Zippityzern’s Uncommon Nonsense
Farmer’s Almanac
Linda L. Zern
Published by LinWood House Publishing at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Linda L. Zern
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.
~~~Down on the Hobby Farm~~~
During the day, the shadows of cranes, vultures, and eagles coast across the ground of our farm, and at night, the lonely cries of whip-poor-wills float through the air like ghosts through fog and mist.
It’s hard not to be charmed by the nature thumping all around us. That’s one reason we moved here, to be surrounded by the thumping of nature, and to have horses, and butterfly gardens, and grandchildren, and quiet weekends in the country—surrounded by the thump of nature, of course.
Country living is like having an obsessive-compulsive hobby, and my husband and I are obsessive-compulsive hobby farmers. We bought six acres in Saint Cloud, three horses and someone gave us a dog. There’s a cat, but she came with the place. We don’t raise corn, or soybeans, or veal. A hobby farm is a lot like a black hole—stuff (like money) goes in, but nothing (like money) comes out.
My husband has a real job. He fiddles around with computer-related software during the week and makes money. I have a real job. I fiddle around with words on paper, and I barely make enough money to pay for the paper. We both play hobby farm on the weekends by mowing, chopping, digging, burning, nailing, pressure washing, and sheath cleaning. The real point of our hobby farm is horses—the brushing, the riding, the watering, and the feeding of horses. And then there are the questions of gelding hygiene, of course.
One of the horses in our stable is an old sickle-hocked gelding in an advanced stage of aging, or as I like to say, “He has two good legs, one bad leg, and one hoof on a banana peel.” Sonny is a rescue horse, and once upon a time, he must have been something to look at. Now, he’s a broken-down paint horse standing in the shade of a live oak, nursing a bad attitude and gas. Also once upon a time, he was boy horse, but now he’s a gelding with a high-pitched whinny, arthritic hips, and sheath issues.
Sonny gives our hobby farm an air of slow-moving southern charm and the feel of days gone by—sometimes. Sometimes he needs his sheath cleaned—mostly in the fragrant, gentle spring.
“Honey,” I said to my husband, one fragrant and gentle spring, “I think that it’s time to clean old Sonny’s sheath.” The sun drifted over the barn like a fried egg in the sky. Flies buzzed in groggy, dopey circles. Horses pooped.
My husband looked mildly suspicious, his hands instinctively clenching a pitchfork, his knuckles growing white.
“Sonny’s what?”
“His sheath.” I leaned against the barn door and waved my hand vaguely in the direction of the paddock. “Think 'sword and scabbard' like in pirate fighting.”
His knuckles started to look like bloodless doorknobs.
“Scabbard! Sheath! What are you talking about?”
“You know the thing that the sword goes into—the scabbard—you know, the thing that protects the sword.” I pantomimed putting an invisible sword into an invisible scabbard. “Sonny’s scabbard (i.e., his sheath) needs cleaning.”
I crossed my arms, confident in my diagnosis.
Frown lines creased my husband’s forehead as he pondered all the potential symbolic sword-related possibilities. Leaning on the pitchfork like a D.O.T. worker on a break and standing in a puddle of horse droppings, the slow light of understanding crept into his face. Horror etched harsh lines under his eyes.
He looked at the old grouch of a horse napping in the shade next to the barn.
“You can’t possibly mean . . .” He bit his lip, and I thought I detected the glint of a single tear in his eye. “Someone has to reach up and . . . grab or clean . . . inside his . . . with what? And how? And more importantly—for the love of all that’s decent—why?!”
“Because boy horses, who are geldings, get waxy gick sheath buildup if you don’t clean their . . .”
“Yea, yea, yea, sword holder.” His sarcasm hid despair and mild panic. “I get it.”
Sonny slapped at one bony hip with his tail. He snorted, shook his head at some imagined slight, and then farted.
“Now there are a couple of ways that you can do this. You can wait until he goes to the bathroom and he drops his . . .”
“I am not standing out here waiting for that old grump to pee.”
