Dodo Eggs

Here’s the game… I am offering you two very short stories.  One is completely fabricated (like a Barbie doll) and the other is only embellished (think Hollywood starlet).  Read both then decide which has a shred of truth.   

 
Spare the Truth; Scare a Child

A well-run ranch needs many strong calloused hands to function properly.  But when these can’t be found, the rancher-in-need must resort to silk-palmed, won’t-touch-a-bug pansies like me. 

At the rural high school I attended, extra jobs on ranches were occasionally available and I tried to take them.  It was a good way to make some extra money and smell like manure.

The season had come to work this year’s lambs.  Their tails needed to be docked and they needed castration.  My job was simple.  Chase down the lucky animals and hold them while the necessary removals were completed. Tails were simply snipped but the testes were bound by a thick rubber band wound tight enough to cut off circulation.

I remember one of the rancher’s sons brought his seven-year-old boy with him. The eager, inquisitive child climbed the gates and watched while all of us worked.  His hands holding the top part of the gate while the toes of his boots stuck through the bottom crossbars.  The boy’s blue eyes widened then squinted with imagined pain following each successive operation.

About a half hour into the work, the boy yelled for his dad’s attention.  “Dad what are you doing to the sheep’s privates?”

His father’s eyebrow raised a bit while he conjured a G rated response. “Well, we’re removing their tonsils. The rubber band cuts of blood, the tonsils die, and they just fall off.”

A minute later the boy ran off toward the farmhouse and the father returned to work.  I gave the man a smile enjoying his efforts to protect his son’s innocence and the cowardly way he went about it.

It wasn’t until the next year that I heard the rest of the story.  The boy developed tonsillitis only a few weeks afterward and when the doctor told him his tonsils would need to be removed the child flew into a panic.

 
Finding a Lucky Shot

It was a perfect day with a light blue sky and sunshine warming my skin.  The breeze carried the welcome smell of freshly cut grass.  Small children ran around the large backyard finding bits of pastel amidst the blades of green.  I was enjoying watching the Easter egg hunt as the children were.

The only wrinkle was a colorblind boy who kept grabbing droppings left by the neighbor’s huge Labrador, pulling his hand away in horror, and then crying for his mother.

“Maybe being colorblind isn’t the only issue.”

I was reclining in a plastic lawn chair with a wicker basket wedged between my legs.  Another egg was pulled from my son’s basket. It popped open with just a small squeeze along the seam. “Oh, good a chocolate bar. That’s better than some of the other junk I’ve been forced to eat today.”

I closed the emptied egg and placed it on one side of the basket along with the other “inspected” eggs.

My wife gave me a narrow look.  “Would you stop eating your son’s candy?”

“I’m teaching him to share. You keep saying that’s important.”

The next egg wasn’t as good. It was five jelly beans; three of them were licorice flavored. Those black poison pills masqueraded as candy but I knew better. I began pitching them aside.

“That’s it.” She took the basket and marched after our little boy.

The grandfather sitting nearby chucked a bit. “Son, are you going to let your woman get by with that?”

“Uh, yea.”

His smile didn’t budge.  “I’ll give you one of these small chocolate bars if you throw that last jellybean at your wife.”

“Really?  You know, normally I do stuff like that for free.”

“Well, you’d better hurry or she’ll get away.”

I shrugged and tossed the small black oval.  I wasn’t aiming at anything in particular; it was just a haphazard toss. However, my wife’s striped shirt had slightly pulled away from her jeans, which offered a bit of skin only a half of an inch wide. The bean arched perfectly and landed along the small of her back then disappeared down her pants. She stopped instantly and stiffened.

I turned slowly toward the old man with a smug look hanging on my face.  “So, is that worth a Krackle?”

• Good Egg or Bad Egg?
• Interview with Tim Smit
• Dear Doctor Pokorny – Smith Letter
• Snowball Effect
• Good Egg & Bad Egg 5