Just For Fun

Thanksgiving is a time for reflection, for gratitude, for taking a few moments between the cranberry sauce and the pumpkin pie to appreciate life’s blessings, both major and minor. This may be or may not be why, over Thanksgiving dinner with a group of friends, we wound up discussing Mike the headless chicken.

Real name. Real chicken. Mike, for a few golden months back in 1945 and 1946, was the most famous resident of Fruita, Colorado. His notoriety was the result of a botched Sunday-dinner style execution. His owner, intending to behead the young rooster in traditional fashion, aimed a little high. He did indeed chop off most of the head, but most of the chicken’s brain stem was left intact. Mike not only survived, but thrived for an additional 18 months, thus proving something most of us would already suspect—that a brain isn’t really necessary to the everyday functioning of a chicken.

Mike’s owners put water and grain into his esophagus with an eyedropper, took him on a national tour during which thousands of people paid a quarter apiece to see him, and no doubt sincerely mourned his death when he eventually choked to death. For the whole story, see miketheheadlesschicken.org/story.html.

More than 60 years later, the town of Fruita still celebrates Mike’s unusual life each spring with a two-day Headless Chicken Festival.

Mike’s inspiring story came up over Thanksgiving dinner when one of the guests mentioned that she used to live in the Fruita/Grand Junction area. Another guest immediately brought up the headless chicken, which tribute to the fame of her former community caused the first guest to roll her eyes and shudder. Apparently she would prefer to see Fruita known for its excellent orchards and wineries rather than its famous fowl. She probably has a point, though you have to admit a public that breathlessly follows the latest escapades of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton may be culturally more attracted to headless chickens than to peach orchards.

It might have made her feel better had I thought to tell her about the institution that for several years was one of the claims to fame of my home town of Gregory, South Dakota—the outhouse museum. Some of the little buildings scattered across a vacant lot were original; others were reproductions. One was the outhouse in which a locally famous horse thief had hidden from a posse. Another—the highlight of the collection—was not merely a two-holer, but a two-story four-holer. The second level, presumably, was designed for easy non-shoveling access during harsh South Dakota winters. And in case you’re wondering about practicalities, the upper floor was set back from the lower to eliminate chances for unfortunate incidents.

The display never did quite achieve more than regional fame, and as far as I know it is now closed. Perhaps the fault was its lack of detailed research—the provenance of several of the buildings was suspect, and the historical accounts were simply full of holes. Or maybe it needed to pay more attention to the adage, “When you’re number two, you try harder.” Or perhaps the problem was its management. It may have done better under the supervision of a board of directors—a privy council, as it were. Or maybe an outhouse museum simply wasn’t exciting enough to move the general public.

But you never know—it was worth a try. The country is full of small towns that would like to get a small share of the traveling public’s vacation dollars. Some places, like the Black Hills, are blessed with an abundance of scenic and historic riches to tempt the curious tourist. Others have the resources to build exhibits like the Spam Museum (the edible kind, not the email kind) in Austin, Minnesota, or to annually redecorate the onion-domed Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota.

Smaller towns have to be more creative. So they sponsor outhouse races, bedstead races, turkey races, frog races, cockroach races, hog-calling contests, or husband-calling contests. They develop festivals and exhibits around whatever resources their history or their imaginations may suggest. It might be corny; it might be silly; it might be undignified. But what the heck—it just might be fun. And there’s always room in the closet for another silly tee-shirt.

After all, whether it’s a headless chicken or an array of outhouses, the important thing is not to squawk about what’s missing, but to go with what you have.

A 60th anniversary party for one’s parents is a big deal—worth dressing up for, even. So when I packed my suitcase for the occasion I put in a nice dress, my good shoes, the curling iron, and not one but three pair of panty hose.

This redundancy should have been enough to guarantee having one good pair of stockings, but it wasn’t. Two pair had runs in them, and the third was badly snagged. Almost certainly, no one except me would care or even notice. Still, dressing up just isn’t dressing up without decent panty hose.

