Let Me Off at the Top!: My Classy Life and Other Musings (15 page)

“This man,” I said to the jackalope, “believes I have eaten Senator Bobby Kennedy. He believes Mr. Kennedy is alive and in my belly.”

“Is this true, Peter Lawford?” asked Sekannawan.

“Yes, proud mythical beast. I believe the senator has been eaten by this man.”

“Not so,” said the jackalope king. “Bobby Kennedy was given permission to walk free from here and with our aid he made it back to civilization. He is enjoying the breakfast buffet at the Desert Inn even as I speak.”

Well, you can imagine how this really burned my britches. Suddenly I didn’t care a lick about this talking jackalope king and I let him know it. “Now, you listen to me! My name is Ron Burgundy and I’m not going to sit here listening to any half rabbit, half antelope blabber on while Bobby Kennedy is enjoying a delicious breakfast buffet. I WILL NOT STAND FOR IT!”

“Then you have no choice but to enter the Ring of Lost Horns and fight me unto the death!” said Sekannawan the jackalope king.

“Then I shall fight you!” I cried.

“Be careful, Burgundy.” Peter was back on my side. “He will tear your limbs off and eat your liver while you are still alive. He will feed your eyes to his children while you can
still feel the pain. The raw sound of gnashing baby jackalope teeth on your eyes will drive you to insanity before you die!” It was truly the most emotive I had seen Peter Lawford since his turn as Theodore Laurence in
Little Women
. I told him as much and he was grateful for the notice.

We were paraded some miles to a circular patch in the desert. The ground was littered with the horns of dead jackalopes. It was a gruesome sight to be sure but my mind was focused on that buffet. I couldn’t stop thinking about maybe one day possibly wrapping two pancakes around a western omelet in the shape of a huge spongy burrito. I would call it “the Breakfast Burgito” and it would be enjoyed the world over. In my reverie I hardly heard the sounding of the jackalope yell signaling the beginning of the fight. Sekannawan came at me fast. His little jackrabbit feet exploded his muscular body off the ground. His antlers pointed right at my face as he flew through the air. It was like a grenade had gone off and the shrapnel was coming at me. I had time for one move and one move only. My two hands went instinctively to guard my face. The antlers hit my hands with surprisingly little force. He was a lightweight. I grabbed ahold of both antlers and tore him in half. The fight was over. A thousand jackalopes stood in mute silence, stunned by the death of their king. But soon the silence grew to a murmur and then a growl. “Kill him!” they yelled! And just like that they were on us, Lawford and me. Ripping and gnashing and tearing, they tried their best, but we were killing jackalopes faster than you can say
omelet fixins
.

“ENOUGH!” came the cry of a female jackalope. Suddenly they all stopped attacking. When she spoke I knew that she
was their queen. “My name is Kokenta, queen of the jackalopes. I say free this man! He has honored the law of the Ring of Lost Horns. He is worthy of our respect and admiration and shall hereafter be known as Ron Burgundy, king of the jackalopes.” I think she was trying to save face, because clearly Lawford and I were going to rip up their entire population in about ten minutes.

“Great queen,” I said, “I do not wish to be worshipped as your king but only to return to the Desert Inn for their breakfast buffet.”

“You can return, Ron Burgundy, under one condition,” she spoke.

“Name your price, wise jackalope queen.”

“From this day forth you shall harm not beasts of the wild for any reason other than survival of thyself.”

I was slow to answer but when the words finally came I felt a great relief, like a magical feeling of being one with the universe had overtaken me and I was suddenly free. I answered her demand thusly: “I will indeed honor your condition and from this day forth, this dawn of the jackalopes, I, Ron Burgundy, son of Claude Burgundy, will harm not any beasts of the wild unless my own life is challenged.”

“Go in peace, Ron Burgundy,” my new friend Kokenta said. “Your name will forever be sung in our epic songs. Your deeds will not be forgotten by the jackalopes! Make haste. The breakfast buffet ends at eleven thirty.” And off the thousand jackalopes went, racing into the desert. I have not seen one since. But, yes, they have seen me.

