Seemed simple enough remove chicken cages from the woods on a former abandoned property a friend had recently purchased and I could have them for free. Since each cage was about 11 – 12 feet long and would house 11 – 12 chickens each with their own separate little pen this seemed like a great deal considering there was 14 cages in all. So Easter Sunday bright and early I woke up and drove over to the property with my trailer and proceeded to haul the cages out of the woods. Vines had grown up in between them so I had to cut them free in order to drag them all out but eventually after 4 hours of hard work and three trips back and forth I had the cages all neatly stacked up on the back of my property.
Visions of free eggs and self-sufficient living filled my head picturing happy free ranging chickens running around leaving me piles of yummy fresh eggs. I then began researching chickens thinking I should get about 50 until I found out they are shipped as chicks and wouldn’t even begin to start laying eggs until they were 7-8 months old. On top of that they needed special feed, warming lights, eye-dropper feeding and frankly as much as my visions of free ranging chickens were I wasn’t about to become mother hen to 50 babies. It was then I had the brilliant idea to trade or barter some of the cages for what I wanted so I typed up an ad on Craigslist and offered the cages for $50 each or trade 6 chickens that were laying for a cage. A day or two went by and I got numerous calls mostly screwballs wanting to know if I had chickens for sale or eggs and a few who thought $50 was to much for cages that would cost $180 if they went out and purchased one new, these by the way were in excellent almost new condition so to those folks I simply suggested they might be happier purchasing a new cage then trying to save any money on a reasonably priced one.
On the third day a guy named Paul called me and asked if I was willing to take 12 chickens for 2 of the cages to which my reply was naturally yes. He told me he come over on the weekend and drop them off and pick up the cages so we agreed on a time to meet. Sunday came and Paul showed up with the chickens and I was so thrilled to have them I gave him an extra cage in the trade because he told me they had just started to lay. It was during this time another friend called me to ask what I was doing that day and I told them I’d have to call them back because my chickens had just arrived so he said he stop over to see them. Here’s where the story gets interesting and why one should seriously consider all the options before raising chickens.
Day One: Arrival
About ten minutes later as Paul and I were putting the chickens (Bantams) in the cages my friend’s wife shows up with four small children and their high-strung labor doodle (aka bird dog) who is still a 90 pound puppy. It was unknown to me that he had called her after speaking with me and told his wife he’d meet her at my house. As I’m about to tell them don’t let the dog out of the car I turn around as a chicken runs past me and notice the little Bantams are still small enough to squeeze through the feeding openings of the cage compartments and are now running free. At the same time this is going on the kids come running over along with the dog who immediately begins chasing the chickens to see how far the chickens will fly in different directions. In less than 5 minutes I had 12 chickens that had never seen my land at all scattered over 5 acres of property with kids and dogs following them as they got further and further away from the intended spot I had for them.
About this time my friend calls back and asks if his wife has shown up so I tell him yes they are here and have made sure the chickens can fly and before he gets here to help round them up would he stop by the feed store and grab me a bag a chicken feed. Paul in the meantime has loaded up his cages and tells me not to worry they will eventually all come back and since I was so nice to give him a extra cages if I lose any he’d be happy to replace them and I made some joke about needing 12 more since mine were no where to be seen. My buddy shows up shortly after he leaves with the feed and wonders where the chickens are as his wife begins asking me what I have to drink in the house because she thirsty. I tell her she’ll have to fend for herself and just go inside while I try to round up the chickens. After about an hour as I’m wandering through the woods near my house trying to herd chickens back to where I can catch and cage them she begins calling me saying she broke the bottle of vodka on the kitchen floor so the kids need to be careful inside.
Now I’m a wee bit miffed so I call my friend over and explain the situation, dude, I JUST got these hens, they have no idea where they are yet so would it be possible if your wife cleans up my $30 bottle of vodka she broke and then load the kids in the car along with the dog and get them out of here until I can get things settled down”. Thankfully they comply and I let them know as soon as I have the chickens use to being here they are more than welcome back to see them but being that they just arrived let’s let them settle in first. The rest of the day is spent herding 7 chickens back toward my house, 5 are missing, 3 are in the woods so really only 2 that I know of are gone. Just before it gets dark I take a head count and have 9.
Day 2
The chickens wouldn’t go into the cages no matter how hard I tried and every time I got close to them they’d fly away so fuck it, I was going to free range them anyway. I take a head count before I have to go to work and there’s 11. I give them water and spread feed out for them and they seem quite happy clucking and eating when I leave for work. During the day I stop in and purchase a feeder tray and a watering device totaling $23.00 along with the feed my friend picked up my free eggs have already cost me $33.00. I quickly calculated I can make this up quickly since they are suppose to lay at least 9-10 eggs a day so I’ll be in the black in no time. The plan is working somewhat.
End of the day arrives and I get home to find the chickens have tore my rock garden to pieces and uprooted every plant I had in it so I spend the next 2 ½ hrs replanting and fixing the rock garden. Normally it wouldn’t have been a big deal but being that every rock in it is white quartz I tilled or dug up from various planting projects around the house it represents a fair amount of work in addition to looking nice. The girls watch as I do this clucking and scratching at the dirt. Dusk comes and I manage to round up three and put them in their cages, which takes about an hour. The rest decided to fly up into the tree near my house as I was chasing the other 3 around and are impossible to get down without risking injury to myself since is now dark outside.
Day 3
5:12 am, why are their chickens outside my bedroom window? Ahhhhhhhhhhhh I’ll take car of it later when I wake up, DING OMG that’s where I planted the moonflowers and rare morning glories!!! Quickly I hop up and go outside to see the ladies have torn the hell out of they rock garden once more and have found the trellis I was growing my moonflowers and rare morning glories on. Needless to say those are history, the girls are plucking and make all sorts of chicken noises I take to mean, “hey, were hungry”, so I go over to the shed and get the feed out, fill the containers, fill the watering unit they spilled over and give them breakfast then go back inside to catch a nap before I have to wake up.
7:32am walk outside and see no ladies so I go around the back of the house to find them tearing up my month old green beans, no use in wondering about the squash that was growing nicely either since they have already harvest it for me, a bit early but I’m sure they thought well as they did it. I dawns on my then to train them so I spray them with the hose to get them out of my back garden area and herd them over to where I’d like them to stay tempting them with a big pile of food, it works! 8:15am I’m in the truck headed to work thinking how clever I am to have trained my girls so quickly and call a few friends to brag about my super smart chickens.
1:04 pm arrive home to find the girls have not only finished destroying the rock garden in addition to throwing the rocks everywhere I no longer have to worry about my wildflower flower garden since they have retiled all the young plants for me back down to dirt, nothing is left. They greet me from the potato bed as if to say, “hey dad, remember those two month old gourmet blue potato plants you were wondering if they would grow well, we took care of them for you too. Once more with the hose and the feed getting them back to where I would like them to stay, free range yes but come on girls within the designated area please. Getting out back I see they had been busy there too as 45 baby apple trees I started from seed last fall and were about 4 inches high are all tipped over and laying on the ground roots exposed to the harsh sun, great! It dawns on me, THE GREENHOUSE, but after checking it I see they haven’t found it yet. With lunch time over I go back to work with a silent prayer they find something else to do besides wrecking all the work I’ve put in before they got here. Oh yeah, still no eggs!
7:08pm get home to find the girls in the front flower beds again and want to strangle them or myself for thinking I have smart chickens. Chase them out of the beds with the lure of more food and the hose sprayer, which now they actually seem to like and notice the leader the one my daughter calls Miss Money Penny is calling the shots on my flock. In fact they all seem to do what she says except Princess Laya (because she’s always sitting when I find her) and the one I like best, Henny Penny. Not wanting chicken for dinner I head up the road to talk to a farmer that’s a friend of mine and begin telling him the woeful tale of my beautiful gardens and the girls, which amuses him greatly.
“Told yaw,” he begins, “You got to gather them birds up and put them in a coop or you’re not going to have nothing growing over there except for your temper”. “Chickens love to scratch and more than that they love digging things up as they look for something to eat”. I explain the food and how there’s no eggs and all the rest and he tells me I need to be mixing oyster shells in with their food as it helps digestion and shells, so with the renewed knowledge I head back home to get the girls out of the gardens they must be in to find them all in the tree again acting like everything is alright with the world. I have just enough time to fix the rock garden and replant the damage they did to the wild flower beds before it gets to late to see.
Day 4
4:59am, instantly awaken to the sound of chickens on the back deck where my 200 super rare tomatos are growing. Spring out of bed and open the back door to find disaster has come a bit earlier today as over ¾ of the tomato’s are gone and the rest look like Godzilla trod through them on his way to Tokyo. Step out onto the porch and onto a planting knife I had stuck into the railing of the deck within easy reach thereby cutting a chunk out of the side of my foot and grabbing at it fall down into a pile of fresh dirt and chicken poop. Seriously this isn’t how I imagined it, I’m suppose to be waking up to gentle clucking and go out and find eggs in the beautiful hay lined cages with my girls singing some fucking Disney morning song, instead I have Satan’s dumbest most destructive birds, even Henny Penny is in the mix. Miss Money Penny bolted as soon as the door was cracked leaving the others to hold the bag, still no eggs!
Get everything cleaned up, save what tomato’s I could and as I finish I hear them out front now. I get all the food and water together and think they’ll settle down to eat as I head out front to find them now in my prized roses I’ve been growing for 6 years scratching at the bases of the roses for food. Once more hose herding around to the side and notice they have decided the best place to crap is all over my landscaping equipment. These really can’t be normal chickens because why instead of a wheel barrel I could care less about do they chose instead to shit all over my eight thousand dollar John Deere walk behind mower, my three $2500 riding mowers and my $3000 garden tractor? If not to make matters worse the rock garden is torn up once again and I was even smart enough to leave plenty of food and water out the night before.
9:43 everything cleaned up, washed, and sparkling again. I’ve even gone out of my way to tarp all the equipment and move it a fair distance from the tree figuring if I can’t join them outsmart them, I apprehensively leave for work. 2:17pm arrive home for lunch to find the girls have figured out how to get under the tarp and crap on the equipment again, seriously, is it this difficult raising egg-less chickens? I consider a free community chicken dinner.
3:41 everything cleaned up again and replanted in record time (I’m getting good at this) the girls feeling comfortable watch me from within a foot away as I do it all and I can see a gleam in Miss Money Penny’s eye. I leave to go to my next client, still no eggs.
