Animals and Crackers

by
Alan Reynolds
 Animals and Crackers

All stories, poems and cover illustration

copyright © 2008 by Alan Reynolds

All rights reserved

including the right to reproduce this book or portions

thereof

in any form whatsoever.

Poems by Alan Reynolds are also published

in US and UK magazines

and literary journals

and

on the Internet.

www.alanreynolds.nl
Preface
Snkae’s Tale was written in response to assignments to use
nine given phrases in nine different 500-word stories. I used
the phrases as titles as well as in each story, and also made
them into a series or chapters for a book about my friends
Snkae and Waldorf.
One story in the set, Eleven Seconds, indulges Waldorf’s
fascination with unusual plurals for animals: a brace of
hounds, a cete of badgers, etc. The other stories are bog
normal, straightforward reporting of down-home life.
Skunked is a short collection of short poems about Rasputin,
an even shorter skunk

ACR
Monnickendam
Contents

Snkae’s Tale 2
A Frayed Scarf 3
A Whisper in the Dark 5
Eleven Seconds 7
False Bottom 9
The Scholar Ship 12
An Unbroken Glass 14
Thermostat Wars 16
Six Chairs, No Waiting 18
If I Had a Hammer 20
Waldorf’s Words 22

Skunked 23
Rasputin Flees Unjust Accusers 24
Rasputin in Gym Class 25
Rasputin Hangs It Up 26
Rasputin Meets M. Suávee 27
Rasputin Skunked 28
1
Snkae’s Tale

2
A Frayed Scarf
A frayed scarf, a quick meal, the bird jammed twice going
down the alligator’s throat, leaving wings broken back, black
feathers wet and scattered, and tempers and nerves, the
alligator’s and Tom’s, frayed.
Tom, afraid not only of losing his own lunch but also a hand
or foot, watched where the cormorant had been. He watched
the alligator watching him, measured the reptile’s length by
eye. Six feet and growing, long as a grave is deep. He
wished he had stayed on at the bank, had not taken this
outdoor job.
His nostrils told him when the alligator constricted the
cormorant. That fish that bird had been ripe.
LENGTH. Tom wrote down in his notebook his estimate of the
alligator’s length. MARKINGS. He saw none not shared by all the
other alligators here on Sanibel Island. IDEALS.
“Ideals? The normal run of what passes for thinking here?”
Tom squinted through his sweat, turned the notebook to
different angles. “Ideals” was printed on the form. He would
have to fill in something if he wanted to get paid for today’s
work. It was already late morning and he would not have
time to find another large animal to meet the day’s survey
quota. What was wanted? What would suffice?
The alligator though still on the log seemed closer, more
aware of Tom. “Ask it,” Tom told himself. He did. “What are
your ideals?”
Nothing. He called out his question more loudly. The green-
black eyes stayed on him and the alligator belched, a little.
Wood-peckers went into overtime, ratcheting up the pre-noon
cacophony, singing racial memories of moccasins with white,
white mouths.
It was more than just the heat. The alligator cleared its
throat, in a matter of speaking and began just that:
speaking. “I thought no one would ever ask,” it said. “I do
have a few.”

3
Tom moved back the foot he feared for the most, feeling the
water swirl where his boot had been and hoping the motion
was his, not a snake’s. What to say? “Yes?” he tried.
“Ideals. I have a few,” the alligator continued. “Never eating
cooked food. Voting with my tail. Outweighing what I hunt.
Why?”
“It’s a survey,” Tom told it. “The state hired me to look for
what is lacking in the state.”
“Depth?” asked the alligator. “Ideals? Alligators out on the
flats in bone boats?”
“I don’t know. I just track the Sanibel creatures, watch them,
fill in the forms in this notebook.”
“Show me,” said the alligator, swinging only, Tom hoped, its
head in his direction. They both stood their ground, held
their water.
“Stay there,” Tom screeched. The alligator slid in the water,
a little closer.
“I’m cool,” it said. “Ideals? Do you read Thomas Nagel? I
don’t, but the woodpeckers think the world of his What It Is
To Be A Bat.”
The pool between them seemed smaller. Black feathers
mussed the alligator’s enunciation. It seemed a small thing
to notice, but Tom did.
He tried to step back, but looked back first, and saw the
alligator’s mother. Or uncle. Or grandfather. Ideally he
would have outweighed them each.