“Or you can go up in there and grab it.”
The horror spread from my husband’s face to the tendons and ligaments of his body. His limbs went rigid right before he dropped the pitchfork. His hands flew to his mouth, and through gritted teeth he asked, “Clean it with what?”
“Well, I’ve seen people use Vaseline, or warm soapy water, or . . .”
Sonny decided at that very moment to drop his sword and urinate.
Snapping to attention, I yelled, “Hurry Sherwood, the Vaseline. Run man! Go!”
He froze like a hunted rabbit staring into a rattlesnake den.
“Hurry, this is our chance!” I rolled up my sleeves, and squared my shoulders. Sherwood turned and stumbled into the gloom of the barn like a man planning to boil water for an emergency birth on a kitchen table.
“And Sherwood,” I yelled. He paused and looked back. “Don’t forget the rubber gloves.”
He didn’t.
That’s one reason we moved here: to be surrounded by the thumping of nature, to have horses, and butterfly gardens, and grandchildren, and quiet weekends in the country, and to be up to our elbows in nature, of course. In the fragrant and gentle spring, the bald Eagles swoop down from their massive nest behind our barn to tear our neighbor’s baby lambs to bloody bits.
Watching the eagles take turns turning the newborn lambs into jerky for raptors, my husband took my hand and asked softly, “I wonder if PETA knows about this?”
“I think there’s a lot PETA doesn’t know about Mother Nature,” I sighed.
A bald eagle’s shadow drifted across the swayed back of our old rescue horse, Sonny, as he dozed in the shade of a live oak, while nature thumped all around.
Linda (Nearer to Nature) Zern
~~~The Attack of the Bad Stinger Goat~~~
In the weak sunshine of a Florida winter, it is customary for some Floridians to sit on their septic tanks. Tipping their faces to the sky, their sinuses exposed to the gentle medicinal comfort of the sun’s warmth, they will hope, with a hope as raw as their throats, that God and nature will heal them of their Ebola-Rhino-Flu-Plague.
Okay, sometimes I pull a lawn chair over to the septic tank and sit in the sun and hope that it will make me feel better when I’m sick.
Sometimes, Phillip, my son-in-law, brings the grandkids over and sits on the septic tank with me. What can I say; it’s a rural thing.
Once upon a time, we sat in the sun on the septic tank. I was feeling as weak from Flu-Plague as two kittens in a sinking sack, while the grand-kidlets, Zoe and Conner, cavorted merrily under the Japanese Plum tree.
Zoe sang, “Fruit, fruit, fruit, I want two fruits.” As a grandparent, I was charmed.
Conner pooped in his pants.
The world spun gently on its axis, right up to the point when Conner, poop in drawers, stumbled in the direction of a strange, horned white goat that had mysteriously appeared in our yard. I assumed it had journeyed here from somewhere beyond next door, or perhaps, a lost fantasy world where goats control all the landfills and trade routes from the east.
“Phillip, grab that boy before Billy Goat Gruff knocks him down.”
The goat flipped his scraggly beard in the direction of my voice. Phillip ran and scooped up Conner, setting him next to me in my pool of medicinal sunshine on the septic tank.
The goat, a smallish—no higher than my knee variety—with a dirty blond beard and “come hither” devil eyes, started a slow determined trot in our direction. Its eyes glowed yellow.
Phillip, never a lover of goats or farm creatures or nature, in general, looked worried.
“What does it want with us?” He sounded nervous—also squeamish.
I sat up a little straighter, trying to sound confident about inner goat motivations.
“Oh, he’s probably just seeing what’s what.”
The goat kept trotting.
I closed my eyes in exhaustion brought on by the Flu-Plague. The odor of goat, BOY GOAT, engulfed me, and wow, he smelled close! I opened my eyes to the sight of this stinker of a goat trying to French kiss the sleeve of my shirt, hearing the sound of obscene noises of potential goat date rape. My lawn chair toppled over as I jumped to my feet.
