{"id":345,"date":"2014-01-31T19:53:36","date_gmt":"2014-01-31T23:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/?p=345"},"modified":"2014-01-31T19:53:36","modified_gmt":"2014-01-31T23:53:36","slug":"hey-sweetie-guess-what-followed-me-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/?p=345","title":{"rendered":"Hey, Sweetie, Guess What Followed Me Home?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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1-16-14\u00a0 Use the phrase \u201cI never wanted that in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

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I was bound and determined to do it, and Vera was bound and determined that I not.\u00a0 So it goes.\u00a0 We survived, but barely.<\/p>\n

The first shipment took two weeks to arrive at the post office.\u00a0 Mary called up to the house and asked that I come down as soon as possible, as the little critters were a bit noisier than the biddies they usually got in the spring, and the locals were getting curious and insistent.<\/p>\n

I got down to the post office after supper time, and picked up the five boxes with the air holes in the sides and warning stickers saying \u201cLIVE PRODUCT\u201d on all sides.\u00a0 As if you couldn\u2019t tell from the sound and smell.\u00a0 They went into the back of the pickup and all of us headed back over to the farm.\u00a0 The locals were left in the dust, rubbernecking as a gang on the front sidewalk.<\/p>\n

I had everything ready for the brood when I pulled in to the barn.\u00a0 The cages had feed and water and litter and heat lamps.\u00a0 It looked professional, alright.\u00a0 I always said, if a job\u2019s worth doing, it\u2019s worth over-doing.<\/p>\n

I dragged the first box to the tailgate, and carefully opened it.\u00a0 Eighteen of the twenty chinchillas had survived the trip.\u00a0 I felt bad for them having to travel with their dear departed brothers, but I steeled my soul for the commercial venture, and picked the little rodents up and put them down again, four to a cage.\u00a0 I had to sex the little buggers as I went, which really meant just turning them over and squeezing a bit.\u00a0 Boys in this cage, girls in that one.\u00a0 I was hoping for a bumper crop of girls, cause they could have babies and the boys were along just to speed up the process.\u00a0 As it turned out, the literature was right and I got just about even with the numbers.\u00a0 Oh, well.<\/p>\n

I had ordered a hundred of the little critters, and ended up with ninety two.\u00a0 Pretty good, I thought.\u00a0 With their gestation period, I would be okay within a couple of months, and I\u2019d be in full swing by the October harvest season.<\/p>\n

I made sure the cages were all secured and headed into the house.\u00a0 Vera headed me right back out, and I had to shuck off out in the barn and put on the clothes she threw out to me.\u00a0 She seemed to be in a bit of a pique.\u00a0 Once formally attired, I took a second stab at it and made it to the laundry.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t ask permission, just went ahead with it and accepted the consequences.<\/p>\n

Over supper, Vera and I discussed the economics of chinchilla farming.\u00a0 I had memorized the contents of the brochures, and had a shiny blue binder they had sent me from the ad in the back of the magazine.\u00a0 Vera\u2019s arguments fell like dominos, and yet I had an unsettled feeling that it was all a set-up.\u00a0 I was sure as I could be that this was the one that was going to put us over the top.\u00a0 How could you go wrong supplying the furriers of New York with premium pelts?\u00a0 The Russians had been doing it for decades with minks and sables and all that.\u00a0 What made them better than me?\u00a0 Nothing!<\/p>\n

Come May, I had my first litter of baby chinchillas.\u00a0 It was a good thing, too.\u00a0 I was down to seventy-five of the little guys, and had spent a fortune on fencing off the barn to keep the foxes and fisher cats out.\u00a0 Who knew?\u00a0 The babies were little, but there were six of them and I was in business. They brought me back up to eighty one.\u00a0 All I needed now was a continuous stream of girls chinchillas to give birth, and I\u2019d be rolling in it.\u00a0 I had the phone number for the furrier tacked up on the wall, just ready for the call.<\/p>\n

I headed back into the house, and gave Vera a call at her mother\u2019s.\u00a0 She insisted she wasn\u2019t coming back until I got a second washer and got a clothes line up.\u00a0 I heated up a can of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee on the stove and fell asleep in the chair in front of the TV.<\/p>\n

July was a hot one.\u00a0 I lost a bit of the crop to the heat when they ran out of water by accident.\u00a0 I rigged up a self-watering system for the little bastards, and hoped for another bout of births as soon as possible.\u00a0 I drew some hope from the fact that I was still ahead of the game.\u00a0 There were 157 rodents in the barn, and I was getting happy again.<\/p>\n

Come October, I crated up the crop and drove them over to the processing center.\u00a0 I squoze in between two semi trucks and stacked the crates myself.\u00a0 There weren\u2019t enough for a forklift.\u00a0 I looked over my shoulder as I left, but just couldn\u2019t get a tear to come to my eye. On the way back, I stopped down to the bank and then over to the mall.<\/p>\n

Vera met me at the door when I got back up to the house.\u00a0 Gee, she looked good.\u00a0 She sure was surprised with the fox fur coat I got her as a forgive-me present. \u00a0\u201cYou\u2019re forgiven, but I told you I never wanted that in the first place.\u00a0 Now take me out to dinner.\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing in the house but Chef Boy-Ar-Dee.\u201d<\/p>\n

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  1-16-14\u00a0 Use the phrase \u201cI never wanted that in the first place.\u201d   I was bound and determined to do it, and Vera was bound and determined that I not.\u00a0 So it goes.\u00a0 We survived, but barely. The first shipment took two weeks to arrive at the post office.\u00a0 Mary called up to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-promptedwriting"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":347,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions\/347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}