by Kathy Brasby | Sep 15, 2023 | Country life, Humor
And There They Were
I didn’t notice when the attack of the mini toads began. One day I took a walk along a small creek and tiny toadlets darted from blades of grass to stems of weeds to tiny stones. The first one surprised me. The second looked cute as it bolted across the path.
By the tenth – nay, more – I was getting concerned.
Just how many of these were there?
I have watched many take-over-the-world movies, so I knew the routine. One movie, Kingdom of the Spiders, is seared into my brain because of the ending. The movie followed the invasion of spiders gone rogue. It ended with our hero hiding in a farm lodge overnight. He turns on the radio in the morning to learn how the invasion was stopped but hears nothing but static. Duh-duh-duh-duh.
Duh-duh-duh-duh
So he pries boards off a window to discover that the lodge and his entire town are encased with spider webs. Trapped like Frodo in Shelob’s web. Another duh-duh-duh-duh as the credits rolled.
I laughed at the ending, but I was re-thinking my response as I watched toads pop up everywhere. They started out small enough to hide under a penny. But they grew.
Soon my window wells had a dozen toads hiding in there.
Well, not hiding. Unable to get out. How had they gotten in there?
And, really, where had they come from?
The Tadpoles
My research says they started out as tadpoles. Well, this was the year for unusual rain, so that made sense. But I was sad that I had somehow missed seeing the darting little tadpoles in puddles. Those fascinate me.
Tadpoles turn into toadlets. Toadlets turn into toads. Gobs of them.
I wish I could tell you I started counting, but I didn’t. I noticed toads every time I took a walk and assumed I was seeing new ones. Soon, I was certain there were hundreds. Thousands.
OK, a kajillion of them.
I started asking friends. They confirmed they had a bunch, too. They wouldn’t confirm a kajillion, but I suspected. If I didn’t have a kajillion on my little farm, then together we must.
Friends were concerned. Which meant they were lamenting toads lost to mowers, car tires, and stomping toddlers. I think they were lamenting, anyway. It was hard to tell with the fist pumps.
One friend declined to have the rest of us visit, just in case we carried toad seeds on our shoes. She didn’t have any baby toads and didn’t want any. Although her adult kids had toads, so she’s likely infested by now, anyway.
I mean, how do you turn down the grandkids coming to visit? If little ones don’t bring colds, they probably bring baby toad seeds.
The Only Comfort
The only comfort with the toad invasion of 2023 is that as the toadlets grow in size, they diminish in number. I can’t explain that either, but it explains why toads aren’t used in math books to illustrate the number kajillion. (What do they use, anyway?)
I take comfort in the other thing: toads don’t spin webs and can be a useful ally if the spiders ever go rogue.
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by Kathy Brasby | Aug 19, 2023 | Country life, Family, Hope, Humor
This morning, I buckled on my sharp shiny sword and stepped out the door to do battle with the monsters growing at the edge of my property. I had postponed this for weeks, but it had to be done before the day got any hotter and the monsters got bolder.
The cult movie, The Little Shop of Horrors, featured a sentient carnivorous plant named Aubrey II that fed on human blood. My own monsters were threatening to swallow vehicles for the moment before moving on.
I wasn’t sure if my plants were carnivorous but why let them keep growing?
Was the dog safe? The chickens? See why I needed the sword? [spacer height=”30px”]
Prone to exaggeration
Because I have been known to exaggerate, I need to clarify that my sharp shiny sword is really a DeWalt cordless pruner, but hey, tomayto, tomahto.
This pruner can cut through three-inch limbs, so I strapped it on and headed for the monster forest surrounding my wood pile. Oh, the irony.
We’ve had a Seattle kind of year in normally arid northeastern Colorado. Really. We usually get about fifteen inches of rain a year while Seattle gets more like 34. Flip-flop those this year and you get the idea why the monsters were so eager to stretch into trees.
They’ve been thirsty forever and finally gulping gallons of rain.
Gulping gallons
This year, entire stacks of wood have disappeared within their jungle. Maybe devoured by the hungry dripping teeth of the Aubrey II’s out there.
