Hunting Stories: How I Became the Dog

Bandera, Texas (The Kyle Ranch)

**People hunt and fish so that they have good stories to tell around the cave, campfire, or dining room table—besides all the other reasons people hunt and fish (see the little star things at the beginning of this sentence.)

I love the hunting and the fishing for the stories.

First, I want to say that hunting is hard. Contrary to the perception perpetuated by people who eat chickens and cows clonked on the head by other people, hunting is like finding a needle in a giant wilderness and shooting at it while the needle turns invisible. Animals are slicker than an eel’s fanny at getting away.

Second, hunting is hard. I had no idea how hard it was. On a recent hunting trip to Kyle Ranch (a little slice of Texas heaven) I was left breathless at how challenging it can be to shoot invisible needle-like animals. Literally, breathless.

As our guide drove us over, up, down, and through thousands of acres of bouncing Texas hill country looking for ground venison, I found myself in the backseat of the pickup truck. The pickup bristled with weapons. My husband rode “shotgun” with a rifle. I hung my head out of the backseat window. As every jouncing mile passed, my adrenalin ratcheted up. My soaring excitement might have been visible from space. 

I sniffed the wind. The smell of Texas cedar filled my bloodstream. My head swiveled as I scanned the heavy underbrush. I quit blinking. I started to pant. My thundering heart threatened to crack ribs. Blood pounded in my head.

Then I saw it. It was a giant, staring, frozen whitetail deer not hiding, completely visible, looking at me. I went on point, stuck my finger out of the window, and in a normal sort of voice (neither loud nor soft) I said, “Right there.”

She bounded away before I could say a bad word, which I did say—loudly.

She bounded away like a wild animal confident that she was 1) not the kind we were looking for 2) faster than a speeding bullet, and 3) able to become a see-through needle any old time she wanted.

My husband turned around, reached out, patted me on the head, and said, “Good eyes. Good eyes.”

That’s when I realized that I’d become the dog.

And that’s my first hunting story.

Linda (What a good girl!) Zern
          


**People also hunt and fish to match wits with animals who are able to hide behind branches the size of matchsticks, to provide lean chemical free meat for their families, and to earn their supper the old fashioned way by stealth and skill rather than clonking.

The Droopy Truth - A Classic ZippitZern

My husband (Sherwood Kevin—they called him Sherwood not Kevin—go figure) and I have racked up a fairly impressive list of most embarrassing moments over the past thirty plus years of marriage.

There was the time Sherwood ran out of gas in the drive-through of McDonald’s where he had to push the car up to the “pick-up” window. Then there was the knee surgery/Sodium Pentothal fiasco when Sherwood had a little trouble coming “out of it” and told the Nazis’ (i.e. nurses) in the recovery room that he had four wives and thirty-seven children and a really HUGE . . . um . . . REASON for all those wives. Talk about “Big Love.” Then there was the bubble gum on the hairy buttocks incident—also Sherwood.

He’s racked up a fairly impressive list of embarrassing moments. But remember I haven’t even begun to discuss the reams of charming, noxious, embarrassing moments involving various body fluids erupting in public places from our children during the “four kids, six and under” years.

The mistake is to assume that once the children are potty trained and the hubby’s knee rehab is over, that the humiliation is finally over. You know, the embarrassment of being alive and breathing in various gases which produce still other gases—when mixed with, oh say—a Coney Island hotdog. If anything, the relentless march of age just makes for a lot of fun opportunities to be total bags of gas and droopy body parts.

Now, “most embarrassing” is almost a competition, and I’m thinking that I might have taken the lead.

From a recent phone call confessional:

“Boy, did I have an embarrassing moment today at work,” my husband began.

Not shocked, I asked, “Oh good grief now what?”

“Well, I got up from my desk to greet some co-workers, and when I stood up I just let fly with a giant . . .”

Cutting him off, I yelped, “What!?”

“You know.”

“No, what? You let fly with a groan, a moan, a sigh . . . what?” I paused and embraced the dawning truth. With slow drip horror, I said, “You. Did. Not!”

“Yep! Right there in my cubicle.”

“Did anyone say anything?”

“Nope. But their faces said it all; it was so embarrassing.”

Silence descended over our conversation like a helium balloon filled with methane.

“Well,” I said, “I think I’ve got you beat.”

“I don’t know; that was pretty embarrassing. I’d never met those people before.” Skepticism mixed with humiliation in his voice.

“I’m telling you; I’ve got you beat.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“You know how on Mondays I clean house in my big old sweatshirt, and I don’t wear . . . you know, anything . . .”

“Rubber gloves?”

“No! I don’t wear, you know . . . foundation.” (Foundation is a Southern word for bra. It’s a cultural thing.)

“And you’re not talking about makeup.”

“Right.”

“So, I had some stuff I needed to put in one of those plastic snap Rubbermaid totes, you know those plastic storage buck-ity things with the lids that I buy by the truckload from WalMart?”

“Yes.” It was a worried “yes.”

“Okay, so after I shoved the junk into the plastic thing and I went to snap the lid closed,” I said, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, “I snapped the end of my . . . self in the lid.”

Silence.

“You mean, the part not wearing foundation,” he said.

“Roger that,” I sighed. “But the worst part is that the plastic lid was closer to my waist than my chin when I snapped my . . . self into it.”

“Wow, bummer. Okay, you win. You now hold the most embarrassing moment prize.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. Thank Mother Nature.”

And so it droops; I mean goes, and so it goes. I’ve never been one to herald “the dignity of man” much, because I’ve never found any part of living to be very dignified. Mostly it’s just people pretending that nothing disgusting ever comes out of their noses or other orifices—ever. But it does, and we all know it. Not only does disgusting stuff come out of us all the time, sometimes it lingers in the air and wafts over into the cubicle next to you.

