Duck Hunting!

[el Ducko]

It's the ones with the Σ on them that puzzle me. ...but after I lick 'em a few times, they all look the same.

[Chuckwagon]

Rabid Duck!

[ssorllih]

Poultry can't get rabies! he may be mad but he ain't rabid!

[Chuckwagon]

Hmmmmmm.... Thanks Ross.
Danged GOOFY Duck!

[el Ducko]

FURTHER ADVENTURES of our hero, EL DUCKO, and the mighty (strange) CHUCKWAGON

I`ve only told you the first part of the story, Gentle Reader. (As for you OTHER types of readers... well... get in line.) Did you ever wonder why ol` Chuckwagon is so mean and ornery? ...ornery, anyway. Lawyers tell me you can persecuted for one and prosecuted for the other, but we weren`t real sure which, so we decided... But again, I get ahead of myself again.

Well, it wuz back in the day when the chicken fried steak was first coming into vogue. They were so popular for a while that the Oil and Gas Journal, a respected industry rag, published an annual "Where Can You Find the Best Chicken Fried Steak in the Oil Patch?" issue, and it always sold out. All of a sudden, cowpokes across the west were up to our eyeballs in poachers and rustlers. The poachers were after the Chicken part, and the rustlers were after the Steak part, and as for the Fried part, everybody and their duck was after THAT part. Every little town in the southwest, it seems, was founded by a Dairy Queen franchisee, and in many a town, that`s still the only place you can get anything to eat or any place to cool off.

We took to hiring marksmen to fend `em off. Little did we know that the same chicken fried steaks offered up by our ol` pal Chuckwagon, were some of the greasiest, oily-est chicken fried steaks in the oil patch. In fact, we suspect that he actually was responsible for it being called the "oil patch," rather than "that nice lower forty with the petroleum wells on it" that the ranchers in them thar parts were beginning to get mighty fond of.

His recipe consisted of dredging critter parts in flour, then tossing them into a deep fat fryer, then turning it on and... Well, let`s just say that he never had to throw out the used grease like DQ and Mickey-D and the King of Burgers and Little Carl and Dave`s little red-headed daughter do. Nossiree bobtail. He judged the grease by its color and, when it started to go greenish at the end of the month, stepped up production so as to achieve faster turnover. ...and turn over it did, especially in the cowhands` stomachs. ...got to where ya didn`t need to hoot-n-holler at the cattle to drive `em this way or that. Nope. The Audible Gastro-Intestinal Engines among us (side note: this is suspected by some entomologists to be the origin of the term "Aggie," although this is disputed by nearly every dang one of `em. ...Aggies, that is. What the heck do people who study insects know about the origin of words, anyways? ("Inquiring etymologists` minds want to know.")

And so, faster than you can sneak an entymology joke into this here scienterriffic paper, we hired marksmen. ...not just ANY marksmen, but the best Marxists we could find. Besides the obvious guys (Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo), we even had Karl hissef on retainer fer awhile. (He travelled with us for a few nights, but didn`t like the Linen.)

So, night after night on the long cattle drives, we sat out under the stars, sipped our Arbuckle`s, munched on well-done crispy chicken fried steak, felt our arteries narrow, and pined for the home that y`all and we-all had all so fleetingly known.

...and it was okay until Chuckwagon, once known as the High Plains Rudderless Drifter, came to learn to play the piano. (...which neatly ties into the previous story about the gunpowder and the piano, right? Well, okay, NOT right. ...but I`m tryin`.) Most people don`t realize that Chuckwagon is a top notch piano player in real life (or, in his case surreal, but read on), but few realize how he came to perfect that particular craft. Was it that, after a particularly heavy meal, nobody would (or could) speak to him? ...or were they so burdened that they were unable to...? ...or perhaps that the singing couldn`t be heard over the loud rumblings and belches and other bodily noises?

Unbeknownst to us (Jeez, I love that word! ...actually got 57 points with it, playing board game SCRABBLE), Chuckwagon had been taking a correspondence course in concert piano at the University of Northern South Texas, and had the gold (colored) embossed-looking photocopied certificate to prove it. He`d sit there under the stars, playing and listening to the coyotes howling ("singing along," he called it), while we all slinked off into the shadows to try to get away from it and grab some shuteye.

