Yolanda’s been feeling a bit of congestion. I told her to stay home, but she insisted on coming to work today! Hope she doesn’t pass it on to Pasiano.
How does a Clown Nose Contagion begin? If you’ve missed the earlier part of the story, go HERE.
El Chupacabra
(From “chupar”–to suck, “cabra”–a female goat)
The Chupacabra–dread goatsucker, floats in the clouds. He is waiting for the sweet girl goat who trips home over the bowed bridge behind the Three Billie Goats Gruff.
One gruff Billie “Baaaaaaahs about heartburn. One more gruff Billie “Billllllleeeeees on about taxes. And the last gruff Billie “Maaaaaaahs about greener grass on the other side of the river––which may be reached, of course, only by crossing the bowed bridge.
From our removed vantage point, we can see, crouching under this bridge,
the Troll. He is poised to catch #1 Billie, then #2 Billie, then #3 Billie, and
as fast as he catches them, he gobbles them up.
Now, he is about to grab sweet Baby Girl Goat when––out of the clouds swoops the Chupacabra! His horns are sharp, his face is green. With whiskers for eyebrows, long hose mouth with suckers, thorns extruding from the suckers, eyes the color of a poinsettia flower flashing purple fire, mouth dripping saliva, claws flashing, opening, lowering to grab up Sweet Missy Goat Girl.
“Noooo,” we scream. “Run!” we beg. “Look up!” We groan. But sweet silly Goatgirl only pumps her tail goat-fashion and lifts one hoof to raise it up to bridge level. She shivers flies off her tender flanks, tossing her silken goat tresses as she does, bats her baby browns and trips onto the bridge, wondering, “Where is Uncle Billie?” And then, “Where is other Uncle Billie?” And then, “Where is Uncle Billie 3?”
As she reaches the bridge apex, she peers over and sees her own shadow only. She does not see the Troll’s long arm reaching up behind her. She does not see the shadow of the Chupacabra spreading larger over the bride around her. She turns her head sideways, wondering where her grumbling Billies have gone off to, and in the water sees another pretty goat girl leaning toward her. She leans forward toward the water girl, leans farther, until one well-turned goat hoof only supports her weight upon the bridge. Then, just as the Troll’s hand tries to close upon her arm, she tumbles over into deep cool water, and the Chupacabra, reaching out his long neck to drink her, sinks his suckers instead into the Troll.
The Troll, reaching in vain for the retreating Goodie Goat shape, feels the sweet piercing hot flowing of his black Troll blood into the Chupacabra. Then the Chupacabra, tasting the blood, stops. Sputters. Withdraws his stickers. Distends his hose mouth. Spits. Spits bitter Troll blood. Reaches down to drink the river. Then spits out, drinks again, spits out again, draining the river until, his attempts to escape the results of his own actions executed too late, the Troll blood poison pulls him down to perish on the bridge, one claw touching the shoulder of the fast-fading Troll, one arm draping over a furry Troll paunch.
And they die in a monster embrace while down below, our sodden Goat Deb rolls over in the streambed emptied by the suckers of the Chupacabra, shakes mud from her curly coat, wipes hooves on the riverbank grass, trips daintily over pebbles to the other streamside, and gallops down the path.
And, the moral of the story? According to one troll scholar, it is:
–Don’t let some old Troll get your goat
Whereas Chupacabra experts say the moral to the story is:
–Once a goatsucker, next a moatsucker.
But I, after all, am the teller of this story, and I say the true moral to the story is:
–Be you a Billie Goat Gruff or a Chupacabra, never ask for whom the bridge trolls. It trolls for thee!
For RDP Tuesday
1953
Spooks
As hidden as a splinter and welcomed even less,
the ghosts slip out like shadows with bedsheets for their dress.
They hide behind behind our mirrors and come out when we gaze
to edge around our shoulder as the steaming haze
from the hot water of our shower fades out and we see
a figure in the mirror that isn’t you or me.
We think when we get older they will ossify to stone
and will no longer rise to scare us when we’re all alone.
But honey, I must tell you, sure as the cock must crow,
A ghost is born to haunt you as I’m born to tell you so!
The Sunday Whirl Wordle prompts are: splinter steaming shadows old mirror rose honey crow edge gaze stone ghosts
Click on photos to enlarge.
For the Lens Artists Challenge #330
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Unscheduled Visitor
I hear a rapid rapping and I’m wondering, “Who is it?”
It’s too early in the morning for a casual drop-in visit.
I’m still in my pajamas and the dogs and cats aren’t fed.
How can company be calling while I’m still here in bed?
The knocking is insistent but I have no way to spy
upon whatever passer-by refuses to pass by.
My intercom is broken, so I call out from the door,
“Who is it?” but it’s obvious they aren’t there anymore.
I wander back to bed again, feeling somewhat tense.
Only when I’m sleeping does the knocking recommence.
“Who is it?” I scream out again, accenting every vowel.
The dogs sense my frustration and they begin to howl.
My bedroom sliders are open, so my voice soars over the wall.
Any passerby could hear if they could hear at all.
But still nobody answers. This Saturday morning’s still.
There are no other noises up here on my hill.
No car horns and no dog barks. No children’s noisy play.
No birdcalls. No construction to mar this quiet day.
Except for my invectives as the rappings start again—
louder, oh much louder than they have ever been.
As I charge out of my front door, I grab for an umbrella—
in case I need a weapon to fight off some unknown fella
intent on ruining my day, but when I turn the key
and open wide my front wall gate, there’s no one there but me!
I roar in my frustration. The whole town must hear my wails.
