The Underwater Ger B Q Cookoff Photograph by Jim Williams

The Underwater Ger B Q Cookoff

by Jim Williams

Title

The Underwater Ger B Q Cookoff

Artist

Jim Williams

Medium

Photograph - Short Story

Description

FURTHER ADVENTURES OF COMTE RODOMOTADE DEMI-TAUX FAUX, ANCESTOR OF THE RIGHT HONORABLE RANTIN N. RAVEN-FAUX VI, THE MAYOR OF MYASSA, FLORIDA (WHERE YOU'RE PAST IS OUR FUTURE), PART DAUX!

In the early days of his life with the Raven Clan, Rodomotade began currying favor with the clan leader, Lard Brick. They discovered a shared love of bizarre practical jokes, usually resulting in creating great annoyance and outrage in the tricked. On one night their wives had thrown them both out of the tribal compound again because the women had had enough of their middle school boy's locker room behavior after imbibing too much of the firewater that they had "obtained" from Prince Murat's stores. The Comte had soaked and wrapped up his meter long macaroni really tight and was snapping everyone on the behinds with it. The Comte was bent over and the clan leader was rolling around on the dirt floor laughing at everybody leaping and running around when their wives cornered Rodomontade (which wasn't easy in the round compound) and did a duet of the riot act, which appeared to replace The Comte's hysterically contorted expession with a look of true terror. But the wives had forgotten something. Lard Brick was still rolling around howling and had rolled up right behind the women. Rodomontade pushed them over Lard Brick's back and both men convulsed in laughter again.

As they walked around outside the tribal compound, The Comte proposed a hoax on the entire Myassa Tribe: the best kind, a really silly one, one that will make everyone who fell for it feel really stupid. The plan was to make up some sort of unknown dangerous beast and panic the tribe with wild, frightening claims of the horrors which neared. There were already long standing monster stories like the Myassa Kraken, Assie the Creature from the Bubbling Brown Waters of Myassa Crack and the little green men who periodically slipped out of the forest at night and took sleeping Raven clan wives and placed them in bed with men from other clans. The men they were found with confirmed the wives' little green men stories and swore nothing had happened.

Rodomontade remembered that Prince Achille Murat had brought some exotic pets from France which were unknown to the tribe. He had a macaw which Rodomontade immediately rejected because it had learned to scream "RODOMONTADE! VOUS EEDEEOT!!" whenever The Comte came into view. Nor did he have any interest in the saliva covered dog which had saved him from further humiliation as the Prince's spittoon. As with himself, the Prince didn't bathe the dog either. Anyway, Rodomontade was concerned that if he no longer had the dog the Prince would demand Rodomontade's return. Best to let loogie dogs lie. There were also several hundred (and increasing) strange little long legged mice from Achille's trip to Mongolia. They bred like the indigenous bumbum (Myassa Wild Hare). None of the prince's menagery seemed appropriate.

Rodomontade and Lard Brick discussed the characteristics that their fake creature might have: size, height, how many legged or slithering, skin, scales, feathers, sounds, smell, weaponry, appearance, frightfulness, flying, They wanted to make it different from the other clans' spirit animals like the bumbum, the bootay (Myassa Terrible Tiger Gator), the butthoe (Barking Spiders of Myassa), the dingla-beri (Myassa Plumbing Snake), the skunkacabras (Myassa Skunk Sucker), the buttox (Myassa Wide-bottomed Bison) and several others of the unique indigenous fauna. When they couldn't agree on anything, they decided to make it invisible because unseen things were always more frightening.

They began to giggle with drunken delight as they came up with warning signs because they knew that as soon as they were told, the tribe members would begin to see and hear the signs everywhere. And it didn't matter what they were, ordinary things like wind whistling through the pines, rustling underbrush, scratching noises, limbs on trees cracking and falling, just any ol' thing. It would be just like telling someone about symptoms of terrible diseases which they immediately fall ill with.

Added to the above warning signs were hearing rushing sounds in your ears, feeling your heart beat, babies waking in the night, shivers after urinating, unusual sweating, nocturnal emissions and unexplained erections among pubescent boys, shaking bushes, sneezing, bad smelling feces, excessive flatulence in the buttox herd, owls hooting at night, irritable bootays, unexplained senses of apprehension, dread or fear, and confirming any other things the tribe members might worry about.

The next day, when they woke up under a tree outside the tribal compound they had terrible hangover headaches. Neither remembered the night before very well. But great ideas are never totally forgotten. After finding a breakfast of fermented buttox milk from a fermented buttox and some kind of purple stemmed mushrooms they found growing from the buttox herd's turds, the night's plans were completely obliterated from memory. Lard Brick, being more used to these foods, began to hallucinate strange invisible creatures living in invisible bubbles. As each bubble popped he recalled another of the previous night's drunken reveries until the entire hoax was recreated before him. Then he passed out. When he awoke again, The Comte was a few feet away on hands and knees, shaking his head furiously like a wet dog. Lard Brick gave him a dope slap to the back of his head and when The Comte looked up at him he gave Rodomontade a V-8 slap. Rodomontade fell onto his back and held his hands up as if to ward off any more slaps and said "Wow, man, have you ever really looked at your hands?" So they both studied the backs of their hands and then studied the fronts of their hands.

