(Continued from last blog posting)
Around the corner from us was this single-mother, who was probably way ahead of her time. She lived in a small house that was sandwiched between the "Fraternity" house at the corner of our street and just before the convent which was across the street form Saint Marks Catholic School. (A convent is a place where all the Sisters of The Holy Names of Jesus and Mary live).
Everyday, for the sake of educating her two young children, this lady brought them over to our house for a lesson in science and biology. Where else could you expect to find a giant 20-year-old frog (the size of a beagle) named, "Grandpa," swallowing baby chickens whole and wrestling rats like they were mere crickets.Where else in the city could you expect find tortoises cavorting or rabbits mating on any given day. With the infestation of guinea pigs and rabbits along with the snakes and all the other critters, we had a veritable zoo in our backyard. This is not to mention the long-haired hippies who belonged in the Zoo right next to their primate relatives. With our plethora of animals and the per diem enterprise of procreation on prominent display, what a brilliant way to teach your children about nature and sex education.
As Catholics, we were not allow to talk about those kinds of things but I'm sure Darwin would be pleased with this lady's progressive approach to home-education.
These field trips with her 4-year-old and stroller-bound infant had become routine. She was as regular as the Milk Man, the Post Man or the Helms Bakery Man (even though Herbie the Helms Man was mad at us for stealing his eclairs - Harding Avenue was still on his route (Blog Post 8/3/13).
Her children especially loved the chickens and would spend considerable time staring though the chicken wire at the hens in our crudely built hen-house. Her 18-month-old would stand in the stroller, giggling, gawking, and ecstatically drooling down her bib while her 4-year-old jumped up and down, enthusiastically waving his hands in an awkward way, as if he broken chicken wings, while making attempts at chicken sounds. He had very thick glasses and looked special and this only helped to reinforce our assumptions.
The way I looked at it (keeping my family in mind - who managed to find the worst in people and christian that with an awful nickname), I figured that this lady was probably lucky to have such a tame nickname like "The Chicken Lady." Seriously, it could have been a whole lot worse! She had learned to let herself in through the side gate and usually showed up unannounced.
MIND YOU - I was up in bed with my leg sutured in a million places AND COULD NOT WARN HER!
She had absolutely no idea that the delicate laws of the universe had been change last night when the group of angry small man and hippies climbed over the fence (fell really) and brought home:
THE BEAST!
EL POLLO LOCO!
VELOCI-ROOSTER!
THE TERROR OF VENICE!
This bird was definitely related to its dinosaur ancestor, the Veloci-Raptor. Though it had the brain the size of a pistachio nut it was a devious and cunning predator. (Speaking of gray matter, my dad said my brother's brains were not more than the size of a walnut. Which made them slightly more intelligent and more capable in their diabolical scheming.)Anyway, the calculating beast let the poor Chicken Lady push her stroller all the way back to the chicken coop. The kid squawked, the baby drooled and the rooster from hell stealthily moved in behind them to seal off the exit path.
This unprovoked attack by the raptor of prey, would be its revenge for the kidnapping the night before.
Talons blazing...up, up, up flew El Pollo Loco! In a rear assault as the Veloci-Rooster struck the lady in the derriere time and time again like something out of a Hitchcock horror movie.
"Hell has no fury like a mother scorned"
Under siege, the mother pushed the baby down into the stroller and closed her in the bonnet. She protected the 4-year-old by shielding him with her body. There was only one way out of the primordial graveyard of old car parts, decaying boats, and travel trailers —that had no "travel" left in them. She could not navigate her baby stroller over the decaying remains of prehistoric washing machines and outboard motors that haven’t had pistons in them for ten years. She had no other option, but to go through the BEAST!
Ramming the rooster with the stroller and beating it off with a trashcan lid, she eventually managed to escape the ravages of the taloned-beast with only 16 bloody puncture wounds. The poor woman moved from Venice and was never heard from again. As for the crazy-eye'd rooster, the Chicken Lady had only managed to wound the bird's pride thus making it meaner than it ever was.
Venice - Harding - Dahlins - Marijuana Thieves BEWARE!
Four Eyes sneaked in past the foul-mouthed mynah bird in the entry to visit me in my room so he could inform me of all the details of today's events (I was sad that I couldn't be there to protect the Chicken Lady and her two children). Four Eyes pulled a pen and notepad out of his pocket and began writing notes. While writing, he droned on about how in the future they should make a movie about Veloci-raptors. He said that because of our rooster, someone in Hollywood should portray the raptor as a close relative and make it have the cunning ability to hunt its prey. I hit him in the head and said, "You're so dumb! For real! Four-Eyes. No one would ever be stupid enough to believe something like that! Not ever!A minute later, I heard some of the hippies in the backyard screaming bloody murder. Apparently they had been back at Wall Drug and they had been trapped by Veloci-Rooster. I giggled thinking this was divine payback. Four Eyes left and I could go to sleep on with something positive on my mind :)
Next the Big Fire and the scandalous tightie-whities.
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