Sunday, June 18, 2006

Wake-up calls

Today's infestations: ants, cows. The ants were winged, and I found them swarming all over the patio at 5:15 a.m. when I returned from dropping one of the young men off for a youth group bus trip to Myrtle Beach. The patio looked alive with untold numbers of ants scrambling over everything in their path, including my hiking boots, which I often leave out on the patio to dry off after a hike. The boots looked as if they'd suddenly sprouted glossy black wriggling tresses, not something I particularly feel like putting on my feet. The only way to get back into the house was to walk directly through the swarm, and a few of the ants followed me inside, where the resident dad was awakened very early to an urgent request for his pest eradication skills.

The cow infestation waited until after breakfast, when I was washing up the Father's Day breakfast dishes and noticed a cow standing where no cow had any right to stand. Then there was another cow and another--six or eight total; they were too busy gambolling about to submit to an accurate count. The resident dad put through a wake-up call to the neighbors, who averred that these couldn't be THEIR their cows but that they would go take a look and see whose cows they might be. We left for church to the sound of a four-wheeler zipping up the road to deal with the bovine infestation.

I suspect that few dads want to wake up on Father's Day to face an infestation of pests, but for a tough job, a little Dad'll do ya.

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