deer hunting

You Dirty Tag Whore

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,
This is me wondering what the heck this "tagging" thing was...it was disappointing how not-sexy it is.

I got tagged. Here in Alabama there are two choices for what tagging something could mean: first, I’ve killed a wild animal and I stuck a piece of heavy cardboard through its ear to show it to the game warden, or second I accidentally shot myself while hunting wild animals and the coroner has stuck a piece of cardboard through my ear to show me to the game warden.

I now know that it means that somebody tagged me on her blog and so now I’ve been tagged.

When I first read the notice that I had been tagged, my first thought was that this was some internet sex thing. I was about to cancel all my accounts online and have the internet connection shut off. But then I read it more closely and I saw that the creepy person who tagged me is actually a blogger I recognize and even though she’s really smokin’ hot and writes about shmexy vampires for a living, I don’t think she’s into me in THAT way. But thanks, Erica Lucke Dean, for thinking I’m totally tag-worthy.

Now I’ve gone back and read the fine print and it turns out that tagging isn’t going to get me laid or make me dead, and while only one of those is good news, it’s still a relief that nothing kinky is happening with my internet activity. So here are the answers to the questions that I’m supposed to post now that I went and got myself tagged up. I mean, tagged.

WHAT WAS THE HAPPIEST EVENT OF 2011?

Event like as in a holiday or event as in getting myself out of a situation without involving the cops, the paramedics, a lock smith, or the town Tarot reader? Um, I would have to say that getting to touch a dolphin in the ocean was pretty neat. See? We can see a wild animal without tagging it…

WHAT HAS BEEN THE SADDEST EVENT?

Huh. That one’s a stumper. There’s not a lot of sad going on around me because I have this eighth sense for sniffing out mood killers and running away like someone’s on fire. I guess not finding out my kid’s class was having a Christmas party and therefore making her be that one kid whose mom didn’t send anything. That sucked a lot.

ONE UNLIKELY THING YOU DID:

Here’s the thing, all this stuff that I do that shocks the shit outta me? Yeah, everybody else totally saw it coming. But something I did that I never really envisioned myself doing was getting my hair caught in the hinge on my kitchen cabinet and having to cut myself free with a steak knife from the drawer while my O.A. (occasionally asshole) husband stood there laughing really hard and absolutely not helping me.

WHO LET YOU DOWN?

The entire U.S. government. And the Auburn Tigers. And the undersea gods who make tsunamis and the weather patterns that make tornados. All of you pretty much sucked toe last year.

WHAT MADE YOU LAUGH?

Valium. Shut up, it’s medicinal.

WHAT MADE YOU CRY?

Hmmm. I don’t remember doing a lot of crying in 2011. Oh wait, some butt-muncher stole my dog and then it managed to get away, but then it was hit by a car. Yeah. Cried a little bit.

ONE THING THAT MADE YOU PROUD OF YOURSELF?

I made a completely amazing papier mache frog head for my daughter’s Halloween costume and it rocked. Technically, I did that back in 2010 but I’m still riding the high from that one.

ONE CHALLENGE YOU OVERCAME?

The parking garage. I finally learned how to get out of those things without needing my Garmin.

WHAT WILL YOU CHANGE ABOUT YOURSELF IN 2012?

That’s a dangerous question. What if I make all these grand plans and you people actually expect me to go through with them? We’ll start small with I’m going to finally learn how to multiply fractions. From there, I’ll work my way up to remembering to write down stuff in my checkbook register to keep my husband from having to call up all my usual haunts and ask them if I wrote a check in the last ninety days. He completely thinks about tagging me when I do that.

I’m sharing the love here by tagging Greg from DogsOnDrugs.com because I kind of secretly want to know all this dirt about him now that I found out just how many times he can toss the F-word into one conversation about grocery shopping. Yeah, buddy, I know you read this blog and there’s your name right there on the screen and you’re gonna be all, “Holy F! She F-in’ said my name! She’s so F-in’ amazing! I need to F-in’ grocery shop!” (I may be slightly exaggerating Greg’s amazement at this announcement. It may be more like, “Holy F! This is like an F-in’ chain letter that you gotta F-in’ keep goin’ and I don’t do that F-in’ stuff,” only I don’t think he would say “stuff” after saying the F-word that many times.)

Only a Selfish Pig Wouldn’t Be Fit Enough to Eat

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

If the stick figure can fall out of a tree without whining about it, why can't my husband?