So, me an` Whitey and Blackie and that guy with the spray-on tan who hangs out in the House of Representatives and blocks everything decided to solve the problem by stealing the whole shebang, certificate, piano, stool, sheet music, and all. We`d ride on up ahead, plant it where it might easily be spotted (perhaps on Recycle day), count it as a political contribution so it couldn`t be traced, and wait. ...and sure enough, along came ol` CW, listening to one of those transistor pod thangs that plays the same fifty-bazillion songs that all sound alike, over and over... or maybe, he was texting while driving the wagon, which is a big no-no in these here parts. ...yours too, I hope.

He was so preoccupied with how to abbreviate the words so that, like teenagers themselves, they were unintelligible, that he rode right by us. I felt like yelling something off-color, like "Don`t tweet on the seat!" which some woman had yelled at him once when he was fooling with that dang phone and accidentally went into the wrong restroom. ...wouldn`t have mattered, though. He was oblivious. ...drove right into the gully where we had stashed the piano crate, he did. ...looked like an old Laurel and Hardy skit, only, instead of the piano dropping onto him, he dropped onto it.

...back in a few moments, folks, after these brief (yeah, right) messages from our sponsor. Uh... who was that again?

[Disembodied voice with Polish accent]"... Brought to you by Double-You-Dee brand, fine meats that can`t be beat because you make `em yourself! Ja, Boys and Girls, you can grow up to be big and strong and overhang your belt, just like the old cowpokes of the Old West. You, Sir- - have you had salami or charcuterie today?"

[Dusty-looking wrangler] "Gawrsch! Who... me?"

[That voice again] "Now, back to our action-packed episode again, folks, after this brief..."

[group, shouting ] "AHHHHWWW-SHADDUP!"

[screen goes blank]

[Chuckwagon]

El DuckO Gets A Loan!

A duck goes into a bank, and hops up on the desk of the loan officer. ''Hi,'' he quacks.''What's your name?''
The loan officer says, ''My name is John Paddywack. May I help you?''
''Yes, Mister Paddywack'', says the duck. ''I'd like to borrow some money.''
The loan officer finds the duck a little odd, but gets out a form. ''Okay,what's your name?''
The duck replies, ''Kermit Jagger.''
''Really?'' says the loan officer. ''Any relation to Mick Jagger?''
''Yeah, he's my dad'', replies the duck.
''Hmmm, you don't say!'' says the loan officer. ''Do you have any collateral?''
The duck hands over a pink ceramic elephant and asks, ''Will this do?''
The loan officer says, ''Um, I'm not sure. Let me go check with the bank manager.''
''Oh, tell him I said hi,'' adds the duck. ''He knows me.''
The loan officer goes back to the manager and says, ''Excuse me, sir, but there's a duck out there named Kermit Jagger who wants to borrow some money. All he has for collateral is this pink elephant thing; I'm not even sure what it is.''
The manager says: ''It's a knick-knack, Paddywack, give the duck a loan; his old man's a Rolling Stone.''

[Chuckwagon]

The Duck And The Doc

It was not Henry Ford who invented the dipstick, as reported to every 3rd grade student in America. No, no, no, indeed! An` only I, Smoky Wheelrut Wagontrack, History Intransigent Sui-Generis Extraordinaire, will soon put an end to this preposterous, pagan poppycock... baseless, infuriating balderdash... and erroneous whimsical nonsense!

You see, the very first "dipstick" was actually a lanky, rope-twirlin', skinny, duck of a dude named El DuckO. The meadow-muffin kickin' cowboy wannabe duck was a dopey, driftin' drake who threw a long loop, practicing on the neighbor's cows every afternoon. That is, until he once had a great scare. Yes, one afternoon, the crazed duck spotted a bull having a horrid face - much like that of Maybelline - the ol` bag he had taken to the prom on a blind date a hundred years before. Upon seeing that bull having Maybelline`s face, the poor duck immediately went into duck-shock, turning quite pale from his ringed-neck upward. Yes, yes, yes... seeing Maybelline's face on the bellowing bovine was just simply too much for El DuckO to fathom, as he slipped into a period of great sorrow and mourning, having immense pity for the poor creature. Dragged back to the ranch by his faithful horse "Duck Plug", all El DuckO could possibly utter was, "Oh, that poor, poor, bull - cursed with Maybelline`s monstrous mug", as hour-by-hour, El DuckO`s own facial features became more whitened and pale. Yes, the duck eventually turned pure white from the neck upward!

