Varmints!

One of the more interesting things about living in the country is the abundant variety of fauna. Just when you think you’ve met every possible critter on the block, another one shows up in the darndest place. When all is said and done, you may end up with a stitch or two, but usually there’s a fun story to go with it. With a little luck and several years of therapy, eventually you get to chuckle at it.

Just last year I went back to visit my parents, still living in the house they had built years ago. It was late August, hot and humid. I had my two sons with me and as usual, my parents insisted we all stay in the house instead of getting a hotel. My dad took me aside and said, “Have the boys sleep in the living room. You can take your old room.” There was a weird look on his face.

“Why?” I asked.

“We’ve had some issues,” Dad squirmed.

“What kind of issues?”

“Snakes,” Dad whispered, in case they were listening and trained to come when they called.

“How does this have anything to do with where we sleep?” As I said it, I realized the issues were coming from inside the house.

“Last Tuesday I got up in the middle of the night to watch TV. As I sat there, a snake slithered across the floor toward me.”

“In the living room?!” I asked.

“They must be getting in through some hole from under the house.”

“They?!?” The hair on the back of my neck was starting to rise. Like tiny little snakes.

“Have the kids sleep down there. They’ll sleep through anything.”

This is what is known as a quandary. Do I let my children sleep where there are known sssserpents ssssurfing sssatellite TV, or do I send them to safety and assign myself to a week of sleeplesssssnessss? And as I got to know more about how my dad functioned, I wondered how I ever survived childhood.

Send a kid out first to see if it’s safe. We’ve got four of them. We can get by with three. Suddenly certain childhood memories became much clearer.

The first night was rough. I made the mistake of going online to learn more about black snakes, the kind that had visited with my dad. While they’re not poisonous, they are aggressive, nasty biters, and can climb. As in onto a couch. Not a wink of sleep for me. I cowered on the couch, lights on, with a big stick. Every once in a while I’d pass out for a moment, only to startle myself awake, flailing my stick at the empty air.

Needless to say by daylight I was a zombie. I didn’t tell my boys why they were sleeping in my room. However, once they figured out that I insisted on sleeping downstairs, they suspected they were missing something and pushed to find out what it was.

Tommy: I need to sleep downstairs. Bobby snores.

Me: At least that way you know he’s still alive.

Bobby: Mom? Is there some reason we can’t sleep downstairs?

Me: I’ll tell you later. Would you like a candy bar for breakfast?

The boys were sleeping in my old room. Every once in a while we’d hear buzzing coming from inside the wall, near the window. Nothing on the outside of the house indicated anything unusual. I couldn’t find any holes. I suspected a raccoon had settled in, entering through the attic, but in August? Unless he had figured out how to pick up the satellite television feed and was watching daytime television, there was no reason for a coon to be inside. Between my snake stakeout and lack of sleep, I was already maxed out on worrying. Whatever was in the wall was staying in there, hopefully until we left.

I slept during the day by the pool, instructing the boys to wake me only if it was absolutely necessary.

Bobby: Mom, can I sleep downstairs tonight?

Me: You woke me for that? No.

Bobby: How come you get to have all the fun?

Me: How about a nice candy bar for lunch?

Bobby: Mom, it’s almost four pm.

Me: Would you like Snickers or Milky Way for dinner?

Once we left, I told my dad about the weird noises in the wall of my old bedroom. He investigated and found it to be a huge nest of wasps. The buzzing we heard was the wasps stabilizing the temperature in the nest. Or fighting over the television remote.

Through the years, other varmints that made it inside the house included:

Mice - One of my earliest memories was seeing a grey blur skitter under the couch with my mom in hot pursuit. This is probably why we got Princess, Tomcat Extraordinaire. And once Princess was gone, the rodents were kept out by the Leno-loving black snakes.

Bats – Pamplona has the Running of the Bulls. We had the Barrage of the Bats. Usually confined to the attic, every once in a while they’d swarm, skitter, and bump through the kitchen and living room. It got so bad that we kept a few tennis racquets handy, ready to take a swing as they made the turn into the hallway. Someone would casually call out ‘Bat!’ and everyone would grab a racquet. My hand-eye coordination greatly improved. Plus I was able to ‘accidentally’ hit my brother a few times. Oops.

The bats eventually left our home. My mother observed that they left for good at the same time I went off to college. Could I be the Pied Piper of winged rats? I often felt like that when I went out to nightclubs.

Squirrels – When my parents went away on vacation, leaving the house empty, a squirrel crawled down the chimney and house-sat for them. He eventually ran out of Chex Mix, got bored, and couldn’t get out. No matter how many window panes he gnawed on, how many curtains he ripped, it was hopeless. He eventually got stuck inside a vent in the fireplace, creating a stink worthy of a Republican at a no-host bar. Never, ever let a squirrel house-sit for you.

Moths – These were the B-52s of moths - huge, hulking, grizzle-suede, cargo bugs. They were slower and clumsier than the bats, and there seemed to be millions of them, swarming whatever light was lit. Nothing like sitting down to read a good book on a quaint, quiet, country summer evening, only to have your light source knocked over by flying lint buckets the size of your fist. I wanted to buy a bug-zapper and put it inside the house.

On rare occasions we could glimpse the food chain in action – a moth, followed by a bat, followed by my brother with a tennis racquet. How did the moths get in? Builders beware – nook your crannies properly, lest you be destined to live in the House of Mothra and his bungling buddies.

Birds – They attempted to get in, but it wasn’t really their fault. In our massive bowling alley of a living room, we had a picture window running nearly the entire width of the room. It was beautiful, but since we lived on a ridge, sometimes low flying birds would attempt a shortcut through the glass. Ouch.

Besides the varmints we intentionally brought into the house, these are all the critters I’m aware of that made it inside without a hall pass. There’s the viable chance that others infiltrated our abode and our parents never told us for fear of frightening us. Or for fear one of us would write a book about it. Oops.

Raising a Barn...and a Family

Scenario - you've lived your entire life in New York City. Recently married, you decide to move to the country and start a family. You know very little about country life. Regardless, you decide to raise the stakes by:

1. planting stakes and watering them


2. having no money


3. having a baby right away


4. building your own home from scratch and some bricks


5. building your own home with relatives and beer


6. getting drafted


7. all of the above

Tsk, tsk. Kids back then did such crazy things. To be fair, getting drafted was beyond my dad's control. As far as the other activities, you'll get no complaint from me. They all serve to heighten the tension in my story.

How hard could it be? To begin with, everyone you knew was yowling about wild, obstreperous Indians and the dearth of a decent deli. Perhaps all that Brooklyn barking was part of the reason my folks moved to the country. Peace, quiet, and a pristine lack of ‘How YOU doin’?’

As you know by now, my parents didn’t listen to the naysayin’ city slickers. They did eventually discover, however, that the country had its own minor drawbacks, such as:
· poison ivy
· poisonous snakes in the poison ivy
· ornery Dutch settlers
· ornery Dutch bugs
· 130% humidity
· -130 below zero winters (that’s in kilograms)
· severe thunder storms
· blizzards beyond belief
· no cable television
· no cable television even after it’s invented

I’m going to assume they were unaware of these. To know about them and still move would indicate cranial incapacities that boggle the mind. If indeed, your mind is still boggle-able.

