A crafty unicorn . . . was captured by a snapshooter after a two-day chase from Central Park to the Bay Area . . . The unicorn was nicknamed Holden. It is unclear whether the AP misheard [Texas] Hold ‘em coming through as the protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye – The News, November 3rd.
Nobody knows how Holden got into Central Park. But he may not be the first. “The Unicorn in the Garden,” a woman claimed her “booby” of a husband saw, which he denied, saw his nag of a wife taken away instead to the “booby hatch.” She remained there, institutionalized for the rest of her life – The News, November 4th.
Holden, the crafty Central Park unicorn, mysteriously “liked” carousel content Thursday night—just as he was set to go off-grid, an Instagram spokesperson said. The young unicorn . . . closed Facebook as his pics were being tagged #TBT by so-called friends . . . “It’s one of the hardest things we have to deal with as social media users,” said Bonnie Rodríguez, a professional photographer whose gallery work featured Holden on exhibit at Los Angeles back in 2013. “Hopefully something can be learned from this so there can be better outcomes for this very misunderstood animal.” – The News, November 19th.
If you’re really interested in hearing all this, you probably want to know where I was whelped, and what my parents’ dumb rainbow gate was like, and how they were always preoccupied with pegasi, and all that “doctrine of the mask” kind of crap, but I’d really rather not go into it, if that’s all right with you.
It’s not that I don’t have the time, residing here in Queens and all, where I can rest up conveniently, and not be a hazard to the joggers and the rabbits and so on. In Queens I really have quite a free schedule, between feedings, and pacing back and forth, which I don’t really have to do but I do it anyway, because the little kids seem to enjoy it, and I feel it is expected of me.
One so-called bit of horsefeathers I will mention, just because I find the whole business so damn aggravating, is that before I was here I did not have a name—not Holden, not anything—and I wish I didn’t have one now. It’s really not unicornlike. To have a name at all, that is, let alone Holden. I guess you’d probably have to be a unicorn to know what I mean.
The thing I want to tell you about isn’t my unstable foalhood or anything like that, but a bunch of stuff that happened to me a long while ago when I first came to New York City, which you may have heard a little bit about if you were the kind of person who was reading the newspapers around then. What made me think of it was, recently, I was at my favorite watering hole and I saw this crazy picture that looked sort of like me, on the floor of what some cheap motel optimistically called a “pool.” Right smack-dab in the middle was this stupid joker, who could even be my own dumb little brother for all I know, sitting in an empty concrete hole, and you can see some water next to him, some tube and whatnot snaking out, and he’s looking straight up at the photographer with this particular expression in his eyes—not a dopey expression, but sort of the opposite of dopey, you might say. Like what he’s looking at is dopey; it’s hard to describe. He’s looking with a horsey, flashy, teethy sort of grin. The smile kind of curls up over his nose, and you can tell he’s about to open his muzzle and lick there, too. I couldn’t believe it when I noticed that. I’ve done that myself only about a couple of hundred thousand times. It’s a habit I have.
Probably he had just taken a drink of the water he’s sitting next to, in the picture, I mean. That’s the reason he’s ponying up a toothy grin for licking his nose. After you drink, you’ll find there’s almost always a few drops of liquid hanging from the end of your nose, which can be rather irritating, believe me.
And in the meantime this photographer starts to snap, from a goddam tree limb maybe even hanging by her heels or something, probably all red in the face after running full speed for about eighty miles trying to find this rabbit, photo equipment and straps and all hanging down and dangling everywhere from the tree while the camera is making these very upsetting snap snap snap snap snap sounds. This variety of sound of taking potshots also happens to be very terrifying to rabbits, by the way.
You see, I can tell, from my own personal experience, almost exactly where the joker is staying. It’s in the Wood by the grotto where they have an absolutely enormous amount of rabbits. That happens to be just about my favorite place in the whole city, it really is. Not many people are aware that area has a great number of playboys and bunnies that just sort of go hopping along enjoying themselves around the grotto, not near the pier, far away from where a bunch of sea lions would be waddling around with a fat man’s strut. And then this photographer comes along snapping photos and cracking tree limbs and causing pieces of bark to fall in the holly of the woodland, scaring the rabbits away.