So here’s hoping that this week finds you downwind and your droopy bits safe from snappy plastic lids.

Note:  If you find these references too obscure please email me, and I’ll be happy to tell you that Sherwood farted in front of some clients he had never met, and I snapped my nipple into a Rubbermaid storage container.

Linda (Flopsy) Zern

Crimes Against My Humanity

Moon n 1. The natural satellite of the earth, 5. Any disk, globe, or crescent resembling the moon. (Let’s fly to the moon.)

To Moon v 1. The act of smashing your pimply nether regions against the glass of the window of a quickly moving vehicle, on the turnpike. (Mom, that idiot just mooned us; speed up so we can get his license plate number and report him to the authorities.)

Moonstruck n 1. Believing the authorities care.

My daughters and I were assaulted on the turnpike. Do you want the facts of the assault or the resulting trauma?

By the way, the word “assault” means roughly “vulgar things that happen to you without your permission,” or in the Vulgar Latin it means vulgar people without their pants on.

Okay, the facts of the assault. On first glance we were a pretty cute group: Heather was 8.10 months pregnant, Maren was newly engaged, and I had wrinkles older than the combined ages of the assaulters. Whatever the reason, we were picked out of the never-ending stream of turnpike traffic.

Heather recognized that we were being followed by a van full of lunatics (get it—lunatics, lunar, moon) when she said, “Mom, get away from this jerk; he’s about to run us off the road.”

Looking back I noticed we were being followed by a van with its lights on. I could tell the lights were on because they were shining inside my trunk.

“What a lunatic,” I muttered through grinding teeth.

I slowed down so that the lunatic could pass me and get on with his very important life. The lunatic slowed down.

“Mom, switch lanes; he’s not going around,” Maren said, shooting the lunatic dirty looks through the rear window of the car. Her hands were clenched around an imaginary neck. I switched lanes.

He switched lanes.

This disturbed me so much that I tried to shoot him the evil eye through my rear-view window, which caused me to lose focus on the semi-tractor trailer in front of us. I stomped on the brakes. Lunatic boy stomped on his brakes. I changed lanes. He changed lanes. I slowed down. He slowed down. I almost ran off the road. He laughed. I wished for super hero powers like laser beam eyes.

Maren sighed, “Oh good, he’s finally passing.” She sank back into her seat, closing her eyes, exhausted.

Then without warning, Heather screamed, “Oh no, no, no!” She flung her hands up to shield her face. “An enormous, hairy, pimply a**.” Then she clutched her swollen abdomen as if to protect the innocent child within.

I looked at her face and what I saw there will go with me to the grave. The horror! The horror! Well, that and the fact that I’d never heard Heather use the “A” word—ever. It was pretty shocking.

Maren yelled, “Speed up! Let’s catch them. We’ll take pictures of them with our camera phones.”

“And then what? Make posters!” I held the steering wheel steady. “No, face it girls, we were mooned.”

I paused for effect and then said, “You know they could be a van full of sex slavers trying to crash us, steal us, and sell us.”

They both rolled their eyes.

“Let’s go to the mall,” I said.

“To the mall,” Maren chirped.

“To the mall,” Heather moaned.

To the mall,” I concurred.

And away we went to the mall. But be warned, somewhere out there is a van full of sex slavers looking to crash, steal, and sell a likely looking car full of girl types, or just a van full of bored college kids trying to impress each other with their bare-bottomed daring and dash. Either way, they’re lunatics.

Linda (Green Cheese) Zern

  

BOOK OF ZERN - YET ANOTHER CHAPTER

1.     Behold, we doth still tarry in the land of three sides and speak of our travails and triumphs there. In the year in which the Mayans spoke of as “the end of all things,” we doth still prosper, in that our numbers increased and our joy groweth strong.

2       And the begats consisted of both a new grand boy, which was called Griffen, and a new grand girl, which was called Hero. And thus were the numbers of our rising generation brought to nine.

3        And thus we did continue to party much with singing and with dancing and with glow sticks and with the playing of the vinyl records which I, even the YaYa, doth keep and preserve. And the rising generation doth enjoy both “Marching Band Music” and “The Beatles.”

4       Wo unto Poppy, who didst proclaim that the partying had grown too great, for we didst ignore him in his wo, and we didst dance about him while singing “Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang.”

5       And Poppy did ride forth on his horse, Miss Kitty, to practice much with the volunteer mounted posse, so that he might sally forth to apprehend those that did wickedly at “The Loop,” a place of much buying and selling and movie watching and petty theft.

6       And I, even the keeper of the records of my people, did accidently becometh a senior at Rollins College, in the land known as Winter Park. And many were astonished.

7       Even Aric, the eldest, did becometh engaged to one Lauren of Saint Cloud and there was rejoicing and thanks given.

8       In this selfsame year of 2012, Heather and Phillip didst begat Griffen, the last boy of four, in addition to Zoe. And Zoe didst weep when told that she wouldest have yet another brother.

9       In the same way, Maren and T. J. didst bring forth Hero, their second of two daughters, and they didst open a business on Fairbanks which they calleth “The Salon” and they didst become a small business and they didst “build that” themselves, yea after they were blessed by one who is called “rich.”

10    And the youngest of our offspring, even Adam, and his goodly wife Sarah waited with thanksgiving for the third of three daughters to be born unto them. And Emma didst rejoice in a sister in that she didst believe that a brother wouldest be a lot of trouble and wouldest want “to wrestle her up” like unto Zoe’s brothers who didst “wrestle up” all they saw.

11    And thus ended the twelfth year of the twenty-first century and we grew strong in the land of the three sides and we believed that our God did go before us as a pillar of fire, leading us in the way of truth and happiness.