My folks purchased a thirty acre plot of land outside of town. Very outside of town. Beyond-pizza-delivery outside of town. When they bought it, there was nothing on it except trees, bushes, grass, and the things that like to live in trees, bushes, and grass. Now there’s a lovely house on the property, and the things that liked to live in trees, bushes, and grass have discovered that they prefer living in a lovely house. Especially when it got cold. Or hot. Or rainy.

Fall is the season when all the critters that spent the summer outside begin their migration. Not south, but rather, inside. As in the basement, or attic, or, for the high-falootin’ critters, the living room. Why flap your wings all the way to Palm Beach when you can just peck a hole into the attic? While the ornery Dutch settlers didn’t welcome my parents, the local wildlife was thrilled to see them, especially when the snow hit the hill.

This all happened in Rhinebeck, a little town in Dutchess County, about ninety miles north of New York City. Well over 300 years old, Rhinebeck was founded by three Dutchmen from Kingston, not to be confused with the band by the same name. They opened a bar and the rest is history. Actually, so is this.

Anyone who moved to Rhinebeck in the past 200 years was considered a newcomer. To run for office or open a pizza parlor, you had to show proof of residency on a teeny, wilted, yellow map of the original Dutch colony of Neuuw Amsteurdauum. For many years, the town remained quite small, restricted by the obvious constraints of trying to live on a teeny, wilted, yellow map. Eventually the rules were relaxed to allow for settlement if you possessed a name with several odd, guttural consonants in a row, such as Pietr Fargenschvathing the Elder. Or a suspiciously trimmed name such as Kip.

Since my parents didn’t boast such a meritorious lineage or even extraneous vowels in their name, they settled outside of town, beyond the pale, as it were. In the pre-cable TV days, villages protected themselves from Indians, wolves, and Jehovah’s Witnesses by building timber-pole walls, or pales. Over time this pale distinction has changed from being a protective barrier to the line of demarcation for pizza delivery. Either way, a status symbol of survival.

My parents opted for a breezy parcel of land, choosing a high ridge upon which to build their home. I knew this was the highest point around because electrical storms zapped our house endlessly. Either the elevation was to blame, or God was aiming for my sister.

While there were several homes already built in the area, they were infested with the ghosts of lost pizza delivery guys, so my dad decided to build his own. House, that is. Although we could have used a pizza guy, too. Having no money, he enlisted the help of his dad, brother, uncle and any other relatives he could lure up from Brooklyn. Beer worked. So did all these guys. Hard, if not always smart.

My dad’s brother, Bob, was a high-steel union worker from New York. So of course he managed to fall through the roof of our two-story house-to-be. Luckily the wooden balcony broke his fall. Luckily he hit his head and doesn’t remember this happening or we’d still be running from his union boss.

My dad’s dad, Bob, was the consummate Irish stereotype – drinking, smoking, happy-go-lucky leprechaun with the evil grin and twinkling eyes. He also worked his tail off. Somehow he made everything look so easy, whether it was driving a coal truck in Brooklyn for puny wages, or motoring up to Indian country to pound nails with his son. He took it all in stride with a wink and a smile. Which, of course, drove his wife, Bob (kidding), completely nuts.

A sidenote regarding family names – you may notice a motif repeating throughout my family’s story – a few names, such as Bob, Tom, and Ann, are used over and over, sometimes slightly changed to prevent confusion, sometimes slurred to add to the confusion. No reason except tradition, and besides, if they were good names, why throw them out? It also saves on stationery. At times it’s bewildering, so middle names were thrown in the mix, as well as the ever-popular ‘Hey, you!’ which meant everyone came running.

My dad’s uncle, Tom (yup), was a plumber, so at least some construction was done properly. Recognizing the situation for what it was, he managed to build the pipes strong enough to support the house and the snow which piled on it in the winter.

When the Cuban missile crisis hit, Dad was drafted (again) and reported to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where my brother, Tom (yup), was born. The birth cost a whopping $12. My dad still wants his money back. Meanwhile the foundation of the house lay open to the elements all winter. Needless to say the raccoons, squirrels, snakes, birds, bats and other sundry varmints weren’t too pleased to have their living quarters unfinished. A few of them wrote threatening letters to Castro, who eventually calmed down and backed off so we could all get back to work.

Eventually the house was finished, more or less. I say more or less because in the rush to beat the winter snows, some nooks and crannies were never properly nooked and crannied, leading eventually to lots of visitors from Mother Nature’s extended family. A red-brick, split-level monster, our home had a huge fieldstone entryway with a rounded, opera-style staircase. Most of it featured hardwood floors. The living room alone had space for a massive fireplace, television, pool table, piano, several couches, and, as we found out later, various varmints.

The Logistics of Converting Livestock to Pets

There's an old adage in farming that it's harder to eat an animal after you've named it. Lots of farm kids attempt to salvage a steer, goat, or pig by giving it a cute name. Sometimes it works. For instance, we named my sister and we ended up keeping her.

But most times it doesn't work. The first couple of steers we owned, Larry and Suzy, were downright evil. Yes, I'm aware 'Suzy' is a bizarre name for a steer, but they wouldn't let me name him 'Rose' after our Nana. This gender-bending of a name may have played a part in his poor attitude, but that certainly didn't give his buddy, Larry, any excuse to be rude.

Names alone were not enough to save those meanies from becoming veal parmagiana. They once chased our mother up into a tree and kept her there all day. After that, I never saw Mom tenderize beef so thoroughly. We kids soon realized that if any of our animals were going to live long enough to collect Social Security, we were going to have to take the name game a bit further.

So we not only named our farm animals, we tried to turn them into pets. For instance, we taught several of the cattle to hang out in the yard like big dogs. They learned not to cross the road or chase cars, and how to take the lid off the container of grain in the garage. My pet rooster, Chump, liked to be scratched behind the ears and would come when you called him. He wasn't quite housebroken, but his table manners were impeccable (sorry).

This pet project didn't always succeed. We often fed table scraps to the horses and cows. It's one thing to have your dog drooling patiently by the table. Quite another to have a herd staring in your kitchen window at your dinner plate-

Horse: Whinny! (You done with that?)

Cow: Moo! (Dibs on the potatoes au gratin!)

Chicken: Cluck!(Herb, is that you? Oh, my God!)

Nevertheless, we continued our furperson conversion, hoping to make them all members of our family. My dad knew exactly what we were up to. One day as I worked in the front yard, Ralph, our Black Angus steer/dog, walked by sporting chalk lines all over his body. As I looked closer, I realized the dotted lines followed the cuts of meat under his black fur. Today, Ralph was our oversized Labrador, but tomorrow....

