December 16, 2018
BOSCO
So anyway. After the last Poodleshoot and everyone had been released on bail for various crimes of violence, discharging firearms within city limits, property destruction, incite to riot, rioting generally, unprovoked poodle-slaying (which in the County of Marin is a crime, dastardly though the ordinance may be), bloodletting, raucous music, and multiple counts of jaywalking, the Island and Marin appear to have settled down for the moment.
Last issue was postponed due to the Editor being detained after returning on a Boston whaler that turned out to have been stolen. It did not help that the Editor was captured wearing a George Washington costume, complete with wig and his Marine Corps ceremonial saber. The police chief for Central Marin PD, being a vet, returned the sabre, but the wig and tri-corn hat were kept as evidence, which caused the Editor much grief.
Evidence of what, asked the Editor indignantly.
Violation of Marin Behavioral and Ethical Codes, said the CMP Chief. And the testaments of Certain Self Important Citizens.
I cannot tell you, said the Chief. Even though we all know who they are for they are always trouble. Would you like a slug of Scotch as partial amelioration? I find it does me great wonders.
What is it, asked the Editor.
Glenfiddich. 18 years of age.
Don't mind if I do, said the Editor. This seems dreadfully informal.
That is the way we resolve things in Marin among the more civilized. We have a drink and talk things out. Newbies resort to lawsuits and bothering the front desk with telephone calls about bad service.
On the Island, Padraic and Dawn had cleaned up the BBQ pit area with the help of Suzie and returned to the Old Same Place Bar just as the forecasted deluge hit the area with a monsoon. Soon enough the regulars filled up the place while outside it was all sturm und drang and lashings of rain on the pavements. Eugene showed up quite disconsolate by way of first surprising the Hessian poodles in their kennels and then losing the booty on the return back over the water and so he plotted bitter poodle revenge. Next year in Geronimo, he vowed.
The Official scorekeepers and Boundary Wardens for the annual Poodleshoot sat at a table with pencils and maps, trying to puzzle out next year's event. Among them were Latreena Brown, Malice Green, Ralph Blunt, Iglesia Machado, and Pandora Thighripple from the Island Hostesses organization (501(3)(c)) along with delegates from the NRA, which always promotes hunting activities of any type and even has a national budget for Poodleshoot promotion.
At another table sat a group which had been formed during the "Save Bosco" campaign. Bosco is and was a toy pig who has lived inoffensively for many years in the West End until some officious bureaucrat found an ordinance that stated "livestock are to be kept at least 250 feet from any human habitable dwelling."
Now Bosco was wont to snarfle in the postage stamp yard allowed him, a space of no more than thirty by thirty in dimensions, so clearly Bosco was in violation, quite without his awareness, of the ordinance that had been passed in 1855 and so he must perforce go.
the biggest brough-haha on the Island since 1832
Well, Bosco as a miniature pig never destined to amount to more than 20 pounds in weight, at the max, was much beloved of the neighborhood which sent letters to officials, pestered the Island Sun newspaper, and threatened the bureaucrat with sterilization until the ordinance was revised to allow for livestock weighing in at 15 pounds and below to be granted relief from exile, which also heartened any number of chicken coop owners on the Island. It was the biggest brough-haha on the Island since 1832 when a number of things changed as a consequence of the Mexican-American war. It was bigger than even the famous Skippy peanut butter debate, but that is another story.
So much is well and good and we are not making any of this up for it is as true as Moses and the Red Sea. There is even a formal commemorative bench located at the site where Skippy invented peanut butter or at least had its first factory, but all that is history even though the bench is still there on Webster Street.
Pigs are smarter than poodles
Returning to the present and the Old Same Place Bar, the Committee to Save Bosco was meeting to consolidate their position. This always happens and you know it. The idea was to replace every onerous poodle on the Island with a free toy pig. Pigs are smarter than poodles for one thing, and they can be awful cute with their noses. Also it can be impossible to barber a pig in any sort of atrocious insult to aesthetics as often happens with poodles, making them resemble anal dingle-balls. With all the poodles replaced with adorable, intelligent piglets, the entire problem of the Poodleshoot's wanton destruction and loss of life and limb could be shifted appropriately to Marin as a site, where it seems poodle culture abounds in all its self-involved detestation.
And with common agreement the committee agreed upon action and so raised their glasses, invoking their solemn Bosco mantra, "Why should a cat, a rat, a dog have life and my little pig have none? Never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never!"
The sound of the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary and wended its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railbeds that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over White's Hill and Fairfax, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with faint gray shapes along the ridgetops through the drifts of fog to an unknown destination.
