DICKbill Platypus

DICKbill Platypus

63rd Street & Woodbine Avenue

Twilight on a winter's eve

Philadelphia, PA

1967

We had just been studying about the duckbill platypus, a very strange animal.  Our biology teacher shows us photos of this animal and I am intrigued by it.  as a 13 year, old, I have never seen anything like this and wonder where I could see a live one.

I don't remember if it was on this day or sometime around this day. But today, I am walking home from school with my friend, Kathy.  We carry our heavy, heavy book bags. We drag our feet as we are tired and ready to get home and do nothing.  The sun is about to set and it is getting dark.  A man passes us on the sidewalk.  He walks right between us, forcing us to move over to the grass. He didn't say anything. He just charged through us.  But then he was right behind us, almost on our heels. "Excuse me, girls," he says in a meek voice.

We turn around and his raincoat is pulled aside at his waist.  He exposes a huge penis. We scream and run and he seems to vanish in the night.  I don't know where he went.  I don't know how far away from him I ran. But when we stop, he is gone.  We catch our breath.  We are trembling in fear. We don't know what to do.

"Did you see that thing?" Kathy asks.

"What was that," I ask.

"His thing", she answered.

"It was so huge. It looked like a duckbill platypus," I tell her and I mean it.  I had never seen one up close and personal before but this thing was so big it looked fake. We laugh but we are still shaken.  We run the rest of the way home.