One of my favorite moves was to sneak a steer into our house. And once we had done that a few times, we decided to up the ante and attempt the second floor. There were several key degrees of difficulty, all of which made this stunt even more exciting to pull off:

• Mom - usually in the kitchen, but wary of any strange noises. Also wary of no noise at all, since that's when we were usually doing the most damage. Sometimes a sibling was bribed to launch a distraction. Sib-bribing was dangerous in its own right, though, since now the sib had a chance to snitch on you if the need ever arose. A creative counter-story and the threat of a noogie were needed just in case someone blabbed.


• Front entryway- chosen because it was the widest and furthest from eagle-ear Mom. It was difficult to keep both the screen door open and the main wooden door open whilst rustling cattle through them without something going wrong. If the steer got hit by the door, it would usually reverse gear and attempt to fly out the nearest exit, usually located over your body. Any cowboy who's operated a loading gate at a cattle ranch has similar issues, except when they get run over, they don't also get grounded by their mom.
  
  
• Front hallway - slate floor - loud and slippery, especially if you wear hooves. To muffle the sound, we made extensive use of throw rugs, carefully leading the animal so it wouldn't step on the loud floor. If we missed the rug, the hoof 'clank' on the stone floor would give us away. Imagine the game, Operation, but on a much larger and more physically punishing scale. To this day, when I see a throw rug, it reminds me of sneaking cattle down the hallway to the stairs. And I can still hear my mom calmly calling from the kitchen, "Get that animal out of the house." Yes, good times.


• Staircase - wide, which was good, but cows are genetically stair-challenged, which is why you rarely see them in public libraries or performing in musicals. They're not keen on elevators either, but that's a story that I can't tell until the statute of limitations runs out. I can only afford so much litigation at a time.
  
  
• 180 degree rotation- in the rare event we got a steer all the way upstairs and into a room without being detected, turning the animal around without destroying anything (and making noise) was dang near impossible. If you don't believe me, try it sometime. One errant tail flick and a lamp or table bites the dust. We once got Ralph turned successfully but he then flicked his tail against the bedroom door, making a loud, cow-startling noise, which in turn made him leap forward, until he got to the staircase, which he tried to skip altogether. Cattle can't fly, at least not indoors.


• Return trip - what's harder than getting a cow upstairs? Getting it downstairs. Something about looking downward and the fear of falling. Or maybe it noticed how our beds were so much more comfy than the pasture and didn't want to go back. Cows are hinged differently from us - their rear knees are backwards - so a staircase is a mechanical challenge. Some of them tried to 'hop' down, gaining so much speed that they'd miss the turn to the front door and end up skidding into the living room. If we were lucky, the pool table stopped their forward motion. But the eventual 'thud' usually tipped my mom off that cattle were in the vicinity. At this point it was everyone for himself. Sometimes the cow was left alone to talk things over with my mom. I never had a cow rat me out, though, unlike my sister. Cows ratted her out all the time.

Fortunately we never had a steer have an accident on the carpeting. I don't know how I would've explained that one, except to blame it on my brother. Perhaps the whole holy-cow-I'm-in-the-freaking-house situation was enough for them to keep their tails tucked tightly to their bottoms.

Once a few of the steers had been successfully smuggled into and out of the house, it was time for a bigger challenge -Tara, my horse. She was young, but still the size of a young horse. Farm animals look deceptively smaller when they're outside. Get them inside next to the couch, or even better, on the couch, and you get a better perspective on size. And if caught, a better perspective on corporal punishment.

Tara was a quarter horse, called that because they typically consumed many Quarter-pounders -thereby making their rear ends the size of buses. I never realized how big she was back there until I tried to fit her butt through the front door.

Quarter horses are known for their explosive speed. This is because their back ends are composed almost exclusively of huge, explosive muscles. And a 426 HEMI. At short distances, a quarter mile or less, they are faster than thoroughbred race horses. In a doorway, they can shift from forward to backward in .008 seconds, with enough strength to tear the wood trim off a door and crush an instep. Fortunately, the blunt force was usually sufficient to throw you far enough clear of the alleged incident to make blame difficult to prove. "I couldn't have done it, Mom. I was way over in this pear tree, pickin' apples."

Like most quarter horses, Tara also possessed incredible maneuverability. Many times we'd be trotting along and she'd spy something horrifying, such as a maple leaf or blade of grass. She'd drop her head, spin her shoulder out from under me, and I'd be left hanging in mid-air like Wile E. Coyote. This happened enough that my parents finally brought in a professional horse trainer to work with her. The trainer couldn't stay on anywhere near as long as I could, and eventually gave up on taming any of us. I think my parents wanted to give up, too.

Quarter horses are also known for their brains and easy disposition. Tara was easygoing as long as she got what she wanted. Once her brain hit tilt, however, all bets were off. So the main challenge with getting her into the house was to keep her mellow. For Tara, that involved beer.

When Tara was born, we all joined her and her mom in the pasture, basking in the glow of Mother Nature and the miracle of a new life on the farm. And the very first thing Tara did was line up my dad's Miller High Life, which was sitting innocently in the grass, and kick it over. Since then she's had a thing for beer. This would come in handy when executing the old livestock-in-the-parlor trick.

I gave her a sip or two outside, then placed the beer bottle in the hallway. Tara was not happy. I opened both doors for her and waited. She swiveled her ears, pawing at the ground. She could hear my mom in the kitchen making dinner, and she perked up at that. But she was still wary about going in the house. She shoved me, knowing I was up to something. Finally, with Tara watching closely, I went in and took a sip of the beer. Her beer. She started to whinny in protest, and I had to quickly shush her by grabbing her muzzle. She pushed me out of the way and lunged for the beer in my other hand.

I backpedalled into the hallway, aiming carefully for the throw rugs. Before I knew it, Tara was inside. I gave her a sip of beer. She dribbled shamelessly. While we had momentum, I headed up the staircase with my thirsty pony.

It's amazing what some asses will do for alcohol. By now all Tara saw was the beer. I was hoping that by the time she realized where she was, she wouldn't care. We made the turn at the top of the stairs and headed for my bedroom where I gave her a nice, long drink.

Success! At least halfway, anyway. We still had the return trip to navigate. Tara slobbered Miller all over my floor and looked about happily. The door to my balcony was open and inviting. She decided to investigate. Not a good idea, and she quickly realized that the grass in the front yard was ten feet down. The beer was gone, and Tara wanted out. Now.

I had to get her away from the balcony and turned around. I clanked the empty beer bottle, hoping to get her to follow. She glared at me, then turned her attention back to the view outside. I could see her gathering her legs for a jump. She didn't seem to consider that after clearing the railing of the balcony, she had at least a fourteen foot drop to the grass. I didn't understand her logic at all until years later, after attending a few fraternity parties.

Mom: Ann! Get down here and set the table. Dinner's almost ready.

At the sound of those magic words, Tara spun around. Thank goodness my horse ran on leftovers. The problem was that she was now headed for the kitchen. If she figured out where we kept the beer we were all doomed.

She lumbered down the hallway to the staircase. She stopped for a moment, then caught the scent of pasta wafting its way up from the dinner table. Angling her butt around, she sidestepped handily down the stairs.

