The Boogerville Brats, A Cautionary Tale*

 

            The song spread like wildfire! It was “penned” by some smarty arsed youthful Squatch with a broad sense of humor and not much respect for convention, Human or Forest Man’s.  
            “We’re the Boogerville Brats,
            And that’s that!
            We do just as we please.
            So, you’re a camper?
            That doesn’t hamper
            Our elbows or our knees!
            So, this is your house
            Well, goody for you!
            You might not like it
            When we get through!!
            Boo Hoo!
            Oh, the Boogerville Brats
            Will fix you up good!
            Hoot or whack as you will!
            Wah wah, wah ahooooo!  

    (Think "When You're a Jet" from West Side Story. Something in that spirit.)      
 
            It spread like a contagion from pod to tribe to family to clan, all among the young and frisky. It didn’t scan that well, but maybe that was part of the attraction. Even quite nice young Forest People learned it, even if they had to sing it quietly.
            It didn’t really prescribe any particular disruptive behavior. But it didn’t have to. It left latitude for invention.
            Well, youth is youthful, and singing a sub-cultural song is one thing. Perhaps it should have been pinched off where it started somewhere down in the American southeast. But it wasn’t, because elders didn’t take it one bit seriously. “The little boogers are acting up a little, ah well, they’ll be too busy being older shortly.”
            Singing inspires the young, else where do armies, and children’s marches, and movements come from? The contagion of group thought. It led to the desire to best one’s besties in acts of nuisance toward the homo sapiens of the land.
            The first generation of the contagion was pretty predictable. Young Boogers* would rap on windows at night and run off giggling, while some lady grabbed  her neckline and hollered. It was delicious!
            Youngsters in neighboring forests would hear the song and hear of the exploits of the first responders and figure they could do better. And better they did. Some of them found campers at night, sleeping the sleep of the human and unaware. Mostly these kids just made noise. There was always something to bang around. They would sing the song and then split before anybody got seriously awake.
            A group further to the northwest thought these were pretty pathetic and childish exploits. A leader amongst them, Harold, began to devise games for his buddies. What he came up with was something like counting coup. A burly young Booger would run up to a tent, unzip the zipper, and if he was bold and fearless, reach in and give a person a good yank on whatever part he could get ahold of, all the while singing the song. Sometimes they would grab some lady and then the screaming would start.
            Youngster began marching in groups through the forests of America in broad gleaming daylight singing the song.
            Somebody told somebody, and then they told somebody else, and eventually word got to Ralph. He was not amused. And as we know Ralph really prefers to be amused. So, he was doubly not amused.
            Harold’s group inspired Gnrrr, who refused to go by an English name. Gnrrr was dire and dark and not kidding. He was still young but had potential to be a real cross-cultural problem when he hit his full stride.                         “Games?” Gnrrr thought. “I like games, when the loser is some peckerwood human!”
            He wasn’t a real thinker though and he couldn’t remember the words of the song, so he bagged it and went straight to what he called games.
            He gathered all his age group, who were probably somewhere in southern Idaho. This thing had been spreading.
            He told them that he would put a good word in with his tall dark and glamorous sister, Anki, for the guy who could sneak into a house at night and steal the pillow out from under a human head, with extra credit for getting the pajamas or sweats or whatever too.
            This turned out to be the ultimate straw. Things got ugly in Idaho for several nights. Houses were invaded. Not many pillows were stolen because people in Idaho are also not kidding. Some shots were fired too. No jokers were injured, however, just scared out of their hairy minds. They returned to Gnrrr lamenting. No good word was given. Anki remained single.
            Once again word got back to Ralph by several stages. He whistled up Maeve and told her to repeat this message to Benny in Concrete, WA, where he was supposed to be keeping order in the Squatch community and all that sort of thing. The message went, “Find this Gnrrr in Idaho, use a portal. Don’t waste time hiking. You know what is going on. Make it stop. You know what to do!”
            Maeve flew all the way to Concrete in a few hours and found Benny at home with Lily in the Basket House and delivered her message. After a snack and a short rest she flew back to Ralph to say, “mission accomplished.”
            Now, Benny remembered what it was like to be a brat/joker/pest. So he was the perfect guy to deal with this Forest fad. He had some sympathy, but he also knew it was a dead end and no good would come of it, even for the jokers.
            Benny kissed Lily goodbye, said he would be back before too long, and took one of those mysterious shortcuts to Jerome, ID, where Gnrrr was hanging out with his gang of pests in an abandoned spud cellar.                     Benny pretty much followed his nose to find them. Forest People don’t have any trouble doing that. He already knew the general location from gossip, rumor, and outraged news. Gnrrr and the boys were making Squatches smell bad with the locals reputation wise.
            When Benny slipped into the old collapsing spud cellar seven pairs of red eyes glared at him.
            “Peekaboo!” said Benny. “I found you goofballs.”
            “Huh?” said Gnrrr, followed by grunting from the guys.
            “I have a message from Ralph, Himself, for you guys. He says “Stop. Now.”
            “Who is Ralph? I don’t know any Ralph. Why should I care?” said Gnrrr.
            Benny said, “Listen. You don’t want him to come down here. You really don’t. You’re big, but you’re stupid. He knows stuff you guys will never know or even guess!”
            “Scare me cutie,” said Gnrrr.
            “OK,” said Benny. He had just lost his last bit of sympathy for these hairy clowns.
            So! Standing in the dark in a spud cellar in Idaho he began to sing the Song of Reversals that Ralph had taught him a couple of years before. Even human people within earshot had goosebumps and couldn’t define what they were hearing. It was unearthly deep, long waved sound. Birds and beasts hunkered down and waited for it to be over.
            Things started to happen. The ground kind of shifted. Dirt fell from the overhead in the cellar. The big tough guys began keening in fear, because they knew this wasn’t just an earthquake.
            They forgot the song they didn’t know anyhow. They forgot the games. Six of them forgot about Anki too.
            They walked out into the darkness backward and disappeared. The song had sent them home. The song did its work like ripples spreading in a pond.
            Harold and friends forgot the song and stopped counting coup and then forgot the whole thing.
            Back and back it went until no one could remember the stupid song and in fact weren’t sure what all the excitement had been about.
            The Boogerville Brats fad was dead, was a dud, and was over. It was so passé no one would even mention it.
            By the time it was all tidied up Benny was back home with Lily getting ready to eat his dinner. During dinner he told her all about it. He was quite pleased, and Lily was quite impressed. Benny thought maybe they should visit up at the Home Clearing soon. Maybe Ralph would teach him another song!
 
*A booger is what some southern people call the creature we mostly refer to as a Bigfoot or a Sasquatch. To me the word seems to be related to the British usage “bugger” which is what old time rural farmers called an animal. It think it’s from Yorkshire.