Weird Foods
Grow on trees like cherries. They are a little bigger than grapes, but look like tiny watermelons. One eats them skins and all like a grape, but they taste exactly like melons. The seeds are like shotgun pellets. Sometimes, boys get into big trouble with Watermellers. They stuff several into their mouth and squish them around until there is nothing left but the seeds. Then, they blast other kids, especially girls or cats. The cats try to climb a tree and the girls tell their moms.
A good way for a girl to "get even" with a "wallermeller spitter" is to throw a Beaner pit at the boy. Beaners grow on trees like apples. They are as big as a peach, but look like a big cherry. The large pit inside is hollow, and when it hits the back of a boy's head, it makes a wonderful "thock" sound.
Slurpies Slurpies grow like berries on big bushes. They have a hard shell, but when they are ripe the top can be popped off. Inside is a delicious, juicy, sweet fruit that tastes like stewed parsnips. Kids spend a lot of time sucking themselves cross-eyed just to get every last drop.
It is interesting that in Chaladon Blueberries grow on cobs like an ear of corn. Kids really enjoy eating them because they can have a sweet, tasty treat and make an incredible mess at the same time.
Healthy Organic Breakfast Food
These are actually three different wild grass seeds. Shown above from the left is the Snik, the Kragle, and the Plok. These are baked slowly in the oven until dried and puffy. When one pours milk on them, they
There is a giant flower in Chaladon called the Sheggy with large, shaggy, yellow stamens around the center called wheets. There are also giant bees that make special honey from the Sheggy flower juice. The bees need to work very hard squeezing through the narrow wheet hole so they can get the flower juice, and they leave bee sweat all over the wheets. At the end of summer, the Sheggies dry up and people pick the dried wheets covered with the sweet, gray bee sweat. The cereal is sweet and crunchy.
By far the most popular breakfast cereal in Chaladon is Chirpeeos, the little donuts with the oaty, nut-like taste. Where do they come from? Well, first it is necessary to understand that a beautiful butterfly as large as a small bird, flies over the meadows all summer, making softly squeeky, chirping sounds. Not surprisingly, they are called Chirpees. Everyone knows that butterflies start out life as big, green caterpillars. Then, they make a cocoon, and finally the butterfly breaks out and flies away. The cocoon dries up, the wind blows away the skin and little feet, and all that is left are the donut-shaped body segments.
Extremely Strange Food
Technicolor Lizards Riptornikans eat some very strange things, one being lizards, or to be perfectly accurate, Technicolor Lizards. When they go on a picnic, they look for a place where there are lots of lizards. After catching and cleaning, they roast them on a stick over the campfire. Supposedly, they taste like shrimp. They also roast a special sausage, called Googles, which are stuffed with fresh Greedler and then smoked.
A Greedler is a ground squirrel almost two feet long. They eat mostly seeds and grain, spending all their waking hours (mostly at night) gathering grain to fill their store houses for the winter. The animal has two "pockets" on its hips to help carry home the seeds. The problem is they are very, very greedy. When they find lots of seeds or grain, they stuff their pockets so full they can't get back in their hole. When Riptornikans want to make sausages, they spread corn on the ground around the Greedler holes. The next morning Greedler butts are sticking up in the air everywhere, and people can gather all they need. After they grind up the Greedler meat, they are ready to stuff the sausages, which they call Googles.
Googles Actually, Googles are giant worms, nearly five feet long with hugh, googly eyes. They are found only in one remote mountain valley called Bora Tora. Riptornikans consider Googles a real delicacy. When fried slowly in butter, they are very tasty with a flavor like liver. Sausages made by stuffing the worms with Greedler meat, however, are.best of all. Riptornikans especially are just crazy about them.
They cut off the Google's head and his butt. Then, they flush out the guts, leaving a sort of hollow tube of delicious Google meat. They stuff the "tube" with ground Greedler meat and smoke the sausages, which then can be be grilled or fried.
When Riptornikans grill their precious Googles, they like to eat them on buns like earth people would eat a hot dog. They spread the bun with what they call "trail butter," which looks like gray mayonaise. It is not.
Blue Gaggers are giant, blue-colored snails, big enough that kids can to ride on them. Unfortunately, when kids DO ride on them, the snails make a sound like a person throwing up, which is the reason they are called Gaggers. Trail butter is the slime left on the ground behind a Blue Gagger. They ride the Gaggers across a clean sheet to keep the "trail butter" from getting dirty. Supposedly, it is quite tasty.
Bear Food Earlier in the report it was explained that Riptornikans domesticated the common bear, using them as work animals and even riding on large ones. Many have asked the question, what did they feed these herds of animals? Horses, oxen, even Boodles are plant-eating creatures, but bears need a diet that includes meat. Perhaps this section that illustrates unusual human food items is not the place to discuss this topic, but we include bear food here because it is such a special subject and there is no better place to discuss it. Riptornikans fed their bears a balanced diet. On the vegetable side they provided parsnips and Chirpeeos. For high energy protein they provided dogs. Modern day readers might react negatively to such a notion, but in defense of the Riptornikans, the dogs in question were not the usual "man's best friend" sort of dog. They were small, barking dogs of the type that should be put to death without any thought or emotion. Who among us does not believe that small, barking dogs should be strangled without sentiment or emotion, or even better, smashed into silence with a snow shovel? Or as one Riptornikan phrased it so well, "That constant, mind numbing 'frak-frak-frak' can make a person nearly crazy, but once you throw the little beast into the bear pen, the yapping finally stops with one satisfying crunch."
Shown at the right are the two main "yappers" used by Riptornikans as bear food. Piddles are angry little "lickers" with curly white hair, long, floppy ears that drag on the ground, and a long, red tongue that always is licking or slobbering on something. When they are excited, which is almost all the time, they bark like fools and jump around until they step on one of their ears. This scares them half to death so they bark even louder and then they make a puddle on the floor. Of course they step in it and get their feet wet, and this makes them go insane with shrill yipping and yapping. What good would this animal be except for bear food?
Try to pet one and the Pook will bite you—every time. They even try to bite the bears, and maybe this is the reason bears seem to really enjoy eating the nasty, little frak frakers.
Dog boys with cracking whips rode on fast bears herding the thousands of Piddles and Pooks along the trail. At night they sat around campfires singing such songs as "Get along, little doggy." As a historical note, one such dog drive ended in disaster. During the military buildup in advance of the great battle that was averted by Queen Abagail, the Riptornikan King Clutch brought his army to the defense of Celadonia. Naturally, he brough along thousands of dogs to feed the cavalry bears. As the "dog drive" approached the capitol city, they had to cross a Squeezer valley. Clutch refused to listen to any advice about Squeezers so he ordered the dog boys to proceed, and down into the valley they went. Squeezers jumped them and the herd stampeded. The dogs were scattered for miles around where Celadonian farmers killed them with shovels and axes. Goodbye bear food, hello hungry, unhappy bears.
| |||||
 | | | | | |