To the left was the front door, to the right - the kitchen. Tonight, Tara was determined to sit at the table with us. I slipped in front of her and quickly closed the door to the kitchen. We stood, nose-to-nose. She outweighed me 6-1, but she had no opposable thumb to operate the doorhandle.

Mom: Ann? Come on, I need help setting the table.

Me: I'll be right there!

Tara responded to my mom, too, but I yelled loud enough to cover her whinny. I figured I had less than a minute to de-horse the house before my mom got suspicious.

I looked up to see my youngest brother, Bob, standing in the open front door, mouth ajar, staring at Tara's butt. To be fair, that's probably all he could see from that angle. I waved the empty beer bottle at him and whispered-

Me: Is this yours?

Bob: Wha- what? No!

Me: It is if Mom catches Tara in the house. Help me!

Bob stood there, face to face with a horse's ass, wondering how old you had to be to qualify for the witness protection program.

Me: Get some grass. Hurry!

Still stunned, Bob walked outside and picked some grass. Tara turned to see. She preferred rigatoni, but the grass was in sight. I shoved her toward the door. Bob waved the grass at her and she hit a trot on the slate hallway.

Mom: Do I hear a cow in the house again?

Me: No. I was just showing Bob my tap moves.

I tapped a quick version of a shim sham riff as Tara's butt cleared the front door. Bob closed the gate, er, front door, as Mom stormed in from the kitchen.

Mom: Quit horsing around and get in here!

I flipped my brother the international symbol for noogie-warning and headed in to eat.

Nana, the Passive-aggressive Baker

My dear, departed, diabetic Nana used to bake for us grandkids. A lot. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? The first dozen times or so it was. After that - no. No. No. Every day. Every damn day. It was like the movie Groundhog Day only with Bundt cakes.

We'd come home from school, the witching hour for kiddie appetites, and she'd appear with a big ring of dry cake. She'd parade right past my mother, who would be preparing dinner, often within reach of sharp kitchen utensils. "Have some cake," Nana would say to us, which is Gaelic for If you love me you will eat this now or I will die and it will be your fault.

She would then sit down and stare at us, waiting for us to eat. Our mom, knife at the ready, would stare daggers at us, then at Nana. Our stomachs would growl at us. There was no way out without some sort of home-baked Irish angst.

Nana: I made you a cake.

Mom (staring icily at us): What a surprise.

Nana: Well, I had nothing better to do.

Mom (eyeing the paring knife):……thanks.

Nana (heavy sigh): Guess I’ll go home and watch The Price is Right. Alone.

I took up sports just so I wouldn’t have to come home right after school and witness this scene.

The flip side to this logic was if you truly valued food, you took only what you needed. A daily dose of Bundt cake was a loony extravagance. Eventually I began to associate cakes and sweets with an uneasy maternal glare. While it later made dieting easy, I absolutely freaked out in bakeries.

Nana lived next door to us on the farm, close enough to tinker with our lives but far enough away to duck the house rules. She had lived through the Great Depression and treasured every bit of food she now had. As a result, she was quite fat and suffered from diabetes. Not to judge her, but no matter how hard she stared at me, she was not going to make me eat Bundt cake until I weighed 200 pounds.

She was born in Brooklyn of Irish immigrants, living there all her life until her husband, my Pop-pop, passed away, at which point she moved in beside us in the country, with the cows, crickets, and velvet-dark, quiet nights. Many things I loved about the country probably terrified her.

City folk don't ever get to know true darkness. Or silence, for that matter. There's always something lit or noisy. Like a street light or a trash truck beeping away, I guess that's comforting if that's what you know.

But in the night of the countryside your eyes don't always help you and your ears pop for lack of better things to do. To me this was magnificent - I felt like my other senses kicked in and I could think without any distractions.

To my Nana this was disturbing. It probably didn't help that I pointed out all the creatures that came out at night - the giant moths, the various snakes, the skittery mice, bats, etc. that owned the darkness. Maybe the Bundt cakes were payback for scaring the daylights out of her.

Once she moved to the country, Nana had to learn how to drive. This was mind-boggling to me - how could anyone make it through life without driving? I had been driving tractors since I was twelve years old. Those odd city people got by without driving at all. No ‘D’ train in the boondocks, though, so Nana had to buckle down and learn.

We owned a bunch of Volkswagen Beetles, most likely because they were expendable and didn’t injure pedestrians too much when they hit them. I don’t recall many details of my grandmother’s driver education, just my dad requiring a few extra beers and colorful curses. I do remember Nana yelling at him in that special voice reserved for special offspring. Her timing was poor because at that particular moment they were heading down our precarious driveway. The one with the sharp turn and the cliff.

Somehow my dad made it through teaching his mother how to drive, but when I turned sixteen and could officially take the wheel, Nana was assigned to be my teacher. Not sure who was being punished for what, but somehow we both managed to survive. Nana was quite patient, at least on the surface, however when I didn't slow down fast enough for her liking, she would stomp on an imaginary and therefore non-functioning brake pedal, very nearly putting her foot through the floor of the passenger side of her car.

Me: Everything ok, Nana?

Nana: Just fine. (stomp!)

Me: Want me to slow down?

Nana: No, I’m fine. (stomp!)

Driving with Nana was an experience. She always made the sign of the cross before putting it in gear. After riding with her a few times, so did the rest of us.

Eventually she bought an AMC Gremlin, a car even uglier than its name insinuates. Nana’s Gremlin was baby blue with white racing stripes, a rolling exhibition of lipstick on a pig. It was unique enough that when townspeople saw it coming, they quickly learned to hide behind sturdy trees and posts.

As she aged and her eyesight faded, I questioned the sanity of her continuing to drive. "I've thought about that," she replied, "From now on, I'm just going to drive the roads I already know." Unfortunately this wasn’t comforting to anyone in her path. As you may have guessed, Driving by Braille was about as successful as Closed Captioning for the Blind. But hey, she knew the road, she drove the road, and everyone else had to get the hell off the road.

Like any grandmother, Nana needed help with some things, for instance, crossing icy pavement. Unlike other grandmothers, she had the vice-like grip of a Teamster. "Help me across the street, Ann Frances," she'd say and daintily take my arm. I'd grit my teeth for the pain that was sure to shoot through my bicep as she grabbed hold, her fingerprints later tattooed on my arm in the form of a florid, multi-colored bruise. More payback, perhaps, for not eating all those Bundt cakes.

We would bring our soda and beer cans to her to flatten for recycling. We had to carry the bags of cans for our poor, frail granny, yet I witnessed her crushing the old-style, thick, steel cans with her bare hands. This show of strength made it even tougher to turn down her Bundt offerings. If we didn't eat her cakes, she might flatten us like so many beer cans.

Nana helped out at our church, assisting the teachers with religious education. In other words, she was the bouncer. If a kid didn't behave, he was handed over to Nana, whereupon he very quickly saw God and understood the pain of penance. As the disruptive student was led away to face Nana the Corrector, other kids stared at me like it was my fault my grandmother was a drill sergeant.

