Regicide

When I told you about our new Welsummer rooster, a couple of you mentioned your own unpleasant experiences with Welsummer roosters. The exact word used, in fact, was "jerk."

Ours wasn't a jerk. He was a complete asshole.

First he flew at A., who promptly thrashed him in the hopes that would teach him a lesson.

Then he jumped at the MiL, who chased him off with the help of the dogs.

At this point, I told A. the rooster was going to have to go. He was obviously too chuffy for his own good. Or rather, for MY good.

And then he attacked Cubby in the dog pen, spurring Cubby (slightly) on the back before I could chase him off by whacking him with the shepherd's crook. I had to hit him hard multiple times to get him to back off.

A. cut off his head today. I plucked him, A. eviscerated him, and he's going to be our Mother's Day dinner. That'll learn the bastard.

Spurring my son was the wrong move for him, obviously. Bet he'll taste good, though.

You tried to tell me. And so I will now add my warnings to yours: Avoid the Welsummer rooster. Unless you're a fan of aggressive assholes.

Gross, Grosser, and Grossest

Yesterday when I lifted up the garden cloth to check on the (non-existent, dammit) germination of my carrot and beet seeds, I nearly had a heart attack when I saw a dead snake glaring up at me. It was just a garter snake or something--we don't have poisonous snakes here--but its mouth was wide open and it looked for all the world as if it were about to strike.

Except it had been dead for awhile and baking under that cloth, so it was quite dry and definitely dead. No idea why it died under there. I chucked it over the fence, thinking maybe the chickens would eat it. They did not, and I was startled anew every time I walked by the damn thing on the way to the garden. I finally threw it in the gully today.

That's gross.

A. is even now filleting a dozen or so small perch he caught with Cubby in the lake today. No greater love hath a father than to fillet multiple tiny fish for his son. I was sitting out there keeping him company as the darkness fell on the nicely rain-dampened property when I noticed an enormous worm coming up out of a crack between the stones of the patio. Then I saw more and more night crawlers squirming up out of the cracks, like some kind of science fiction movie.

That's grosser.

Just as A. had started his long filleting job, I walked out on the patio and saw a small creature in the flower bed under the magnolia tree not ten feet from where he was standing. I thought it was a baby woodchuck or something, but it wasn't acting wild. It was just kind of wandering around slowly and pointlessly, despite the two humans and three dogs in the near vicinity.

I brought it to A.'s attention, asking him if it was a baby woodchuck. He was about to set Otty on it (his preferred method of despatch for varmints, you may recall) when he realized it was a poisoned rat. So I brought the dogs inside and A. thumped the rat with a shovel till it was dead.

That is OH MY GOD THE GROSSEST.

P.S. I wrote this last night, but then our Internet connection wasn't working so I couldn't post it. Now I'm too lazy to go through and change it all to the past tense, so there you are.

The Good with the Bad

Yesterday was the fifth of May. In case you didn't know. The fifth of May is not just the fifth of May for those of us who look for any excuse to eat guacamole. It's Cinco de Mayo. And unlike the first Cinco de Mayo we celebrated at Blackrock, it was unseasonably warm and sunny yesterday.

A sunny, warm Cinco de Mayo? We know what that means: frozen margaritas for all!

You know how to make good frozen margaritas? Lemme tell you how I make good frozen margaritas. Limeade. Yup, the frozen stuff in a can from the supermarket. Limeade plus triple sec plus tequila plus lots of ice in a blender and that's one delicious margarita.

We didn't have any limeade on hand, but we did have LOTS of limes, so I squeezed and squeezed and squeeeezed some more, until my hands were tired and there was enough lime juice in the blender. Then, instead of making simple syrup, I dumped in the remains of some peach syrup left from thawing frozen peaches.

Turns out the only thing better than frozen margaritas on a sunny Cinco de Mayo evening is peach frozen margaritas on a sunny Cinco de Mayo evening. DAMN THAT'S GOOD.

Then we ate guacamole and salsa and chips and chili and roasted squash, with Mr. Jason as our dinner guest. He used to live in Arizona too, so he gets Cinco de Mayo. Also, he wanted to go fishing on the glassy-calm lake in the canoe with A. and Cubby.

So after dinner, they set out to troll in the canoe. I did a million dishes and then sat on the porch reading for awhile and admiring the astonishing sunset. Around eight, I went down to the beach to wave them in, since it was already past Cubby's bedtime. They were nowhere in sight. And they didn't appear until the sun was down and it was almost dark, WAAAAY past Cubby's bedtime. They had caught a few perch, and just as I was starting to bring Cubby up to the house for bed, Mr. Jason caught a pretty big pickerel from our dock.

That's a good day.

Unfortunately, the good day was followed by a not-good night with Charlie after I got to bed too late myself. And that not-good night was in turn followed by a painfully early morning, with both kids up and cranky at 5:30 a.m.

So I spent today so damn tired I felt woozy. But you know, we all take the good with the bad. And yesterday was good.

I'll take it.