Just for clarity, these are more like hybrid Aubrey II’s. Some people call them wild sunflowers. But potayto, potahto.
These guys are threatening to blot out the sunlight and swallow not only the log splitter in the yard but the privacy fence. The uncut logs. My entire house.
Last month’s hail storm left dents in heavy metal but didn’t even bruise these plants.
The trunk of several were bigger than my wrist. Huge by wrist standards.
I started by gripping the base of one and pulling in case it didn’t have a good root system. Maybe they’d all fall like dominoes and my work would be done.
As it turned out, if they could stand up to the pounding hail, my grip was a mere annoyance and no more.
I was kind of afraid of that.
Out came the sword. (Remember: tomayto, tomahto.)
Wrong choice
I should have worn a hard hat instead of gloves because it turned out the sword was mightier than the monster. The sunflowers began falling with a crash onto my head.
Imagine sunflowers succumbing to my trusty sword (humor me here) and slamming onto the ground. Or me, depending which was closer.
It was usually me.
Domino effect. Clunk, clunk, clunk. Onto my head. (That alone may explain this post. Brain injured.)
I now have a pile of slain sunflowers by my driveway. The monsters had surrounded an old coffee table, two tree stumps, and a tomato cage.
And, boy, am I glad that I got those rescued.
That’s my report for today and you can believe whatever you want. Just like The Little Shop of Horrors.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jul 10, 2023 | Country life, Humor
When we released the lions into my pasture of abundant grass this summer, my little herd of goats was distressed. In fact, they gave a whole new meaning to panic attack as they huddled along the fence line and refused comfort from their comfort food: animal cookies.
To my eyes, the recent additions to the pasture were tail-swishing, cud-chewing 350-pound calves. To my goats, they were tooth-baring, evil eyed, growling lions.
Whatever
The calves ignored the goats, but could the goats ignore the calves?
The milk goats, usually annoyingly docile and cuddly, suddenly decided that not only did calves look lions, so did I.
At milking time, they usually crowd at the door ready for their sweet feed and animal crackers. But the day the lions came, they cowered at the fence line.
Clear across the pasture from the barn. The fence line that was much closer to the lions than the barn.
Yay For Animal Crackers
I took animal crackers out to them, only to watch these lion-crazed goats run away from me. These were the same goats who made any pen repairs impossible because they stuck their noses in my face. Nose to nose. Really.
I bribed them with animal crackers, which must have looked mildly familiar, because one finally stretched her neck to sniff.
I snagged her collar, and we made a slow, stiff-legged trip to the barn. Away from the lions but she didn’t seem to notice that.
The two remaining milkers fled to the far corner, but one goat followed me: the only one who wasn’t yet being milked. It made me wonder if producing milk was related to mental collapse.
Their Mental Collapse
The one who followed got her cookies just for being smart.
I thought the milkers would relax once the first goat got her turn at the sweet feed. They were usually jealous creatures. But, no, that day I had to lure in the second one.
The third one seemed more relaxed. But remember that these goats thought a calf was a lion, so what she seemed to be was definitely not what she was.
I brought a bucket of sweet feed for her plus an abundance of animal crackers.
Bribery Worked A Little
She was happy to eat sweet feed, but it took three tries before I snagged her collar. I had sweet memories of this girl following me anywhere. Pre-lion.
We got halfway across the pasture (remember this is away from the lions) when she decided that to escape. She reared into the air and twisted her body.
I held her collar in one hand and a bucket half-full of sweet feed in the other.
When she reared, I had a thought:
Ugh. I’m going to get grass stains on my best jeans.
And, as my feet tangled and the ground was approaching, I had another thought:
Do NOT let go of this collar.
Beware Of The Jungle
The abundant grass served as a soft pillow for my landing. I got to my feet and here’s my report: I did not let go of the collar and I didn’t even have bruises the next day.
The lions have now turned into calves, and my goats will condescend to eating animal cookies. All is well in the jungle.
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by Kathy Brasby | Oct 21, 2022 | Country life, Humor
What’s new on the farm? I’m glad you asked. Well, pretend you asked.