“Or he could be looking for a date.”
The goat made a lunge at my leg. I dodged.
“As in one night stand date. Grab the kids before it’s too late—this stinky goat is in full on lover boy mode.”
Phillip scooped up Conner, but Zoe, misunderstanding what I had said, began running around, waving and yelling, “Go away stinger goat. Go away.”
Confused, but hopeful, the goat surveyed the scene and then lunged at the closest available flesh—Phillip’s leg.
Zoe yelled, “Leave my daddy’s leg alone!” Zoe waved.
“It’s having its way with my leg!” Phillip’s voice had gone soprano.
“It’s having its way with your leg,” I screamed. I ripped the garden house from the side of the house.
“Run!”
Expecting a torrent of water, I turned the water spigot on full blast, but lying advertising and crap marketing had given me a false sense of security in my brand new never-kink hose. A weak drip of water taunted me, and I cringed to see more crimps and kinks than hose.
Phillip shrieked. Conner wriggled free.
Conner spun like a poopy top. Zoe shrieked and flailed.
“Bad Stinger Goat!!”
I whipped the hose from side to side to un-kink the kinks and defend whatever honor Phillip had left in his right leg. The goat continued to love up the helpless limb.
Finally, the hose kinks came free and I fire hosed that nasty stinker of a goat. The goat turned his face into the blast of water, curled his lips back, and took a shower. The distraction gave Phillip enough of a head start that he, Conner, and Zoe were able to make a dash to the screened porch.
I dropped the hose and bolted, bringing up the rear, not two steps ahead of the now wet and super rank horn-dog of a goat. The screen door crashed shut behind me.
“Is everyone okay?”
What I heard in my son-in-law’s voice brought a shudder to my soul. What he said next, I cannot forget.
“I showed fear,” he said. “I showed fear.” He hung his head.
Conner reached out to pet the goat through the screen. I tipped over a lawn table and shoved it against the door.
I avoided Phillip’s eyes.
“You smell like a bad stinger goat. Go clean yourself.”
As Phillip slunk off to wash his leg in boiling water, our eyes met.
“We will never speak of this.”
His chin collapsed onto his chest. He continued slinking.
Somewhere in the yard a goat bawled its loneliness and desire.
Linda (Spring Fling) Zern
~~~Chickens I Have Known~~~
“Run,” I screamed. “Go! Go! Go!” I turned the van key in the ignition. The engine rumbled to life.
In the distance, the glare of eyes like cold, hard glass swung toward us.
Aric and Heather were the first to stumble their way from the house to our family van. Heather tripped and staggered halfway to the open door of the van, and Aric, without thought for his own welfare, turned back, grabbed her by the collar of her shirt, and began to pull her through the driveway dust to safety. (He grew up to be a soldier. She grew up to be a ballerina.)
Maren hustled across the yard next, diving headfirst into the van. (She grew up to be a political science major.)
In the distance a small, white juggernaut of rage fixated on our van as it began its headlong pursuit of us. I thought I glimpsed a few white feathers exploding up from the racing, pumping body to waft away in the afternoon breeze.
I revved the engine.
“Move it!”
Adam, dragging his own diaper bag, toddled to the car, hauled headfirst into the vehicle by his siblings. (Adam grew up to be an exceptional daddy.)
I heard the van door bang shut. The children strapped each other in for the getaway. I slammed the gas pedal down and gunned the van—gravel spewing from the rear tires.
The small body covered in white feathers gained momentum, hunkered down close to the ground, its clawed feet tearing at the turf, beak and burning eye pointed at our now retreating van. We cleared the driveway, and fishtailed onto the paved road.
“We made it,” I said.
The children cheered.
In the rearview mirror, I observed the little, white rooster raise its head in frustration to crow a challenge at the back of our van. Light glinted off of its razor-like spurs.
“Psycho chicken,” I muttered to no one at all.
I headed to the library with my four children and tried to ignore the feeling of dread that sat like a lump in my stomach, knowing that it (that miserable, filthy rooster) would probably be hiding in the bushes when we got back—waiting, watching, plotting.