I'm sure she loved us, but she had a unique way of showing it. She babysat for us kids a few times, not that we needed the watching but it made her feel needed. A classic Nana babysitting visit went something like this-

Me (watching television): Hey, Nana, what’s up?

Nana(heavy sigh): Nothing good on tv, so I thought I’d come over and look at you.

She would then plop herself in a chair right next to the television and literally stare at us. I don’t care who you are – you cannot enjoy television with someone sitting next to it staring back at you.

One night when our parents were out, Nana felt the need to use our oven. Our mother had complained that the oven wasn’t working right. Perhaps Nana felt compelled to fix it or prove Mom wrong. Whatever the reason, I was watching television in the living room when Nana called for me casually from the kitchen. Casually, as in whenever you have a moment meander over here because I’d like you to see something a smidge amusing.

Nana: Ann Frances, could you come in here?

Me: Can it wait until a commercial break?

Nana: ……I don’t think so.

Me: Is something wrong?

Nana: ……

I raced to the kitchen to see flames from the oven licking the ceiling. Nana was frozen in shock, staring at the growing fire. I grabbed the extinguisher and put it out. Thank goodness Nana was there to take care of us, and to tinker with the ornery oven while our parents weren’t around. At least now we knew something was definitely wrong with the oven, also known as the large black hole in the kitchen wall. It was burnt to a freaking crisp.

And if there was a Bundt cake in there, it was well-done.

"Princess" -Tomcat Extraordinaire

When I was two years old I was given a tiny, grey, tabby kitten I named Princess. My parents tried to convince me to name him something a bit more appropriate, but I insisted. Why was gender such a big deal? I was certainly old enough to know a ‘Princess’ when I saw one.

At first an adorable kitten, Princess quickly grew to be a tough, burly tomcat. Perhaps, like the subject of Johnny Cash's song, A Boy Named 'Sue,’ his name made him stronger. Regardless, I take full credit for the many early-life challenges that prepared him to become the feline version of Chuck Norris.

One of those challenges was my penchant for dressing him in frilly doll clothes. Years later this would keep my therapist happily occupied. At the time, however, Princess was less than thrilled. Typically I’d have to wrestle the outfit onto him. Dressing a Barbie doll was for wusses - try keeping a decent outfit on an uncooperative barn cat. Once nicely outfitted and accessorized, Princess would then strut away, his machismo challenged, his tail twitching, and his angry male cat bottom peeking out from beneath pink lace and taffeta.

He soon learned to vent his gender-confusion by killing mousies and kicking canine butt. I had a ringside seat to some of his best fights. When a new dog moved in down the street, it decided to put Princess in his place by barking and charging at him. Any other cat would flee. Princess sat down, waited until the dog was nearly upon him, and swatted the mutt once, hard, across the muzzle, flipping it into the street. The dog yipped, got up, and ran home shaking its head. Princess yawned and went back to looking for mice.

We had some rather large rats living in the barn, some of them nearly the size of cats. They were incredibly quick. I once saw one jump at my dad's head, almost six feet off the ground. Our dogs would often tangle with them, but Princess is the only pet I saw singlehandedly take one down. While the dogs yapped and yipped and more or less acted like dogs, Princess was absolute economy of motion, remaining stock still until his claw or teeth would turn a rat’s mistake into a deadly checkmate. Ninja warriors could learn a lot from him.

Rodents were his favorite snack. He’d consume them head first, a nasty vision if you happened to be around when he was mouse-munching. As disgusting as it was, you just had to watch until the tail was out of sight down his gullet. Weird kitty ambrosia, for Princess, was his furry Mickey kielbasa.

These victories didn't come without a price. Somewhere along the line of countless battles, Princess lost his right eye and his left ear. As he aged eventually his ‘meow’ would be lost, too, replaced with a tape-delay sort of ‘ow’ squawking noise that seemed to emerge long after he opened his mouth.

Gnarly animal that he was, and despite all the emotional cross-dressing abuse he endured, Princess was still an affectionate pet. After seeing him beat up a dog and consume a mouse or a snake, it was a bit off-putting to have a one-eyed, one-eared, squeaky cat purr in your lap. But even Chuck Norris needs a hug once in a while, right?

Me: So, how was your day?

Princess: Me....orwf (fine...and yours?)

Me: Fine, thanks. What did you do?

Princess: Me....orwf (the usual...smacked that stupid dog....ate a mouse...and you?)

When he grew older, in the chilly dead of a New York winter, Princess would disappear for months at a time. Every year I accepted that he had finally passed on - perhaps a bobcat had gotten him, or a trap, or he had starved. After all, he was ancient. But he’d show back up in February or March, fatter than ever. Later I figured he was doing what all proper, elderly New Yorkers do – wintering in Palm Beach.

Sunday is Chicken-whacking Day

After church on Sunday morning, we had what I hope is a unique ritual. We'd attend Mass at the Church of the Good Shepherd. After that, we'd head home, change clothes, and kill chickens.

It was more organized than I make it seem, though. We had about twenty Rhode Island Red hens, kept for laying eggs. We also had over a hundred white Leghorn 'meat' birds, raised for, well, meat. The fact is, chicken nuggets, chicken breasts, and chicken tenders all, surprisingly, come from chickens.

Not a fact many like to face, and better off overlooked, especially at dinner time. However, on our farm we got to see many pretty ugly facts right up close and personal.

Everyone had a job to do. My assignment was to pick who, on that particular Sunday, was going to die. I would peer about the hen house, looking for a likely candidate. Stepping on my foot was a good way to get chosen. Any eye contact with me was another way to receive an invitation.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been *mumble-mumble* days since my last confession. Since then, I have hit my brother, scared my sister, and killed fifty chickens.”

“Yes, my child….Wh-what? Chickens?”

“Yes, Father.”

“You killed them?”

“Yes, Father.”

Long silence.

“Fifty of them?”

“Yes, Father.”

Another long silence.

“3 ‘Hail Mary’s’ and an ‘Our Father.’”

“Thank you, Father.”

Thou Shalt Not Kill. I guess there are exceptions to every rule.

I’d chicken-pick, taking the victim to my dad, who would sling the bird upside down, suspending it from a crosspole by baling twine looped around its feet. As you can imagine, it would flap and squawk, until my dad put a board behind its neck and lopped its head off with a hatchet.

One bird, however, had other ideas. As the hatchet came down, he zigged when my dad thought he’d zag. Contact was made, but not cleanly, and the bird was somehow able to slip out of its leg noose and run away, head dangling to the side. Yes, indeed, a chicken with its head cut off, just as bizarre and awful as you imagine.

It ran down the hill, all helter-skelter, finally collapsing a few hundred yards away. As I went to retrieve it I felt a bit sick. A gallant, desperate try, ending in futility and eventually on my dinner plate. I considered maybe some sort of medal would be in order but I didn’t know how to notify his next of kin.