There’s never a clothes-transforming fairy godmother around when you need one, so solving the problem meant a quick stop at the grocery store on our way to the party.

I asked a teenage clerk where I could find panty hose, and she graciously took me to the right aisle. “We don’t have a lot left right now,” she said. “The hunters have been buying them for their turkeys.”

Hunters? Turkeys? What on earth do panty hose have to do with turkey hunting?

Maybe it’s a come-on, favored by hunters who can’t find D-flat on a turkey call, to get the birds within shooting range. “Hey, girlie, I got some new nylons here. Ecru. They’re yours, if you make it worth my while.”

The hunters are targeting toms, though, which makes this idea seem unlikely. Cross-dressing as a common activity for either hunters or turkeys is simply not something one wants to contemplate.

True, male turkeys are obviously proud of themselves. Just look at the way they fan out their tails and strut their stuff to impress the ladies—even if, honestly, it doesn’t take all that much to impress a female turkey with a brain the size of a peanut. But it’s simply too big a leap of imagination to go from showy strutting to a chorus line made up of wattle-shaking toms in tights.

And how would a turkey get into a pair of panty hose, anyway? It would be almost impossible to pull them up without thumbs. Besides, their spurs would tear holes in the nylon.

Presumably, of course, the hunters slide their trophy birds headfirst into a pair of panty hose as a good way to keep the feathers from being damaged on the trip to the taxidermy shop. This use for stockings might be a bit unorthodox, but it it’s certainly practical.

It also offers a whole new way to talk about trophy birds. “What’s that one? A size C? Oh, D? That’s not bad. But take a look at this guy—queen size, for sure. Maybe even a queen-plus. Just look at the size of those thighs.”

Looking impressive, after all, is the whole point of hunting trophies. And nothing quite sets off a nice pair of drumsticks like black fishnet panty hose.

Having spent the past three weeks in dedicated research, I am not at all pleased to announce my carefully documented results: Wireless Internet access contributes to obesity.

At least it does when you are a traveler, roaming restlessly, laptop in hand, seeking wi-fi in the wilds of the American West. It isn’t making the wireless connection that’s the problem. It’s the places you have to go in order to find it.

There was the fast-food place that promised wireless access—Mac-Internet, as it were. (Note: Take a couple of extra napkins to de-grease fingers before applying same to keyboard. Additional note: Using the drive-through is not appreciated by those in line behind you.) Would-be surfers were required to log in, either with a coupon received in response to a food purchase or with a cold, hard credit card number. Fair enough. There’s no reason a company should provide free Internet access to non-customers. But I didn’t want to log in and give an international fast-food giant my name and email address. It’s not that I didn’t trust them; I just didn’t want them sending me any tempting coupons for discounts on French fries.

There was the small-town public library. Did they have wireless Internet? They certainly did; I was welcome to take that table, or the one over there, or that one in the far corner. Great—no fees, no food. Unfortunately, no full access, either. Getting connected was easy, but the system seemed to mistrust me. I couldn’t download my email, and I couldn’t get into several of the sites I needed to access. (And no, they weren’t those kinds of sites. Really. Get your mind out of the gutter.)

Okay, that left the coffee shop. Free wireless access, good connection, no problems with sites or email. Except, of course, one can’t go into a coffee shop, use their Internet access, and not buy a little something. It would be downright churlish.

Besides, the place, which was a Christian coffee shop, had an assortment of goodies that would have presented Adam and Eve with some real temptation. There were the delightful whiffs of freshly brewed coffee, hints of exotic flavors that begged to be enhanced by luscious swirls of real cream. There were the jars of teas with tantalizing names like “Welsh Teatime” and “Russian Caravan,” just asking to be accompanied by scones or muffins. There were the cheesecakes and the cookies and the several flavors of ice cream.