4
A Whisper in the Dark
The green drink drunk from an unbroken glass
makes losing of the scholarship less grim.
False bottom from intoxication’s pass
at courage sounds a whisper in the dark.
A thermostat wars with his unwired skull
in which six chairs, no waiting, have been lost.
The “If I had a hammer” student snores
Eleven Seconds He will take no firsts.
Stephen woke hot. Facedown on the fraternity room leather
sofa, not a good olfactory choice. The snake, the one he
usually saw, regarded him from the floor, eyes left, like a
titular head of department relegated to a mere mention.
The snake spoke to Stephen in a parenthetical whisp.
“Excuse me?” grogged Stephen.
“Would you like one?”
“One what?”
“A whisp! A flock of snipe! Weren’t you hunting snipe again
last night, being ringleader for the snipe hunt?”
An ant crawled over Stephen’s tongue he’d left out to dry
while he slept. Overriding ant-ethical antithetical parental
controls, Stephen bit the ant and (parenthetically) his tongue.
“O antithesis of God, thou evil serpent!” he shouted.
“Pathetic,” lisped the snake. “Want a whisp quickie? A
quacker? Talking like parrots, are we now?”
“Where? Snipes?” lolled Stephen, refreshed and shamed of it
by his own blood (a parenthetical excursion eschewing future
tongue bites and the mentioning of other fun topics).
“Shurly sound bites,” replied the snake. “The snipe is in the
pastry and the flock has six chairs waiting.”
“That’s a lot of chairs,” said Stephen, not really up to early
afternoon conversations.
“¡Sí!” said the snake in what Stephen, who failed languages,
thought was Spanish. “Muchos charros. Carisma.”

5
Maybe Agnes of God, thought Stephen. He said, “Is there
anything to drink? Flock, hock, hooch?”
The snake (whose name is Snkae) said, “Why don’t you call
me Snkae? I can read minds but with you that does not work
so you have to say what you mean.”
“OK,” said Stephen. “Snkae (how easy to type!), where is
this all going? How about a beer?”
“Probably,” answered Snkae, “into Theology since Logic
seems beyond you. How do you like, ‘In the Phi Delt house
there are many masons’? Or, ‘How many Moses-treated
serpents do Morris dances on the Headmaster’s pen?’”
Stephen raced for the head, regrouped, got off the sofa and
eventually off the floor and raced again more effectively this
time for the head.
Snkae followed, stopping halfway to ponder how Hawking, on
recanting what he had purported for thirty years, had been
lionized, not fired. “Too parenthetical by far,” Snkae thought.
Hearing Stephen returning, he coiled, hooded, waited.
Stephen had, among other parentheses, showered. He felt
better now, almost up to dying. He thought about higher
things: snipes, girlfriends of his brothers, the fiction of
fraternity, fraternity suits.
From somewhere not quite in sight came a snake’s sibilant
sneering string of saliva sated syllables: “Want, er, a whisp,
er, in the dark?”

