Peninsula Daily News’ “wilderness gossip columnist,” Pat Neal, is venturing into animal land with a new radio show airing on nonprofit KSQM 91.5 FM this Tuesday.
Neal’s “The Game Farm Gang” is loosely based on the animals at the Dungeness Valley’s landmark Olympic Game Farm.
But the writer, author, storyteller, fishing guide, historian and Oil City politico, long known for his wilderness exaggerations, is taking it a step further.
“The Game Farm Gang,” Neal said, features the mythical misadventures of a dysfunctional group of animal characters that inhabit a game farm “resort” located (like Olympic Game Farm) along the Dungeness River.
Neal himself takes on the role of Twinkles, the Kodiak bear, whose paw-waving to Olympic Game Farm drive-by visitors is an Internet video hit that’s been featured on the “Oprah” and “Ellen” talk shows and in a video by singer Carrie Underwood.
“The Game Farm Gang” is written by Neal from an animal’s point of view.
KSQM board member Jeff Bankston said the writer’s dual persona has become a dilemma around the radio station’s studios.
“We never know who we are talking to anymore,” Bankston said.
“Is it Pat or is it Twinkles?”
Neal will not answer that question, preferring instead, he said, to hibernate on it.
“The Game Farm Gang” debuts on KSQM this Tuesday at 4 p.m., repeating Saturday at 11 a.m.
In between, Neal’s popular wilderness gossip column appears this and every Wednesday on the PDN’s Commentary page.
