As we passed one of the numerous flea markets on the way into Brownsville, about 6 hours later, I saw the tops of some tents and a the top of a magnificently-painted Fun House ride. We got off the highway and pulled onto the lot. It was about 5 p.m., the sun was going down, and the market was closing down. Hands in pockets, I scurried toward the sideshow, just as they were loading everything into the truck. There was a carousel still set up, and the Fun House, with a man working on painting the front of it.

Then someone said, "Are you Elizabeth?"

"Yeah," I said. It was John Strong, I hadn't actually seen him before. We shook hands, and I introduced him to my parents and he introduced me to his crew, telling them my website was one of the best in the world right now ("Gosh," I thought.)

"Have you got any animals here right now?" I asked. He went to the truck and took out two terrariums. One was his two-headed snake, Buddy, a bullsnake about 2 feet long with two fully functional heads. He handed the snake to me.

"Oh no, I'm afraid I'll drop it," I said. But the snake wasn't going to allow that. It coiled around my arm and began constricting. John also showed me his two-headed red eared slider, which had two perfect heads and a shell that looked like it had been welded down the middle. Each head controlled the limbs on its respective side (essentially, they were dicephalus twins). And he showed me some laminated spreads from Mexican tabloids, featuring assorted cases of Siamese twins. "These are the ones I told you about," he said, pointing to the picture of Katie and Eilish Holton. The headline, disturbingly prophetic, was "Si Separaran, Moriran!" ("If they're separated, they will die.") He gave me my own copy of that one.

Then I met Timmy, the 20"-tall, dwarf miniature horse. He was a pinto with one blue eye and one brown eye. John said he was five years old, which was a good age for a dwarf minuature horse. Because they have deformities similar to those of dwarf humans, they can have severe medical problems. And he had a four-legged chicken that was unique from other four-legged chickens in that she had one leg growing out of the top of her back. She could walk and peck and do most everything normal chickens could (not that chickens really do much...). "She's the only hen who can lay an egg and catch it before he hit the ground," John said.

December 30, 2002

We left Brownsville and headed toward La Feria, using a map John had made for us. We found the ranch easily. Two dogs, Timmy the horse and a six-legged sheep were cavorting about in the front yard. I noticed right away that one of the dogs was hairless. John came out and greeted us.

"That's JD," he said, pointing at the sheep. The sheep had a parasitic twin attached at his shoulder and had two legs growing near his face. It was the first time I had been in close proximity to an adult sheep, six-legged or not. "Watch out, he head-butted someone yesterday. They were down for thirty minutes." I kept an eye on him after that. He butted my dad, but not hard enough to knock him down.

The dogs were Wally and Rex. Rex was a mutt who had belonged to some neighbors, but they could no longer keep him. Wally was an exotic breed of Peruvian hairless dog. Indeed, his black skin was completely bare except for a grey mohawk down the middle of his head.

"Come here, I'll show you my pride and joy," John said, opening the van. He lugged out a large green box, opened it, and pulled out a jar. Inside was a two-headed baby. "This goes back sixty years," he said proudly. "It was in the movie 'She-Freak' in 1967. Notice one head is normal and the other is mongoloid. My stepdad, Bobby Reynolds, has one with both heads perfect." We posed for a picture with the two-headed baby.

The cow, a 1300-pound black angus, was named Betty Lou after Betty Lou Williams. Her parasitic twin was attached at the shoulder and consisted of two diminutive, but well-formed legs. Having been raised with a herd of beef cows, she was wary of humans. "She likes me because I feed her," said Candy, petting her. John had purchased Betty Lou while in South Dakota, only a hundred miles from where she was. He had done an internet search for "6 legged cow" and pulled up her picture. A week later, Ripley's contacted the rancher asking if he still had the six-legged cow, but John had already bought her.

Then we went inside, through the garage. JD tried to follow us. In the living room was a large cage containing a brown Capuchin monkey. "This is Jocko, our organ-grinder monkey," John said. There was also a Chinese crested dog, Bucky, curled up on the couch, and a hairless guinea pig in a smaller cage. The two four-legged chickens were in a box under a heat lamp, a temporary lodging until a more spacious cage was available. John had bought the chickens from a hatchery, where over 1 million chickens were hatched every week. When he asked them if they ever had an abnormal chicken, they said no. But he offered to pay $50 for each deformed chicken, and by the next week they had four, each with four legs. Two died, but the two survivors remained in good health.

He showed me the rest of his pickled punks: a two-headed "kid" (goat), a two-bodied pig, a two-faced kitten, a pig with six legs and two mouths, a puppy with six legs. "The goat is so perfect, I need to get it stuffed," he said. "But it's so expensive."

"No, they look too fake when they're stuffed," Candy said.

Then John disappeared into the kitchen and came back, holding two conjoined tortoises. "This is the best example of Siamese twins you'll ever see," he said. "I call them Eko and Iko, 'they look alike-o'. They're ambassadors from Mars." I recalled having seen his "Two-Headed Tortoise" banner in the back of his trailer at the flea market. (The Mars comment makes sense if you know your history: Eko and Iko were two of P.T. Barnum's most famous attractions. Called "The Ambassadors from Mars", they were actually Black albinos from the South. They were brothers, but not twins, and certainly not turtles). The tortoises were born (hatched?) in West Germany and were 8 years old. They moved quite efficiently on 6 legs, and their fused, vestigial 7th leg grew out of their back.

John took me up to one of the trailers, beyond the fence. The wind blew the gate open and the dogs took off down the dirt road, so Candy had to go catch them. The trailer was where John kept his curiosity cabinet (literally, a cabinet). He also had an 8-foot-tall mummy he had sculpted himself when he was about my age. In the cabinet he had a stuffed two-faced lamb, a stuffed two-headed calf (which was born in La Feria years ago, before John moved there. He had bought it from Ward Hall.), the World's Smallest Bearded Lady, "Miss Piggy" (a cyclops pig with its snout growing out of its forehead), a two-headed rooster, and stuffed conjoined calves with two heads and seven legs. He also had a "fossil mermaid girl" which was actually a Jenny Haniver from Mexico. John was not familiar with the term Jenny Haniver, so I explained that it was a general name given to stingrays mutilated to look like things other than stingrays. This particular one was made to look like a human. "You can buy them anywhere in Mexico for a dollar fifty," he said. Then he turned to my parents: "I've got all this stuff and she's interested in the dollar-fifty souvenir." I said, "Maybe I can get one in Progresso later." (My search fo a Jenny Haniver is another story altogether).

Back out to the trailer in the front. John showed me some of his spectacular banners, painted by John Hiner, one of the best banner-painters in the world today (along with Johnny Meah and Mark Frierson). He also rolled out a huge canvas banner: "Gallery of Freaks!" painted by Frierson. It was quite amazing. John told me it was the banner for his exhibit of fiberglass statues of all the famous freaks. "How many of these people can you name?" So I named just about all of them. Then we stood around talking carny stuff for a while. Mom went crazy over a bird she had never seen before.

John also gave me a curiosity of my own: a frozen, four-legged chicken from his freezer. I was elated. (Transporting the dead chicken across the state of Texas on a six-hour car trip is an amusing story all its own). It's now in a jar of formalin in my basement. My friend named it Duke.