everywhere, including to the outhose, where he'd sometimes fall asleep. This shitter was quite literally the worst place she'd ever been, as it housed rattlesnakes and tarantulas and black widow spiders, and the feces overran the pit and spilled onto the dirt floor, she'd stand on her tiptoes for hours lest the droppings besmirch her bare feet, waiting for her cretinous master to snap out of his druggy reverie and leave the shithouse, his habit then was to do tai-chi for an hour, then fix a large breakfast for himself of calves brains and waffles, offering the poor pregnant girl only what food he couldn't eat, which she must lick off his plate like a dog.

My new friend, whose name was Y. Z. Newell, was only two weeks from birth, and he apparently kicked like a chorus girl in his mother's womb. This rendered impossible standing for hours in the outhose, and in frustration and fear she searched her captor's pockets and extracted a folding knife with which she calmly and precisely slit his throat, his eyes opening and meeting hers in terror and incomprehension before he slumped over and died in a fountain of blood. Y.Z.'s mother waited for the blood spurt to stop, then heaved the dead man head first through the crapper's hole until only his legs were visible, as forked and spindly as a turkey wishbone, and fled into the night.

"Guess where she ended up?" Y.Z. asked.

"Where?"

"Dr. Ken's clinic. That's where I was born."

"But how do you know of Dr. Ken? And how did she get to his clinic?"

"Coyotes led her."

"You mean...?"

"Yes. Coyotes raised me. Mother fared poorly after she gave birth, and was an invalid for years before she died of kennel cough when I was twelve. The Deenkera clan cared for her as though she were a sister."

"The Deenkeras outside of Pierre, South Dakota?"

"The very same. My parents were Reever and Skraw."

"My God! We knew them! Skraw was a dear friend of my mother, Ki"

"I have heard of Ki," Y.Z. said, smiling. "Perhaps we met at some coyote convocation."

"It's possible, though I don't remember it."

"Me either," said Y.Z. "What I do remember is how to get to Dr. Ken's clinic. You need to get there ASAP, as you look like death's leftovers warmed over. I'll take you there myself."

"That's extraordinarily kind of you."

Y.Z. dismissed my compliment with a wave of his beefy hand. "It's nothing. Plus, it's time for my annual physical anyway. It'll be a two birds, one stone deal. Get in the squad car."

"Gladly. A question, if I may."

"Of course."

"When I saw you grazing just now, I presumed you were raised by ruminants."

Y.Z. laughed as we drove off. "Indigestion," he answered simply. "Nothing beats grass for that."

"Amen," I nodded. I lay curled on my side in the backseat of Y.Z.'s cruiser, soothed by the soft leather, and the car's gentle rocking, and before long I'd slipped back to sleep, dreaming of my boyhood burrow, dreaming of Ki.

Recipe: Swamp Eggs

Part of good health is eating right. My own diet, when I'm not on a wilding spree and killing my own prey, is admittedly eccentric, as my profile suggests. But it keeps me healthy beyond belief: I can run for over twenty-four hours at a stretch, swim up a raging river well over a mile, outdig the most determined badger, and maintain an erection for over three weeks without permanent damage. Perhaps my coyote upbringing accounts for my toughness, its effects maintained despite decades away from the prairie, slowly moldering in libraries as vibrant as the local beggar's tomb, my many years of indoors schooling threatening to strip me of my ferality but failing, genes prevailing over environment in my case, as an earlier posting documented. But for the washed majority, the twoleg crowd, attending to proper nutrition is vital, and constitutes an important part of our treatment program at the Balzac Institute, where patients leave, on average, weighing a good stone-and-a-half less than when they entered our facility. And while none of the men has yet reported getting it up as long as I am able to regularly (they don't have a chance!), they do note improvements, which I attribute largely to better nutrition, our meals entirely planned by that doyenne of pole and stage, Miss Gator Ethel Thibodeaux, the Cajun Maven. Today's Gator Ethel recipe is for "swamp eggs," a delicacy I confess to enjoying if I run short on my supply of Andorran jellied eels. Here she is, our chef and muse:

"Dis is Miz Gator Ethel, cher, talkin' wi' you about de needs of de body, not what's you thinken, either, but de fuel for our motor, as it were, de foods we eat an' de fluids we drink. My oh my but do us Cajun folk know de way around our plates! My Uncle Raoul Rene Thibodeaux wuz de biggest eater I ever saw an' yet he ate healthy and weren't too fat neither, cher, no sir. Uncle Raoul was a poacher an' a drinker an' a professor and he wud a spent life in prison most likely had his airboat not been powered by two Mezzashitz engines from a Nazi bomber, he got them from a gud friend down in Argenteen, that boat cud fly an' de game wardens never had a chance. Plus Uncle Raoul lived in de mos' remote part a de bayou an' it wuz like a watery maze getten to his complex deep in de' swamp. I never seen nothin' like his house, cher, it wuz de mos' interesten colleckshun of buildin's you ever wud want to see. Dey wuz all raized uppen poles stuck right deep in de' swamp mud, ten yards in de' air at least, six or seven a dem, and connected by gangplanks, rickety ol' things dat swung dis way an' dat, it scared me outta my undies to visit. You'd pull up in Uncle Raoul's airboat he tied to a dock, den climb up an ol' rope ladder dat musta been knotted together by Methuselah hisself. You'd climb an' climb and reach de first home where his conjammed twins, Gus an' Gus, lived, dey shared many of de' same organs but had only four limbs, dey was kinda double-wide like my sixth husband's trailer, dat ol'boy was rich, and Gus an' Gus were about my age, dey had dese two heads poken outta dey t-shirt, one canten one way, de other de other, dey looken pretty different as well, dey voices also weren't at all de' same, Gus he wuz gay an' had a voice dat matched dat trait like a shandleer inna ol' maid's parlor, while Gus wuz a womanizer an' quick wid de one hand he controlled, you kept yore distance! His voice was deep an' growly an' smutty an' I didden like Gus, but I did like Gus. De two hated one another fierce, an' one mornen Gus wuz sick a bein' called a fruit an' a fag by Gus, I didden blame him a bit, an' in de night Gus strangled Gus, but dat wuz a most unfortunate mistake, cher, for Gus controlled de heart of de both of them, an' when Gus died so did Gus, but smilen cuz he got his wish even though he lost his life.

"Anyway, I got off track, like my dog, Boo, does when he chasen de' possums outta de French Quarter in de' mornin', Boo keeps de Quarter clean a pests. Back to Uncle Raoul's place: You went from de twins cabin to a separate builden where Raoul hisself lived, den to a big kitchen, den to Raoul's wife's home, den to a shitter, den to a 'normous den an' liberry, Raoul taught at Tulane an' he had thousands a books, mostly 'bout Raoul's special area a interest, Cajun Studies. An' one whole shelf wuz books about Cajun an' Creole cooken, mos' of dem recipes tried and tested by Uncle hisself, dat ol' boy cud eat as I said. His very favorite dish of all took two whole weeks to prepare! Here's de recipe:

"Take a gator 6-8 feet long an' shoot him in de brain. Have a pit dug first, maybe four feet deep an' 9 feet long. Fill dat pit wi' sappy pine cones an' branches, an' some dried pine needles, an' some hard wood. Light a fire an' burn it gud an' hot. Keep adden hard wood an' pine cones and keep it burnen day an' night for three days. Meanwhile take de dead gator an'pull out his brain an' his innards. Clean out his body an' his guts. Start stuffen de gator wi' onions an' garlic an' sausages an' peppers of all types. Pour vinegar all over dis mess an' stitch de' gator closed. Take de' cleaned guts and putten 'em in a cauldron full a Dixie Beer an' horse piss. Boil dat whole load a slop for three days itself. Once you done wi' all dis, lay de gator on de incredible hot coals and dump de' cauldron over de' gator. Shovel clean sand on top a de' gator till dat big bastard's all covered. Start a fire on top a dis closed pit an' keep dat burnen two weeks. Den let de fire go out, an' once de ground's cool dig up de gator. Now you got yoreself one big smoked treat, and oh, cher, but dat meat is gud! Succulent an' smoky an' spicy. De whole critter's good for eaten, de skin, even, which is chewy an tasty. De eyeballs is what you fight for, as dey is sweet as cherry pie. De nice thing is, too, is dat de gator will keep for days without needen a fridge. Jes' scrape any rot off de' beast an' eat de rest. Uncle Raoul loves his smoked gator and I do too.

