On the day JB and I went to the Soo, Mark and Marian put the life jacket on Olivia and took her for a ride to Hessel on Grandpa’s boat, Pooh Bear. As soon as she got on the boat, Olivia was out like a light, and slept the entire one-hour ride.
The Sunday before we left JB, Austin, Lauren, Chris, O, and I rode Pooh Bear to Cedar Campus to catch the morning sermon. We didn’t have much time to get there, so when Uncle Austin took the helm we got a choppy 45-mile-an-hour ride to Cedar. As soon as we got into the boat, Olivia was lethargic. I mean, it was like she had taken a tranquilizer or something. No normal human could have slept a wink on that choppy, windy, cold ride, but it was as though the life jacket made Olivia oblivious to the elements. Her eyes sometimes fluttered a little, but she pretty much was out the whole time.
She didn’t cry or fuss at all about being jostled about on the boat. But then during the service JB noticed a bright orange substance on his shirt and Olivia’s. We think she got a little seasick and barfed a while after we had landed.
After church we boarded the boat again, and took a calmer trip back to the cabin. No sooner than I sat down with her, she was fast asleep. I thought that perhaps it was the hum of the engine, though she doesn’t quickly fall asleep in cars all the time. Not only did she sleep for the whole boat ride, but also as she was handed off the boat onto the dock, was walked through the marshy grasses to the car, rode the short distance in the car back to the cabin, and came inside and was laid on the living room floor. Fast asleep.
Those who know Olivia know that this is STRANGE behavior for her. She does not sleep. She especially does not asleep when she’s away from home and is surrounded by people. But apparently none can resist the drowsy power of the life jacket!
I lay her down on the floor, with the life jacket securely around her, and there she slept, with cabin activities going on all around her, for some time.
Last weekend, in addition to dog sitting for the in-laws, a sister came to stay for a few days. Due to the nature of this story, she has requested that she remain unnamed. So we shall call her Sister X.
Sunday was a beautiful day so I invited everyone to go with me on a family walk. JB suggested walking to
Soon after starting this walk, I remembered why JB and I do not go on walks together. A walk for JB is a slow jog to the rest of the human race. Or at least, to the Teague race. Sister X and I were huffing and puffing and giving it our all just to keep within sight of JB and the dogs. (And our sister Annie walks even slower! She could never go on a walk with JB.) I’m sure Olivia was having fun getting pushed in her stroller at such a high speed. She probably thought it was like a ride in the car!
JB insisted that we were the odd ones, and that no, it wasn’t just a Teague thing, because our brother walked with JB to EGR a few months ago and they kept the same pace. Whatever. I don’t believe you, JB.
I comfort myself with the fact that at least JB will never be overtaken on a walk by a stealthy prowler, because no one can catch up to him without giving themselves away with their huffing and puffing. Either that or JB will be half a mile ahead of them before they realize, “Rats! How did he get up there? He’s too far now! Better find me some other victim. Perhaps there’s a Teague girl strolling around here somewhere…”
Anyway, by the time we reached EGR we were quite winded. After JB and I bought groceries, we all made a pit stop at Jersey Junction for ice cream. While JB went to the restroom Sister X and I were enjoying our cones, harnessing the dogs, and watching Olivia.
Big Lexi of course wanted in on the treat action, but I surely wasn’t giving her any of my cone. 1.) it’s MINE and 2.) she eats poop. Poop eaters don’t share food with me.
But Sister X, perhaps nostalgic of her childhood when she would share her cone with our esteemed Jack Russell, Reba, held out her cone for Lexi to lick with her long doggie tongue. Lick, lick.
I was flabberghasted. Surely Sister X was done with her ice cream, and was just letting Lexi have a lick before she threw it out?
“You’re done with that, right?” I ask her, as she brings the cone to her mouth.
“No.”
“She eats POOP!!” I exclaim.
