It’s possible that Dyl might have acquired a kind of trauma from actually witnessing predatory animals attacking prey out in nature that was pretty much just outside his door step.  His property didn’t quite belong to him and his family. He once told his friend that as a kid, he fell asleep on the rocks outside and woke up at night hearing the sounds of coyotes howling –  which scared the crap out of him. I seem to recall that he was so scared he was petrified.  That would be something right there that would’ve contributed to his sense of intimidation with wild critters.  We know he preferred to swim in his friends’ pools because he didn’t like that his pool tended to have some dead birds, frogs and lizards occasionally floating within it.   I think Dyl may have felt a bit surrounded by the wild that was his home. It wasn’t quite a place where he could be completely comfortable outside. He adapted by being cautious and respectful of dogs, especially Devon’s huskies, which look a bit akin to wolves or coyotes.   I go into a bit of detail here on Dyl preferring cats to dogs. 

Interesting that you bring this up because this is exactly the post I’ve been piecing together for a couple of days now. It was originally going to be for Dyl’s birthday but, well, I was having second thoughts.  

I love it. and yeah, I get the message. 😏 

Dyl had two cats named Rocky and Lucy and  birds.  When he was a kid he had a pet hamster named Snowflake.  I’d say nope on liking reptiles.

Given the longer length of Dyl’s hair, It would have been months after his RNN interview in Jan ‘98 since his hair was pretty short then. So, possibly Sophomore year/10th grade around May with a good possibility of even hanging out during summer vacation or even Fall of ‘98 in Junior year.  

When Byron moved into an apartment in 1998, Dylan inherited his bedroom. He repainted the room, two black facing walls and two white facing walls with red shutters on the windows  

More here  

Another account stated: Dylan wanted to paint his whole room black but Sue vetoed the idea, so he had to settle for one black area near a window.

Both accounts are slightly conflicting but essentially state that he had a black area or wall and I would imagine the other wall was white.  It would make sense and reflect his personal everlasting contrast philosophy.

Hopefully, Sue will describe in her book the reality of what Dyl’s bedroom actually ended up looking like after he inherited it from Byron.

Dyl was kind of a foodie with a ‘legendary appetite’ so I don’t think he was all that fussy about the kind of pizza he liked, certainly not as mono focused as Eric’s green pepper and pepperoni fav. I think Dyl appreciated a lot of different combo pizzas: plain ole classic pepperoni, meat lovers, supreme with both meat and sausagecombined – but I don’t know why.. I just kinda see him especially digging ham and pineapple pizza, going for a bit of sweet flavor on his pie. That’s just my take, of course..

During spirit week at school, it was said by a couple of students that Dylan had walked around with a painted swastika on his chin or cheek. Yes, of course he knew what that symbol represented and that it was a powerfully infamous symbol that people feared or shrank back at the sight of. Why did he do it? He did it to a get a rise out of those conservative and religious classmates at Columbine. Simply worn for the shock value. It was a way to flaunt irreverance with a stark symbol boldly painted on his face and obtain either an instant fear reaction or repulsion from peers. Dylan also did a similar sort of thing when he wore a Soviet Hammer & Sickle pin on his black combat boots. A classmate asked him point blank about it once and Dylan replied: ‘to get a reaction out of people’. Doing this sort of thing, wearing certain mysterious or shocking and offense symbols would’ve been a power trip for both Dylan and Eric. KMFDM was all about ‘Symbols’ at the time too. It likely made them feel as though they garnered just a bit more fear and respect from the mainstream, obedient, non-thinking followers that made up their school in addition to wearing the black trenchcoat and combat boots. It was a way for them to shake things up and rattle the school.

Additionally, Dylan seemed to have disassociated his part jewish ancentry from his awareness. I mean, it’s not like he was just plain ignorant about it all. The dude had gifted intellect and an awareness about things. It’s not like he never thought about it or that it never crossed his mind that, he too, would’ve been persecuted back in Nazi Germany because of his part Jewish ancentry. It’s more like even though his family observed a couple of major jewish holidays in his home along with christian holidays too, he just seemed to have compartmentalized that aspect of his family culture and sort of mentally shrugged off that part of himself. It’s as if Dylan denied it by pretending away his jewish side but in a lazy sort of way. He wasn’t overly anxious about keeping this a secret from people. At some point in Junior year, Dylan eventually noticed that Eric had really latched on to eating up everything german, about the Nazi’s and Hitler, so Dylan jumps on his friends’ bandwagon romanticizing the Nazi ideaology as a way to also feel empowered. Oddly, Eric didn’t know about Dylan’s little ‘don’t ask; don’t tell’ secret and even odder, is that Dylan didn’t even really consciously think to hide his jewish ascentry from Eric who was really digging a idealogy that was extremely against a part of his own family culture.. Maybe, he thought because he didn’t look stereotypically “Jewish” according to the Nazis? Dylan was pretty much what the Nazi’s would decree ‘Aryan’ or Nordic: tall, blonde haired had blue eyes. So perhaps, Dylan felt like his physicallity would help him push away or easily conceal the reality of his mixed heritage. That he’d blend in with christian, non-Jewish culture in the school and that no one would really ever consider that he might be part Jew.

In the Basement Tapes, according to Judy Brown’s viewing of them, Dylan volunteers while their video taping that his uncle will probably be upset because it’ll be around Passover (in ‘99 the first day of Passover was 4/1 and in 2000, the first day of Passover was 4/20), and Eric basically says, to paraphrase: ‘back the fuck up. Wait a minute, What? you’re jewish?’ at him. Dylan basically hems and haws and sheepishly minimizes: ‘well, yeah, ½ or ¼..“ to which Eric is like “that’s too bad, man.” So, strangely, Dylan doesn’t even expend a great deal of energy to even conceal that he’s part Jewish from even Eric. He just starts blabbing about Passover and his Uncle. Insert foot; mouth. It’s more like, he’s only partially Jewish so to him, it’s not really Jewish, muchly? He doesn’t even think a whole lot about it at all and since he’s in denial over it, he doesn’t even consider that he, himself, would’ve been considered a degenerate casualty of Nazi germany. Because he’s not relating any of this personally to himself. He projects the fear factor of the Nazi symbols by painting them on his chin and is pretty much just enjoying the instant gratification of people’s reactions to it in the hallway at school. It appears to be nothing more than the power trip. Shake up the proper christians, the jocks and straight-laced preps and derive pure shock value reactions from flaunting that glaring swastika on his visage. It was politically incorrect and it felt good to him. It’s as simple as that.

Tbh, I am not really sure at this point.  I’m going to wait and see how Sue navigates her experience for us in her book first before surmising specifics as to why (it would seem) the parents are stalling their depositions closer to their potential deaths.  Sue originally planned to not release her memoirs until after her death but has since changed her mind likely because of all the shootings that have taken place over the last decade. She now feels an ownness to help other parents detect subtle clues with their own kids as she’d failed to do with Dylan. As for the Harris’, they remain a suspiciously closed book, disinterested in helping themselves heal more by coming forward and being willing to give insight to others.