"But dis aint a meal mos' folks can fix for theyselves. What to do, den, when yore appetite spikes an' you want somethin' good an' real quick? 'Swamp eggs' is my choice every time, cher. Dey's scrumptious an' nutritious an' quick to make. Hell, I even taught Whiski Rae Shamrock how to whip up a batch for us to eat in between shows when we poled together in de old times. Dat girl wuz smart wi' de books but dumb in de' kitchen. She actually tried to toast a pair a pork chops for us once for supper! Unique effort, I have to say, but de chops only burnt in de toaster an' started to flame. I 'bout split my g-string laffen to see dat pretty young girl tryen to blow out de fire an' only maken it flare brighter! I grabbed dat toaster by de cord and flunged it outta de window a de river boat where we performed, an' it crashed into de Mississippi an' sank from sight! Some alligator gar ate gud dat evenin', an' so did we. Behold:

"Take a dozen gud speckled hen's eggs an' dump 'em in a pan a boilen tomato juice dat's got tequilla an' Barq's root beer mixed into it. Cook dem eggs for three or four minutes, den drain de pan an' fill it wi' ice water. De shells a de eggs will bust open maken de peelen easy. Take dese naked eggs, den, and put 'em in a corn meal mix dat's moistened wi' buttermilk till it's gud an' smooth. Add a liberal dose a Tabasco, a tin a sardines smashed into a paste, goodly amounts of peeled garlic an' salt an' cayenne pepper to taste. Den spoon a healthy dollop a bacon grease into a skillet and crank de heat up high. Once de grease bubbles angrily, upend de whole mess an' fry everythin' up, taken pains not to rupture de eggs. Once de coaten is crispy an' brown, remove de eggs to a plate, squirt mustard over em' an' serve wi' Wonder bread an' ripe pears. Oh my god but you got yoreself some tasty treats! First time Whiski Rae made dem she ate ten herself! Dey's 'bout as healthy a food as you'd like. Come to think a it, Gus an' Gus prackly lived off a swamp eggs due to dey strange digesten problems. If a food is gud enough fo' conjammed twins, it gud enough fo' you, cher. Try it tomorrow an' get a little Cajun in yore sad dumb life. Jes' kidden."

Thanks, Gator Ethel, for that wonderful culinary tip. Would you believe me if I told you I ate twenty-four swamp eggs this morning? It's true! If only my coyote mother, Ki, could have eaten some during our years together. I hope they're on the menu in the Great Meadow. They certainly are at the Balzac Institute for Partial Recovery, where we believe that what goes down between your teeth is every bit as important as what passes back up through them.

That's it for today. Bon appetit!

Rusty

Balzac Institute

I'm skipping huge gaps in my personal story to leap from that fateful day when I bound my father to a cactus cross, for now I intend to describe, in brief, the approach to good mental and physical health we take at the Balzac Institute for Partial Recovery. Not that I'll deprive my good readers of the ripping and inspiring yarn that is my life, but I still must take a break from mining my past right now. I don't like the term "post-traumatic stress disorder," preferring to call it "serenopause," but I've had a bit of a wilding relapse. Whiski Rae could smell the musk rising off me like stink waves in a cartoon. Also, she rose early one day and caught me cooking up a mess of chimpmunks, snakes and wild parsnips for breakfast. She's set me straight by taking me to a performance of Wagner's "The Ring Cycle," as massive doses of human culture, even that favored by the Nazis, have a civilizing effect on me.

So, to the clinic. The Balzac Institute for Partial Recovery is now in its eleventh year of existence. We occupy a large Victorian mansion we've refurbished extensively, and can accomodate a maximum of fifteen patients at a time. Our grounds are expansive and magnificent, such as you might find in England at a fine manor house, and are renowned for their healing topiary labyrinth, featuring such vegetative sculptures as Sigmund Freud, Catherine the Great, John the Baptist, Secretariat, James Monroe, my coyote mother, Ki, Virginia Dare, Calvin and Hobbes, Marge Simpson, Soren Kirkegaard and Shamu the Killer whale. At one time I used my own teeth to trim and shape the shrubs, teeth strengthed by years of cracking bones out on the prairie. This activity soothed me, too, and drew out my ferality, not to the extent it consumed me, but instead so that I could examine and understand my wild side using my powerful (I am told) intellect. Eventually I didn't need to sculpt the topiary myself, turning it over to our capable groundskeeper, Durwood Del Monte Shamrock, younger brother to my beautiful wife, Whiski Rae Shamrock, MD, and a recovering arsonist and stamp counterfeiter who has abandoned youthful sociopathy for the modest benefits of honest work and a clean conscience. The ankle bracelet is simply a precaution. Same with the GPS unit implanted in his belly. I truly believe he has turned the corner, or is preparing to, or is at least considering it. Really.

