by Kit Frazier
While treating the angry cat’s wound, he behaved like, well, an angry wounded cat.
“Atticus likes us,” I defended, spraying the deep scratch on my arm with a super- industrial sized bottle of Bactine. “He just doesn’t like to have his ears messed with.”
Grumbling as he left me to tend to my wounds, Chap sounded an awful lot like the crabby little cat.
He’s right, though. I love animals.
Even the mean, belligerent, vile tempered ones. Especially the mean, belligerent, vile tempered ones–I mean really–who wants a boring pet?
Three-legged dogs, injured squirrels, rotten dogs and the cat with the vilest temper have all found refuge at our house.
Left to my own devices, our home would look like the Betty Ford Center for deranged pets.
A childhood friend recently reminded me of the way I used to bend over a minnow bucket, trying to teach the little fish tricks, sure if I could coax them into jumping over a drinking straw in an homage to Shamu, their little lives might be spared from a stint on the trot line.
I once was besotted by a baby wallabee on the five-o-clock news that had been rescued from a non-sanctioned exotic animal farm.
With his worn, ragged fur and his large, chocolate-brown eyes cast up at the camera, he nearly broke my heart. Before the newscaster went to commercial break, I was up off the sofa and on the phone, asking where I could pick the poor thing up.
That plan, happily, was thwarted.
And so the alligator gar was just the latest in the succession of animals that somehow leap into my life.
Lately, I’ve been having run-ins with toads—not my favorite animal, though surely they deserve to live a happy life. I’d just prefer they not take up living in my home. Really, toads are just frogs with a big public relations problem.
This past Saturday, I’d left my muddy tennis shoes on the porch, and the next morning, in my haste to get the animals fed, I shoved my bare feet into the shoes, where my right big toe immediately met a large, soft, squishy resistance.
I screamed, prompting Chap to come running, assuming I’d been beset by some horrible tragedy and found me dumping a large toad from the inside of my tennis shoe.
Chap just shook his head. “You’re lucky it wasn’t a scorpion,” he said helpfully as he scooped up the toad and tossed him off the porch and into a patch of soft grass. “Don’t leave your shoes outside.”
I watched him retreat back into the house.
“You just wait,” I muttered to his back, scooping the toad back into my shoe. And I went into the house, looking for his best pair of boots.
Chapter Thirteen
Pecked to death by a duck
Two of the five boys who live across the river paddled their canoe over to ask me if they could “take my dog”—these are the same kids that caused me to have to swim over to retrieve my border collie after they had teased, coaxed and bribed my pup across the cove and into their grimy little clutches at least once a week last summer.
I can’t blame the dog for jumping ship. I’m quite certain five rock-throwing, rope- swinging boys under the age of 10 are way more fun than me, and they usually have a much bigger cache of half-chewed hot dogs.
Their mother home schools them, which is why I suppose she had her sofa moved outside so she can lounge around, drinking big glasses of bourbon and Diet Coke while her progeny swim, scream and terrorize small animals.
Last summer she and her hubby bought the boys a hoard of white baby ducks and unleashed them on all of their unsuspecting neighbors. For a while, the kids were thoroughly enchanted with the ducks, but, as one might suspect, they outgrew the ducks quicker than they outgrew their super-size Under-roos, and the ducks returned the favor, and began attacking the kids when ever they got into the water.
If you’ve never seen a kid get pecked by a duck, you don’t know what you’re missing.
When asked if they could take my dog back across the river, I almost said yes, just to see what would happen when they tried to get my long-legged border collie into their rickety, waterlogged canoe.
But even at my most dastardly, I do have limits, and told them they were welcome to play with him on our shore, and asked why, with three dogs of their own to play with, would they need to come avail me of my pooch.
