Texas Tales -- Texas Ranching & Kids - Back In The Day

Who among us doesn’t believe (or wish) that at least one of our offspring will be a child prodigy, a genius or some sort of magnificent, exceptional human being? Well, in my case, I only took one shot at the great motherhood thingy and realized early on my chances were sketchy at best.

If, however, curiosity had been an indicator of intelligence; my son should have grown up to be another Einstein. From birth his interest in everything surrounding him was like a heat seeking missile. This trait was fairly controllable up until the time he was four. Prior to four my main concern was that he wouldn’t eat any of the bugs he was determined to inspect up close and personal or accidently get shipped off to Mexico in a bag of goat fur.

We lived on a central Texas ranch and there was no lack of interesting bugs, spiders and creepy crawlies to attract the interest of a small child. It didn’t take long for me to figure out which were the smart ones and which ones were stupid, stupid, stupid. I usually found the stupid ones in my son’s pockets when doing laundry.

That’s where I found the green lizard. I was turning pockets inside out and sorting clothes when suddenly the pocket I was attempting to turn -- moved! I dropped the pair of jeans like a hot branding iron and that’s when the lizard made his escape into my kitchen and subsequently into the living room. I don’t like lizards and beyond that I’m not even going to pick one up – much less live in the house with one.

The immediate question became how to get rid of the damned thing without totally destroying the house and my nerves. With a bit of creative thinking I decided to get my canister-type vacuum cleaner, take the head off the long cylindrical sweeper stick, turn the vacuum on and suck the lizard up – crossways – so the suction would keep him glued to the end of the nozzle long enough for me to take him outside, turn off the vacuum and set him free. The idea definitely had merit if I hadn’t drawn a stupid, non-cooperative lizard. I got the vacuum wand nozzle situated right over the middle of the lizard’s back and turned it on – and at exactly the same time the stupid thing turned to face the nozzle, head on and – zoop – down the nozzle he went and into the vacuum bag.

Now, for a fact, things like this happened to me on a regular basis and my busy, rancher husband rarely found those occasions amusing. It also never failed that every time I had to enlist his help there’d be a bunch of cowboys at our house – and that day was no exception. Facing the inevitable I traipsed off to the horse lot and quietly told my husband I’d like to speak with him privately to which he replied in a loud voice, "What the hell’s happened now?" If the other four guys standing there didn’t recognize there was a problem they were deaf so I gave up political correctness.

"Well, I accidently vacuumed a lizard," which seemed a perfectly logical way to describe the problem to me but the four cowboys found that tremendously funny and began roaring with laughter. My husband, however, was still not amused. "Why were you trying to vacuum a lizard?" By now the whole thing was way out of hand and my patience was totally expended so I answered curtly, "Because the damned thing looked dirty!" I thereupon stomped back to the house to address the problem on my own.

By now my son is in the kitchen, I tell him what’s happened and he begins to cry. Seems the lizard, I’ve in all probability executed by vacuum, is my son’s pet and new best friend named "Lonnie." He asks if he can take the vacuum apart and try to rescue Lonnie. I agree to the vacuum surgery if he takes it outside – the thought being if Lonnie is found alive and well he’ll once again be a free roaming range lizard in my living room. Lonnie the Lizard was subsequently found and we gave him a fine and proper burial in a matchbox.

Terribly distressed, my young son ambled off to the barn where the goat shearers were hard at work. He’d been in and out of the barn all day, picked up enough of the Mexican language to converse freely with the workers and had obviously chosen them as the compadres with whom he’d share his lizard grief. I finally got lunch on the table and everyone was present and accounted for except my son. No one knew where he was and the best information I got was they’d seen the boy go into the barn but hadn’t seen him since.

While everyone else started eating; I went to the barn and began to loudly call my son’s name. I finally heard a muffled "I’m in here!" I followed the sound to one of the large wool sacks (which should have been called mohair sacks) that the goat hair was put in as the goat was sheared. The sacks are rough, sticky burlap and at least six feet tall. They’re suspended from the top rail of the fence with the bottom of the sack on the ground and the wool is tossed in as it comes off the goat. It has to constantly be compressed and apparently my son was the "compressor" on duty.

I helped him out of the sack and he smelled to high heaven. Keeping a fair distance from him, due to his essence of eau de goat, I inquired as to why everyone else was having lunch and he was still in the wool sack. He said they all forgot he was in there. So far, it hadn’t really been a very good day for my little man. We went to the house and I sent him straight into the bathroom to take a bath. By the time he reappeared everyone was gone so he ate his lunch and went back outside.

I finished the lunch dishes and went into my son’s bedroom to tidy up a bit. I had just found the three, strange looking items on top of his dresser when he came in his room to ask me a question. I answered and then inquired what it was I held in my hand. "Oh, those are just blasting caps," he replied nonchalantly.

The word "blasting" struck immediate fear in my heart and I headed for the back door to find my husband and inquire as to how one disposes of blasting caps. I met him coming in the door. "Where did those damn blasting caps come from?" he anxiously asked before I could say a word. "They were on Rusty’s dresser," I replied. Of course, by then, Rusty was long gone and therefore missed one of my husband’s absolutely stellar rants.

Seems blasting caps are pretty serious items and certainly not suitable as household décor. My husband left out the back door, blasting caps in hand, and muttering under his breath – something about carnage and death and curious children. I spent the rest of the afternoon doing nitpicking housework and didn’t see anyone again until five o’clock when my husband came in the house to write a check for the goat shearers.

He wrote his check and both of us were headed out the back door when Rusty magically appeared on the porch. We stopped at the door and allowed him to come in the house as we both had a few choice topics to discuss with him. As he stepped through the door; he thrust a quart Mason jar toward me. I couldn’t see what was inside because his hand covered it up but the lid had holes in it so whatever was in the jar needed to breathe. That should have been a clue!

Like a dummy, I took the jar at the same time I asked what was in it. Rusty calmly replied, "A baby rattlesnake!" Without hesitation I threw the jar straight up in the air. It’s really difficult for two adults and one child to try and catch the same jar before it hits the floor, breaks and there’s a loose rattlesnake in the house.

My husband caught the toss and the snake, although obviously shaken up, remained in his glass house. Thereupon the glass jar with the snake disappeared out the back door with Rusty’s very angry father. I surmised the snake, like the blasting caps, would not be returning to the house. Rusty fell right in behind his father extolling the merits of having a pet rattlesnake but his argument was falling on deaf ears.

That evening, with our son finally tucked in bed, my husband and I sat down to have a glass of wine and discuss the events of a very hectic day. We’d spent all our time keeping body and soul together due to our child’s curiosity. What kid loses a pet lizard, destroys an expensive vacuum cleaner looking for the pet lizard, arranges and conducts a lizard funeral, gets trapped in a bag of goat fur, collects blasting caps in his bedroom and brings a rattlesnake home for a house pet – all in one day?

"I didn’t do things like that when I was a kid; did you?" My husband’s distress was genuine but between the long day and the wine I was reduced to silliness. "No, but back then I didn’t know blasting caps or wool sacks even existed. I sure didn’t know anyone with an extra pet rattlesnake," I replied. My attempt at humor fell on deaf ears.

"You know, it sounds awful to say but I miss the time when life was relatively simple and the only thing we really had to worry about was our kid eating slow-moving bugs!"

"Yeah," I replied, "me too. Thank heaven he didn’t like the way they tasted."

My husband stared at me intently as though mentally debating which planet I claimed as home base. I never found out what his decision was but as he rose from his chair and headed toward our bedroom I heard him muttering under his breath, "Well, what with a mother that vacuums lizards and…"