by Kathy Brasby | Feb 10, 2015 | Hope
My younger brother was a high school wrestler, which made for an interesting lesson in the folly of letting siblings mature.
His first practice of the season came shortly before my visit home from college. We hadn’t seen each other in a little while and he wanted to get me caught up on things. I could tell he was jazzed about wrestling. And I wanted to re-connect, too.
“Here’s a new move I learned,” he said. We were standing in the middle of the living room with a new carpet on the floor, a good thing as it turned out. “Watch.”
Watch wasn’t really the right term. Stand still and do nothing was a better term because he put one hand behind my neck, one behind my knee, and, whoosh, had me flat on my back.
“Pinned! Just like that. And it’s really easy,” he said. He had enough maturity, at least, to help me get back on my feet without first pressing his knee into my clavicle.
I wasn’t a wimp in the athletic department. I played basketball, softball, tennis, and flag football. I rode horses and faced thundering cattle. I was no fragile piece of china. But I hadn’t ever learned a wrestling move.
There are times when a polite retreat is wise. But I was a college student. Wisdom was like a tree in the mist. Sometimes I saw it, sometimes I didn’t.
“It worked pretty well.” I rubbed my shoulder where I had landed.
He grinned and I wondered when my tow-headed little brother had turned into this six-foot tower of muscle. “I’ll show you how easy.”
“Um, OK.” Remember the part about wise? Not so here.
He shook out his shoulders. “Easy to do. First you grab my neck.”
OK. I duplicated his opening.
“Then you grab my knee,” he said.
I leaned down to replicate his move. Suddenly the walls of the room swirled around me and, with a thump, I was on my back again.
He grinned, dusting his hands off. “That is how you counteract it!
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by Kathy Brasby | Feb 3, 2015 | Hope
When the trapped raccoon turned out to really be a restless skunk, people got a little antsy at our house.
If you’ll remember my story, we thought we were trapping the raccoon who had eaten our duck’s eggs a week before hatching.
We trapped a skunk instead.
Once the jabbering stopped, we still had the problem.
“I was going to work in that barn today,” my husband said. “I don’t want skunk stink in there.”
True. The skunk needed to leave without leaving his scent.
We called our neighbor, she of great farming wisdom. “Cover the cage with a blanket,” she said. “The skunk won’t spray while it’s under the blanket.”
Sometimes you just have to trust.
So my husband gingerly draped an old blanket over the cage. So far, no smells.
Then he grabbed his rifle. This skunk was not going to be stealing duck eggs anymore. With rifle in one hand and cage in the other, he headed for the far end of our pasture.
But not alone. He called to our older son. “You need to come with me.”
Some say looks can kill but this look could have sunk a ship. Our son had no interest in going to the far end of the pasture with a skunk and a man toting a rifle.
But sons are amazing.
He went.
When the entourage arrived to the little knoll with prairie grass waving in the wind, they decided they were far enough from the buildings to risk uncovering the skunk.
It was our son’s job to pull the blanket off the cage.
With a deep breath – maybe his last for all he knew – he crept forward to the cage and plucked the blanket with the tip of his fingers.
Courage is measured in many ways. But one of them has to be an 8-year-old willing his arm to grow as he slowly – can we say cold molasses here? – drew the blanket off the cage.
It was happy ending time. Nobody got sprayed except the cage and some prairie grass.
But I don’t think our son was in any danger. He didn’t stop running until the house blocked his path.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jan 30, 2015 | Seasons
Harry dialed his son. “The neighbors came over to scoop off the front walk.”
His son, Dean, lived across town and hadn’t made it out yet. “Oh, good. Thanks, Dad.”
“Just wanted you to know.” Harry hung up. Within minutes, Dean got another call. This one was from his sister.
“Dad says you didn’t scoop off the front walk.”
“Well, the neighbors did it. When did he call you?”
“Just now.”
Dean calculated. His father must have immediately dialed his sister after calling Dean. In fact, while Dean talked to Sharon, his phone buzzed with a new call. It was Harry.
“I better see what Dad needs now,” Harry told Sharon and switched the call to his father.
“Yeah, Dean, I wanted you to know that the neighbors also scraped off our windshield. But I don’t think we’re going to church anyway. It’s cold, you know. I just wanted you to know.”
Harry could no longer scoop snow or carry out his own trash but he could dial his phone. His children had given him a cell phone and it proved to be Harry’s new hobby.
He called all his children regularly and passed on news from one to another. Harvesting news and passing it on the the rest of the family became his daily goal.
Harry had a new purpose and it involved his favorite people: his family.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jan 23, 2015 | Seasons
My dad once rescued an angry mama cow by luring her into a runway where she thought she could mash him flat as a Gumby toy. He let her stay close to his heels until he reached the door into the barn.
Then he grabbed a fencepost and vaulted onto the top railing while the cow’s momentum carried her into the stall where she could tend her newborn calf sheltered from the blizzard outside.
That memory of a lithe and strong man of resource has held firm in my mind as I watched his abilities wither along with his body.
The family woke up to Dad’s challenges when he set his pickup engine on fire. Dad was a master mechanic and even in his 80s he wasn’t afraid to crawl under the hood and adjust a carburetor.
Something went wrong. Something that wouldn’t have gone wrong 10 years before.
The fire scorched the pickup engine and underside of the hood.
Dad was nearly in tears for his clumsy mistake.
We were nearly in tears at the thought of a fire stealing him away from us.
We could have grounded him, taking away his vehicles and finding ways to keep him tethered to a recliner and television.
We didn’t.
We became very interested in his projects. We hung out with him as often as we could, turning a wrench when he started a repair. We listened when he discussed maintenance.
Just like Dad had rescued that angry cow even though she didn’t know it, we had to do the same for Dad.
He’d taught us to solve problems creatively. If he could vault the fence to save a cow, we searched for ways to save him from himself.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jan 20, 2015 | Stories
The nest was empty. After almost four weeks of waiting – four weeks of fluffy yellow duckling dreams – all the nests were empty.
The ducks had done their part, filling four nests with beautiful eggs.
And now some varmint had raided the nests.
Raccoon. We were sure of it. We knew raccoons darted in and out of the nearby corn fields, waiting for the ears to start to ripen before they ripped them free with those crafty little hands and gorged themselves.
The same mask that makes a raccoon cute to most stuffed-animal connoisseurs signaled something different to us on our hobby farm. We saw them as little thieves.
And now one had dashed our hopes of a crop of ducklings.
“I’m going to get a humane trap,” my husband said, his arms folded over his flannel shirt.
We found one at the local farm supply store and set it up.
On night one, we failed to put any tempting food in the trap. Nothing happened.
On night two, we realized we had set the plate too tight after the critter ate our bait without springing the trap.
Night three caught our cat.
We tiptoed into the barn after night four. The trap had been dislodged from its spot and the dirt floor was plowed and furrowed. We couldn’t see the trap, now hidden behind some metal leaned against the wall.
Finally we had scored.
We rushed around the barrier to gloat over our raccoon.
“Whoa,” my husband was leading the pack and he stopped with the gang piling into his back.
“What?” The youngest couldn’t see past the mob and started to push her way forward.
The crowd could have stepped aside but we were all busy rushing away.
All because our raiding raccoon, that detested varmint, turned out to be a raiding skunk instead.
Next week: what to do when a skunk is angry and trapped in your barn.
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