Kick Ass: Selected Columns

by Carl Hiaasen

In some places, cockfighting remains legal provided that the birds are not fitted with sharpened spurs, and that no gambling is allowed. This, of course, takes all the fun out of it. If the roosters can't slash each other to shreds, and if the spectators can't bet on it, where's the pleasure?

  The argument from animal-rights sissies is that cockfighting is cruel, even sadistic. They like to mention that big raid in West Dade a few years ago, when police found live roosters with their eyes missing. It happens, sure, but at least they didn't wind up as fried nuggets in a Col. Sanders

  box.

  Most of those arrested last week at the Hialeah pit were accused of misdemeanors, although a few face felony charges that carry possible five-year prison terms. In Florida, it's illegal to promote, stage, attend or gamble on an animal fight.

  Now's the time to take a stand against such government intrusion.Tell those pointy-heads in Tallahassee that enough's enough—what goes on between a man and his chicken, well, that's a sacred and private thing.

  And who's to say these gallant birds don't relish the tang of fresh blood on their beaks! Why, you should see their tiny eyes light up when those spurs are strapped to their shins. There is no finer moment in sports.

  So cheer those crusaders who carried their killer roosters to the courthouse steps, for justice comes to those who crow the loudest. Free the Hialeah 186!

  Land snakes! Pythons seem to like it here

  October 11, 1989

  Finally, some good news about Florida wildlife.

  The panthers might be vanishing, but the pythons have arrived.

  You know all about Big Mama, the 20-foot beauty that was living comfortably under somebody's house in Fort Lauderdale.The neighborhood kids kept telling their parents that they'd seen this monster subterranean serpent eating raccoons and opossums, and naturally their parents didn't believe a word of it.

  Once captured, Big Mama has gone on to become a star of local and national media. If you're in the TV biz, there's no video like snake video.

  Then, just when you thought it was safe to be a raccoon again, along comes Junior, another semi-humongous python who turned up last week at a local construction site. Though measuring only about 17 feet, Junior was nonetheless stretched out and posed with every TV reporter in the tri-county area. The next day the poor creature died from internal bleeding. Such is the price of fame.

  The authorities want us to believe that these two snakes were freaks in our midst and that their discovery within weeks of each other was just a wild coincidence. They want us to swallow the notion that these pythons were family pets that either escaped or were abandoned. But how many people do you know who own a 20-foot snake? Or even two 10-footers?

  No, these carnivorous beasties had been loose for some time, doing what pythons do best—eating, sleeping and making lots of baby pythons (females lay up to 100 eggs).

  Wildlife experts say there's nothing to worry about, but they said the same thing about Bufo toads, and look what happened. And parrots—every neighborhood now has its own flock of screeching parrots. Were all these birds somebody's pet? Not unless they staged a mass breakout. More likely, they've simply adopted South Florida as their new home and are merrily reproducing in the tops of our banyan trees.

  Same goes for the pythons. They're here to stay. Both Big Mama and Junior were an exotic species called the reticulated python, which happens to be the longest snake in the world. Here are the most commonly asked questions about our newest tropical neighbor:

  Where do they come from?

  The reticulated python is native to Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Burma and the Philippines.

  How big do they get?

  Commonly growing to 25 feet, the largest known specimen was killed in 1912 on the north coast of Celebes.The snake measured 32 feet, 9 1/2 inches.

  What do they eat?

  Pythons prefer to dine on small mammals, although the larger specimens will gobble the occasional deer or goat. In one of the few documented cases of its kind, a 31-foot reticulated python is known to have eaten a 14-year-old boy on the island of Salebabu, in Indonesia. The attack happened several years ago, and there's no reason to suspect that this particular python has migrated to South Florida. Yet.

  Are pythons swift, clever and keen-eyed?

  No, pythons generally are slow, dull-witted and myopic. In stalking prey, however, they have the considerable advantages of stealth, camouflage and about 300 pounds of sheer muscle. They also love to climb trees and swim rivers.The good news is they're not poisonous. The bad news is they kill by brute constriction.

