Dai Uy Dan,

Oh what an excellent cuisine experience I have enjoyed this weekend past. And much of it, nay virtually all of it, thanks to Your Eminence. Your feloin recipe is now enshrined and engraved in a heavy copper plate bolted permanently into the brick arch over the back porch of La Hacienda de la Montana Wolverton. In short, the episode involves thus: I noticed last week that the hacienda garbage bags set out near the south compound gate, while awaiting the ministration of the municipal sanitary engineers, have been visited lately by two scrofulous gray landfill panthers. The untidy mess of small bird bones, bits of rotting ungulate flesh, and heads of grass carp and conger eels left behind by Tuffy and Muffy began to smell in the early spring air. Soon, I reasoned, the detritus would attract blowflies, maggots, tort attorneys, and other coprophagic pests. Thus, the slinky gray T&M must go. Added bonus: an opportunity to test our own Felinicide Mentor�s feloin recipe. Another bag of offal -- this, I believe, including bison (or were they muskox?) lights and sweetbreads -- was prepared and then placed just outside the triple concertina and line of fougasse mines near the scene of the previous crime. A short pistol shot away I lay slung up and prone in concealed wait, the scoped 700 ready and loaded with .223 SXs. (Sorry about that Mortie.) Just as I was inserting tape number three of �Don Giovanni� in the old Walkman, the reeking offal received its visitor. What followed next was: (a) a perfect, unwavering hold on the left ear hole, (b) a trigger break like the snap of a strand of uncooked vermicelli, and (c) the instant appearance of a thin red mist in place of what used to be the head of the baited beast. I waited moments for the second victim to enter the kill zone and receive its final sacraments, but.. no. It was alone. Was it Tuffy or Muffy?

Well, neither, it turns out. And even better. It was small and gray and mammalian all right. But the furbearing cockroach which now sported a .22 caliber earhole was some sort of terrier. All cute and fuzzy and cuddly, its little button eyes, now still and cloudy, stared in final disbelief at the small puddle of blood coagulating in the dirt by its nose. It had: no collar, no tags, fleas, and an open sore on its back above its cute little stubby little tail. It was about the size of Tuffy or Muffy, though, and 90 seconds work with the shaving-sharp Gerber prepared it for the hibachi which I could see beckoning us from the hacienda�s back porch.

An hour and three Coors later, transported by Bubbles the terrier and your recipe to gustatory ecstasy, I let out a magnificent belch and one belt notch. If your delectable formula works so well on Bubbles the terrier I can barely contain myself, imagining how inutterably scrumptious will be Tuffy and Muffy when the Remington barks again. Tango mike, dai uy, tango victor mike.

Clifton C

Your Eminence,

But I thought we here at AR were way, way past that neolithic shoot-n-shovel thing. Word from On High is that ya gotta eat whatcha snuff. (And yes, Mortie, that goes even for lawyers, though once you clean 'em and shovel out the impacted feces and the two or three cubic feet of coagulated semen and the bundle of tapeworms and the double armful of old condoms and gerbil skeletons there isn't much to 'em). 35 pounds of fido-trespassing-in-officer's-country translates to eight, maybe ten, pounds of droolworthy kebabs sizzling over the old Weber while the sunset sparkles off the dew gathering on what's left of the dwindling sixpack of Golden's finest over there on the railing. To say nothing of the mirth experienced when the neighbors come calling to ask if we've seen Baxter or Bumfy or whatever they've named their four legged scrotumlicker -- and there he is, collar and tags and all, stretched out on the garage door a half inch thick including salt. And when the Wolverton County sheriff's deputy waddles by a day or so later ya just say, "Sorry, Officer Fife... okay, Barney then, this here cattle killer was a-chasin' my steers and he musta got runned over by the harvester." Even if you don't own any steers or harvesters.

Waste not, want not, as my cellie always said, and he would've known. Now back to work if you don't mind.

Clifton C.

_________________________

Bark like a dog or I'll stop.

Mr. Clowers. Li think you okay. Rearry stop if no bark rike dog? HA HA! You make fine joke GI! Li saw movie rike that one time, ver funny! It high schoor going out movie. Gym coach howr rike worf!

So you no waste what kirr. That good jos! Li be your friend.

Chao, ba. Yes I really will stop if she won't bark like a dog. But your reference to a cinematic work is a bit puzzling. What movie would that be, Mme. Li? Maybe you don't remember quite correctly, mm? Maybe -- and this is considerably more likely -- you are dinky-dau. Same same water buffalo. Time go see bac-si again, increase meds, Yes?

Yours in perpetuity,

CC
______________

Leave the seat up, dammit.

Mr. Clowers don't be dinqe dit! Why you say Bac si? Bac si numba 10! No rive my rever. Sometime bac si need Li, not other way! Movie carred Porky's. Brond srut gym teacher howr rike worf! Beau coup HA HA! Horrywood wird and sirry sometime, stirr make Li smire. You see Porky's? Why reave seat up?



Li go now.

The culinary genius of our threadleader, Danielus il Magnifico, grows more evident with each passing day. I speak, young troopers, of Dan's exalted Feloin Recipe, described in his own words in exquisite salivary detail much earlier in this long and elaborate electronic tete-a-tete. We all know the beneficience of the recipe on the Other White Meat and I, and I trust I am not alone here, can personally attest to its salutatory effects on the stringy and sinew-laden flesh of Canis lickscrotumus (at least those furbearing cockroaches about the size of a woodchuck and all covered with gray, curly hair and named "Boodles" and missing part of its head due to a .223 SX passing through it). But I am here to tell you that the Feloin Recipe transmutes the lowly seagull -- yes! a seagull! a feathered garbage recycler! the very creature for whom the word "scavenger" was coined! -- into five-star coq au vin. Wolverton Mountain is far, far, inland, well away from the haunts of the common Atlantic blackback but every once in a while Jonathan Livingston comes to the crow- and fishercat-bait down in the south ravine, and this one did and it went to its Maker with a Stinger-sized eye socket. Just one tip: you know where the recipe says to marinate overnight? And you know you don't have to do that with Canis lickscrotumus? Well, you do with breast of Jonathan and just to make sure, leave it over the weekend. Then fire up the Weber, break out the coolaid, and tuck in. Yum.
____________________

Bark like a dog or I'll stop.

Experience suggests, that as a practical matter, cat, rat, and dog all taste fine when wrapped on a stick, and cooked on a hardwood fire with a little salt, pepper, and tabasco.

For those extra special events,,,Add some strips of slab bacon to Ned's suggestion,,,,,Clay