Dave Barry: Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up

As of this writing, I haven’t seen anything about this in the National Enquirer. I also haven’t heard from the Air Force.

I expect, however, that I’ll hear from you out there in Readerland. One thing nobody disputes is that stories about UFOs generate reports about UFOS. But listen: If you have anything to report, the place to send it is:

The Miami UFO Center P.O. Box 313

Opa-Locka, Fl, 33054

The important thing is: Don’t call me. OK. It’s not that I don’t believe you. It’s that my life is already filled with bizarre, inexplicable phenomena, such as the way the right rear speaker in my car never works except when they play songs I hate. Deedeedeedee deedeedeedee

This next section is mostly columns about Amazing but True things that I found out about thanks to mail from alert readers. One of these readers, as you will see, is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court, who alerted me about a ground-breaking new antiflatulence product called Beano. This resulted in a column that some newspapers found too offensive to print, a fact that resulted in another column, which was either about censorship or circumcision, I am still not sure which.

This section also contains vital information about an issue that everybody needs to think about more, namely, toilet snakes.

Here at the Bureau of Animal Alarm we have received a disturbing Associated Press photograph sent in by alert journalist Russ Williams of the Asheville, North Carolina, Citizen-Times (motto: “A Newspaper Whose Staff Has Too Much Spare Time”). This photo shows a goat, looking fairly calm under the circumstances, hanging by its horns from a rope going through a pulley attached to the side of a building. Two men in a window are holding the other end of the rope. Here is the caption, which we are not making up:

SPAIN—A goat hangs by his horns from the bell tower of the church in Manganeses de la Polvorosa, some 200 miles northwest of Madrid. Villagers, who open the religious festival of St. Vincent by dropping a goat from the church belfry, attacked police who tried to block the tradition. The goat was uninjured as villagers caught the goat with a tarp.

As sensitive and broad-minded humans, we must never allow ourselves to be in any way judgmental of the religious practices of other people, even when these people clearly are raving space loons. We are sure that the people of Manganeses de la Polvorosa would be amused by some common American religious practices.

“We may drop goats from belfries,” they’d probably say, “but at least we don’t thank the Lord for touchdowns.”

Nevertheless, we here at the Bureau feel that the Immigration authorities should keep a sharp lookout for Manganeses de la Polvorosa tour groups coming to the United States, particularly New York. Because they might decide to visit the Empire State Building, and while they’re up on the observation deck they might suddenly smack their foreheads and realize that it’s time to open the festival of St. Vincent, and the next day’s New York Post might print the following tragic headline:

TERRIFIED CROWD FLEES 120 MPH DEATH BUTT

Another animal menace that we all need to be more concerned about is giant toilet snakes. This is a growing problem, as can be seen by the following statistics:

Number of Articles About Giant Toilet Snakes We Received Prior to 1992: Zero. Number of Articles About Giant Toilet Snakes We Have Received in 1992: One.

Statistically, this represents an increase of infinity percent in the number of giant toilet-snake reports. The most recent one, sent by alert reader Jack Sowers, was written by reporter Mike Leggett for the Austin (Texas) American Statesman. It concerns a man named Steve Ashenfelter, who used to manage an Oklahoma hunting and fishing club. One day he went into the clubhouse bathroom, and, in his words, “there was a big snake lying in the toilet. As soon as he saw me he just swirled around and went down the pipes.”

So Ashenfelter did exactly what you would do; namely, he moved to another continent.

No, really, he followed standard toilet-snake procedure, which is to go around flushing the three clubhouse toilets in an effort to get the snake to come out.

“I went in the bathroom upstairs, and there he was, lying in the toilet up there,” Ashenfelter recalled. “So I went and flushed all the toilets, and he came back up in the toilet where I saw him the first time.”

Eventually, Ashenfelter got the snake, but it took him two days, and he ended up using—we are still not making this up—two fishing poles, chlorine bleach, muskrat traps in all three toilets, an eight-foot piece of lumber, rope, and heavy metal hooks. The snake turned out to be over seven feet long.

We do not wish to create a nationwide panic, but apparently there is a new breed of large, commode-dwelling snakes that have figured out how to move from toilet to toilet, which means they could easily travel across the country via the Interstate Plumbing System. This has serious ramifications, especially if you’re a parent trying to potty-train a small child. Psychologists agree that the best way to handle this situation is: lie. “Don’t worry!” you should tell the small child many times, “A big snake won’t come out of the toilet!” This is the approach Mister Rogers is taking.

Meanwhile, however, something must be done. One practical approach would be for the government to require all U.S. citizens to put muskrat traps in their commodes. The only problem here is that if the trap is not removed prior to commode usage, there could be severe consequences for guys of the male gender. On the other hand, many women might view this as a fair punishment for all the billions of times that guys have left the seat up. It’s definitely something to think about as each of us, in his or her own way, prepares to celebrate the festival of St. Vincent.

As you are aware if you follow international events, over the past year I have written a number (two) of columns about the worldwide epidemic of snakes in toilets. As a result I have received many letters from people who have had personal toilet-snake encounters, to the point where I now consider it newsworthy when somebody reports NOT finding a snake in a toilet.

But now I am getting nervous. I say this because of a recent alarming incident wherein a woman, attempting to use her commode, was attacked in an intimate place—specifically, Gwinnett County, Georgia—by a squirrel. I have here an article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, written by Gail Hagans and sent in by a number of alert readers. The headline—a textbook example of clear journalism—states: Squirrel somehow makes way into commode, scratches Gwinnett woman’s behind. I am not making this headline up.

The woman is quoted as follows: “I went to the bathroom and lifted the lid and sat down. That’s when I felt something scratching my behind.”

So, following the recommended “Jump, Slam, Call, and Tell” emergency procedure, she jumped up, slammed the lid down, called her husband at work, and told him to come home immediately, which he of course did. We may live in an age of gender equality, but men have a protective instinct that dates back millions of years, to when they would have had to defend their mates from such vicious predators as the saber-toothed tiger and the mastodon (toilets were much bigger in those days).

Unfortunately, by the time the husband got home, the squirrel had drowned, forcing us to once again ask WHEN the failed Clinton administration will demand that ALL commodes be equipped with tiny life preservers. But that is not the issue at hand. The issue at hand is that the squirrel apparently got into the plumbing system via a roof vent, which means that if you, like so many people, have a roof, your toilet is vulnerable to any organism with a long, narrow body, including (but not limited to) otters, weasels, dachshunds, squids, and international fashion models with only one name, such as Iman.