Sister X stops the cone in midair and gets this shocked look on her face. Yeah, right. Like anyone doesn’t know that Lexi eats Maggie’s poop with glee, all the time! (In fact, a few weeks ago as I was petting Lexi I saw it smeared down the side of her tongue. Ew!!)
She bring her napkin up to the cone, and I assume that she’s really going to throw the whole thing out now.
Nope.
She just wipes off the ice cream and takes a big lick herself.
My mother is fearless.
What strikes me is that it took me 30 years to realize this.
It all started one early Sunday morning last fall. Mom and Dad had gotten up earlier than usual. To go to church, you ask? No. To take part in another activity that is perhaps just as holy to my parents: handgun class.
So Dad was standing at the stovetop making eggs when Mom walked into the kitchen and started to whoop and holler. There, at Dad’s feet, was a giant RAT. The rat jumped up and ran across Dad’s feet before it escaped under the cupboards and to its safe haven of the basement.
Mom was all in a tizzy then. The whole family was set to come over for Thanksgiving the next week, including little Olivia. “We can’t have a rat when the baby comes!” Mom exclaimed. “It could eat her hands!” Now, before you think that my mother is overreacting, Google “rats biting babies.” Granted, the possibility of Olivia getting eaten on by a rat was quite slim, seeing as someone would be holding her just about the entire time and my parents don’t live in a slum with flesh-eating rats, but still.
The rat was quickly killed, along with six of his mousy friends. I asked my mom how big the rat was, as I am a journalist at heart and don’t do exaggerations. Mom said that the dead rat was as big as a hamster.
I was surprised to hear about the rat, since my parents have never had rodent problems. I think it was because we regularly had a kennel of Jack Russells (renowned for their rodent-killing abilities), several feisty barn cats, and children constantly running in and out of the buildings and basement. When there’s people, cats, and dogs around, mice and rats don’t have much opportunity to party. For 20 years my parents have lived in that house on 75 acres with several outbuildings, and we’ve only had one rodent problem before this.
Back before my parents remodeled the house, we had a resident rat named Curly. Krystal, who followed Mom everywhere, and saw him several times, named him.
After rat #2 (dubbed Larry...see the pattern?) last fall, I asked Mom how she knew we had Curly living in the house and she said, “I saw his happy little face!”
Dad would leave for work around 4 or 5 a.m. and Mom would sit on the couch and read her Bible and pray until us kids got up for school. The living room was over 100 years old and my parents had not been able to fix it up yet. One of the walls even had a little mouse archway chewed into it, just like in the Tom and Jerry cartoons.
“I was reading my Bible one day when I saw two little eyes (in the mouse arch) so I got down and looked and he was looking right at me. I said, ‘You dirty rat!’”
She told me this all quite matter-of-factly, which is my Mom’s way. Nothing in this world is really out of the ordinary to my mother. I am the same way, but I know that if I came face to face with a RAT, I would be a bit unnerved. Though I’d probably call him a dirty rat, too.
Mom continued with her rat story. “Then, when I was putting wood in the stove (in the basement) it jumped up and it was the flying rat.”
Krystal corroborates this story. "I was down there when she saw him that time," she told me. "The first time I saw him mom was loading wood in the basement. He ran vertically up the wall into a hole."
Curly was a tough rat to get. Dad tried several tricks, but Curly got wise to his antics and outsmarted him every time. Dad had even created this elaborate trap, which was an advanced version of “walking the plank.” A common way to catch a rat is to put a ramp up to a deep bucket of water and put a treat at the end of the plank. As the rat walks to the end of the plank, the plank will tip into the bucket with the rat on it, and the rat will drown. However, a clever rat will climb back up the submerged plank and hop out of the bucket. Dad crafted a plank with a hinge, so that as soon as Curly got to the edge, it would drop him in, and then swing back into place, leaving Curly with no way to climb out.
Curly figured out the plank and after walking out on it once (and somehow escaping), he never went back on it for the treat.
