The Tale of the Faux Toupee

Our five-pound Yorkshire terrier, Ploodle, does not go to a dog groomer. His mother puts a bowl on his head and cuts his hair with loving hands at home. I am Ploodle's stylist.

I also own the bowl. 

When Ploodle looks like a possessed oven mitt, I know it is time to "trim him up." When I'm done he often looks idiotic. Sometimes, for a bit of whimsy, I leave the hair on his legs longish so that he looks like he's wearing UGG boots. People laugh at him, but he's a very secure fellow and has a fine self-deprecating sense of humor.

After giving Ploodle a crew cut in honor of crew cut awareness week, I ended up with a tiny haystack of fuzzy Yorkie hair that I wrapped in a towel (for immediate disposal in the garbage), but then I forgot and stuffed the towel with the whole hairy mess in the wash machine, which got washed on the "Heavy" cycle, probably more than once, and then got stuffed into the dryer and dried on "High Heat-Cottons."

The haystack of Ploodle hair turned into a toupee--a bad one.

I called my husband.

"Honey, I can't find it."

He's used to getting phone calls from me, in the middle of the day, that contain little or no context, information--or sense. He's used to not knowing what the heck is going on.

"What? What can't you find?"

"The toupee."

There was a pause. It might have been beyond pregnant.

"Remember?" I said, frustrated anew at my husband's lack of mind reading talent. "Remember? That wad of Ploodle hair I showed you; the wad of hair that kind of got cooked in the dryer into a giant placemat and that ended up looking like it was made of Yeti armpit fur? Remember?"

The memory came back with a thud. I know; I heard a thud sound.

"Oh right, it was disgusting."

"Okay, so I put it in the bathroom garbage, but now I can't find it."

"Well I don't have it." Sherwood is working in Detroit.  He flies home on the weekends so I can keep him up to date on important stuff.

I wandered through the house trying to decide if I had dreamed the whole dog hair toupee incident.

"I can't find it anywhere." I noticed another one of the dogs wearing what looked like a mustache. "Wait a minute. Either Coco is trying out a disguise, or I think I'm onto the location of the missing toupee." I followed a breadcrumb trail made out of dog hair toupee bits.

Still talking to Sherwood, I walked into our bedroom. Ginger, our soldier son's English Bull-dog, looked up, her mouth full of either the butt end of a molting moose or the missing hairpiece.

"Never mind. I found it."

"Thank goodness. For a minute there I was afraid that you were going to accuse me of having packed the darned thing." He clicked off.

Ploodle stood by, looking embarrassed.

"What are you embarrassed about? It's just hair.  I got all the way to the gym with a piece of that white sticky tape from a lint roller stuck in my waistband, trailing out like a castle banner. And some woman walked by, saw it, made a face AND DIDN'T BOTHER TO SAY ANYTHING."

Ploodle had the good grace to blink.

"That's right; just about the time I think I'm looking hip, fit, and cool, it's a safe bet that something ridiculous is going to be stuck in or on the back of my pants."

Ploodle wagged his nubby little tail.  I sighed.

"I'm just glad it wasn't your dog hair toupee stuck to my pants. Wouldn't that have been hard to explain?"

Ploodle, Ginger, Coco and I decided to go play jump over the horse poop piles until dinner.

Linda (Close Shave) Zern 

  

Bucolic Bird Brain

I recognized that look as I stared at vacant eyes, gaping mouth and body language that screamed, "Feed me!" I remembered that look, sitting on my couch.  I knew a hungry teenager when I saw one.

The problem was that this "teenager" was a bird--A BIRD--a half grown scruffy-feathered, gap-beaked blue jay bird, and it wanted to be fed. Typical. I had just scratched up an earthworm with my garden rake. What could it hurt? I fed the earthworm to the scraggly blue jay teenager bird. It was a bucolic, earthy gardener's moment. Charming.

It was also summertime. Our air conditioner was broken. Typical. So, I called the AC man, a nice congenial man with interesting tattoos on his large muscles. He looked like he could tunnel out of a prison or had.  He arrived and got to work puttering around the air conditioning unit. I puttered around my garden.

The entire time I had that strange, eerie feeling that someone was watching me . . . and yelling at me. Typical.

There it was, plopped on a mulch pile--slouching, staring, and yelling--the blue jay teenager bird. Not only was the pimply bird slouching, it looked like it needed a shave and some deodorant. Typical.

I walked closer. Its mouth gaped open. I attempted to shoo it away. Its mouth gaped wider. I talked to it and said, "What's your deal?" Its mouth almost unhinged at the jaw. I recognized that look. It wanted to be fed--again.

Get a job, I thought.

The AC man finished his puttering and brought me the bad AC news. We stood shoulder to shoulder, the invoice on his clipboard a history of AC neglect. He gave me the total.  I sighed. I wrote a check.

Blue jay teenager bird, its tiny brain firing on all 1.5 cylinders, recognized "worm-getting-lady." It sailed, erratically, from the top of the mulch pile, past my face, to land on AC man's shoulder. I screamed. AC man used his large muscles to toss his clipboard. AC man screamed. The teenager bird's mouth gaped open. It didn't budge from its shoulder perch.

I thought I should explain why I had collapsed onto the ground.