On my way there I decide to call them and tell them something came up and I’ll see them tomorrow which is ok with them and figuring this is war decide to break out the big guns. I head over to the hardware store with no idea in mind except get everything I need to build a coop I’ve never made or seen before. $154.89 later I leave the store with everything I need to build an 8X8 coop and on the way home stop at another farmers house I know to ask him why my chickens aren’t laying. I find out I’ve been feeding them broiler food the whole time I’ve had them so all they are doing is getting fat instead of what I had intend in my Disney vision of raising chickens.
6:17pm I get home to find the girls have undone the tarps. I’m baffled because they were tied down this time and not only that they dug up my collection of two year old Japanese maple trees I grew from seed, I’m seeing red but fault myself for no foresight since I was warned, free range my ass these little fuckers are going into a coop tonight. I call a friend and explain the situation and he agrees to come right over and help. He also agrees to pick up LAYER food on the way here. I mentally begin running numbers as I start the coop and figure my free chickens that will provide me with free eggs has now cost me somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 months work and about $600.00.
As I’m building the coop I hear clucking coming from the greenhouse and my heart sinks, I suddenly feel sick. Running over I find the one we name Ellie May inside walking around the edges, nothing has been harmed and I’m instantly overjoyed. I round her up and shoo her out knowing now I MUST get the coop finished tonight as tomorrow is another day of destruction and they now know where the greenhouse opening is. Using construction flood lights we finish the coop around 9:36pm and the only thing left to do is get the ladies in it but since they are now up in the tree for the night it will have to wait until tomorrow.
Day 5
5:04am, WTF this is getting old, how in the hell can they be exactly right outside my window? The freakin’ trellis!!!! Screw it I’m too tired to get dressed so I throw on my slippers and a sweater and head outside in my boxers to find the gals have finish totaling the front gardens, the moonflower garden, and the rock garden once more, I know why now people are driven to murder. But maintaining I get my new feed and call, “here chicky, chick, chick” and they follow me all the way to the coop where I toss the food in and watch them all follow. Once inside I take the loose chicken wire side I had left undone grab the stapler and fasten the wire onto the frame, fuck you girls let me get some sleep now. 6:12 I lay back down and at 6:43 hear them outside on the back deck yet refrain from bashing my head against the wall choosing instead to see what mischief their up to. I open the door just as Miss Money Penny and Anna Bean pull down one of the replanted apple trees thinking how in the hell did you get out? Like a cattle herder on my way to the big round up I wander back and forth cutting off escape route and tempting them with more food and finally get them back in the coop to find they had pulled the wire up from the bottom to get out.
8:10am I finish from staking the wire into the ground and head back inside to get ready for work and on my way into the house finds on one of the apple tree pots white gold! Yes finally they have laid not one, but two eggs. Granted given a small egg in the grocery store looks like a large next to these the goal has finally been reached I have eggs. The rest as I have learned from all the chicken folks I talked to must be hidden around the property as Bantams are famous for hiding their eggs making each day you wish to free range them like a Easter eggs hunt yet with mine now safely secure in their coop this shouldn’t be a problem for me. I’m so proud of my girls having given me two eggs that have only cost me $300 an egg I promptly call my daughter and give them to her to eat figuring there will be more where they came from.
It’s now 9:02pm and I’ve gone to work and came home at 8:12 to find the ladies excavating the ground like a team of World War II American soldiers in a German Prison camp digging on the far back side of the coop next to the shed. With a bit effort they might have with the additional work been able to get out again but a few big rocks and a stout 2X6 I’ve thwarted the next great escape and am still at present the commander in chief of this crazy little farm. Until something interesting happens next I expect eggs tomorrow when I get up at 7am for once. Will keep you all posted, for now were out and they’re in. Oh did I mention for the past three days I’ve also been dealing with the flu? Life sure does throw you some curves sometimes, especially when you add chickens to the mix.
Day 6
Blissful sleep until 7:30am, drank a half a bottle of Nyquil and kicked the flu to the curb, of course I woke up with the proverbial Nyquil hangover but the flu was gone and after a couple of cups of Joe I felt back to my old self once more. 8am I popped outside to check on the girls and saw they made it through their first night in their new coop with flying colors. In fact I think they liked it so much since they didn’t even get wet during the brief rain we had I found they had left me three eggs in one of the cages, I almost wept.
Went to work and wondered all day if they’d get out but when I arrived home at 6:23pm I saw Miss Money Penny frantically digging away once more in the corner of the coop. Walking over I saw everything was fine she could dig to China before she ever moved the small boulder I put in the place of her most recent excavation attempt.
Went to the shed and got out the food filled the feeder tray and changed the water so it was fresh as well and while putting the feed and water back in the cage saw Henny Penny hop up and climb out of the cage to see what was up. My dear little bird had left me two more eggs in her cage so things are looking up indeed. All total now in the past two days I have found seven eggs and the red marker is slowly moving to the black but I still have a long way to go but these were the best $100 eggs I’ve ever eaten. Will keep you all posted.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
The Baby Possum
I got email feedbacks from folks who were wondering what the baby possum story was all about so I looked through my disks this morning and finally came across it. This was written about six months prior to the story I told about the close encounters with the owl, and eagle so it kind of goes along that same theme, best part is this really happened just like the other story (the animals really didn’t talk there though that part even though the rest was true, was just artistic freedom). But I ramble, so read this while I return to the one I’m working on now (since it’s raining and I don’t work in the rain) about when I met Frank Zappa’s half sister in a grocery store
There is a good reason God made babies to look the way they do. All soft, cute and cuddly (well… the majority of them) and I suppose that’s why I stopped the car to help another life that was in trouble last night. I was driving along a dark road in the country around 3:45 in the morning (as if that’s something new) when I noticed in the headlights this little form flopping around on the road. Stopping the car to investigate I saw in the headlights it was a baby possum. By the time I’d gotten out of the car and went over, him (or her) it was still. Fearing that it had died I examined the little creature by touching it carefully with a pen I had and found it was still breathing so I went back to the car to see what I could find. I opened the trunk and found a small box and got it out the trunk. Returning to the baby possum I gently picked it up (with winter gloves I put on) and placed it in the box.
A car must have hit it, but seeing no blood doesn’t mean something isn’t wrong or that it isn’t hurt. So in my Good Samaritan way I thought why not help the little creature out and take it to a vet in the morning in the hopes this tiny life could be saved. Now I’m no animal expert but I am aware wild animals carry things like rabies, fleas, ticks, lyme disease and god knows what else that could be lurking on them ready to strike one down with the latest version of some simian type plague so I kept the gloves on until the wee creature was secure and safe.
Many of you must be wondering what might possess someone like me to pick something like this up so early in the morning, is he deluded, insane, a well meaning tree hugger, or just an average Joe trying to do the right thing and perhaps it’s a bit of them all yet there I was back in the car and on my way to check on my people at 3:45 in the morning. I was rolling down the highway feeling pretty good about myself thinking I’m going to score me a couple of good karma points when I hear the little guy (or girl) stir in the box. Thinking that it can’t be so bad if it’s awake I figured just leave it alone, let it sleep and the doctor will have it all better in the morning when the office opens up, or when I take it over to Pedimont Wildlife rescue in Durham.
Now shortly after hearing the stirring inside the box I came to a customers house who was handicap and noticed that the carrier had forgotten to bring the paper up to this customers house, a nice very sweet 90 yr. old woman in a wheelchair with a O2 setup. All I could picture in my head was this poor old woman wheeling herself out to the driveway, which was more of an obstacle course for Monster Trucks than for cars, and again trying to do the right thing I stopped got out of the car and picked the paper up. I carried it over to the house and set it on the porch railing by her door so when she looked for it in the morning it would be within easy reach. The last thing I want on my conscience is some 90 yr. old O2 tank breathing wheel chair bound woman to be found in her driveway keeled over because she struggled to reach down to get her morning paper and fell over dead. Beside have you ever tried to sit in a wheel chair and pick something up in front of you, it’s a pain in the muffin if you haven’t and even if you have at best it’s a experience even a yoga master wouldn’t want to endure.
Completing the delivery I went back to the car, got in, started it up and began my travels down the roads again. Suddenly I felt a movement on my leg and thinking I might of gotten a tick on me from the baby possum I turned on the over head light to see if that was it since I had shorts on. Now imagine yourself in this situation while your going 60 miles an hour down a unlit country road because that’s where I was at the time basking in my newly found karmic goodness. Looking down at my leg to make sure it wasn’t a tick searching for a new lyme disease victim I didn’t see any ticks. What I did see though right now at my feet was one very pissed off baby possum and he began hissing at me while attempting to take a bite out of my leg by snapping at it.
If you ever wondered how some of those Hollywood stuntman do the tricks they do to make it look so easy, they put baby possums in the car with them because as this animal was doing its best trying to bite me as I was trying to get the car slowed down while removing my feet off the floor. It must have been at that point that the baby got the upper hand because he climbed up still hissing onto the seat I was standing on as I attempted to slow the car down and drive all at the same time while it was nipping at my sneakers. Freaking out that he (or she, I didn’t have time to turn it over and check) might bite me I stepped over onto the passenger seat as the car slowed enough to hold the wheel from there and fend the baby from hell off with the other which held a thin 3 page Monday paper to keep the possum at bay. To refresh the readers mind were speeding down the road doing 60, there’s no lights, no buildings, no convenience stores, and hardly any houses while trying to drive from a standing position in the passenger seat as a baby possum attempts to French kiss my leg with her (or his) teeth as I fend it off with a 3 page paper.
Why Oreo’s entered my mind at the point is beyond me and I suppose it was a defense mechanism to keep me from losing it as the ironic turn of events played out. I didn’t have Oreo’s though, nor milk to dunk them either, but I did have a gourmet brownie on the seat where I was. I’d planned on eating it later in the morning but baby must have smelled it and wanted some because he (or she) then tried to get me to leave the seat so it could get over to the brownie. Now crouched in a car on a seat trying to hold a baby possum back with a Monday paper isn’t the most effective way of animal control and management while standing in the passenger seat of a moving car but the car managed somehow to slow down enough to where I could open the door and get out.
After getting out of the car I ran along side it using the edge of the door to bring it to a stop and then opened the trunk to get a tire iron out so I could use it to move the possum, and hopefully reach inside and get the box out where I put the possum to begin with. The possum was way ahead of me and had gotten out of the way to crawl back down by the drivers side near the gas pedal to eat my $4.00 brownie and it didn’t appear to have any mind to save it’s rescuer any.