My parents eventually had to resort to the Blue Death, which is a poison. With children, dogs, and cats about, they didn’t want to use poison, but they had no choice. It worked. Curly was found dead one day, and he was tossed out by the barn.
Until 5-year-old Krystal found it. The story about THAT is in my attic. I think. I will look for it.
After they caught Larry this fall, I told my mom that I think she had a rat problem because she had killed all the snakes in her basement. Snakes eat rats, so if the snakes go away, the rats come out to play, right?
See, I wasn’t completely honest about our “only 2 rats” rodent problem. We also have had a few snake incidents.
This is where my mother’s fearlessness comes in.
Our basement used to be a
Several years ago my mother was in the basement doing laundry or getting food from the pantry. “I saw something hanging and thought, ‘That looks like a snake,’ so I walked over and it WAS a snake!” Mom recalled.
Now who in their right mind would walk up to an unknown object, that you already think is a snake, that would be hanging next to your head, in a dark, creepy basement?!???
My mother.
(Apparently she was bothered by this enough to always wear a hooded shirt down there. That way, in the event that one DID drop on her head, it wouldn't slither down her shirt.)
Like rats, my mother has no time for snakes. They must be removed. When I was a teenager she had me help her kill a snake that was out in the yard. It was quite a gruesome ordeal, as the only tools we had were a baseball bat and a rusty hoe. It seemed to take forever and has scarred my memory ever since. Mom was not phased.
So this summer when she spotted some large snakes in her basement, she took action yet again. Next to the basement door she keeps this old farm implement which belonged to my great grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Davis Teague. It’s a very crude tool with an old wooden handle attached to a rusty piece of slightly curved metal. She calls it “Grandpa’s tool” and she kills snakes with it.
“I already killed a couple this year,” Mom told me. “With Grandpa’s tool. One was long, like 34” long. (The tool) killed three snakes and Dad said that Larry wasn’t dead so he took care of him with this (too).”
I asked her just how she killed a snake with Grandpa’s Tool.
“I pinned it down and I sawed its head off,” she said simply. “I sawed it in two.”
“Wasn’t it flailing all over the place while you did it?” I asked.
“No, you stand on it with both of your feet and then you use the Tool to saw it in the middle.”
I shudder just to think of being in the same room with a snake, but Mom has no qualms about standing on its writing body while she saws the life out of it.
Lately JB has been telling me that I’m my Mom whenever I say something funny or show a humorous mannerism. I take this as a compliment because I find my mother to be quite entertaining.
But fearless? Able to saw snakes in half with the flick of a tool?
That’ll never be me.
With that skill, Mom is in a class all her own.
Fourth of July was good, but busy. JB and I helped get things ready for the annual Teague 4th of July party. We also just hung out with Mom and Dad and siblings and had fun.
Two best Quotes from the weekend:
"These are great almonds!" said Tommy, as he fishes some nuts from a large bag.
"Those are walnuts," said JB (or Virginia, or me—we were all aware that they were walnuts).
"No, they're almonds," he insisted.
"No, they're walnuts—it says WALNUTS on the bag," we insisted back.
"Walnuts? No. It says ALMONDS. See, right here: D.I. ALMONDS."
Sorry, brother…
_____________________________________When Ivan got to our house for the party, his father Eric told him that my Dad is Santa Clause, and that Ivan had better be good because Santa will remember if he was naughty or nice. The wonderful thing about children is that they believe anything you tell them, especially when the big man standing at the grill looks JUST LIKE Santa Clause.
When Ivan needed to go in the house later, he politely approached my Dad and asked,
“Santa, can I use your bathroom?”
Ivan was especially geeked when Santa let him drive his lawnmower around.
There are more photos from the party. You can check some of them out at www.flickr.com/violetjane if you want.
One of the dogs’ favorite games to play at the Hilton is tennis ball chasing. It goes like this:
I get out the tennis ball slingshot. Lexi and Lucy go beserk with excitement. They both spring off all fours straight into the air, several times, until I can get around to shooting a ball. It is quite impressive to see Lexi do this, since she weighs about 90 lbs. She really gets some air. Lucy jumps so high that her head hits the slingshot and if I’m not careful I could shoot her in the face.
