Fire Good!
You know,
it took us a long time to figure out that whole
throwing-animals-in-the-fire thing.
Allot of you just assume that we
whipped out a cookbook
and there deduced the optimum time
to sling some creature into the flames,
but
we didn’t even have paper back then, so
no… no cookbooks.
Pretty much just cave walls and
certain arrangements of rocks on the ground.
Be that as it may,
cooking was kind of a hit and miss thing.

Oog and Grog’s wives had the whole
“yank-food-out-fire-now!” thing
down pretty good.
Lionel’s wife, on the other hand,
was about as sharp as
a piece of non-knapping flint rock.
[Okay. That was a pretty good joke back in the day.
I guess you had to be there.]
Again, Lionel’s wife Bruce…
[“Bruce” being a very popular name for
women during this time.
You know, it’s kind of odd
what’s happened to it since.]

Anyway, Bruce couldn’t cook shit.
Part of the problem was that
she often did try to cook shit.
Let’s just say there were lots of leftovers on those nights.

So yea, Lionel’s wife Bruce had
one set time period she’d throw an animal in the fire.
The bad thing was that
this time period was the same for a sparrow
as it was for a mastodon.
Her grilled sparrow was inevitably charred to ash
whereas her mastodon was
blackened on the bottom,
a touch of singe on the side
and steak tartar for the remainder.

Now,
DoDo Bird?
Man, Bruce could sear some tasty DoDo Bird,
and it wasn’t long before
Lionel came to spend all his time hunting DoDo.
The down side of this, well…
Let’s just say they ate way too much DoDo.
Okay. So again,
there was a learning curve after we
discovered fire and its use for cooking.
It took us around a year before
we discovered you should never throw a
live animal into the fire.
Generally they’d just jump up and commence
running around the cave setting things on fire.
Yea, I think the first time that happened was
the day Oog’s wife Sweet Pea discovered
the craft of weaving.
Yep, we were all on the verge of wearing
proper woven cloth
when that giant tree sloth sprang out of the fire,
lumbered right through Sweet Pea’s weaving loom
an wore it, and its flaming fur
right out into the fire drenched night.
It would take a few millennia for
the blouse and pleated skirt to make its comeback.
Until then,
the women of the cave would have to continue
wandering around naked.
So yea, beyond the act of cooking,
fire had many versatile benefits.
What with no fire for illuminating our cave,
we cavemen would not have been able to spend
those long evenings watching all them
prehistoric cave mamas
throwin’ fascinating shadows up against our
equally curvaceous walls.

Let’s face it.
Television was quite a few years away.
Until then…
Fire?

Oh yea.
Fire was good.

Yo Bruce baby!
Any more of them there
flammin’ hot DoDo wings?

©05 Jack Hubbell