6
Eleven Seconds
“The scaup duck is a flocking fowl.”
“Language!” cried the snake.
“I can only read what’s printed on this menu,” the alligator
answered, then went quiet, he thought, as that brave
Spartan lad suffering a fox to gnaw his vitals.
“Why are you moaning like that?” Snkae asked him.
The alligator twitched his tail, taking care not to knock Snkae
into the log they were both treading water next to. So much
then for his Gary Cooper beau ideal. “What are you
reading?” he asked Snkae.
“The same menu as you, Waldorf. The same menu as
everyday here, written for us by little gods painting good
Sanibel air with aroma calligraphics that stand out like the
tied-off veins of a long-time heroin aficionado.”
“Right, then,” said Waldorf in what may have been answer.
“What do you fancy?”
“The scalps are good. Mind you, I’m speaking Scots. Mussels
always start a lunch off right.”
“What I would like,” said Waldorf, “would be a feast. I could
start with your suggestion as a first then have eleven
seconds. How do these sound? Let’s have them all. A cete
of badgers caught at odds with shore. A drift of hogs adrift
without a paddle.”
“I am all unhinged,” said Snkae. “We’ll have a binge. A cast
of red leg hawks who took a bevy of roe deer just before the
swamp took them.”
“Coot covert,” Waldorf chortled, getting hooked. “A kindle of
Maine Coon Cat kittens.”
“Please!” said Snkae, not as a reprimand. “It’s good to know
an alligator with ideals. How about this: spring mystery
litter of multiparous swamp mammal?”
“That sounds,” said Waldorf, “multifarious. Add some
collards and you’re on.” By now he was not just hungry but
also larking about in exaltation.
7
“A meal to murder for,” crowed Snkae, getting into the swing
of things as only something that sheds its own skin can.
“Something to bank on!”
They observed a moment of silence, remembering ex-banker
Tom. Then Waldorf said, as if he were reading the menu,
“The shrewdness of apes is overrated.”
The tide, not counting storms, is negligible on the island, and
a driveway that supports one snake and one alligator and
one Jeep Grand Cherokee sees additional fauna as forage.
Except in the middle, the driveway was not all that deep and
Snkae and Waldorf were often forced to leave it for what it
was, which was not what the real-estate agent had claimed,
and to swamping into the swamp next door for monster
feeds.
“Remember,” asked Snkae, “that lunch your uncle threw?
Half the neighbor’s kennel, peacock muster.”
“Shurly ‘mustard’,” answered Waldorf.
“Surely not.” And being snide, Snkae added, “Pheasant
nide.”
Then Waldorf, idealistic to a fault line Snkae had just crossed,
erupted from the water and consumed the skulk of vermin
Snkae had had his eye on.
“Sord,” said Snkae, maladroit at catching mallards and
seeing he was going to go hungry this lunch.
“Language,” said Waldorf, primly, and belched, a little.

8
False Bottom
Snkae woke cold, belly down on the fraternity room leather
sofa, not a good matrimonial mattress move. “False bottom,”
he lisped, “was it good for you then?”
“Aaargh,” said a heavy voice off to his left.
Snkae opened an eye, one of his own, used it unwisely. He
saw Waldorf too nearby, dripping on the rich but dirty carpet
and holding up the unusual umbrella he carried when
traveling. “Waldorf,” he said coldly, “what are you doing
here?”
“I won’t ask you the same,” retorted Waldorf loftily for
someone with such short legs. “What a trip. What a campus.
What a long walk!”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Snkae.
“Course not,” said Waldorf. “You were transported. Called up
by that absinthe Stephen drinks when his parents’ monthly
check arrives. Where is Stephen?”
Snkae took care to look around before answering. “Good
question,” he said. He belched, a little.
“Bad as I suspected,” said Waldorf. “Luckily for us only the
campus police trying are to put two and two together, the
opposite of their usual task. People are talking, wondering
why there are fewer other people around these last days.
Doing head counts and coming up short the odd Tom and
Stephen.”
“Odd,” said Snkae.
“Odd how?” said Waldorf.
“Pickled, probably. Not too bad.”
“Shake a leg, Snkae. We have to get back to the swamp.”
Snkae looked cold-bloodedly coldly at the alligator then
slithered off the leather. Went back and did it all again.
“There,” he said. “Farewell, false bottom.” He followed
Waldorf to where the door had been until the alligator’s
arrival. They went outside.

9
It was raining cats and dogs. They had a few and continued
refreshed.
It was Monday morning and fifteen minutes before the first
class so the campus was deserted. In an hour or two the first
students would be waking, introducing themselves and
thinking about partying or lunch. The dean dozed in her
study and the maids played virtual reality games on the
airspeed campus network.
“Shurly ‘high-speed’,” said Waldorf.
“What?” said Snkae.
“Sorry,” said Waldorf. “I was talking and didn’t hear.”
The university teacher (more than one would have been
redundant) glanced outside, saw the two large reptiles, and
decided not to teach this week. He pulled the sheet of paper
out of the university typewriter and threw the paper on the
floor, picked it up and wadded it up and threw it down again,
like authors did in films he’d seen, wondering why.
The snake and the alligator continued marching to the
marshes, across the huge campus, across the huge gardens
surrounding the campus, across the gigantic athletic center
surrounding the gardens, across the vast sports stadium
surrounding the athletic center, and into the swamp that
encompasses all.
“You have great power of endurance, Waldorf,” Snkae said
falsely, “like a river horse of good bottom.”
“You are thinking of hippos,” said Waldorf. “They can be
good when little, or long dead.”
Lightning struck a cypress, sticking it to a whisp of snipe
seeking shelter there.
“Where are we?” said Snkae. “It’s good to be home.” He
swam and slithered to where the tree had been and
consumed the crispy birds. “Can’t let them go cold. Why are
you waving your umbrella?”
“I am not waving it. I am holding it up. It is made from a
genuine two-iron,” said Waldorf. “I hate lightning.”