I shoot a ball. Lexi takes off like a speeding bullet, but Lucy shoots off like a firecracker, way outrunning her, and gets the first tennis ball. She races back to me before Lexi has even turned around and tries to make me want the ball.
“Haha! Look at me! I have the ball you just threw! And I’m not giving it back! Chase me, I dare you!”
I launch another ball. Lucy again beats Lexi to the ball, but since she already has a ball in her mouth, she can’t retrieve this new one. Lucy races back to me with the original ball in her mouth, still taunting. Lexi gets the new ball and brings it back. And drops it like a good dog. And I launch it again.
We go on like this for quite a while. Lucy basically is running in a circle the whole time, delirious with excitement. And Lexi plays catch with me.
So on Tuesday we were in the middle of a game when Maggie, the old geriatric dog, saunters out of the woods to take a dump in the middle of the yard. In the middle of our play area.
Why didn’t she do that in the woods?!???
I felt like I was in one of my slow motion nightmares, where your body just won’t move fast enough to divert the horror that is about to take place in front of you.
Lexi and I are in a dead heat to reach Maggie. I tell my legs to run faster, but they don’t. I holler at Lexi, but it’s not loud enough. Lexi has dropped the ball and is racing with reckless abandon toward her prize. I am too late.
I don’t know why I kept running to get closer to the crap pile. It’s not like I could ever outrun a lab. And before I can avert my eyes they are accosted with the grotesque scene of Lexi gulping down hot, steamy, fresh dog excrement. Purely vomitous. I scream and yell, but she doesn’t give a shit, no pun intended.
Then she trots back over to me so that I can throw another ball for her to fetch.
“You a-hole! I am not touching another ball that goes into your mouth! You ruined play times! YOU wrecked it! Why did you do that?!???”
I can see Lulu in the background, still holding on to her ball, a quizzical look on her face. She wants to know why we’ve stopped playing. She wants to still run! I tell her that Lexi has ruined everything.
All the dogs are oblivious of what just happened. I trudge back to the house, demanding that they follow me. In their eyes, I have wrecked play time. I am the bad auntie-mother who makes them go inside and lie down.
In their doggie eyes, I am the ruiner of fun.
This is Lucy’s new favorite thing. She LOVES Drama Clean shampoo.
At least, that’s the only explanation I can find for her actions. Every day (with the exception of Sunday) that we have been staying at “The Hilton,” Lucy has gotten so dirty that she has needed a bath—sometimes twice in one day. It’s got to be the shampoo. At our house Lucy uses Bunny Shampoo, which is supposed to be nice on pet skin. But at the Hilton, she gets people shampoo, which leaves her fur smelling and looking way more glamorous.
Her favorite stunt that requires a bath afterward is rolling in deer poop. She loves deer poop more than dead animal (I am grateful for this). If she rolls in dead animal, she will get one long streak down her back. But deer poop is a wonderful thing, if you ask Lucy. It is worth rubbing your whole face in. It is worth rubbing down both of your sides. It is The Shit.
Yesterday when I got home from work, I praised the Lord that Lucy did not crap in her pen while I was gone. She is touched in the head and freaks out when we leave her alone. And I won’t get into the details, but the dog food at the Hilton affects her bowel movements in a disgusting way. So cleaning up her messes is dreadful. “Praise the Lord! Thank you Jesus!” I hollered as I did a little Pentecostal rejoicing dance next to her pen. I’m sure she thought I was crazy. Yeah, well at least I don’t crap my pants everyday like you do, Lucy!
