A Bump on the Head and a Backward Penis

We live on the coast of Oregon. This past week, my cousins from the fine state of Colorado visited. They don't encounter sea lions in the Rockies--not when they're sober, anyway--so we took them to see our local 800-lb. blubber boys who sit on floating ramps that are beneath the bay front. I'm talking about sea lions lounging in the sun a few feet below a throng of tourists who are madly massaging the buttons on their digitals and disposables.

Unfortunately, the barges were bare. This is the one month of the year when our local lions swim to California to get some sea lion nookie. Seems to me like a long way to go, but it's what a guy will do when it's been a year since the last time, and nature gave him short little flippers instead of arms that are long enough to relieve himself with a salt-water wank.

Doing what any over-educated intellectual would do in this kind of situation, I phoned my neighbor to whine. Besides being a cartoonist of some renown, our neighbor T. MacCracken is a biologist and naturalist who leads groups of unsuspecting tourists on ocean explorations.

T. tells me that our local lions are mostly teenage boys, in addition to a few aged and infirmed retirees. The sea lion cows live hundreds of miles south. They swim in small herds of a dozen or so who are serviced by a single bull. To get laid, our local males have to swim from Oregon to California, and then get in line to duke it out with the big bulls.

As for sexual allure, T. says all eyes are on the boy-lion's bulge. It seems that the number one thing that gets a sea-lion lady hot and bothered is the bulge on a bull. But it's not where you are thinking. The bulge that separates the men from the boys is on top of the sea lion's head. It's where the muscles attach that power the lion's jaws.

It seems that the bigger the bulge on top of the head, the more powerful the bull's jaw should be. My female readers are probably thinking, "Sounds like our sea lion sisters enjoy oral sex as much as we do!" But it's the bulls with the strongest jaws who stand the best chance of defeating the other males. Why nuzzle up to a sure loser when you can make waves with one of Poseidon's finest?

Just when I was getting my sea lion sex facts straight, my visiting cousins switched species on me. They wanted to know why the penises on our male llamas stick backwards. I tried to blame it on my wife for training them that way--but the cousins were having none of that.

The male llama has one muscle in front of his penis that pulls it forward when he is sexually aroused. He has another muscle in the back of his penis that pulls it toward his tail the rest of the time, like when he's reading the Weekly or playing Pokemon Emerald on our goat's Gameboy.

Another thing that llamas do differently than humans concerns "that time of the month". Humans ovulate every month whether they have sex or not. Llamas are induced ovulators, which means that the females only ovulate after they've been mounted by a male.

In other words, after a few minutes of llama lust, the female llama ends up bare-hooved and pregnant for the next eleven and a half months. This makes sense when you consider that llamas come from countries in South America that are overwhelmingly Catholic.

One mistake I sometimes make in writing about sex is to assume that we humans are the norm. Maybe it's humans who are a bit odd for focusing on the bulge below the belt instead of the one on top of the head. And perhaps we human males are the ones who have our penises on backwards. If you've been inside the rest room at a busy service station, you'd swear that we human males have our penises on backwards.

FREEBIE: no matter which way your genitals are sewn on, I have asked my neighbor T. MacCracken to do a cartoon in honor of this week's column. If you'd like a free, signed copy, email me with your name and address by going to www.goofyfootpress.com, and hit the contact button once you get inside. And if you click here, you can see photos of llama penises as well as our local sea lions!