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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Crocodile who wrote (57630)	12/24/2000 12:33:34 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

That's quite a story. But I seem to have missed something. Why are the barns empty? Where have the horses and goats gone? Whassup?

To: Crocodile who wrote (57630)	12/24/2000 5:16:41 PM
From: Rambi	Respond to of 71178

Great story, croc! I am in awe of your willingness to look death in its piggy eyes. Raising things in any form- plants or livestock- is a mystery to me and is only appealing once removed, as in your stories. My mother was raised on a pseudofarm. Her father was a designer who liked to think of himself as a gentleman farmer. He came home from work, took off his highly starched, tall white collar that my grandmother pressed with those heavy irons heated on the wood stove-- I now have them on the den hearth-- and put on his overalls, transforming himself into Farmer Fred. Then he puttered around his little acreage and raised little crops and little animals, all of which my mother hated and which hated her in emotionally charged and disastrous relationships which she communicated to me by way of excellent and graphic storytelling. My brother and I would curl up in bed on either side of her and she would regale us with tales as terrifying as any Nightmare on Elm Street thriller. There were sows that ate their own babies, but only because they couldn't get to my mother, and geese that chased her with every intention of pecking her eyes out if she happened to fall. I think of my mother every time I see that kid get attacked in the schoolyard scene in Hitchcock's The Birds. It is a wonder she survived the horrors of her childhood. Our favorite story was her near death at the jaws of a vicious sow misnamed Daisy, who reigned in giant splendor for some time in the farmyard. My mother had a little friend, Bubby, who lived across the road, and who, for unknown reasons, had some kind of weird control over my mother, like a mini Puppetmaster. He dared her one day to walk along the woodrail of the pigpen, a forbidden activity, where Daisy lay, no doubt praying to the PigGod for a succulent seven year old to fall from the heavens in time for dinner. Of course, my mother obliged, knocking the wind out of herself, whereupon, coming to, she heard Bubby screaming in terror, Get Out Get Out, and when she looked up from the mud, she saw the massive Daisy heading intently toward her, and giving thanks to the PigGod who had answered her prayers. Screaming, my mother slid to the fence where she scrambled out, having lost her shoes, but not her toes. Her father, whom I never knew, must have been a nasty sort. He had no sympathy and punished her for disobeying and for upsetting Daisy, who I guess was pouting at the loss of her gift from PigGod. (Maybe that's when she ate her children- I'm fuzzy on the timeline of Daisy) My grandmother punished her for ruining her clothes, although I have more sympathy for my grandmother's anger; those irons are hell to lift. She must have had incredible forearms. Anyway, I'm sure her stories and reading The Egg and I at too early and impressionable an age, convinced me that farming of any sort was likely to be lethal. As you no doubt can tell by my reactions to the wildlife that shows up periodically in my living room, I maintain a healthy distance between myself and nature when possible.