Not having to clean a dog pen allowed me to spend some time outside having fun. I brought out a blanket and laid in the sun, reading a good book. The dogs all came over to me to say hello, and then wandered off to do dog things. For Maggie and Lexi, the older dogs, this means basking in the sun, casually perusing the yard for the stray bunny or groundhog. For Lucy, this apparently time for a hot date with deer poop. I had forgotten this and was happily reading my book until she sidled up next to me, REAKING of filth and was brown all over.
“Excuse me, mother (said in a Brittish accent, for she is a Brittish dog), but I’ve had quite enough fun for one day. Do you mind if I lean against you on your nice blanket while you read your book?”
“Lucy, you stink! Go away!”
“What? I think I smell quite wonderful. But if you insist, we can rub some Drama Clean shampoo into my fur. Here, let me sit really close to you unti you’re ready to do so.”
“Go away, Luly! You are a stinky dog! You an animal and you are disgusting!!”
She finally gets the message and walks away. I return to my book for a few blissful seconds until the rankness enters my nostrils again. If that dog is trying to touch me again, I’m going to kick her ass! I think. I look around. She is not near me. No, she is standing 15 feet away, her nose lifted to the air, enjoying the sweet breeze that I am downwind from. I can see the wind ruffling her fur. She is in heaven. I am ready to commit murder.
But I am determined to read my book for more than five minutes. I tell myself that the dog bath can wait and that she might as well get all her “poop rolling” kicks in now, while she’s still dirty, which she does. She happily returns to the poop, wherever it is, a few more times.
Why didn’t anyone tell me that SEVERAL poop rollings are way harder to wash out than one?!??? It was nasty. I had to wrap her in a rag towel just to transport her to the utility sink upstairs. It took at least two applications of Drama Clean and I had to use my nails to scratch the poop off of her face. GRRR!!! Afterward, I could still faintly smell the gross. I decided to wait for JB to return to give me a “clean enough” verdict, since I have a superwoman sense of smell. He said she was fine.
Sigh…she’ll be fine until today, when mama deer or baby deer or some young buck’s fresh pile beckons her name. Tonight we may just have to try shock collar therapy…
Lucy has finally been able to enjoy the freedom of a fenced-in yard. Our yard has been fenced on all sides but the front. A few weeks ago JB and his dad erected a fence to go across the front of the house on the right side, but we had to be a little more creative with the driveway side. Our driveway is flanked very closely by the neighbor’s fence and our house, so there is no way to get a gated fence in there and still be able to fit our cars down the driveway.
JB had noticed some neighbors doing this, so we copied them by buying a little doggie fence thing that we can stretch across the driveway when we go outside with Lucy, but can easily move when we need to pull a car in. We’ve considered ourselves lucky that Lucy is terrified of inanimate objects, especially ones that can move, like the gate. We took a gamble with the 2-ft high fence, as it was cheaper and easier to transport in and out of the house.
And it works. Lucy is afraid of the thing. And really, she doesn’t care about getting out, because there are far more fascinating things in our yard, like squirrels, birds, and this little chipmunk that lives in the wall of our garage that she is determined to catch, etc. She also doesn’t like being away from JB or I, and since we’re usually in the backyard with her, she’s quite content.
I’ve been a bit sick lately with stupid pregnancy crap, and on Tuesday I had overworked myself making a pie for Grandpa Hunt’s birthday (he and Grandma came over that night), making a nice dinner, and cleaning up the downstairs for company. When JB got home, Lucy and I went out to meet him. I was exhausted and so glad to see him.
As we are talking by the car, Lucy hears children’s voices out front. She races down the drive, barreling toward the gate with break-neck speed. “She’s totally going to smash into the gate and have a meltdown!” I think.
Then it happens.
The impossible that is totally possible with Lucy, the circus dog.
She leaps. Her little doggie legs spring her puppy-sized body into the air and she sails over the fence to sweet freedom.
Oh no!!
I start to walk quickly toward the fence, because my wardrobe of flipflops and extra long pants, coupled with my breaking-down pregnancy body, won’t let me run.
The piercing screams of terrified little girls fill the air. They scream and scream, certain that Lucy is going to eat them alive.