Now it was my turn to try and get a fully awake baby possum back into the box which is easier said than done. If you’ve ever seen a possum they normally don’t seem to be fast animals but this baby now hopped up on sugar from my gourmet brownie sure could move pretty fast because after I opened the door and tried to get him into the box he (or she) decided under the seat was the best place to avoid such an capture. So blocking the front of the seat with papers and the rear opening of the seat with papers I got the gloves back out of the car and put them on along with a heavy sweater I still had in there. I figured this would be a better line of defense than bare skinned arm for its teeth if it should try to take another bite out of me. I got back out of the car and got the tire iron to move him with as I heard the baby trying to eat his (or her) way through the seat, apparently baby possums don’t like to be confined under car seats.
Coming back around to the front armed with my tire iron, winter gloves, sweater, a flashlight, and a box inside I felt comfortable could handle the task I figured I’ll get him out this time since I remembered hearing something once about these animals falling asleep when they are scared (frankly I was feeling pretty woozy myself). We’ll if anyone ever says babies are timid send them my way so I can correct them because this baby was anything but timid in fact aggressive comes to mind if anything does. There was no falling asleep for this little guy he was wide awake and doing as much damage to the bottom of my car seat as his teeth could handle and the tire iron that I thought would be a brilliant tool for this purpose was about a foot too long in that confined space. Yet after about a half and hour of trying to corral the little creature into the box I gave up and called the office to tell them I’d be late. While I was on the phone telling them the story you’re reading here really was true and assuring them it wasn’t some elaborate excuse for wasting time to goof off the baby finally came out and went right into the box that was lying on it's side. I took the tire iron and tipped the box up, found the lid and added it to the box while the baby hissed and champed it’s teeth at me trying to climb out. Not chancing another stunt drive down the road I got the spare out of the back placed the box in the hole and weighed it down with the tire as I closed the lid.
Climbing back into the car I sat directly in baby possum poo that I guess was a thank-you for picking him (or her) up to begin with. I started the car back up and drove back to where I found it and pulled over. All the way back as I was headed there I could hear it eating at the cardboard to get loose again and this was through the trunk so I know it was really mad by now. With gloves, tire iron, sweater guard, winter gloves I found the spot and stopped the car. I went around to the back and opened the trunk. Lifting the tire I saw the baby possum had chewed a hole into the side of the box and his head was sticking out of it hissing. So like some Chinese plate twirler or a member of the Cirque du Soleil, I managed to lift the box out of the trunk by balancing it on the tire iron and keeping it steady with a tap now and again with my hand. I placed it on the ground and tipped it over to watch one little baby possum disappear from the side and emerge its head and body out of the box to back off into the weeds toward the woods. After I could see he (or she) was going to be ok I headed home to unwind. Today has been more than I needed so I decided to take the rest of the day off to wash my pants, clean up the frosting mess from the brownie, and the gift my little friend left on the front seat. Thinking about the experience and the crap I go through day to day just to see these papers are circulated properly I really need to find a new job because this is beyond normal. Maybe I should quit and start my own company delivering baby possums; after all I do have experience.
There is a good reason God made babies to look the way they do. All soft, cute and cuddly (well… the majority of them) and I suppose that’s why I stopped the car to help another life that was in trouble last night. I was driving along a dark road in the country around 3:45 in the morning (as if that’s something new) when I noticed in the headlights this little form flopping around on the road. Stopping the car to investigate I saw in the headlights it was a baby possum. By the time I’d gotten out of the car and went over, him (or her) it was still. Fearing that it had died I examined the little creature by touching it carefully with a pen I had and found it was still breathing so I went back to the car to see what I could find. I opened the trunk and found a small box and got it out the trunk. Returning to the baby possum I gently picked it up (with winter gloves I put on) and placed it in the box.
A car must have hit it, but seeing no blood doesn’t mean something isn’t wrong or that it isn’t hurt. So in my Good Samaritan way I thought why not help the little creature out and take it to a vet in the morning in the hopes this tiny life could be saved. Now I’m no animal expert but I am aware wild animals carry things like rabies, fleas, ticks, lyme disease and god knows what else that could be lurking on them ready to strike one down with the latest version of some simian type plague so I kept the gloves on until the wee creature was secure and safe.
Many of you must be wondering what might possess someone like me to pick something like this up so early in the morning, is he deluded, insane, a well meaning tree hugger, or just an average Joe trying to do the right thing and perhaps it’s a bit of them all yet there I was back in the car and on my way to check on my people at 3:45 in the morning. I was rolling down the highway feeling pretty good about myself thinking I’m going to score me a couple of good karma points when I hear the little guy (or girl) stir in the box. Thinking that it can’t be so bad if it’s awake I figured just leave it alone, let it sleep and the doctor will have it all better in the morning when the office opens up, or when I take it over to Pedimont Wildlife rescue in Durham.
Now shortly after hearing the stirring inside the box I came to a customers house who was handicap and noticed that the carrier had forgotten to bring the paper up to this customers house, a nice very sweet 90 yr. old woman in a wheelchair with a O2 setup. All I could picture in my head was this poor old woman wheeling herself out to the driveway, which was more of an obstacle course for Monster Trucks than for cars, and again trying to do the right thing I stopped got out of the car and picked the paper up. I carried it over to the house and set it on the porch railing by her door so when she looked for it in the morning it would be within easy reach. The last thing I want on my conscience is some 90 yr. old O2 tank breathing wheel chair bound woman to be found in her driveway keeled over because she struggled to reach down to get her morning paper and fell over dead. Beside have you ever tried to sit in a wheel chair and pick something up in front of you, it’s a pain in the muffin if you haven’t and even if you have at best it’s a experience even a yoga master wouldn’t want to endure.
Completing the delivery I went back to the car, got in, started it up and began my travels down the roads again. Suddenly I felt a movement on my leg and thinking I might of gotten a tick on me from the baby possum I turned on the over head light to see if that was it since I had shorts on. Now imagine yourself in this situation while your going 60 miles an hour down a unlit country road because that’s where I was at the time basking in my newly found karmic goodness. Looking down at my leg to make sure it wasn’t a tick searching for a new lyme disease victim I didn’t see any ticks. What I did see though right now at my feet was one very pissed off baby possum and he began hissing at me while attempting to take a bite out of my leg by snapping at it.
If you ever wondered how some of those Hollywood stuntman do the tricks they do to make it look so easy, they put baby possums in the car with them because as this animal was doing its best trying to bite me as I was trying to get the car slowed down while removing my feet off the floor. It must have been at that point that the baby got the upper hand because he climbed up still hissing onto the seat I was standing on as I attempted to slow the car down and drive all at the same time while it was nipping at my sneakers. Freaking out that he (or she, I didn’t have time to turn it over and check) might bite me I stepped over onto the passenger seat as the car slowed enough to hold the wheel from there and fend the baby from hell off with the other which held a thin 3 page Monday paper to keep the possum at bay. To refresh the readers mind were speeding down the road doing 60, there’s no lights, no buildings, no convenience stores, and hardly any houses while trying to drive from a standing position in the passenger seat as a baby possum attempts to French kiss my leg with her (or his) teeth as I fend it off with a 3 page paper.
Why Oreo’s entered my mind at the point is beyond me and I suppose it was a defense mechanism to keep me from losing it as the ironic turn of events played out. I didn’t have Oreo’s though, nor milk to dunk them either, but I did have a gourmet brownie on the seat where I was. I’d planned on eating it later in the morning but baby must have smelled it and wanted some because he (or she) then tried to get me to leave the seat so it could get over to the brownie. Now crouched in a car on a seat trying to hold a baby possum back with a Monday paper isn’t the most effective way of animal control and management while standing in the passenger seat of a moving car but the car managed somehow to slow down enough to where I could open the door and get out.
After getting out of the car I ran along side it using the edge of the door to bring it to a stop and then opened the trunk to get a tire iron out so I could use it to move the possum, and hopefully reach inside and get the box out where I put the possum to begin with. The possum was way ahead of me and had gotten out of the way to crawl back down by the drivers side near the gas pedal to eat my $4.00 brownie and it didn’t appear to have any mind to save it’s rescuer any.
Now it was my turn to try and get a fully awake baby possum back into the box which is easier said than done. If you’ve ever seen a possum they normally don’t seem to be fast animals but this baby now hopped up on sugar from my gourmet brownie sure could move pretty fast because after I opened the door and tried to get him into the box he (or she) decided under the seat was the best place to avoid such an capture. So blocking the front of the seat with papers and the rear opening of the seat with papers I got the gloves back out of the car and put them on along with a heavy sweater I still had in there. I figured this would be a better line of defense than bare skinned arm for its teeth if it should try to take another bite out of me. I got back out of the car and got the tire iron to move him with as I heard the baby trying to eat his (or her) way through the seat, apparently baby possums don’t like to be confined under car seats.
Coming back around to the front armed with my tire iron, winter gloves, sweater, a flashlight, and a box inside I felt comfortable could handle the task I figured I’ll get him out this time since I remembered hearing something once about these animals falling asleep when they are scared (frankly I was feeling pretty woozy myself). We’ll if anyone ever says babies are timid send them my way so I can correct them because this baby was anything but timid in fact aggressive comes to mind if anything does. There was no falling asleep for this little guy he was wide awake and doing as much damage to the bottom of my car seat as his teeth could handle and the tire iron that I thought would be a brilliant tool for this purpose was about a foot too long in that confined space. Yet after about a half and hour of trying to corral the little creature into the box I gave up and called the office to tell them I’d be late. While I was on the phone telling them the story you’re reading here really was true and assuring them it wasn’t some elaborate excuse for wasting time to goof off the baby finally came out and went right into the box that was lying on it's side. I took the tire iron and tipped the box up, found the lid and added it to the box while the baby hissed and champed it’s teeth at me trying to climb out. Not chancing another stunt drive down the road I got the spare out of the back placed the box in the hole and weighed it down with the tire as I closed the lid.