“Duh,” Travis said. “Our dogs don’t like us.” Hard to imagine why. When Chap starts in about more kids (he has a perfectly good pair of his own), I always point across the water and say, “Really?” I understand where he’s coming from. He is #7 of 12 brothers and sisters, and while I truly love his family, I just have a hard time considering a litter of my own, and gone are the days when you needed a gaggle of strong backed young-uns to help herd cattle. That’s what the dogs are for.
As the boys took their leave, their mother hefted herself off the sofa, watching as her progeny began to paddle back home.“
You want a couple of kids?” she yelled across the river.
“No thanks,” I said, giving the canoe a little shove. “I already ate.”
Chapter Fourteen
Collapsible shoes, biodegradable underwear and a stark raving sex machine
I got a serious case of cultural whiplash last night, going from covering a city council meeting for a small newspaper in meek mild Meadowlakes, to a writer’s meeting in downtown tie-died hair, pierce-every-orifice Austin.
Meadowlakes is a buttoned-down little suburb of Marble Falls, about 60 miles and a world away from Austin, with the little town's manicured trees and pedicured lawns. The biggest controversy on council agenda that evening was whether or not they should make two streets into one-way thoroughfares—which after some impassioned pleas by citizens who live along those streets, council chose to abide by the wishes of their neighbors, and the streets of Mayberry with Money will remain the same.
Then it was off to Austin, down the yellow-brick road of Red Bud Trail, which, at its summit is one of the most stunning, sparkling, evening vistas of the Emerald City.
My breath always catches as I crest that hill, and I found myself wondering once again, why the hell did I move away from Austin?
Journeying through Westlake, Austin’s answer to Meadowlakes, and into Zilker Park, I was treated to the cornucopia of culture that helps make Austin Weird.
Two men in very short shorts were riding together on one very small Moped. A guy in a thong was happily riding a bicycle and a woman was walking—I’m not making this up—a rat (the four-legged furry kind, not the lousy ex-boyfriend kind).
Ah, I smiled to myself, The prodigal writer had returned home!
I pulled into Book People, a happenin’ hipster book store to meet with my long lost writing buddies, and parked, rather smugly, in a “compact car only” space—you never see those west of the city, and I hightailed it into the three-story Mecca of media.
Of course, there are books in the store, but there are also items that might not have made it onto your shopping list—a stack of collapsible shoes, a pile of bio-degradable underwear and magnets with sayings like, “Well behaved women seldom make history,” and, “Of course it hurts, you’re getting screwed by an elephant.”
Even the bathrooms encourage a kind of organized uprising, and patrons paint the walls with book reviews and quotes from Byron and Goethe, all surrounding a placard asking folks to remember that children use the restroom, with an entreaty to keep all stall art G-rated.
The proprietors did everything but supply bathroom guests with Sharpie Markers and a thesaurus.
I had a wonderful time with my writing buddies, and it was good to be back–the girls are all busy with their writing lives, all still beautiful and smart and funny, and I got the familiar pang of writer-home-sick, which I always get when I’ve been away too long.
I’d made up my mind. A year is far too long to be away from my talented scribbling compatriots, and even though I now live 70 miles from the last bastion of creative, card- carrying liberal Texans, I hope to make it back on a regular basis.
&nb
sp; Leaving my writer buds to head for the McDonald’s on Riverside to borrow some Wi-Fi to file a story for the paper before midnight, I wondered once again why on earth I would move so far away from such a colorful, creative city?
I filed the story, got a sweet tea, and as I made my way back out to the car, a man who looked an awful lot like a jittering, half-crazed Jesus jumped out at me from behind the drive through and screamed, “I’m a sex machine! I’m a sex machine!”
“How nice for you,” I said, and hurried into my car and locked the door.
As my heart settled and I revved into reverse, the guy was still ranting at me regarding his sexual prowess.”
"Ah," I said. "God may indeed bless Texas, but his sense of humor is planted firmly in Austin.
Chapter Fifteen
No, I don’t want to feel your new ta-ta’s and other workplace hazards
“Feel my tits.”
