Invasion Of The Giant Caterpillar-Eating Bear
The other morning, seven o’clock, up to feed the horses.
“The WATER’S out!” Siobhan screamed in blind panic, Siobhan doesn’t get excited about much but the water being out is grounds for apoplexy.
“I’ve got to call Perry!”
Perry McNabb being our red haired jack-of-all-trades handyman. Want a new roof put on? Call Perry. Need your toilet fixed? Electric gate repaired? Lights rewired? More jobs for Perry. I’ve got to tell you, though, Perry can be a hard guy to find. When we first met him, he was available at a moment’s notice, but now that he has achieved near-legendary status in the handyman universe, it’s hard to even get a call-back. Once we called Perry and he was gallivanting around New York City. Last year, he was living it up with King Kamehameha on his palatial estate in Hawaii. It’s hard to shed a tear over the financial wellbeing of your blue-collar worker when the blue collar is made of velvet.
“Let’s go out and look around, Siobhan, maybe we can figure out what’s going on.”
“Alright, but we’ll probably still need Perry. He’s very good about coming when the water’s out.”
“Yeah, but the tramp steamers from Bali are so infrequent….”
Turns out some little animal had knocked the capacitor-containing cover off our pump’s capacitor box. Siobhan popped it back on and rushed to advise Perry that he needn’t interrupt his luau.
Next morning, same problem. This was getting a little annoying. Looked like we might need to put a fence around the well area or enclose it with one of those cute little sheds that cost a thousand dollars.
“Hey, Bill—look at this! The door to the tool shed is open. No armadillos are reaching that!”
“It must be a bear,” I told her. “People all around here are reporting bears lately. They’re looking for food.”
“Well, there’s no food out here unless he likes caterpillars. We’ve got plenty of them.”
“Yep, lots of protein.”
Siobhan eventually remembered that SHE might be the bear who accidentally left the tool shed open, but she’s not certain so the possibilities continue to abound. The pump has been knocked off three times now, always in the middle of the night. One of our neighbors suggested we hide out there with a shotgun and off the offender when he shows up. Hmm, let me think about this—sit up all night beset by ravenous insects, bored out of our minds or pop the box back together in the morning? We opt for box popping. And maybe building a fence. Not that a fence would be much good, of course, in restraining a hungry giant caterpillar-eating bear.
D-Day
Which could stand for Doom, I guess. Or Decision. Or Diagnosis. I’m going in tomorrow for my vast array of tests and procedures to determine the arcane reasons for the blood in my urine—which, by the way, has disappeared. You know you’re getting old when your entire day is reserved for medical business.
I start out at 9:50 at UF Dermatology, where Dr. Fisher and her band of skin whackers will remove yet another problem patch, this time from my collarbone. Usually, I have to wait around for an eternity while these folks take the thing back to the lab to make sure the “margins” are adequate and they don’t have to come back and snip off even more of what little skin I still have left. If they take too long, I risk being late getting to my CAT Scan appointment across town which is scheduled for noon. And if I’m late for that, it will be hard to make it on time for my cystoscopy in yet another building at two. Geez. I envision a scene like you might see on the old Beat The Clock TV show where I race madly from place to place, being snipped, diving into machines, taking clothes on and off while rabid host Bud Collyer shouts warnings and encouragement. All this and with no hope of earning a nice prize—unless that prize might be a clean bill of health, which means we still don’t know where that blood came from. Oh, well. I guess I’ll take that result over “Yes, Bill, we know exactly where that blood came from and we’re prepping the operating room for your immediate life-threatening surgery!” Brrrr. Suddenly, it’s cold around here.
Twenty Six Years Of Unwedded Bliss
When I first met Siobhan, I had 15 mares and I never got them all in foal the same year. They say if you get 75% of your mares in foal you’re doing pretty good and I was doing pretty good—but everybody aspires to Perfect.
“What do I get if we get all your mares in foal?” she wanted to know.
“Well, you get to come back next year,” I told her.
“It seems like I should get something extra for 100%,” she complained.
“Well, what do you want?”
“I’ll think about it and let you know.”
