Finally making the transition…

it’s taken nearly fifteen years, but it’s finally happening.

after spending our first forty years on the left coast…eating sprouts and avocados…saving whales…hugging trees…voting for actors posing as politicians…enjoying the surf and snow…befriending illegals…and riding out the aftershocks of earthquakes…i think we are finally becoming texans.

how do i know?  i may be ready to buy a gun.  let me explain…

for the past six months, we have been harassed by mice and rats at the farra cabana.  first it was this summer.  thought we had tackled the problem, but somehow…before they died…they must have contacted their cousins and told them we were pretty easy targets, being from california and all.

so the extended family moved in about a month ago.

being the ungracious hosts that we are, we began putting out poison cubes (which we are convinced they just carted off and used for furniture in their little rodent family rooms) and a big honkin’ trap.

a few days ago, the trap caught a big one by the nose and, after it had drug it’s sorry little body around our kitchen floor for a while during the night, it finally gave up the ghost.

now here’s the part that made me fall more madly in love with wanda than i ever thought possible.  instead of waking me up in the morning to do the dirty work of picking it up and tossing it in the trash…she did it all on her own!  then she cleaned up the blood and washed the floor and when she told me about it, i asked her if she was okay with dealing so closely with the death of one of god’s creations?

“nope.  it got what it deserved.”  no remorse.  no sadness.  pretty much pure bloodlust.

this morning, i caught another one…with a pot.  i snuck up on it (though i think it was a little punch drunk from eating the poison…it moved as slow as i do most mornings), put the pot over the top of it,  slid a piece of cardboard under the pot, dumped the rat in in a plastic grocery bag, tied the top and layed it on the garage floor.

i was watching the bag move around when it happened.  my inner, tranquil, ex-hippie peace and love demeanor was taken over.  a cosmic compulsion grabbed my ecologically correct, california heart.  without hesitation, without conscience, without compassion…i reached for my shovel leaning against the corner of my garage…and with a swift, calculated, determined explosion, i totally lumberjacked that bag, and it’s contents, into a perfectly flat pancake.

with what looked  like a cherry-raspberry syrup oozing from inside the bag.

and with that “yeah, i’m bad…i just hit a walk-off homerun in the bottom of the ninth” arrogance, i bent over picked up the bag and threw it in the trash can.

no remorse.  no bad feelings.  no guilt.  no bad dreams tonight.  just the pure satisfaction of a man who has protected his house and his woman from the evil intruder.

i live in texas now, dad gummit!  i’m a man.  i’m wild at heart.  i can kill things.  i think i need a gun.

i wonder if walmart has any of those “super power soakers” in stock?