“Mother Nature” Administers Official “Smack Down” To Area Busybody For Not Minding Her Own Doggone Business

In a quite appropriate assemblage of circumstances that has beleaguered son-in-laws the world over rejoicing at the sheer poetic justice of the thing, an area busybody (and quite enthusiastic and over-reaching mother-in-law in her own right) Brunhilda Snopes, aged 63, an area battle axe and farm/ranch matriarch, was nearly rendered senseless with fright after inserting herself into a situation where she obviously didn’t belong in the misguided and somewhat cruel attempt to ridicule and undermine another human being over something that really doesn’t matter all that much anyway.

“Well, I was over at the Festoon place when Skeeter Festoon (the dumbest of the Festoon kids so obviously the one who will inherit the ranch!!) came traipsing up, looking all disheveled and dingy, all his clothes some sort of unimpressive gray or whatever, and that is when I noticed what I was certain was a major laundry faux pas!” said Brunhilda wearily. “You know how men are with laundry! They will wash on any old temperature, throw colors in with whites, and never, ever use fabric softener, regardless of how much one nags! Lord knows the concept of a dryer sheet is beyond the realm of the remotest possibility! (Editorial note: Using stupid dryer sheets is, in fact, a pronounced statistical improbability several stages past 'remote', yes!) Oh, it is just a disgusting mess! Anyway, as I was cataloging the quite numerous laundry violations that Skeeter seems to rack up like deer antlers at a taxidermy shop, I saw what appeared to any reasonable laundry aficionado to be a clothespin still attached to the back of his quite faded and unimpressive shirt. So, needless to say, I marched right up to him in order to remove the offending laundry instrument and wag it in his face in order to prove once and for all my superiority over him in all things laundry, when before I knew it, that supposed ‘clothespin” began wriggling in my hand and those horrid little forelegs began stroking my fingers and those beady little eyes just glared at me with the inter-species contempt and hatred that only a lower life form can feel for a creature at the top of the food chain!” she stammered pathetically (Ironically, that was the same look she gave Skeeter upon critiquing his current outfit or ‘get-up’ or whatever you call that odd assortment of garments that Skeeter likes to wear!) “Oh, it was horrid – and it even scared Skeeter so bad he went lumbering across the yard (at unnaturally high speed for a homo sapien!) and knocked himself unconscious against that apricot tree. Oh, none of this dern mess would have happened if he would have just listened to my years of laundry-related scolding and if he would have bended himself to my irrepressible will and let me control every aspect of his stupid and worthless life until every semblance of humanity was wrung from him!” she said defiantly with an air of misplaced superiority and angst. (While vigorously wiping her liver-spotted hand on her tattered apron to get the 'insect germs' off!)

“Well, when I got out of bed about noon and went to do whatever one is supposed to do on a ranch or whatever, I had the unfortunate reality of bumping into that ever-unpleasant Brunhilda out by the chicken coop!” said the still groggy Skeeter while holding a piece of raw liver to his quite livid and greenish-black eye. “Anyway, I was trying to be polite and move away from her with some dispatch, realizing that I was more than likely going to have to sneak into the barn and hit the bottle like I do after most exchanges with that bitter shrew of a woman, when the next thing I knew she marches right up to me, touches me on the back between my shoulder blades and then begins screaming and howling and carrying on like some demon inspired banshee from the very pit itself! Needless to say that was quite unexpected. Well, being a coward by nature, resolving the ‘fight or flight’ dichotomy was really a no-brainer for me, and the next thing I knew my pappy was dumping a bucket of cold water over my head and saying something about how I was not getting out of my chores that easily. It was all very confusing. Anyway, Brunhilda made a quick departure after that and I ended up in the barn with that bottle I have hidden behind the manure fork – so I guess things ain’t all so bad after all, I guess” he concluded drunkenly (and repeating himself in the same sentence!) with a dopey smile that is all too common among those who are already “half in the bag” at 1:30 in the afternoon, for Pete’s sake.

(Editorial Note: For the record, the unfortunate Praying Mantis, who was just minding his own business after mistaking that gray, dingy, obviously mistreated shirt for a rock where it might catch a moth or something, somehow managed to extricate itself from that shrieking mental patient of a shrew of a woman who was making such a fuss and eventually ended up in the potato patch, unharmed, thank goodness, where it spent the rest of the day looking like a stick and trying to get a quick snack while checking out all the female Praying Mantises who seem cuter and more sassy than usual this year, for some reason. Thank you.)