Deer hearts are even better than skulls

For the past several months my mother has been trying to get me to dissect a frog. She even went so far as to buy a dead frog from a homeschool website.

Gag.

Mom finally returned the frog, much to my relief. Unfortunately last week she scheduled a time when we could all go over to the Vaughn's and study a (rather fresh) deer eye and heart.

Both had been previously frozen and had slightly changed in consistency. The eye, for instance, had half turned to rubber and the heart almost looked like....a peach....even though it was red. And soggy. And more then a little bit icky.

I have to tell you, it was very disconcerting to open the refridgerator door and see the heart and that eyeball staring right at you.

Egad...creepy.

After the heart and the eye had been drained in the sink, two cutting boards were taken out and set on the table. Melody and I studied the area around the table to try to find the spot where we would be the furthest away from the raw heart.

....heh.

Nothing against dear Mrs. Vaughn, of course, but her knives are awful. At first we tried to cut open the eyeball with a small knife; but it was so dull that it wouldn't slice through even a little bit. Then mom brought out the butcher knife....

Jeremy, who has gutted a deer before, warned Mom about the eyeball.

"Mom, be carefull or the eyeball will explode!"

She shook that off thinking that he was pulling her leg and trying to make her nervous about cutting open a raw eyeball. It turned out that he was right. When the butcher knife finally penetrated the skin around the eye, a big glob of clear jelly and a bunch of liquid suddenly squirted out all over the place.

Naturally she screamed.

I have to admit, Mom surprised me. She gritted her teeth and dug into that eyeball with no gloves on or anything, which is the exact opposite of what I expected her to do. After she eventually mushed the eyeball to pieces with her fingernails, we turned to the heart.

Oh joy.

During the eyeball demonstration, Jeremy kept digging his fingers up the arterys and into the cracks of that heart. Seriously, that heart looked exactly like a skinless, faceless orc. No, really. It was nasty.

Mrs Vaughn found a better knife and Mom sliced the heart right down the middle. She found the left atrium and the right atrium, the left ventricle and right ventricle and probed and stuck her fingers into every part.

Mom's got guts when it comes to that sort of thing. Fake spiders will make her flip, but when it comes to raw hearts and eyeballs she's a real brick.

Finally, after about 45 minutes we were through. The boys were given the job of bagging up the heart and eyeball and taking it to the trash.

And then Isaac goes and pretty much throws it into my face....

I was happy.

I was thrilled.

At that moment I just about wanted to hug him to death.

and I really mean to death.

I think that I have seen just about enough deer parts and organs to keep me satisfied for the rest of the month of January.

I just hope that Febuary isn't going to be this weird.

Oh, by the way, Mom's not going to let me get away with not dissecting the frog. She's scheduling a time in the spring for me to do it.

I suppose that my next story about wild animals and their blood will be titled 'The Frog Prince'.

And no, I will not kiss the thing. In fact I will do all that I can to stay away from it.

P.S. (I just found out that mom did NOT return the dang frog...I think she put it into the attic for storage....)

Sweet Pickles

For those of you who do not know, My family roots are in Danville, Va. My grandparents live there and my great-grandparents lived there before them.

Anyway, my grandfather had 11 siblings and 4 still live in Danville on the same street right next to each other.

His youngest sister, my Great-Aunt Sue, is normally a very good cook. Her yeast rolls, for instance, taste storebought and her cakes are great. But her pickles....

A few months ago, I decided to go through the refridgerator and organize it. I admit, the fridge was in desperate need of help. I found about a half of a loaf of moldy bread, a very hairy tomato, and a pair of sweet potatoes.

Green sweet potatoes.

But the last ( and most interesting) thing that I found was a small tupperware.

The tupperware was slightly green colored, and so foggy that you couldn't see what was inside without opening it. The lid was also sticky...

Anyway, Mom said to keep it because dear Aunt Sue had given it to us around...oh...two years ago.

Pickles will keep for forever, you know.

Two months later my younger brother Jeremy went on one of his 'health streaks'.