Last week a pig bit my hand, apparently because my hand looked just like the cheap animal cookies I was feeding the goats.
These are the Bacon3’s that we’ve discussed before. Their goal in life is to eat. That they have plenty of food in front of them all the time doesn’t convince them they aren’t about to see their ribs poking out in starvation.
Too much is never enough.
I wanted to attribute that quote to the proper owner, but it seems to be well-used in song lyrics, book titles, and blog posts.
Let’s just call it the motto of the Bacon3 and move on.
The goats love animal cookies. When I wave a handful of these bland little cookies in the air, goats run to me. Sprint like a wolf is on their tails. It’s like crack cocaine for them, except maybe a little less hallucinogenic, although the jury may be out on that. It’s hard to tell sometimes.
Once my son and I raised rabbits. We had a special treat we’d give them every day, and they’d throw themselves against their cage door like zombies in the apocalypse trying to get to the living. I wasn’t sure we’d get our hand back if we actually opened the door.
Distraction work for rabbits because their brains are smaller than an acorn. They threw themselves at the fresh grass hay, too, so that we could put their cocaine in their treat dish while they were devouring the hay.*
The Bacon3 have bigger brains
Watching the goats get cookies while the Bacon3 got nothing did not suit the pigs. Goats are cute while pigs are, well, pigs. I’ll bet Hollywood could record their snorting, slow it down a little, and get a new sound for the monster from the black lagoon. That monster squeal surrounded me while I handed out treats to cute goats. I should have known better.
You know that commercial with the teenagers debating, on a dark and stormy night with a haunted house looming, if they should escape to the running vehicle or hide behind the swinging chain saws? Yeah, that kind of “I should have known better.”
I should have known better
I know enough to wear boots and jeans into the pigs’ pen. They are generally more rude than aggressive. Usually, they push their noses against my boots as though boots look like food, too.Or their cousins. Not sure on that one.
I forgot about my hand while I was handing out treats to the goats. I guess I forgot about the pigs, too.
Then I dropped a bookie. Big mistake. I leaned down to scoop it up. Hands. Cookies. Those apparently look identical to an allegedly-starving Bacon.
The chomp was faster than hummingbird wings, and then I had blood dripping down my hand.
Bacon1 earned new names immediately. Several.
I’d like to think he’d remember to stay away from me after my tantrum. But I do dream a lot when it comes to my pigs.
I Am Smarter…I Hope
Because I’m smarter than a pig (Are you challenging that thought?), I stopped the animal cookie feeding and returned to the house to deal with the pig bite.
The Bacons still imitate rabbits on a zombie attack, bashing their noses against their gate whenever I come near. Otherwise, they’re out in the pasture eating all the grass they can find. Clearly starving.
But their radar is up for the next time I come with cookies.
Or pumpkins from the garden.
Or fingers.
My hand wound has healing, although I am afraid I’ll have a scar. A pig-toothed, snout-shaped, snorty scar to help me remember the Bacon3s.
But those three? Forgetting them is like trying to forget the time your tire blew out, you ran off the road, ruined a wheel, and had to call for a tow truck which took four hours to arrive and you were late for your cousin’s wedding. You don’t forget.
But I’d rather forget. I really would.
*Absolutely no cocaine was ever fed to any of my animals. I wouldn’t even know where to find the stuff, since the feed store doesn’t stock it.
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by Kathy Brasby | Oct 10, 2022 | Hope, Humor
Although we assume we only need hope when horrific things happen in our lives, we’re wrong. We need hope every day because things go wrong. Not always horrible things but wrong things can be enough to derail our goals or dump us into a “why bother?” mood. Part of the daily grind.
Photo by Ryan Franco on Unsplash
You know the daily grind. Maybe the car sounds sick and your budget can’t stretch. Or maybe the kids are sick—on the day of your big meeting. Maybe traffic is like driving in mud and you need to get to that appointment. Maybe your food order got lost or a now -former friend just blasted you on social media.
