Aachoo Voo, Private Eye
Episode Nune Nin 9
Vooey Wooey and The Insincere Blessings
We were taken to various hospitals, my pets and I. There was some confusion naturally, in all the screaming and fainting and hissing and barking and obscene language. That was probably how I ended up at a veterinarian clinic and the parrot ended up at the State Asylum and Toulouse and the others wound up in St. Chuck's Hospital under the care of Dr. Burr. Well, at least until the Administrator of said hospital insisted that "animals were not welcome" and Dr. Burr took them home with him until their owner could be found and returned to. My mother refused to allow them in her home despite my father's wishes. (All this information I found out later, told to me gleefully by MiMi Voo after I had finally been released from the animal clinic and subsequently from some human hospital I can't quite remember.) We were sick. All of us. Sick as dogs. (And cats and ferrets and mice and fish and parrots, etc.) It was food poisoning, plain and simple. (With all that that entails!) Plus a good measure of hallucinations thrown in. Oh, it was awful.
First, let me explain what I do remember. It was not actually my beloved furry friends who were doing all that screaming and barking and hissing: It was my mother. (Actually, the parrot was cursing but he always did that and had become very combative and threatening so the medics were forced to put him in a strait jacket and and take him to the Asylum for the protection, not only of themselves but of my mother for whom he had held a long time grudge. I was told that before they finally caught him, he had achieved some semblance of satisfaction by stuffing a beak full of peanuts down her blouse and throwing up pate', green oysters and tequila on her $400.00 shoes.
Meanwhile, I was lying in my bed moaning, wondering when I'd painted everything black and white and why my legs were nine feet long and my feet were touching the wall and my head was nowhere close to my pillow. In fact, Manny the mouse was lying on my pillow holding his little tummy and squeaking loudly in very descriptive sentences. I know, because I understood every word he said. I was also quite certain that he was drunk. There were several empty champagne bottles lying by the bed and I had no memory of emptying them. I had convinced myself that I'd been having a very bad nightmare and that I'd probably wake up eventually to my normal/abnormal life. Instead, I had unluckily awakened to a rather shameful reality.
Little did I know that my badly disguised detectives out front had been alerted by a neighbor of George's, the old man whose chest I had been working on, that there were possibly several dozen people dying in my apartment due to the horrible sounds coming from inside and that they should check it out immediately. Obviously, nobody really believed they were Chinese tourists for various and obvious reasons but also because they were both still wearing Homicide badges, I guess just out of habit. They were certainly dedicated detectives but they were, well, stupid. Anyway, they broke in and saved us. In a manner of speaking.
My mother's butler had been arriving also at that moment while she waited in the car with the chauffeur. She'd called fifty-seven times the two previous days and was beside herself with worry. The butler surveyed the scene through the broken-down door and had rushed to inform her of the dire and bizarre situation. The elevator just so happened to be working that day strangely enough and she had entered my apartment like a hurricane on legs, screaming and crying, tossing policemen this way and that and then putting her hand to her coiffed head, began to faint until she saw all the sick animals lying here and there amongst the party hats and half eaten containers of food and changed her mind.
Then the parrot recognized her shrill voice and commenced his attack. I don't really know who called who or what but they tell me that at least fourteen ambulances showed up, sirens blasting and in all the chaos, the parrot ended up in the Asylum and I ended up on a table in a vet's office full of hamsters, Pomeranians and a couple of bad-tempered chimpanzees. (And yes, they were all looking at me like that school picture: Which of these things are not like the others.) I was the thing.
I later received several absolutely astronomical medical bills because every last one of us had to have our stomachs pumped and were given various medicines and ice-cold baths and lectures. (Weiner especially hated the cold baths.) It was to be my last party for some time. After several long boring days, I was released to go home and was happy to see that glorious color had returned to the world. There were roses waiting with an unsigned card, Lance had left a Get Well card filled with pictures of ruined and ragged clothing with a big HA HA on the front and Dr, Burr arrived later with a car full of happy and healthy animals (including the parrot that he had helped escape from his padded bird cage) and a bottle of some vile potion painstakingly created just for me by Grandfather Storklegs.
It tasted like mud and huckleberries, but I forced it down, grew stronger and actually learned to like it. The parrot had still been under observation and deemed dangerous so there was an alert out for his capture and return to the Asylum but I told them I would be responsible for him as long as my mother stayed away and they seemed satisfied with that. However, as far as I know, he was the only parrot in New York City that has ever been actually diagnosed as criminally insane.
We had a lovely visit and when he left all my furry friends watched him go with sad faces, having found a new friend. All except the parrot. He had no friends and he liked it that way. He was upset, nonetheless, when I insisted on keeping the little strait jacket as a souvenir. I hung it up in the kitchen where he could see it and pointed to it whenever he dared to be exceptionally annoying. He irked me on a regular basis but also occasionally showed some compassion to me in my still weakened condition. One morning he greeted me with a chipper "How's my little Vooey Wooey?" And then threw a peanut at me. Life was back to normal. Of a sort. But I had to admit that during our forced separation I was shocked to discover I'd honestly missed his snickering and even his constant but insincere blessings.