10
“God made all this,” said Snkae, waving whatever he could at
the driving rain, the rippling water, the wind, the lighting
bolts coming thicker and faster, the last bits of crispy snipe.
Waldorf held up his umbrella as high as he could, and said,
“Even God can’t hit a two-iron.”

11
The Scholar Ship
Tuesday morning early the Sanibel sun rose on the back of
the night rain. Saltwater fish who had felt at home in the
driveway got the message and swam back across the road
and into the Gulf. The rain departed taking the Jeep Grand
Cherokee with it. The university teacher came out the front
door in jungle boots and a rage and splashed after the
floating jeep.
“Pitiful,” burbled Waldorf, up to his snout in the cultivated
swamp the teacher called lawn.
“He often does that,” answered Snkae. “He always loses,
then the rain takes pity on him and returns the jeep. Or the
tide does.”
“I meant pitiful, how he looks,” said Waldorf. “He should
wear more than just boots for his morning fitness run.”
“He’s in a rage.”
“But not the rage.”
Snkae turned his back, as it were, on Waldorf’s clumsiness of
diction, hoping he would not tell another joke. He lisped,
“God can’t hit a two-iron, indeed.” Snkae waited, got his
timing right, then slithered aside just as the alligator tried to
bite him. Maintaining the easy relationship common among
long-time swamp predators, they hissed and glared at each
other.
The university teacher ran by them and into the house and
out again in blind panic, chinos, Izod shirt and bowtie. “I’m
late, I’m late, I’m late,” they heard him scream.
“The late professor?” Waldorf asked Snkae.
“Naw,” said Snkae. “he’s too skinny. If he disappeared the
property developers would get this place, and conserve it like
they conserve all old properties: instant high-rise on the tide
line and where would you and I be? Why can’t he just one
time wear a snake shirt?”
“Did you,” said Waldorf, “say gnaw?”

12
“No,” said Snkae. They watched the teacher wait tensely,
timing himself to catch the jeep on the next incoming wave.
“Pitiful,” said Waldorf. “Can’t he tell it’s not floating? That
this is rain water, about eight inches deep?”
Sensing a pause in the swirls, the teacher leaped for the
running board and, because the jeep didn’t have one,
bloodied his nose on the door, opened it, the door, and
climbed into the seat.
“I wonder what he teaches,” said Snkae.
“Fistic something,” I think, “Maybe gnu leer fistic. Ask
Stephen,” laughed the alligator.
“Still have that cold, do you?” sneered Snkae. “Does he ever
look around? The teacher? Ever greet us, his neighbors?”
They watched the teacher curse and kick and jump around in
the jeep, which suddenly started. Smoke billowed. The
driveway surface dried near as damming permitted, and the
Scholar Ship, for that was the name painted on the jeep’s
side, roared up toward the road.
“Watch its wake,” hissed Snkae, and they did, seining the
minnows and frogs and general green debris they hoped was
food into their breakfast-loving, cold-blooded but hotwired
selves.
Out on the little road the teacher turned the Scholar Ship
onto the other little road that was the main highway to Fort
Myers and headed off to teach if the student might turn up in
class today. He hummed a little to whatever the air
conditioning was singing and told himself he was happy.
Rain fell silent and silently and away, and the sun consumed
his nightmares while he drove.