JB is still standing there, in shock, I think. I turn to him and say, “Get your ass out there!! You’ve got tennis shoes on!!!”
The screams continue, and I am afraid that the girls’ parents are going to come out of their houses and club our dog to death for frightening their children.
When JB gets on the scene, Lucy has not left our yard. He calls to her and she stops barking and sits down for him. The little girls are across the street, all in a tizzy. They’ve met Lucy before, but that was when she was on a leash, and not running at them full tilt, barking like a mad dog. JB apologized and said, “She won’t ever hurt you! She’s a big scaredy cat!” The littlest girl, about 7, said in a polite voice, “Well, I was bit by a dog before and I didn’t know what was going to happen!”
I felt awful.
JB brought Lucy across the street to meet the girls again, and she was all sweetness and tail-wagging. The girls pet her and JB tried to reassure them.
No parents came out with clubs.
We’re safe. For now.
But now Lucy has found our kryptonite. And anyone who knows Lucy knows that she could even scale a three-foot fence, or probably even a four-foot, if she really wanted to.
I’ve been keeping a wary eye on her. Every time she trots down the driveway I call out to her, and she comes back. But I can’t keep that act up forever. And I’m really worried about the day that she sees a stray dog and jumps the fence to yell at it. And the stray dog murders her.
I told Lucy that we’re going to have to string barbed wire across her gate now. That she’s been sanctioned to doggie Alkatraz. I don’t think she gets it though and I really don’t feel like taking care of a doggie with barbed wire cuts on her belly.
Sigh…
In September 2006, I posted this true Teague story on my blog.
“Do mom and dad still have that bird?” Smelly asks Anne.
“What bird? Levi stubbs (their finch)? Yeah.”
“No, that bird that Dad caught.”
“What are you talking about??”
Two weeks ago Smelly was visiting home. Dad tells her that a hummingbird had sat on his finger. “If you sit really really still they’ll land on it,” he says. He convinces her to stand next to the feeder and hold her hand out. When nothing happens, he dismisses her attempt with a wave.
“The colors you’re wearing are too bright for them. Too bright of pink.”
The next weekend, Mom, Dad, Smelly, Krystal, and Derek were sitting out on the back porch eating dinner. Their 75 acre old farmland spreads out behind them.
“I’ll bet you I can go out there and pet that bird (on the feeder),” says Dad. Everyone laughs. They don’t believe him. Dad stealthily walks out to the old bird feeder and sure enough, he pets the bird!
Everyone insists on trying it, too. So they each go out, one at a time.
Dad raises the stakes. “I bet ya I can get that bird to sit on my finger.”
More balking from his family.
He approaches the bird and sure enough, it sits on his finger!
Everyone insists on perching a bird on their finger, too. They each go out, one at a time
Dad is feeling confident. “You know what, I betcha I can capture that bird!”
“No, no!” “Whatever Dad!” “Yeah right!” No one believes him. Afterall, it’s a wild bird!
“We still have that old bird cage, don’t we Karen?” he asks.
Everyone continues to protest.
Mom brings out the birdcage. He gets the wild bird on his finger and starts walking with it. Everyone watches with baited breath. Then he grabs it with two hands. “Heh heh, I got you now!”
Into the cage the bird goes. “You’ve got to let him go!” they say.
Then they try to put a perch in there.
A few days later Anne asks Dad, “Do you still have that bird?”
“No, no, we let it out that night!”
“I don’t know what everybody was freaking out about,” says Dad.
“It could have been tamed!”
Last Christmas, my Dad made this grandiose claim:
“I can get a hummingbird to sit on my finger. How much money is in it for me?”
Of course, we do not believe him. The nature of the hummingbird is to NEVER stop fluttering its wings, eating, flying about. If there’s one wild bird that you cannot tame, it is the hummingbird for sure.
Today I received this photo from my mother:
Note to readers: Never make a bet with birdman!
