In response, Kefauver put on a coonskin cap during a speech in Memphis, proclaiming: "I may be a pet coon, but I'm not Boss Crump's pet coon."

Or I'm as crazy I as a pet 'coon.

He's met you, and he don't like you one bit, and Jerome is mean as a pet coon.

Sometimes, when you do speak out, people look at you like you're crazier than a pet coon.

The so-called normal man is a figment of the imagination; every member of the human race, from Jojo the cave man right down to that final culmination of civilisation, namely me, has been as eooentric as a pet coon - once you caught him with his mask off.' '

But young Carrie said, "The assistant manager of this hotel has a pet coon that eats Brussels sprouts."

In a televised speech given in Memphis, in which he responded to such charges, Kefauver put on a coonskin cap and proudly proclaimed, "I may be a pet coon, but I'm not Boss Crump's pet coon."

But he plans to move back to the old house on May 1, in part because the attentive retirement home staff is making him "lazy as a pet 'coon."