My experience with the jackalopes was deep and life altering. I began a journey of new understanding in relation to the Animal Kingdom as a whole. Baxter, my very best friend and dog, was my constant companion and guide through this new consciousness. I am a sensitive man unafraid to express my feelings. I have been known to cry from time to time. I’ve never made it through the movie
One on One
with Robby Benson because I get too choked up. It’s so very emotional. If you haven’t seen it, do so, it’s a real treat. A young college basketball player with great one-on-one skills is forced to play in a system of offense and defense that severely constricts his style. It’s torturous to watch. The overbearing coach, played by G. D. Spradlin, simply won’t let the kid create on the court. Whatever you do, don’t tell me how it ends. I have never seen the ending and I doubt I ever will. The waterworks start flowing as soon as I hear the Seals and Crofts song “My Fair Share” and because of my loud sobbing, almost screaming really, I am always asked to leave the theater. Annette O’Toole plays a bitchy but softhearted tutor—Oh boy … I’m having a hard time getting through this right now! Forget I brought up the movie
One on One
. It’s just too damn emotional for me to even write about it.

My point here is simple. I am a sensitive man. I’m not afraid to pick a flower or delight in a butterfly or go for a skip. I care about the world around me and all of its creatures. Now when I see a manatee or a dingo or a hyena or a toucan or a giraffe or a leopard or a tortoise or a cow or a baboon or a
Gila monster, I have no desire to kill it. Take the wild baboon for an example. If you run at a baboon with your arms waving, yelling with your shirt off, which I have done, the animal will see it as an act of aggression and run full speed right at you. His only thought will be how to get at your face and tear it off so he can eat your head meat. I don’t speak baboon. I confess I don’t speak any animal language. However, Baxter can communicate with almost all of God’s creatures and I can converse with him. On that particular safari when I ran out to a baboon to play a joke on him I was nearly torn to shreds. He was feet away from chewing off my whole face when Baxter barked out, “No, proud race of ape! He is your brother!” To which the baboon responded, “This thing is no ape!”

Baxter would have none of it and he said to the baboon, “He is an upright ape, no more dignified than you, great baboon, but simply one that can drive a car and uses small sharp knives to cut the hair on his face.”

“Why is he running at me?”

“The human man is not smart. He does not understand basic body language.”

“He could have gotten killed,” the baboon warned. (All of this conversation was related to me later by Baxter on the plane ride home.)

“I have had to save him many times from all sorts of animals in the Animal Kingdom,” said Baxter.

“I don’t understand, what’s in it for you?”

“He puts dry dog food in a bowl for me.”

“A devil’s bargain!”

“He is my friend. I sleep with him when he has not ‘scored.’ I sleep with him often.”

“What is your name?”

“My name is Baxter and his name is Ron Burgundy.”

“Well, Baxter, you tell your friend Ron Burgundy not to run at baboons the way he did. It’s weird.”

“I shall relate that to him. You are a gentle soul.”

“And you are a wise dog. Go now. I am hungry and I will want to eat either you or the Ron Burgundy.”

“We will take our leave. Can I smell your red butt?”

“Of course.”

An animal that understands that you respect him, from the fearsome white shark to the impulsive and grumpy bear, will be more willing to treat you with respect.

Over time I have come to understand the Animal Kingdom as one great hierarchy. The noble eagle sits at the top. He is God’s greatest creation, soaring through the skies with magnificent splendor and grace! His watchful eye looks over us all. I am in awe of the eagle and I believe one day when the skies fall and great chasms of doom open up to swallow mankind, it will be the eagle that rescues and guides those of us worthy (that would be me and my news team for sure) into the next land. I have several wood carvings of eagles in my home for this reason. One of them has a removable head and a hollowed-out body where you can hide some keys or half pencils like the kind you get at a golf course. If the noble eagle is at the top of the Animal Kingdom, then surely the lowly sea otter is at the bottom. They are the dumbest, most
stupid animals out there. I can’t even imagine what kind of hell we would be in for if the sea otter ever took control of the world. Simply put, they would ruin it. I don’t hate them but I sure wouldn’t trust them with maintaining order. Baxter confided in me once that talking to sea otters was like talking to aerobics instructors. I don’t doubt it. They are self-centered and boring and all they want to talk about is fish. Meanwhile Baxter tells me that most eagles think like ancient Greeks with minds sharper than Socrates’. Baxter has also told me on several occasions that eagles intimidate him. His small dog brain is no match for the cerebral majesty of the eagle.

