Museum of the Weird (6 page)

Feeding Time!

Digestion time is a special personal time for snakes but one of the most fascinating times to observe a snake is during FEEDING TIME directly prior. It should be known that many snakes actually enjoy putting on a show for an audience during this time, much to the dismay of
the animal which will be consumed
but as a capitalistic venture and as a favor to the snakes, FEEDING TIME will be announced and may be observed at the visitor’s discretion. It will be advised that children observe, because contrary to popular belief, the mind of a child can take in
much more horror
than that of an adult, that it can be a detriment in fact to deprive a child of the facts of life as they say on television
the facts of life.

What to Expect!

Visitors to the SNAKE FARM will see snakes in great number and variation. They will see milk snakes and ball pythons and garter snakes, and vipers and rattlesnakes and king snakes and adder snakes and diamondback snakes, and tiger snakes corn snakes cottonmouth snakes asp snakes rat snakes. Many inferior SNAKE FARMS try to keep and show other animals such as turtles alligators bats and baboons but I as owner and proprietor of this SNAKE FARM will insist that there only be snakes. THERE WILL BE ONLY SNAKES.

THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE

When the tortoise walked in, the hare nearly cried out in misery. He had been promised visitors by the night nurse, who was pretty and gave him an extra serving of gelatin when he asked. The hare had made the old mistake and figured that someone so pretty would never give him bad news, but there he was, and here was the tortoise.

“Hello,” said the tortoise. A bouquet of wilting lilies was taped to his shell.

“It’s good to see you,” murmured the hare. Perhaps if he pretended it hurt to open his eyes, the tortoise would leave. The hare squinted and squirmed.

Oblivious, the tortoise attempted to sit in the chair by the bedside. He did this by leaning back, supporting his weight with his hind legs, and then hefting his front legs onto the chair. The chair, on casters, rolled back. The tortoise lumbered to where the chair had rolled and repeated the process again. Finally, he got the chair wedged between the bed and the IV unit. He pitched his body upwards, scrabbling at the upholstery. If the night nurse walked by, she would surely assume the tortoise was attempting to mount the chair. Perhaps she would call security.

The tortoise dug in with his claws, pulled himself into the seat and turned around to face the hare, crushing the flowers taped to his back in the process. His breathing was laborious. “I hear you are dying,” the tortoise said.

That’s a delicate way to put it, thought the hare. “Indeed I am,” he said. “They gave me eight weeks to live a year ago, and I beat the odds.”

The tortoise nodded.

Asshole, thought the hare. “I was real outspoken about it for a while,” he said. “I got into the paper. The thing was, I was just taking multivitamins and running every day, then I did a whole-body cleanse every two weeks.” He stretched his legs and felt the diminished muscle tone.

“The odds caught up,” said the tortoise. With his big eyes, he did seem a little doleful. Then again, he always did. He clearly hadn’t cleaned his shell before the visit and smelled like a distant scummy pond. Talk about a sanitary environment, the hare thought.

The hare pressed on. “Everybody’s got to go sometime,” he said. “You’ll go. Maybe you’ll get the cancer and die next year. I can’t imagine you’d have too much trouble succumbing to the odds, as it were. No offense to you, but it takes some serious mental acuity.”

“I’m not sure,” the tortoise said, “that tortoises can get the cancer.” He was trying unsuccessfully to reach around his massive shell to the flowers. He plucked one petal off in his claw and brought it close to his eye, frowning. Perhaps he wanted to eat it.

“Don’t worry about the flowers,” said the hare. “I saw them when you came in. They were very nice Easter lilies. Daylilies are my favorite but they’re a bit rare, a bit hard to find. You might find a daylily in a soup if you look in the right place. You’d have to travel across the ocean but you might just find it in China. Can you imagine it? A flower in a soup. Believe it or not, and I suggest you believe it.”

The tortoise sighed. “Friend,” he said.

The hare looked at the place where the night nurse had shaved his fur to insert the IV needle. The skin was puckered and red in the shaved place. “I guess you win,” the hare said.

“There never was a race,” said the tortoise. His shell wobbled a little as he scooted the chair forward and leaned precariously over to touch the hare’s paw with the flat portion of his beak. The hare could feel the warm air streaming from the tortoise’s nostrils, the cool air rushing in. The hare closed his eyes and pretended to sleep until the tortoise left. He breathed evenly with noise of the machine hooked up to his body. The night nurse came and went. It was a very long wait indeed.

FISH

Dale was married to a paring knife and Howard was married to a bag of frozen tilapia. Each had fallen into their respective arrangements having decided independently that there was no greater match for them in life.

When anyone asked Dale if he had dated actual women before making the decision to marry a paring knife, he would look at that person with such incredulity that the stranger would feel as if they had been rude to inquire. Dale did love his paring knife. They had their problems, like any couple.

Obviously, Howard admitted, a bag of frozen tilapia was different in many ways from a woman, though in many ways it was the same.

* * *

Howard arrived early to Dale’s apartment and found the man finishing breakfast. The paring knife was propped up against a book on the table and Dale’s galoshes were next to the door.

“Morning,” Dale said. “Coffee?”

Howard accepted a cup and waited at the table. “Warm out,” he said. He liked to keep talking to a minimum until they got on the water.

“I know it,” Dale said from the other room. “We went on a walk and watched the sun rise across the field. Sweat right through my shirt.”

The paring knife was stuck into its usual cork. Howard felt that keeping it out on display was a little silly. When he brought his portable cooler out with him and people asked questions, he said he was a diabetic and needed special medicine. He didn’t bother making people understand his personal life. That’s why it was called a
personal
life, Howard figured.

