Cookup

Salvatore Pucci

The cat shot is a quick download, small format that takes a few seconds. We need one more cat picture here.

I watched him scramble after a rodent yesterday.  First, he digs furiously in the lawn. He found a hole which, I assume, belongs to a vole. Then he walks away  "Ask me if I care?"  The vole is tricked into coming back to the surface.  Voles are like that, curious.  In an instant The Pooch is back over tail to the hole in a one viscous leap at the vole.  The vole escapes to brag to his buddies about fending off a monster tiger.

I found a dead vole by the back door the other day.  Black to gray fur, sharp,pointy nose, stained brown incisors-not at all like the cute mice the cat finds out by the lawn shed with their rounded ears, brown fur and white under-body.  This time of year, one of my favorite stories to read to the kids was The Church Mice At Christmas.  Of course the mice are poor because they live in a rectory-whatever that is.  The main cat in the tale is a benevolent cat who helps the church mice.  Read it sometime. It'll restore your faith in mice as something other than assistants to Republican politicians who nibble away at our sanity.

Oh, but I have strayed.

Cookup.  Guyanese expression for a bit of this, a little of that.  It can be used for anything from food to a person's heritage, like mine.

So I'm on patrol of the grounds with the Perrito. I  spell it wrong in a Spanish language dictionary because the spell checker underlines it in red, tricking me into thinking my command of Espanol is lacking  Perito is a town in Argentina not a small puppy-my usage.  The 50 foot white pines have littered the back yard/field with cones.  I'm trying to decide if I should get out Fred and mow the lawn-the lazy man's way of cleaning up the cones-or if I should rake them into a pile. Mowing in November tells one's neighbors this guy is a bit off.three bricks shy of a load.  Fred will disintegrate them into mulch, but I just replaced the blades, sprayed the undercarriage of the mower deck with penetrating oil for his long winter nap. I decide to rake after filling a kitty litter pail with cones for a fire starter or possible Christmas wreath decoration. 

Disgruntled Wily Posing as Amish

At the far end of the 10 acre corn field is an Amish covered black buggy, a tethered ragged horse and an Amish guy with a dot of orange on his head.  That would make a good picture, I tell myself.  But the Amish don't like their picture taken.  It's hunting season.  It's not safe to walk in the woods without blaze orange.  He's not in the woods, however.  He's installing a gate between the field behind us and the far corn field, the one that Principal Felty owns.  Dipstick Dan, the neighbor, installs the posts for the gate to open into a thicket of scrub trees instead of the far field.  It figures.

While I'm downing a lunch of elbow macaroni and tuna fish, Mandy barks at an approaching stranger.  It's the Amish man with orange wool cap over his straw boater. He needs to borrow a drill bit.  "And while I'm at it, can I borrow a drill?  I drill him with questions.  "Is this a new Amish fashion statement?"  This Amish man has never been exposed to sarcasm, "I don't understand what you mean."  He doesn't laugh when I explain.  He tells me he also wears an orange vest when he's hunting.

I've run out of ingredients for this cook-up because I'm thinking,

If that rifle fell while I took the picture of a stuffed coyote with a straw hat and knit cap, I'd  have some esplainin' (Ricky Riccardo)  when Dawn gets home.

The rifle is always loaded, 10 shots in the clip, nothing in the chamber with the safety on.

BUT, did you remember to flick the safety?  Did you pull back the bolt and load the chamber?

My daughter-a city slicker-has no experience of rural life.  She hasn't seen Mandy tree an obviously, addled raccoon in broad daylight. She needs to listen to the NPR segment of This American Life about a woman attacked by a rabid raccoon hysterically calling her husband from their rural driveway on her phone only to have him laugh at her spunky sense of humor. Or follow her story of trying to get a $3,000 rabies shot from a rural hospital or to have the doctor explain that the rabies shot should be given within twenty four hours of the bite while the hospital insists she bring the so-called rabid raccoon in for testing, which takes about a week.

I'm going outside with the rifle to reassure that I'm not Charlton Heston.