  How do I know if one is living under my house?

  If you haven't seen your poodle for a few days, it might be a good idea to check around. Fortunately, a python such as Big Mama only gets hungry every couple of months. The rest of the time they just sort of curl up and grow.

  What do I do if I find a 32-foot python in my yard?

  The one thing you don't do is try to kill it with a rake. Rakes work fine on pesky little garter snakes, but not pythons. All you do is get them incredibly ticked off, which is a bad idea. As any professional reptile trapper will tell you, the ideal python is an unperturbed python.

  You said these things climb trees! So what happens if a giant python falls out of a tree and lands on top of me?

  Then you can kiss your sorry asp goodbye.

  Send in clowns—and book them, of course

  January 9, 1991

  Busted again.

  Performance artist Kman (no hyphen), AKA Art Kendallman, AKA Monkey Joe, AKA the Missile—collared during the Orange Bowl parade.

  Intercepted as an unauthorized clown.

  "I was just parading like I do every year," Kman says. "They said the director didn't want me there."

  Kman loves a parade. He waits all year for the Orange Bowl. Usually he tags along with the Ringling Brothers clowns, but this year the Ring-ling clowns didn't participate so Kman was pretty much running solo.

  His costume was, well, distinctive. The green jump suit with the red dots wasn't too gaudy, especially for a clown. The sneakers with the flashing lights weren't so peculiar, either. It was the rest of the outfit: "I have a helmet with goggles and a mask. My mask is like a hawk pilot. I'm a hawk! Yeah, and I have a helicopter on my head."

  That's what seems to have caught the attention of police.

  "It's motorized and everything," Kman says of the helicopter. "It's a great chopper. It's a Huey. I found it at Toys-R-Us, amazingly enough. A scale-model Huey!" So he was whirlybirding down Biscayne Boulevard toward the grandstand and the network TV lights when a Miami policeman stopped him. Kman didn't have a permit to be there.

  He told the cop he hadn't missed an Orange Bowl parade since 1984. He explained how the Ringling clowns always welcomed him into their formation. Kman says the cop told him OK, get with the Ringling guys. But there was no sign of them, so Kman loosely hooked up with some clowns from the phone company.

  This is how he describes his act: "Basically I'm flying this helicopter on my head and basically running around. I do different stunts, turns and spins. I'm a dancer, so I dance while I do this."

  He was just warming up, revving the chopper, when the same cop spotted him again. "I also was walking really slow, and that had something to do with it," Kman theorizes.

  At any rate, he got arrested for trespassing. The police report straightforwardly describes the suspect as a man "adorned with a helicopter" who "did not belong in the show."

  As he was hustled out of the parade, some of the spectators booed the cops. Kman spent five hours in custody. "They had great fun with me," he recalls. "They had me posing with officers and taking pictures." Kman relates the story with annoyance but no bitterness. He's been arrested before. Once he was riding the Metrorail as Monkey Joe—that is, dressed as a monkey and squatting on his haunches like a monkey and occasionally making noises like a monkey—when he was busted for wearing a mask in a public place.

  On the day the pope v
isited Miami, Kman was arrested again for refusing to remove his goggle mask. At the time, he was riding a bicycle with the scale model of a Hercules military transport plane mounted on the front. He is uncommonly fond of miniature war toys; he once appeared in public as a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

  Says his lawyer, Glenn Terry: "He's a harmless guy who's trying to say something, though I don't know what it is."

  Police say Kman wasn't causing any problems at the Orange Bowl parade, except that he refused to go away.The parade folks say it's unfortunate that Kman was arrested, but say he should've got a permit like all the other clowns.

  "We had Captain Crime Stopper, and the World's Fastest Clown," notes Gene Cokeroft, director of production for the parade. "My gosh, we'd never say no to a clown." He added that Kman's whirling helicop-ter-on-the-head routine sounded very entertaining.

  Next year, Krnan promises, he will go through the proper clown channels. As for the theme of his performance, the message of his art: "Fly in peace," he says. "Whatever."

