“Artist Chablis Visits Local Farm”
Stu Hazzard reporting for the Moon County News Nerds

World-renowned painter Chablis was in Moon County yesterday at the farm of Harald and Gretta van der Skeeterhornenflugen. The artist, who also claims to be clairvoyant and a Unitarian, came to research the farm’s champion fowl for his next masterwork, “Duck Wearing a Watch”. The painting will be done on a 20 foot x 20 foot canvas made of Arkansas plywood which, according to Wikipedia, is sheep stomachs stapled together and covered in oatmeal. Chablis will also be mixing his paints using his own special blend of resins and the sweat of the proletariat.

I tried to get an interview with Chablis but was told “back away, you imbecile, you’re scaring the widdle duckies!”

The diminutive artist originally hails from Paraguay. His real name, according to Wikipedia, is Che Guevera, and he adopted the name Chablis after a night of drinking with Danny Bonaduce. His last project was not a rousing success. In 2008 he painted a mural of the twelve days of Christmas as seen through the eyes of an alien from a planet in the Pegasi 51 system on the side of a Manhattan office building. The project, funded by Public Broadcasting as a community outreach, cost $8 million. It was visible for approximately twelve hours before local street artist D-Dog Nazzy tagged the building with “Stefonia is such a cutie, wow what a booty.”

Asked to repaint his swirling mass of seventeen shades of blue, Chablis refused. A scathing editorial read on NPR damaged the artist’s reputation, severely curtailing sales of his silk screens of monkey’s genitals that had been such a hit over the previous holiday season.

“Duck Wearing a Watch” will be Chablis’s first major work since that debacle, and he hopes it will revive his flagging career.

The famous painter’s visit to our small community caused quite a stir with gawkers clogging the road into and out of the tiny burg of Clod. Harald and Gretta van der Skeeterhornenflugen were especially taken with their guest. Harald, 67, and Gretta, 65, have raised champion ducks and chickens for three decades.

“Gretta likes her birds,” Harald told us. ”We tried cross breeding once. We were going to call the result a “chuck” but it didn’t work out too well. The birds ate some of our pigs and were sending psychic messages to Gretta in her sleep. We had to have them destroyed.” According to Wikipedia, this story is true.

Gretta braved a conversation with the enigmatic Chablis. “I asked him why he wanted to paint a duck, and he told me his grandfather was a free-range Andalusian mallard. I don’t know what that means.”

Chablis spent the afternoon sitting on the edge of the van der Skeeterhornenflugen’s pond communing with his proposed subjects. Onlookers say he took a liking to one duck in particular, naming her Peggy and doing an elaborate Morris dance in her honor. Could this be the duck in “Duck Wearing a Watch”? We’ll have to wait and see. Chablis isn’t scheduled to start his painting until his grant from Red Foster’s Aviation Disasters Cyclorama begins.

In the meantime, life in Clod is getting back to normal. Main Street is clear enough now for Mrs. Gunderby’s flock of cross-eyed sheep to amble back over to their meadow and Harald and Gretta have returned to tending their prize-winning birds. Perhaps six-year-old Jeffy Flester summed up the excitement best when he told me, “I like to eat ducks. My Gramma cooks them sometimes. They poop a lot.”