The crawling bird is the first character to be encountered in this antic-novel stuffed with characters that could make you grope for the digitalis. The reader will also meet: the demon, the fatman, the lawyer, the other fatman, the Ebony Kings, the gunsel, the golden singing snakes, the Big Red Cheese. The Virgin Queen of England, the middleman and his secretary Zelda, a pig in a red trench coat (!), the lonely hawkman, the godlike man with no name, the insiduous Oriental Doctor, the talking, blood-sucking flowers, Dwit and Xit the cigar-smoking frogs, the tap-dancing locust…The author lists as influences the Marx Brothers, Monty Python, Richard Lester, the silent comedians, Woody Allen, Harry Harrison, Keith Laumer, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Dorothy Parker, Hemingway, Jeeves and Wooster, Phil Dick, Robert Sheckley, and Alfred Bester.   Cover art by Ron Cobb.