Bringing In The Sheets!

This morning after I walked eight miles with Leslie Kinky called from the Austin airport—headed to Philadelphia. We talked about Lucky.

When we were done talking I grabbed my pretty pink bandana, the one with the lavender and turquoise accents, put it in the sink, soaked it in cool tap water—then I tied it around my neck and went outside to help Tony and Ben.

As soon as I stepped outside on the porch I recognized Eileen's red car parked down by the barn and that made me happy. When I reached the barn June, Ellen and Eileen greeted me before I could greet them. Ellen hugged me even though I warned her before hand that I stunk to high heaven from my earlier workout.

After Ellen hugged me, then I noticed that Ellen was wrinkling her nose and sniffling as she quickly took several steps backwards away from me until I was downwind from her. I thought,"Ellen is a very smart woman—she ain't no dummy." Then we had a short, but fun hen party.

Eileen gave us an update on Callie Dean. "Nancy, she is the smartest dog in the world!" Eileen bragged on the Catahoula pup that she adopted from us this past Memorial Day. "She sits on command and is housebroken and she loves her her crate and she's scared of our Chihuahua—which is good. The other day I was on the Internet searching for more Catahoula information and found a French breed dog that looks exactly like her! And I am going to tell everyone that she is a French Beaceron (Sorry, y'all. I think that is how she spelled it.)." We all laughed. Then it was Ellen's turn to catch us up on Jermaine Jackson, the shy, but sweet dog that she adopted from us a few months back.

"Well, what can I say about Jermaine?" Ellen said, as I continued to stand downwind from her. "Jermaine is Jermaine. He is a really sweet dog and he has come a long way, but he is still always on the lookout and ready to run and hide if something out of the ordinary happens. Like the other day when June came over for a visit. He'd let her pet him for a few seconds and then he'd go to the window and peek outside to see if her husband Kevin was outside. Then he'd let June pet him, again and then go check to see if Kevin was out there. It was pretty funny."

"Ellen," June's sister said. "Please tell Nancy about Culvert." Then they started laughing.

"Okay," Ellen said followed by a laugh. "Culvert is my new cat. June found him in a culvert and she named him Culvert. A few weeks ago a friend was staying with me and she brought her two dogs with her. Culvert and the dogs didn't seem to like each other very much and there was a little scuffle between them, but nothing serious. A few days after my friend had left with her dogs I noticed a bare spot on the end of Culvert's tail. It was about two inches long and it looked like a scab. It was no big deal. Probably his tail got bit by one of my friend's dogs. I don't know. Anyway, the other day I saw Culvert on top of the dining room table swatting something around, so I got up to see what he was playing with." Then Ellen took a deep breath and calmly said, "At first I thought it was a little dead mouse, but it wasn't. It was the end of his tail! I couldn't believe it, so I looked at his tail and saw a little pink nub that was nearly healed, where the two inch end of his tail had fallen off." We burst out laughing.

We visited for a few more minutes then they took off to the dog pens with combs, brushes, leashes and treats. As they walked our dogs Tony and Ben sprayed down the dog pens with some nasty chemicals to rid them of fleas and ticks  I grabbed a sack of dog treats and went around to all of the pens handing out treats to our great dogs.

Around noon, after our great volunteers left, Tony told us that he was going inside to cool down, so I volunteered to help Ben treat the pens. My job was to keep the long hose from kinking as Ben moved from one pen to another. It wasn't a difficult job at all. In fact, it reminded me of my sailing days long ago with Jim when I used to crew for him on our Catalina 22 in the many sailboat races that we usually won or took second place in.

At one pen I started laughing as I was bringing in the long yellow hose, so Ben asked me what was so funny. "Ben, if I was wearing sailing gloves and had a winch in my hand right now this would be just like what I used do when I crewed for Jim. I was either letting out the sheets or bringing in the sheets, trimming or changing out the the sails, while trying to not get hit by the Boom. Our boats name was The Bullsheeter." Ben started laughing as he sweated and sprayed down the pen.

With only four pens left to spray, while Ben was working I picked up an empty, green plastic bottle of condensed Malathion that we were using to spray down the pens and began reading it. I discovered that it killed all kinds of bugs and insects in the garden and was safe enough that it could even be sprayed on fruits and vegetable plants, but nowhere did it say "kills fleas and ticks." I told Ben about my discovery and told him that I was going to take a lunch break and check out Malathion on the Internet, so Ben took off to the Lodge to eat lunch with Will.

After checking out the chemical Malathion on the Net, I told Tony that it did not kill ticks or fleas and he got mad. "That clerk told me that it was the best stuff to use, so I took his word and bought it..." A few cuss words later Tone took off in Buttermilk to go get the right stuff while I started cooking lunch for us.

Forty-five minutes later we ate lunch. I was the first to finish eating, so I went outside to see if Ben was here. When I found him at the far end of the rescue ranch Ben happily said, "We're done, Nance. I just finished spraying the last pen."

"I'm sorry, Ben, we're talking do-over," I said. "Malathion does not kill fleas or ticks. Tony went to town and bought the right stuff and we have got to redo all of the pens. To say the least, Ben was not a happy sprayer and the high heat didn't help his mood either. Then Tony showed up to help Ben, so I took off to try to spray down Marlin's and Princess's pen using a handheld spray pump against Tony and Ben's protests.

I wish that I had heeded their advice, because it took me nearly an hour trying to treat that pen. I gave up when I ran out of the mixture with only two-thirds of pen treated, so I took off to find the men.

When I found them down by Ben Stiller's and Gracie's pen with only six more pens to spray down we started laughing about having to redo all of the dog pens. It was nearly four o'clock and I don't know if it was due from the heat or the chemicals, but we couldn't quit laughing. "I'm just glad that we killed off those awful cabbage beetles and the cucumber beetles!" I joked. "Y'all, I don't think it would be a good idea for us to go into the pest control business."

"You're right about that, Nance," Ben said. "After using all of these chemicals today I bet we all die from it on the same day."

"I know!" I said. "Unfortunately Ben, your death will be a little early for you, but just think about it—we could all be buried together! And our tombstone would read: Flea! Don't bug us! We're ticked off!" By four-thirty we had all of the pens sprayed and came inside the trailer to cool off and rest. Then Ben left and I returned a phone call to a woman about her lions, tigers and bears.

Y'all have a great evening!