July adventures have been postponed due to the passing of a good friend, Oreo Doublestuff Jarrett (February 15, 2000 – July 15, 2012). I’d like to take a moment to remember him.
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I met Oreo years ago at one of his now legendary fêtes in Salt Lake City, held while his humans were away and unaware. Gatsby-like, he wowed us with grand opulence: three beds, five towels, a slew of toys that squeaked and bounced, and a full buffet of treats and goodies. He often bragged that he scarcely ate his prescribed food, having such a hypnotic hold over his humans that he could induce them to hand feed him from their own plates. All it took was a whimper, which he had perfected to the pitch of song. His humans called him “Highness,” but though destined to be king, he was not born a prince.
Coming into the world in the year Y2K, Oreo scarcely knew his biological parents, who gave him up for adoption at a place known as Bird World. “The place was for the birds!” he often griped and spent years lobbying for its name to change to Pet Village. Once adopted into a foster family, Oreo attended the finest of training academies, learning the arts of proper sitting, rolling over, rhetoric, and dancing (he was known to pull a mean box step from time to time!) All these tricks, he directed toward furthering his agenda, which was, as he summarized it, “greatness.”
Having perfected his methods, Oreo directed his humans to install a special door and stairs for his convenience and to offer up the largest bed in the establishment for his comfort. With his new kingdom in place, he set to building a following. His home bordered a vast grassland, and he took to bellowing across the waves of green, summoning all animals within hearing to attend court. And they did, those dogs of all sizes, those cats and pigeons and kestrels and muskrats. Guided by a tall tulip tree, all converged upon Oreo’s domain for a good time between the hours of nine and five.
Though he invited all, especially those wildfolk who were down on their luck, Oreo was ferociously protective of his assets, and he declared the utmost importance of keeping secret the wildness that took place under that tulip tree. Oreo’s situation was precarious: as any ruler depends on the loyalty of his subjects, his power to throw a shindig depended entirely on the ignorance of his humans. Once, just as the garage door opened, a couple crows that had taken a few too many fermented raspberries fell, cawing and flapping, all across the lawn. In a panic, Oreo had to take their wings in his mighty jaws and hurl them over the fence before anyone came home! He spent many hours that night barking in front of the television, just to convince the humans he’d spent the day in slumber and now wanted to play!
As time went on, the festivities became less regular but more extravagant. Oreo had his humans reshape their garden and build a fire pit, not that any of his guests knew how to light a fire anyway. More and more, he became an observer of the festivities rather than an active participant, surrounded by his most loyal supporters, code named Mr. Egg and Mr. Ball, as well as the court jester, Stupid Toy. His additional free time led him into freelance work as a model and ambush poet, the goal being, at his age, to share his glory with those who just could not make it to his parties. I hear he once recited “Ode to a Sweet Potato,” in such a passionate soprano of non-lexical vocables that it even brought tears to the eyes of a cold-blooded lizard. That’s hard!
As he gained years and weight, Oreo turned more philosophical, and more of his parties became lectures on the meaning of life. Deeply superstitious (he required his humans to purify his food and drink with chant and shaking before eating it), he subscribed to the idea that 2012 would mark the end of the world and thus sought to prepare us all. The last time I visited him, back in June, he took me under his paw and said, “Billiam, do you see that squeaky ball?”
Honestly, there was no squeaky ball, but Oreo had gone blind by this point. I said I did.
“That’s a very special squeaky ball. I used to chase it often in my prime. If I could, I would chase it all the way to Doomsday. Do you have a squeaky ball?”
“No…”
“You must get one! A fellow who lacks a squeaky ball is naught but a knave!”
“My teeth just aren’t designed for it.”
“No no, you’ve missed the metaphor. I can’t see that squeaky ball, nor can I hear it, except in my heart. I have chased it for years, and though I cannot sense it, I know that it is here and mine. It embodies all that I have desired and all that I have won. I want you to do as I have done.”
“To chase your squeaky ball?”
“No, pay attention! You must find your squeaky ball and pursue it! Run fast! To fulfillment, to glory! This squeaky ball is your destiny, Billiam, and you must catch it! Catch it before it rolls off the edge, because the world is too busy with its own departure to toss it into your paws!”
“But how will I know if I’ve caught it?”
“Isn’t it obvious? You won’t have anything left to chase.”
I didn’t buy into his Doomsday philosophy, but 2012 did turn out to be the year that Oreo stopped chasing. Though cancer of the liver had ravished him (unrelated, I am assured, to his youthful adventures), and stripped him of his chasing abilities, I hear he passed with a smile of contentment on his face. Despite his scandalous affairs with his towels, Oreo never mated or had pups, and so bequeathed his kingdom to his humans. As befitting a pharaoh, he now sleeps in a grand sarcophagus with his treasures: his towels, a peanut butter sandwich, and his squeaky ball.
Each animal has its own way of responding to loss, and grief is certainly not a strictly human characteristic. Yet, we know that, one day, each body that goes into the ground will rise again as a flower or a mighty tree. Caterpillars will eat the leaves and become brilliant butterflies, some of whom will be eaten by beautiful birds. Some birds will be eaten by cute kittens or mighty falcons, who also will fall and rise again, because there is no such thing as true death in a world where matter is neither created nor destroyed. Some day, I will pay a visit to his grave under the tulip tree, and though no more wild parties shall brighten its boughs, I know it will bloom again with petals the exact size and shape of Oreo’s big, goofy tongue.
Rest in peace, my friend,