After soaking the bodies in hot water to loosen the quills, we kids would pluck off the feathers. My grandmother, Nana, had the nasty job of gutting the birds. She seemed to enjoy it, though. As she sliced and whittled, I would hear her muttering under her breath, “Well, Margie, you thought I wouldn’t find out, but I did, didn’t I, you little tramp! And now we meet again!” Sometimes Nana really scared me.

We’d perform this ritual ten times every Sunday, with most of the chickens going into the freezer for later. When my friends at school asked me what I did over the weekend, I always neglected to mention this part. In hindsight, perhaps if they knew what happened to those who crossed me, I might have earned more respect from the ‘in’ crowd.

I had friends who’d just as soon not know the short life history of their nuggets. I had other friends who hunted and didn’t blink twice at things like this. Fair enough. While it was a most unpleasant experience, I must say the chicken was the best I’ve ever tasted in my life. So it was a trade-off. Good food is often not guilt-free.

Not all the birds went the way of the plate. As mentioned earlier, the egg-layers were exempt from execution. We also had a few pet chickens, including my rooster, Chump. An elegant, svelte, white Leghorn, Chump would parade about the henhouse like he owned the place. He wasn’t quite housebroken and disliked being on a leash, but he’d come when you called him and could be trusted not to wander too far away. He liked to be scratched right in the small of his back and near the top of his drumsticks.

And he wasn’t too fond of Sundays.

Piano Lessons With Cats

For as long as I can remember, and even a bit before that, I took piano lessons. My mother determined that I needed a habit more irritating than many of my sister's irritating habits, which included talking nonstop at a high pitch, staring unblinking at people for hours at a time, and having a bladder the size of a walnut. At least with the piano, my sister's squeals would be drowned out by the lilting toils of rickety, pensive scales played eighty-seven times in a row.

My piano teacher was Mrs. Bartagas, an elderly widow who lived alone. If you could call living with forty-three cats living alone. It was more like living with moving, breathing, angora stealth-pillows with claws.

My mother would drop me off at her house and I'd knock on the front door. The cats lived inside, every last one of them, and as Mrs. Bartagas opened the door to let me in, a swirl of cat hair would rise in the draft. The cats would scatter into the shadows, kicking up more hair and throw rugs as they went. I could sense their eyes shining at me from the nooks and crannies of many years of accumulated furniture. I half expected Rod Serling to appear with afternoon tea.

Forty-three cats is a rough estimate. I was never able to line them up for an actual head count. Cats don’t cotton to counting. Once in a while I’d spot one I thought might be new. “Why, yes, that’s Oliver,” Mrs. Bartagas would reply. “He’s new.” Then I’d ask her how many cats she had now. The answer was always, “Why, forty-three, dear,” as if she was surprised to hear such a silly question.

Mrs. Bartagas had a lively past that she loved to share. Since this meant less playing time I was all for it. She had somehow been affiliated, in reality or fantasy, with Doris Day. There were pictures everywhere of Ms. Day, some even signed. It was hard to make out the signatures because cat hair blanketed nearly everything.

She would launch into a story about the olden days, and I'd keep an eye out for attack cats. There were a few that liked to bite my ankles, especially when I pressed the piano pedals. I was convinced that one day I’d be playing a tune and hear an irritated 'meowrr!' from deep inside the piano as I smacked some misplaced feline with a felt piano hammer. The top of the piano would fly open, and the angry cat would leap out and attach itself to my jugular. In a hostile territory such as this, Clair de Lune can become a dangerous enterprise.

The air in the house was pungent, thick. While I loved all animals, I was allergic to cats. Attempting to play Beethoven’s 5th whilst sneezing one’s fool head off was difficult, however the adrenaline rush produced by the cat-claw assaults on my ankles helped clear my sinuses enough to get by. Every once in a while a kamikaze kitten would wipe out the clicking metronome on the top of the piano. The constant drama kept me alert and terrified. Looking back, my visits were probably the highlights of their little feline lives. When I left I’m sure they had some tall tails to share.

The keys of her piano were real mother-of-pearl - worn, wavy and opalescent, much like Mrs. Bartagas' fingernails. I tried not to notice the similarities, but when she'd show me how to play something, her nails clacked on the keys. Ebony, ivory, and geriatric cuticles all blended to form a hopefully once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Her hands were incredibly quick and lithe on the keyboard, which was good because if they stopped for any reason, I couldn’t help but stare since they were, well, ancient. Veins, arteries, and tendons arched and mingled like a city map. I did my best to listen to her instructions, but my mind was fixated on the freeway interchange just south of her pinkie and ring finger.

In a pasture in front of the house lived Mrs. Bartagas’ white horse. When I was leaving, he’d come over to the gate and bob his head at me. Mrs. Bartagas would often ask ‘Bob’ what she should have for dinner. He’d whinny something unintelligible, at least to sane people, and she’d head back to her house of cats. He’d look at me and bob his head, so I’d pick some grass and feed it to him. Then I’d leave before he started telling me things I was better off not knowing.

When my mom picked me up, I’d be sneezing my head off and bleeding about the ankles. But I was humbled, happy to see my mom, and thrilled to be going home. I’m guessing that’s why she sent me in the first place.

Down on the Snake Farm, Chapter Two

(Note -if you're new to this story, you might want to read Chapter One first, located just below this blog post. If you're afraid of snakes, please don't read this at all, unless you enjoy being frightened out of your mind.)

My brother loaded the containers into the car and I drove them down the road to the Montfort Reptile Institute. When I took a turn a bit too quickly, the containers rolled about on the passenger side floor, their contents hissing and wiggling. If a lid came undone, I was completely prepared to leap from the moving vehicle. Nothing in the world could get me to even touch the containers, for fear of feeling the skritchy movements of the varmints inside. When I reached the Institute, I rang the doorbell and told Mr. Montfort that I had some snakes for him.

Mr. Montfort was thrilled. "What cute babies!" he exclaimed, as if they were kittens. He pulled a couple of the hissing, coiling vipers from a container and let them wrap around his fingers. Their heads were triangular shaped, like pit vipers, with nasty little turned-up noses like my friend Allison. They were speckled like rattlesnakes but arched up and flattened like cobras about to strike.

Feeling lightheaded, I backed my way toward the car, muttering something about being glad to return his poisonous snakes to him. “Oh, no, these aren’t mine,” he said. “Nor are they poisonous. They’re Hognose snakes - they act poisonous but really aren’t. They fake it to survive.”

He kissed one on the back of its hissing, flattened, speckled-leather head. “They’re the clowns of the snake kingdom!” I was never a fan of clowns, especially when my sense of humor was tucked up neatly under my bladder for safety.

Mr. Montfort was so delighted with them that he insisted on giving me a behind-the-scenes tour of his snake farm. I recall attempting to say "No, thank you," but his offer knocked the wind out of me and the words stuck in my throat. Mr. Montfort was already starting the tour, and I was raised to be polite, so....

"Have you ever met a caiman?" he beamed, waving me through the door. A caiman is a slightly smaller, slightly more unattractive version of an alligator. Gators and crocs get all the good press and choice leading roles. As a result, caimans resent this, working harder to be feared like their bigger, prettier relatives.