Definition: Deny any kind of sugar or fat during a meal so that you can eat more sugar or fat later in the afternoon.

Everyonce in a while, when Jeremy goes on his 'health streaks' he gets a craving for pickles. Usually he eats the plain old storebought pickles because they only contain 30 calories per pickle.

Sounds unhealthy to me.

But then, we ran out of storebought pickles. But Alas, Jeremy wanted one. So he dug into the fridge and unearthed the green, slightly sticky tupperware from Aunt Sue. That was his first mistake.

The second mistake was opening it.

Immediately, the entire kitchen was filled with a strong, sickly-sweet smell. I have never smelled a corpse, but if I ever do I will not be surprised if it smells like sweet pickles.

Like I said, the tupperware was green. And for a very good reason. The pickles were cut into thin strips that looked like moldy carrots. The liquid(or kerosene) that surrounded the pickles in the tupperware was thick, cloudy and light green. Not altogether the most appetizing thing that I have ever seen.

Jeremy's third mistake was eating one.

I can see it now: the poor, unfortunate fork slowly being lowered to the rim of the tupperware, gazing into the thick green juice. It's too bad that Forks cannot talk, because if they could I am quite sure that the untensil would have been screaming out to jeremy to save him from the cucumbers that smelled like death.

Did I mention that the juice was thick? It was. Thick as bubblegum cough medicine and five times as nasty.

I never did like bubble gum cough medicine. The stuff is grainy enough to chew and it sticks in your throat for half an hour.

Somehow, Jeremy had convinced my other brother, Timothy, to "be a man" and try one as well. Phrases like "Be a country boy" and "Stick together" were common.

Anyway, they both decided that since Jeremy was the oldest, Jeremy would be the first to take the plunge. He grimaced painfully and lifted the fork to his mouth and retracted it just as fast. The stuff really did smell like death. When he had gathered up his courage yet again(which took a while), he bit off a piece of the pickle before he could change his mind.

Now, generally Jeremy isn't much of an actor, but I have to admit, he did a humdinger of a job on this one. When the marinated cucumber entered the vast cavity of his mouth he didn't move a muscle. He actually chewed it up and swallowed it without flinching.

Honestly, part of that was because he wanted to see Tim's reaction to the cuke. Timothy reluctantly took a bite, scrunched up his face, and spit the pickle back out before you had time to say Who's-your-uncle.

'Sweet Pickles' they were called. The name was not an exaggeration. Those pickles were so sweet that each one must have been positively steeped in sugar syrup for a week. When you take that and add storage in a fridge for two years, well now, that is a pickle.

We begged mom to let us throw the pickles away once and for all, but no sir! Wasting is a sin.

You know; I doubt that even people in Haiti would have eaten those Sugar Soakers.

Eventually we got rid of the pickles(much to everyone's satisfaction).

Fortunately Aunt Sue hasn't made pickles in a very long time.

And the next time she does I'm not touching them.

Bubble gum cough medicine really is nasty.

I wished for a green light.

Ok, so I was driving home from church a few weeks ago. Not that unusual. We were about as calm and collected as Marshes ever are. We had stopped at a stoplight that lasted a very long time. I was bored...

And then I noticed the car next to us.

I guess it wasn't that unusual. It was a little red sports car with tinted windows so I couldn't see exactly what was going on in there. But from my point of view....

It seriously looked like two guys beating the tar out of one another.

Sheesh, that's interesting. There are two guys in their 20's pounding the daylights out of each other, not to mention their car.

Speaking of the car....it was shaking. Literally trembling from the turmoil inside. I could see two fists trying to hack the steering wheel to pieces.

....and then the car door swung open.

We were sitting at a stop light that was going to change at any moment, and here this blond, tall, surfer dude jumps out of this teeny car.

In these jerky, robotic movements the guy started break dancing in the middle of the street. No kidding.

It might have been all right had the guy had any talent for dancing, but no. He looked like a puppet being tortured.