Yep, there is definitely a connection between wireless Internet use and weight gain. My research puts it at about 342 calories per email.

But there’s hope. I think I’ll start a new research project. My hypothesis is this: Maybe, if I just delete the email messages, the calories will disappear as well.

One of the things travel offers is the opportunity to observe nature. It’s especially enjoyable to see the various types of wildlife in their natural habitat. Take the grackles we saw not far from Santa Fe. Their natural habitat, apparently, is a paved parking lot.

We had stopped at a large tourist store/travel stop along Interstate 40. As we walked from our car to the building, we noticed several birds on the ground in the parking lot. Grackles are medium-sized birds, larger than robins but smaller than the crows they somewhat resemble. These weren’t exactly the grandest of grackles, being somewhat anxious-looking and a bit bedraggled about the tail feathers, possibly from close encounters with car doors. Still, they skipped busily back and forth among the vehicles as if they had some reason for being there.

When we came out of the store and headed back to the car, we discovered what that reason was. One of the grackles was hopping along the front of a small car, its neck stretched tall and its eyes on the bumper. Every few steps it would jump straight up and grab one of the bug bodies squashed onto the bumper. It was enjoying the afternoon bug buffet, an ample and presumably appetizing spread of ready-mashed assorted insects.

We watched the bird for a while as it pecked industriously back and forth along the bumper. If visitors stayed in the store long enough, browsing through the moccasins, straw hats, plastic cacti, tee-shirts, and other souvenirs of New Mexico, they would have clean cars by the time they came out.

At least some visitors would. Our vehicle, an SUV designed for rough terrain, was unfortunately too tall to be a good candidate for grackle grooming. We might have to wait till the birds evolve, as they surely will over time, into a new sub-species—the parking lot grackle. These will no doubt have longer legs and longer necks to allow them to reach the really juicy morsels higher up. With any luck, they’ll also have improved peripheral vision to help them watch for closing car doors.

The other morning about 9:00, my doorbell rang. On the front step stood one of my friends, along with her dog. Both of them looked shaken. She asked, “Can we come in? There’s a mountain lion right up there in the middle of the road.”

She had parked her car at the main street about half a mile away in order to walk her dog in our neighborhood. It’s a quiet, pleasant place for walking, an area of meandering dead-end streets, with widely-spaced houses interspersed with clusters of trees and brushy gullies. Even though it’s inside the city limits, the place has an edge-of-town feel to it. We regularly see deer and wild turkeys.

We’ve also assumed for some time now that mountain lions occasionally stroll through. But those mountain lions were hypothetical. This one was real. There’s a big difference.

Admittedly, my first reaction to her news was a flicker of disappointment. I go for walks in this neighborhood all the time. How come I’ve never gotten to see a mountain lion? That response was soon overshadowed by unease. What was a full-grown mountain lion doing out and about in the middle of a bright, sunny morning?

This cat had been standing in the street maybe 100 yards from the end of our driveway. It was watching several turkeys in a nearby yard, no doubt contemplating a late breakfast. When my friend waved her arms and shouted, the lion moved off to the edge of the road and sat down in the grass. The dog, meanwhile—an arthritic, 15-year-old dog—was barking and straining at the leash, trying to pull free so she could take off and chase the big kitty. My friend wisely decided instead to detour into my driveway.

We called the Department of Game, Fish, and Parks. By the time a couple of guys got to the house about 15 minutes later, the lion had gone on its way, but at least its presence was duly and officially noted.

Now, on my daily walks, I keep feeling uneasy prickles between my shoulder blades. I can’t help wondering if I’m being eyed by a 150-pound cat who is trying to decide whether I look like breakfast or should be saved for lunch. I certainly don’t want to give up walking. It’s a form of meditation for me as well as exercise. Still, knowing there’s a critter out there who might see me as its next entrée tends to detract from the meditative process.

