Oh, well, a-bless my soul, but what's wrong with me?
I'm itchin' like a man on a fuzzy tree
My friends say I'm actin' wild as a bug - Elvis
I always wondered what lies they told people to get them to agree to become Controllers. Now I know. At least I know what it took to get one person to betray his entire planet.
I guess he betrayed me personally, too. In a way. Not that he knew me. There were probably a million girls like me with crushes on him. - Rachel
The Rachel quote above is before the opening vignette in this book, so we know right away an important person is going to volunteer to be a controller. You can almost feel the cheesy voiceover at the beginning of an episode before the “more on that later” part.
The vignette at the beginning has Cassie and Rachel chatting at a school field trip to The Gardens, the local zoo where Cassie’s parents work. There's some funny discussion about Cassie’s mom being out of touch with the bands they listen to when suddenly a little kid falls into the crocodile pit. Rachel displays courage in this scene, jumping in the pit to save the little boy by acquiring one of the crocodiles and then fighting off the other crocodiles to save the kid from being eaten.
She does have a weird sick feeling as she is acquiring the crocodile but doesn’t think much of The Reaction1 and decides not to mention it at their first meeting2. Jake has overheard from Tom that some celebrity is going to be endorsing the local Yeerk recruiting cult, The Sharing. Jeremy Jason McCole is going to be endorsing The Sharing. Jeremy Jason McCole with the cute hair. Jeremy Jason McCole who is on posters in girls’ bedrooms and lockers everywhere. Jeremy Jason McCole who Rachel and Cassie think is very hawt.
Cassie sent me a sly, sidelong glance. “Of course… we might have to actually meet Jeremy Jason in order to save him.”
“We have to do our duty,” I said. “I mean, for a start we have to find out if he’s already a Controller.”
“And we’d probably have to meet him to do that.”
“Get close to him.”
“Very close”
“Absolutely”
“Mmm-hmmm.”
“The two of you are making me sick,” Jake said.
Rachel goes home and does some “research” by surfing the web3 to find out more about Jeremy Jason McCole. She learns he is going to be in town that week for a TV talk show and starts to daydream about seeing him in person. Rachel starts to feel stuff. She is majorly excited. Her breath starts coming in a little shorter. There are a lot of ways that have described the feeling she’s starting to have. In a series where we get a lot of animals’ instincts, we are getting some very teenager animal feelings here. Suffice it to say she is all shook up4.
Except unlike the average teen Rachel has a bunch of animals inside her and at this point starts turning into the crocodile. Then to a fly. Then to an African elephant. All without morphing to a human in between. As she becomes a huge elephant she falls through her bedroom floor to the kitchen below.
Since she is involved with two sudden weird disasters Rachel becomes a mini-local celebrity as the luckiest (or unluckiest) girl to have survived falling into a crocodile pit and through a floor in a house. Unfortunately, she’ll also find out in the book that she is having an “allergic” morphing reaction to the crocodile as Ax tells her she’ll eventually expel the crocodile. At the time she doesn’t realize he means she will literally barf up a living full-sized crocodile. She has The Reaction a few more times and each seems to be associated with strong feelings. One of the most dangerous reactions happens as she discovers Jeremy Jason McCole is planning on betraying his species and becoming a voluntary host.
The climax ultimately involves Rachel being featured at the same show as Jeremy Jason McCole at the point where she finally ends up vomiting up the crocodile. The rest of the team is there too, and many antics ensue. Ultimately, A crocodile attacks a bunch of people. Rachel unintentionally steps on the Yeerk infesting Jeremy Jason McCole as the Yeerk is trying to slither away. In the end, Jeremy decides to avoid the Yeerks by moving to Uzbekistan.
This book is a lot of fun. So much of it can be read as a commentary on growing up in a world with celebrities that kids can feel like they know and can develop crushes on just as they are starting to develop ideas of romance, social hierarchy, and sex. The horny animal literally coming out of a teenager is on the nose but somehow doesn’t feel forced given the series. There is fun banter throughout the book between Cassie and Rachel, between the girls and the boys, and a treatment of Jeremy Jason McCole as an object of desire rather than a person.
