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have to stay fresh much longer than a gallon a milk. Some a them real old splicers that by now had begun to grow moldy or to fall apart was pickled and stored in the barn. Lemuel Lee liked to think of that collection as his own private museum. After all, Uncle Earl always said that splicin’ was an art and that just as you wouldn’t never throw out a damaged Leonardo, it was a sign of respect to the old masters to preserve their achievement for posterity. But of course the really topflight and well-preserved splicers was on display for the general public in the Gardens of Sodom. It had long been Uncle Earl’s policy to charge a separate admission to the Gardens of Sodom, not only because that meant an additional source of revenue, but also because it tended to discourage little kiddies and thereby allowed him to maintain that he was protecting the innocent while displaying Sodom’s monsters as living symbols of God’s vengeance upon the wicked. The laminated deck of playing cards -- bare-tittied lamias, voluptuous hermaphrodites cavortin’ with goats -- fulfilled the same educational purpose and sold like hotcakes at the Lizard World gift shoppe.
           So Frobeys had been makin’ splicers for a long time, although nowadays county fairs wasn’t what they used to be and so there wasn’t much demand. Lemuel Lee was proud that it was a family tradition that Uncle Earl had continued and now was passin’ on to him. Uncle Earl’s daddy, Big Jake Frobey, had taught Uncle Earl and told him how he himself had learned it from his daddy, who had learned it from his daddy and so on -- all the way back to Hezekiah Frobey, the one who was married to Mad Rosalie, whose brother Edgar Poe was the writer. The first Frobeys in America had brought splicin’ all the way from England, cause they was carnival folks even back then, and they musta had Black Fungus back in England since without the Fungus you couldn’t never, for example, put a rat’s head on a rabbit seein’ as how the goddamn rabbit would reject it so the splicin’ wouldn’t take. Lemuel Lee had heard that families that was furriers passed on the secret formula for tannin’ hides from generation to generation; folks that was diamond cutters did the same with cuttin’ secrets, and he figured that splicin’ lore was a similar kind a guild secret and at one time just as valuable. In 1849 P.T. Barnum himself had paid a thousand dollars for a Frobey splicer -- and back then that was a heap a money.
           Back in England, the greatest philosopher a splicin’ -- the one who figured out that a splicer has at least two minds like a schizo -- was Doctor Josiah Fludd, the first member of the family to get pieces off a dead folks. But the guy who invented splicin’ was Dr. Fludd’s father-in-law -- who went by the name of Meister Gerhard Frobin (cause back then they spelled the name a little different); and this Meister Frobin must sure as hell a been some kind a big deal -- or else that English earl (the fella Uncle Earl was named after) wouldn’t otherwise never have called him in to fix him up when his parts started fallin’ off or gettin’ lizardy or otherwise goin’ bad. Well, this old Frobin (who was the same guy who made that splicer outa the monkey) must a done a damn good job. Cause that earl fella was so tickled pink, he tells him that if the Frobeys was ever to come to the colonies (cause that was all they was back then) they could kill his pigs, farm his land and smoke up his tobacco -- and he wouldn’t never ask for nothin’ in return, except that if his old body ever got all messed up again, they’d honor the Frobey Debt and give him a spare part. So that’s how come they was all Americans now, eatin’ burgers, puttin’ up with all this goddamn bullshit and doin’ the best they could.
           The greatest maker of splicers in the family once they was all settled in America -- the one who sold that splicer to P.T. Barnum -- was