“I am not going to feel your tits,” I told my co-worker--in the ad department, of course--at the small-town newspaper where I work.
She'd just purchased herself a new pair of ta-tas. “Oh, come on, take a feel--they’re almost lifelike!” I wanted to say that nothing on her was almost lifelike, but common sense prevailed. Sadly, she’s not the first woman to shake her brand new money makers at me, telling me to go on ahead, take a feel. I was talking to my very good friend Shera Lee, who happens to be a Hooters waitress in Austin, about my co-workers new twin obsessions. She just shook her head knowingly. “Yes,” she said. “They get new boobs and go mad with power, but wait her out. It passes.” “When?” I demanded. “She keeps hovering over my computer and I’m afraid she’s going to put my eye out!” Apparently, there is a New Owners Guide to Store-Bought Ta Ta’s with an entire checklist of things you must absolutely do right away to ensure that your new boobs are working properly.
1. Take an inventory to ensure that there are in fact two of them, and they are relatively symmetrical and of the same size.
2. Run right out and buy a sports bra. Lots of them. You’ll never want to wear anything else again.
3. Head straight to your bank and stand in line at that snotty teller who always ignores you and lay those bad boys right up on the counter and whisper, “I’d like to make a deposit.”
4. Join a gym. Not to exercise, silly, to lean all over the equipment and make that man who’s been ignoring you drop a barbell on his big toe.
5. Purchase additional mirrors for home and office, so that you can see your new store-boughts from every angle, and as an added bonus, your office mates will, too.
6. You’ll need constant pressure checks on the silicone level of your new hooters, which can only be accomplished by asking total strangers and unsuspecting co-workers to, “Go ahead, give ‘em a feel.”
The problem with a boob job is that after you get your brand new knockers, everything else starts to look a little shabby, and pretty soon your getting all your dangling parts nipped, tucked and sucked.
Just last week, she nearly bumped into me with her new ta-tas, reading a brochure with a Georgia O'Keefe painting on the cover.
"Did you know there's this thing called vaginal reconstruction?" she said. "They can re-do your whole hoo hoo--even make you back into a virgin!"
I stood there, staring at her, thinking there wasn't enough plastic surgery in the world to turn that clock back for this woman.
And as for checking the results of that particular miracle of plastic surgery--I don't want her re-virginated hoo-hoo hovering anywhere near my computer.
Chapter Sixteen
Sadly, Chicken-Fried Bacon is Not One Of The Four Basic Food Groups
Despite what you may have heard, chicken-fried bacon is not one of the four food groups. I have spent several years trying to convince Chap that there are foods that do not have to be battered, fried or soaked in salt to be tasty.
He’d been a bachelor so long he’d forgotten–or maybe he never knew–that good, healthy salads do not consist of iceberg lettuce slathered in ranch dressing. The first salad I ever made for Chap was a fresh baby spinach tossed with juicy strawberries, dried cranberries and toasted pecans, with a light drizzle of raspberry vinaigrette.
He came up to the house after doing manly man things out back, shucked off his leather gloves, washed his hands, sat down and stared at my salad masterpiece.
"It looks like leafs,” he said. "Yes,” I said. “And it tastes like leaves. Try it–you’ll like it.” He looked skeptical, but he took a tentative bite, and of course, after the first bite he wolfed down the entire bowl and asked for more. But the deliciousness of good, healthy food hasn’t completely quenched his taste for fried globs of fat and processed lard-fried dreck.
On one of the rare occasions he accompanied me to the grocery store, he stared longingly at the rows and rows of bland white boxes of Hamburger Helper and asked, “Have you ever had this stuff?”
After he passed me the smelling salts and I came to in Aisle 13, I said, “No. And I don’t intend to, and if you want to live to see 50, you won’t ask me to make it for you.” It’s not his fault, really. It’s endemic to this part of the country. Anyone who’s ever walked the midway at the State Fair of Texas under the giant, friendly wave and big, booming voice of “Big Tex” knows that many folks consider deep-fried Twinkies the height of cuisinal culture.