Right then, it would have been cool to see what would have happened had the light turned green at that very moment.

He pounded his car a bit and then folded himself up in order to get back into the car.( did I mention that the guy was tall and gangly?) Once inside his car he continued to punish his poor auto.

Finally. The light turned green.

It was a little too late in my opinion.

Moral of this story: Never dance in the middle of the street at a stop light. Really. It's stupid.

This story isn't half so good as my Deer story.

I love deer skulls.

How to begin.... New Year's Eve. For New Year's my family and I went to my Grandparents for a late Christmas. Don't ask why. It's a long story. Anyway, for those of you who don't know, they live in Chatham, Va, which is very remote and just about the tiniest town that you will come across. The post office is about the size of a jail cell. No Kidding. I judge towns by the size of their post office(s).

Ok, that was kidding. I really don't do that...

Anyway, we had a great time. We ate food, played 3 games of boggle, ate more food... We started to watch Spiderman1 at like 10:00...which by the way is a bad idea because we didn't finish until about 12:30. I finally slept at like 1 o'clock in the morning which is scandalous.

Bunny Trails. I love bunny trails. Have I ever told you that I love bunny trails? I do. Bunny trails are like....big puffy marshmallows falling from the sky...

Never mind.

New Year's Day dawned bright and cheery in the cold and somewhat windy land of Chatham. Eventually my family got up and at 1:30 in the afternoon my cousin Kayleigh and I went exploring to the old Mill.

Explanation: The 'Old Mill' is a big stone structure that has been on the banks of a creek for over 100 years. About 70 years ago it burned down, but the stone parts and the really big and REALLY rusty wheel still there. Needless to say, it's cool, and the only time that you can actually get to it is in January or February and even then it's quite a job not to get thorns in your shoes(which, by the way, I got several) and not to tear a hold in your clothes. Around the Mill are a bunch of staircases that lead to nothing, and walls around big pits that go to about 9 feet deep. Real fun.

Anyway, My cousin and I decided to take what I call the 'Scenic Route.' There are two ways to get to the Mill. You can be a citified chicken ( no offense intended) and take the logical path (the nice, paved road that goes right past the Mill) or you can choose to be Brave, Bold and Adventurous (in other words... a farmer) and take the 'Scenic Route'. My cousin, unfortunately, leans toward the former, whilst I am the latter. Naturally, since I knew both ways, we went my way.

The 'Scenic route' is a lovely, peaceful and tranquil walk through the woods, past a creepy cabin, through a meadow until you have reached the Mill. If you're lucky and don't get lost, that is. Anyway, we were having a lovely time. The sun was shining and the birds were building their nests.

Or they would have been had it not been very cold, windy, and January.

We were progressing wonderfully. We only tripped about 5 times each; She tore her jeans and I landed in a mud pile. Figures.

Actually, it really was a nice walk. We didn't trip and I did not land in a mud pile. Like I said, it's a pretty journey through the forest. Since we don't see each other often we took advantage of the time together and talked. And talked. And talked some more.

I was having a good old time, walking and talking like a typical girl. Then about halfway through the woods I realized that I was standing on something rather hard.

A half-eaten deer carcass. My Gosh. Doesn't that just lift your spirits and send them soaring? Mine sure did. Soared right up that golden staircase all the way to heaven.

Boy, that skeleton sure did add to the scenery. I don't know what it was.... maybe it was that deer's bohunkus that was still intact. Maybe it was the empty eye holes that stared into nothingness. Maybe it was the fact that I was standing on the neck. I don't know what it was, but something about that dead deer made my forest experience the best thing that ever happened to me.

That deer was so pretty. If I had had gloves and a garbage bag, you know what I would have done? I would have removed the entire thing, bohunkus and all, reassembled it, and hung it from the ceiling in my bedroom, right above my bed.

And that is the end of Part 1 of 'The deer story'. The rest you will have to come up with yourself.

Seriously, though... all of that is the gospel truth.

Why do these things always happen to me?

Did I mention that I love Bunny Trails?