I was getting worried about the cardcheatin' curmudgeon, so I took him to that ol' sourdough, Doc "Half-Horse" Henry Hayburner, our local veterinarian and horse farrier - a man rather famous for curing crazed cowboys and wild animals. By now, El DuckO was desparate as he looked in the mirror. Sure enough, he had turned pure white from the neck on up. Ol' Doc Hayburner, upon examining the colorless duck-cowpoke wannabe in his truly morose condition, squinted through his wire-rimmed spectacles, drew his hand down his scruffy, white beard and proceeded to mix up two pints of the most unimaginatively foul and horrid lookin' and stinky smellin` concoction ever conceived or conjured up by any contemptuous quack.

"Drink this straight down Duk!", ordered the Doctor. With that, our ol' quacked-up pal poured the foul (fowl) liquid down his gullet without taking a breath! Then El DuckO belched, spit, cursed, and started jumping up and down.
"Good grief, Doc!" El DuckO exclaimed, "That tastes like it's been run through the
south end of a northbound bull! It tastes just like bull crap!
The veterinarian squinted through his glasses looking at El DuckO and said,"It was, you goofy duck! You were a quart low!"

[el Ducko]

How EL DUCKO and CHUCKWAGON Actually met
"So," you ask, "how did you get the handle "El Ducko," huh? Well, Kiddies, it goes like this. ...and along the way, this here`s also how I came to meet that wild-n-wooly character named Chuckwagon. We`ve had many an adventure since then, and it`s been mostly feudin` an` fussin` an` fightin` (until I used up my supply of apostrophes and had to quit). That`s how rough it`s been. But that`s how you make the best friends- - facing adversity together. ...also, university, diversity, varsity, obscurity...

Well, Kids, a long time ago, way back in the woods, as all good stories start, I was a young fledgling, just out of flight school. In those days, that meant being kicked out of the nest, and in a sense, that still holds today. But anyway, I was assigned to the 78666th Tactical Gleaning In Formation group, and the 78666th TGIF was known as the "Seventy Eight Devils" for reasons known only to the numerologists. (It`s the local zip code, for gosh sakes.) We all had nine-to-five "day jobs"- - mine was making sure that the little paper salt packets that you get in fast food restaurants have too much salt in `em and the little paper pepper packets don`t have enough pepper. The responsibility was high, but exciting it wasn`t. Far better it was on Friday afternoons. Typically we would report in, have a few belts ("belt ourselves in" as we called it), take off, and fly over to the coast to work over the rice fields for the weekend.

In those days, you only needed to know a few calls in order to be an effective duck communicator. There was the feeding call, the mating call, and of course the "chortle," which is appropriate for conversation or laughter. ...as is the case when you are flying in formation and someone ahead happens to "pass gas" and knock a couple of followers out of formation. Just as human fighter pilots have their call sign ("nickname" to you and me) painted just below the cockpit canopy on their assigned aircraft, so each of us earned a call sign. ...and because I once mis-guided us into a field of pinto beans, I picked up the call sign "El Ducko," I guess because I liked `em and they didn`t. Anyway, my call sign became Señor El Ducko, or el Ducko for short. (Yeah, I was short-tempered in those days. ...but don`t get me started.)

On the particular day in question, it was a rough flight home, if you know what I mean, and I was subsequently demoted to the tail end of the formation. I was a better navigator than most, not that it mattered, but for the near term, señor, all seniority was lost.

Days, maybe months, we had been on routine patrol and were returning to base, stuffed to the craw with Texmati rice. We approached our home airspace, Canyon Lake AFB (which stands for Avian Flock of Birds, I guess. ...never bothered to ask.) Just as we were sluggishly forming up over Comal County International (a dirt strip until recently), a "Blue Norther" cold front came in from the northwest, blotting out visibility in all directions, including that most important of directions, "down."

We were tumbled, we were buffeted, we sung Jimmy Buffet songs as loud as we could to keep track of each other. We even contacted a Chinese buffet briefly, one which offered fried rice. Sadly, not only was our "To Go" order misinterpreted, but they didn`t have a fly-through window so we couldn`t pick it up. ...only a fortune cookie, which said "Have nice day, elsewhere." Had it not been for the effects of the heavy load and a few bean burritos for lunch, we would have lost squadron-ly integrity completely.

