Michael Collins
I don't know exactly what's caused these thoughts, but I suspect it's probably my wife and my sister-in-law, constantly talking about the yummy vegetables that we need at our weekly family gatherings, such as squash, cucumbers, and cauliflower. I don't think vegetables are good for me. I know everyone else in the world thinks vegetables are good for you, and maybe they're good for them, but I'm not convinced they're good for me.
I don't hate them or anything, I'm sure they're very lovely plants, and they do look quite pretty. I just don't think eating them is in my best interest. It isn't just me, either, it runs in my family. I didn't grow up eating them. I only ate pickles because I was unaware, they were cucumbers in disguise. I wouldn't have eaten a cucumber with all those scary seeds if you'd paid me. But somehow a pickle seemed harmless and toothsome.
Toothsome is a word I don't understand but love. It's as if your tooth wants some. This word must be from the Redneck Dictionary. My teeth don't particularly want anything, except maybe Salt & Vinegar Chips and Tabasco, which they seem to enjoy squashing. It’s probably why I stop at the local Circle K and purchase my dose of Twange, commonly known as, Pickle Salt or Dill Pickles without the seeds.
Oh, the squash again. As I said, my family isn't much for vegetables. My sister-in-law, Delia, loves them, I am sure her family always had vegetables at every meal, so apparently, their Chinese ancestors were big herbivores.
My ancestors, however, didn't eat plants, at least not unless they were really desperate, and then anything can look good; you know how that is; mushrooms, dandelions, and stuff like that… The Irish practically lived on potatoes, but I don't think they called them a vegetable. They might have carved them into delightful woodblock-like things and made prints but eating them would not have been the first thing on their minds.
My kinfolk raised chickens, hogs, and cattle but everyone in my family was partial to chicken. And sour cream. (YUK!) I don't know how you raise sour cream, but I know cows are involved, and come to think of it, cows are involved with everything that I don’t like. That is white stuff, like sour cream, cream cheese and milk, blue cheese dressing, and ranch dressing. Although I don't see my people with cows these days, perhaps they traded with tribes of sour cream-making people.
There are two other possibilities for my digestive distress. One is that our house smells bad when my wife cooks something like salmon. Oops, did I say that? I meant broccoli because a mouse or mice must have died under the refrigerator. I have that suspicion because when I went into the kitchen late at night for a glass of water, I saw a shadowy little shape on the floor and threw a box over it. Since my reflexes aren't all that good, the fact that I could throw a box on it immediately suggested that it was dead, and the fact that it didn't thrash around in the box confirmed this. I slipped a paper under it and slid it out the door and into the trash bin, where it could rest in peace.
This is the first time I've actually seen an uninvited rodent in our recent home, and I have to say it's shocking. Where did it come from? Did it crawl through the air vent? (Creepy if it's true), because the air vents are in the ceiling. Did I not pay the exterminators enough this month? Did it maybe just walk inside one time when I left the front door open (less creepy, but a valuable lesson). A lizard once came in that way, and I had to come home from work to rescue my wife and grab it with my bare hands as it popped its head out from under the refrigerator. I don't think I could do that with a mouse, even though they're cute--even this poor stiff little one was cute and now just looked like a very realistic stuffed animal.
I don't mind them being around the outside of the house since we basically live in the desert and they were here first, but I do draw the line at them living in the house if they don't pay rent, which they haven't yet offered to do.
I knew where there is one stiff rat; there will be more, probably in my grandbaby's swimming pool. I also know from experience they would stink for a few days, and then they'd just shrivel up and look just like little wet mummy mice, which was quite interesting in a weird kind of way. I knew it was time to put out some dippy-dome poison.
So, I disposed of the rent-shirking rodent and don't plan to tell my wife so as not to upset her, but I might have to tell her about the one that keeps running between the sofa and the loveseat at night. But I am sure that tomorrow she will say "There must be a mouse in the house because something has been eating the cauliflower seeds that are meant for the invited rodents (namely dippy-domes) outside." Yes, she feeds them; dog biscuits of all things. When I explain these things to her, she will probably calmly ask me to put out some rat poison.
There's one other cause that crossed my mind, though, and that has to do with the rat poison. While I will be careful not to touch it and will wash my hands, twice after even handling the box, for a moment I had the not-very-healthy idea that the aforementioned vegetables might have been seasoned with it. I wouldn't blame my wife if she did this--and neither should you, as I was quite crabby earlier this past weekend, but even so, it wouldn't really be kosher, in both meanings of the word.
I don’t like vegetables and don't want to eat them. She suggested I did it in ranch or blue cheese dressing, both things I don’t like, and both things that a rat would probably like. She is always very eager for me to eat these things, too eager which is what makes me wonder. My son actually ate some of these vegetables and the way he screamed, I thought for sure they were mixed in rat poison, but it was just blue cheese dressing that caused the shriek.
So, I've ruled out the rat poison. If she was going to poison me she'd tell me so I could appreciate her cunning, which I would have. I wouldn't even think of calling 911 because I'd be embarrassed, plus I wouldn't want her to get in trouble; besides I’m not sure how she'd explain a dead husband on the kitchen floor, but maybe she would just throw a large box over me and slide me out the door and into the trash bin. But I'm still alive and at least 2 rats aren't. So, I guess she likes me better than them, at least for the time being.
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