Peeking behind the curtain of fame and finding some of the flaws or depth of personality causes strong reactions for Rachel. Maybe as a parent I will later frown upon the sort of behavior prior to the strong reactions and point to the realization that Jeremy Jason McCole isn’t a sex object but actually a powerful person with an internal world. It turns out some of this power has gone to his head and degraded him into a bad person willing to sell out his species. But I tend to find crass immature jokes about sex more funny than harmful.
I know that the horniness of preteens and teenagers can be disruptive to teachers or adults who are trying to guide children. While I was growing up there was often a tendency to scold the sort of joking around sex as immature, gross, base, or even unholy. Being a teenager in Catholic schools meant that I was surrounded by all sorts of strident narratives about sex and sexual morality. This meant that sex, whenever it was discussed by adults in schools, was always cornered off to the side to talk about in these serious tones.
It’s probably fair to say that most adults didn’t really want to be in the room for these conversations, kids definitely didn’t feel comfortable in the room, and all the loudest adult voices that did feel some sense of mission assumed that kids were going through a depraved horny transformation where all the demons would feast on the new running hormones. Frequently, these weirdo adults also happen to often be adults who have a bunch of authority in the Catholic world and have never have had sex5. Honestly, if you were the tiny minority of children who was a true believer in the sexual morality discussions, I don’t think you would have been surprised to see a teen girl transform into a crocodile from *gasp* entertaining some horny thoughts. Served her right and shows the dangerous destruction of horniness!
Now, I don’t want to claim that horny teenagers can’t wreak havoc on the world around them. Teenagers do get each other pregnant. Teenagers engaging in unsafe sex can spread disease. Teenage boys often have more physical strength and can exert sexual power to traumatize girls and boys. Teenagers can become confused and frustrated when feelings of desire are taboo or outside the range of discussion - from desires of those of the same sex or no desires at all. Feelings of entitlement to sex can lead to teenagers becoming abusive adults. And, yes, teenagers can develop unhealthy attachments or obsessions with hot celebrities that distract them from class and everyday activities. Throughout high school and college, I knew people who experienced pretty awful abuse at others’ hands either involving sex or because of their sexuality. Homophobic slurs and bullying for even being slightly tomboyish as a girl or effeminate as a boy were routine at the time I was in K-8th grade.
But the weird moralizing about the crass sexual banter that teenagers receive from adults is completely divorced from any of this actual harm involving sex. In fact, because of the prescriptive gender roles and strident discussions of the evils of gay sex it probably actually worsens the problems that can happen. A lot of issues in the world can be helped by creating better institutions. There’s a pretty obvious one here where the church can look at radically altering who is ordained and has authority to shape the anthropology of the church and discuss it with kids growing up in Catholic schools. But even if I talked through some changes I’d like, they aren’t going to happen anyways in the next century - even the supposedly most pastoral leaders in the church are presently at a point where no one who has experience at the margins takes them seriously because they don’t say anything that addresses any issues people actually are physically or emotionally harmed by. International aid workers don’t take them seriously. Homeless services in the US don’t take them seriously. LGBTQ groups don’t take them seriously.
So what I’m left with is the hope that adults, especially parents, who are uncomfortable talking about sex with kids might step into the dialogue when the situation arises. Heck, engage in dumb banter. Share in the horny stories and horny songs. Maybe even direct some of the crass banter at the idiots who have never actually made a human the old fashion way saying horniness is the devil preying on your soul. It might turn out harmless banter and stories have some power after all.
Hey, that’s the name of the book!
Huh, I wonder if that’ll come back around.
Which is a great jukebox musical that I was ensemble in during high school.
Yeah, sure, not all priests, bishops, and cardinals or whatever and there are certainly weirdo lay men, it’s almost always men. But it does seem too often to be the ordained.