As any good student of avian weather science knows instinctively, behind the cloud front of a "Blue Norther" comes a patch of higher than normal high pressure which results in clear weather and high winds. High pressure systems circulate clockwise in the northern hemisphere, but we all had given up clocks and watches when the digital revolution came and went, was supplanted by the cell phone revolution, which was in turn supplanted by Lady GaGa or Janet Jackson or somebody like that, and we all had wardrobe malfunctions resulting in- - you guessed it- - nobody having a watch to tell us which way clockwise was.

And you guessed it again- - we guessed wrong, and soon found ourselves far out over the Edwards Plateau, headed west at a frightening clip, being borne ever higher by the wind. We were scared mightily, especially since anything over ten thousand feet is considered dangerous without supplemental oxygen and impairs your judgment worse than mao tai rice wine at a Chinese banquet. The country looked rougher and rougher, and then, there on the horizon, there were jagged mountains ahead.

Our leader, Fraser, was from the old line of original German settlers near New Braunfels. Owing to his thick accent, we called him the Kaiser. He flew over next to me, pointed at a dust trail below, then waved "bye-bye.". "Huh?" I yelled in the rarefied air. I wasn`t going down there into that dusty, windy hell-hole for nuttin`.

"Ducko, you and Quacko and Whacko and Yacko go down and check it out. You first, Ducko, in case there`s any shooting."

"Yes, Sire," the other three said smartly. I cringed. Needless to say, this favoritism steamed me. There had been a fair amount of nest-hopping going on over the years, and I`m not one to point feathers at anyone, but those three other ducks looked awfully like the Kaiser when the sun hit them "just so." But I`m nothing if not loyal to a fault. ...which is why it`s usually my fault. I get blamed for a lot around here. But that`s another story.

Radio protocols, as anyone who has ever been in the military knows, are very straightforward. There are four permissible things to say when you receive a message. They are "roger" (acknowledged), "wilco" (will comply), "over" (back to you), and "out" (end of transmission). Good protocol dictates that you only say one, and only one is necessary for all transmissions... except for young hot-shots, who manage to reply "Roger, wilco, over and out" at every opportunity. You can do pushups for the rest of your life, doing that.

So I acknowledged with a "wilco," and the Kaiser honked the signal to head downward. I did a wing-over and led our little group down to check out the dust trail. It was coming from a horse-drawn wagon headed up one of the valleys toward some sort of encampment. I swooped in low so I could eye the disreputable-looking guy driving, pulled up so hard that it made my head spin, and nearly spun in while landing on the trail just up ahead. Fragments of poetry swirled `bout my head, as they had ever since one of the yearlings dropped a fragmentary grenade in the hanger and we all had to- - what else? - - duck-and cover.

• "A little old driver,
  "So ugly and thick,
  "That I knew in a moment
  "It sure weren`t Saint Nick.
  "He had a big nose and a trunk like a flagon.
  "I figured it out- -
  "`Twas that old guy, Chuckwagon."

He pulled to a halt. "...you the one lookin` fer work?" he called out.

As matter of fact, I was, only it was back home. Being Salt Czar and Pepper Pariah had lost its charm long ago. I started to reply, but he beat me to it. "Know anything about cow punchin`?"

Well, I`d seen some of those old Gene Autry westerns about guys who rode around on horses, sang occasionally, carried cap pistols, wore funny-looking hats and boots with spurs... every Saturday morning, seems like, some kid would have a birthday party and we`d all get dumped downtown for the Saturday afternoon matinee "...and no love stuff," it was advertised. ...only we were too young to be able to read, so it didn`t make an impression, one way or the other. ...about like the plots, seems like. There`s this one rock in northern Arizona that they chased people around endlessly, on horseback...

I nodded, and was just about ready to reply when he asked, "Whut are ya goodest at?" stared hard, and saw my call sign. "...el Ducko?" he added. The guys in the bushes, Quacko, Whacko and Yacko, giggled a bit, then went on ahead to scout the encampment, while I tried to get a word in edgewise.

Then I realized that there was a better way. Do you remember the words to some of those old cowboy songs? I did.

• "I`m an ol` cow hand," I started in,
  . . . from the Ree - Oh Grand,
  . . . an` mah legs ain`t bowed..

I couldn`t remember the next line, seems like something about a sun tan, but fortunately he interrupted. "Cain`t sing worth a doggone, neither, but thet`s okay."

I pressed on, through the refrain,

• "I`m a cowpoke who never poked a cow,
  . . .never roped a steer `cause I don`t know how,
  . . .and I shore ain`t fixin` ta start in now....
  . . .Yippee-Aiyee-Oh-Ky-Yay..."