Our program revolves around the undeniable assertion that nobody is ever completely well or, for that matter, absolutely unwell. We firmly believe that nudging people from the terrible to the okay is not only doable but noble, and that it respects the obvious fact that suffering is man, and man, suffering, and fuck all the rest. Those seeking perfection or absolute succour won't find the Balzac Institute to their liking, for we regard the very quest for a state devoid of misery as being supremely neurotic. If, however, you wish to feel just a bit better, and are fine with minor improvements, we're the place for you.

The Balzac Institute's therapeutic approach is best conceptualized as "targeted eclecticism," a term less oxymoronic than you might think at first blush. For in our opinion at BI, as we refer to ourselves, "eclectic" doesn't mean "everything," while "targeted" can be a shotgun blast to the body at 25 metres, and not just the sniper's desired "pink mist" from five blocks away.

Patients at BI stay for fifty-nine days irrespective of their diagnosis and condition, a duration picked because it approximates the average coyote gestational period. The program is assertively but not exclusively "natural," not in the nuts and berries, herbs and minerals sense, but out of homage to the Great World Beyond, or GBW, a locution which refers, broadly, to what used to be called Mother Nature, until that term fell to the merciless scythes of the political correctionists. Below lies a brief description of the program's schedule:

Week 1: First payment due. Diagnostic testing. Fasting. Three mile run. Safety swim. Digging classes. Stalking and seizing. Rolling in dead things. Hiding. Improving the senses. Yipping and yowling. Hide chewing. Dance therapy.

Week 2: Medication wash-out. Seventy-two hour marathon psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Cathexis and catharsis convocation. Psychoneuroendocrinological probing. Phrenology 101. Your rectum and you: motility exercises. More dance therapy.

Week 3: Improving the senses II. How to kill chipmunks and rabbits. The perils of traffic. Embracing varminthood. Mating rituals. Vegetables: who needs them? Fifteen mile run. Your burrow your home.

Week 4: Second and final payment due. How to have skin like a baby's ass: Beauty seminar by Whiski Rae Shamrock, MD, and Gator Ethel Thibodeaux. Yoga till you drop. Mindlessness training.

Week 5: The wind, the rain, the stars. Seventy-two hour electroconvulsive therapy session. Rest.

Week 6: Screw like a muskrat, run like a moose: discovering the joys of ferality. The love poems of Jack London, Ogden Nash and Rumi. Hypnotherapy. Dental implantations: how to make your canines really growl. Optional fang installations.

Week 7: Sharing your tale of personal growth. Seventy-two hour medication infusion session. Managing side effects: living with a fat ass and learning how to laugh. Voluntary scullery opportunities.

Week 8: Group mural therapy. The joys of psychiatric philanthropy. Wrapping it up.

Days 57, 58 and 59: Form signing session. Thirty-six mile swim. Group portrait. Go the hell home.

Drop me a line if you think this program might interest you or a loved one. References available. First thirty minutes free. Total cost $39,999.99, excluding transportation, tips and optional institutional gifting.

See you later.

Dusty Balzac, MD

Skin Care II

Back to something lighter and more useful. Writing that last post gave me the gout, and I've been fasting and living off of only vinegar and Frank's Kraut Juice for the past ten days. I've lost over twenty pounds and the nightmares have lessened to the point where I sleep like a squirrel again. Here's Whiski Rae Shamrock's latest proctodermatologic tip:

Hi folks!

