freaks and monsters

disclaimer: don't get yourself all riled up about the word "freak". go to the coney island freak show and learn a little something about difference if you're snarling right now.

yesterday i spoke to the first supernatural nephew. i had called his mom to ask about shipping some mysterious chocolate and then there he was.

what's your favorite animal? he asked. now, i know my favorite animal is the bat. there's nothing better, nothing more fantastic, but i paused, scanning my brain, because i wanted him to be impressed. i wanted him to be proud of my choice. i went with bat. he seemed pleased. i asked about his favorite and it's a pterodactyl. he hesitated first, asking if it could be extinct. i said extinct would be fine because i know how he loves the dinosaurs. good. then his favorite is definitely pterodactyl. he likes the way they're able (in his way of seeing things) to fake out larger, land-bound predators by swooping away at the last minute. he laughed just thinking about it. he said pterodactyls would laugh, too, yelling down taunts to the carnivores snapping below them. secretly, i was thrilled because we'd chosen the same animal. okay, not really the same animal, but kindred creatures. freaks. irregulars. it is his ability to recognize and celebrate rarity and strangeness that i hear most in these calls. the nephew and i love the churkendooses.

for those of you who don't know, the churkendoose is the barnyard version of the "it takes a village to raise a child" story. it seems one day the ladyfowl at the farm notice an egg all by itself. it doesn't belong to any of them, but each takes a turn sitting on it. all that sitting somehow infuses the little birdlet with characteristics from all the mamas involved. the hatched bird is a freak. spectacular and gifted, a little bit like everyone but not entirely like anyone. misfit. but every one of those bird mamas saw her own kind in the little freak. that's the moral of the story, i suppose. that even the strangest among us has a little bit of us. but what i got from it as a kid is that everyone loves the strange kid.

there will be more phone calls. the nephew lives half a country away and we don't see each other much. he changes quickly and i can't keep up with what wildness swirls into his head but he reports on bits of it from time to time. i know there will be more questions and i'm ready. i have not forsaken my beloved bat, but there are more loves than one in the animal world. i have a whole list of animals he'll like to meet. platypus. wallaby. axolotl. but those are pedestrian. those are easy. i've gone to schreber's fantastic beasts for the serious stuff. malayan stink badger.klipspringer. fossa. crab-eating fox. african chevrotain. greater grison. babirusa.