An Unusual Creature

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1.
In the evening, it is my custom to walk my dog. Ordinarily, I stroll about 20 blocks with my yellow Labrador padding along at my side. Sometimes, my walk takes us through a churchyard. In that place, tall oaks interlace their heavy branches overhead and the lawn is littered with acorns and jagged, fallen twigs. Squirrels play in the grass and, often, when there is no one else hiking in that churchyard, I will loose my dog so that she hurls herself after the rodents, trailing her leash behind her like a comet. The squirrels are fast and agile and they can outrun my dog across the short sprint required for them to scamper over the turf and up the sheer trunk of one of the trees, climbing out of dog’s reach to cling to the bark like a russet or grey mollusk, chirping insults at the retriever galloping wildly below.

One autumn night, business detained me in the big city one-hundred miles away and I didn’t achieve my home until it was dark outside. My wife told me that she had walked the dog, taking the route that leads along the boulevard to the churchyard and the oak grove. At that place, my wife dropped the leash to let the dog course among the trees, sniffing at the air for scent of squirrel. As it happened, several squirrels obligingly descended from their nests aloft in the tree-tops, flouncing their tails to incite the dog to frantic charges this way and that across the acorn-strewn lawn. After all the squirrels had retreated to their high haunts, the dog pranced in circles under the boughs, snapping at the leash dragging under her paws, and searching for new prey. At that moment, an animal suddenly materialized out of the dusk. The dog stopped in her tracks, surveying the creature standing a few yards ahead of her. The hair on her back rose in serrated hackles and the dog muttered a throaty yelp. The animal had a hairless greyish blue body and floppy, elongated ears. It’s legs were long, bald stilts. The beast made an uncanny mewing and yowling sound and, then, darted away toward the boulevard. The dog levitated leaping high into the air and, then, careened after the animal, dashing in its wake in a low, feral crouch, her belly almost scraping across the clumped twigs and acorns. The strange creature moved like a rabbit, hopping with blinding speed on back legs that scissored through the air.

It was no competition: the creature was across the roadway in a flash, turning acrobatically to lunge down the center of the sidewalk on the opposite side of the boulevard, a misshapen shadow swiftly vanishing into the twilight. The dog shot toward the street. A car was approaching and my wife expected the dog to pitch herself forward under the tires of the vehicle. She closed her eyes and flinched, expecting to hear the thud of the car against the dog. But the car surged past and, when my wife ventured to look, the Labrador was standing at the edge of the street, perched on the curb watching after the departing creature with sad, yearning eyes. Far away, near the intersection with stop-and-go light, the strange animal lunged forward, leaping through the pools of dim yellow puddled under the streetlamps.

I asked my wife: “What kind of animal was it?” “I don’t know,” my wife said. “I have never seen anything exactly like it.” “It couldn’t have been a dog,” I told her. “Frieda (that is my dog’s name) is terrified of all dogs, even the smallest ones, and she will not chase them.” I paused: “Was it a cat?” “I’m sure it was not a cat,” my wife said. “Maybe a muskrat or a badger or something?” “No,” my wife said. “Or a beaver or a raccoon or an opossum?” “None of those animals,” my wife answered. “Could it have been a coyote?” “No,” my wife said. “I know what a coyote looks like and this animal had different ears and a different shape.” “Well what do you think it was?” I asked. “Some kind of big, mutant rabbit,” my wife said. “A big mutant rabbit?” I repeated. “Or a kangaroo,” she said. “A bald kangaroo.” “What would a bald kangaroo be doing here in Minnesota?” I asked. “I don’t know,” my wife said.

2.

In March 1917, Franz Kafka wrote a short parable called “A Crossbreed.” The little fable comes to us in a notebook that Max Brod dubbed “Oktavheft D.” The story is narrated by a man who has inherited a strange animal from his father. The creature is a Lamb Cat -- that is, half lamb and half cat and partaking of the nature of both animals. Sometimes, the animal lurks around the chicken house seeking prey; on other occasions, the beast gambols in the meadows. It purrs sometimes and also bleats. The Lamb Cat is small and sits on the lap of the narrator and, often, he shows the animal to school children. They ask him questions about the origin of the animal that he can not answer. When the Lamb Cat encounters either a lamb or a cat, the animals simply stares at them with uncomprehending eyes. The creature is domesticated and it slinks between the feet of the narrator, preferring the company of human beings to other beasts. The narrator speculates that, perhaps, the animal seeks human companionship because it knows that it has no siblings in the world. There are no others of its kind and the creature seems to comprehend this in some way. The narrator regards his possession of the Lamb Cat as a sort of sacred burden. He believes that the animal is exhausted by itself, that it has tired of being an anomaly, and that it would regard the knife of the butcher as a kind of mercy. But the animal is a legacy from the narrator’s father and he feels duty-bound to protect it.

3.

A week ago, I told a friend about my wife’s adventure with the strange animal in the churchyard. My friend said that he knew a man who moonlighted as a taxidermist. One of the taxidermist’s hobbies was making chimeras by piecing together fragments of different dead animals. My friend called the taxidermist and he came down to the tavern where we were talking to show us examples of his work. As it happened, the man was the president of the local Chimera Club, a group of taxidermists who specialize in hoaxes, stitching together animal furs and grafting skeletons to make impossible creatures.

The taxidermist had brought a notebook (it was labeled D) with him containing photographs of his work. He turned the pages and we admired his handicraft. A desiccated mermaid grinned at us from a photograph -- it was a baboon skull and torso stitched to a sturgeon’s tail. There was a bear burdened with the great hoary head of a moose and a crouching hyena with an improbably slender ibis’ head on its shoulders. One snapshot showed a greyish - bruise-blue creature with long naked legs and a heavy tail. “What is that?” I asked. The taxidermist said that he had made the chimera by sewing together the furry skull of Great Plains jackrabbit and the body, legs, and tail of a small kangaroo. “A friend brought me several ‘roos and wallabys from Down Under,” the taxidermist said. “I had a lot of fun with them.”

I am convinced that my wife saw one of these chimeras darting down the boulevard on the day that she walked my dog in the churchyard. I have no explanation, however, for how the dead creature, built from fragments of stinking fur and bone, had somehow come to life.

I asked the taxidermist that night in tavern this question: “Are you ever able to bring these animals that you piece together to life.” “Not yet,” the taxidermist said. “I like to imagine them alive and like to speculate as to how they would live and reproduce, but I have never succeeded in causing one of these animals to actually move and breathe.” He paused and winked at me: “I’m still trying though.”