Dale emerged from the back room with his baitcaster. “Sorry for the late start,” he said, pulling a six-pack of beer from the fridge.

“No problem.”

“You make sandwiches?”

“They’re in the cooler.”

Dale nodded. “I had some problems down at the DMV,” he said. “They installed a security checker, and everyone was all up in arms about me bringing in a weapon. I was holding up the line, I had to talk to some supervisor. After all that, I didn’t even have the right identification.”

Howard grunted.

Dale fit the baitcaster on its rod. “Can’t let that kind of treatment go. It’s a concept of self-respect. If people can’t treat with respect, what are we supposed to do? As a civilization. You know what I’m saying?”

“Sure.”

“All I’m asking for is what’s fair for me and my family. This country has long flagged on the equal rights front and this is another card in the deck.”

“People might think it’s strange, is all,” Howard said. “It’s none of their business.”

Dale picked up the paring knife and placed it cork-down in his breast pocket. “It’s not their problem,” he said. “That’s what it is.”

“It’s not your problem, either,” Howard said, picking up the six-pack. “Let’s get out there.”

* * *

The two fisherman sat all morning without a single bite. It was a few hours in before they got to talking.

“Explain women,” Dale said.

They enjoyed having these theoretical discussions, though they were both married and each secretly felt he understood women well enough.

Howard leaned his shins against the cooler as he spoke. “We’re fishermen who don’t eat fish,” he said. “We catch fish, but we enjoy pointing out interesting things about their fins and scales.”

“Remember that trout I caught with the two mouths?”

“That trout was mutated.”

“It only ate with one of those mouths,” Dale said. “I cut it up later and that second mouth was a vestigial situation.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Dale looked out at the quiet pond. He liked to avoid misunderstandings. “We don’t eat fish,” he said.

“We are interested in fish, but we don’t eat fish.”

It felt like the kind of morning where men end up making decisions, Dale figured. He was using his old baitcast reel, the Rick Clunn model. He had a lot of respect for Rick Clunn, a professional angler who seemed to keep his life in order with more ease than the average man. He was determined to practice his fan cast that morning, sending the line out like the arm of a clock in an attempt to cover as much water as possible with each cast. The line kept falling slack and Dale eased back into his old overhand. Howard was dozing under his cap, head bowed.

Dale considered Rick Clunn’s idea that angling is an art form, and that his own artistic growth faltered until he recognized it as such. Rick Clunn felt that the highest level of his aspiration as an angler was to help a select few touch perfection in that which they most enjoyed. Rick Clunn felt that the world’s troubles were caused by everyone else mucking up the works with details and greed.

Dale, for his part, felt that the world’s troubles were caused by simple misunderstandings. From sprawling wars to domestic disputes, any problem could be easily drawn down to something happening and a person or group of people getting the wrong idea.

The theory was cemented in his mind every time he brought his paring knife with him to church.

There they were, dressed for service. Every week, Dale pressed his pants and sharpened her blade lovingly against the oilstone. He knew it looked a little strange for a man to prop a paring knife next to him in the pew, he
realized
that, but he figured that as long as he kept the tip of the blade protected with a cork, nobody would say anything. One Sunday, the head usher tapped him on the shoulder as the first hymn began.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” the usher said, once they reached the narthex. They sat on the spare pew under the picture window, as they did when they had these conversations. Dale’s paring knife rested between them.

“It’s no trouble,” Dale said. They were Presbyterians, which meant they were unfailingly polite.

“The knife is bothering folks again,” the usher said. “I know you don’t mean to.”

“Who is bothered?”

“It’s a new family. We’re trying to keep them in the flock. We value young families, as you know.”

“My wife and I are a young family,” Dale said.

“And we welcome and accommodate you, as we have for years.” “I wonder if we would feel more welcome if we had children.” The usher took a long moment to scrape a patch of candle wax from the wooden pew with a credit card. Wax shavings drifted to the seat between them. “Of course that’s not necessary,” he said. “Perhaps you could keep your wife in your breast pocket? Close to your heart?” The usher nodded politely to the paring knife.

“I respect your position,” Dale said. “I respect that we can have a dialogue about this. But when I’m sitting in church, I’m trying to hear a sermon, and everybody else should be too. Instead, everyone’s swiveling around and looking at me, and you’re having to come drag me out.”

“They don’t understand your position,” the usher said.

“Darn right they don’t understand my position. That’s exactly what I’m trying to say, here. This is a misunderstanding on their part.”

“And in turn, would you say you perhaps misunderstand their position?”

“I don’t understand it,” Dale said, “but I don’t misunderstand it. There’s a slight difference there.”

“But a difference, all the same.”

The sermon was over and the organ had begun to play the offertory. Dale and the usher stood. “I may as well head out and beat the rush,” Dale said.

“For what it’s worth,” the usher said, “I think she’s a handsome knife.”

Dale slipped her into his breast pocket. “I appreciate that, sir.”

* * *

Howard sometimes wanted to cook and eat the frozen tilapia, but he always resisted. He made a special portable cooler, one that could be plugged into a wall outlet or a cigarette lighter. This allowed Howard to keep the wife in bed with him, even to take her on short trips, such as to the Western history museum Howard loved, the one with the special barbed-wire exhibit. There were many different types of barbed-wire, but his favorite was the type with the independently rotating spurs, five every yard. It was too bad about the safety glass. If the safety glass was not in place, Howard would flick the spurs, sending rust flying. He had fitted his portable cooler with a convenient shoulder strap, which allowed him to carry the wife right into the museum. They could be in there for an hour and a half before thawing became an issue.