These are the sorts of things that can steal away our hope for the day. But we can turn our day around. We can decide if the wrong thing sends us into the pits of doom or if we can send that wrong thing into the a holding tank to become a story.
As I’ve told my kids more than once, “Either this is going to work out or we’ll have a great story to tell later.”
Humor helps us find hope in the daily grind because it turns the wrong thing into something that we can laugh at.
Maybe my stories will make you chuckle and help you look at troubles differently. Because, sometimes, things aren’t as bad as they seem. They’re just on their way to becoming a great story.
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by Kathy Brasby | Sep 24, 2022 | Family, Humor
I didn’t know I was a contrarian until I bought that mouth guard set.
I had noticed in the last few months that my teeth were tired every morning. I had never been a teeth grinder before, so I resisted the idea for a while.
But I finally buckled and ordered in a mouthpiece kit. It came with four gummy pieces that looked like what the dentist used to fill with some goopy paste and then stick in your mouth to get an impression of your teeth. The goop tasted okay but sometimes persisted.
So that, maybe you went out to eat after the dentist appointment and discovered, after smiling brightly at the waiter, that paste crumbs were hanging from your lips like miniature stalactites. Theoretically.
Well, this kit didn’t have any goopy paste.
No goopy paste but stern instructions, though, for molding the mouthpiece.
So, I quote:
Immerse mouth guard in hot water 175 to 180 degrees.
Where was my candy thermometer again?
Oh, yeah, my daughter had borrowed the thermometer. So I would not know exactly what the water was.
I guessed. I still wasn’t in contrarian stage. Just practical, although that might be the precursor to contrarian. Still puzzling that idea.
Next instruction: Soak for ten to fifteen seconds. Must be less than twenty seconds.
Wait, what?
Must be less than twenty seconds?
I’m pretty sure this is when the contrarian started to lift its head. Just what would happen if I left the mouth guard in the water for, say, twenty-one seconds?
Maybe at twenty-three seconds, the mouth guard turned into a gelatinous mass like a jellyfish floating in the water. Or like a glass octopus. Or a transparent sea cucumber. (Who came up with that creative name? Probably the same scientist who named his dog Dog.)
So theoretically, there was a jellyfish floating in the water after my temperature guess.
Since there were four mouth pieces in the kit, I wondered if they assumed somebody might test their instructions?
After the fifteen seconds heating-up period comes the next order. I mean, instruction.
Use a wooden spoon and wooden chopsticks to fish the mouthpiece out of the hot water.
I double checked.
Yep, it said AND. And wooden chopsticks.
I don’t have any wooden chopsticks. Whelp, time to just figure it out myself. I used a wooden spoon and then plopped the piece on a dish towel. I didn’t need another jellyfish if this mouthpiece was allergic to metal spoons.
Oops. I didn’t read ahead. I was supposed to lower the mouth guard onto a paper.
A paper.
Sure.
This was getting dumb.
Then the instructions said to let the mouth guard cool for three to five seconds.
I didn’t know I’d need a stopwatch when I started this process.
Well, I lowered nothing onto a paper.
I plopped the piece onto the dish towel and then shoved it over my teeth. I had watched the dentist do that, so I knew how.
I bit down into something slightly firmer than Jello at a church potluck.
By now, I was in full rebel mode.
Fifteen seconds here. A paper there. And then the last instruction.
Leave the piece in mouth for exactly ten seconds.
Uh-huh. Exactly ten seconds. I’d have chastised the instructions, except it was hard to talk with that piece of old Jello in my mouth.
Just to show them, I pulled the mouth guard out when I felt like it. I wasn’t timing that.
Good grief. I can count one-Mississippi as well as anybody, but there was a principle here. The principle of “don’t be ridiculous.”
Then….
No more instructions.
What do I do next?
Well, at that point, I did what any contrarian would do. I figured it out. Included in the kit was a little blue plastic case for the mouthpiece so it’s resting there until it cools into something stiffer than melted gelatin.
But now that I know I am a rule breaker, I suppose I’ll find out at bedtime if I will even use this gummy thing.
I’ll let you know later. Or maybe I won’t.
This contrarian stuff is pretty fun.
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