Maybe the answer is to get a dog. True, there aren’t many dogs big enough or tough enough to take on a mountain lion. That doesn’t really matter. The dog wouldn’t have to be big, or fierce, or brave. It would just have to be slow. I wouldn’t have to worry about outrunning a mountain lion, after all, as long as I knew I could outrun the dog.

I almost got to go buy school supplies this year. A recent family visit was originally going to coincide with a school-supply shopping trip for the grandkids. But then the family schedule changed, so they went and bought everything the day before I arrived. Bummer.

It’s not that I like shopping. I hate shopping. It’s just that I love school supplies. Nothing says, “fresh start” quite like a pile of crisp new notebooks, a pack of pens with the caps still on, a set of unopened markers, and a brand new three-ring binder—the fancy one that comes complete with dividers and a pencil case and that closes with a zipper. Best of all, though, is the delightful promise of a whole box of new crayons or colored pencils, all those untouched points lined up neatly in their precise, color-sorted rows.

When my kids were young, school shopping was often frustrating. Some years it was a struggle to squeeze the extra money out of the budget for the basics and maybe a few extras like a new backpack or a nicer binder. The kids would want the more expensive folders with pictures on them, the brand-name markers, and the fancy gel pens, while both my budget and my inherent thrift would argue for the plain, the generic, and the least expensive.

By the time the budget had grown, so had the kids. I remember my disappointment the year the youngest had, at least for school purposes, grown too old for crayons.

I was shocked to learn this year that, in the cities where two of my kids live, the grade school kids don’t get to have their own school supplies. Oh, the families still buy them individually, following the school’s lists down to the exact colors of the folders and the prescribed brand of tissues. But on the first day of school, everything is dumped into one giant pool, turned over to the teachers to be doled out as needed.

On a strictly practical level, I can see the logic of this. It has to be easier for the teachers to control a central supply closet rather than cope with, “I forgot my pencils,” and, “my mom didn’t buy the right notebooks,” and maybe even, “Ashley has the good kind of markers and she won’t let me use them.”

Perhaps this communal approach is also seen as more “fair” to the kids whose families can’t afford the good markers or who neglect to buy what the kids need. Although, in my town, that need is met quite nicely by a local credit union’s annual school supply drive. It’s a perfect blend of charity and nostalgia for those of us whose kids are grown but who still get a kick out of buying notebook paper.

There’s something missing when your school supplies come out of the central supply closet. I sympathize with all those kindergarteners and first-graders. They’re missing out on the proprietary satisfaction of knowing that the first scarlet stroke on paper from that pristine red crayon or marker is going to be their own.

Last week my nephew accused his mother of felonious behavior: “She broke into Donna’s house to leave zucchini!”

Her response was immediate and indignant. “I didn’t break in! The door was unlocked.”

She didn’t even bother to deny that she had left the zucchini. After all, she had been merely following the zucchini-grower’s unwritten rule for getting rid of surplus: in August, any unlocked door is fair game. She knew no jury of her peers—namely, vegetable gardeners in the throes of zucchini harvest—would ever convict her. Instead, they’d probably ask her for Donna’s address. They would be eager to make the acquaintance of anyone too naïve to lock her door as protection against random acts of zucchini-dropping.

I, on the other hand, as a tomatoes-only gardener, was not only willing but eager to take some extra produce off my sister’s hands. I came home from a family visit with a box of cucumbers, two heads of cabbage, a bag of fresh green beans, and six zucchini. I appreciated it all, even the zucchini, though I was a bit daunted by the four that were bigger than baseball bats.

The problem with zucchini is figuring out how to use it. Zucchini is a vegetable, more specifically a squash. Therefore, by definition, it must be good for you. The dilemma is not whether one should eat it, but how.

