It’s Tuesday, January 05, 2010 and it’s time to sit back and another
We’re giving The Destructor Chronicles another week off and will regale you with another interesting tale of my youth that may shed some light on the question: “Dude, what the heck is up with you?”
It was the same summer as the Great Spittoon Race and my brother and I were at my mom’s folk’s place, a sprawling Angus ranch in south-central Texas. On my mom’s side of the family, we were the eldest grandchildren and as such, generally set the daily agenda. My cousin John Paul was three years younger than me, but lived on the ranch with his folks year-round.
I have never met a youngster more ornery than my cousin John. He was always looking for ways to present the people around him with some new and unforeseen challenge to contend with. His parents spent a good deal of their time whipping him. I would venture to say that he on average received upwards of 5 whippings a day. Once whipped for something, he seldom repeated the exact same transgression, but would come up with variations clever enough that he could rightly claim “You never said I couldn’t do THAT!”
About halfway through our stay, some varmint was getting into gramma’s chicken coop and making off with at least one chicken a night. To catch the culprit, a live trap was baited with chicken entrails and placed in the coop. We were disappointed for three nights in a row. It seemed the trap was acting as a repellant. On the fourth night, John decided that perhaps a more enticing bait was in order. He caught up and slew a young fryer (the very one slated for Sunday dinner) and used it to bait the trap. This resulted in his last whipping for the day and we all went to bed.
But he was right. The next morning, we arrived at the chicken coop to find the trap contained not only a very messily ripped up chicken, but also a half-grown and very angry bobcat. The younger cousins began crying in that they knew the cute, young bobcat would soon be dispatched by either my grampa or my uncle. It was generally decided that the bobcat had probably learned its lesson and could be released, knowing that it wouldn’t come around here again.
This presented us with the problem of how to get a half-grown bobcat out of a live trap. No one was enthusiastic about simply walking over and opening the door. After about a half-hour of studying on it, my cousin John announced that he had the solution and took off for the house. He returned moments later with my grampa’s brief case.
The case was a sturdy affair, one of those old-fashioned ones that opened at the top. The opening was large enough to accept the door end of the trap. A quick jaunt down to the tractor shed yielded us three pairs of heavy welding gloves and two thick, leather welding jackets. We extracted grampa’s papers and such and then donned our protective gear. With a little bit of work, we managed to get the door-end of the trap into the briefcase and stood the trap and case on end.
The bobcat showed little inclination to go down into the briefcase, but a few good jabs with a stick was enough to get him there. On a count of three, my brother and John yanked the trap free, I snapped the case shut and snapped the latch closed. Done and done.
Only we now had a new problem in the form of how to get a half-grown and even angrier bobcat out of a brief case. Fortunately my cousin had already thought of that and we hiked over to the highway. The idea was that we would set the case by the road, someone would come along and open it, see the bobcat and flee, leaving us with the empty case.
And that’s pretty much how it worked out. Kind of.
After just a few minutes of hiding in the weeds, an old, 4-door chevy coasted to a halt beside the case. The back door opened and out stepped a rather tall and lanky gentleman. He looked left, then right and instead of simply opening the case, grabbed it up and jumped back in the car, which sped away.
Now what?
The road made a sharp bend, so we cut back through the woods to try to catch sight of where the car was going. Halfway through the woods, we heard the sound of tires screeching and shouting. By the time we emerged from the woods, the still running chevy was sitting crossways in the road with all four doors open. The open case lay beside the back door and not a soul was in sight. My cousin dashed out, snatched up the case and we beat feet back for the house.
The problem now was that at some point, the bobcat had shredded the interior of the case and had urinated within. There were also copious quantities of chicken feathers and remains inside as well. John told us not to worry and that he’d have the case as good as new in a jiffy. As it turns out, his making it “good ad new” consisted of dumping out what he could and scooping out the rest with a welding glove on his hand. He replaced grampa’s stuff and returned the case to his study.
As luck would have it, grampa needed something from the case that very evening. Just as we were setting down to watch TV, we heard grampa yelling and cussing from his study. Since my brother (to this day) has never been any good at telling a lie, it was a matter of minutes before the whole truth was out and we were all lined up for whippings.
All but my brother of course.
In other news, I soon found myself all by myself in the tech support queue. Seems Lynette was given the day off to go talk to junior high kids about the dangers of choosing a career in telecommunications industry and Chris had to take his pa to the ER. Nevertheless, I AM the one called El Magnifico the desire of women and the envy of men.
But I am nonetheless in a pretty good mood. There’s just something about watching the body of someone I loathe floating by that raises my spirits.
In other news, I am not having many love for the weather.
That’s just too damned cold. Yes, it’s not the -20 crap we had a couple weeks ago, but it’s cold enough to make me whine about it and that’s cold enough. One fine day, I will strap a snow shovel to the front of my truck and start driving south. When I get to a place where someone asks “Hey, what kind of shovel is that?” I will drive south another 100 miles and live out my days.
Of course with my luck, I’d get as far a Sheridan and have some drunk hillbilly stumble over and ask. Then I’d wind up living out my days somewhere around Kaycee.
So, I’ll probably just shoot any drunk hillbillies I see heading toward me in Sheridan.
That’s about all I feel like for today. Tomorrow is Reader Mail and hooooooo boy! Do we have a doozy waiting for us! Still time to get your words in edge-wise. Send your emails to:
