Yes, It’s another adventures in Carol Land post!
No unlike most of mine in the past I wasn’t there for most of it. Due to communications issues I missed out on a 6 hour car ride involving a purse, and picking up some more chickens. But I can pass over some of the remembered highlights from what Carol regaled me with and a short little trip that we made together however.
As was typical Dan picked me up from home since I was involved in the game (I’m the ships engineer in a Traveler game. Gee funny that eh?) and Dan and I arrived at the normal time where we were informed that Mike was gonna be a bit late since Carol had the car (and was picking up chickens) and he couldn’t get the van to start and was gonna get a jump start from the pickup truck. Right off the bat I knew this was gonna be interesting once they arrived.
Well later on Carol called Dan and asked him to pick up Mike from home since despite his best efforts he couldn’t get the van started and it had a new battery taboot. So Dan took off to pick up Mike and the rest of us decided to chill out and relax. I fired up an ancient laptop that I have (courtesy of Mike and Carol) that ran Windows 2000. No major problem. I used it to fire up something that even ran older software and played some old DOS games (Master of Magic in this case) and chatted away.
Later on Irish’s phone rings again. He listens for a few seconds and says something and then announces “She’s chasing chickens in a convenience store parking lot.” I smiled a knowing smile. Yep, gonna be interesting to hear about this.
Time passed and eventually Dan arrived with Mike and later on Carol did as well. After a few minutes of Carol being there she let everyone know that she needed to take off for the house and then back to drop off a dog and then come back and wondered if I wanted to come along. I said “Sure! No problem!” and figured that way I could find out what went on earlier about the chickens so we headed out to the car where I saw a absolutely beautiful dog in the back seat. According to Carol his name is “Demon” (though that will change) and is an Australian Shepard breed. All I saw was those eyes of his. Very pale blue (I think maybe gray). Those eyes just pierced through you with a very friendly look and I could have gotten lost in them very easily. I was familiar with Lexi and CeeCee (Mike and Carol’s two other dogs) but this one was one I hadn’t met.
So had Mike and Carol gotten another dog? Well yes and no.
You see the dog’s owner was Stan. I mentioned him and his wife’s home in a much earlier post.
http://desonbowenford.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/adventures-in-carol-land-part-2/
Ya see Stan has a problem. Yes he’s a veteran, yes he’s been in the military a number of years but there is one thing that causes him to duck. An angry spouse. So here is how he does it. It seems that his wife deals with animal things much better if they were simply accomplished while she wasn’t there. For example he has 3 horses. All three of them simply appeared at the home in the barn while she was on vacation. So for the time being Mike and Carol are taking care of the dog until she goes on vacation and the dog will simply materialize at the home while she’s gone. Just like the horses did. Hey, I ain’t gonna argue if it works out that way for both of them. This seems to be of one of those situation where both sides are ok with it then fine. Those eyes should get her I’m sure. They almost got me. But wait it get’s stranger from here.
During our trip to the house Carol informed me about roughly what went on earlier today.
Seems she got a call from a friend of her’s who had a problem. Her friend had left her purse at home. A long ways away. About 3 hours driving distance away. Could Carol head over to her friend’s place, pick up the purse and drive over to drop it off? Oh and in the meantime there were some chickens she was sure that Carol was gonna want to look at the general vicinity at the same time.
Well armed with some hand written instructions Carol took off to drop off the purse and look at the chickens. She tried to call me to see if I wanted to go along with her on this trip but unfortunately she couldn’t get through. No one answered and thus I was oblivious to this escapade.
Here are some of the highlights from what Carol informed me and my poor tortured memory can remember.
Got the purse. Drove about 3 hours to drop off the purse. Looked at the chickens. I’m not sure but I believe she did indeed take Demon with her as well. Gotta get some pics of that dog I swear.
The return trip is when the fun really started.
Carol stopped at a convenience store to gas up, stretch the legs, maybe take the dog for quick walk, and water the chickens. But not in that order. (chuckle) She decided to water the chickens (all 4 of them) before gassing up. Got got a hold of some water, and opened the box to pour the water into a bowl for them. Well, turned out that at least one of the chickens decided to be an escape artist and 2 others decided to follow suit. One didn’t succeed in escaping though. So you have 3 chickens running loose in a parking lot and Carol trying to catch all 3 of them and one still in the box. 2 of them were caught in relatively short order. The 3rd one was gonna be a pain. It was a Leghorn (yes the Foghorn type maybe he had the same attitude I dunno).
I can picture the chase scene now.
(Ch) “I say, I say, I am NOT going back in that box Missy no matter how hard you chase me!”
Gets chased under a truck.
(Ch) “I say, there is no way that gas can is gonna help corral me little Missy! I’ll just run around it!”