"Okay," he says. "You`ll do, in a pinch. Got any partners what want ta hire on too?"

"...be rat back," I said, noticing that, when I`m around someone what tawks funny, Ah kinda pick up thuh lingo. I lifted off, signaled to my comrades, and we headed aloft.

...and I say "comrades" quietly because it wasn`t long ago that people like us, who live a communal life like ducks do, were labeled communists. No amount of explaining that, if we`d had the sense to call our dwellings kibbutzim like the Israelis did, we could have gotten away with it, and probably been provided weapons with which to shoot back at the duck hunters. ...so, yeah, I was looking for a job. I wanted out of there.

But before I could climb high enough to report what was going on below to the Kaiser, one of the guys (Quacko or Whacko or Yacko- - they all look alike to me) pulled alongside. "Hey! Ducko! They`re eatin` sausages down there!"

Sure enough, the old geezer on the wagon had pulled into camp, there were all sorts of folks milling around, and they seemed to have a common interest in sausages, preserved meats, and even baking, too. My mouth watered. If I could learn how to do that, too...

"C`mon. Let`s drop in and refuel," somebody yelled from above, and the whole flock, or flight, or whatever it was, dove on `em, pulling up at the last second, wings whistling in that way that ducks sound like when cautiously checking out a landing spot. You know- - gentle, yet wary, ready to dump flaps and throw on the power at a moment`s notice. Maybe it`s instinct, or maybe experience from being shot at a few times too many, and then there was that time when I jumped off the barn, into a hedge, when I was a kid and didn`t quite pull up in time.

"...sounds like a trap, Kid. I`m too old for this," Kaiser Fraser sputtered, and turned for home. That was the last time that I saw him. ...kinda sad. He and his baker friend, Stude, weren`t long for this world, as it turned out, but I didn`t know then what I know now.

Down below, several ducks were cozying up to the crowd around the smoker.

• "We got kabanosy, and Landjaeger too.
  "When we`re ridin`, it`s great to have something to chew."

"...definitely a trap," I thought to myself, as my compadres were drawn ever closer. "Nobody does rhymes THAT cheesy." It looked like they had several sorts of sausages that they were working on. There were casings of various sizes, and various cuts of various kinds of meat hanging about, preserved meats of what were probably traditional styles and traditions from all over the world. Indeed, as I listened, I could pick out various accents. Over to the side, there was a group that sounded like it was speaking Polish. ...and drinking shots of some sort of clear liquid, too.

And suddenly, I was thirsty. Someone handed me a cup, and someone else poured a nasty-looking black liquid into it. I looked up, and Chuckwagon grinned. "Arbuckle`s," he said. "...been on the fire for three days, now. ...ought ta be gittin` purt` near tasty."

The rest blurs, which probably good because it reads like the winner in a bad writing contest. "It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot was fired." Somebody stepped in the campfire embers, burned their foot, and went howling off into the bushes. Someone else was in the bushes, responding to nature`s call, and the two collided in the dark with unfortunate results. As they say each year in the "dumb sit-com" promos, hilarity ensued. Certainly chaos ensued. ...then the lawyers sued... Well, you know.

Next morning, those of us who were left cleaned up the smoking ruins, loaded everything up on pack animals, and set to work driving cattle. Now, not being a drover, you probably don`t understand much of the cattle drive business. (...or, as it`s pronounced out west, "bidniss.") (...`scuse me: "Out West.")(That`s better.)

First of all, cattle don`t have steering wheels, which may come as something of a shock to the sixteen-to-eighteen year old set. Second, there`s no game controller or console on the pesky critters, so you can`t reboot if you die. ...which is entirely possible if one of the dang things takes a mind to trampling you into the all too prevalent dust. Thirdly, they don`t listen to reason real well, so unintelligible whistles and shouts work just as well as anything to intimidate them into going in the general direction that you want them to go, whereas a cogent argument as to the necessity of meeting a train schedule doesn`t. (Come to think of it, maybe they actually ARE the sixteen-to-eighteen year old set.)

Dang it, it`s hard, long, hot, dusty work, and what I had hoped to be a cozy breakfast with new-found friends turned out to be a fast-break frenzy. But we ate as best we could, got those who had wandered off during the night (both cattle and cowboys) back with the herd, and started `em moving in the general direction of north. Our destination- - Abilene, wherever the hell that was. ...or maybe Cheyenne, or Ogden. ...or maybe- - well, Chuckwagon wasn`t real clear about that. Maybe we were to be the Great Plains version of the Flying Dutchman, destined never to find port. All I know is, don`t never try ta sing opera while in the saddle. It spooks the cattle sumpthin fierce.

