Half Cocked!

This evening Tony and I had a blast literally, because we went over to see our good friends Carol & James and Brenda from San Antonio.

We arrived at the beautiful ranch a little past five o'clock. "I arrived just three minutes ago," Brenda said, as we hugged each other. After the howdys and hugs, and after petting Scout and Jake, we went inside the house and the fun began.

As Carol poured some white wine (from a bottle) we decided to go outside and sit on the deck by the lake to enjoy the cool, Fall-like weather. "Even though it is only eighty degrees outside," I said, "I wore my favorite plaid flannel shirt to help bring on the Fall." Carol shivered and got up and went inside. When she returned she was wearing a cute, zip-up, lavender hoodie sweatshirt with her shorts.

First, we talked about Brenda having to go to Lake Jackson, Louisiana for a meeting yesterday evening and then driving all the way back today. Then we talked about James and Carol's beautiful horses. "We haven't ridden them much because of the heat," Carol said. "And, the are getting fat, because of our watermelon parties that we have with them and the chickens."

Then we talked about their new upgraded riding mower. "We decided not to replace the seat afterall," James said. "We decided to upgrade to the their top of the line model and..."

"We love it!" Carol said. "It used to take me three days to cut the grass and now..."

"It only takes us three or four hours, now," James bragged. "Carol really loves it, too. The other day I set the blades at 3 1/2 inches and when I finished mowing Carol lowered the blades to 1 1/2 inches and she mowed it again." As we laughed about us talking about mowing—a few of their chickens arrived, so we started talking about their chicken problems.

"We don't know what is wrong with a couple of our chickens, but they are losing the feathers on their backs and one of them actually got sunburned the other day," Carol said. "We love our chickens and we can't figure out what is ..." Carol stopped in mid sentence and jumped out of her chair and quickly ran into the house!

A few seconds later Carol came outside carrying a huge, pump-shotgun that was as big as she was! "Snake!" Carol said, as she pumped her shotgun. I looked at Tony, then Brenda and then James and then I put my fingers as far as they would go into my ears and closed my eyes. Brenda plugged her ears with her fingers and laughed just as Carol fired into the lake. BOOM! It made me jump.

"You missed it, Carol," James said, calmly. "It's between those two big leaves over there. See it?"

As we turned to look at the lake where Carol had shot she said, "I hate those dang Water Moccasins,"as she reloaded and pumped her shotgun and took aim, again. With fingers stuck in our ears Carol fired off another round—BOOM!

Carol missed again, so James got up and went to show her where the snake was hiding—BOOM! Carol missed again— Carol - 0,  Mr. W. Moccasin -3 and then the snake disappeared somewhere in the lake. As Carol leaned her shotgun against the house and came towards us she said, "I hate Water Moccasins. They are so aggressive and I don't want them killing our chickens or biting our dogs or the horses. I guess I scared off the chickens. Tony, do you know why our chickens are losing the feathers on their backs?"

Unfortunately, Tony didn't hear her, because his fingers were still stuck in his ears—just in case Carol decided to shoot one more time at the snake and miss it again. When we looked at him he removed his pointers from his ears and Carol asked him the question again. "It's your roosters fault," Tone said. "He is too aggressive when he mates with the hens. His spurs need to be trimmed and that should fix the problem."

Carol and James then took turns telling us funny stories about their rooster and they had Brenda, T. and me laughing really hard when they told us about the rooster attacking James right after he had moved in with Carol. "I don't care if he was jealous of me. That rooster," James said.

"When we first got together," Carol said, with a laugh. "Every time that James would come see me he would bring little presents. Like dog treats, horse treats, a sack of special chicken feed and Hershey Kisses for me. After the rooster attacked James—he brought me a jar of "Rooster Seasoning." We all started laughing.

"It was actually chicken seasoning. I just drew a line through the word Chicken and wrote Rooster," James chuckled.

Around seven o'clock Tony and I told everyone that we needed to get back to the ranch, even though we were having so much fun. "And, thanks to Carol—we had a blast!" I said, as we climbed into Buttermilk.

Y'all have a great evening!