Tales from the Author: The Caterpillar Joke

Once upon a terribly dreary time in a blink-and-you-miss-it stretch of the Earth called Skyview, Kansas, there was a perfectly normal if mournfully forlorn fellow named Randy Allen Wilkes, and his was a broken heart: His beloved wife of ten years, Delores Lucille, had been killed in a twisted, burning wreck with a very drunk driver on her ironic way to work at a local pub called “Mug/Shots,” a truly lamentable occurrence which took place nearly seven years prior to the moment in which I find myself typing these words in and amidst the very wrong tale of one man’s woe in the aftermath of loss.

He’d gone through the precarious self-destructive version of his current (vastly more moderate) drink phase and played a bit with the drugs (though drugs were never much of a thing with the good Randy and therefore such didn’t last long), but nothing could mend up Randy's shattered old heart.

He’d wracked his tormented mind time and again seeking some solace or other in a life that just didn’t much seem in the mood to be helpful in the face of his lonesome tragedy, and when one day he was driving along in his ugly little barf-green Volkswagen Bug, a sudden random idea besieged him out of left-field and he was taken aback with a slight spark of possibility and hope: A pet.

There was no replacing his dear Delores and such a notion was beyond preposterous absurdity no matter which angle you might gander the idea from...but a pet to keep him some valuable company during his time attempting to cope with the sorrow was far from a lousy idea.

Decided on his potentially fruitful course of action, Randy flipped himself a u-turn in the abandonment of hitting up the local cinema where he had considered perhaps diverting his misery-stricken mind with the ten-thousandth, “Fast and Furious” film in a long line of them with the promise of more to come until about three years past Doomsday and about five minutes before I finally lose my patience with Earthian bullshit.

The nearest pet shop in Smokewater County was located in Caribbean City one town over to the west aways, and he proceeded to make the half-hour drive with renewed hope as he blasted a bit of Dio in the form of the time-honored metal classic, “Rainbow in the Dark.”

By the time he arrived at “The Fuzz Bucket” he was in a considerably improved mood as the idea of a pet was growing on him a smidgen more with each passing minute...and with, “Rainbow in the Dark” stuck in his bloody noggin, he was already rolling around the idea of naming whatever his pet turned out to be a suitable something after the legendary Metal-God himself, the late great Holy Diver Ronnie James Dio.

Now, Randy didn’t feel anywhere near together with the idea of a normal every-day pet to take back with him to his lonesome abode; he was in no mood for some crazy-arse thrillseeking Snoopy-Beagle-Motherfucker nor was he even in the slightest bit of a mind to throw down his hard-earned god-money on a dispassionate tabby with a goddam eating disorder who fetishizes animal cruelty most predominantly on man’s best friend (Dog Lives Matter, and that’s a fact), and mice are mice which brings me to his fairly reasonable notion of fuck mice.

So our pal Randy walks into “The Fuzz Bucket” and it is precisely what one would expect from any given small-town pet store: There were unhappy animals, the place smelled funny in a way that bordered on vaguely unpleasant but fair enough because a building full of unhappy animals isn’t really expected to smell like Playboy Bunnies and Pizza Hut unless one has suddenly happened on the most awesome pet store in the galaxy, and there was one pimply-faced bespectacled young dipstick with freckles and tomato-goddam-red hair whose name tag read, “Lowell.”

“Welcome to this pet shop,” Lowell of the Chucky-Do said, and if your loving pal the Author had been standing there he would have likely done something rash like ram a fucking V8 up his arse because the Author and insipid introductory applications do not good bedfellows make, “How can I help you, Sir or Ma’am?”

Randy gave the lad a good glare but refrained from V8-delivery or anything of the like due to the tragic fact that in this day and age it is not surprising to encounter someone who openly identifies as Pringles and gets downright thermal about not being addressed properly because according to some unwritten rule in the stars everyone in the more contemporary era absolutely must be psychic as not being psychic and therefore unable to tell what color of left sock an individual identifies as this week is nearly as primally-inhuman as not having a cellphone.

So rather than DAMRAGE Our Lowell Who Art At This Pet Shop all to Hell for the irritating transgression, Randy proceeded to regale the boy in regards the notion of wanting a pet that doesn’t really stand out, nothing at all like a modern human who can’t read minds and does not possess a means to walk down the street and post stupid shit on their Social Media.

