INTRODUCTION

This is my third book for Crown Publishers—a division of Random House, a subsidiary of the word-kicker conglomerate, which is a member of the United Nations and working under the auspices of NASA and the Virgin River Hotel Casino in Mesquite, Nevada.

How in the world, one might ask, did a former large animal veterinarian living in the wilds of western obscurity get a book published by a real publisher?

Friends, it is the result of shameless self-confidence, dogged persistence, and shooting arrows into the sky.

In 1981 I found myself down to no keys. Wallowing in the nadir of a bathyspheric existence—my bad luck had peaked. Broke, single, in debt, I was plumbing the depths of my own survival. Like a lizard trapped in a three-gallon bucket.

It was there on my personal seafloor that I decided, since I couldn’t sleep, I might as well write a book. I was up anyway. The product of this two-year nocturnal exercise was a novel called Hey Cowboy, Wanna Get Lucky? Being ignorant of the process and optimistic in my innocence, I sent copies of the four-hundred-page manuscript to those writers whose words had clung to the cobwebs in my frontal lobe.

I admit, the condition of my life at the time rendered my judgment a little skewed. The lucky recipients were Thomas McGuane (Nobody’s Angel), John Nichols (Milagro Beanfield War), Tom Robbins (Still Life with Woodpecker), Dan Jenkins (Baja Oklahoma), and Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas).

Oddly enough, I had also become enamored with Isaac Bashevis Singer, Edgar Allan Poe, and the book of Isaiah, but I didn’t have their addresses. As I waited anxiously for a response, I learned the fate of unsolicited manuscripts . . . plywood mostly, or insulation. Yet, one arrow struck a receptive heart. Tom Robbins, that master of Technicolor titles, synchronized writing, and profound philosophy, wrote to me. He quoted my lines back to me. He played marimbas on my ventricles. He said, “You need an agent. . . . Take mine!”

Suffice it to say, my novel was passed around Madison Avenue for a year, got thirty-five rejections, and ended washed up in a box on the shelf in my closet.

Fast-forward to a new life. I had become a raconteur. Without premeditation or intent, I slid down the slippery slope into entertainment. My veterinary clients were gradually supplanted by others inviting me to speak at their agricultural banquet. I became a road man. Then came a new wife and family, a business publishing and marketing my cowboy poetry books, enough money to buy some cows and a used pickup, and a phone call from my agent in 1992 saying Crown was interested in publishing my self-published volumes of poetry.

I declined, thinking, “I sell more poetry books than they do.” Not to be deterred, they asked, “Do you have anything else?” The rusty novel, having survived several moves, still sat, in reserve you might say, high in my closet. I retrieved it, dusted off my agent, and it (the book, I mean) sprang to life. Crown published it in 1994, followed by Cactus Tracks & Cowboy Philosophy, a compilation of my National Public Radio commentaries back in 1997.

I have been writing a weekly column since 1980. It now runs in 130 papers from the Delmarva Farmer to the Pincher Creek Echo, from the Tucson Citizen to the Cascade Horseman, from the Florida Cattlemen’s to the Cabool Enterprise in Cabool, Missouri.

The column is the essence of what I do, which is to “think up stuff.” I was admonished in an ancient English class to “write about what you know.” My life revolves around animals and the people who care for them; so that’s what I write about. It has been said that it is the truth in humor that makes it funny. I agree, and it certainly explains why there are no science fiction jokes.

The stories I write assume a life of their own and, like whining children, continue to pester me to make them a part of something bigger. And some do. They become NPR commentaries or greeting cards or eulogies, poetry books, menu backs, bar sermons, refrigerator art, or even get told and retold in my life performances.

Duckfeet, as we call this book, contains selected tales from the imagination cup that continues to runneth over. They crave attention and this is their chance to shine.

They are, as I describe them, mostly humorous, occasionally political, and accidentally informative.

They are biologically correct, PG-rated, and anxious to please, not unlike the author who is still out there shooting arrows into the sky.