Climbing back into the car I sat directly in baby possum poo that I guess was a thank-you for picking him (or her) up to begin with. I started the car back up and drove back to where I found it and pulled over. All the way back as I was headed there I could hear it eating at the cardboard to get loose again and this was through the trunk so I know it was really mad by now. With gloves, tire iron, sweater guard, winter gloves I found the spot and stopped the car. I went around to the back and opened the trunk. Lifting the tire I saw the baby possum had chewed a hole into the side of the box and his head was sticking out of it hissing. So like some Chinese plate twirler or a member of the Cirque du Soleil, I managed to lift the box out of the trunk by balancing it on the tire iron and keeping it steady with a tap now and again with my hand. I placed it on the ground and tipped it over to watch one little baby possum disappear from the side and emerge its head and body out of the box to back off into the weeds toward the woods. After I could see he (or she) was going to be ok I headed home to unwind. Today has been more than I needed so I decided to take the rest of the day off to wash my pants, clean up the frosting mess from the brownie, and the gift my little friend left on the front seat. Thinking about the experience and the crap I go through day to day just to see these papers are circulated properly I really need to find a new job because this is beyond normal. Maybe I should quit and start my own company delivering baby possums; after all I do have experience.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Close Encounters of the Animal Kind
Last night on my way home I found myself going down a section of road in the country that was dark and heavily wooded, it reminded me of something that happened on a road similar to this a long ago, in fact it was the very same road.
Once, maybe it was five, could be even six years ago, I was working as a circulation district manager for one of the local papers. One night the occasion arose where I found myself out in my car on a rural country road delivering newspapers because the normal carrier was sick. Normally this wasn’t in my realm of duties because I could have delegated it to one of my subordinates yet I decided to deliver the papers for this carrier so I could refresh myself with what this person went through each night.
Because of my position I knew this persons paper route for the most part and since I was the one during those days that taught the carriers how to memorize the 725-825 different addresses and correctly deliver the six different papers to these various subscribers. In those times, before the corporate buyout/take-over happened our paper was also contracted out to deliver, The New York Times, The Financial Times, USA Today, Barron’s, The Wall Street Journal and ours The Herald Sun. Sounds difficult I know but after you have it memorized it’s quit easy and the only thing that needs your full attention is the daily changes to those customers.
So I’m going down this road around four o’clock in the morning one night at the end of January and we were just finishing up a freakish three or four days of warm weather and rain. This night was no exception because while I was preparing the route (hint: how do you think your papers get into those plastic bags?), it was raining quite hard even though it was warm out. Having been delivering for about an hour I was headed down this darken road and got to a section where it dips down a little bit in the middle near a heavily wooded area which given enough rain overflows once in a great while. But there was no flood on this night the water had filled the ditches and surrounding woods but didn’t reach the road that was regardless of the water in the woods wet and somewhat slick.
I’d just delivered (or a better word might be thrown) a paper into a subscriber driveway and looked down to see if any changes were coming up. All of the sudden out on the road in my headlights (I was driving with the bright lights on so I could read the mailbox addresses easier) were thousands of six to eight inch long black and white dotted salamanders. You see these woodland creatures normally during this are buried under old rotten logs or dug down into the dirt, but on this night they had all agreed enough of winter and decided to do something about it. I’ll never know what the outcome of that salamander convention because I only took a few minutes to stop and watch thousands of them gather on the road but this story isn’t about salamanders in the middle of winter, this story is about what happened during that ride.
As I mentioned this was a dark night, it was 4 am and I was in the country on a wet road covered with salamanders in the woods. I got on with the tasks before me and delivered to the next address and was headed to the one that followed that when as I came around this banked corner something even crazier happened. The window was all the way down not only because it was around sixty eight out but because it made for throwing the paper over the hood of my truck into the driveways easier than getting out. I’d just reached across the seat to take another paper off the pile I had in order by delivery and type to throw it when looking up a huge shape was coming in through the window.
Naturally I swerved and quickly recovered enough to try and see the road as my arm came up to protect my face from this giant brown thing was semi-attacking, semi-escaping in front of me. With a push of my arm toward the window I felt claws wrap around my arm and this is what probably motivated me to using the force I needed to for what happened next. As soon as my arm connected with those claws the flapping object was in my face and then it was out the window half-flying, half-tumbling onto the road. I had just had a close encounter with an owl. Not just a cute, wise old Winnie the Pooh owl either but a full size great grey owl out on the hunt looking for I assume salamanders. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever been up close to a great grey owl but they get to be two feet to almost three feet tall and this one was no exception, I’m talking full size owl here. The whole thing took less than six seconds to shake up my night but seeing the owl go down I quickly found the next driveway to turn around.
Heading back to where I had my close encounter, seriously this was frickin’ nuts, I’m writing this now and still remember how crazy that was. Imagine going 45 miles per hour down a know but not really know dark wet road and out of the blue you finding yourself in a personal battle with a three foot owl in the front seat and on the steering wheel fighting over who’s going to drive. But getting back I saw as I pulled up this majestic creature lift itself up and fly off into the woods. Seconds later I could hear hoo hoo hoo, hoo hoo hoo as if saying, “WTF was that?” Turning to get back into the truck I felt a squish and looking down saw I had stepped on one of the salamanders headed to the convention I mentioned earlier and it dawned on me this might have been the very snack the owl was swooping in towards when we met. I bid good night to my friend and left to continue on into the night delivering the rest of the route without issue.
It left me in an odd mood though for I began to wonder what would have happened if I had hit this owl and how with all my talent I wasn’t qualified to care for a field mouse let alone a owl if it had been injured. An animal with a sharp beak and huge claws I pictured myself trying to place a broke wing three foot owl in my car without getting peaked to death and blooded by claws in the process. I’m glad it didn’t turn out that way though as I headed home to watch “The Great Lebowski” before going back to work.
Later the same day around 11 am I’m out doing a delivery to a customer near Jordan Lake a twenty-seven mile long reservoir built by the Army back in the fifties or sixties and as I’m going down the road I see there’s an eastern box turtle making his way across the road. Now I’m no turtle whisperer but I do know enough about them to realize they can’t hold up a car with their shell so I stop the car to rescue him (or her) off the road.
Since I lived on a little lake at the time I thought, hey why not take him back there since there’s a whole bunch of different turtles in it and plenty of woods near by for him or her to live in. So gathering him up I place him in the truck on the passenger floor and continue on my way.
If you’re ever out anywhere and anyone ever tells you that turtles can’t climb they are plumb dumb lying to you because I spent half the time bending over to keep this little turtle from climbing up into my dashboard and the other half trying to steer down the road so it didn’t look like I just drank a twelve pack of Bud Light. Picture in your minds eye the truck in front of you where a guy is driving it and every once and a while the truck swerves erratically from one side of the road to the other and you have a rough idea what it is like driving around with a loose turtle in your truck.
Anyway as I continue on trying to keep the turtle from climbing up into the dash and failing where my attention should be focused on driving I look up after adjusting the turtle once more and right in front of the truck in my windshield is a fucking bald eagle. I shit you not, this is the very same morning after the owl (or the next morning after that night, the news tends to make you never really know what day it is since they all blend from one into the other, but this was the very same morning from the previous night with the owl, turtle in on the floor next to me is being mischievous). Once again I swerve hard out of the path of our nations symbol who was attempting to have me kiss some glass with bald eagle embedded in it and once more, my window was down.
The Eagle manages to pass me but as it’s going by its fucking wing comes into the window slaps me hard in the face and its gone. Startled I look in the mirror on the side of the truck as I begin pulling over thinking the eagle might be hurt only to see it flying off. Eagle fine or not I stopped the truck got out and started screaming, “what the f*#k, what the hell is this crap, jumping f*#king Jesus on a pogo stick what the f*#k is this sh*t all about with the animals”, I’m jumping up and down screaming, shaking my arms and generally freaking out looking like some half deranged lunatic after a somewhat intense situation. I mean it was nuts, like some frickin’ Russian KGB or American CIA stress test, it shook me up.
The just as I’m finishing up my ‘WTF life dance’, I hear the eagle who’s safety made it over to big tall gnarly old tree to recover say, “that was for the Owl, pay attention to the road you no driving f*#k.” He then gave me the feather and then flew off like I did something wrong? If things couldn’t of gotten any weirder when I got back in the truck the frickin’ turtle who is on the passenger seat now says, “that’s what I was trying to tell you, the owl’s got a message for you”. I looked at him with a sarcastic eye and said, “really, you think? Are you serious”? I then drove to the next public phone I could find called in and told them I must have come down with something so I was going home for the day.
You see my reasoning was that I’d given it my best shot for the last ten hours and given all the weird things that had happened I was probably better off home in bed than out on a road driving around. I went home, parked and took the turtle over to the edge of the woods to let him go. He walked away slowly but before he got out of sight he turned and said, “I just can’t remember when I have been with a worse driver in my life, fast, slow, one f*#king side to the other, all I was trying to do was get to the other side of the road and this one has to pick me up, stupid humans!” and with that he left. I stood there thinking to myself some days are definitely crazier than others and today was no exception but it still didn’t top the baby possum story, but that’s for another time.
Once, maybe it was five, could be even six years ago, I was working as a circulation district manager for one of the local papers. One night the occasion arose where I found myself out in my car on a rural country road delivering newspapers because the normal carrier was sick. Normally this wasn’t in my realm of duties because I could have delegated it to one of my subordinates yet I decided to deliver the papers for this carrier so I could refresh myself with what this person went through each night.
Because of my position I knew this persons paper route for the most part and since I was the one during those days that taught the carriers how to memorize the 725-825 different addresses and correctly deliver the six different papers to these various subscribers. In those times, before the corporate buyout/take-over happened our paper was also contracted out to deliver, The New York Times, The Financial Times, USA Today, Barron’s, The Wall Street Journal and ours The Herald Sun. Sounds difficult I know but after you have it memorized it’s quit easy and the only thing that needs your full attention is the daily changes to those customers.
So I’m going down this road around four o’clock in the morning one night at the end of January and we were just finishing up a freakish three or four days of warm weather and rain. This night was no exception because while I was preparing the route (hint: how do you think your papers get into those plastic bags?), it was raining quite hard even though it was warm out. Having been delivering for about an hour I was headed down this darken road and got to a section where it dips down a little bit in the middle near a heavily wooded area which given enough rain overflows once in a great while. But there was no flood on this night the water had filled the ditches and surrounding woods but didn’t reach the road that was regardless of the water in the woods wet and somewhat slick.
