Dear diary,
We leave the diner after tipping the waiter heartily (he can quit his job and live forever off the fortune that we give him); then we return to trekking North-Northwestward on the rivers and stones. At the end of the millennium, the landscape changes to plains with hills and valleys.
Now some pterodactyls land on the grass directly before us. They coast in from the far east and silently land where we are; then they apparently fall asleep.
“Are they dead?” sez Jeanette.
“No,” sez God.
“How can you tell?” sez Jeanette; “Look, their eyes are closed.”
“Yeah,” I add, “and they don’t seem to be breathing,” I hold my hand against the belly of the one that landed nearest to me.
“Machines were never alive in the first place,” God replies.
Then we all look closer at the flying reptiles and realize that, indeed, there are tiny metal screws holding them together.
“Is ANYthing in my scriptures non-mechanical?” I make a self-deprecatory joke.
“No,” sez God.
“But how can you tell?” repeats Jeanette.
“Tell what?” sez God.
“That machines were never alive,” sez Jeanette.
“Ah, that’s because they were blotted from my Book of Life,” God takes a notepad from his marsupium and holds it open to the page where the handwritten word “Pterodactyl” is crossed out. Jeanette looks perplexed, which pleases God terribly.
Thus, being that the birdlike non-birds apparently had no mission or purpose to their short lives, and they remain inertly snoozing where they touched down, we resume walking forward.
Eventually we come to an elevated net, like the type that is found on a tennis court; so we decide to play an impromptu game of volleyball. It’s every herdsman for ourselves and God against all. We win pretty easily, so God challenges us to a rematch. Fernando and I stand on one side of the net with Monica, Anna, and Jeanette by our sides. God stands on the far side and serves the ball. I set it and Anna Karina spikes it. The volleyball shoots thru the air, leaving a trail of smoke behind it on account of its rapid speed, and it bomps on the ground, thus earning our team one point. “Yay!” we all high-five each other, as God’s countenance falls. The rest of the game is exciting and intense, with both sides playing extremely well; but no further points are scored, so we win yet again.
Now we continue walking thru the plains.
“Look: a white squirrel!” sez Monica Vitti, pointing at the creature who is hastening across our path.
“Look: a pink-eyed rabbit!” sez Jeanette MacDonald, drawing our attention to yet another creature.
“I like animals,” I say, as we continue to stroll forward.
“Thanks,” sez God.
I turn my head and ask God sincerely: “Did you truly make them?”
“Yes,” sez God.
After walking for another few seconds, the land becomes mountainous. We all now change into our Expensive Waterproof Lightweight Hiking Boots ($415.20 per pair). Wind begins gusting; the temperature drops; snow falls; and the air is now thin. But none of us are scared: we just keep trudging forward like professionals.
Upon making it to the other side of the dangerous mountain range — it turns out that we just successfully navigated Annapurna in Nepal; and, in the process, we also happened to get clean over a rock massif in Scotland that is part of the Cairngorms — we espy a clear pond, around the perimeter of which a parcel of deer are grazing.
There are seven deer total. God pulls out his rifle. “What are you doing?” cries Monica. God aims and shoots six times, and six deer drop. The seventh bounds off into the distance. “I let that one go,” God nods toward the escapee, “because I could see there was a sign around her neck, with a message written in diamond letters — it was a warning, saying: ‘Touch me not, for I belong to Julius Caesar’. Do you comprehend? That’s a different J.C. than the one I own; and I respect my rival’s property. I think I’ll christen her ‘Sabbath’.”
We approach the slain deer and God dresses them and prepares the meat for us on a makeshift altar.
“This is really good,” sez Jeanette. Then she swallows. “Thanks for doing that.”
The rest of us nod and murmur in agreement, while savoring the kill.
“No problem,” sez God.
“Do you think you might salt and divvy and pack up the leftovers in wax paper; then use a sledge to transport the score to a nearby village where they’ve never even heard of deer?” I inquire of God. “I bet you could make a fortune in the foreign markets.”
“I already have everything I need,” answers God. “Any venison that we don’t consume, I’ll leave for the local wildlife — my friend Milton Satan tells me that all the creatures who live hereabouts are entirely herbivorous, so of course I’m curious how malleable their habits are.”
Now the telephone rings.
“Somebody brought a nuisance item?” God sez.
“It’s my pink rotary landline,” I admit, blushing while opening the drawstring of my rucksack and pulling out the shrilly screaming device. I pick up the receiver and say: “Hello?...Yes...No...Yes...No!” then I hang up angrily and toss the phone into the pond. “Good riddance,” I shout.
After a pause, God asks, “Who was it?”
“Telemarketers.”
My fellow herdsmen all cackle at this reply, as I laboriously pull the cord back, hand over hand, until the phone is seen to surface and comes dragging onto the shoreline. Then I replace it in my rucksack.
“You’ll do anything for a joke, won’t you?” God looks as tho it’s the first time he’s considered this aspect of my personality.
“It appears so,” I say, pulling the drawstring tight and looking exhausted. “I wonder why you fashioned me like this.”
“Oh that wasn’t ME,” God smirks.