Lowell proceeds to inform our dear chap Randy in a bored-ass monotone that they have a caterpillar that might just do the trick, and it is on this declaration that the aforementioned Randy is leaning toward that DAMRAGE I mentioned.

Seriously, a fucking caterpillar.

“Uhm...so what in a small-time pizzeria on a cliff overlooking a small bordertown in Hell am I supposed to do with a goddam caterpillar?” Randy asked not unreasonably.

“Oh, this ain’t no ordinary caterpillar, Sir or Ma’am,” Lowell explains calmly, “He’s an exceptional conversationalist and he loves his beer!”

Randy is of a mind to grab this silly little prick by the throat and squeeze until pimples start popping, but he instead opts out with the decision to ask, “How much is this caterpillar?”

“Fifty bucks out the door, Sir or Ma’am,” Lowell says, and Randy can feel his blood-pressure elevating ever so slightly; with one glare and no words, Randy reaches into his back pocket and withdraws his wallet, extracting two twenties and two fives.

Lowell walks off and returns about three minutes later with a shoebox in hand, and there are little air-holes poked into the lid. Randy forks over the bucks, takes the shoebox (making certain not to forget the receipt he deeply suspects he’ll be needing, much like the tire iron he’ll be needing to bring with him in the event he has to return so he can make dead-sure that Lowell never again attempts to sell defective pets to anyone.

Randy then makes the drive back to Skyview with his newest very suspect acquisition, pulls into the driveway of his mournfully-empty home, and in he goes with the shoebox, sitting it on the windowsill next to the front door with a mind to go get him some lunch.

En route to the kitchen he stops in his tracks and turns to look back at the shoebox on the windowsill, bathed in the dwindling sunlight of the day as time slowly crept toward early evening.

“Say, Mr. Caterpillar,” he said amiably just to try it on, “I’m your new friend Randy, and I’m naming you Ronnie Cat Diopillar...pretty crafty, eh? Here in a little while I’m gonna get ready to head out to this bar I’ve been frequenting lately...feel like joining me for a few beers, Pal?”

Nothing: Dead goddam silence, and Randy is feeling the midgetized version of what in that seething moment had the very serious potential to evolve into Hulk-Level DAMRAGE.

He stomped off to the kitchen, counting to ten as he made for the fridge and opened ‘er up: Cold spaghetti sandwiches was the inevitable because Delores was the cook, Delores is quite deceased, and Randy the Bachelor needed to finish up that spaghetti before it wound up going the Way of the Dodo.

Once the not-so-goods were prepped he sat at the dining room table busting his mediocre munch, occasionally glaring over at that damned shoebox and drifting away into a particularly pleasing idle reverie in which Lowell was tending his duties at this pet shop with a shoebox wedged in his anus.

Like any self-respecting bachelor he put his dish in the sink when finished, leaving any actual date to be washed in the hands of an absent and unreliable non-existent jury as he made way to get ready for his anticipated night at the bar. On his way from the kitchen he once again stopped and turned to glare at the shoebox.

“Ronnie,” he said, “I’m fixing to go clean up and get ready to head out to, ‘Bubbles & Burps’ where I intend to get God-awful shitfaced and I’m wondering if you wanna join me. Best wings in town and the waitresses have boobs only rivaled in size by the ones drinking up all the booze. You game?”

Still nothing, and this is the gateway to DAMRAGE.

Randy stomps off for the bathroom and brushes his teeth before hitting the shower; it is during this shower that Randy entertains his angry psyche with visions of repeatedly bashing away at Lowell with that tire iron as the young punk dangles from a tree limb by a length of rope, and this merry vision culminates with Lowell of the Borrowed-Time exploding in a rain of candy everywhere, Snickers and Twix abound, Baby.

Fresh from the shower, Randy storms off to his bedroom after applying some smell-good and breaks out his best Gucci suit, decking out with the Dandy Hot-Pink Thrift-Shop-Style Mack-Daddy Pimp-Juice Number and heading back out to the living room with his car keys and the front door calling his name in the heraldry of the Hangover Genesis.

Five feet from the door our boy Randy makes his last stand with Ultimate DAMRAGE burning like Hell in his eyes: “Alright, Ronnie...are you goin’ to the goddam bar with me or not, you crinkle-cut cocksuckin’ no-good pet-shop caterpillar-shit motherfucker? ANSWER!!!”

Ronnie Cat Diopillar: “Dude, Randy...I heard ya the first time, Man: I’m puttin’ on my shoes.”

Ba da ba ba ba.