“Psycho chicken,” I repeated in disgust.
It was too. I saw that chicken attack a boy on a bicycle—more than once. It was perhaps the meanest rooster I have ever been acquainted with. It would stop doing whatever it was doing when it saw us in the yard, and run, full out, to get a chance to rake us with its spurs. Sometimes it would run two, three, or four football fields to get at us. We started having to go outside armed with brooms and swords. It was chicken terrorism at its worst.
Not all chickens are created equal, though. We once had another rooster that got his butt whooped in the barnyard so badly, he ran away. He ran all the way to our mailbox, where he sat in the wind and rain—alone—for the longest time, waiting for the mailperson everyday, bedraggled and pitiful (the chicken not the mailperson.) Until one dark night, shadowy unknown forces carried him away—never to be heard of again.
I suspect the mailperson.
Then there was Edgar the Chicken. We got Edgar as a chick. Chicks imprint on the first thing they notice after they bust out of their shell, and in this case, the first thing Edgar noticed was Adam, my youngest son. Edgar turned out to be a little brown hen that followed Adam around like a dog, waiting for Adam to feed her juicy crickets. When Edgar looked at Adam and asked, “Are you my mother?” the answer in Edgar's chicken brain was yes.
Adam still speaks fondly of Edgar.
Once, when our chickens got into the horse worm medicine and poisoned themselves, it fell to my husband to “put them out of their blind-staggering-around-poisoned chicken misery.” There is a little known clause in the Man Manual (Section B, Paragraph 6, Subheading 12-A, titled - Duties of the Executioner) that reads, “All distasteful and potentially icky tasks fall to the man or man surrogate in any causal relationship—‘cause if you don’t kill that sick critter you’re going to wish that you had.”
The problem is that chicken killing has gone somewhat out of fashion, and so my husband was at something of a loss as to how to best put the chickens out of their worm poisoned misery.
Watching the chickens stagger about, he scratched his head.
“What? How? Do I smother them with a pillow?”
“Not my pillow,” I replied.
My husband is no chicken. He used his own pillow.
This has been a discussion of chickens—real, live, pecking, chicken, animals. This should in no way be seen as a symbolic discussion of some of the two-legged human chickens I have know throughout my life. Like the psycho chicken person who cannot stand to see anyone, anywhere enjoying life more than they enjoy life, so they want to peck you to death if they can. Or the cowardly chicken type, who refuses to return to the war once he or she has lost a battle or two. Or the Edgar chickens that somewhere along the line learn to wait around for someone else to catch their crickets for them—good for pets, not so good for folks.
This has been a discussion about chickens and nothing but the chickens.
Linda (Chicken Master) Zern
~~~Cat Trouble (In Third Person)~~~
“Why are you wearing duct tape around your ankles?” Her husband asked.
Sherwood only seemed curious, not accusatory. They were sitting at the island in the kitchen, the remnants of breakfast strewn across the countertop.
Linda kept reading the Saturday paper and did not raise her head.
“Because of the guy with the tattoo. You know the one, two doors down.”
“Our next-door neighbor taped your ankles with duct tape because . . . ?”
Linda was often frustrated that Sherwood did not have total access to the inside of her skull. She rattled the newspaper for emphasis.
“No, the guy with the tattoo two doors down. You know the guy.”
“The Duct Tape Ankle . . . What? Killer, ankle catcher, or just a duct tape creep—maybe?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. The guy who used to stand on his back porch in his underwear shooting at vultures—drunk.” She knew what was coming next. They had been married a long time. “Not drunk vultures, the guy was drunk. The vultures were not drunk.”
At this point in the conversation, Sherwood knew that gentle head nodding was always his best choice.
Linda crossed and re-crossed her duct-taped ankles.
“He moved.”
“Who? The duct tape guy?” Sherwood kept his voice low, trying not to seem to take sides—if there were going to be sides to take, eventually. He was trying to keep his options open.