Since zucchini has virtually no flavor, and since its texture evokes an art gum eraser more than a vegetable, it doesn’t add a lot of pizzazz to salads. Frying it works reasonably well, as long as you understand that the zucchini itself is not the point, but merely an excuse to add plenty of butter and seasoning. Sneaking it into casseroles is a possibility, as long as you don’t try to serve it to eagle-eyed small children who will spend their dinner hour poking through the entree to separate out small bits of anything suspiciously vegetable.

My purpose in bringing home the huge zucchini, though, was to grate and freeze it to use in zucchini bread and muffins. It’s a great way to eat something deliciously full of fat and sugar, while pretending that it’s good for you. This year I’ve discovered something even better—my son-in-law’s recipe for zucchini chocolate cake. Moist, rich chocolate cake with vegetables in it? Sounds like health food to me.

For years (at least until I learned about the chocolate cake) I’ve wondered why anyone grows zucchini. One reason might be that it’s so prolific and easy to produce. It’s like my father’s memory of the food when he was in Navy boot camp: it wasn’t very good, but there always was plenty of it.

Lately, though, I’ve begun to suspect a different reason. Maybe people don’t grow zucchini for its nutritional value, but for its entertainment value. Even those who eat zucchini laugh about it. Even its name is funny. It’s the squash that gets no respect. You just have to appreciate a vegetable that provides such good material for so many bad jokes.

It’s summer—the time for county fairs, midways, and carnivals. As I kid, I always went for the tamer rides on the midway. Not for me the stomach-churning contraptions with names like “The Screaming Sidewinder” that hurl you through the air, fling you upside-down and inside-out, and finally spit you out with your knees wobbling and your face an interesting shade of green. No, the carousel and the Ferris wheel were about as adventurous as I ever cared to get.

My late husband, however, was much more of a risk-taker. No boring old Ferris wheels for him. He was a roller coaster kind of guy. Once we visited a resort in Nevada that had a roller coaster. This was no carnival roller-coaster wannabe to be hauled around on the back of a truck and set up in half an hour at the local fairgrounds. It was the real thing, installed around and above the hotel. It climbed almost straight up till it was higher than the building, then dropped straight down—and after that it got nasty.

Wayne, of course, wanted to go on this ride. And he wanted to share the experience with me. I told him thanks but no thanks, I didn’t like roller coasters.

“Have you ever ridden on one?” he asked.

Well, no, not really. Not actually. Never, in fact.

“So how do you know you don’t like them if you’ve never been on one?”

Well, I just knew, okay? At the same time, I pride myself on being a logical and fair-minded person, so I had to admit the validity of his argument.

Once I had gone that far, there was no way out. Which is why, a few minutes later, I found myself standing beside him in line, a ticket clutched in my sweaty fist. The name of the ride was printed on the ticket: “The Desperado.” It was not reassuring.

For once I didn’t mind standing in line, but unfortunately our turn came all too soon. We joined the rush of enthusiastic teenagers and small children and climbed into a car. Two slender preteen girls just ahead of us said that they had been on the roller coaster dozens of times over the past two days. “It’s a blast!”

The safety bar that snapped across my lap was so tight I was sure it would leave bruises. There wasn’t time to ask the attendant to loosen it before we took off. After the first few seconds, I was glad there hadn’t been. The car climbed slowly, ratcheting up the first steep grade. I knew we were going to drop abruptly sooner or later, so I hung on tightly, trying to prepare myself.

It didn’t do any good. Suddenly we were plummeting straight down, and it felt as if my head were going to fly off. I had been worried about getting sick to my stomach. Not a problem. I was too terrified to even remember I had a stomach. We screamed along the track at an angle that tipped us sideways, we whipped around sharp curves, we rippled up and down steep little backbreaking hills. We didn’t go upside-down. If I hadn’t been so scared, I might have been grateful for at least that one small concession.

At first Wayne kept telling me, “Relax! Just relax!” He finally must have decided that particular piece of advice was pointless, because he switched to, “Breathe! Just breathe!”

