Do
pigs need air traffic controllers?
by
Robert LaFrance
There’s an old French expression
(from 1849) “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose”. It
means, as we all know by now, “the more
things change, the more they stay the same”.
At
this point it would be easy to descend into politics (attack ads, $90,000
secret payments, etc.), but I think it would be better to keep this discussion
on a higher level – trash.
On
many, many occasions on the mornings following the pickup of trash, I have
noticed that certain driveways ALWAYS have loose garbage spread all over them.
It’s true - always the sames ones. That’s the kicker: every week and I mean
EVERY week, the same people must go out onto their driveways after they come
home from wherever they’ve been and pick up the trash that has obviously been
spread there by large birds and small animals.
What
is astounding, even though it shouldn’t be, is that it never seems to occur to
these people that they should really give a thought to doing something about
it. Here are a few suggestions.
Never,
never put food into your trash; put it into your compost pile or take it out
into the woods for Johnny Wolverine. If you put food wrappers into the garbage,
wash them so there’s no scent of food. If you are going to put a half-eaten
rack of lamb in there, you can expect the little carnivores to tear open your
garbage bag. That’s their job – staying alive, as John Travolta would say.
Put
your garbage in a container, preferably a metal one with large metal
electrified jaws and an ultrasonic alarm if any creature should come near. I
put my garbage in a steel barrel that has the bottom out. The creatures don’t
like metal, just as I don’t like heavy metal, and don’t touch it.
There
was my advice. I am sure that next week I will not see any more driveways
littered with trash. Wait! What’s that flying over? Somebody’s going to be
missing a few pigs. They’re migrating north to Eureka, Nunavut, their summer
nesting grounds.
*******************
And
people thought federal cabinet ministers didn’t want to take any initiative,
that they were just keeping out of sight until they get their pensions or that
expense account cheque comes in. Hah! There was a time (pre-Stephen Harper)
when they were extremely active and I’m going to give you a recent example from
the book ‘Right Honourable Men’ by Michael Bliss.
In
the year 1899 – okay, not THAT recent – Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier, who
just plain could not understand economics, had just given a speech to a group
of businessmen near Toronto. He had made just about every mistaken assumption
there was, and was on his way to deliver another similar speech somewhere else.
Finance
Minister W. S. Fielding, who was travelling with Laurier, couldn’t allow that
to happen. He instructed an aide to get rid of the speech. The aide took the
speech out of Laurier’s luggage and threw it – the speech, not the luggage –
into the Teeswater River as they crossed on the Paisley, Ontario bridge.
Laurier never knew what happened to his papers, but after that he stuck to
speeches written by people who knew what they were talking about.
Picture
that being done to one of Harper’s speeches. The culprit would find his head
impaled on a pikestaff in front of the War Museum.
*********************
Shortly
after I had tripled the amount of her life insurance, my wife and I were
walking along the edge of a high riverbank along the Tobique River when I
spotted a bottle floating downstream, which, when you think about it, is the
logical direction for it to float.
Since
she wouldn’t go down the vertical bank to the rocks below and try to retrieve
it, it was up to me. After all, it could have been from somebody shipwrecked
and needing help. Maybe they were stranded without food or water on Reed’s
Island or somewhere up that way.
It
was a Diet Coke bottle, and inside really was a note. It said: “Help, I need
$90,000! Send cash to M. Duffy, Ottawa, and definitely not Cavendish, PEI!” I
didn’t know what that was all about, but my wife looked at it and said it
looked as if it were a hoax. That was before she accidently pushed me into the
river. I did manage to get out – barely.
When
we got home, the phone rang. It was the insurance company. “Mr. LaFrance, would
tell your wife that her request to quadruple your life insurance coverage went
through yesterday as requested?”
Boy, you can’t trust
anybody nowadays!
-end-
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