LITTLE FEATUS

 

All dogs are bipolar. I don't mean they're manic-depressive. I mean they have a North Pole and a South Pole. Their identity is established by both, and they recognize each other by using both. Whenever dogs greet one another, they sniff each other, north and south. Whenever they urinate or defecate, they're not just eliminating body waste, they're signing the neighborhood guest book. After a dog has marked a spot, other dogs who subsequently come along can sniff and tell: what gender the dog was, how big he was, what he'd been eating, and how long ago he signed in. Dogs interpret this information to know the territory because, in the last analysis, they're social animals, and their relationship to one another is hierarchal. This hierarchy determines dominance, which determines feeding order and reproduction rights.
One day it occurred to me, while observing the hindquarters of a dog, that his tail looked like the trunk of an elephant, and his anus kind of resembled a mouth. That illusion could be very firmly reinforced if he had a great big pair of eyes to go along with these features, located in the appropriate spots. Of course, I also remembered seeing images of the Devil in European art. Sometimes he had a face on his ass. Obviously the image had presented itself to other artists in history when they too looked at some animal's backside and imagined the same thing. I just gave it a slightly new twist. Randy Adams put Featus' second face on him in 1982 at Dr. Fussell's office in Houston.
:::l e s s
m o r e:::