But that’s not exactly the stuff I started to tell you about, though—I mean the stuff that happened to me a few years back, that I mentioned before. In my case, with the particular events involving myself and rabbits and so on, my problems, if you want to call them that, started when I got kind of turned around awkwardly—I’ve always had the crappiest sense of direction, it’s a terrible flaw for someone in my occupation. Suddenly I was about halfway lost and running all over on extremely hard ground with cars and buildings and all that, never even a stable where I could crawl in and take a breather, and sometimes people were shouting at me.
Then high up in the air I saw a couple of rabbits, a welcome sight, not that these weren’t the fakest rabbits in the world, you understand, but still it kind of improved my mood just seeing them there.
The thing about rabbits hopping in the air is, they can’t stay there forever—they have to come down. As a unicorn you learn this fact pretty early on, trust me. And, when they do come down, ninety-nine percent of the time it’s a hill or woodsy area, and, if you’re lucky, fairly near the road, as I pointed out before. So I kept an eye on the general direction these rabbits seemed to be going, and I went that way myself, with a lot more running, and being shouted at, and some dodging around cars that I really could have done without, quite frankly.
Then I saw a lot of trees, and a stone wall that I kind of leaped over, and then I was in the Park, where it’s much more relaxing, if you tend to be excitable, which I sometimes am.
Pretty soon I saw a gas station up ahead, and I could tell it was a gas station, and, sure enough, cars were at it. I don’t know if it was the same cars I saw flying past me earlier, but it could have been. I don’t know that much about the individual cars, to be perfectly honest, because they all kind of blend together for me. Really, I have never seen such an incredible bonanza of cars as in that freeway, and even trucks and a few goofy tractors with those long trailers and whatnot. I never dreamt of so much horsepower. Talk about a unicorn tail-pipe dream. Right away I’d decided this was my favorite place ever, as I mentioned previously. I kind of strolled over to it in a quiet way, around on the other side of the gas station, so as not to get the grease monkeys all flustered and unhappy. I leaned back and enjoyed the scenery and finally let my heart go back to a more normal rate of speed for a change.
But if you’re really partial to the rabbits, like I am, you want to do more than just watch them, so pretty soon I began creeping up using this special method that I have, with my knees bent and my stomach practically brushing the ground. It looks kind of strange, but it’s effective as hell.
The only drawback when I do that is sometimes I forget about my horn, and the stupid thing sticks out. That’s something I know I have to work on, I really do. Anyway, I must’ve forgotten, and my horn must’ve stood out, and someone must’ve seen it. All at once there was yelling, and people pointing, so I quickly decided to go for a kind of unobtrusive stroll someplace far away. I stopped in a horseshoe store. But then I noticed a car was following me, and another car, and another, and then goddam helicopters if you can believe it, and there were people on one side of me, and when I turned there were more over there. Well, I won’t exhaust you with all the stupid details. I think they probably shot me with one of those flashbulb jobs. I had a hell of a headache afterwards, I can tell you that.
I’d like to meet that other joker, the one whose picture I saw, and tell him I really sympathize with what he’s dealing with at the pool. Not to get all sappy or anything, but my heart kind of goes out to the poor slob. I feel like if I could give him any helpful advice, which I probably can’t ever do because there’s no chance I’d ever actually meet up with him or anything—but, if I did, I’d tell him to stay as far from the pool as much as he possibly can. I know it goes against common sense, but these people here don’t want a wild card near the pool at all. It’s not like anybody would miss one or two of them, they have so many. Maybe these people have a water sport fetish or something. Maybe it’s a whole city full of goddam pool sharks—don’t ask me. Anyway, just take my word for it, leaving their precious goddam pool alone is definitely the best policy.
Maybe I’m an animal with certain problems and all, like they say, but I still think I’ve learned some halfway brilliant things in my life. If I weren’t sort of temporarily stuck here, I’d love to tell him all this junk, and help him out. If I am being completely transparent, I am wearing a mask. We all wear them. Every day in every way we pose in a mask of our outward appearance and public manner. Social media is a mask. Friendship is a mask. And yes, friends on social media, definitely a mask. Except for that woman you barely remember from tenth grade who keeps popping up on your Facebook page like a cold sore which you could see because she’d post about it in an extended interior monologue of thought and feeling, like a fictional character. On the contrary, the mask is your outward bearing of a fabulous animal—whatever, not trying to sound profound. Really, they’re just masks. But they’re ours.
If you enjoyed this story, don’t forget to hit the so-called like button—it makes a huge difference with the goddam algorithm. And if you loved it, for chrissakes, share it with a friend already.