Geese Louise!


Revenge of the Lawn by Richard Brautigan

"Revenge of the Lawn" is the titular short story from a collection by the same name. I've read a few so far (there are QUITE a few in the collection), and this was the most entertaining one yet. The main bit of humor is about how a once-beautiful lawn has become cursed and barren through neglect, and now inflicts harm upon one of the characters, through various bizarre ways.

In wonderful Brautigan-fashion, a gaggle of geese stumble upon a moonshiner's mash (which I assume is the leftover pulp of apple cider or whatever they ferment) and consume it heartily.

This, of course, gets them drunker than the proverbial skunk. There are no skunks in the story, however.

So the geese pass out, and the moonshiner finds them and assumes they are dead. So she plucks them and puts 'em in her basement. Well, the geese wake up and freak one upon finding themselves naked and hung-over.

Wonderful situation, right? I thought so.

About the illustration:
Done all in watercolor. Quick watercolor. I probably should have pencilled it out a little first, though, eh? Haha, it came out alright. I scanned it and tried to take out the paper wrinkles in Photoshop, but it was just too much of a task because the midrange gets all blown out. And all attempts ended up looking strange. But this way, it looks like the geese are kind of weighing down the middle of a blanket or something, haha.

3 comments:

Caitlin said...

I love the idea of hungover geese. I might have to read this story.

Love the colors, and I really like the way the paper is wrinkled - it definitely looks like a blanket.

MamaLern said...

HA. Drunken geese. Pate'. Neato sketch!

Denise Gallagher said...

I love that story! I'm going to go read it again...
Drunken geese!

And I like your depiction of those geese...
You are right, the wrinkled paper definitely adds weight to them...
or almost starburst effect...
nice!