“He’s not the duct tape guy—he’s the guy who moved but forgot to take his cats.”
Sherwood continued to nod, while adding a pensive, thoughtful frown. He considered his pensive, thoughtful frown one of his most successful expressions.
“The guy who moved and forgot to take his cat, that have moved in under our hedge.” Noting Sherwood’s pensive, thoughtful frown, she continued, “The cats—not the guy! Haven’t you noticed the feral horde out there? I got scared when they started to chew holes in the porch screens. I was afraid they were going to eat me while I slept.”
“Ummmm, I’m going to bet that the correct answer is yes. Yes, I did notice the feral horde.”
“Very good, the correct answer is yes. They’re scary creatures, and they attack my ankles when I take the garbage out—hence the duct tape.”
“Why aren’t they on their way to the pound?”
Linda looked sheepish.
“Those cats are wily. I can’t catch them so I started to feed them so they’ll like me and get close enough to catch.”
“And it’s working,” She said, peering down at her duct-taped ankles, “Sort of.”
“I tell you what—start feeding them out in the road. Pretty soon, kitty cat speed bumps.”
Linda narrowed her eyes to slits.
“Sometimes you can really get on my very first nerve, you know that? That’s your solution? Why don’t you go try and catch them?”
He sighed.
“All right. I’ll be wild kingdom animal trapping guy. I’ll go round up the savage cat-beasts in our hedge. You know those wild kingdom animal trapping guys get murdered, once in a while, by nutty crap like stingrays or poodles.”
“Yea, I know that. No duct tape, duh.”
(From the Third Person Journals of Linda and Sherwood)
~~~Last Will and Best Wishes~~~
Sonny was old. Sonny was so old that one day while eating hay in front of me in the barn, he began to choke. Concerned, I watched Sonny gag, cough, and hack up . . . a tooth—a big, old, stinky, rotten tooth. Sonny was a horse—a very old horse. He kept right on eating hay, minus one tooth.
I took it as a sign that the great wheel of life, death, and then you lose your teeth kept right on turning, and I began making plans for horse internment. Step one – call neighbor with backhoe. Step two – arrange for the "big blue shot to the stars." Yet I hesitated to pull the equine plug.
I hesitated, right up until Monday, when Sonny developed a problem that can only be described as “dangling boy trouble.” Due to extreme swelling, Sonny was no longer able to retract his “dangling boy trouble.” He was now a toothless, obscene old horse. I ordered the grandchildren not to look at him. I ordered myself not to look at him.
When the vet showed up, he recruited me as his assistant, putting me to work elevating and hosing down Sonny’s “dangling boy trouble” for thirty minutes. Sonny continued to eat hay—apparently pain free due to advanced decrepitude. I got rubber gloves out of the deal. Sonny got several injections out of the deal.
Our vet then showed me how to rig up a “dangling boy trouble” sling out of a pair of my old panty hose—size A. (I felt bad that I didn’t wear a more substantial-sized panty hose, queen-sized, at the very least.) For several days I followed Sonny around the pasture, tucking his “trouble” back into the panty hose hammock when it fell out. It fell out a lot.
We called a family meeting and the vote was unanimous. It was time. The men were particularly sensitive to Sonny’s dangling situation. Several were heard to say, “For goodness sake, a panty hose banana hammock? Give the old guy his dignity.”
Dignity for the horse, are you kidding? What about my dignity? I had just spent a week tucking Sonny’s gigantic “dangling boy trouble” back into a pair of my panty hose.
Truthfully, I thought the least dignified point of my life had been the day I heard the sound of one of my children (who was standing behind me at the time) throwing up in my hair. From Sonny, I learned that dignity and low points are all relative, and sometimes it can be a good day to die.