I’d just delivered (or a better word might be thrown) a paper into a subscriber driveway and looked down to see if any changes were coming up. All of the sudden out on the road in my headlights (I was driving with the bright lights on so I could read the mailbox addresses easier) were thousands of six to eight inch long black and white dotted salamanders. You see these woodland creatures normally during this are buried under old rotten logs or dug down into the dirt, but on this night they had all agreed enough of winter and decided to do something about it. I’ll never know what the outcome of that salamander convention because I only took a few minutes to stop and watch thousands of them gather on the road but this story isn’t about salamanders in the middle of winter, this story is about what happened during that ride.
As I mentioned this was a dark night, it was 4 am and I was in the country on a wet road covered with salamanders in the woods. I got on with the tasks before me and delivered to the next address and was headed to the one that followed that when as I came around this banked corner something even crazier happened. The window was all the way down not only because it was around sixty eight out but because it made for throwing the paper over the hood of my truck into the driveways easier than getting out. I’d just reached across the seat to take another paper off the pile I had in order by delivery and type to throw it when looking up a huge shape was coming in through the window.
Naturally I swerved and quickly recovered enough to try and see the road as my arm came up to protect my face from this giant brown thing was semi-attacking, semi-escaping in front of me. With a push of my arm toward the window I felt claws wrap around my arm and this is what probably motivated me to using the force I needed to for what happened next. As soon as my arm connected with those claws the flapping object was in my face and then it was out the window half-flying, half-tumbling onto the road. I had just had a close encounter with an owl. Not just a cute, wise old Winnie the Pooh owl either but a full size great grey owl out on the hunt looking for I assume salamanders. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever been up close to a great grey owl but they get to be two feet to almost three feet tall and this one was no exception, I’m talking full size owl here. The whole thing took less than six seconds to shake up my night but seeing the owl go down I quickly found the next driveway to turn around.
Heading back to where I had my close encounter, seriously this was frickin’ nuts, I’m writing this now and still remember how crazy that was. Imagine going 45 miles per hour down a know but not really know dark wet road and out of the blue you finding yourself in a personal battle with a three foot owl in the front seat and on the steering wheel fighting over who’s going to drive. But getting back I saw as I pulled up this majestic creature lift itself up and fly off into the woods. Seconds later I could hear hoo hoo hoo, hoo hoo hoo as if saying, “WTF was that?” Turning to get back into the truck I felt a squish and looking down saw I had stepped on one of the salamanders headed to the convention I mentioned earlier and it dawned on me this might have been the very snack the owl was swooping in towards when we met. I bid good night to my friend and left to continue on into the night delivering the rest of the route without issue.
It left me in an odd mood though for I began to wonder what would have happened if I had hit this owl and how with all my talent I wasn’t qualified to care for a field mouse let alone a owl if it had been injured. An animal with a sharp beak and huge claws I pictured myself trying to place a broke wing three foot owl in my car without getting peaked to death and blooded by claws in the process. I’m glad it didn’t turn out that way though as I headed home to watch “The Great Lebowski” before going back to work.
Later the same day around 11 am I’m out doing a delivery to a customer near Jordan Lake a twenty-seven mile long reservoir built by the Army back in the fifties or sixties and as I’m going down the road I see there’s an eastern box turtle making his way across the road. Now I’m no turtle whisperer but I do know enough about them to realize they can’t hold up a car with their shell so I stop the car to rescue him (or her) off the road.
Since I lived on a little lake at the time I thought, hey why not take him back there since there’s a whole bunch of different turtles in it and plenty of woods near by for him or her to live in. So gathering him up I place him in the truck on the passenger floor and continue on my way.
If you’re ever out anywhere and anyone ever tells you that turtles can’t climb they are plumb dumb lying to you because I spent half the time bending over to keep this little turtle from climbing up into my dashboard and the other half trying to steer down the road so it didn’t look like I just drank a twelve pack of Bud Light. Picture in your minds eye the truck in front of you where a guy is driving it and every once and a while the truck swerves erratically from one side of the road to the other and you have a rough idea what it is like driving around with a loose turtle in your truck.
Anyway as I continue on trying to keep the turtle from climbing up into the dash and failing where my attention should be focused on driving I look up after adjusting the turtle once more and right in front of the truck in my windshield is a fucking bald eagle. I shit you not, this is the very same morning after the owl (or the next morning after that night, the news tends to make you never really know what day it is since they all blend from one into the other, but this was the very same morning from the previous night with the owl, turtle in on the floor next to me is being mischievous). Once again I swerve hard out of the path of our nations symbol who was attempting to have me kiss some glass with bald eagle embedded in it and once more, my window was down.
The Eagle manages to pass me but as it’s going by its fucking wing comes into the window slaps me hard in the face and its gone. Startled I look in the mirror on the side of the truck as I begin pulling over thinking the eagle might be hurt only to see it flying off. Eagle fine or not I stopped the truck got out and started screaming, “what the f*#k, what the hell is this crap, jumping f*#king Jesus on a pogo stick what the f*#k is this sh*t all about with the animals”, I’m jumping up and down screaming, shaking my arms and generally freaking out looking like some half deranged lunatic after a somewhat intense situation. I mean it was nuts, like some frickin’ Russian KGB or American CIA stress test, it shook me up.
The just as I’m finishing up my ‘WTF life dance’, I hear the eagle who’s safety made it over to big tall gnarly old tree to recover say, “that was for the Owl, pay attention to the road you no driving f*#k.” He then gave me the feather and then flew off like I did something wrong? If things couldn’t of gotten any weirder when I got back in the truck the frickin’ turtle who is on the passenger seat now says, “that’s what I was trying to tell you, the owl’s got a message for you”. I looked at him with a sarcastic eye and said, “really, you think? Are you serious”? I then drove to the next public phone I could find called in and told them I must have come down with something so I was going home for the day.
You see my reasoning was that I’d given it my best shot for the last ten hours and given all the weird things that had happened I was probably better off home in bed than out on a road driving around. I went home, parked and took the turtle over to the edge of the woods to let him go. He walked away slowly but before he got out of sight he turned and said, “I just can’t remember when I have been with a worse driver in my life, fast, slow, one f*#king side to the other, all I was trying to do was get to the other side of the road and this one has to pick me up, stupid humans!” and with that he left. I stood there thinking to myself some days are definitely crazier than others and today was no exception but it still didn’t top the baby possum story, but that’s for another time.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
A Tale of Horror – The other side of the hunting fence
I don’t know if there’s a sound called death when you hear the firing of a gun yet there it was in my ear, the crack-bang of a shotgun that told me somewhere something was dying. I opened the back door and stepped out hoping perhaps it was my neighbor Will scaring crows out of the pecan trees again except I knew that sound wasn’t the same one that the shotgun blanks made he used to shoo those thieves of the air away, no this was a deeper sound, one that warrants attention. This sound bit the air with a force that spoke of death.
Standing on the porch under the fading red autumn skies I began looking around when I noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye. Out past the field where the rye grass grew all summer down on the other side of a silk-flower tree lined pond there’s a small clearing on the far side and something large was on the ground, it screamed with a horrible bleating sound that said in any language, “I’m dying”. It took a moment to register in my senses it was a doe because this was so foreign to me, like hearing someone use the word, “nigger” (and mean it) it was something that doesn’t belong, something so primitive compared to the world I live in that it’s almost too difficult to comprehend. My thoughts were jumbled all at once, it’s a doe, she’s dying, then guilt - perhaps one of the very ones I’d been feeding daily from the apples I collected off the apple trees that had gone wild, maybe those treats drew her to this place. I saw her thrashing around trying to stand only to fall down, again and again she repeated her vain attempt at getting up until I saw the wind blow slowly across the field and settled next to her, she became quite, her movement slowed, the reaper had arrived.
I quickly went back in and put on my work boots, grabbed a jacket and set off toward the doe wondering the whole time, what I could do for her when I got there, apprehensive about mental TV flash backs of animal planet programs showing deer cutting people up with their hooves I dually began searching my memory on my knowledge of animal husbandry and for some reason wishing I had my multi-tool knife on me (although for the life of me I still can’t figure that one out when a better wish might have been an emergency room in an animal hospital with a fully staffed trauma team of the best surgeons in the world on hand). I could see she was still hanging onto the dearness of life but by the time I got over to where she was her breathing was hard and labored, it was only a matter of time before she passed on and I wanted to touch her. I watched her knowing there was nothing I could do since she’d taken the gunshot to the side of her head and neck. Her eye moved as I looked at her and for a second we each saw the other. At that second our locked eyes and I felt the wildness within her that swam in waters of fear and confusion knowing with no doubt the sinking pull of going down. From the hole in the side of her head blood and gore spewed out around the opening. Repulsed I turned away from the deer with a sickening feeling in my stomach knowing she’d never taste apples I collected again or find the piles of pecans I left by the tree for the deer, or in her world simply breath the air of tomorrow.
I went up to the house where the old man I’d become friends with lived to let him know someone shot the deer. I had almost made it to the house when Will came out and said, “well that will be one less lady eatin’ more than her fair share from my garden and a few more pounds in the freezer”. He continued on with the play by play saying, “almost didn’t get her as the damn thing kept moving on me”, “Will”, I said, “Your shot her?” to which he replied, “sure did, she’s good eating and has been taken more than her share lately so I thought I’d even things out. Say why don’t you give me a hand throwing her in the truck so I can take her over yonder and hang her up”. I said, “OK”, and followed Will in his truck back over to the doe and gently walked up on her once more checking to see if she’d passed once more slowly reaching out to touch her to which Will chuckled and said, “first time you ever seen a doe get shot”, “no”, I answered back, “I was just curious if she was still alive, heard of one once kicking out the back window of a pick-up truck cause the deer wasn’t quite dead when they put her in there”. Then feeling like a traitor for masking my true thoughts on the whole situation I grabbed onto her back legs as Will took the front, we picked her up and placed her in the back of the truck he’d brought over. As the tailgate closed her head flopped back onto her body I knew she was really gone and thought to myself it must be a terrible way to go.
Now I realize being hit by a car might be worse and the total time between the shot and her final moments on earth couldn’t have been more than five or ten minutes at the most but couldn’t get over the queasy feeling that something I enjoyed was no longer around to give me or anyone else pleasure anymore. I thought of my own delight at seeing the deer feed out front and the times I’ve opened the back door to scare them as they chomp down my own garden after they’d already eaten what I had grown for them but that was more of a game of peek a boo with no ending. Here there was an end, game over, no one wins.
