Pan (The Edited Version)

There’s nothing like a baby goat, they can jump straight up in the air landing on their feet, or jump sideways. 

The mainstay of a goat’s diet is hay and grass, so if you live in the suburbs and don’t want to mow your lawn, buy a small tribe of goats. 

Every urban and suburban farmer wants to keep goats. Fortunately, zoning permitted, you can keep a goat in your yard.

Some cities condone urban goat-keeping including—  Seattle, Portland, Charlottesville, Columbus, and Milwaukee.

In astrology, the goat is Capricorn, the 10th sign on the zodiac. 

The centaur Pan has the head, body, and arms of a man with the torso of a goat. 

Pan the mythic God is roguish, luxuriating in taking the mickey out of hikers trekking the forest. 

He played the Pan flute, making it himself from Motani wood and bamboo. The sound of his improvised tunes flows through the forest hypnotizing those in ear range.  

Laying on his side on top of a tree limb, he gazes down at gullible hikers, ad-libbing horror stories, scaring them away. 

He lives like a chimpanzee in the forest— a vegetarian who picks fruit from trees and drinks river water. 

Otto Ringling organized an expedition into Greece’s Almyros Forest to capture Pan in 1919, packing ample kit— thick woven nets, blowpipes with ballistic syringes. 

Ringling wanted to put Pam on show, half man — half goat, the goat man, the Greatest Freak of The 2oth Century. 

When Ringling's men approach Pan, the mythical God dematerializes, disappearing on the spot making him impossible to catch. 

Pan is a Germanic leprechaun.

ASIDE from the author— How can I write 6, flow of consciousness pages on a centaur?

Once, on the outskirts of the Mark Twain National Forest near St. Louis, Pan hid in the bushes of a suburban Wildwood park, waiting for the sun to go down.

Leaping a metal fence with ease, he grabs clothes off a laundry line, like a prison escapee would. 

With difficulty, he slips into a pair of brown trousers, ripping them at the knee because his legs are curved. He puts on a long-sleeved white shirt and socks over his cloven hoofs.   

Pan walks the city streets of St. Louis a freak like the Elephant Man. 

Passerbys eyeball Pan, assuming he's crippled or on drugs. 

He walks into Eddy’s Bar, you can’t hear a peep in the place, the winos are there to drink in the shadowy pub. 

The barkeep doesn't know Pan's a centaur, he orders a drink saying,

pour me a drink mate.

a drink of what? 

anything.

Pan picks up the shot, the scent of whiskey sickens him. 

The city is no place for Pan. He dematerializes, wisping through a bulwark of atoms and molecules, through the streets of Wildwood at the speed of light to Mark Twain State Forest.

The goat man runs through the woods, running for a week, deeper and deeper into the woodlands. 

After eating a dozen wild apples Pan takes a few steps and keels over into a puddle of quicksand sucked in by a whirlwind through a cylindrical tunnel that bypasses the earth's blazing inner core as it passes through to the outer core.

Pan breaks through the thin crust of the red mantle into China's  Zhangjiajie National Forest.

The forest is full of fruit— dragon fruit, mangosteen, mango, longan, and rambutan.

5 Chinese Forestry scientists are measuring the width of Katsura trees when they hear exotic flute music and they're drawn to it, following the sound.

When the scientist see Pan they are shocked. Some run, others snap pictures of the goat man with digital camaras, unable to catch the goat man's image in their viewfinders. 

Pan then hurls insults at Chinamen, telling them they are weak little men who eat bats and squat when they pee,  

The Chinamen hustle out of the forest to their van, as they driveway one says,

没有人会相信我们在森林里看到的，所以把它藏起来。

 

If we tell our colleagues we saw the goat man they will think we're crazy, so bottle it up. 

Pan migrates south through the Kulan Shan mountain range to Bhutan. Like a goat, he's sure-footed in the mountains.

Bhutan is 71 percent forest so Pan can roam freely.

The farmers of Paro province worship Pan. They pray to him for good luck, placing fruit and sticky rice at the base of the goat man's tree as an offering. 

The rascal Pan gobbles up the alms, then belittles the farmers in Bhutanese, calling them dull-witted hayseeds, and milksop.   

The King of Bhutan, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck orders a team of soldiers to go into the forest and capture Pan. 

When the soldiers come across Pan, firing a rocket net and entangle him.

Pan is caged like an animal in the Bumdeleng Zoo. 

The zookeeper places a bowl of chopped meat in Pan's cage, the goat man fingers the meat and smells it, he's nauseated. 

Craving fresh fruit he dematerializes, streaming out of the zoo in a lightwave, like a ghost. 

Pan lives in the sacred forest of Bhutan for the next 2000 years until a meteor collides with the earth, sending the planet into a tailspin. The goat man is airborne tumbling through the biosphere.

Eventually, Pan is pulled by gamma rays into the Martian craft Orion. The Martians overpower him without lifting a finger.

The goat man gets messages from the Martians telepathically, and answers them. 

The Martian children love Pan, they feed him boiled ants and sweet potatoes. 

A 2000-year-old Martian transmits a message to Pan,

Are the Earthlings friendly? They look pale next to Martians.