Linda (Bury My Heart With Rubber Gloves) Zern
~~~The Fire Ant Tango~~~
Attention: Fire Ant Advisory - Threat Level Triple Magenta
Fire ants, for non-Floridians, are an imported insect species here. The word fire is not used arbitrarily. Fire ants are mean. They bite. They sting. Their mean, stinging bites leave volcanic bumps that turn into pussy sores on your ankles, which can look tacky when you're wearing spiked heels and toenail polish.
It’s a condition commonly referred to as fire ant ankle rot.
Fire ants were imported from Hades, just south of the river Styx, on that boat piloted by the dog with the three heads—or maybe it was a river in the Amazon via a boat piloted by an anaconda. It’s possible fire ants arrived in a potted plant from South of No-Where-O.
Actually, there is a rumor crawling about that fire ants were brought to the United States by the Department of Defense to be used as a top secret weapon of mean-spirited destruction against the former Soviet Union, but they escaped.
Now they live in my yard—the ants not the Soviets.
The way our family sees it, we only have two options: we take the fight to the fire ants or attempt appeasement. That's it. Those are the choices.
We've tried appeasement. We sent a diplomatic representative out with a white flag to the ants' stronghold—an ant mound the size of a plastic wading pool out front by the oak tree. The cat volunteered. He carried that white flag of appeasement and civilized diplomatic moderation like a trooper.
We were prepared to make concessions. We were prepared to leave small daily offerings of rice, soggy cereal, and grease on a flat rock. We were prepared to sacrifice a virgin. We were prepared to live and let live, well . . . after the virgin sacrifice, of course.
In exchange, the fire ants had to promise not to build outposts or forward-operating bases under the walkways in the butterfly garden, or the crack in the front porch stoop. They also had to promise not to bite the granddaughter when she stomps in the middle of one of their mounds and then forgets to run away. (Her dad showed her how to stomp on anthills and then run away, but she's not two yet. Her timing is a little off, and she forgets the running away part.)
It was a good offer made in civilized good faith.
The fire ants took the cat hostage and ate the flag. An unnamed, unknown, anonymous source confirmed (maybe) that the cat had been water boarded. Did I mention the cat came back without the fur on his tail? The ants sent their counteroffer back to us tied to the cat's bare naked tail.
The counter offer read:
MOVE or DIE!
Signed the Ants
Now it's war!
My mission in this conflict is to ride around the yard on a John Deere lawn tractor pouring down ant poison, out of a plastic Taco Bell cup like napalm. We call it "Operation Kill the Ants with Twenty-Dollar Bags of Poison," or "Boom-Bam-Bop." We are using the latest advances in fire ant eradication technology—fire ant killer granules—danger, danger, poison, poison.
Take that you little terrorists. It's a poison that promises to kill the queen and the colony, to prevent further colonies, and to bring peace to the earth. As far as I can tell the fire ants love the stuff. They collect it, tote it home, store it, and save it up for Cinco De Mayo, when they throw a party and get real loco while dancing the fire ant tango.
News from the front could be better.
So if you come to see us—stay alert! Report suspicious activities, abandoned boxes, packages, and moving bits of nothing. Try not to linger too long in open, unsecured locations outside the green zone. Keep your weapons locked and loaded.
Remember, soldier, if you have to stomp on an enemy fort, do not forget to RUN AWAY!
General Linda (Bombs Away) Zern
~~~The Fires of Mount Doom, Saint Cloud~~~
The day the county tells me I can’t have a bonfire or chickens in my yard is the day I pack my bags and relocate to . . . Mount Doom or Cuba or the Florida outback or Alaska. I haven’t decided yet.
Country living is three things: poultry, walking outside in the dead of the night in your *scanties, and—of course—fire (brush, trash, and bon).
Everyone burns stuff in our neighborhood. Mr. Medina, next-door neighbor and collector of three-legged animals, occasionally lights up a bonfire that smells like a ritual goat sacrifice. When he’s over there, stoking his strange flames of yowling stink, I forbid the grand children to breathe deeply—but this is out in the country. So we live and let burn.
It’s our way.
The only real fire etiquette rule around here is “Thou shalt not burn down thy neighbor’s anything.”
