Pretty Shiny Things ...

On the East side of the property where I grew up, my Papaw had a Christmas tree farm. It was great, my sister and I loved it! Lots of baby Christmas trees all down the east side of the property. We would regularly play in the Christmas trees; we lived for games like hide-and-seek, race to the end of the row of Christmas trees, try to remember which Christmas tree we left our drink at, etc. 


During the most awesome time of the year, late spring/early summer, the Christmas trees were alive with all kinds of critters. Bird nests, insects, awesome black-and-yellow argiopes who would sit in their massively beautiful webs in between two Christmas trees. Occasionally there would be bunny nests under them, as well, if Blackjack or Fragile didn't find them and eat them. (Yes, the cat and dog were avid hunters of all things smaller than them ... )


One early summer, Lainey and I were playing in the Christmas trees when we spotted something we had never seen before. It was so pretty, like a little hunk of gold just sitting in the Christmas tree. After studying it for a while and deciding it didn't belong there, we carefully removed it and took it inside to show Mom.


Mom didn't know what it was either, but like most things we found for her that weren't alive, she put it in the corner shelf as a decoration. There it sat. Just sitting there on the shelf, looking all pretty and shiny, until one day when it was not so pretty and shiny anymore. It was open and disfigured, although we didn't notice until:


Mom had decided to go into the living room for who knows what. Maybe she was wanting to watch television or just sit on the couch. Still don't know, don't really care. That's when she noticed the coffee table was moving. And the floor. And the ceiling. Somehow, for no apparent reason, a load of cute little baby praying mantises had made their way into the house and had taken over.


It was a mantis war, right there smack-dab in the middle of our living room. There were baby mantises eating baby mantises who were just finishing up eating another mantis. According to my mom, the entire room looked like it was moving because of all the baby mantises crawling around and eating each other.


Much to Mom's dismay, she now had an infestation of mantises; she is not the lover of bugs like I am. After freaking out in a most unnerving manner, she was able to get to the phone and call my aunt. My aunt probably laughed hysterically before coming down to the house equipped with: A vacuum cleaner. She swept up all the baby mantises.


I'm not sure what happened to all those mantises. I don't know if they were set free or died in the vacuum bag. I hope they were set free, I should probably find out. 


Moral of the story: Yes, praying mantis egg sacs are gold and shiny and pretty. Just so you know. They don't belong in the house on a shelf for decoration.

Stray dogs don't care ...

I miss the house I grew up in. It was a great house in the middle of a bajillion acres. My great-grandpa built the house at the turn of the 20th century. It was small, but perfect. The house and the land had been in my family for forever. There were fields all around, bordered by a forest line.
One day, I woke up with my sister and I was going to build an iguana house. It might have been a ferret house, I don't really recall what type of house I was going to be building. Regardless of the type of house, I went out into the barn and started working on it. I was probably about 7 or 8. My dog Blackjack, the best dog that ever lived, took off across the field and was chasing some stray dogs. Laine and I decided to follow. We followed past the tree line for about 2 gazillion acres into the field behind the tree line.

Finally, the stray dogs disappeared out of sight, so it was just me, Laine and Blackjack out in the field of despair. We were so tired at this point, and lost. We had no idea which direction we had gone in because those crazy stray dogs didn't know where they were going, either. We gave up. We were going to die in this field. We had been out there for 6 hours already!

"We're going to die!" 

"Mom and Dad will NEVER find our bodies out here!"

"I love you Laine!"

"I love you Jase!"

Then, a ray of hope. A helicopter! We were saved!!

"They sent out a search party! Hooray!"

"We're going to stay alive!"

As we were watching the helicopter soar above us, our little hearts filled with hope. It had been 18 hours at this point. There we were, laying in the middle of the field, flopping around, too tired to go on, gasping because we were so incredibly thirsty after this whole thing. We watched desperately as the helicopter soared on, not seeming to notice our tired, dying bodies waving for them. We had to go on.


We walked to the other tree line - this one was behind that second field of despair we were in. We walked through the woods, barefoot and all. We finally came upon our second ray of hope: A friend of the family's house.  I had stepped on a thorn and was in a lot of pain. I was going to die a miserable death until we saw the house, I had accepted my fate. Death of starvation, dehydration and thorn. Our slow path toward death had already lasted 22 hours, so the house was our last chance.
We ran up to the house, screaming like wild animals at the thought of our rescue! We were so unbelievably happy! Until, that is, nobody answered the door. 

"Nobody's home!"

"We're still going to die!"