Dr. Whiski Rae Shamrock back with more advice concerning that living fabric which covers our bioarmature and feels oh so nice to caress and lick. In my practice as a proctodermatologist, I often see patients who mistakenly use soap to cleanse themselves after their morning evacuation, then fail to rinse properly in their rush to earn their daily dime. Come about eleven am or so and the itching can be intense. The reason? Natural anal juices are soothing and seep imperceptibly from glands lining the inner mucosa of the colon's last hurrah. These juices aren't in the least feculent, and their aroma is in fact pleasing, reminding some observers of brownies fresh from the oven, and me of a piping hot beignet dunked into a frothy goat's milk chicory latte at the Cafe DuMond. Yum, yum! Harsh soaps shut down the production of these juices, however, for up to twelve hours, leading to inflammation and the dreaded "bung bite," as we Cajuns call it. Scratching the offended area isn't very socially acceptable, and actually worsens the condition, owing to the release of histamine. Insertion of an ice cube into the heinie hole every five minutes for a couple of hours does ease the discomfort, but can cause frostbite and the eventual sloughing of tissue, which causes an unholy mess that tends to run down one's leg at the most unfortunate time.

So, what to do? Here's where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Don't soap your crack unless you're in the shower! Otherwise use udder balm or llama lanolin as hygienic emollients, or, oddly, Arby's Sweet 'n' Sour Sauce. Apply these products directly with your hand, which you can wash off later. Take Q-tips and use them to gently separate your cheeks for an hour if you have the time, thus allowing for natural drying. Or go to a harmonic aesthetician or an organocosmetic enemologist for alternative therapies, including dark chocolate douches, meconium crystals, pulsatile ginger hosings and the Great Rubidium Pyramid of Gandor. And consider purchasing "Gator Ethel's Bayou Thundermug and Reckum Sprayer," which Plumbers' Digest named best new product of 2005 in the "Miscellaneous/Unnecessary" category.

Unnecessary my ass! Gator Ethel suffered terribly from bung bite for years, which kept her from pursuing her stripping career in Atlantic City, as the humid New Orleans air at least offered her some small measure of fundamental relief. Let's turn the laptop over to her now:

"This is Miz Gator Ethel writen, th' number one pole dancer of th' French Quarter and inventor of th' world's most refreshin' toilet. Th' spellchek ain't worken but I is, and while y'all was getten you fancy schoolen, po' me was shaken my ample rear in th' worse nudie joints you ever dreamed of in th' world. An' durren those years I had myself one sore crack, yessir! You could a sanded me raw an' rubbed me with cayenne pepper an' I dont think I would hurt anymore than I hurted. I tell you, cher, I cried th' night away after I comes home from work. I wents to doctors, voodoo witches, chiropracks, priests and a healer down on Jackson Square. I could hardly walk an' was one pair a g-strings away from haven to go work for th' New Orleans Public Liberry in th' children's secktion. Then I sees this clinic called "Clap and Clap," which th' girls sometimes frequented to heal themselves from diseases of th' trade and to worship th' Lord, as a lively gospel church shared th' premises with th' clinic. An' who do I see but a beautiful young doctor I reckonized from years before, my ol' dancen friend Whiski Rae Shamrock, now a doctor! Oh but we laughed an' hugged an' cried together! Then she gets down to doctorren business and checks me out real good, an' I hadn't been worked over like that for hours. She was peeren an' poken an' shinen lights up my yoohoo an' my merde canal an' swabben me clean. Th' stuff she found up there I cant even tell it's so embarrassen! An' she tells me I'm allergic to dollar bills, an' th' men will have to use plastic or coins thereafter when they reward me. But that was only th' start, for my bung bite required a month's stay at Charity Hospital an' many bizarre treatments involven sun lamps an' steroids an' pungent creams thick as gator gravy an' massages an' vitamins as big as a baby's fist an' some cutten of rotted skin. But I enjoyed myself overall, an' in occupational therapy I worked on a project that keeps me good an' clean. That's th' "Gator Ethel's Bayou Thundermug an' Reckum Sprayer." See, cher, I took an ol' bedpan that was extra big for the obese folk and drilled two holes in th' bottom. In one of them I inserted yore basic garden hose, an' in th' other an ol' hairdryer. Do yore stuff in th' mornen in comfort, give youself a good washen out, then blast yore bottom wi' the hairdryer. I tell you, cher, I aint never had bung bite since inventen this product. You send me a a check for $99.99 an' I send you back th' toilet of th' ages. Plus, a DVD of my exercise routine, 'Pole Away Yore Fat Ass.' You looken beaucoup better, cher, you follow my instruckions. My address is Gator Ethel Enterprises/PO Box666/New Orleans, LA 06572. Bye an' be good."

And bye to you, gentle readers. Yours for the biggest organ of the body.

Love,

Whiski Rae Shamrock, MD