  No peace for movie ushers who want quiet

  June 26, 1991

  AMC Theaters has announced a crackdown on customers who yak during movies: Violators will be ejected after one warning.

  This ought to be fun, especially in South Florida. We've got the loudest, surliest, burliest, most well-armed movie audiences in the hemisphere. A verbal warning might only provoke them.

  What prompted AMC's new policy was a national survey in which 71 percent of those interviewed named "disruptive behavior" as the reason they don't go to the movies more often. Like AMC, Wometco and General Cinema are attempting to discourage talkers by showing on-screen warnings before every film. The test will be trying to back up those threats with serious muscle.

  AMC says it will order its ushers to patrol the aisles vigilantly. I didn't even know they still employed ushers! They've got plenty of uniformed young men whose job is guarding the uniformed young women who make the buttered popcorn, but these fellows are under strict orders never to leave the refreshment stand. You seldom catch them inside the theaters.

  Say you scrounge up some ushers crazy enough to take on a South Florida movie audience. Training them will cost a fortune. Start with a basic martial-arts course, then six weeks on the firing range, nightscope training, wilderness survival school, hostage negotiations, and so on. Those who don't wash out of the program still won't be prepared for the teeming hellpit that is your average early-bird matinee in, say, West Broward. There's one sure way to see if an usher is combat-ready. Put him in the aisles during a Woody Allen movie.

  Allen is a literate and witty screenwriter. His movies are full of clever lines, exquisitely timed. Enjoying the dialogue, unfortunately, requires that one be able to hear it. That's simply not possible in many local theaters.

  The problem is chronic and insurmountable. Woody Allen sets most of his pictures in New York. Many South Florida moviegoers are from New York, or have relatives there, or once visited there on vacation. Thus they cannot restrain from exclaiming, at the most crucial moment of the movie:

  "Look, there's the Chrysler Building! We were there with your cousin, remember? Back when she had that terrible gout!"

  At which point, the wife is likely to say (in a voice like a diesel): "That wasn't the Chrysler Building, it was the World Trade Center! And it wasn't gout, it was gallstones!"

  Other Manhattan landmarks that send moviegoers into clamorous eruptions are Radio City, the Empire State Building, Macy's, the Plaza Hotel, any Broadway marquee, and of course Central Park. Whenever there's a scene in Central Park, you might as well go buy some Raisinets and relax in the lobby, because you won't be able to hear a word of the movie. Audience members will be trading moldy Central Park anecdotes for 15, 20 minutes easy. Another perilous situation for ushers is Terminator-type films, which rely on spectacular methods of incineration, dismemberment and organ removal. In other parts of the country, such scenes evoke normal shrieking and groans of disgust. Here in South Florida, though, they inspire long esoteric debates about technique—for example, is a grain thresher more effective than a circular saw? How long do human body parts keep in the refrigerator?

  Only the boldest of ushers would interrupt such a conversation with a "Sssshhhh."

  Once a customer defies the warning, the challenge is subduing the noisy culprit and removing him or her from the movie. Many of these babblers are quite huge, much bigger than your average usher. Nothing short of a flash fire is going to budge them from their seats.

  AMC's solution is to offer a refund if they'll get up and leave peacefully. That'll probably work fine in Tulsa, but extra coaxing may be required here in Miami.

  We're talking stun guns and grappling hooks.

  Miami politics a sticking point for voodooers

  February 20, 1992

  Miami City Hall, usually likened to a circus, is now a chamber of the occult. Goodbye, Ringling Brothers. Hello, Addams Family.

  Commissioner Victor DeYurre's office is being plagued by eerie happenings. A miniature coffin, containing hair, appeared on an assistant's desk. A door was defaced with a cross drawn in blood. Two of the commissioner's aides recently received anonymous voodoo-style dolls, with pins protruding from the tiny torsos. Each of the dolls wore a noose.

  Maybe this stuff goes on at all city halls, but I doubt it. Even by Miami standards, a punctured voodoo doll is worthy of concern. DeYurre has downplayed the creepy incidents and remained calm. However, three veteran aides have abruptly departed his staff for other city jobs.