Mr. Montfort hopped into the cage to wake up the caiman and put on a show for me. The caiman didn’t care much for this, spinning around and hissing at him. I agreed with the caiman. No introductions were really necessary here.

The issue with getting a behind-the-scenes tour is that it is usually just that -behind-the-scenes. In this case that was a bad thing. Much like a mullet, this place was business in the front, party in the back. Regrettably, not my kind of party. Many of the safety features designed to protect everyday visitors to the institute were on the front sides of the cages and displays. Backstage, not so much. One wrong step and you could end up with a rather grumpy reticulated python as a roommate.

Our crazy neighborhood herpetologist continued, proudly showing off his collection of lizards, snakes, and things most sane people avoid at all costs. He had all kinds of snakes, many I’d never even heard of, many I’d meet again in my nightmares, but his pride and joy, our final stop on this wonderful up-close-and-personal tour, was his King Cobra. "This is what your hognose wants to be." The viper stared motionless at us through the glass. "But your hognose is quite a bit slower than this fella."

What a surprise - Mr. Montfort was going to demonstrate to me how fast his cobra could strike. “See this stick?” he put a long stick in front of me. “No marks on it, anywhere, right?” He opened the rear of the snake’s case with the stick. I heard a thwack but didn't see the cobra move.

“Now look,” he said, putting the stick quite close under my nose. There was a nasty, new gash in the stick along with a small blob of what I believe was, depending on your point of view, either snake spit or deadly cobra venom. “Pretty wild, huh?”

I steadied myself against what I thought was a shoe box, stacked on a shelf about head high. I felt something rustle in the box. "DANGER - TIMBER RATTLER" said the label. If I fainted I’d fall and knock open that box, or maybe a different box with a different slithering, killing machine, or maybe multiple boxes of slithering death, so I did everything I could to stay upright and breathing.

“I feel bad taking all of these. Are you sure you don’t want to take a few home with you as pets? They’re not as common as they used to be around here and they’re excellent mousers.”

I shook my head no. I meant to say something but my lips had dried to my gums and my tongue was hiding behind my tonsils so nothing came out.

“Hmmmm… You gave me eight babies. Hognose lay eggs in groups of 10 to 15, so there are probably a few more out there. You might want to look around. They usually don’t stray too far. You might get lucky and find the rest of them.”

“Urrrgh,” I replied.

“Then there’s Momma Hognose. She’ll be laying more eggs soon enough. They’re territorial, you know.”

I, on the other hand, was no longer territorial. I was moving. At the earliest possible opportunity.

P.S. - if you're insane interested in seeing how an Eastern Hognose imitates a cobra, here's an excellent video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjH7eIs7_Uo

Photos from the top are:hognose, cobra, cobra, and hognose.

Down on the Snake Farm, Chapter One

One of the nicest things about growing up in the country was having our own pool. Forty feet long, it sat sparkling in the middle of our front lawn. (Keep in mind this was the country – we baled our front lawn.) However the sparkling only occurred if we cleaned it daily, vacuuming the bottom, skimming bugs off the top, and retrieving thirsty but clumsy mice, frogs, and snakes.

Yes, one of the hazards of the great outdoors is that animals tend to live there. Cute animals as well as gnarly, nasty, legless lizard-types.

One afternoon, after vacuuming, skimming, etc., I decided to take a nap on a chaise lounge next to the pool. It was hot so I wore my bathing suit, hoping to erase a bit of my farmer’s tan. I was dozing off when a small, skritchy sound awakened me. It was coming from directly beneath my lounge chair, so I leaned over to see what it was.

“HISSS!!!!” screeched a herd of tiny snakes, swarming in the shade of my chair. A couple of them coiled and puffed up, rising like itty bitty cobras. I’d never seen anything like it, and would have preferred to continue not seeing anything like it. But there they were, at least five hissing, puffing junior vipers, within inches of my bikinied bottom.

More were coming out from under the edge of the pool and heading for the shade. My shade. Apparently a momma snake had laid a clutch of eggs in the cool dampness next to the pool liner. I was, unfortunately, welcoming them to the world.

I froze. The snakelets settled. I waited, hoping they’d leave. They settled some more. “Shoo!” I waved my hand at them. “HISSS!!!!” they replied. This was beginning to look like a very long day.

They settled down again. More newly hatched vipers joined their older siblings. Maybe if I extended my leg really, really far from the lounge chair I could manage to leap away from the chair....

“Hissss!”

No such luck. Somehow this sort of thing only happened to me. Somehow, someday, it would all make sense. Either that or some universal entity was bored and messing with my kharma just for kicks. Getting attacked by a chicken was one thing. Getting chomped by a swarm of angry mini-cobras was entirely another. Please God, don’t make me have to explain this at school.

I yelled for my brother. “Help!!”

“Hissss!” came the chorus from below.

“Shut up!” I yelled at the snakes. “For newborns, you’ve got a lot of nerve!” Some of them were rather large. I wondered if they could slither up the chair leg.

“Help!!”

“Hissss!” By now there were quite a few of them milling around down there. Maybe I was dreaming. What kind of snake puffs up and rises like a cobra anyway? I knew all the local type snakes –black snake, garter snake, Ray-the-cowboy-wanna-be, water moccasin, and puff adder. The last two were poisonous, but none of them acted like this. Strange.

Then I remembered the snake farm down the road.

The Montfort Reptile Institute was a quirky place. Mr. Montfort collected snakes and icky, crawly things. He milked poisonous snakes and sold their venom to places that made anti-venin from it. We met him when our cows broke through our fence and were grazing in the field behind his place. As my siblings and I gathered our herd for the trip home, my mom apologized for our cows trespassing. “We’re so sorry our cows got out,” she said in a voice you might use to apologize for spilling tea.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Mr. Montfort. “Happens to me all the time with my snakes.”

In my entire life, I never left a field quicker.

“Help!!”

“Hisss!”

I was going to die here, in my bathing suit, fifteen years old, chewed up by a swarm of teeny, weird, poisonous snakes. I’d become another local legend, like Mitch the mechanic who thought he could fly, and Mrs. Bartagas, my piano teacher with forty-three cats and a horse that told her what to make for dinner.

Stupid brother – where was he? What did baby snakes eat, anyway? I guessed they weren’t vegetarians.

“Help!!”

“Hisss!”

“Tommy, heeelp!” I promised myself I’d never be mean to him again. I promised to never tickle him until he peed, or make him laugh while he was drinking milk, or any of the other mean things I had planned to do but hadn’t gotten around to yet.

“Hisss!” The sun was setting. I was shivering and the snakes showed no sign of leaving. Hopefully they weren’t looking for a warm place to spend the night.

“Whut?” My brother, irritated, poked his head around the corner of the house. “What’s your problem?”

“Get down here!” I shrieked at him, relieved but remarkably, still a bossy older sister. “Get down here now! There are snakes everywhere! Snakes! Now! Here!”

“Hisss!”