13
An Unbroken Glass
The university teacher was early after all. There was no
traffic going off the island at this time of morning and the
Scholar Ship sailed past the thousands of vehicles coming on-
island: the maids and gardeners and cooks and all the other
people arriving to service, as it were, Sanibel’s tourists and
affluent residents.
The teacher smiled although, as often, he was not sure which
part of the thought made him do so. Then he laughed into
the mildew forming on the leather dashboard as he zoomed
over the high bridge to the mainland, knowing why this time.
“No way that horrible alligator and snake can follow me over
this bridge”
“Not on our short little legs,” said Snkae wryly.
“Four Roses,” said Waldorf. They lay together in—especially
in Snkae’s case—unarmed truce in the back of the Scholar
Ship as it pulled into in the teacher’s reserved parking space
outboard of those for the deans and maids and lawyers and
counselors and paying students.
“What?” asked Snkae.
“Four Roses. It’s a rye. Can’t buy it anymore. Can’t stomach
it. But the teacher can and does. He tells the Dean it’s a
roborant which keeps her from telling him he can’t drink it.”
“Because roborants are good?”
“Because she won’t admit she can’t look up what roborant
means.”
The teacher got out, locked the doors, and walked the hot
mile to the front of the new, drug-funded Academic Temple.
He admired the Homo sapiens non urinat in ventum
inscription carved on its facade, then went round to the
servants’ entrance and his office.
The snake and alligator let themselves down through the
Scholar Ship’s large (well, it would be) rust hole in the tire
well and went around to the main entrance and into the
sawgrass to watch unobserved what might come along.

14
The sun baked off a fresh batch of mosquitoes and sent them
flying for shade. Puppies gamboled and lost. Waldorf
belched, a little.
Snkae felt unwell. “Can the cold-blooded have fever?” he
asked.
“West Nile,” said Waldorf. “Might as well laugh about what
you can’t cure.”
“No,” said Snkae.
“Of course not,” said Waldorf. He was paying attention not to
Snkae but to the delivery van. Snkae noticed and perked up.
The driver opened up the back and removed two large cases
of sterile rats for the Biology Lab.
“Do your mating call, Waldorf!” Snkae said, “Quick.”
“Not alone, I’d go blind.”
“Do it,” lisped the snake.
Waldorf roared, sort of, and the driver screamed, very much
of, and ran into the lab.
“Box lunches,” beamed Snkae. “Let’s tie one on.”
Later back in the sawgrass Waldorf, feeling ratted on, asked,
“Did you notice the label on those boxes: Sawgrass Florida’s
Cool New Destination Is Hot?”
“Yes,” answered Snkae. “Damn humans are ruining the
Atlantic side of the swamps as well as here on the Gulf. I
wish we could eat more of them. Did you say West Nile?”
The snake and the alligator belched, a little, and followed the
driver into the Biology lab. Unsurprised that no one was
there they took the cold buffet marked Specimens and
moved on to the warm.
“I feel a joke coming on,” said Waldorf.
“You’ll go blind,” said Snkae. “What will happen, do you
think, to the general happiness in the universe if we free
these viruses they keep here behind an unbroken glass?

15
Thermostat Wars
The Dean did not have a faculty for meetings, so when his
class ended the university teacher was free to go back to
Sanibel. Enthusiastic to a fault, he looked forward to coming
back next week, seeing if the student might come to class
this semester. He waved to the other academics—the
university was proud of having as many researchers as
assistant coaches—and proceeded across the parking acres
to his space. The sun was out with a vengeance and a vigor
as if this were its first time to notice this particular earth and
the teacher stopped to wonder.
The rains had cleaned the Scholar Ship to what at high noon
passed for a mirror finish and he caught his own reflection,
tried to throttle it, and then—thumbs jammed only slightly—
chilled out, did that hair flick he so admired the Scots girl
doing on that ancient Prince video. His gray ponytail, on the
forward part of the gesture, covered his balding crown nicely
but the ends hurt his eyes. “Nice lass,” he remembered out
loud, choking back a tear he thought was nostalgia and
failing to notice Snkae and Waldorf in the back of the jeep.
“Maybe if I published something I could get a research job
here, and a raise, and stop my night classes on the island.”
The ride home passed in third for the jeep, something to do
with a transmission problem, and in torpor for the snake and
alligator, something to do with lab animals the PETA no
longer had to worry about freeing. The teacher played Dr.
John and sang along about Babylon, feeling more affinity
than was accepted on campus. Snkae and Waldorf,
marveling the teacher still had ears, dozed and belched, a
little. The air conditioner did yeoman duty following its own
thermostat wars that it would certainly have won had not
Waldorf disconnected the controls.
“Now that is a Management System,” sneered Snkae. “It
would be hard to model corporations better than you did
here, Waldorf.”
“What,” said Waldorf, a bark not a question. Once over the
bridge, the teacher turned on the cruise control and all three

