Chinchilla Wrestling

 

I am baby-sitting my granddaughter’s chinchilla while she is on a mission for our church. She’s out there talking to people about the meaning of life and living and the point of it all. (Zoe, the granddaughter, not the chinchilla.) 

She’s having a ball. (Zoe, the granddaughter, not the chinchilla who is also a girl.)

Actually, the chinchilla is also having a ball. Literally. She has a big plastic ball that she rolls around inside. She also has a dust bath, three-story cage, big wheel, wooden house, assorted toys, hunks of volcanic stone to sharpen her teeth on, and a human slave—me. 

The chinchilla’s name is Chee-Chee.

Chee-Chee does a good impression of being a grumpy teenager. Once in a while, she enjoys a good chin rub.

Mostly she is not in the mood and barks, jumps, and threatens with her tiny teeth. Everyone is terrified of her. 

Chinchillas eat copious amounts of timothy pellets or chinchilla chow, actual timothy hay, the bark off of teething sticks, and various nuts and seeds. NOTE: Chee-Chee digs raisins also terrorizing humans. 

Recently (a time not so far in the past so recently) Chee-Chee and I got in a fist fight. 

I shuffled to her cage with a plastic scoop filled with chinchilla pellets. Chee-Chee the chinchilla, in a show of grumpy dominance raced over, grabbed the edge of the plastic scoop with her tiny chinchilla hands, and started yanking the scoop out of my hand. 

We commenced wrestling. She yanked. I pulled. She yanked harder. Chinchilla chow dribbled from the side of the scoop. She put her back into it.

“Let go of that!” I yelled. 

We wrestled on.

Absurdity mixed with indignation. This dang creature weighs nothing under all that fur and she was winning. I started to laugh.

“I mean it,” I spluttered, “you cannot win.” Laughing turned to bigger laughing and a bit of hysterical chortling.  

And that made me pee my pants.

And that made me laugh harder, also pee harder. 

What? 

Urinating is often used in the animal kingdom as a form of self-defense in dangerous or tense situations. Toads pee on kids when they pick them up all the time; everyone knows it.

It felt like I was wrestling that mammal for my life.

Therefore . . . I’m a toad. I’m a toad attacked by a chinchilla that defended itself in a time honored, natural way.

What did I learn? I learned that to feed Chee-Chee I need to wait until her back is turned and sneak the food into her cage.

I am a toad who can be taught.

Linda (Tinkle Time) Zern

Lightning Rod

 We live in the lightning capital of the world. Hush. Don’t argue with me. I’m not in the mood.

We live in the lightning capital of the world. 

When summer arrives in the Central Florida, lung sucking heat arrives with it. Humidity smacks you in the face like a hammer. The will to live dwindles. 

However . . . as sure as the sun rises, thunder storms (storms full of thunder) arrive with the brain smashing heat. In the afternoon, the heat rises, the skies lower, black clouds boil across the sky. Various farm animals race for shelter.

The air takes on a pregnant, expectant quality: breathless and heavy. Wind races ahead of the rain, trashing trees and hairdos. 

And then the pregnant sky’s water breaks. Bam! With the rain comes the lightning. 

In Florida, we learn early on to count between the flash and the explosion: one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi . . . 

Each Mississippi equals a mile, or that’s the rumor.

Expect when you can’t even get the “M” out of your mouth before the freaking fireball is cracking the concrete of the back patio. Lightning is fast, sure, and total. I know. I’ve seen it.

My husband and I watched a recent storm thrash its way across the yard, standing on our back covered porch. Ratty tree limbs crashed to the ground. Leaves whipped in tiny tornado swirls. I stood in water up to my neck . . . okay . . . okay maybe not my neck, but it was damp under my bare feet. I wrapped myself more tightly in my leopard print bathrobe. 

Lighting blazed behind the barn, once and then again.

“Wow, that was close . . .” I began as a flash of light ballooned into a freaking fireball straight in front of us. The thunder did a good, good job of imitating mortar fire from an invading militia.

Explosion joined screaming mixed with shouting.

“Lightning just hit that tree,” my husband (Captain Obvious) observed. 

I screamed some more and ran for the kitchen door. It was locked. Shouting, I started pounding on the kitchen door. “It’s locked. Let me in,” I howled, “let me in.”

Captain Obvious spit out, “Who are you yelling for? No one is in there. We are out here. You’re ridiculous.”

“Why do you always lock me out?” I countered. “I’m the only robber you ever lock out.” Howls and nuttiness mixed in my brain with visions of flaming fireballs. “I have no shoes on. You have shoes on.”

“You’re crazy. It’s too late.”

And it was true. The fireball had exploded against the Maple tree, the lightning traveling through its roots under the patio, cracking the concrete in three places and popping several pavers up and out of their spots. 

And that’s how I know we live in the lightning capital of the world. It tried to blow us up but only got the patio.

Linda (Lightning Rod) Zern

Old, Older, Oldest

 

I knew my husband and I were officially old when I heard myself saying, “Honey, do I have a neck hump?”

And he said, “Hang on. I have to put on my glasses.”

Because he couldn’t see my neck hump WITHOUT HIS GLASSES.  What the what?

Supposedly, age is just a number. Sort of.

Another sign that you’ve reached a questionable age of advanced decrepitude: When you’re sitting around with your peer group and the conversation goes a little something like this.

“Look at my fungus toe.”

The looking commenced. The conversation continued.

“That’s nothing. Look at my fungus toe.” Open toed sandals were kicked off, willy-nilly, and fungus toes were displayed with abandon.

“So what’s everyone doing about their fungus toes?”

My brain shut off at that point because my neck hump was giving me a fit.

Neck hump comes from looking down . . . for . . . every day of a long and fruitful life. Think about it. Try to sweep your floor, vacuum that rug, wash those dishes, fold those clothes, change those diapers, mop up that puppy tinkle, paint those baseboards, dispose of that dead (roach, fly, beetle, lizard) corpse WITHOUT LOOKING DOWN. 

Go ahead, try it. I’ll hold your coat while I practice good posture.

And when you’ve spent fifty to sixty years checking those memos from the boss or typing up notes from 6,000 pointless meetings you’ve had to attend, the hump is the least of your worries. 

Let’s not even talk about Menopause “apron.”

Recently, a gentleman in our church was asked to help oversee the activities of our young  men’s program. The gentleman in question was . . . well . . . not in the generation identified with one of those letters (Gen Z, X, Omega.)

 

“Do you think he can keep up with those young men?” Concern was expressed. 

Are you kidding? Have you seen the neck, gut humps on some of those Gen X, texting maniacs? According to my doctor, even the young and newly hatched are evolving bone hooks on their spine bones from excessive head forward, down looking, screen scrolling. By the time they are my age they’ll look like those vultures in that Disney “Jungle Book” cartoon. 

Sheesh. My neck trouble didn’t show up until I’d spent sixty-five years grinding my teeth and enduring a lifetime of mocking head shaking from the young and super keen.

All I know is this. Neck hump comes for everyone in the end, and the pelvis is the one bone in the body that is gender specific. Getting older means you’ve learned stuff, a lot of stuff. Some of it is helpful. Some of it helps you win at trivia games. And some of it annoys the young and newly hatched. 

“Stand up straight or you’re going to become a hunch back, and put your shoes on before you get toe fungus.”

Linda (Down But Not Out) Zern