One hundred percent is folly. Nobody gets one hundred percent. Either the mare doesn’t cycle properly, you can’t get her to the stallion at the optimum time, the sperm is unreliable or some other compromising factor inhibits your chances. None of these factors bothered Siobhan, of course. And one day when I went out to the farm, she had neatly written on my blackboard (usually containing duties of the day): Dinner In Paris.
Whoa. Unless she was talking about Paris, Kentucky, that could run to a few dollars.
“Deal!” I told her, never for a minute thinking there was any chance in hell she could pull off this magic trick. Fifteen mares in foal indeed! As the breeding season progressed, however, the mares began getting in foal with startling regularity. Before I knew it, a half dozen were pronounced pregnant, then ten, then a dozen. We didn’t have ultrasound confirmation in those days, however, so I had to take her word for it.
“You can palpate them yourself,” she offered, but I passed on that one, being the trusting individual that I am. We had a few stragglers but all the mares eventually came around. Everybody was pregnant.
“It only counts if I have foals though, right?”
“Yup, it only counts if you have foals.”
And, of course, I did have foals, fifteen of them, healthy as could be. She followed that up by getting 14 of 15 the next year. So now, of course, she was owed, gulp, Dinner In Paris. These things, as everyone realizes however, take time.
The Lesser Gifts
Siobhan, of course, has not gone completely unrewarded over the last 26 years. She received her beloved Georgia O’Keeffe Red Poppy No. VI print in the Early Days—it hanging on the wall above our table in a St. Pete Beach restaurant where the helpful waiters had placed it, delighted to be in on the surprise. She got an exorbitant made-in Paris, at least, dress that is remindful of a soft light-green cloud and another one, equally account-draining, from L.A., a silver-and-black futuristic number that a woman from any planet would be proud to wear. She got blouses and pants and sweaters and jewelry and boots and even a concrete garden gnome. Although, I think she liked the water-lily best.
The water-lily, brilliantly white, calmly resided well out on a modest lake not far from where we live. We admired it often while passing by.
“You’d like to have that water-lily, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah, but it’s too hard to get.”
“I could probably go out there and get it for you.”
“What about the people who live in that house?”
“Well, the house is a long way from the pond. I don’t think they’d see us. And they wouldn’t even notice the water-lily missing—there are a bunch more of them up close to the house.”
Siobhan is very conservative in these matters. She is not one to creep on to other people’s property and make off with their flowers. No, that’s what she has me for. So we park the car at the side of the road where it will not be seen from the house. I have the notion that I will remove my shoes and socks, roll up my pants and move stealthily out to the water-lily. The pond laughs in my face with incredulity. It is, it seems, a much deeper lake than we had anticipated.
“C’mon, Bill—let’s forget about it. You can’t get out that far.”
I hate giving up on these little projects, however. “I’ll just take my clothes off,” I told her.
“But people can see you from the street! And maybe the house, too!”
“I’ll keep the underwear.”
“It’s very small underwear….”
“Big enough to beat the indecent exposure laws, though.”
I moved slowly out onto the pond, the extraterrestrial mud oozing between my toes as I waited for the local alligator or pond-monster to rear its ugly head. Eventually, I made it to the water-lily area—there were two of them almost together, peas in a pod. I pulled on one of them and it broke off. I happily headed back to present my gift to Siobhan.
“No! No!” she whisperyelled from the bank. “You need to pull it up by the ROOTS!”
Jesus H. Christ, I thought. The alligator/pond-monster isn’t going to let me flop around out here forever. But I went back and tugged on that water-lily. No dice. It wasn’t moving. I stooped down as far as I could without getting the nice water in my mouth and gave it another try. Grudgingly, it acceded. I trudged back with my prize, covered in pond scum. Siobhan was very excited. “It’s not Dinner In Paris,” I said. “Dinner In Paris would be easier.”
The Rest Of The Story
On March 26, we achieved our 26th year together in unspectacular fashion. Oh, we’ll probably go to Cedar Key or somewhere for a belated celebration, but nothing extraordinary. That comes next year, for in 2013, in July, we are going to Paris and Siobhan will finally get her long-promised dinner. Nobody can say Bill Killeen doesn’t stick to his bargains even if he can be a little pokey at times. I am not sure there will be any more water-lilies in anybody’s future, however.
That’s all, folks….
