Undertaking
an Undertaking:
A Love Story, Part II
not by Dave McBee
Ricky called The Biologist, with
whom he'd been boarding a
certain small friend, to ask how that small friend was doing,
why he hadn't been calling or writing, and when he might be ready
to come home.
"Oh, he's ready now!" she assured him. "All his flesh has pretty much rotted away, and he's really stinky!'
Tears welled up in his eyes, and he got all choked up. He was, well, overjoyed.
The now-pungent boarder, you may recall, is the head of a small mammal found last fall along a Washington beach. The Biologist had allowed him the use of a quiet corner of her property as a charnel house, so that the local vermin could do what they do best. So they had done, and now little Boniface was ready for the next stage in his metamorphosis.
Ricky rendezvoused with The Biologist at a pet supply store in Seattle's north end, a place replete with tawdry hand-written signage extolling the virtues of certain dried animal parts: "Giant Sow's Ears - Twice the Pleasure, Twice the Fun - $2.99!" There were other animal segments available upon which he really didn't want to focus too fully. Expressing his urgent desire to get the hell out of there, we headed to her place.
Boniface really did look better
than the last time Ricky saw him, and the smell really was not
much worse than he remembered. The Biologist loaned him a toothbrush
(the GUEST toothbrush...) and pointed out the garden hose. It
really didn't take long to remove the few remaining gobbets of
tissue clinging to the skull, and to rinse it thoroughly enough
that he could bag it for a long bus ride home.
Next stop for Boniface will be summer vacation in a hot sunny place: he needs to dry out and bleach in the sun, perhaps for the whole summer, before he'll be ready for company. The Biologist told him he'd have to build a sturdy metal cage that can be wired down on a roof somewhere so that large scavenging birds won't fly off with him, wearing the skull like a bonnet.
Regarding the large hound mentioned earlier, he knew that The Biologist had a 135 pound dog named Horatio entombed in her freezer that she'd meant to do something with. That sentence, out of context, is truly scary, or at least quite sick. Actually, Ricky knew that The Biologist wanted to prep the skeleton for display. He had planned to offer to help in whatever way he could. He had imagined donning full-length plastic butcher's aprons, gauntlets, goggles, and the whole nine yards. He had imagined large cauldrons of foul-smelling corrosive liquids into which we'd immerse Horatio. He had imagined retching a lot.
When he meekly offered to help with Horatio, The Biologist, probably unconsciously, wrinkled up her nose and considered the problem for a while before saying, "Y'know, there are quicker ways of accomplishing this that would leave the bones prettier, but...let's just bury it for a year or so." This sounded much easier on the olfactory, and he quickly agreed to do the deed.
He walked with The Biologist out to her garage, whereupon she started digging through her meat locker, which was, probably not coincidentally, about the size of two coffins stacked one atop the other. She's digging through the freezer, picking up and shaking or squeezing black plastic Hefty bags to determine their contents: "Goose... Goose... I don't know... here, hold this."
"Goose... Goose... I don't know... " She opens the bag: "Ooooh, look! Pigeons!" he peers in, and, sure enough, the bag is filled with little frozen pigeon corpses. So, he's standing there holding various frozen dead things as The Biologist digs down toward the stiff hound, and he's thinking, "I am NEVER having dinner here."
She eventually finds the dog, and he totes it into the back yard while The Biologist picks out an appropriate spot for its interment over in a far corner. Before he digs the first shovel full, he turns, considering all he's seen here today, and asks, "Do you have anyone or anything else buried over here?"
She stops, and considers WAY TOO LONG before answering, "No, I'm sure I don't."
So he starts digging, and a couple feet down he hits the corner of a large plastic garbage bag. He points and accuses, but The Biologist innocently claims, "Not one of mine!"
So he just sort of shifted the hole over a bit and finished the job.
When Ricky went to see his mom on Mothers Day, he asked her if he could put a stinky dead thing on her roof for the summer. They settled on the garage. She must really love him.
Author Dave McBee disappeared last month, too. The entire Get Lost Magazine staff
is certain aliens abducted him. The probing part is still a matter
of speculation.
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