Truck pulls out revealing him exposed.
(Ch) “Yikes I say! I’d better getta movin along here! You almost got me Missy! and I dare say watch that language of your Missy unless you like to eat soap!!”
Truck with a fishing boat pulls in and Carol borrows a fishing net from the owner who undoubtedly watched her attempts with some amusement but he was very patient in watching her efforts.
His watching was rewarded.
(CH) “uh oh! She’s got a net now and she looks very determined! I’m gonna make a break for this nearby Golf Course! Look a creek! With tall grass! That’ll slow her down!”
Carol pursues the leghorn into the creek. By the way did you know that Chickens in full speed can charge right across a creek and into the tall grass without getting wet? Not so Carol. Entering the tall grass and recovering some of her sense of humor she mutters something like “Crikey! We got a bird in the bush here!” (in a Crocodile hunter voice). She sees the creek and figures that she’s gonna have to cross it but it’s too far to jump all the way so a leap halfway is called for into the water. It can’t be all that deep right? By the way did I mention that she was wearing shorts and sandals at the time? No? Well after tearing her shorts in the tall grass (she showed me the tear on the way to the house) and jumping in she discovered the water depth was not only over knee high but lower of the shorts high with a mighty splash. About mid calf or so. After coming over on the other side where the Chicken was I figured she was pretty steamed at this point.
(CH) “What! She ain’t stopping! Now what do I do? I say, I say lookeee over there…. brambles!! That should I say, I say, poke a hole in her enthusiasm!”
Well, it didn’t stop her. Carol showed me the scrapes on her left arm as she was telling me about this. One in particular caught my eye it ran from her elbow all the way down to the underside of her hand of her left hand. There were other ones as well.
Now I ‘ll admit if it was me there wouldn’t have been a survivor of a chicken after that. I would have borrowed a shotgun from someone and figured on a chicken dinner that evening. But that’s me.
Well the rest of the trip back was uneventful after returning the fishing net to the no doubt amused fisherman who would have regaled his fishing buddies with the tale of the woman who borrowed it to catch a wayward chicken.
ok, you got that?
Good there’s more.
Remember how I mentioned about Carol telling me about these things on our trip to the house? Well it’s gets better. Two more things so bear with me. By the way I hope you’ve been enjoying this please let me know in comments ok?
So we end up arriving at the house and Carol unloads Demon. Next she decides to try to jump start the van in case something had gone wrong with Mike’s attempts. There the van was sitting in front of the pickup truck, nose pointing to nose. No problems. So carol fires up her pickup truck (with a very loud exhaust system) and tells me to hit the accelerator if I think the engine is gonna die to keep it running. I climb into the truck cab and wait. She proceeds to connect the jumper cables and climbs into the Van. I see a few lights go on in the van so I know it’s getting juice.
“GLARGE IT!” I hear. (loud muffler system on the truck). Figuring that she wanted me to step on it I did so for a few seconds and watch her attempt to crank it over.
“KLL DT!!” I hear and back off. Unfortunately the van didn’t start so there’s something wrong big time with it. Carol has Hate/Hate relationship with this van and this wasn’t helping. So giving up on that we needed to put the dogs into the house and head back.
That’s when I had to drag a plushie white bear with a leash attached to it along the ground meanwhile in aloud voice saying “C’mon Demon! Good boy! Time to go nighty night!” several times.
What a minute! Deson you had to what? Drag a what along the ground? and saying what?
Well it’s like this. The landlords of the house don’t want Demon in the house after finding out that Demon was a Farm dog and never had been left overnight in a house. ok, in a way I can understand the landlord’s worries. Mainly because the prior residents (Before Mike and Carol moved in) had a pair of Pit Bulls and the dogs had literally torn the house apart chewing up insulation, and siding. This wasn’t a Pit Bull. I hate to say it but there are times when Pit Bulls earn their reputation and the prior renters had let them run wild. I don’t blame the Pit Bulls themselves so much as I blame the dog’s owners.
That said the idea was for me to drag this white plushie bear to this one small shed acting like it was demon being put to bed for the evening. Apparently sound carries rather well out in the country at times and I was to make a production of it. Now I’ll admit I messed it up by returning with the plushie bear much to Carol’s dismay after I did this. I was supposed to leave it out at the shed and I didn’t know WHY I was told to do this entire escapade. After Carol corrected me (thank you Carol for your patience) she then dragged the “Pseudo Dog” out to the shed and we headed back to the gaming group.
Oh wait! YES, WHENEVER you are planning to come out to Abendroth's and you have the time, you simply must pm me so we can get together for coffee and chicken...s over at my house! Spittin' distance away I tell you! We're in each other's backyard! Would love that so much
