The Mind of The Red Coat

When I was in high school, I was the part-time henchperson of a Mad Scientist.

I’m not exaggerating about “Mad Scientist”.  “Riley” (Name changed for his family’s privacy) was a former Medical Doctor, as well as an artist, microbiologist, pilot (as in, designed and flew his own experimental aircraft), magician, computer programmer and musical composer, and had an outbuilding attached to his house where he kept things like his hand-made 3D printer, electron microscope and drone-dirigible assembly devices.

Riley had ALS and was eventually wheelchair-bound, so by 2006 I was being called in on the odd school night or weekend to go out around FoCo and the surrounding mountains. “I need a younger set of legs and someone with no fear of heights” He’d say.  Being that I was a very boring child that had no interest in sex or drugs and always called when I was going to be late, and that Riley was a trusted family friend, My parents trusted me to go out at like 9PM  and come home at 2AM on a Tuesday.  

…To do things like scale locked fire escapes and climb around on rooftops that we DEFINITELY did not have permission to be on to do things like install speakers and bluetooth broadcasting devices at strategic points around Old Town so that if you download the right app onto your phone (I’ve got it backed up somewhere, I’ll post it when I find it) , you can walk around town and be exposed to the ghostly, extremely shady side of FoCo history for his 2007 Halloween project.

We did get caught by the cops but I was 17, short and white as goddamn mayonnaise so when the cops asked me what I was doing “It’s for a community art project!” actually worked.

My favorite Mad Science Project was in 2009, Gallus rostromegalus.

I was home from college for summer, and Riley had been messing around with Rotational Physics and had managed to make Giant (24’ x 18’) extremely realistic Chicken eggs, weighted and everything so that if you picked one up, it would feel like there was a heavy yolk wobbling around inside.  They’re amusing all on their own, but after leaving them in the slash pile from spring cleaning, Riley realized they had POTENTIAL.

So we went around getting permission from a few businesses and the art museum, and I spent a few nights making plausible enormous chicken feathers in Riley’s lab out of grass, acrylic glaze and some other odds and ends laying around, and filling up the back of my mom’s van with as much of the backyard slash pile as fit in there, then drove out in the middle of the night to set up giant nests for the eggs, strewn with feathers and surrounded by Traffic cones and orange construction mesh and signs from the entirely fictitious “Department Of Fish And Wildfowl, Specious Relocation Division”

(an incomplete nest on the steps of Fort Collins Museum of Art)

(signage, responsibly warning people to stay away in case of giant chickens)

Riley even made QR codes that linked back to an obviously false Wiki- if you scrolled to the bottom, the page was covered in feathers and after five minutes it would start to make chicken noises.

People. Went. INSANE.

Crowds turned up to take selfies with the nests and Riley tracked down literally dozens of tagged photos captioned “IS THIS REAL????”.  

Someone wrote a very worried and not terribly facetious-sounding letter to the editor concerned that Giant Chickens were roaming around FoCo, something that big could hurt someone!  There was an entirely-serious-sounding counter-letter that we Humans have clearly invaded this majestic creature’s natural habitat, where are they SUPPOSED to make their nests, huh?   

Multiple people called the police to report having seen the elusive Gallus rostromegalus up in the hills or skulking around downtown. Reports claimed it was anywhere form five to twelve feet tall, with dramatic plumage and an eerie, yodeling sort of call.

A few nights after installing each nest, we went back, collected the eggs, and left broken ‘eggshells’ and extra down feather around each of the nests. One of the nests was put up at the local Garden Center and I remember one of the assistant managers coming outside just after we finished the ‘hatching’ and shrieking “OH GOD I THOUGHT THOSE WERE FAKE THEY’LL GET TO THE TOMATOES SOMEONE CALL THE POLICE!”  That woman would later become my manager when I worked there for a summer, though she never made the connection between me and The Chickens.