I thought back to when I was young when my own father took me deer hunting and how excited I was to be on a hunt with “the boys” and how when one of us finally did shoot a deer how that delight turned to horror as I watched that animal die too. I never hunted again, I never lifted a gun again for it was a lesson that had burned into the soul of my being and I never wanted to be a part of it again. Through the years as I’ve gotten older I still try to understand the whys and the how of hunting but there was something about this death so close to Halloween that brought the dark side of it into light. Under the joy of dressing up, carving pumpkins, and collecting candy in bags lies something moldy, something dank, something that smells sickly.
I got home, entered, and shut the door. As I bent down to take off my work boots I saw the blood that was all over my hands, I saw the blood from the doe had dripped all over my pant legs and work boots, I remember thinking this is crazy I should have noticed this the second it happened, why wasn’t I aware of this or is this where death lies in wait for it’s call; whether from the honk of a car horn, or the click of an electric fence, or perhaps this time from the report of a shotgun.
Autumn when it turns to Halloween is about being scared, it’s about being horrified, it’s about ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night. It’s about the end of a cycle. Many times these ends for some reason express not a reason for joy but of remembrance for the frailty of life, funny how these things differ to many of us so perhaps that’s where the joy in it is. To just breath the air, to see, to smell, to taste, to touch, for as it is in fiction so it can be (and often is) in real life the same thing. Death is there just outside the light for us in a little crack of darkness list in hand just waiting for the right time when it can come out and introduce itself and say hello.
Standing on the porch under the fading red autumn skies I began looking around when I noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye. Out past the field where the rye grass grew all summer down on the other side of a silk-flower tree lined pond there’s a small clearing on the far side and something large was on the ground, it screamed with a horrible bleating sound that said in any language, “I’m dying”. It took a moment to register in my senses it was a doe because this was so foreign to me, like hearing someone use the word, “nigger” (and mean it) it was something that doesn’t belong, something so primitive compared to the world I live in that it’s almost too difficult to comprehend. My thoughts were jumbled all at once, it’s a doe, she’s dying, then guilt - perhaps one of the very ones I’d been feeding daily from the apples I collected off the apple trees that had gone wild, maybe those treats drew her to this place. I saw her thrashing around trying to stand only to fall down, again and again she repeated her vain attempt at getting up until I saw the wind blow slowly across the field and settled next to her, she became quite, her movement slowed, the reaper had arrived.
I quickly went back in and put on my work boots, grabbed a jacket and set off toward the doe wondering the whole time, what I could do for her when I got there, apprehensive about mental TV flash backs of animal planet programs showing deer cutting people up with their hooves I dually began searching my memory on my knowledge of animal husbandry and for some reason wishing I had my multi-tool knife on me (although for the life of me I still can’t figure that one out when a better wish might have been an emergency room in an animal hospital with a fully staffed trauma team of the best surgeons in the world on hand). I could see she was still hanging onto the dearness of life but by the time I got over to where she was her breathing was hard and labored, it was only a matter of time before she passed on and I wanted to touch her. I watched her knowing there was nothing I could do since she’d taken the gunshot to the side of her head and neck. Her eye moved as I looked at her and for a second we each saw the other. At that second our locked eyes and I felt the wildness within her that swam in waters of fear and confusion knowing with no doubt the sinking pull of going down. From the hole in the side of her head blood and gore spewed out around the opening. Repulsed I turned away from the deer with a sickening feeling in my stomach knowing she’d never taste apples I collected again or find the piles of pecans I left by the tree for the deer, or in her world simply breath the air of tomorrow.
I went up to the house where the old man I’d become friends with lived to let him know someone shot the deer. I had almost made it to the house when Will came out and said, “well that will be one less lady eatin’ more than her fair share from my garden and a few more pounds in the freezer”. He continued on with the play by play saying, “almost didn’t get her as the damn thing kept moving on me”, “Will”, I said, “Your shot her?” to which he replied, “sure did, she’s good eating and has been taken more than her share lately so I thought I’d even things out. Say why don’t you give me a hand throwing her in the truck so I can take her over yonder and hang her up”. I said, “OK”, and followed Will in his truck back over to the doe and gently walked up on her once more checking to see if she’d passed once more slowly reaching out to touch her to which Will chuckled and said, “first time you ever seen a doe get shot”, “no”, I answered back, “I was just curious if she was still alive, heard of one once kicking out the back window of a pick-up truck cause the deer wasn’t quite dead when they put her in there”. Then feeling like a traitor for masking my true thoughts on the whole situation I grabbed onto her back legs as Will took the front, we picked her up and placed her in the back of the truck he’d brought over. As the tailgate closed her head flopped back onto her body I knew she was really gone and thought to myself it must be a terrible way to go.
Now I realize being hit by a car might be worse and the total time between the shot and her final moments on earth couldn’t have been more than five or ten minutes at the most but couldn’t get over the queasy feeling that something I enjoyed was no longer around to give me or anyone else pleasure anymore. I thought of my own delight at seeing the deer feed out front and the times I’ve opened the back door to scare them as they chomp down my own garden after they’d already eaten what I had grown for them but that was more of a game of peek a boo with no ending. Here there was an end, game over, no one wins.
I thought back to when I was young when my own father took me deer hunting and how excited I was to be on a hunt with “the boys” and how when one of us finally did shoot a deer how that delight turned to horror as I watched that animal die too. I never hunted again, I never lifted a gun again for it was a lesson that had burned into the soul of my being and I never wanted to be a part of it again. Through the years as I’ve gotten older I still try to understand the whys and the how of hunting but there was something about this death so close to Halloween that brought the dark side of it into light. Under the joy of dressing up, carving pumpkins, and collecting candy in bags lies something moldy, something dank, something that smells sickly.
I got home, entered, and shut the door. As I bent down to take off my work boots I saw the blood that was all over my hands, I saw the blood from the doe had dripped all over my pant legs and work boots, I remember thinking this is crazy I should have noticed this the second it happened, why wasn’t I aware of this or is this where death lies in wait for it’s call; whether from the honk of a car horn, or the click of an electric fence, or perhaps this time from the report of a shotgun.
Autumn when it turns to Halloween is about being scared, it’s about being horrified, it’s about ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night. It’s about the end of a cycle. Many times these ends for some reason express not a reason for joy but of remembrance for the frailty of life, funny how these things differ to many of us so perhaps that’s where the joy in it is. To just breath the air, to see, to smell, to taste, to touch, for as it is in fiction so it can be (and often is) in real life the same thing. Death is there just outside the light for us in a little crack of darkness list in hand just waiting for the right time when it can come out and introduce itself and say hello.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
I saw Jesus at Wendy's
I was feeling a bit puckish earlier today so I stopped into Wendy’s to grab a bite to eat and saw a sign that read you had to request tomato on your hamburger if you wanted tomato or they wouldn’t be adding it, (even though they will still be charging you the same price). Translated that means, Wendy’s is so cheap that even the worst low-end tomato they can get from some underpaid backyard farmer is still too expensive for them to add. Since they have to pay more for these basic ingredients instead of increasing the price they simply aren’t adding it into your order anymore unless you request it, (thereby saving more money on overhead and maximizing profits). What next Wendy’s, you going to have your undocumented south of the US border employees start scouring the dumpsters of the local supermarkets in the dead of night trash picking expired veggies for your next quarterly earnings update to the stockholders?
Now I normally don’t eat tomatoes on my burgers but since this was something they weren’t doing I figured why not make them since I can throw it away. I’m paying for it so I purposely ordered mine with tomatoes and ketchup, minus the lettuce, pickles, mustard, onions and all the rest of the rabbit food they want to put on your less than picture perfect burger. But I’m not here today to talk about burger extras and frankly (to go down a different path for a bit) I could never come up with a good enough reason for adding a salad to my burger or half the other things companies dream up to screw up a good burger. Nor I’m I going to go into why I don’t like the cheapest yellow mustards they can import from prison labor camps in China (even though I like other mustards). I’m not even going to get into why I absolutely hate pickles so much I can’t even handle them if they’re just on the plate as a side garnish. No, today I’m here to say something far more important than hamburgers without tomatoes on them, today I’m here to speak about Jesus.
You see because these corporations are so hung up on profits they will only hire the lowest scale of undocumented drug inducted alcoholic degenerate wage earners they can find (not because they would pay them less if they could, but because it’s against federal law to pay any less (unless you’re Wal-Mart). You can expect without a shadow of doubt something is going to be wrong with your order because of these corporate practices and that’s even when you can find someone that speaks spanglish. I got my burger I thought it wise to give it a quick scan bEfore I bit into it since they can never seem to do it the way I order it.
I began inspecting my meal by unwrapping it and opening up the burger I saw the meat, a tomato, ketchup, good so far, and then frickin’ pickles! This isn’t what I ordered, I hate pickles, I hate them touching my food, I hate the way they taste, the way they look, everything about them just skives me out and makes me want to hurl and while checking this burger I saw once again they didn’t disappoint me because it had the dreaded pickles on it. I was about to freak out and go up to choke the manager until he turned blue in the face when I noticed something strange. The pickle on my burger looked just like the face of Jesus, and because of the way they put the ketchup on it there was a place right under the eye that looked exactly like he was crying blood. Holy fucking cardinals playing bocce ball John Paul I thought to myself, yep you heard me right, on my 99 cent Wendy’s burger was the weeping face of Jesus!
Now I normally (as mentioned), Jesus or not, would have zoom, zoom, zoomed right back up to the counter and slapped that bad boy meat side down on it (since I made them repeat back the order to me twice in spanglish) but I couldn’t, the force of that crying Jesus pickle held me spell bound. I looked around and saw there were not only Hispanic workers behind the counter but Hispanics patrons as well in this establishment and not wanting to cause a scene or a sudden influx of bible thumping charlatans, Christians and other inbred rattlesnake shaking dancers with missing teeth all wanting to test the sweet tea machine by dumping poison in the containers or hurt my area with a shitload of pilgriming believers coming to see the weeping pickle Jesus I suddenly thought, ‘I should sell this on ebay’, that was until the pickle spoke to me.
Jesus said to me with through vinegary lips or maybe it was more like a Vulcan mind meld, “Rae, write these words down and tell the world that the time is coming of my return, then dispose of this pickle” So I let Jesus know I was way ahead of him on the disposal part and asked him, “but why should I, a somewhat normal and fairly sane person seek to risk embarrassment and humiliation by telling the world you spoke to me while in a pickle form, sitting on a burger slapped between two buns”, to which he replied, “ My child it is not for you to understand what I do your mission is to simply spread my word”. I asked Jesus if he could recall what happened the last time he tried to spread his word and if his feet and wrists still hurt, to which he said “good point, that’s why I’m calling on you this time”.