“Whut?” Tom mumbled again. What part of my screeching did he not understand? At least he was finally meandering down to the pool. And starting to realize there might be something wrong. For the first time in my life, I regretted depriving him of oxygen as a child.

“Snakes!” I hissed. “Everywhere. Look!”

He started to come over and stopped. “Whoa,” he remarked. “There are snakes under your chair!”

“Get something to get rid of them before they hurt me.” I bit my tongue and added, “Please.”

“Wow,” Tom continued. “They’re hatching by the pool. There must be at least fifteen of them. They look like they’re poisonous.”

“If you get me out of here,” I stated slowly, “I will give you a chocolate bar. Real chocolate this time. No Ex-lax.”

“Promise?” he asked.

“Yes, yes, yes! Go get a broom, please.”

“Even better,” Tom grinned, “I’ll get the shotgun.”

“Tom, if you blast a hole in the pool, Dad will get mad.” I didn’t bother mentioning any potential damage to me. He might think it worthwhile.

He threw a beach towel over the end of the lounge chair, so the snakes couldn’t see what was going on. Then, wearing thick boots, he scooted closer, reached out, and grabbed my hand, pulling me off the chair.

“Hisss!” as the chair wobbled, empty above them.

He swept as many as he could into some big storage cans and sealed the lids. The cans rocked back and forth as the snakes puffed, snarled and coiled about inside them. I changed my clothes and took the snakes down to our friendly neighborhood reptile institute. I wanted to know what they were. But first I gave my brother the biggest chocolate bar I had.

To be continued….

Growing Up Green (Acres)

Every once in a harvest moon, a couple of city people get the wild idea that they would be better off living by a babbling brook with the pretty deer and some fluffy bunnies. Whether it's a genetic mutation, a Darwinian attempt at entertainment (hey, Einstein, hold my beer and watch this), or yet another attempt at a FOX reality show, every so often it happens.

My parents are from Brooklyn, a part of New York City whose name is derived from the Indian word for "arrow broken by heavy accent." When my parents married they decided, much like the nimrods from Green Acres, to move to the countryside. I blame this decision partly on the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn. A diehard Bums fan, my dad decided that once his beloved team headed west, he might as well hang it all up, get married, and move to the 'sticks,' because his life was essentially over.

Both of their families railed against the move. "Oh, my gawd, there are Indians up there!" howled Aunt Mary.

"You'll nevah see us again!" warned Uncle Frank. (This was the same Uncle Frank who would visit us and our pool every summer for thirty-five years.)

"Are you freakin' outta your freakin' mind? Did you even check to see where the nearest deli is? You will freakin' starve!" Uncle Louie murmured. Uncle Louie wasn't our real uncle, but Brooklyn Borough regulations stated that everyone had to have at least one relative named 'Louie,' 'Vinnie,' or 'Tony.' If you didn't have one, one was provided for you at a nominal charge.

Brooklynites live by a different map. First, there are the local neighborhood landmarks consisting of the deli, bakery, corner store, and butcher. All local places are on a first name basis, for instance, Third Street Delicatessen is called Vinnie's because it was owned by Vinnie Constantino. It doesn't matter that Vinnie died twenty-three years earlier - it is Vinnie's, dammit.

Travel is by bus and subway. Routes are referred to by the letters of the train or bus - take the 'A' Line to Rockaway- for instance. A big trip involves a 'transfer,' or multiple trains and buses, maybe even to one of other boroughs of New York City. Beyond the city is the frontier town known as Yonkers, then the wilds of Indian country where my parents ended up, then Canada. We learned quickly not to tell relatives that Indians didn't really live here, because if we did, they'd be up here all the time asking us where the nearest deli was.

City people do not use standard directions such as north or south. Instead, you're told to "go to Avenue D and hang a right at Vinnie's." If you don't know that Vinnie's is actually labelled Third Street Delicatessen then you must be from freakin' Yonkers and don't deserve to live anyway.

Countryborn, I learned to tell time and direction by the sun and stars. I gave valid directions to the citidiots that attempted to visit us, but sadly, they'd get lost anyway. For color, I'd throw in 'take a left at Jimmy Joe's turnip truck' knowing full well the truck wasn't there. Jimmy Joe was serving three to five for embezzlement and not selling turnips anymore. Hee, hee, hee. With no cable television, we made our own entertainment. Ain't no hatrack on my neck, suh.

Green Acres was an amusing show. My childhood was amusing as well, mainly because I survived it. Unlike the television show, though, my childhood consisted of many trips to the emergency room. Even then it was entertaining, at least for the nurses and doctors attending to my injuries. They usually got a good chuckle out of my medical record, which included:

• bitten by horse (stitches)
• bitten by dog (stitches)
• trampled by cow (contusions)
• trampled by horse (lacerations, contusions, and a concussion if I remember correctly)
• kicked by horse (cracked ribs & an impressive double horseshoe bruise/tattoo)
• thrown by horse (severely bruised bottom and pride)
• thrown by cow (massive embarrassment)

Once (thank goodness only once), I was in the henhouse gathering eggs when a chicken hopped off a rather high nest right onto my head. As she landed, she slipped and entangled herself in my hair. Naturally the birdbrain panicked, flapping her wings in my face as her claws scraped my scalp. I couldn't get a grip on her and the weight of her body hanging off my hair bent my head almost to the ground. Make a note- when you're in a henhouse, don't fall down. The floor is incredibly nasty and slippery with....stuff.

After several long minutes of flying feathers and torn follicles, I was able to unleash the beast. Since the giggling of the emergency room staff was still ringing in my ears from my last visit, I skipped reporting this to anyone. When an incident like that goes public in a small town, just try to get a date to the prom. Nobody wants to be seen with the owner of a Girl Scouts' Chicken Attack Survivor badge.

One morning before school my mom was out back feeding our massive herd of cattle, Larry and Suzy. Yes, two whopping head of Angus. How tough could that be, right? Larry, however, was still cranky about losing his Rocky Mountain oysters and, much like many cuckolded cowboys, was determined to prove how macho he still was without them. He pawed the ground and charged at my mother and her grain bucket. A tough redhead from Brooklyn, my mother refused to relinquish the grain, opting instead to head for the nearest tree, where she remained all through breakfast. Finally my siblings and I had to head for the school bus. My dear mother, still treed by Larry, gave us a lovely Rose Queen wave from a sturdy branch, warbling, 'Have a nice day at school!'

In Algebra class, a friend asked me what I was thinking about. By then I knew better than to share the embarrassing truth, so I made something up. Never, ever tell a friend that you're wondering if your mom's still stuck in an apple tree with a fierce steer named Larry waiting below. It took me years just to tell my therapist about it.

I watched Green Acres for years, waiting patiently for them to unmask the dark side of nouveau agrarianism, but it never happened. Arnold the pig never ended up as bacon next to Sunday morning pancakes. None of their cows ever ambled by with meat cuts outlined in surveyor's chalk on their bodies. They never addressed the problem of turning a horse around in your bedroom and getting her downstairs again before your mom found out she was in the house. Serious flaws in a sitcom, if you ask me. Reality, however, kept me in stitches.