  We don't know if the mystery doll-impaler was aiming his ire at DeYurre personally, but the possibility must be addressed. Criticism of politicians takes many forms, and a miniature coffin undoubtedly deserves more attention than a telegram.

  South Florida's multicultured society offers a rich selection of hexes, spells and curses that could be unleashed on local officeholders. I can understand why disgruntled citizens might resort to blood scrawls and the like. Nothing else seems to work. Say Metro approves an ugly shopping center for your quiet suburban neighborhood. Say the swing vote on the zoning change was a commissioner who ignored all even-tempered letters and phone calls. How do you repay such betrayal? You either wait for the next election and vote the rascal out of office—or lay a heavy-duty hex on him now.

  Buy a voodoo doll (about $5 at curio shops) and dress it up to resemble the offending politician. For authenticity, you should costume the doll with as much detail as possible. (For instance, if the target of your spell is Mayor Steve Clark, the doll should have a tiny little five-iron in its hands.)

  The next step is choosing an appropriate curse. Hexing a governor or senator will require bigger medicine than hexing, say, an assistant city manager in Hialeah Gardens. For dosage information, amateur conjurers can consult many modern texts. A good one is Voodoo and Hoodoo by Jim Haskins, who culled centuries of folklore to document popular hexing customs.

  A favored technique is to cut open the voodoo doll and sprinkle cayenne pepper inside. Sew the doll up with black thread. Then you tie its hands and place it in a kneeling position in a remote corner of the house. Says Haskins: "You may subject it to other indignities—kick it, blindfold it. Corresponding problems will befall the victim." More somber rites involve a small coffin, a black cat, a chicken and a glass of whiskey. Details are too gross to mention here, but suffice to say that the chicken and the cat get the worst of the deal.

  A word of caution: When attempting black magic, please don't harm any innocent creatures. Not even a slug should lose its life because of Victor DeYurre, or any politician.

  Most homespun spells are designed for wicked landlords, wayward spouses and greedy relatives. Improvisation is necessary to make them effective at city hall. Don't waste time sticking pins into your mayor-doll's back. Stick them into its pockets, to discourage graft.

  Experts don't know if voodoo will become a potent political force in South Florida, but its use might be more widespread than
suspected. Haskins writes of a tested ritual to cause mental confusion and temporary insanity:

  "Obtain a piece of the intended victim's hair and singe it lightly over an open flame. Then bury it deep in the ground to cause him to lose his mind."

  This one already has been tried, with obvious success. See for yourself. Visit the next Miami commission meeting.

  Modern world puts evolution into reverse

  July 6, 1995

  Scientists are advancing a theory that human beings have stopped evolving because we've interfered with natural selection.

  Thousands of years ago, the fittest of the species endured, while the weakest stumbled into tar pits or got eaten by saber-toothed tigers. That doesn't happen much anymore, and consequently—these experts assert—humans are actually devolving, getting dumber and less fit.

  The hypothesis is bolstered by the popularity of daytime talk shows and psychic hotlines. More empirical evidence is supplied every Fourth of July, when alcohol and explosives are freely distributed among the populace.

  It would've been an ideal day for geneticists and naturalists to have visited Dade County, where a water crisis became a startling biosocial experiment.

  Here's what happened. Runoff from recent heavy rains dumped hazardous levels of fecal bacteria and other nasty microbes into the Oleta River and Biscayne Bay. Health officials quickly detected the contamination, and warned people to stay out of the water.

  It was not a precipitous announcement. Swimming in sewage is dangerous, especially for children. Bacteria enter the human body through any orifice of convenience, and commence to make you sick as a dog.

  A Ph.D. in microbiology is not necessary to grasp the concept: Clean water is good. Poopy water is bad.

  Local newscasts aired the pollution warnings for days, and displayed detailed maps showing which areas were unsafe for swimming. By dawn's early light on July 4, it was reasonable to assume that almost everybody was aware of the problem, and had relocated their picnic plans to a safe beach.