16
of the Scholar Ship’s occupants dozed down the real roads
and the almost real roads all the way home.
Brown pelicans turned lazy circles into a mind-bending torus
and into another mind-bending torus, not knowing the plural.
An osprey sat proudly on a motel’s TV aerial imagining she
was doing her part blocking news coverage, realizing Fox
News already did that.
A very large alligator, Waldorf’s uncle, turned his back on the
jeep as it slipped to a halt in the home waters of the
teacher’s driveway. Small birds cried for lost opportunities
they had hatched hoping for angels.
The teacher went inside the house and Waldorf and Snkae
splashed after Waldorf’s uncle to check out the new
neighbors who had moved in last week, taking over an
abandoned genteel home and fencing it with eight-foot-high
chain link topped with a tearful mélange of broken Coors
bottles.
The three left the fence for what it was and swam along the
canal and onto the lawn.
“Shurly ‘tasteful,’ or ‘tasty,’ not ‘tearful’,” said Waldorf,
eyeing the six ferocious guard dogs racing toward them.
Snkae drew the line at pit bulls, then Waldorf and his uncle
crossed it.

17
Six Chairs, No Waiting
The pit-bull scarfers lost little time getting back into the
swamp. Waldorf’s uncle continued on deeper into the ooze
for some cormorants while Snkae and Waldorf pulled in under
the palmettos of the teacher’s yard. They heard an angry
voice.
“Du Lac? Du Lac whut?”
Pushing aside just enough sawgrass to see what the teacher
saw, Snkae saw the teacher sawing off the legs of a tall
kitchen table. A huge man was holding up the table in one
gigantic fist.
“Impressive, how the table stays so still,” said Waldorf behind
Snkae. “What language is that man speaking?”
“Native, I should think,” answered Snkae. “Or mock native,
like the governor speaks when he knows he is recording
sound bites for posterity.”
Waldorf said, “A sound bite is a jaw forever.” He said it again,
louder, and the man dropped the table.
“Do like I say,” said the teacher. “I’m a teacher. Do like I say
and not like I do.”
The huge man grunted or something that sounded almost
that intelligent. He picked up the table and grabbed the
chainsaw from the teacher and ran at him waving both.
“Oh dear me no I don’t think so very like that at all,” said the
teacher a little rushed but only verbally. As calmly as a
matador putting the sword to a very-confused-and-about-to-
be-delivered-to-McDonalds-soaked-in-own-best-blood bull,
the teacher switched the big man gently, putting out his
lights.
“I told you he was a fistic teacher,” exulted Waldorf. “What
style, what speed. What an inspiration! Put up your dukes,
Snkae, I feel inspired.”
“No fangs,” lisped Snkae, getting into Waldorf’s low humor,
getting it all. It was not hard to do, just hard to take. He
threw his coils into a slip-not around Waldorf’s jaws and held
them closed. “‘Sound bite’ was it?” he asked.
18
Waldorf rolled them both into the deeper water of the
backyard, mocked a death roll so hard he roiled the yards’
killer bees until their metabolism went into reverse and the
air was poor with suckled honey. Snkae just held on and
enjoyed the ride.
Waldorf flaked out and sank to the bottom. Snkae let loose
and swam back to where the big man was just opening his
eyes, blinking in the spray from the hose the teacher trained
on him. “Let’s get this straight,” said the teacher calmly.
“You assert that you are my new neighbor, that I have pets,
and that my pets came onto your property and ate your pets.
Is that it?”
The big man nodded, more off than in comprehension, but
the teacher acted like it was an answer. “Well,” said the
teacher, “the only pet I have is the parrot indoors, so you and
or your conclusions are amiss, astray, awry, counterfactual,
fluffed, sophistical, specious, and, in a word, wrong.”
He turned his back on the big man and the hose off him and
off. He coiled the hose and laid it on a chair.
Something in Snkae fell in love and he whispered to himself,
“I wish I could do that. Maybe there is a heaven, and you are
greeted there with six hoses of your choice, all singing Hosie
Annas and lying there in six chairs, with no waiting.”

