Le Jonapatchapha
[Pronounced "Jon-a-pa-cha-fa"]

    [Le Jonapatchapha was a creation of my Uncle Rushian about a monster who inhabited the fields and swamps around Bodoc.  Over countless nighttime retelllings on darkened porches, the account of the monster grew and grew. Here is a recollection.]

    The monster was seven feet tall and generally of human shape and form. It was capable of moving very swiftly, moved about only at night, and was a vicious beast who was known to consume little children without so much as chewing them up.  It reproduced itself by laying and hatching huge black eggs which were the size of the black castiron pots used to boil clothes and to boil the water for la boucherie.

    Once upon a time, on a night in the fall of the year Le Jonapathapha was roaming the area. It was on a moonlit night and Alcide Guillory, a local farmer's great-great-grandfather, was harvesting sugarcane by moonlight.  The monster attacked. Frightened by the sudden approach of the monster, the brave farmer struck at it with his caneknife. The knife, freshly sharpned, split the attacker in half, from its ugly head to its horrible toes.

    But the Le Jonapathapha was not to be slain so easily.  In a flash, the thing repaired itself and merged its two halves back together. It was only partly successful, however, for the left and right halves were perfectly misaligned. The upper part of the left side attached itself to the lower part of the right side, and vice versa. The result was that Le Jonapatchpha now had either an arm and a leg at every point of the compass and the beast's locomotion was more bizarre and frightening than before. Now it could move twice as fast, for it simply moved in a wheel-like motion by constantly rolling.

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