By Daris HowardGazette Contributor I was tucking my pants down into my work boots before we started the job ahead of us. “Why are you doing that?” Butch asked.“Well,” I answered, “when we load the bales off of the ground, they almost always have mice under them, and I don’t want any of them running inside my pant leg.”
Buster didn’t like the sound of that, and he started tucking his pants inside his boots too.
Butch and Buster, brothers, had come over to give me a hand loading hay. It was spring time and we were getting down to the final layers of last year’s crop. During the winter, the mice like to tunnel under the bales to keep warm. There they would have huge families, and when we loaded the last of the bales, mice would scatter everywhere.
The wild cats, that called our farm home, would hang around the edges to see if they could pick up dinner while we worked. The mice, trying to keep away from the cats, looked for any hiding place they could find. I had already had the unpleasant experience of having them find that hiding place up my pant leg, and I didn’t relish the thought of it happening again.
As Buster and I continued to tuck our pants into our boots, Butch started to mock us.
“Oh, you two are a couple of big sissies. Why, I wouldn’t be afraid of no itty, bitty mouse. Besides, if you were as fast on your feet as I am, no mouse would have a chance to go up your pant leg.”
He then went on to expound to us how, when he was a boy growing up in the mountains of West Virginia, he had hunted mountain lions and all sorts of really frightening creatures.
The truth was, Butch and Buster had moved out here when they were about eight and nine years old, and though we were only about twelve, I still doubted Butch had done half of the things he claimed.
We started loading the truck with the old bales. The ones on the outer edge didn’t show many signs of mice, but as we worked farther toward the center, we started seeing more and more tunnels. Then came the moment we expected. We turned a bale and a mouse dashed under the bale closest to it. As we continued removing bales, more and more mice would be there, and would race to the closest tunnel.
Then came the time when, like musical chairs, there were more mice than tunnel entrances. One huge, fat mouse, about the size of a Chihuahua, turned and saw the dark opening of Butch’s open trouser leg. As it entered, Butch let out a yelp and started to dance like he was discoing to acid rock. But the more he tried to shake the mouse out, the farther up the tunnel it sought safety.
When it reached the top of his leg, it climbed to safety where the pant legs joined. When it lodged itself in there at that very critical, private juncture, Butch started to holler as if he would die. He screamed for someone to “... Kill it! Kill it quick!”
Now, Butch and Buster weren’t necessarily known for thinking clearly under pressure. At Butch’s screams, Buster reached for a handy, nearby shovel. He wound up like a baseball player planning to knock a ball out of the park. He swung so hard he took Butch’s feet right out from under him. When Butch came down, his head hit the ground first, but it wasn’t his head he was holding as he curled up in the fetal position and groaned.
“Hey Butch, did I kill it?” Buster asked. “Did I? Did I?”
“I don’t know,” Butch groaned. “But if you did, that’s not the only thing that’s going to die today when I get so I can walk again.”
Buster realized Butch was talking about him, and mockingly rolled his eyes. “You mean if you get so you can walk again. And ‘if’ is a mighty big word, Butch.”
(Daris Howard, award-winning, syndicated columnist, playwright, and author, can be contacted at daris@darishoward.com; or visit his website at http://www.darishoward.com)
Mountain Gazette editor M. John Fayhee on the benefits of going off-route, getting lost, and not marking your path.