19
If I Had a Hammer
The afternoon wore on hot and sticky like a shower curtain
melted onto a bather who had pulled a radio into the tub
while reaching for one last margarita. Woodpeckers suffering
pilea meltdown from exposure to the Sanibel sun banged
their heads against mangrove trees for relief and also for the
funky rhythm they got going.
The university teacher lay on the porch floor in a hammock
that had not been as securely screwed up as he was.
Snkae lay in shallow water where the bottom front step used
to be, and Waldorf stayed down in his gator hole screening a
book he had eaten. Life was good.
Alligators read by eating, and made no exception for books.
Since this book had been missing its cover Endangered and
threatened species, Waldorf thought he was perusing a
menu. He read along happily, mentally supplying words he
assumed had fallen prey to his puissant gastrics. “Florida
bobcat bouillabaisse, cotton rat ratatouille, West Indian
manatee with chutney, moody eastern indigo snake
mulligatawny... yep, had those. Bouillon of bald eagle,
surprise of sea turtle. I’ll bet. American crocodile… …”
“American Crocodile,” he yelped, surfacing suddenly and
looking over both shoulders in a perfect half-gainer that
tucked him flat onto Snkae. “American Crocodile!”
Snkae, the biggest snake Waldorf had ever seen, was not
impressed or even hard pressed to shrug him off. “Where?”
asked Snkae.
“On this menu,” answered Waldorf, but Snkae would not
buckle down to take a look.
“I take your word,” said Snkae, “but you won’t convince
him.” They both looked at the porch with its writhing
hammock and smiled. They were fond of the teacher, the
only human they had ever liked alive. They watched the
teacher’s Spyderco police knife push through the hammock’s
fabric then rip it. The teacher’s head appeared, and only
then did his eyes open. He looked at them stupidly, and then
with relief.
20
“He thought you had et him,” lisped Snkae to Waldorf.
“More likely you,” answered Waldorf, deciding he too had
shown a bit much panic for one afternoon and glad of
diversion.
The teacher went into the house, cooked something he came
back on the porch and ate. He drank something that watered
the reptiles’ eyes. Everything was as always on the small
estate the teacher had inherited it and let go to ruin, and
they all three loved it. They settled down to watch the
sunset, but blinked and missed it.
Night fell so hard it hurt itself. Overly hopeful insects struck
up a dawn chorus although most would be et before dawn by
the approaching Cuban tree frogs.
Snkae noticed first, then Waldorf, and they warned the
teacher to get to the Scholar Ship. It was more a feeling than
something they could hear, but it was strong. “Where are
the keys? Open the jeep door!” yelled Waldorf.
A three-Hummer army from next door bore down, passing the
trio in the dark and unleashing not dogs but rounds of
gunfire.
Remembering the last time he had heard an Uzi provided the
teacher with more focus than normal in his life and he hit at
the jeep’s window. “If I had a hammer,” he moaned as the
front porch disappeared to a bazooka blast.
Snkae pushed the teacher up the jeep’s rusted-out tire well.
“The keys are in the ignition. Drive!”
And, quick as a marsh rabbit doing lines of Cuban frog, with
Snkae and Waldorf mostly if not securely on board, that is
just what the teacher did.