After seemingly several days, they quit looking at their hands. It was lunchtime. Their wives, Ravin' Booty and Flaming Moon, found them and dragged them back into the compound, where they were dumped into the compound's stream to sober up. There were howls of protest!! From the other tribe members: "What are you doing!!" "We have to drink that water!!" "I was washing my food downstream!!" "My kids are swimming in there!!" "The fish are dying!!"

Meanwhile, Lard Brick and Rodomontade were having revelations about how wet the water was.

As they sobered up in the stream they began to recreate the previous night's plans. But they still didn't have the fake monster. Rodomontade had an inspiration. After describing the beast as being huge and dangerous, getting the tribe panicked about the upcoming reign of terror and having everyone on edge, the hoax's denouement would end with a huge anticlimax. And the whole clan would be involved, even the women, because the entire clan all delighted in a good hoax. When the women heard their plan they forgave Lard Brick and The Comte for the previous night's macaroni snapping.

The Ravens began a whispering campaign within the clan. The rest of the tribe saw them whispering and looking very concerned about something. The women remained silent around other clans' women, but they were instrumental in the plot. After the little green men deposited a few Raven wives in other men's beds, they swore the men to silence when they were the most vulnerable to coercion and would promise the women anything they wanted to complete their current activities. They left a few false clues and went back to the Raven compound. They had to stifle their laughter as they gathered and shared the rumors that they had planted. It took less than a day for the rest of the tribe to hear the story and with each retelling the beast became larger and more terrifying. It started slowly but after a few days the tribe members began jumping and hiding at every sound or unexplained movement they encountered. The Ravens affirmed the tribe's fear and seemed to be the most frightened.

After a week of growing apprehension, the Ravens started saying that all the signs indicated that the now apocalyptic creature was getting nearer and would be there the next day. After three more days of putting the tribe on edge, the Ravens gathered in the forest for the coup de gras. They began thrashing around in the bushes, then shaking saplings, then escalated to beating on trees with logs as they approached the tribal compound. The tribe's cries of fear joined the shouts of warning by the Ravens and could be heard even through the dense kudzu forest. At the height of their frenzy the beast, or rather beasts, were loosed from their cages into the bushes around the camp and, due to the racket behind them made a desparate dash toward the assembled tribe, at which time Rodomontade and Lard Brick began shouting that the horror was upon them, which panicked the tribe into flight. But when some tribe members looked back to see the terrible creature they saw nothing but several hundred of Prince Murat's tiny long legged Mongolian mice leaping out of the forest toward them. They shouted for everyone to stop and look. After about five seconds everything became perfectly clear to the tribe. They looked at each other. Then the tribe members began dancing around when the mice began nipping and clawing at ankles in desperation to escape the cacophony behind them. It was the first time they had been out of a cage.

The Ravens tried to run for their lives but they were laughing too hard to stand up. The tribe quickly surrounded them and closed in on the hysterical Raven clan. But instead of the thumping they expected, the chief congratulated Raven clan for a successful practical joke. Then the whole tribe began to laugh and representatives of several other clans came forward and asked the Ravens to teach the entire tribe how to do it another tribe.

Those Mongolian mice thrived in the north Florida woods and grasslands. There were so many of them that every year on the hoax's anniversary the tribe celebrated by holding a competitive round-up and roast. The leaping mice have become an indigenous species over 200 years and the event continues to be an annual celebration in Myassa County, Florida. Schools are closed and children encouraged to look for them like Easter eggs.

In 1866, the original Mongolian mice were received from Mongolia at the Museum of Natural History (Musee d'Histoire Naturelle) in Paris and classified Meriones unguiculatus, loosely translated as "clawed warrior". Today we call them gerbils. The annual round-up competition is called The Gerbil Wrangle and excellence in gerbil wrangling has been a hallmark of the Raven-Faux line ever since Rodomotade. The Mayor continues the tradition by being recognized as the Gerbil Wrangling World Champion and Head Wrangler of the Gerbil Division of the Myassa Colo-Rectal Manufacturing and Gerbil Rental Corporation and also Professor Emeritus of Gerbil Studies at the College of Recreation, Archaeology, Anthropology, Computer and Kinesthesiological Sciences in Myassa (CRAACKS in Myassa). Some approaches have been made to the International Olympic Committee to make it an Olympic sport. Each has been greeted with great amusement. And the roast has transmuted into the Annual Underwater Ger-B-Q Cookoff. ...

(Photo courtesy of Florida Archives)

Post Script: Aside from being a shaggy dog story inside a shaggy dog story to explain the weird photo, which is not so weird to long-time Florida residents, this story includes references showing the "historic roots" of how "modern" Myassa County, Florida came to be what it has come to be.

See the ongoing story in my Short Story gallery:
http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/wacks-museum.html?tab=artworkgalleries&artworkgalleryid=536130