Riley passed away in 2015 after a good and well-lived life, and was kind enough to leave me The Eggs in his will.

It was a truly splendid bit of ruckus, and I miss him terribly, and I very much treasure the memories.  And the Eggs, which I am absolutely going to inflict on some unsuspecting neighbors at some point, in his honor.

So, I’m up at my parent’s house to return the power tools I borrowed and say hi, and I’m out walking the dogs. Got a leash in each hand, dual-weilding doggos. It’s a bit tricky but they’re used to this and don’t tangle as much and I’m the only person with good enough knees to stop them when they see snackable wildlife.

Anyway, we’re on the North end of the Poudre River trail, by overland, you know where that long bridge is? And I’m disposing of dog waste right before the bridge like a responsible adult when I hear what sounds like an ice cream truck playing “Yankee Doodle” at roughly five times the speed it’s normally played at and see the following:

There is a gentleman rapidly approaching our location who is also dual-weilding doggos, but in his case he’s got a pair of malamutes barreling down the trail at full Iditarod speed, clearly having the time of their lives. They’re hauling thier human behind them, whom I will describe from the top down:

He’s wearing a helmet, which is the only sensible thing going on here. He also has a magnificent handlebar mustache that is flapping joyously in the unusual October rain. He’s wearing a full body Spandex suit of such intensely clashing colors that is physically hurt to look at, but most importantly

He is riding

A unicycle.

It’s not a normal unicycle either this gentleman is towering over us mortals in an unreasonably massive unicycle, like he’d lost the back end of a penny farthing and decided that was an acceptable means of transportation. I see a device attached to the seat that looks like a pedal-powered music box which explains why my ears are being assaulted with the speed core rendition of Yankee Fucking Doodle. I do not see brakes.

I realize I have half a second to grab my own dogs before they decide to join or topple this strange Traveller from wherever Dr.Seuss books are set. I gather each animal under my arms and stand there with a collective hundred pounds of writhing canine under my armpits as the malamutes pick of speed and as they pass the gentleman cheerfully bellows something at me that I don’t hear because Arwen has already partially broken my hold and is attempting to climb on my head, presumably to launch herself at him.

And then he is gone.

We stand there, staring bewildered in the direction of his last known trajectory, listening as speedcore Yankee Doodle fades into the distance. Even after it is gone I still wait, because the trail ends in half a mile from here and I expect to here a crash, possibly even see a fire explosion. But nothing comes, only the sound of October rain and confused dogs.

So if you know of this gentleman and if he’s still alive/on the material plane, can you ask him something for me?

Content warnings: Fire and Explosions mention (no people or animals harmed), petty theft, dubious livestock handling and mentions of Ohio.  As usual, all the names have been changed to protect people’s privacy.

This is a story of man’s hubris in the face of Chemistry and Large Animals.

So back in northeast Ohio in the early 1950’s there was a Fireworks factory that was a source of pride and income for the county until 1955, when it burnt down in a spectacular conflagration that the local department was unable to handle.  When TK, the Owner asked to rebuild on the site, He was told, Quote:

“No.”

So they moved the site over the next county and into Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and were allowed to build on the condition that they do something to prevent another warehouse fire.  The owner at the time had a fairly splendid idea:  Instead of one LARGE warehouse that would burn up entirely in the (very likely) event of fire, he instead built many small warehouses scattered about some pastureland so that if something caught, only one small building would go up in flames.  Brilliant!

This did have the side effect of needing a great deal more land upon which to operate, and a good businessman doesn’t let a resource just sit there, so TK stumbled upon another brilliant idea: he’d ranch the land and make some money on beef!  He had actually gone to the county fair to purchase some Angus when he happened upon something he could sell for an even greater mark-up and generate some local interest.

Which is how TK ended up purchasing half a dozen Bison cows and a Bull Bison named Buford.

Trying to get better at building atmospheres in illustrations :)

This was fun!

ANIMATION PRACTISE