21
Waldorf’s Words
Waldorf , knowing so many animals, likes playing silly devils
with nouns denoting a number of animals, birds, or fish
considered collectively. Here are some he uses in Snkae’s
Tale:
bevy. a company of roe deer, larks, or quail.
cast. the number of hawks or falcons cast off at one time;
e.g. two.
cete. a company of badgers.
covert. a flock of coots.
drift. a drove or herd, especially of hogs
exaltation. a flight of larks.
kennel. a number of hounds or dogs housed in one place.
kindle. a brood or litter, especially of kittens.
litter. the offspring produced at a birth by a multiparous
mammal.
murder. a flock of crows.
muster. a flock of peacocks.
nide. a brood of pheasants.
shrewdness. a company of apes.
skulk. a congregation of vermin, foxes, or thieves.
sord. a flight of mallards.
whisp. or wisp, a flock of birds, especially of snipe.

22
Skunked

23
Rasputin Flees Unjust Accusers
I spent an hour rooting through the junk
to find out where Rasputin threw the chunk
of clothes he’d looked so cute in. Clue: a monk
who watched him wad them up said, “Phew, a skunk.”

Without this cold I’d quickly find his clothes.

I’d walk on close as stink behind my nose
then, pausing where it cried and whined, expose
the rags he cast off somewhere in these rows

and piles and curlicues of twisted threads.

Wasp-waisted dresses and short-listed spreads
are strewn in here with blue mould-misted breads
but I can’t find the new two-fisted Keds

and the little cap I’m sure Rasputin wore.

In an hour’s search I’ve found a boot and more
or less the cape the green-and-fruit man swore
Rasputin wore to loot the candy store.

24
Rasputin in Gym Class
Rasputin’s working out, works on his arms.
He wants to hand-stand when he spreads his charms
but he’s not spotted, little chap gets wiped
out by his bulk. They call him candy striped
down the skunk works where he and his mates
practice blinding canines, use a chair
as target, that they circle, Fred Astaire
alert and agile while they practice, sing,
“Zout you, baby, zcent don’t mean a zing.”

25
Rasputin Hangs It Up
Rasputin’s spelling Flower at the chair.
“Why ‘chairman’ but ‘char lady’?” Zephyr asks.
This floors Rasputin’s shooting, makes him stare
“You mist!” she laughs, and puts their practice masks
back in Skunk Hollow, name they call the chest
they keep their kit in, they’re not doing shoots.
Rasputin’s angry, hates not being best.
“I can’t stand being bettered. Malamutes,
pugs, and husky spaniels alter path
to stay upwind of where I screech and churr
but Zephyr stops me sure as higher math.”
Her little paws smooth down Rasputin’s fur
and then they lunch together in the breeze,
have his favorites: honey and the bees.
ýi

¤<ýÏÏÏÏýi

illustration by Neil Harding

26
Rasputin Meets M. Suávee
“I know what it means, Rasputin, but is it a word?”
Rico Suávee tries a hand-stand, looks absurd.
“No,” adds Rico, “What you do is grunt.
Diction’s not a problem on the hunt
but Zephyr’s zest for dating exceeds stew.”
Rasputin gives a look: “Who’s asking you?”
“Zephyr,” Rico answers, looking smooth.
“Your bad rhyming, how you tried on ‘couth’
the time you went to tell her how she’s cute
enough (she said you told her) to ‘just shoot’.”
“I SNEEZED,” Rasputin’s soulful eyes grow huge.
“Whatever,” Rico parries, “Subterfuge
sucks eggs and persiflage is greens
but collard skunks don’t date no drive-in queens.
A febrifuge (my language class) will help
the chance you’ll have been involved with next year’s
whelp.”
Rasputin gives M. Suávee six duck eggs
then they trot to class on chalk-striped furry legs.

27
Rasputin Skunked
Rasputin’s tears disturb the limpid lake
till Señor Rico Suavee’s front paw rakes
its surface, and the ripples give away
Rasputin’s not alone. He turns ash gray
and walks into the dew drenched weeds that grow
so high in June that skunk paths do not show
when their users trot along those trails en route
to breakfast: eggs of waterfowl -- duck, coot.
Señor Rico follows, not too closely, till
enough time’s passed so both skunks can and will
pretend they (neither) know Rasputin’s cried.
When he turns around, Rasputin is dry eyed.
He flexes, until Rico is impressed
then grins, “Hey, Suavee, want an omelet?”
A real skunk missing Zephyr does not let
on that it’s something, hey, he can not handle.
Rico waves, says he’d like his eggs scrambled.

28