So we continue to walk as a posse in the direction North-Northwest, away from the pond where God arranged the leftover venison in a pleasing display for whoever happens to find it and wants to eat it. (It looks so good, I’m tempted to finish it off myself.)
Soon we come to a place where they sell cork. Fernando demands that we stop and buy cork. So we all buy a fair amount of cork. Then we continue our stroll.
“That looks like water, up ahead,” I say (we’re all dying of thirst now, because the meat was oversalted).
“No, that’s a mirage,” sez God.
Sure enough, it proves to be mere sand. We continue to slouch forward.
“That looks like water, up ahead,” sez Fernando Pessoa.
“No, that’s a mirage,” sez God.
When we approach, we’re overjoyed to find a freshwater spring. We all drink our fill.
Feeling totally rejuvenated, we now rest for a few eons. There happens to be a palm tree by the spring, and we all lean against it. Each of us individually, privately now fantasizes that we are wholly other characters who happen to be reclining near the same tree and daydreaming. Then, they (we) begin to read airplane novels aloud to one another, and we suspect that none of us is actually literate, therefore there’s a strong possibility that these characters of ours (which, again, are simply ourselves starring as our own film’s heroes) are just making up their own stories.
Now a predator begins eating our loved ones. First, all of God’s family is eaten. Then, a couple days later, we collectively notice a beautiful, large hawk sitting on a fence before our faces. We snap pics of the bird with our still-cams, and Monica even captures a video of it — we are surprised how it is not in the least spooked by us.
Then, God, as a scientific test, crafts a twelve-pound Australian Shepherd Pomeranian pup out of the dry earth, by simply wetting the soil and mooshing it around with his hands and then blowing upon it. He sets this dog atop a pedestal before the great hawk, and, just as we were planning to continue our leisure stroll, yet before we had stepped off our prayer mats, God’s new Aussie Pom assumes a position in order to answer the call of nature: then we notice the hawk circling above it.
At this point, I nudge God with my elbow and mutter: “Hey, you better name your creation fast, for it looks like it’s soon to be hawk’s-meat.”
“Finny,” God sez.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I name the pup Finny,” God clarifies.
Then, sure enough, the predatory bird swoops down and snatches the dog, when the poor thing has only had a chance to generate six connected links of “sausage”, which is only a small fraction of the canine’s intended excretion. And we are all standing within arm’s reach of the altar when this happens.
God, upon beholding this, attempts to jump up and bat the bird off before it gets its talons around Fin; but the hawk is bold: it snatches its prize and flaps up to the top of a lamp post on the street. The bird immediately begins to dine, ripping open the pup’s soft belly with its beak, while keeping one eye on God who is trying to shoo the thief away.
Now a fox and a coyote and a deer all approach the area beneath the streetlamp. As morsels fall from the hawk’s dining table, these other beasts snatch them up. God attempts to wave them off, as well; yet they keep returning.
All of the above transpires in a matter of moments; the rest of us look on in a state of shock, not knowing what to do. None of us are able to think or move fast enough to stop the horror. In all our years of herding livestock, we’ve never had the misfortune of losing an animal to a predator like this. So all we can do, now that the damage is done, is reflect on what we just witnessed.
“Such an exciting event,” I say.
Jeanette sez: “Yes, do not leave small animals out at either dawn or dusk. Those are the most active times for hunting.”
Shaking her head, Anna Karina sez: “Hawks presume that little dogs on a leash are curbside delivery.”
Anna’s remark inspires me to voice a fib, just to spice up our talk:
“A polar bear attacked my sixty-pound labrador last century, while I had him on leash,” I say. “That was when I lived in Longyearbyen, Norway. I tried to dissuade the attacking beast by stepping towards him while holding my arms out and shouting ‘Boo!’ while I was making ‘jazz hands’; and this caused him to pace backward about twenty meters. Then the polar bear sat down to yowl and bark at us.”
“So, did you save your black lab?” asks Fernando Pessoa.
“How’d you know he was black?” I say, genuinely astonished; “I purposely never mentioned that detail.”
“I could tell, by the way you said the word ‘labrador’ during your recital.”
“Ah, ye-e-es,” I tap my chin meditatively. “Yes, I did save him: I’m quite sure of it.”
“Being an avid hunter myself,” replies Fernando, “I would not have believed this story if someone else had told me.”
“Yowza!” sez Ms. Vitti. “So much violent mayhem! I liked it better when we were wearing our blue mantles and watching the waterfowl fail at mating.”
Now God returns and joins our convo: “Yeah, it's amazing — many of these larger birds have zero amount of fear for us humans. And not even the forest quadrupeds obey us, when they’re hungry. Did you see me over there, with that coyote and the others? Ah, that reminds me: I tried to frighten away a couple of wild turkeys from the patio near my throne a couple of years ago, and they ended up chasing me into my house! It was a bit demoralizing!”