Meanwhile, the two girls in front of us were screaming and waving their arms in the air and having a wonderful time. They kept glancing back, though, obviously getting a bit worried about me. Finally, after the longest two and a half minutes of my life, one of them shouted, “It’s okay; it’s almost over.”

Mercifully, it was. We slowed down, went through a short tunnel, and rumbled to a stop. The attendant released the safety bar, and I pried my stiff fingers from around it, leaving fingernail marks in the steel.

I managed to climb out of the car and walk away on legs that just barely held me up. My neck hurt, my knees were shaking, and I felt a strong urge to sit down in the nearest dark corner and cry.

Wayne grinned heartlessly at me. “Well, you made it,” he said. “Are you glad you went?”

“I knew I didn’t like roller coasters,” I said.

“But how can you be so sure?” he argued. “You’ve only ridden once. You can’t decide for sure till you’ve been on at least a couple of rides.”

Oh, yes I could. I had.

If you see me at the fair this year, you may recognize me. I’ll be the one waiting in line for the merry-go-round.

Last week—shades of Peter Rabbit and Mr. McGregor—I spotted a cottontail in my garden. “Garden” may be too formal a name for three tomato plants, some persistent grass, a little clover, way too much creeping Jenny, and at least one thistle. I could certainly understand how such a model of flourishing horticulture might appeal to a cottontail. What I couldn’t understand was how the furry little invader got in there.

The garden is in a raised circular bed that’s about 18 inches high, with a woven wire fence on top of that and a wire screen over the whole thing. I couldn’t see any rabbit-sized gaps in the fence or any signs of digging underneath it. My best guess was that the rabbit must have hopped in the day before while I was watering the tomatoes and had left the gate open for a while. I opened the gate, shooed it out, and figured the incident was closed—at least as long as the gate was closed.

But two days later, there was the rabbit again, hiding behind a tomato plant, nose twitching, the perfect picture of long-eared innocence. This time I knew the gate had been shut. When I approached the fence, the bunny didn’t wait for me to open the gate, but headed in the opposite direction. It got to the fence, slowed down slightly, and hopped right through.

For anyone who cares to know, I have now established, through actual observation and measurement, that a cottontail can slip through an opening two inches wide by four inches high. When I bought the fence, I was thinking about deer, not rabbits. The solution, I decided, was to get some light woven wire with a smaller mesh and put a row of it around the bottom of the fence. Good idea. I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Last evening, when I watered the tomato plants, I decided it was past time to do a little weeding. I put my gloves on and pulled the thistle. I took a hoe to the grass and the clover. I pulled some of the creeping Jenny, which is a futile endeavor, but at least I could say I was trying.

Underneath one side of the largest tomato plant was a pile of dried grass and weeds, left over from the last time I got ambitious enough to weed the garden. I picked up a handful of it and tossed it over the fence. The second handful contained some bits of soft gray fur.

When I picked up the third handful, there they were—five or six baby cottontails, snuggled together in the nest their mother had hollowed out and covered with the leavings from my weeding. I was startled to see them. I’m sure they were more than startled to see me. It must be terrifying to have the roof ripped off your house to reveal a giant, menacing creature crouched over your bed. Frightened as they must have been, though, they held true to their instincts and training and didn’t move. I just had a glimpse of bright eyes and twitching noses before I dropped the grass back over them.

Now I was faced with a moral dilemma. The immediate question was whether to go ahead and water the bunny-harboring tomato plant. Yes, I decided. The nest was under one side of the plant but not inside the basin I had dug around it to hold in water. If mama bunny had chosen to build her house on the edge of a lake, it wasn’t my problem if her basement occasionally flooded.

The bigger dilemma was what to do about the nest. Rabbits are pests. Rabbits, or so I presume, eat tomatoes. Peter notwithstanding, rabbits don’t belong in gardens. Mr. McGregor and I are quite in agreement about that.