So when my daughter, Heather, pointing at her husband, yelled, “Holy smokes! Phillip has set the giant pile of bone-dry sticks on fire next to Mr. Randy’s field full of dryer lint,” I admit to being a bit unprepared.
I spun around in time to see a fire shooting two stories in the air with flames licking at the brittle edge of a small stand of gasoline-filled pine trees next to the chicken coop. My son-in-law is like that. He’s an Eagle Scout. He has a merit badge for setting things on fire and then putting the fires out with urine.
Running to assess the potential for neighborhood conflagration, I hustled to the bonfire only to be driven back by the force of the heat, as a four-year-old wandered by to throw a random broom into the fire. Phillip appeared from my barn with a handful of scrap wood used for picture frames and staking tomatoes.
“Hey, Mister, where’re you going with that wooden stuff?”
The Eagle Scout didn’t slow down.
“You’ll thank me some day.”
I doubted it.
A six-year-old dragged a perfectly decent wooden footstool with only a few spider webs on it toward the fire pit. I started to argue with the six-year-old about the value of furniture restoration and refurbishment when I heard Phillip make a kind of garbled yelp, “Mr. Randy’s field is on fire.”
My neighbor’s field was, in fact, on fire. I ran for the end of the hose, sensing more than seeing Phillip’s race for the spigot.
“Hit it!” I yelled, imagining a fire hose blast of water; instead I got a Cub Scout weeing on a campfire from a garden hose that was nowhere near long enough.
“Seriously Phillip, must have more water! The flames have jumped the property line!”
I watched flames nibbling at clumps of crispy mown grass, eating their way towards Mr. Randy’s own burn pile, Mr. Randy’s barn, and Mr. Randy’s dirt digger. That’s what the grandkids call a front-end loader—a dirt digger. Isn’t that cute? Yea, well, we almost set it on fire.
Then, Phillip cut my water off entirely. I stared in disbelief at the end of my DRY hose, as Phillip raced from spigot to spigot in a convoluted hose re-distribution plan.
“Phillip! You are a terrible fireman! And I’m not kidding.”
Fire continued to spread as Phillip popped out from behind the chicken coop like a cork out of a bottle dragging an auxiliary hose.
“Here. Screw these together,” he ordered, as he flung garden hose at me and disappeared. I didn’t want to tell him that I had a hard time screwing hoses together even when things weren’t on fire, but panic gave me strength, and the threat of being sued for burning down my neighbor gave me dexterity beyond my own.
Luckily, we’ve had a wet spring and summer and Mr. Randy’s field was not the tinderbox lint trap it could have been, and eventually water flowed in sufficient strength and straightness, and so the dirt digger was saved—and so was our home owner’s insurance deductible.
That’s how we burned down our neighbor’s . . . everything—almost. And the minute the county calls to tell me that I can’t burn pictures featuring those “unspeakable” ex-husbands, ancient tax records, raggedy scanties, or old algebra homework, I’m out of here—just don’t know where yet.
Linda (Four Alarm) Zern
* Scanties: A southern word meaning clothes traditionally worn under the clothes worn on the top; clothes you can wear in the middle of the night outside in the country because no one can see you unless there’s a fire somewhere.
###
About the Author:
I am the matriarch and co-founder of a new tribe of carbon-based human types—the Zernites. We are known for our extensive use of plastic and the belief that life is for laughing—also snickering. Our fossilized remains can be found in the lowlands of Saint Cloud, Florida. As the matriarch of our tribe, I am frequently called upon to boil meat, gather pre-washed hydroponically grown berries, cast out emotional demons, and keep a record scrawled on possum hide with sharpened charcoal. This collection contains a few of the tales of my people. Some of it’s true. This is the first of what I hope will be many ebook scrolls wrapped up and stuffed in virtual clay jars—also plastic milk jugs.
Connect With Me Online:
My Website: http://www.zippityzerns.com
My Blog: http://zippityzerns.blogspot.com/
Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/zippityzern