"I'm so sorry. The baby bird thinks that I'm its mother. I fed it a worm. It startled me."

AC man tried to dislodge the blue jay teenager bird from his shoulder. It reluctantly flew away to a nearby tree branch.

"Wow, how amazing was that?" I said, trying to sound like Snow White, who had the power to sing birds out of trees and was used to them landing on various body parts.

"Lady, you shouldn't scream like that." He took my check and retreated to his work van.

I took my rake and retreated to my garden just as the blue jay teenager bird (once again recognizing "worm-getting-lady") dove at my head from the tree branch. It crash-landed onto my hair. I screamed the scream of the banshee and began running blindly, flailing wildly, and sobbing hysterically. The blue jay teenager bird's mouth gaped open as it clung to my wildly bobbing head.

AC man's van, its window tinted, never moved even though the engine was running. I streaked across the yard, back and forth, in front of the work van. The bird rode on my head like it was waiting for the eight- second count in a bull riding competition. I thought I detected the soft lilt of laughter, but seeing as how my screaming went on for while, I could be mistaken about that.

Finally, blue jay teenager bird noticed a fat grub on the ground and flew off in an attempt to feed itself. And that's how I became an empty nester.

I promise; this story is true, mostly. It is an example of creative non-fiction, which is the truth dressed up to go to a party.  For example, I could have been wearing a hat, but it's funnier if the bird landed in my hair.

Happy spring,

Linda (worm-getting-lady) Zern  

"Feed me!"

     

On My Own, Pretending Todd Gives a Crap

Feral pigs rampaged through the yard, dangerously close to my leaf lettuce and loofah gourds.  They were followed closely by bobcats, looking for take-out for their kittens. Coyotes howled in the distance.

Not to worry I thought. There are county agencies, programs, divisions, organizations, and entire tasks forces dedicated to solving all my troubles. Right? My local government would help I thought. Someone is out there waiting for my phone call, sitting eagerly behind a government-issue metal desk in quiet anticipation of being of service—to me.

 Okay, sometimes I’m a giant nitwit.

“Hello, this is Osceola County Animal Control. My name is Todd. How can I help you?”

Trying to win friends and influence Todd, I went for lighthearted.

“Hey there, Todd. I need to talk to your Feral Pig, Bobcat, Coyote Division.”

Todd was a dud and not easily influenced.

“Lady, it’s just me.” Another phone rang in the background. “Hang on,” he said. When he returned he was still not up for silliness or joshing about.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I just need some info on the rampaging wildlife around here. I don’t want to get in any trouble, trying to do the right thing, be responsible, educated myself—that kind of thing. So, what’s the scoop on feral pigs? I just put in my spring gar . . . ”

“Not our responsibility, the federal government is supposed to be taking care of the feral pig population.” He did not sound like a true believer of anything.

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine somewhere in the bowels of a stately federal government building all the way up there in Washington DC, a kindly government worker, shoulders hunched, glasses fogged, heart contracting and expanding with worry over the approximately five to 12,000 feral pigs threatening Linda L. Zern’s newly sprouted Golden Queen Corn crop. Couldn’t do it. Couldn’t make myself see it, no matter how hard I squished my eyes shut.

“In other words, no one cares. So, what if I shoot the suckers?”

Todd began to chant.

“You cannot discharge a firearm within . . .”

“Not a problem. I live out.” Todd continued to chant city regulations. “Out, Todd, out not in. Out. I have to call state troopers if I’m attacked by roving bands of man eating men—out, way out.” The chant grew fainter.

He finally paused and said, “You can call a trapper and trap the pigs.”

“What? Like a big game hunter? Or somebody who digs a big pit and fills it with giant mousetraps? What?”

Finding out that I lived outside the city limits changed Todd’s attitude toward me. He softened. He warmed up; he came clean.

“Well, I’ll tell you, lady. We tried trapping pigs once out Poinciana way. There were thirty or forty pigs tearing up the place. We trapped one, and then somebody came and shot the pig in the trap and stole the meat,” he paused and then spoke slowly and distinctly. “There’s no hunting season on pigs.”

He sighed and then had to take another phone call.

“What about bobcats?”

“We don’t catch those, but if you trap them we’ll come pick them up, and there’s a hunting season on bobcat.”

All I could picture was a box, a stick, a string, and a hotdog—also claw marks—lots and many claw marks.

“What about the coyotes? I just don’t want to shoot first and ask questions later; you know?”

“Nobody’s in charge of those things, and you ain’t going to trap them either. No way,” he paused and spoke very very slowly and distinctly, “and there’s no hunting season on coyotes.”

I realized that “no hunting season” was code for “fire at will.”

“Okay, then Todd, pretty much what I’m hearing here is ‘Lady, you’re on your own.’”

He made a non-committal snort noise and hung up.

I had more questions. Like, exactly what does Animal Control control? If I report a giant panda attack will I get more action?  If I shoot a giant panda, will I go to jail forever? If I’m attacked and eaten by a giant panda will you, Todd, be a pallbearer at my funeral?

Overall, it was good to have clarification on the bureaucratic process, because lady, trust me, you are on your own. Just ask Todd.

Linda (Stonewall) Zern