As a kind of sidebar I would like to say wild eagles do not make great pets. I was offered a wild eagle by a Russian I had come to know through the world of high-stakes archery. We both had an interest in falconry. (I have owned several world-class falcons over the years.) This man—I will call him “Glavtec” because he would definitely not want me to reveal his true identity—had six bald eagles in the trunk of his car that he was trying to unload. He was in to me for a lot of archery money. I REALLY wanted one of those eagles but I knew it was illegal to own a bald eagle in this country. I decided if I kept the eagle inside my house no one would be the wiser and I could have my cake and eat it too. I threw the eagle in a pillowcase and took him home. Well, day one the eagle tore up everything in my house. Day two he scratched up Baxter and me pretty badly. Day three he got caught in a fan and while trying to rescue him I got scratched up worse than before. Day four he sat on the couch almost lifeless, watching TV and possibly contemplating suicide. Day five he
began working on a strategy for escape. Day six he was polite and even ate dinner with us at the table. Day seven he allowed me to place a small Uncle Sam hat on his head and posed for a picture with me and Baxter in our red, white and blue swimsuits. Day eight I taught him to drive a miniature fire truck in a comical way and he looked like he was enjoying himself. On the ninth day Baxter and I decided to take our new best friend for a walk on the beach. The minute I opened the door he flew away. He had been planning it all along! He was just playing with me to get free. Ingenious! He still, to this day, attacks me when he sees me. I’m forever watching the skies. He truly is a magnificent bird.

Where does man fit in this great chain of being? I’ll tell you. Right between the narwhal and the puma, and that’s pretty close to the top, my friend. I would say humans are positioned maybe a hundred or so animals from the top. Pretty good considering there are more than a thousand animals. Things like cheetahs, hermit crabs and salmon are definitely higher than us, but then donkeys, parrots and daddy longlegs are below us. It really puts things in perspective when you come to understand the science of the Animal Kingdom and where we as humans stand within it, or Human Positionology, as it is known in science circles. I try not to lord it over the dumber lower animals, like horses and woodpeckers, because I always know there are more intelligent animals, like the squirrel and fruit bats, that can look down on me! Through my experiences with the jackalopes and my understanding of the great chain of being I have become a friend to all nature. I no longer hunt for pleasure. I don’t condemn those who do.
Champ Kind, my friend and an award-winning sports journalist, kills, on average, around five to six hundred animals a year. He loves to hunt. He would hunt caged chickens if it were legal. Maybe he does anyway! I know every year he goes off on his annual hunting trip to some secret island with a group of men known only as the Dark Watch. I don’t know what they hunt. I don’t want to know. I say live and let live, which might not be what they say at all. Funny situations.

Finally, I want to say a word about cats. They are wonderful!

Over the years I’ve had an ever-evolving understanding of the female sex. I credit Veronica Corningstone, my wife, my lover and my sex partner, as the lady who changed my views on women. Before I met Veronica I had some antiquated ideas of how women should conduct themselves in the world. For the longest time I didn’t like seeing a woman in the workplace unless she was getting me coffee or bending over or both. Often I would put a cup of coffee on the floor and ask a woman to get it for me. I know it sounds crazy but I wasn’t sure women could read. When I saw them typing I just assumed they were copying shapes or making noise for no reason. I didn’t know if women knew how to count money. I thought women had underdeveloped brains like the brains
of softheaded people. Then there was the whole idea of menstruation. It made no sense to me and science didn’t seem to have any answers. How could a person dying of blood loss be allowed to work in a man’s office? Frankly I’m still having problems with this one. The science just isn’t there yet. We need greater study in this area but I’m willing to concede women should be allowed in the workplace alongside men. I can laugh at some of the naive things I used to think, but much of it you could write off because of the times. The times were different. Before 1970 women were here on this earth to cook food and give men boners. You certainly couldn’t associate them with delivering the news. There was the whole credibility problem. I wasn’t alone in believing that women could not be trusted. I once bet Edward R. Murrow that a dog would anchor the news before a woman, and I believed it. Women were considered nothing more than sex objects. They were valued more for their legs, their butts and their tits than for anything else. Times sure have changed! Heck, now in television news and I guess just about everywhere else women are respected for their brains. Appearance means very little! Go figure! When I see a woman walking down the street in high heels and a short skirt I no longer drool like a hungry zombie. I think to myself, “Hmmmm, I wonder what kind of brain that foxy mama has?” Veronica did that to me. She’s got brains, all right, and I married her for that reason. Of course Veronica also just happens to have a grade-A dumper and some first-class tits.