“Scary,” sez Jeanette. “Bry and I had trouble with hawks for just a short while, after we spent last summer herding puppies; but we would guard them diligently. We never had a truly serious problem, because we ended up buying a moving yard-ornament, which utterly terrified the birds: they wouldn’t dare go near that thing. — If we ever return to Eagan, we’ll have to check if they’re back. Our entire yard is fenced in with free-roaming pups — I’d hate to think the hawks are shooting fish in a barrel, so to speak.”
“No, they’re fine,” I say, holding out my mobile computing device, which presents a high definition aerial image of our home’s backyard from a live satellite feed. “See: I left the lawn-ornament on, so not a single puppy has been lost.”
Jeanette squints at the display screen and then relaxes: “Ah, good thinking.”
“What kind of yard ornament deters predators?” asks God.
“Ones that move in the wind,” I say, “or the kind that are powered by coal and move along a train-track, like ours. Ideally they should be shaped like other predators — this one that works for us looks like a cardboard elephant with the head of a moose, and it has a man made out of actual fire riding upon it. And its eyes are like big black tennis balls.”
“Whose eyes?” asks God, now extremely interested but quite confused, “Are you referring to the ‘Man of Light’ from Iranian Sufism, or the mammoth moose cut-out?”
“The moose,” I say. “This thing works well — it scares all birds away except crows. So it’s sorta like an anti-scarecrow.”
“Why not crows?” asks God.
“Cuz crows are welcome in our yard. We love crows — they get along fine with our herd of cute puppies; they’d never hurt each other.”
God rolls his eyes.
Jeanette now attempts to add to the fib I told earlier: “That fifty-pound black lab that Bryan and I had befriended last century refuses to go out after dawn — she only likes to romp at night. She became this way after falling in love with our hybrid hummingbird fruit-bat. She senses the danger of the sunlight now. And she is absolutely terrified of the large turtle that lives in our dining room.”
“Oh,” God perks up, “is that the one named SorchyHong-MukDonk?”
“No,” Jeanette scowls; “his name is Bryan the Tortoise.”
I smooth Jeanette’s hand, “He means the hybrid, dear,” then I turn to God and say: “Yes, you’re correct. The hummingbird fruit-bat* is SorchyHong-MukDonk.”
[*Footnote: God and I are referring to an animal that makes a one or two brief appearances in the last few chapters of my other book, Not Novel 13.]
Monica is still concerned about the pups in our backyard: “But I’ve heard that crows can lift more than half their body weight! And I think that red crows, which are the most common type — the ones that are made of ruby glass and that only exist in Eagan — can put on as much extra weight as a public school principal. Even a large bald fat-suit on an attractive older female librarian seductress can weigh up to umpteen hundred-score pounds, when soaking wet. My point is that I think we should install a scarecrow on our property, and we should call his name JESUS.”
“You have got to be kidding,” I say.
“Why’s that?” sez Monica.
“Cuz you’re talking about crows,” I say, “which are officially banned from heaven; and yet the facts that you’re citing only apply to hawks.”
“Oh,” sez Monica, after a pause; “sorry: I misspoke.”
Now God decides to join the fibbing: “I read a story in the Bible last Tuesday where a hawk swooped down on a Jack Russell Terrier — yikes! In less than a second, it gutted the dog with its talon: spaghetti fell out; then it was able to lift the hound and carry it off into a nearby tree, where it treated it rather distastefully. This is next-level stuff. Makes me wish I had handcrafted hawk-kind from moistened sand, instead of revising the velociraptor.”
[AUTHOR’S NOTE. For that last remark to make sense, we must all keep in mind that ‘Jack Russell Terrier’ is one of the smallest dog breeds in the known universe.]
Anna sez: “I was walking my nine-pound Yorkie just this forenoon around the monolith at the park by the Lakeville Liquor Store, and a velociraptor tried to grab her — the fiend came within inches! This was probably the same velociraptor that you say you wish you would’ve avoided employing as source material when creating the modern hawk, dear God. — I was shocked, as was my dog.”
Monica now joins the fib-fest: “I have two hawk-nests near the club where I work as a pourer of soda, and in twenty-eight years of womanly life, neither of these birds ever tried to grab either of my own Yorkie Terriers. But some sort of dinosaur did just miss her when it scraped at the air with its pathetically diminutive claw. Then it went and plopped down onto the nearest evergreen. The thing didn’t care that I was yelling at it to sit elsewhere. Then it stalked us the rest of the way around the dunes, when we went for a stroll that evening.”
“Sounds like the same hawk,” sez God. “Same behavior, anyway.”
“I think the reason for their naughtiness,” sez Fernando, “is that they’re all so hungry from the drought.”
“I agree,” I say while pacing and gesticulating for emphasis: “Fernando and I probably live around the same area, in the same house, with Monica, Anna, and Jeanette. Most likely, there has been almost no rain for the last few decades. Then, just this morning, a giant hawk perched on our deck — that’s what I heard, anyway. I also heard that we inherited a seven-pound Zwergpinscher, which we keep in a thimble out back near the hose-bibb spigot. This was all in an article that someone read to me from tomorrow’s newspaper.”
“Are you sure it was an article,” asks God, “and not just a headline?”
“Oh, no: you’re right; that was only the headline,” I say.
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