I spent my elementary school years in rural Ohio—in a big pile of animal parts. My best friend's dad had a VCR with only three VHS tapes, one of which was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It was my favorite, and not just because the fictional events took place on the day I was born. There's a scene in it where one of the nubile victims stumbles into a room strewn with bones—mostly animal—at once terrifying and rustic in the yellow Texas sun. Not to be outdone, my friend and I discovered a boneyard of our own while roaming a nearby farm, and harvested a few cow skulls that we cleaned with bleach. There was also a fur dealer who lived nearby in a hovel just past the creek. In our only encounter, I watched this man enthusiastically carve out the heart of a fox and hand it to me. But even that experience didn't prepare me to find a severed blue eye staring back at me from the mailbox. Lowering the door of the box, I found a milky, apple-sized sphere suspended in a jar of formaldehyde. It was an unsolicited gift from our veterinarian, who was indulging my predilection for the anatomical. Pressing my memory for other seminal experiences involving animal entrails, I come up empty. But I do remember my friend telling me that his dad had a fourth videotape: Adult Cartoons.