Freddogg Off The Chain

Rhinos are prehistoric, which means before man could squawk, ”Don’t look now but a slope headed Rhino is sniffing his own horn and pawing in the dirt while lining up your sorry ass” and yet they remain fascinatingly funny.

Growing up in Philadelphia a loser male who wanted to “lay out” a fat “girl to women” would always employ the Rhino reference. I don’t know how many times I heard “Screw you and the Rhino you rode in on” but I don’t think my mother appreciated her four sisters-in-law cracking wise to me in that way.

Water Buffalo was also something I grew up with. I never heard a fat boy called a water buffalo it was always girls. And warthog was out there along with groveling down by the water hole.
I think the television program Ramar of the Jungle had something to do with all that and later Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Merle Perkins always had the engine on idle while his lackey Jim enticed a Rhino to “charge the jeep.” High school guys always referred to sex as “charging the jeep” and had the same success rate as Rhinos caught on film. I was going to insert a Rhinoceros Habitat joke except I really don’t know where they live? I suppose out in the open because otherwise during mating season they’d look like Sonny Bono on a skiing shortcut.
Today’s animal rights activists would think enticing a horny Rhino to charge a dirty brown jeep was cruel and unusual and it certainly qualifies as unusual but where does cruelty come in for a creature without a concept.
I had a nineteen sixties freaky friend who had a Siamese cat named Acid. Bill was always high and always amazed and at least he got the most from his drug purchases not like today’s burnouts.
Acid would gallop around the carpeted apartment clopping loudly like a show pony and hurl himself into the walls because as Warren Zevon wrote, ”I’d rather feel bad than feel nothing at all.”
“Acid is amazing!” Bill would always exclaim his eyes bugged out of his head and the cat lived to a ripe old age because he never had to endure rehab and was never allowed outside to attack jeeps.
Once at my high school students in a creative writing class were asked to describe and liken teachers to members of the animal kingdom. Man did those kids get into it and boy were some teachers offended.
I got off easy as the friendly household Golden Retriever but the Warthogs, Rhinos and Water Buffalos were not happy.
Gotta go, time to charge the jeep! I need a jump! The battery is dead!

Freddogg