I throw that damn umbrella. Over the wall it sails.
I stalk back to my room and pull the covers over my head,
praying for more silence, but what I get instead
is the steady rat-tat-tatting that now upon reflection
seems to emanate from a different direction.
I draw aside my bedroom drapes and wonder, “What the heck?”
sweeping my sight across my yard, I finally crane my neck
and see it far up in a palm—an industrious woodpecker
whose ruthless drilling is the thing that’s been my sleep-in wrecker!
I cannot throw a shoe at him for I can’t throw that far.
If I tried to knock a golf ball up, I’d be far over par.
At last I view with humor this ridiculous affair,
and so I pull on Levis and smooth my ruffled hair.
I shuffle off to feed the dogs, the kittens and the cat
and just accept as music this rat-a-tat-tat-tat.
For Linda’s Just Jot it January, the prompt is frustration.
I can’t believe it. Instead of doing today’s Fibbing Friday, I redid one from May that I’d done before but obviously didn’t remember. I should compare daffynitions and see if I repeated any!
At any rater below are Today’s Actual Fibbing Friday prompts as well as my answers.
1. What is a didgeridoo? Impertinent question asked by your buddies when you got home from a date.
2. What is a wombat? What girls hit a baseball with.
3. What is a jerry can? What Jerry Seinfeld’s brother used to say when his mom asked which of them wanted to sweep the porch for her.
4. What is a beaker? A bird, duh.
5. What is a photofit? A picture that is the right size for the picture holder in your wallet.
6. What is meant by pluck? When you make it to the bathroom in time.
7. What is a cat nap? The direction a cat’s hair grows in.
8. Where will you find a winder? At the funeral of her husband.
9. What is a crosshair? A mad rabbit.
10. What is an effigy? A combination of a rude swear word and an acceptable one.
For Fibbing Friday
For Fibbing Friday the challenge is:
1. What is a Moo Moo? A Moo Moo is the Mau Mau name for cow. (The “Mau Maus” were a group of Kenyan fighters, primarily from the Kikuyu tribe, who engaged in a violent rebellion against British colonial rule in Kenya during the 1950s.)
2. What is a Bow Wow? A particularly primo piece of sports equipment made to deliver an arrow to its target.
3. What is a Gee Gee? An utterance of admiration made by a stutterer.
4. What is a Botty Cough? Sound made by a robot with a cold.
5. What is a Chookie Egg? Breakfast served on a train.
6. What is a Choo Choo? The means of masticating one’s breakfast on a train.
7. What is a Tick Tock? The means of communication of insects that burrow into one’s skin and suck blood.
8. What is a Paw Paw? The left hand(s) of conjoined twins.
9. What is a Heffalump? A cow’s udder.
10. What are Jammies? A baby’s pajamas after feeding himself his own breakfast toast for the first time..
If you haven’t read the other two Clown Nose stories that precede this one, go HERE for the first one. There is a link in the first to the second and a link back to this blog from the second..
OMG. I actually had a hat like that right there handy? Well, no, actually, it was hanging on a coat rack in my bedroom. There is a story to this hat. Bob, the man who was to become my husband, gave it to me the first Christmas after we met. Understand, it was a very expensive handmade Hannabird hat I had admired at an art and craft fair in Santa Monica. (But note that I hadn’t bought it.)
I have only worn it once, when skiing, but it has accompanied me to Mexico where you can see it has finally come in handy, but only as an afterthought.
After wheeling the desk chair that I had propelled myself out to the kitchen in so I’d have a place to sit for the picture on a level with my sculpted accomplice (a Julie Mackey piece–also a gift from Bob) I then rolled myself back to my desk. I’d had a sore back all day and there was something about that activity that actually eased the back pain even though it had been painful propelling myself with my bent legs in a sitting position.
Then, upon surveying the photos of the first photo shoot, I realized how boring my hairdo was in comparison with my sculpted friend, and my mind flashed on the perfect possibility and off to the bedroom I went. In lieu of moving the desk chair back to the kitchen, I moved a chair from the dining room, perched upon it and the picture above is the result.
The first picture below, obviously, is of the chair. The second picture is of the cat, expressing a bit of a shocked expression upon spying me in my hat for the first time. And, just in case you are wondering what Bob gave my mother, who was visiting me in L.A. for Christmas that year, I swear this is true. He gave her Phyllis Diller’s fur coat! She (Ms. Diller, not my mother) had donated it to me for an auction at the Venice Poetry center when I was in charge of collecting donations. At the auction, my mother had bid on it but lost the bid to someone else and was so disappointed. (Bob had told the auctioneer he would up any bid by $10 until the last person stopped bidding, so no one had any idea who had actually “won” the coat.) It was blond with curly long fur and a big satin bow at the neck. Imagine her delight when she opened her Xmas gift and it was THE coat! “Marry the man!” she said, and I did. The only place my mother ever wore the coat was to the next Halloween party she went to, but that was of no importance. She died owning Phyllis Diller’s fur coat.
Click on the three photos above to enlarge.
That said, you would not believe me if I told you the number of albums and bags and boxes of photos I had to go through to find this photo of my mom. I gave up and was packing them all up again when I decided to take one more look through the albums–and believe me, there are dozens of them! I found it in a paper bag of loose pages I’d meant to put into an album ten years ago. And there she was. I have no idea what happened to Phyllis Diller’s coat, but the story of how I obtained it is a story for another day. . . .
Out of gas, I’m cooking custard with the hairdryer. So much for my resolutions to use less electricity!
For: Can You Tell a Story in 18 Words?
Three words to use are: resolutions, custard and hairdryer.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 