Monday, July 03, 2006
OK, OK, Just One More Critter Story, I Promise!
I swear this is the last critter story for a while. Of course, since Parrothead Ramblings consists primarily of semi-true stories, how the hell can you know for sure?
We had this family cat that loved to catch snakes. Fine with me, except this cat was a kinder, gentler predator who often did not actually kill the snake. She'd bring the damned things into the house and turn them loose. Again, I like the idea of a snake in the house better than a cat, but it tended to freak the rest of the Crime Dog kennel out big time. Thankfully, the slithering little guys were of the non-venomous variety.
So one day, I came home from work and ZMan told me Bo found a snake in her hair dryer.
Right.
"No, really! She turned it on and it burned the snake up!"
Right.
"For reals, Dad! For reals!"
Look, ZMan. I don't know what happened to Bo's hairdryer, but I know it doesn't have a fried snake in it. Did you and your brother sabotage it or something?
You see, the only reason a snake had never found its way into Bo's hairdryer was because those two little heathens had never thought of it.
There was no question my chain was being yanked, so I shrugged it off. A little while later, I took some trash out to the dumpster. When I opened the dumpster, I saw none other than a hair dryer in there.
What the....?
It was one of those doodads that looks like a handgun. In this case, the gun barrel was broken in half. I picked it up, the broken part fell away, and there it was, in all its glory.
A damned snake was hanging out of the thing. It looked like it had crawled through the little louvers in the end of the barrel and made itself comfortable inside. Snug as a bug in a rug, until Bo plugged it in and turned it on, anyway. It was about then that this particular snake became one with the universe. That little bastard was fried. Extra crispy.
I guess the snake crawled in there some time when it was still warm, looking for some comfort. I'd never heard of such a thing, nor have I since it happened. A cat once set up housekeeping on the warm engine of my Mom's 1968 Olds Delta 88. Mom fired up her car in the morning, and the cat got caught up in the fan and fan belt. That 350 V8 made short work of Garfield. It looked like the cat exploded under the hood of her car. We got it out of there with a water hose.
Life can still be tough at the top of the food chain. Well, almost the top. Our rat-catching mice at the ranch used to get munched regularly by coyotes if they were stupid enough to wander off very far from the barn. And I hear once in a while about cats and dogs being carried of by hawks around South Mountain.
Yum. Miniature poodle. Tastes just like chicken.
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We had this family cat that loved to catch snakes. Fine with me, except this cat was a kinder, gentler predator who often did not actually kill the snake. She'd bring the damned things into the house and turn them loose. Again, I like the idea of a snake in the house better than a cat, but it tended to freak the rest of the Crime Dog kennel out big time. Thankfully, the slithering little guys were of the non-venomous variety.
So one day, I came home from work and ZMan told me Bo found a snake in her hair dryer.
Right.
"No, really! She turned it on and it burned the snake up!"
Right.
"For reals, Dad! For reals!"
Look, ZMan. I don't know what happened to Bo's hairdryer, but I know it doesn't have a fried snake in it. Did you and your brother sabotage it or something?
You see, the only reason a snake had never found its way into Bo's hairdryer was because those two little heathens had never thought of it.
There was no question my chain was being yanked, so I shrugged it off. A little while later, I took some trash out to the dumpster. When I opened the dumpster, I saw none other than a hair dryer in there.
What the....?
It was one of those doodads that looks like a handgun. In this case, the gun barrel was broken in half. I picked it up, the broken part fell away, and there it was, in all its glory.
A damned snake was hanging out of the thing. It looked like it had crawled through the little louvers in the end of the barrel and made itself comfortable inside. Snug as a bug in a rug, until Bo plugged it in and turned it on, anyway. It was about then that this particular snake became one with the universe. That little bastard was fried. Extra crispy.
I guess the snake crawled in there some time when it was still warm, looking for some comfort. I'd never heard of such a thing, nor have I since it happened. A cat once set up housekeeping on the warm engine of my Mom's 1968 Olds Delta 88. Mom fired up her car in the morning, and the cat got caught up in the fan and fan belt. That 350 V8 made short work of Garfield. It looked like the cat exploded under the hood of her car. We got it out of there with a water hose.
Life can still be tough at the top of the food chain. Well, almost the top. Our rat-catching mice at the ranch used to get munched regularly by coyotes if they were stupid enough to wander off very far from the barn. And I hear once in a while about cats and dogs being carried of by hawks around South Mountain.
Yum. Miniature poodle. Tastes just like chicken.