So what to do in a dilemma such as this? Do I risk being thrown into the local nutty bin for hearing the voice of the weeping pickle Jesus or just say fuck it and go out into the world with my pickle as proof Jesus still lives and breathes through us. I couldn’t think, I took a drink of my coke because I was sweating since this was something that I’ve never experienced before. I set the pickle that I now reverently refer to as the weeping Jesus pickle down on a napkin off to the side and decided to eat the hamburger while I was thinking about what to do except when I bit into it the frickin thing it was stone cold! Flippin’ Christ with all his rambling on had kept me so busy with this theological debate on what to do he had allowed my meal to get cold. So I asked him, “Hey Jesus you think you could warm this burger up for me” and he had the nerve to say, “don’t be trite”. Can you believe that, don’t be trite! Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick I didn’t asked to be visited by the son of God while I was ready to eat my low wage scale non unionized un-picture perfect tinnie tiny hamburger that was suppose to hold me over till dinner. Nooooooooooo, he just up and appeared to me in pickle form uninvited and unannounced and then expected me to throw my life away and help him, the nerve, I’ve had junkies I’ve known treated me better.
In the end I agreed to write this story down (just to be safe) and then decided to take Jesus and the rest of my cold burger up to the counter and get another one. When I set it down to complain to the Mexican guy with the missing teeth he looked down and gasped and began yammering on in Spanish faster than a crackhead looking to “borrow” twenty bucks. All the Hispanics in Wendy’s rushed over and then dropped to their knees and started praying saying I was a saint and that the pickle was a sign. They started referring to me as the one who carried the savior before him or at least that’s what I think they were saying given my limited Spanish vocabulary and comprehension of the language while cell phones were being pulled out left and right. You think your life can be weird sometimes, try being the saint of a Jesus pickle and one who hates pickles on top of it. I quickly had 23 Hispanic workers in a crowded restaurant touching me, wanting me to lay hands on them, bless them, and hopefully from what I deciphered grant them miracles.
As these people lay before me on their knees with their heads down and arms outstretched to touch me I did the only thing any self-respecting American would do being granted sainthood by his followers. I had them all stand up and asked them if they had sinned to which they all replied, “yes we have, please heal us”, and then with a stroke of genius hitting me I asked them if they recalled in the bible where God stated that you would pay for the sins you’ve committed while on earth. They all agreed they had heard this before and so I began passing out penitence’s. I left after it was over with an extra $247.63 in my pocket. (hey, damn skippy) I made them pay for their sins and throw in a burger without any pickles on it this time too. As for the weeping Jesus pickle, you can find him in the trash bin located outside the door if you need something to believe in, just don’t tell Jesus.
Now I normally don’t eat tomatoes on my burgers but since this was something they weren’t doing I figured why not make them since I can throw it away. I’m paying for it so I purposely ordered mine with tomatoes and ketchup, minus the lettuce, pickles, mustard, onions and all the rest of the rabbit food they want to put on your less than picture perfect burger. But I’m not here today to talk about burger extras and frankly (to go down a different path for a bit) I could never come up with a good enough reason for adding a salad to my burger or half the other things companies dream up to screw up a good burger. Nor I’m I going to go into why I don’t like the cheapest yellow mustards they can import from prison labor camps in China (even though I like other mustards). I’m not even going to get into why I absolutely hate pickles so much I can’t even handle them if they’re just on the plate as a side garnish. No, today I’m here to say something far more important than hamburgers without tomatoes on them, today I’m here to speak about Jesus.
You see because these corporations are so hung up on profits they will only hire the lowest scale of undocumented drug inducted alcoholic degenerate wage earners they can find (not because they would pay them less if they could, but because it’s against federal law to pay any less (unless you’re Wal-Mart). You can expect without a shadow of doubt something is going to be wrong with your order because of these corporate practices and that’s even when you can find someone that speaks spanglish. I got my burger I thought it wise to give it a quick scan bEfore I bit into it since they can never seem to do it the way I order it.
I began inspecting my meal by unwrapping it and opening up the burger I saw the meat, a tomato, ketchup, good so far, and then frickin’ pickles! This isn’t what I ordered, I hate pickles, I hate them touching my food, I hate the way they taste, the way they look, everything about them just skives me out and makes me want to hurl and while checking this burger I saw once again they didn’t disappoint me because it had the dreaded pickles on it. I was about to freak out and go up to choke the manager until he turned blue in the face when I noticed something strange. The pickle on my burger looked just like the face of Jesus, and because of the way they put the ketchup on it there was a place right under the eye that looked exactly like he was crying blood. Holy fucking cardinals playing bocce ball John Paul I thought to myself, yep you heard me right, on my 99 cent Wendy’s burger was the weeping face of Jesus!
Now I normally (as mentioned), Jesus or not, would have zoom, zoom, zoomed right back up to the counter and slapped that bad boy meat side down on it (since I made them repeat back the order to me twice in spanglish) but I couldn’t, the force of that crying Jesus pickle held me spell bound. I looked around and saw there were not only Hispanic workers behind the counter but Hispanics patrons as well in this establishment and not wanting to cause a scene or a sudden influx of bible thumping charlatans, Christians and other inbred rattlesnake shaking dancers with missing teeth all wanting to test the sweet tea machine by dumping poison in the containers or hurt my area with a shitload of pilgriming believers coming to see the weeping pickle Jesus I suddenly thought, ‘I should sell this on ebay’, that was until the pickle spoke to me.
Jesus said to me with through vinegary lips or maybe it was more like a Vulcan mind meld, “Rae, write these words down and tell the world that the time is coming of my return, then dispose of this pickle” So I let Jesus know I was way ahead of him on the disposal part and asked him, “but why should I, a somewhat normal and fairly sane person seek to risk embarrassment and humiliation by telling the world you spoke to me while in a pickle form, sitting on a burger slapped between two buns”, to which he replied, “ My child it is not for you to understand what I do your mission is to simply spread my word”. I asked Jesus if he could recall what happened the last time he tried to spread his word and if his feet and wrists still hurt, to which he said “good point, that’s why I’m calling on you this time”.
So what to do in a dilemma such as this? Do I risk being thrown into the local nutty bin for hearing the voice of the weeping pickle Jesus or just say fuck it and go out into the world with my pickle as proof Jesus still lives and breathes through us. I couldn’t think, I took a drink of my coke because I was sweating since this was something that I’ve never experienced before. I set the pickle that I now reverently refer to as the weeping Jesus pickle down on a napkin off to the side and decided to eat the hamburger while I was thinking about what to do except when I bit into it the frickin thing it was stone cold! Flippin’ Christ with all his rambling on had kept me so busy with this theological debate on what to do he had allowed my meal to get cold. So I asked him, “Hey Jesus you think you could warm this burger up for me” and he had the nerve to say, “don’t be trite”. Can you believe that, don’t be trite! Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick I didn’t asked to be visited by the son of God while I was ready to eat my low wage scale non unionized un-picture perfect tinnie tiny hamburger that was suppose to hold me over till dinner. Nooooooooooo, he just up and appeared to me in pickle form uninvited and unannounced and then expected me to throw my life away and help him, the nerve, I’ve had junkies I’ve known treated me better.
In the end I agreed to write this story down (just to be safe) and then decided to take Jesus and the rest of my cold burger up to the counter and get another one. When I set it down to complain to the Mexican guy with the missing teeth he looked down and gasped and began yammering on in Spanish faster than a crackhead looking to “borrow” twenty bucks. All the Hispanics in Wendy’s rushed over and then dropped to their knees and started praying saying I was a saint and that the pickle was a sign. They started referring to me as the one who carried the savior before him or at least that’s what I think they were saying given my limited Spanish vocabulary and comprehension of the language while cell phones were being pulled out left and right. You think your life can be weird sometimes, try being the saint of a Jesus pickle and one who hates pickles on top of it. I quickly had 23 Hispanic workers in a crowded restaurant touching me, wanting me to lay hands on them, bless them, and hopefully from what I deciphered grant them miracles.
As these people lay before me on their knees with their heads down and arms outstretched to touch me I did the only thing any self-respecting American would do being granted sainthood by his followers. I had them all stand up and asked them if they had sinned to which they all replied, “yes we have, please heal us”, and then with a stroke of genius hitting me I asked them if they recalled in the bible where God stated that you would pay for the sins you’ve committed while on earth. They all agreed they had heard this before and so I began passing out penitence’s. I left after it was over with an extra $247.63 in my pocket. (hey, damn skippy) I made them pay for their sins and throw in a burger without any pickles on it this time too. As for the weeping Jesus pickle, you can find him in the trash bin located outside the door if you need something to believe in, just don’t tell Jesus.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Etta Love
It’s been a whirl-wind of emotions the past few days and the ironic part is it occurred from nothing I did since yours truly was doing nothing more than minding his own business going about my day much like every other and yet life still decided to come knocking upon my door. And speaking of irony if I’m to be completely honest with myself and you dear reader I suppose the other side of that ironic coin would be this occurred because of everything I have done. Perhaps that’s what they mean when they say, “the past catches up with you”, because nothing explains what happened more than that.
Imagine if you would waking up one day, a day like any other, you begin to get ready for the things you have to do, the places you need to go, mentally checking off the errands you have to run, bills to pay, work to accomplish, stuff like that. Outside the sun is shinning brightly and as you go about getting ready (why does it always have to be when you’re in the bathroom) the phone rings. You see it’s a friend so you think ‘well I’ll call them back in a moment’, as you finish what you were doing. It’s ten minutes later now, your still in there reading that Harry has just drawn his wand against ‘he who shan’t be named’ and there’s a knock upon your door so you call out, “hang on I’ll be there in a second”. A quick finish and your heading to the door figuring out something clever to bust their chops with for not waiting a few minutes until you could call them back. Opening it you begin, “I was….”, and stop short, your breath caught, you try to breath and you can’t, there’s nothing to do in those few seconds but try to adjust to the situation at hand which has quickly become one where you need to place your seat back into the sitting position and put your head between your legs because standing in front of you is someone you haven’t seen in many years, someone you dearly love.
