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SWIM, JOE, SWIM!
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Part II of the Joe Bananahead Saga
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But, really! So what, you might ask, if Joe Bananahead-- a freak of nature, a victim of Siberian Wolf Baby Disease, an incurable waif with fur growing all over his face--was forced to live for a time in a saline tank in the basement of Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas? That sort of thing happens all the time, doesn't it? Nothing lasts forever, though, especially when "nothing" is interrupted by the proverbial rogue scientist--a human cliche, a living breathing one-dimensional stereotype--who happens to be brandishing a syringe of tetrodotoxin, a hallucinogenic poison he derived from the glands of the infamous pufferfish. Of course, giving a freak like Joe Bananahead a shot of the stuff through a glass case is one of the hitches the scientist faced. It is also one of the hitches of this story.
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JOE BANANAHEAD AWAKENS AND SMASHES THROUGH THE SALINE TANK LIKE RAMBO!
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Heat resistant glass shatters, an explosion of salty water spews, scientific instrumentation crashes, and Joe Bananahead flails. But he doesn't know it. The shot of the tetrodotoxin (from the glands of the infamous pufferfish) has rendered him unconscious. Suddenly, in fact, he has both awakened and gone to sleep at the same time. Which, in case anyone reading this doesn't already know, is what the majority of human beings on this planet do without any help at all from medical science. Like them, Joe begins to wander through a hospital, looking for a doctor, stumbling into a nurse or two, his eyes glazed, his arms stiff as candles and as bloated as Polish sausages. You may have met Joe Bananahead. All that time he was talking to you, you thought he was saying something to you, or about you, or congruent to your mutual situation. You were wrong. All that time--outside the hospital, in the park, at a club, in the bus station--Joe Bananahead was dreaming one devil of a dream. For all practical purposes, however, he was a zombie.
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YES, HE MAY LOOK LIKE A ZOMBIE TO YOU, BUT TO HIM HE'S A PUFFIN
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Deep inside the folds of his brain, Joe Bananahead was living out his life as a puffin, a semi-aquatic bird. Rising high over the seascapes of his mind, Joe could spot a fish from 300 yards away. Diving like a falcon, he'd easily snatch the finny little bugger and gulp it in only a breath, and then away he'd bob, dipping, looping, cackling, nickering and calling. The only thing weird about Joe Bananahead being a puffin is that, while he was flying around over the beach, he was doing the breaststroke. That's right. Like an olympic swimmer, Joe was moving his wings like a champion crawler. It must have looked pretty funny to all the other puffins. Which is funny. Watching him, a group of puffins had given him a nickname: Tarzan.
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