Mine is Not to Reason Why, Mine is But to Eat and Die

Hey! My mom is at it again!

Yesterday she offered me the turkey breast carcass to take home to my sweet, sweet Juno. "He can have it, can't he? You give him bones like that?"

Okay. First of all, after almost two years now, and her the one who "gave" me that pup, knowing full well it was a female, even though Genius professed it to be a male so I would say we could have it...Mom still calls Juno a "he" every single time her name comes up.

Secondly, I don't know why Mom is all of a sudden concerned about what Juno eats, considering that the three days Juno spent at Mom's house, after being dumped off by ignoramuses at her mailbox, Juno ate exactly NOTHING. Because Mom thought if she didn't feed that tiny puppy that was too young to even be weaned, that it would A) learn to hunt and feed itself, or B) leave Mom's house and go to the neighbors across the road.

Thirdly, it's probably not a good idea to give a turkey breast carcass to a dog who lives with a real live turkey and (allegedly) pulls approximately fifty tail feathers out of the turkey in the driveway next to the garage while we are gone to work.

But Mom is a giving soul, so I told her that yes, I would take that turkey breast carcass home to Juno. "Where is it, in the fridge? I'll get it when we pack up our stuff to go home."

"Oh, no. It's out in the garage."

"Mom! It's a hundred degrees in the garage! That's going to stink."

"Well, it's not in my car. Just in the garage. And it's inside a big baggie. Gallon size."

"Last year, when you gave it to me a week or so after Thanksgiving, your turkey carcass, which had been INSIDE the FRIDGE, stunk so bad I almost passed out on top of Juno when I unwrapped it."

"Oh, it's not that hot out there. It will be fine."

As luck would have it, I went off and forgot Juno's carcass. Mom decided last night, on our bedtime phone call, that she would drop if off at school today before we started home. I was caught up with my work, and planning to leave within fifteen minutes. The Pony went out to the car to get his laptop, and got the carcass from Mom to put in our T-Hoe. He said Mom didn't want to come in, since we would be leaving shortly. Huh. Best-laid plans. I discovered some homebound work clogging my mailbox, and decided to get that graded and recorded. Then I had to ready some new assignments to send back. So it actually took me about a half hour before I was ready to leave.

"Hey, Pony. That carcass is going to stink up the car by the time we get out there."

"No it won't. Grandma put it in a cooler."

We hopped in T-Hoe. There was no odor. Good for Mom. I stopped for gas. We had to wait for an available pump, because the price had gone down TWO CENTS PER GALLON since yesterday, and of course the pumps were jammed by bargain hunters. I sent The Pony in to pay. He grabbed a soda to go with the Domino's pizza he wanted for supper. It's Hick's bowling night, and I was having leftovers from yesterday's feast. Traffic was heavy along the boulevard by the gassing up place. We waited. We puttered along the back road by the lake to get to Domino's. I missed my left turn light in town because the car in front of me had the audacity to wait for a left turn into the drive-thru liquor store parking lot, thus blocking my lane before I could whiz through that light. We picked up The Pony's pizza. We stopped for the mail. We admired a new NO TRESPASSING sign on our gravel road, all routered out on dark wood, with the letters painted yellow. We paused in the driveway for The Pony to point out that the remains of my goat-decimated lilac bush sprout had tufts of leaves that made it look like a just-trimmed poodle. Then we pulled into the garage and gathered our belongings.

"Hey, Mom. I'll come back out and get Juno's carcass. Here. Do you think you could carry in this ham?"

"HAM? Where did you get HAM?"

"Grandma brought it for you. Since we were leaving soon, I just left it in the car."

"HAM? Are you sure it's not for the dogs?"

"No. It's for you. For sandwiches, Grandma said."

"So that ham has been laying in this black car in the sun ever since Grandma came to school about...oh...NINETY MINUTES AGO?"

"Uh huh. But that's okay. She said it was. Because it's ham."

"And you didn't think to put it in the cooler?"

"No. Grandma just handed me the baggie of ham. She said the cooler was for the carcass."

As the full horror sinks in, let me further state that yesterday, after dinner, when everything else had been put away, Mom said, "Do you think it's okay to leave out that ham? It's wrapped in foil."

"No, Mom. I think it should go in the fridge, too. You don't know when people will want to eat again, or others will drop in."

She grudgingly put it away. Seriously. I know the pioneers let their hams hang in the woodshed for months. And that flies might have lighted on them and done their no-good fly business of propagating their young. And that pioneers did not have refrigerators. And that pioneers carved away the mold and still ate that ham.

Val is not a pioneer.

Right now, that ham is in Frig alongside yesterday's ham that I brought home straight from the refrigerator at Mom's house and put away immediately. Or IS it?

Hick hollered down before he left for bowling and announced that he had fixed himself some ham and potato salad and deviled eggs.

I'm not sure which one of us was Mom's target.