Last year at the fair, we witnessed (and he sampled) fried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, fried macaroni and cheese, fried Oreos, fried Pop-tarts, fried Krispy Kreme donuts, and I’m not kidding, great big balls of greasy fried butter. Even Chap drew the line at deep-fried Spam.
And while we waltzed our way down the sparkling, carnival aisle of acne-inducing, heaping helpings of fat-fried coronary disease, something bumped in the back of my brain, and it sounded like the shadow of old oak-creaking footsteps down my grandfather’s aging staircase.
My grandfather once told me that folks started “chicken-frying” meat because after the Old South fell, the food supplies were depleted, and rolling a pitiful little piece of meat in flour and frying it up made it more substantial, and a chicken leg could seem like a veritable feast in a hungry child’s tummy.
I thought about my grandfather as Chap and I strolled the chicken-fried smorgasbord of the Dallas midway, and how my grandfather fried chicken with a sense of family pride, with the history of his father and grandfather taking what little they had and creating a feast that warded off hunger and had their children feeling like royalty. It was familial pride–that knowing who you are–that flavored each meager morsel.
Near the end of our stroll down the Dallas midway, Chap offered me some deep-fried ice-cream, and I accepted it. I took a taste.
And felt like a princess.
Thanks, Granddad, for helping me remember who I am, and more importantly, where I came from . . . and because I love you, I will still make you eat “leafs”.
Chapter Seventeen
Never Kiss a Screaming Monkey (and other men to avoid)
This weekend, a nearby Hill Country town held its annual spring festival/carnival, which included the usual merry-go-rounds, spin-till-you-puke rides and a fun house.
It also included a little screaming monkey dressed in pajamas, with a man encouraging little kids to sit with the monkey on their laps while he took pictures.
Okay, aside from the inherent ick factor of a monkey in pajamas sitting on a small child's lap, I had one of Oprah’s trademark “Aha!” moments—when a screaming monkey bites your face, remove him from your lap.
This kid was sitting there, holding the screaming monkey trying to give it a kiss, and, as screaming monkeys forced to dress in pajamas are wont to do, it nipped the kid right in the nose.
This prompted the kid to scream, but he tried to give the monkey another kiss, and surprise surprise, the monkey bit him again.
The kid kept kissing the screaming monkey, and the screaming monkey kept biting the kid, prompting the kid to scream even more.
Misery does in
fact, love company.
How many times in life have we tried to kiss a screaming monkey and got bit in the face, and are shocked that when we continue kissing the screaming monkey, it continues to bite us in the face?
I have a friend who dates the same redneck, over and over again, and is shocked, shocked! I tell you, that every time she spends more than a month with this knucklehead, the guy breaks her heart and sneaks off into the night with my friend's panties, her wallet and her pride.
Of course, the faces may changes, but in essence, he's still the same redneck--the same screaming monkey.
From this point on, I plan to avoid people who make a habit of kissing screaming monkeys.
These are the people in your life who constantly get themselves in trouble—the same trouble they always get into, then once again come screaming to you for your help, your time, your money, your left kidney . . . Instead of those valuable resources, I plan to give them some valuable advice. Get the screaming monkey off your lap. I’ve got my own screaming monkeys to deal with.
For more adventures of An Accidental Cowgirl, visit www.kitfrazier.com/wordpress
About the author
Kit Frazier is an award-winning mystery writer and former journalist living on the Llano River in Central Texas, where she inherited two step children, a big dopey Labrador retriever and more cattle than you can shake a stick at.
She still occasionally participates with Austin Search and Rescue with the Austin Police Department and the FBI.
Kit loves to hear from her readers--you can reach her at [email protected]
For more stories and information about Kit, visit KitFrazier.com, and stop by for a chat and the misadventures of an accidental cowgirl at her blog at KitFrazier.com/wordpress
