Dogs know what to do with polls
by Robert LaFrance
There’s
no need of commenting further on the recent New Brunswick election result
because it’s all been said and we’re no farther ahead than we were a minute
after the polls closed. John Diefenbaker once said that dogs know what to do
with polls (pee on them in spite of the different spelling) but humans don’t.
Just one
final comment on the election that has, more or less, resulted in a minority
government, Vanessa Vander Valk, host of the CBC Radio show ‘Shift’, referred
to it as a manure-tea government. I don’t know for sure if she said that
deliberately.
Changing the subject a bit, here
are a couple of medical questions: How do you make an artesian well, and how do
you make a Venetian blind? Somebody was talking about that yesterday as I was
dozing in my easy chair. It reminded me of my youthful days living in Artesia,
which is a small country just south of Kosovo, and also when I was making a
living as a chauffeur in Venice, Italy. I don’t care to go there again. It’s
hard work, poling those kayaks up and down the canals. There I go, talking
about polls again.
It’s that time of year again, fall;
it’s named ‘fall’ because that’s what happens to my spirits every October. I
remember doing a fist pump when the first robin appeared in April, but now a
gaggle of Canada Geese just flew over as I was pruning some apple trees and
when I saw them, I immediately walked into the house and quaffed a water glass
filled with Teacher’s Highland Cream scotch whisky – or was it whiskey? It didn’t
matter.
When I went back outside, I noticed
that the geese, rather than flying in their usual “V” formation, seemed to be
making the shape of a human hand with middle finger upraised. “Same to you!” I
shouted. I get a little rude in October.
There sure is a lot of wildlife
around here this time of year; the bears appreciate all the work I do in my
orchard during the summer and they leave their calling cards all around my
apple trees. Some of the calling cards are just barely short enough, as the
Tilley expression goes, “for two big men to shake hands over”.
A porcupine has been chewing away at
the boards of my garage step where I usually keep a bag of salt just in case
there is some ice each winter; it seems a bit late for this, but a fawn whose
mummy I hope is around somewhere keeps wandering across the front lawn, and on
different days I counted three kinds of woodpeckers down by the garage – downy,
hairy and pileated. Another one I saw was a yellow-bellied sapsucker which I think
is also a woodpecker.
In addition to all that, the
raccoons are also on the prowl, as are the skunks and the moose whose sexual
desires make them fair game for the hunters who can also be called ‘wildlife’
if one can judge by the various coloured wineskins and other alcohol-filled
containers the hunters lug around in case they get thirsty. Late last month
there seemed to be more hunters than trees and they ‘harvested’ dozens of moose
from around these parts.
Many of the winter birds have shown
up. I didn’t see a chickadee all summer and now I’m tripping over them. They
represent the smaller examples of wildlife but the most annoying of all are the
field mice that are now coming into our house as well into as many others. The
cold weather does that, and thanks a lot, Mother Nature. In the past week we
have spent $673.90 in mousetraps, mouse ‘bait’ (as if I wanted to fry them up
like brook trout), and various kinds of sticky paper, ultrasonic light beams –
anything except a cat. I am not a fan.
All those who tend to get nervous when
weird things happen had better sit down before I tell you what I am about to
tell you. It was a shocker to me as well.
I was visiting my daughter who lives
in the Woodstock area when I chanced to stop at a little grocery store near her
home. This is where the shocking thing happened. I went into the little store
that had the obligatory hardwood floors that squeaked and groaned for anyone
who walked on them and I walked around the whole place until I stopped at a
spot that had shelves filled with things like hand soap and other kinds of
cleansing materials.
Hold on to your hat. I looked at the
shampoos and, imagine my surprise, that little store had real shampoo. There was no
‘moisturizer’ in it, no lanolin, no dermatologist approved Aussie sensitive skin
compound; it was just shampoo, period.
Shaken and trembling, I asked the
clerk if she had a case of that shampoo. She had two cases. I bought them and left her a $20 tip. I have
been looking for shampoo since 1959.
-end-
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