Yet, in the instant I decided, without any thought, to cover up the baby cottontails again instead of getting rid of them, they somehow became my rabbits. Maybe because they were so cute. Maybe because they were so vulnerable, lying still in the nest with their hearts thumping and their ears flattened back. Maybe just because they were babies.

Or maybe because of my respect for their mother’s wisdom in choosing the site for her nest. She found the perfect spot, safe from foxes, dogs, cats, and hawks—from almost any predators, in fact, except me. Judging from the height and quantity of the weeds, she probably figured I didn’t spend enough time in the garden to pose much of a threat.

I have to admit she was right. For now, my garden consists of three tomato plants, some half-hoed grass, a little clover, still too much creeping Jenny, no thistles, five or six baby bunnies, and one quick and clever mother cottontail. I can always rabbit-proof the fence after the babies grow up and leave home. It’s a decision I may regret if I find bunny bite marks in half my tomatoes. On the other hand, if they promise to eat the creeping Jenny instead of the tomatoes, we might even negotiate a long-term lease.

Mr. McGregor would be ashamed of me, but I don’t care.

I bought some new shampoo last week. As I put it away in the bathroom, I noticed this reassuring sentence printed on the bottle: “This product was not tested on animals.” How nice to know I can enjoy a guilt-free shower, secure in the knowledge that no innocents have been harmed in order to help me face the day with squeaky-clean, shiny tresses.

But not all cosmetic companies are so humane. Just imagine the trauma for all the poor beasts who have been victimized by these heartless corporations—forced to endure trials of shampoos, styling gels, hair sprays, lotions, and countless other beauty products.

The following case histories are taken from interviews with a few of the hapless victims. (While the species are real, the names have been changed in order to protect the innocent.)

Toinette, Miniature Poodle. “Mon Dieu, what an ordeal! ‘Conditioner,’ they called it. May a peasant with the hands of a blacksmith ‘condition’ them—the barbarians! What their uncivilized potion did to my beautiful curls was a crime. The frizz! The tangles! One could scarcely endure to be combed. And then, as if such pain were not suffering enough, I was taken—oh, almost I cannot bear to speak it!—I was taken Out In Public. Forced to walk in the park among my friends and acquaintances. Oh, I held my head high. I pretended not to care. But I heard, you understand. The whispers. The stifled laughter behind my back. The humiliation! The shame! Still, to this day, I have the nightmares.”

Attila, Rottweiler. “I don’t talk about it much, see. Guys like me, we don’t. But what they used on me was baby shampoo. Left my coat all soft and fluffy, like a pup that hadn’t been groomed proper. Ruined that sleek, menacing look that us tough guys need. Made me look about as intimidating as a Cocker Spaniel. And the smell? “Lavender and Lilac,” they said it was. Disgusting stuff. Lost my night watchman job over it, I did. Anybody tries to get near me with anything like that again, he’s gonna lose an arm.”

Scheherazade, Pekingese. “Hellooo?! Did somebody really think the magenta styling gel and the spiked hair was my kind of fashion statement? I’m a lap dog, for crying out loud! I need people to see me as cute, cuddly, and in need of pampering and treats. Sure, sure, I know I’m really an egotistical little tyrant, but for cripes’ sake give me credit for being smart enough not to want to look like one! What’s next? Nose piercing?”

These interviewees, like many others, managed to escape their torment. They are now living safely at secret, cosmetic-free refuges, where they receive counseling from animal psychologists and are encouraged to participate in weekly support groups.

Other potential victims, stronger or blessed by Mother Nature with better natural weaponry, manage to fight back on their own. Like Anonymous, a Crocodile, who was interviewed from a circumspect distance. “Body lotion? Keep that greasy glop with its Gawd-awful smell away from my hide. I’m a croc, okay? My skin is like leather. Get over it.”

He added with a grin, “Of course, if you want me to taste the stuff, that’s different. Just smear some on your arm and let me at it.”