by Kathy Brasby | Jul 8, 2019 | Country life, Humor, Stories
As we get to know each other a little better, you may realize that I live on a hobby farm. This includes a few goats, chickens, rabbits, barn cats, and ducks.
I also sometimes fix up houses with my sister to flip. A recent project was more demanding than a hungry toddler.
This all began the morning when I was running late for work and I needed to turn out the ducks for the day. I found a duck egg lying on the ground beside the ducks’ water tub, a forlorn brown egg caked in mud and grass.
I didn’t have time to coddle this egg, no matter how sad it looked, so I did the next best thing: I grabbed a fast food napkin from my pickup, wrapped the egg, and threw it in my purse. I’d take care of it later.
Photo by Kathy Brasby
Somehow a purse seems out of place among all the power tools, so I left it in my pickup while we worked. For two days.
When next I rummaged around the abyss of my purse, there was the egg, still wrapped in the napkin. My sister, Ann, and I were on our way to the hardware store. I handed the egg to Ann so I could find keys.
“What is this?” She held it between her thumb and forefinger like it was a dead mouse.
“An egg,” I said. “Just hold it.”
“I don’t want it.” And she put it in the glove box.
Fresh farm eggs have a coating of something that poultry people call bloom. The coating keeps the egg fresh without refrigeration for a long time. Commercial eggs are generally washed which removes the bloom, requiring the eggs to be refrigerated.
The magic of bloom was why there was no rotten egg in my pickup.
A few days later, we took my pickup to the Chinese place for lunch.
“I think I’ll leave my wallet here,” Ann said. Upon opening the glove box, she caught the napkin-wrapped duck egg. “Haven’t you done anything with this yet?” Speaking of Captain Obvious….
“No, I forgot where it was.”
“Well, get it out of here.”
When we got back to the project house, I put the egg with a plastic bag of supplies that I planned to take home.
At the end of the day, Ann claimed the plastic bag so she could wrap her paintbrush. “How did your egg get in here?”
She didn’t sound curious like you’d think with that sort of question. She sounded like I’d hidden a dirty diaper in there.
“Oh, I’ll take care of it.” I grabbed the egg and put the egg in a box I needed to take home.
The next morning, the egg was still in the box at the flip house. Somehow it then got moved to another room and covered by boards and trim. If you think I’m admitting to that move, you’re nuts.
“We need to get these rooms cleaned out,” Ann said a day later. She started hauling things out, so I grabbed stuff, too. When we got the boards moved, I spotted the box. Of course, Ann walked by at that moment. “Is that your egg?” she said.
She made it sound like I was storing soggy seaweed or something.
“Yeah. I lost track of it.”
“You and that egg.”
I carried the egg to my pickup again and put it in the glove box. I’d toss the egg when I got home.
Four months later, a police officer pulled me over for a license plate check. “I need to see your registration and insurance cards,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” I opened the glove box. My faithful egg was still nestled in its muddy paper blanket. I realized in a flash that the magic of bloom isn’t very reliable after four months.
I tried to explain. I really did. But the officer backed away slowly with one hand doing a halt motion and the other squeezing his nose. You’d think I was holding a hand grenade.
I haven’t let Ann check my glove box now for a long time. Just in case I forgot something.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jun 24, 2019 | Country life, Humor, Stories
There are times when a plan comes together a little too well, and my search for cats fell in that category.
We have a hobby farm that includes a barn. And mice. Lots and lots of mice. Herds of mice. Pastures of mice.
You think I exaggerate?
Well, I went in search of some nice cats for the barn. They didn’t need to be sweet lap cats. In fact, barn cats a little on the wild side make great mousers.
So when I saw the poster, I thought I had struck gold.
Free cats. On the wild side. The photos on the poster were of three lovely orange and gray cats. Cute cats and I was okay with a little on the wild side.
My son and I were running errands when I found this treasure. With just a little searching, we found the girl with the cats. “Do you still have them?” I asked.
Raised eyebrows, wide eyes, and an open mouth should have clued me in. “Do you want them?” She was breathless.
I was still so impressed with the ease of finding free mousers that I just said, “Yes.”
“Great! I’ll tell my dad.” She scampered away, and I turned to my son.
“I’ll finish up here, and you go with them. We can put the cats in the car and go home.”
He followed the girl, and I finished my work. When I walked into the parking lot toward our car, I spotted my son at the edge of a small group
Why was there a small group gathered around a large cardboard box?
The girl’s father was at the center, snugging the last piece of shipping tape over the flaps on the top of the box. A bystander said, “If they can’t get air in there, they might die.”
The father stepped back from the tap-dancing box and brushed his hands together. “That wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
My son turned to me. “He had welding gloves on when he put the cats in the box.” Welding gloves are long leather armor against sparks leaping from a welder. Apparently, they are required for cats a little on the wild side.
I think the gloves should be in my lighting-the-grill repertoire, but I digress.
I didn’t want to think about why the dad needed welding gloves.
By now, I was near enough to hear scratching inside the box. A lot of scratching. The sort of demonic scratching that threatens to claw through trees and steel walls.
“A little wild?” I said.
My son shrugged. He likes cats, and he hoisted the box into the back of the car. “It’ll be okay.”
I watched the box rattling with cat rebellion and muted yowls.
“What if they get through the cardboard?”
“I guess we open the doors and bail out ’til they escape.”
That was comforting.
The family that advertised the cats had disappeared like Frodo after he slipped on the ring. Poof. I would have, too.
And so we drove home. No sounds until we got to our barn. Some things can’t be explained.
We laid the box on its side in the middle of the barn, so the top faced away from us. We were about to unleash hungry lions. Cheetahs with teeth. Slashing claws and steel teeth. We were fools but not that bad.
I peeled off the tape while my son stood guard. Behind me. He was less a fool than I was.
I had donned my own leather gloves and goggles like I was going into a snake pit. Longing for a helmet – or a proxy – I lifted the flap.
Orange and black exploded before us. A wild yowl rattled the walls, and we saw a cloud of fur and teeth. The cats burst out of the box, across the floor and, in a millisecond, out the open back door.
“I vote we call them Blur and Streak,” my son said.
“I vote we call them gone.”
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by Kathy Brasby | Jun 17, 2019 | Humor, Stories
I’ve found that carrying some of my childhood assumptions into adulthood has caused me significant challenges.
You knew that I’m talking about mint plants, right?
In my childhood, there was a mint plant by our front steps that was so spindly and yellow that I assumed mint was a weak plant that needed tender care.
So when we moved to our current home and I was choosing plants for the front flower boxes, I picked up a lone mint plant out of nostalgia. I lifted the tiny plant to my face at the store, and solemnly promised to care for it better than the one from my childhood.
This was an amazing promise considering I can cause the death of plastic plants.
But I am happy to report that I kept my promise. That single mint plant took over the entire flower bed in two years.
My mind went back to the spindly mint plant from my youth. The one that stood alone in the shade of the house with no other plants around it.
Yeah, the mint had grown in a plot closely akin to the far side of the moon. Nothing else could grow there.
About that time, I learned that there are many varieties of mint. Peppermint. Spearmint. Lemon mint. Chocolate mint. And they like to cross-pollinate, which probably means they then grow even faster. Can you imagine if you planted lemon mint close to spearmint and all the baby mints grew up to taste like……mint?
I discovered in my research that there is a variety called woolly mint. You can’t make this stuff up. Well, I could, but I didn’t this time. It’s also known as apple mint, which begs the question of how apple and woolly are synonyms.
Mint is considered a little invasive. Like kudzu is a little invasive. Or mosquitoes. Chilling, isn’t it?
H.G. Wells, in his book The War of the Worlds, described a Martian red weed which, in his story, took root on earth and choked out all rivers and swaddled trees and fields. Not unlike mint. He might have based Martian red weed on mint for all I know.
I fear that mint left untended could take over entire neighborhoods. I hope my neighbors aren’t reading this or they might start dumping zucchini at my doorstep.
I can imagine a movie coming: Invasion of the Spearmint. Or maybe The Woolly Mint Cometh. Not sure which one might grab the most viewers. My guess is neither.
My single mint plant is now in a contained area where its family still tries to conquer the grass on the other side of the barrier.
One summer evening, we had a violent rain and hailstorm roll through. Afterward, we stepped outside to the pungent smell of mint in the air.
“Oh, no! ” My daughter said. “I hope the hail didn’t kill the mint.” She takes after that naive child in me.
My son drew in a minty breath. “An atomic bomb couldn’t kill that mint.”
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by Kathy Brasby | Jun 3, 2019 | Country life, Humor, Stories
A few weeks ago, I was teaching chicks how to drink. That probably makes no sense to you but baby chickens pop out of their eggs with no clue how to drink. When the hen is not in the picture, their human owner gets to fill in.
Chicks are amazingly cute little beings. There’s no room for brains in their head, but they make up for it with cuteness.
Photo by Kathy Brasby
If you’ve ever gone to the feed store with your six-year-old, you know how amazingly cute the chicks are. Six-year-olds never miss the chick cages. Once there, they unfurl all the tricks a child knows. Anything is fair here. They might scream or plead or remind you that you hadn’t bought them anything in decades, maybe centuries.
Parents: don’t trust traditional responses. Don’t tell your child, “You’re not old enough to care for this chick,” because the child will assure you that this is their chance to reveal the profound changes in their heart, character, and behavior that have emerged since breakfast when they left their cereal bowl on the table and spoon on the floor. They are changed creatures, just like that chick that just transformed from an egg to a fuzz ball.
Don’t tell your child, “We don’t have a place for any chicks,” What your child hears is “yet,” as in “We don’t have any place for any chicks yet.” They have hope! All they now need is a cardboard box, a saucer, and a bag of chicken feed.
Stay away from the chick aisle!