My darling husband came home from hunting yesterday (without any meat, I feel compelled to add) limping in the door in a pair of pants so shredded that he looked like he’d been attacked by wild dogs. He dropped his stuff and rolled up both pants legs to reveal really horrible bloody gashes running on the outside of both knees. Apparently, he had started to fall out of his tree stand and instinctively stuck his legs out to hold on but they were cut by—get this—the metal screws that hold this tree stand together.

Those of you from rural Alabama not only know exactly what I’m talking about and can visualize the whole thing playing out in slow motion, you even know three relatives that this has happened to. Those of you not schooled in the ways of killing your own wild game from up in the branches of a tree might need a little help, but I’m too lazy to explain it. Just trust me, he started to fall and ended up cutting his legs. The end.

But that’s not actually the end. He cut himself on metal screws. That were rusty. Let that sink in.

There’s an important story that actually happened just last week and it’s important to today’s tale because you need to understand what actually happens in a tree stand. Not only is there an agreement that any member of the hunting world can use your tree stand—and PEE out of it as the need arises—but nature-type things also happen in tree stands. Last week, my husband climbed up in a tree stand belonging to a friend of his and discovered parts of a furry dead animal. I had to explain to him that a large bird of prey had probably used the tree stand as a perch from which to scarf down its most recent kill, probably a squirrel or a rabbit.

So my husband’s tree stand injury now has happened on metal screws that were rusty and coated in rabbit blood, bird poop, and hunter pee. AND HE WON’T GET A TETANUS SHOT. He refused. I nagged, I begged, I threatened, I Googled stories of people dying from lock jaw, I even called up close-up images of festering yellowy-oozy infectious wounds. And he’s such a baby that he won’t go get one.

As hunting people, we are realists. My husband declared that if he gets tetanus, oh well, he dies, no big deal because his life insurance is paid up. To which I pointed out, you have to be a real jerk to go ahead and die from something infectious because then the rest of us can’t eat you in the apocalypse or in a blizzard or something. Way to think of others, asshat.

And That, My Child, Is How We Use the WHOLE Deer

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

Guess what happens when they can smell you from a mile away?

I live in Alabama and I am married to a man. In most cases, that simple little one-plus-one would equal three and a half months of the year ruined by the ruthless stalking of fluffy prey like a caveman on uppers. Yes, I am a deer hunting widow from October 15th through January 31st (it’s physically painful that I know these dates); this is in addition to being an SEC football widow from mid-August through the SEC Championship game in early December, followed by a National Championship game in January if God loves us enough.

I actually don’t mind the deer hunting whenever it actually results in a deer that we can eat. Aside from the several deer that my husband has missed and an equally significant number that he has shot and never could find (because it’s easy to get really, REALLY far away with an arrow sticking out of your side), I would be a whole lot more supportive of this habit if actual meat was the prize at the bottom of the box.

The time spent away from the family perched in a rickety aluminum tree stand for countless hours every weekend during the season isn’t what really hurts me, though. It’s the pee. Yes, I said it, there is a pee problem. Not mine, or my husband’s (well, technically it’s his problem).

In order to hunt deer you have to have a lot of pee, presumably the kind of pee that will attract other deer. Usually doe pee is involved, although if you’re lucky you can get your hands on doe-in-rut pee, the kind that will drive those bucks wild with lust and wanting. Where do you get such liquid gold?

At the pee store. Duh.

Yes, my husband BUYS pee. He PAYS for urine. With actual MONEY. Somewhere along the way I forgot to inform him that if there is anything in my life that I feel we have way too much of, it’s pee. My own pee notwithstanding, there are two children and a dog that have been happily bringing pee into my life for years, and I’ve only just in the last several years gotten all three of them to the point that they can take care of their pee on their own. Little bottles with labels like Doe-Eyed Gold and Buck Bomb have graced the shelves of our attic with the hunting equipment for far longer than I can think about without throwing up a little bit in my mouth.

I finally managed to cure my husband of his obsession with purchasing store-bought pee: like a good wife, I supported his hobbies and interests by usually getting him some hunting-related device for his birthday. This year, I bought him a little camouflaged canister about the size of a soda can that hangs from a tree and dispenses…pee. On a timer, even. You simply hang it in the woods near your tree stand, set it to go, and while you sit safely above ground (and away from all pee) this little contraption sprays doe pee all over the ground to draw the bucks to you. It’s like taking pee from a baby.

Only I bought the wrong one and this one wasn’t on a timer. It was motion activated. He walked near it and the mechanical Pee Fairy doused him from the top of his international orange hat to his Cabela’s all-weather snake guard boots. Happy birthday, dear.