Raw Deal

Admittedly, Cujo does put Dee Wallace and her little kid through all kinds of hell for an entire weekend, and does end up eating his master, his master's drinking buddy, and a careless cop. But the audience never feels any special animus toward Cujo as he gnaws his way toward Nantucket, because it isn't the psycho-pooch's fault that he's acting this way, and besides, Dee was screwing the local stud behind her husband's back so she probably had it coming. In a very real sense, Cujo himself is a victim.

"Victim" is not a word that can be applied to any of the sharks in the four Jaws movies that have been made to date. Any way you cut it, these great whites are heartless sadists who deserve whatever they get. (That's right, fuck you, Greenpeace!) Whereas the man-eating monsters in Alligator, Orca, Cujo, Leviathan and Piranha look like simple garden-variety predators that are going about their business devouring everything in sight, the sharks in the Jaws movies actually seem to be enjoying what they are doing.

In Jaws, the great white appears to be chuckling as he forces a perplexed Robert Shaw down his feedbox. In Jaws 3-D, the great white seems to be taunting the tourists trapped below sea level in Sea World's brand-new see-through facility. In Jaws 2, the shark devours a helicopter and in Jaws the Revenge, the shark actually destroys an entire airplane, raising the possibility that in Jaws 5 we might get to see a shark swallow the QE2 or the Concorde. These are sharks that you really don't want to be fucking around with.

One of the questions that poses itself in an essay of this sort is this: If you had to pick a creature to be eaten by, which one would it be? Great white shark? Soldier ant? Alligator? Grizzly bear? Rabid dog? Piranha? Rat? Killer whale? Psychiatrist?

Well, let's do it by a process of elimination, based on the illuminating information provided to us in these movies. Right off the bat, soldier ants get the hook; based on what takes place in the 1954 Charlton Heston vehicle The Naked Jungle, it's safe to say that the ants work slowly--guaranteeing that your death will be long and hideous--and they also tend to crawl up your clothing and go right for the eyes. Thus, you would have to lie there screaming in abject horror as the little devils nibbled their way right through your cornea, your iris, your retina and then into your brain before you died.

Who needs that?

For similar reasons, rats are out. Unlike sharks and killer whales, which basically kill you off in a couple of heaping mouthfuls, rats tend to play with their food--a nibble here, a nibble there--and even if there are a whole bunch of them on hand for the festivities, you're still looking at a lingering, excruciating, nauseating kind of death. It's also important to remember that rats are kind of gross; if you do have to be eaten to death by some creature, you'd probably prefer it to be a shark or a whale because that reads a lot better in the newspaper, partially because of that whole romance-of-the-sea business.

Compare the following obituary headlines, as they might appear in your local newspaper:

MAN EATEN BY GREAT WHITE SHARK

MAN EATEN BY KILLER WHALE

and:

MAN EATEN BY RATS

If you are still seriously considering exiting this world by having your carcass feasted upon by famished rodents, first take a gander at Willard and see what they did to Ernest Borgnine. If that doesn't change your mind, nothing will.

On the surface, gators, crocs, grizzly bears, piranha, sharks and killer whales all seem like reasonably good alternatives if you absolutely, positively have to leave this planet by being eaten to death. Yes, they're better than rats and soldier ants, but when you take a closer peek at how these heartless predators operate, I think you'll see that they are all in their own little ways profoundly inadequate. Gators, crocs, piranha and killer whales all tend to eat every last mouthful of their victims, so once they get through with you there won't be anything left for your family to bury. Sharks and grizzly bears tend to play with their food, ripping a human being in half and maybe eating the head and torso but allowing the ankles and fibula to wash up on the shore where some distraught parent has to identify the remains ("Yes, that's Timmy, I'd know that femur anywhere") and then bury them in a shoe box. If the funereal niceties mean anything to you at all, I'd take a rain check on most of these creatures.

That leaves humans and dogs, and I honestly believe that if you're backed into a corner on this food imbroglio and have to choose between dogs and men, you should go with Fido & Co. every time. I'm not merely saying this because of the innate dread we all feel when the subject of cannibalism is raised. No, I'm saying this because of the despicable behavior of known cannibals after they've eaten you. "A census taker once tried to test me," Hannibal Lecter gloats to pert FBI trainee Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs. "I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti."

This is the kind of cynical remark that your survivors would be up against long after you're gone. Whereas, when a shark or a rat or a school of killer piranha eat you, there's no way they can come back to gloat about it, a cannibal can hang around making wisecracks about you for decades because of our lax judicial system which refuses to send these vermin to the electric chair. Personally, this would really piss me off. I'd rather get eaten by a shark or a grizzly bear and get the whole damn thing over with.

For this reason, I'd suggest that if you absolutely, positively have to choose the creature that is going to eat you, I'd go with a big, husky dog like Cujo. Although the frothing, saliva-drenched Saint Bernard is pretty horrible to look at, and does tear massive, bloody chunks out of the thighs, abdomens and upper torsos of the people he attacks, it doesn't take him long to polish off his victims, and, more importantly, he doesn't eat the entire body--meaning that you can still have a decent burial, and perhaps even a viewing. If you're Roman Catholic like me, that whole wake thing is pretty important, and provided Cujo doesn't start munching on the face, a good mortician might have enough left to work with to set up an open-casket viewing, which, again, is pretty important to me as a Roman Catholic. All things considered, I'd rather be partially eaten by a rabid Saint Bernard than swallowed whole by a killer whale or torn into fish chum by a ravenous great white shark.

I hope all this has been helpful.

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Joe Queenan's forthcoming book from Hyperion is called If You're Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble.

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