Now maybe this doesn’t happen to most people and I don’t know what the odds are on this unique lottery but I do know that a great love sometimes never heals. It never goes away like the one you had for the girl up the street that kissed you when you were ten and the best you can do with that kind of love is try to move on and forget it but, that’s easier said than done, remember were talking great love here. Maybe I’m not as wise as I should be or as shallow as I need to be because for me I couldn’t forget it so in my infinite lack of wisdom I decided to just jam it into a heavily locked up little room and stick it in the back of my mind with a big sign on the door that said, “Warning, do not open”. You’ve hidden and secured the key to the room so well that after a time you can’t even remember where it was put but every once in a while as your wandering around in your mind alone you come across that door and a sigh escapes as you remember what was in there. You then get on with whatever it was you were doing before you accidentally stumbled into that region of your mind and you try to have faith in those old wives and their silly tales of ‘time heals all wounds’ but you know deep down that’s bullshit and isn’t true because some times some things just can’t be healed.
And so we find ourselves back at the door, mouth slightly agape, your mind racing, your brain temporarily way past overload and all you can say is, “Hi, come in” because in truth inside you’re holding back the force of combined tornados, avalanches, hurricanes, flash floods and a serious fracture in the Hoover dam because that secure locked up little room you had the warning sign on just blew to smithereens letting all that was inside out and Beyonce’ has begun singing Etta James “All I could do was cry”. Something has to give at that moment so swallow hard, man up and say, “Hi, come in” and ask how they’re doing because for you inside the circus has come to town and it’s full of Disney characters again, fucking Roger Rabbit has given Toontown a handful of triple stack euros and everything is right, spring has come and love is in the air again. Maybe this is where we fool ourselves, where we lose all sense of logic and forethought, and I think as wonderful as a great love is, it often to the outsider makes you look like a drunken seriously challenged mental retard and I’m not even getting into the shit it has you doing like writing humorous tales on very serious subjects or spray painting I love you on the side of a 30 story building You know what I’m talking about because every couple does it, making google eyes, cooing, calling each other pet names like little monkey, snookums, and other gaga things like that which challenge all those around such a couple to fight internally just to keep their food down. Ever see 99% of the people around a new baby, well that’s how couples are with each other when they are in love, revolting to others, bliss to but two.
I mean what the fuck life, I accepted (not willingly) that you gave a taste of something wonderful (I didn’t ask for nor was looking for when it happened), something so much like dancing with my missing piece that Disney endings danced around in my head raining sugar plums down upon us but what was the reason after all these years for destroying my little room if that’s not the way it was going to be? I mean I did was I was suppose to, I acted true to myself and those I cared for and regardless of how I felt I moved forward hard as that was so I demand an explanation you cruel fuck. So what if I (not willingly once more) traded the Disney ending for one involving the end of days where I have to run around scared shitless blowing away zombies with a double barrel shotgun just to survive because everything I cared for was gone isn’t that my right on this grand pick a path to adventure highway were on if I can’t have butter on my biscuits? I’m even more appreciative of a good ironic joke than most but irony like the one before me the other day does catch me off guard. The worst part is watching her go again once more as our dear gal Beyonce’ belts out Etta James “I’d rather go blind” in my head, outside I’m smiling and waving good-bye like I just saw her this morning. (Please nominate me for the idiot of the year award).
And to get off the subject and onto music for one second as I’m bitching to life’s ironic and twisted sense of humor, WTF; now you’re even screwing around with my music because few singers have ever had the emotional impact on me that Etta James does. She’s the queen of R&B, the first of the females, the first crossover artist who blew up the airwaves and united music not by color but by the songs. Those songs speak to your soul, songs like, “All I could do was cry”, “I’ve been loving you way too long”, and her masterpiece “At Last”, just to name a few. If you’ve never sat down and just listened to her, really listen to the words in her songs and the emotion she puts behind them well then you’re missing out on one of life’s wonders. So where does life get off messing around with one of my favorite artists?
Which leaves me here, having not gotten this out of my system but instead just working through it once again brick by brick listening to Etta while building another room deciding to use wisdom instead of acting out blaming someone who may or may not of known what she was doing or the impact that it would have had even after all these years. Instead of reeling from my own emotions why not try to at least imagine what hers must have been going through all these years to bring her to knock upon my door, wow that’s heavy shit to deal with but they say likes attract so I’m not too far off base I think. The Nordic race used to believe that the mark of the spiritual warrior was not in acting but in non-action because it is through non-action that all comes into being that should be. Even though life may have played it’s little joke on me and will continue to from time to time I’m reminded now to be the leaf on the proverbial river, to go with the flow because no one knows where the journey might end and if you screw with that you may just end up missing something you were suppose to see or experience along the way. And what would be my advice to you dear reader if something like this should ever happen to you, well that’s simple buy a extra box of shotgun shells because the zombies are coming and Disneyland has been overrun.
Cue: Etta
Imagine if you would waking up one day, a day like any other, you begin to get ready for the things you have to do, the places you need to go, mentally checking off the errands you have to run, bills to pay, work to accomplish, stuff like that. Outside the sun is shinning brightly and as you go about getting ready (why does it always have to be when you’re in the bathroom) the phone rings. You see it’s a friend so you think ‘well I’ll call them back in a moment’, as you finish what you were doing. It’s ten minutes later now, your still in there reading that Harry has just drawn his wand against ‘he who shan’t be named’ and there’s a knock upon your door so you call out, “hang on I’ll be there in a second”. A quick finish and your heading to the door figuring out something clever to bust their chops with for not waiting a few minutes until you could call them back. Opening it you begin, “I was….”, and stop short, your breath caught, you try to breath and you can’t, there’s nothing to do in those few seconds but try to adjust to the situation at hand which has quickly become one where you need to place your seat back into the sitting position and put your head between your legs because standing in front of you is someone you haven’t seen in many years, someone you dearly love.
Now maybe this doesn’t happen to most people and I don’t know what the odds are on this unique lottery but I do know that a great love sometimes never heals. It never goes away like the one you had for the girl up the street that kissed you when you were ten and the best you can do with that kind of love is try to move on and forget it but, that’s easier said than done, remember were talking great love here. Maybe I’m not as wise as I should be or as shallow as I need to be because for me I couldn’t forget it so in my infinite lack of wisdom I decided to just jam it into a heavily locked up little room and stick it in the back of my mind with a big sign on the door that said, “Warning, do not open”. You’ve hidden and secured the key to the room so well that after a time you can’t even remember where it was put but every once in a while as your wandering around in your mind alone you come across that door and a sigh escapes as you remember what was in there. You then get on with whatever it was you were doing before you accidentally stumbled into that region of your mind and you try to have faith in those old wives and their silly tales of ‘time heals all wounds’ but you know deep down that’s bullshit and isn’t true because some times some things just can’t be healed.
And so we find ourselves back at the door, mouth slightly agape, your mind racing, your brain temporarily way past overload and all you can say is, “Hi, come in” because in truth inside you’re holding back the force of combined tornados, avalanches, hurricanes, flash floods and a serious fracture in the Hoover dam because that secure locked up little room you had the warning sign on just blew to smithereens letting all that was inside out and Beyonce’ has begun singing Etta James “All I could do was cry”. Something has to give at that moment so swallow hard, man up and say, “Hi, come in” and ask how they’re doing because for you inside the circus has come to town and it’s full of Disney characters again, fucking Roger Rabbit has given Toontown a handful of triple stack euros and everything is right, spring has come and love is in the air again. Maybe this is where we fool ourselves, where we lose all sense of logic and forethought, and I think as wonderful as a great love is, it often to the outsider makes you look like a drunken seriously challenged mental retard and I’m not even getting into the shit it has you doing like writing humorous tales on very serious subjects or spray painting I love you on the side of a 30 story building You know what I’m talking about because every couple does it, making google eyes, cooing, calling each other pet names like little monkey, snookums, and other gaga things like that which challenge all those around such a couple to fight internally just to keep their food down. Ever see 99% of the people around a new baby, well that’s how couples are with each other when they are in love, revolting to others, bliss to but two.
I mean what the fuck life, I accepted (not willingly) that you gave a taste of something wonderful (I didn’t ask for nor was looking for when it happened), something so much like dancing with my missing piece that Disney endings danced around in my head raining sugar plums down upon us but what was the reason after all these years for destroying my little room if that’s not the way it was going to be? I mean I did was I was suppose to, I acted true to myself and those I cared for and regardless of how I felt I moved forward hard as that was so I demand an explanation you cruel fuck. So what if I (not willingly once more) traded the Disney ending for one involving the end of days where I have to run around scared shitless blowing away zombies with a double barrel shotgun just to survive because everything I cared for was gone isn’t that my right on this grand pick a path to adventure highway were on if I can’t have butter on my biscuits? I’m even more appreciative of a good ironic joke than most but irony like the one before me the other day does catch me off guard. The worst part is watching her go again once more as our dear gal Beyonce’ belts out Etta James “I’d rather go blind” in my head, outside I’m smiling and waving good-bye like I just saw her this morning. (Please nominate me for the idiot of the year award).
And to get off the subject and onto music for one second as I’m bitching to life’s ironic and twisted sense of humor, WTF; now you’re even screwing around with my music because few singers have ever had the emotional impact on me that Etta James does. She’s the queen of R&B, the first of the females, the first crossover artist who blew up the airwaves and united music not by color but by the songs. Those songs speak to your soul, songs like, “All I could do was cry”, “I’ve been loving you way too long”, and her masterpiece “At Last”, just to name a few. If you’ve never sat down and just listened to her, really listen to the words in her songs and the emotion she puts behind them well then you’re missing out on one of life’s wonders. So where does life get off messing around with one of my favorite artists?
Which leaves me here, having not gotten this out of my system but instead just working through it once again brick by brick listening to Etta while building another room deciding to use wisdom instead of acting out blaming someone who may or may not of known what she was doing or the impact that it would have had even after all these years. Instead of reeling from my own emotions why not try to at least imagine what hers must have been going through all these years to bring her to knock upon my door, wow that’s heavy shit to deal with but they say likes attract so I’m not too far off base I think. The Nordic race used to believe that the mark of the spiritual warrior was not in acting but in non-action because it is through non-action that all comes into being that should be. Even though life may have played it’s little joke on me and will continue to from time to time I’m reminded now to be the leaf on the proverbial river, to go with the flow because no one knows where the journey might end and if you screw with that you may just end up missing something you were suppose to see or experience along the way. And what would be my advice to you dear reader if something like this should ever happen to you, well that’s simple buy a extra box of shotgun shells because the zombies are coming and Disneyland has been overrun.
Cue: Etta
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