This is a Special Report by intenerate (illiterate, Ed.) cub reporter, Mavis Quinn…
Hello Dreary Readers,
I am happy to say that I am back, out of jail, on parole, and ready for my next assignment for my great magazine Where Cuckoo Women Create.com.org.biz.
As you may know my Editor-Who-Is-Large sent me on a year-long assignment called Bleat, Clay, Blubber, based upon a best-selling book by that name.
You see, Marvin had decided to “spend some time apart” from me so he could “delve more deeply into his analog radio repair business.” Where have I heard that before?
I was shattered to say the lease, so Editor thought it would be best for me to go abroad. She asked me to cover the wool industry in New Zealand, the pottery industry in China, and the whale bone jewelry of the peoples of southern Argentina. These places all seemed really, really far away, but what Editor wants Editor gets!
In the end what I really found was my inner fleece and the meaning of strife.
Read on…
For the first leg of the journey I spent three months in the wilds of New Zealand, living with a flock of sheep and a dog called Tanya.
I lived on opposum meat and kiwi fruit.
Not too much happened, but I am happy to report to you all that yes, sheep do indeed bleat. And often. AND LOUDLY! And they do have a lot of wool.
The first mission accomplished and it wasn’t a day before I was shipped, and I mean on a ship – for seven weeks – to Mongolia to live in a yurt and explore where the best clay comes from. Who knew Mongolia had clay? I thought it was all dust storms and beef.
The first thing I realized is that there would be no yummy Mongolian Beef dinner like the stuff I get at my local Mongolian restaurant, The Dusty Yurt.
To “welcome” me to the village, my host family made me a special dinner – roasted whole lamb. It looked just like my favorite lamb Mitsy, and I burst into tears and ran out of the yurt!
After that I took to my grubby yurt bed and didn’t come out for a week.
When I did emerge, I set about the task my editor sent me on – finding good clay.
The locals were very kind and shared their clay with me by slathering it on my face each day, before sending me to “watch” for storms at the top of the highest hill.
It was not a happy time for me, as these people listen to the carpet radio all day and it just made me miss Marvin all the more. I begged Editor to send me elsewhere and she happily obliged.
Traveling alternately by ox cart, camel, rickshaw, the shoulders of a Yeti, the Kon Tiki, and a canoe carved out of an endangered Lupo tree, I arrived at the final leg of my journey, a stay with the native population of the Southern Argentinian coast.
Meeting my host family was nice, but I really felt overdressed for the occasion.
They did have jewelry, but not so much whale bones. More feathers, actually.
They had a lot more birds, and a few seals.
I didn’t understand a word they said, and I was very cold all of the time. Everyone got dressed up (in feathers) on Sundays (or Thursdays – I couldn’t be sure) and we all ate bird meat and seal meat and there was quite a bit of belching.
I couldn’t find much of that whale bone jewelry baloney and frankly I was tired of traveling around and stuff. So, I gathered up a pile of bones I found in an old building (The National Museum, Ed), and after my toes had completely frozen off, I packed my bags and headed home.
This time I got to take a plane.
That’s where the trouble started. You see, I was on the plane with my pile of whale bones and someone got it into their head that I was a voodoo priceless or something (Priestess, Ed.)
So, when I got off the plane some police people took me in a little room and took all my whale bones away from me.
Then they arrested me and put me in a jail cell with a woman called Simone.
Apparently my bones were not those of a whale. How was I supposed to know that they were some national treasure of a dinosaur? Do I look like a Palintologist? (Paleontologist, Ed.)
Now Simone was a very interesting person who kept claiming that she was being falsely imprismed. (imprisoned – Ed.) But I know that I was the one who was not a criminal and that led to a fight where we slapped each other a very much lot and then my nose got broken and I had to go to the hospital and then Editor had to come and get me and she was mad. And when I say mad I mean really angry.
So next up she wants me to look into this computer thing called Pinetreerest. I think it’s about some green trees.
(The views expressed here are entirely those of Mavis Quinn and not our magazine. Any animals harmed in the making of this post are not our responsibility. Editor)
P.S. I miss Mitsy.
Maverick Quilts 
I am really interested in the plaid sheep and the Sunday feather suit. I wonder if I can get either of them locally….
Thanks for the enlightening travel report!
Plaid sheep’s wool makes plaid sweaters.
Omgosh…I think my cousin “Roxie” was in the cell next to you…at least she always mentioned “Mavis, Simone & Mitsy” in her letters home….could it be?????
Oh, that old cow? Yeah she was there with us. Always stole my hair clips and rubbed out the scratches in the wall that I was using to count my days inside.
The next time you write her ay hi and that Mavis wants her yellow hair scrunchie back.