"Boooo-hoooo booo-hoooo sob sob sob"

We decided that maybe they were just taking a nap. So we did the only logical thing at that point. We crawled through the doggy-door (I know you're thinking how smart we must have been!). We were little and fit quite easily through the flap. To our despair, they weren't taking a nap. They were nowhere to be found. We felt a little awkward breaking into someone's home, even though we were in such dire circumstances. Had we not felt so awkward, we would have picked up the phone and called Mom and Dad. Hindsight's 20/20.

We had to continue on. All hope was lost, but we kept on going. I knew the road that the friend's house sat on. My mom's best friend lived on that road, too. So I told Laine we had to keep going.

"Come on, the house is this way, we're not far! We can make it! DON'T DIE ON ME NOW!"

Here we were, walking around the rural area, surrounded by fields and a few scattered houses. Just me, Laine and Blackjack. Blackjack didn't seem to mind, I think he secretly knew that we weren't going to die, despite our best efforts to convince him otherwise. In fact, I think he knew where we were the whole time. But despite how great of a dog he was (literally, the GREATEST DOG EVER), he never did learn how to speak human, therefore could not tell us which way to go.

I finally figured out we were going the wrong way. THE WRONG WAY! After 37 hours of being lost through fields of despair and thorns, doggy doors and forests, it was the WRONG WAY! All hope was lost of finding some way to get home via the help of people we actually knew; we decided to stop at a house. A big, 2-story house with a front porch and a cat. 

I mustered up the ability to knock on the door, despite not being allowed to talk to strangers. We needed grown-up help. A nice woman answered the door. I'm sure she was shocked at what she saw. Two little girls, completely filthy from head to toe. No shoes, ripped clothes, probably had leaves and dirt in our hair. It had been a long, perilous journey through the fields and forests of despair.

She gave us some lemonade and let us call Mom and Dad. Blackjack chased the cat up the tree. Mom and Dad came to the rescue, completely embarrassed by the whole fiasco. We jumped in the car, but Blackjack wouldn't get in. He took off towards home, and showed up about 1/2 hour after us.

Once we got home, we realized it had been less than 3 hours. 

Moral of the story: Stray dogs running through a field don't really care if you're following them or if you get lost. Don't do it.

Genesis is not a Christian band ...

My mom was/is awesome. My dad's awesome as well. They (my mom, particularly) were very concerned with the public school my little sister and I were attending. That school was implementing this New Age crap program. Some of it was scary. We had to close our eyes and pretend we were under water and some other absurd stuff. Well, I started having nightmares about being under the water, and my mom was fed up with this stuff they were teaching us little ones. We were in 2nd and 3rd grade at the time.

Being the mom that she was/is, she took on the school. It didn't work, but she tried. So, Mom and Dad found us a private school. A Christian private school. We were/are Christian, so this was cool. My sister and I were excited. A brand new school for our 3rd and 4th grade years! Wow! To make things even better, our best friends were coming with us. Their parents didn't like the other school, either.


We made some great friends. It was a little hard for 3rd- and 4th-graders to get accustomed to the new dress code and the Biblical teachings, but we managed, for the most part. 


Not long after we started at this new school, I was given an in-class assignment. It was a paper that all the kids in the class had to fill out. It was a paper with a table on it. Each square in the table asked us to fill out some information. I can't remember all of them, but it was kind of like a "get-to-know-you" paper. This is where I learned my lesson.

It's a little small, but each square says "favorite whatever" for those of you who don't like to squint

One of the squares on the paper said "Favorite Christian Band." Well, I filled that one in quickly. My FAVORITE CHRISTIAN BAND WAS ..... Genesis. That one was easy. I didn't listen to Christian music, I listened to classic rock with my dad (yes, he has awesome taste in music!). Well, "Genesis" had to be a Christian band. Genesis was the first book of the Bible, for Pete's sake! 


I was pretty proud of filling out my little "get to know you" paper assignment. Pretty darn proud, until the teacher told me that Genesis was not a Christian band. I think she may have even talked to my parents about it. I was dumbfounded. How could this be? Surely nobody would ever name their band the same name as the first book in the Bible UNLESS it was a Christian band, right? Wrong. I was pretty wrong. It wasn't the answer the teacher was looking for, I guess. 

This was one of my first ever research-what-you're-going-to-say-before-you-say-it moments. I must admit, this 4th grade get-to-know-how-dumb-you-are-assignment wasn't one to be researched. Who has to research what their favorite color is, things they like to do, their favorite food, their favorite Christian band? 


Moral of the story: You might only *think* you actually know what you're talking about. Be prepared to have another person come up and prove you wrong. It happens.