walk around town. Passing beneath a canopy of leafy maples, he spied a grocery selling fresh vegetables. Picking up some tomatoes and munching them carefully, he peered into the window of a clothing store specializing in camping equipment; beside the store stood a weapons disposal unit, followed by a book store featuring a sale of Karl Marx’s Das Capital edited by Leslie Lenin, great-grandson of Friedrich Engels. Attila went inside, purchased a paperback copy, sat down on the curb, opened the book, lay back to read a few pages, and soon fell asleep on the sidewalk. The high altitude with its thin oxygenation had slowed his bodily and mental processes, quieted his emotions, especially his violent streak, and given him a headache.
However, the rarified atmosphere also facilitated etymological analysis, creating subtle linguistic shifts, not only in his command of classical Latin and Greek, but in his continued study of Ugoritic, Phoenician, Akkadian, and Sumerian. It was in fact during that first semester at Bustard, his so- called “Sidewalk Period,” as he dozed on cement, that Attila formulated his Theory of Linguistic Connection, the notion that ancient Sumerian and modern Finno-Ugric came from the same linguistic family. “Ur,” as in Abraham’s Ur of the Chaldeans, and the biblo-Chaldean city of Erech (Ur-ech), had names closely related to their modern Hungarian equivalent Ur, meaning “master” or “mister.” Attila practiced his developing linguistic skills on his cell phone, calling his father Ur Zany and bowing before the technology in deep respect.
The lad had borrowed many of these ideas from Origin of the Hungarian Nation, by the Floridian scholarette Ida Bobula. Several months later, as mastery of his skills grew, he was discovered by Dr. Babril Tsupalensky, Rector of Bustard University’s Linguistics Department, who offered him a full linguistic scholarship.
With new funds available, Attila rented a mountain cabin. He spent the next four years surrounded by glorious pine trees, bears, skunks, and birds. Hoping to improve his fluency in ancient languages, he spoke Akkadian to passing bears, using phrases like “How Ur you?” or “Give me Ur hand.” The bears observed him strangely, and their blank response convinced him that better communication skills between bears and humans were needed.
During this “cabin period,” he wrote Grammar of Ursaline Linguistics, which became a best-seller among forest rangers and environmentally conscious Coloradians. Page 16 of the book, filled with action verbs, was adopted by leaders of the “Free the Bears” movement. By assiduously studying its contents as their guide, Podunk Sleswick, Joe “Pebbles” Podushevsky, and Ellen Estretch organized an Ursine March on Washington. Attila’s ursaline verb forms enabled them to speak directly to bears. Alas, the march failed to materialize after the two leaders were clawed to death during a bear consciousness-raising session.
Attila, having spent most of his four college years in his cabin, asked himself one month before graduation, “Where do I go from here?” Answers to this question along with his story of personal transformation can be found in his autobiography, A Bustard Among Men:
It started during my last year at Bustard. What I would do after I graduated? What path would I take? Self-discovery was my goal; I wanted to understand the Me inside me.
One day, in a meditative mood, I took a walk on one of the many mountain trails outside town. Pines, sedimentary rocks, sparkling granite beauties, sprinkled and popped on the marked trail. The rising sun threw spears of flashing light across my path.
Suddenly, a heard a gunshot! Running further up the path, I heard another. I spied a man sitting in a tree, rifle in hand, aiming at the ground. Bang! When he saw me, he aimed at me. Bang! A bullet whizzed past me. Then another and another. Luckily, he always missed.
We soon became friends. That tall, slender man, balanced precariously on a branch, wore a buckskin shirt, leather pants, an Indian feather behind his ear, and heavy work boots. A red beard covered the right side of his face, and a gray cowboy hat, with a plastic eagle perched above it, sat on his head.
He lowered his gun. “Who are you?”
“Attila Zany.”
He raised his gun, pointed it at my chest, and looked me over. “Sounds Hunnish to me.” The man squinted, waited a moment, but eventually lowered his weapon. “The only Zany I know is Brunhilde Zany. She lives down in Cleaver Creek.”
“That’s my mother.”
“Your ma?”
“Yup. After I got into Bustard, I left New Jersey. Ma wanted to be near me. So she moved to Colorado to keep our relationship close.”
“You’re a Bustard U. guy? Out here we call them U Bustards. Four years ago some Bustards from the Animal Rights Department hired me as a wildlife lab technician. I like animals. They said to me, ‘Bob, we’re doing a study of rattlesnake bites. You’re a winner with a gun. Want to kill snakes for us? I said, ‘Sure, why not?’ That’s why folks call me ‘Rattlesnake.” ’
“Fitting.”
“Right. I’m an aural kind of guy. I like sounds, rattling sounds—tin can rattle, coconut rattle, snake rattle, death rattle, anything that rattles. I like killing things, too. When my lab job ended, my life wasn’t going anywhere. I looked into my heart and decided to pursue my deepest interest. So I bought a gun, came to the mountains, sat down by the roadside, and shot rattlesnakes. Been doing it three years now. A good life until six months ago . . . . I ran out of snakes. The peace and quiet nearly killed me. Then I decided to take control of my life. I took my money out of the Denver bank, headed for Toys R Us, and bought out their baby rattles. I’ve been shooting rattles ever since.”
“Expensive hobby.”
“Hobby? Shooting isn’t a hobby. It’s a calling! When I realized the importance of it, and the pressure it put me under, I could hardly stand it. I even thought about killing people! I tried a few times, got arrested, ended up in prison. But after a year, the warden gave up on me. ‘You’re too violent for prison,’ he said. ‘I’m putting you on the street where you can do some good.’ I’ve been out ever since.
“But my interest in shooting people evaporated. No one smiled at me when I shot them. I like a good reception. I like smiles. If folks don’t appreciate you, life’s no fun. So now I only shoot snakes, when there are any, and rattles when there ain’t.”
“Did you ever meet my ma?”
“Sure did. She’s some babe. What a sombrero! Does she ever take that thing off?”
“Hasn’t for years. She’s ashamed of her cerebralectomy. The doctor started but never finished . . . .” I shifted to one leg. Reflecting further on my childhood, I added, “Rattlesnake, you’re making me homesick. Maybe I’ll visit her.”
“Mothers’re like that. Mine sure was until I shot her lemon pie full of holes.” Rattlesnake raised his gun, aimed at one of the broken toy rattles lying under the pine tree, and pulled the trigger. The pop of the gunshot rattled and ricocheted throughout the canyon. “It’s always good to visit your ma. To my knowledge, she’s still living in Schizoid House.”
“ . . . She took that name from her sorority house. I’ve never liked it. It demeans her talents.”