And that`s the way it was, Kids... movin` west.

[Chuckwagon]

Uhhhh... would you repeat that please?


Draw Duk!

Reboot? What is this "reboot". Reboot is what I'm going to do to you if you're still on the street after sundown! Dang rabid duck!

[ssorllih]

reboot is what you do when the cows get outside the fence after you have gone to bed for the night!
Repants and reshirt too.

[Chuckwagon]

Awww shucks pard, we let 'em out at night to "mow the lawn". We usually scrape our boots on Saturday afternoons whether they need it or not. If there is an annoying "build-up" where the stirrup meets the heel, I usually just tip-toe through the cactus fer' a minute! However, I DO "reboot" fer' church!

[el Ducko]

Although there have been rumors of feudin', fussin', and fightin' occasionally, ol' Chuckwagon and I are the best of friends.
Put 'er there, Pal- - let's shake on it!

[BUZZZZZZZ!] Yeow!

[Chuckwagon]

The Duk has been struck by Texas lightning!

ZAP! OUCH! ZAP!

[el Ducko]

One star-lit evening on the trail, a bunch of the boys was settin` `round the campfire, tellin` tales. Off to the side, a few of us serious guys, uh, persons, were engaged in serious discussion. You see, during the trail ride, we had been surrounded by beef on the hoof for quite a while. Many of us were amateur sausage makers, and we had been away from pork for so long that we couldn`t wait to get home and get some.

Discussion turned to fat usage, as it tends to when you`re "chewing the fat" with a bunch of sausage aficionados. Everyone had their own favorite recipe, and there was heated discussion as to which one was best. ...so before everyone`s IMT approached 155 degrees F, I decided to cool things down.

"I spent some time in training, up in Wustah, Mass," I said. "It`s actually Wooster, or Worchester, or some damn thing like that, but the locals call it Wustah. ...and in those parts, fairly close to Vermont, they excel in the art of making ice cream, the higher the butterfat the bettah. ...uh, better. ...and guess what it has in common with sausages?"

"Uh... they have sausage-flavored ice cream?" one of the guys asked. "After all, we have ice cream flavored sausage."

It got really quiet as we all looked at him in disbelief. "Well, we oughta," he sez. "Think about it- - the ideal fat content is twenty to thirty percent. The `fixins` are in the same range as the spices we add to our sausages, all except for Ben & Jerry`s, but they put way too much candy in theirs and besides, they sold out to Corporate America."

There were loud boos, hisses, and nods. (Loud nodding can be painful, so don`t try this at home.) Interestingly, though, no one could disagree. "So, why don`t we develop an ice cream sausage?" someone asked, and we all thought about it, and the more we thought, the more likely it seemed that we could do it.

Now, there are a few problems. To start with, butterfat has a much lower melting point that pork fat. On the other hand, you have to Pasteurize milk products, similar to how we have to heat treat our sausages, and for the same reasons. Someone, at that point, reminded us of baked Alaska, which opened a line of reasoning. Just like you can roll sausage in cabbage leaves or stuff a potato or pepper with it, surely there were other alternatives to hog casing that could be used for ice cream sausage. ...cones, anyone? Faster than Ross Hill could get away with alternates to hog casing, we were off and running with the idea.

And that`s where you come in, Gentle Reader. We have written a research grant proposal for the Department of Redundancy Department at The University of Northern South Texas. While it is pending receipt of several certifications (including the mental competency of the originators, but that`s another story), we invite YOU (yes, you!) to submit recipes. Your shot at immortality beckons (or is it immorality? No! That`s later.)

Just send it to me, El Ducko, Head Department Head, Department of Redundancy Department, The University of Northern South Texas. The successful applicant will have amateur sausage making credentials, an ability to write somewhat coherently on-line, and hopefully, deep enough pockets to finance the grant. (Think of the honor!)

[Chuckwagon]

Uh Huh! Just as I suspected! That bolt of lightning didn't change a thing! That danged quacking sack of giblets is still confused, troublesome, and annoying! Get off Main Street by 5 o' clock you foolhardy, flyin', foul fowl! You... you... you... blunt-beaked bobwhite! Here, grab hold of this lightning rod and go sit on the roof!