Amongst the research regarding chickens is the discovery that chickens wearing red-tinted contact lenses fight less, eat less, and produce more – the chicken trifecta.
Can you imagine the scientist putting contact lenses on chickens? I wonder if they were soft or hard contacts. What if a chicken lost a lens? Would she attack the hen on her right while giving sweet words to the one on her left?
Would you have to change contacts every day? Maybe mellow chickens would stand in line to get their contacts in for the day. Right after brushing their teeth and combing their hair.
If scientists could put contact lenses on chickens, you’d think researchers could find a way to teach chickens how to drink when they first pop out of the egg. Apparently not.
Chicks remain as ill-prepared for life as ever.
But back to my teaching moment. I had two dozen cute yellow fur balls wandering aimlessly in the desert of their cardboard box, about to start crawling wing over wing in the sand, lips swollen and canteens dusty. The overhead light probably looked like a huge angry sun to them.
They needed a mama to teach them how to drink water.
My son watched. “They don’t know how to drink?” he said.
“They don’t know how to find water,” I said. I dipped each chick’s beak into the water and let each one shake its head in amazement at finding water just before dying of desert exposure.
My son shifted gears. “And why did you put paper down in their pen?”
“So they wouldn’t accidentally eat the wood chips underneath. They don’t know the difference between wood chips and their feed yet.”
He stared down at the yellow wave of chick energy. “So you’re telling me that they don’t know how to eat or drink?”
“Well, I guess…..”
He headed for the door. “I’m amazed they know how to breathe.”
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by Kathy Brasby | May 20, 2019 | Humor, Stories
As we get better acquainted, you’ll know things about me that my kids may someday pay you to keep to yourself. This is a great reason to keep track of me. Think of it as retirement planning. Just fill out that email signup over there and the money may well come flowing one day. No promises, though.
Don’t you, by the way, get annoyed with promises coming at you in the mail and on your phone and email? You know what I mean. I have gotten a garden catalog in the mail for years. Most of the catalogs have a big red sticker on the front: “Warning: this may be the last catalog you will receive unless you order.” Yeah, yeah, big promises. I’ve never ordered. I’d be OK if this were the last catalog but no such luck.
I don’t make promises like that. I promise.
I’ve had several jobs in my life, none related to the one before as far as I can tell. I’ve been a property manager for four years. Managing rental units provides endless story possibilities. That’s almost a good enough reason to keep managing.
As you can imagine, we occasionally have tenants who don’t pay their rent. This particular tenant not only got behind on his rent, but he had creative excuses. One month, he assured us that his check must have gotten stolen since we hadn’t received it.
In fact, the police had contacted him about the stolen check, and he was getting another one issued. We asked, could he send us a copy of the police report? No, since the police were in another state.
What, they hadn’t heard of faxing or email?
He did finally get that rent payment paid. It was sort of the sweet-and-sour-sauce with that tenant. One month, he was great and the next, lots of complaints and no rent.
I reported the final events to my business partner, who is also my sister, Ann, via texts:
Me: “Guess what? No rent today again.”
Ann: “Still nothing? Didn’t he promise?”
Me: “Yep.” Captain Obvious is my texting handle.
Ann: “Can’t you just email him and tell him to send us his kidney.”
I was typing, “I’m OK with a kidney,” when Ann answered, “No! Ack! Money. Not kidney. Money.”
I liked kidney better.
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by Kathy Brasby | May 14, 2019 | Stories
This blog is getting a reboot. I’ve tried to be serious and grown up, but I gotta go back to my roots: stories.
I see the world in stories. I laugh at the goofiest things – and you might as well come along.
This morning, my sister, the artist, showed me a new set of paintings. “They’re about new life. Butterflies.”
Me, I am a big fan of cliches, as you’ll see. I said, “I don’t see any butterflies.” She had painted a green background with a round yellow area in what might have been the sky. It might have been irises for all I could tell. She’s an abstract painter.
So then I looked closer. I’m not sure if you are supposed to look closer with abstract work or step back but I was sitting at my computer so stepping back would have required getting up. Not sure it was worth all that.
“There are red splatters on the painting.” My mind flew to cliches because I’m a big fan of cliches. “Is this post-butterflies? What happened to the butterflies?” I started thinking of big predator birds which, by the way, weren’t anywhere in her paintings. Maybe they already flew away. I didn’t ask. I wanted to be a support like any good sister would.
So I asked her if butterflies were good symbols for new life.
“They’re safe,” she wrote me. Did I tell you we were texting on our computers? You may have figured that out from the not-getting-up-from-my-computer comment, but now you know for sure.
Anyway, my sister sometimes types goofy. What she actually sent me was “Sage.”
I almost asked her if butterflies smelled like sage, but she can get testy about her typing. So I just asked her if sage was helpful in creating abstract paintings.
Her exact words, and I’m not taking this up, were “You are such a help.”
So I’m on a quest today to find out how sage and butterflies and abstract skies combine into a new painting. I might even let you see her results. (Probably not mine, though.) Stay tuned.
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