Teats on a Bull

I got this story e-mailed to me a year or so ago.  I laughed so hard my co-workers came over to my desk to check to make sure I was ok.  I laughed myself breathless.  And now, every time I need a giggle I read this story.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
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Beet Pulp Safety Warning a.k.a. The Famous Squirrel Story
© Susan Evans Garlinghouse

People who are into equine nutrition are notorious for spending their time doing the oddest things. While everyone else has normal nightmares about finding themselves riding in the World Equestrian Games stark naked past the press corps, nutrition people fret over whether their carefully thought-out recommendations will make the difference between Muffy the Superhorse winning his next competition in fame and glory, or falling into a dead faint somewhere between being saddled and the starting line. In the end, the finer points of nutrition often make zero difference, however, because you generally find out that:

a) Muffy won’t even touch your carefully crafted ration, much preferring to eat his bedding, the vet’s fingers and anything from the Taco Bell menu;

b) the moment you finish calculating the Perfect Equine Ration featuring Aunt Tilly’s Super Horsey Yums Yums, the feed company goes out of business or is indicted on environmental pollution charges;

c) it’s all irrelevant, anyway, because the barn manager’s favorite phrase is “Well, we’ve always fed this way for sixty years and hardly ever lose more than a horse a month to colic”, and steadfastly refuses to feed anything at all other than His Very Own Secret Recipe, featuring lawn clippings, glazed doughnuts and something that smells a lot like latex.

However, every now and then, you stumble across a feed that horses actually like (at least, after that initial suspicious, “You’re trying to poison me, aren’t you?” look, is wonderfully nutritious, cheap to feed and still Obscure and Mysterious enough that people feel like they’re really on The Cutting Edge in feeding it to Muffy. Beet pulp is like that, and for a long time I thought the only disadvantage to it was the minor inconvenience of having to soak it before feeding. Some folks skip that part, but others revel in making sure everyone else in the barn knows just how conscientious and detail-minded they are about Muffy’s nutritional well-being.

However, eventually I knew the true downside to beet pulp would show up, and thought it only fair that I pass it along…

This afternoon I decided to bring some beet pulp pellets into the house to soak, because I wanted to get an idea of exactly how much they expanded in volume during the soaking process. Academic types are like that, pathetically easy to amuse and desperately in need of professional help. I knew they expanded quite a bit, because the first time I’d innocently added water to a five-pound bucket of beet pulp, I’d come back later to find my feed room practically awash in beet pulp, providing a breakfast that every horse within a five mile radius still remembers with fond nostalgia. So in the interest of scientific curiosity, I trundled in a bucket, about three pounds of beet pulp, added in the water and set it in the living room to do its thing. No problem. Research in action.

Well, in our ongoing quest to turn this house into Noah’s Ark, we have not only four horses, three dogs, four neurotic cats, a sulfur-crested cockatoo, a cockatiel and assorted toads, we also have William. William is a fox squirrel who absent-mindedly fell out of his tree as a blind and hairless baby two years ago and whom the vet promptly handed off to the only person he knew silly enough to traipse around with a baby squirrel and a bottle of Esbilac into her bookbag. Actually, the trick wasn’t in keeping such a tiny creature warm, fed and clean—it was keeping a straight face and looking as mystified as everyone else when William woke up hungry and started pipping for his bottled like a very small, slightly muffled alarm clock. Invariably, this usually occurred while I was standing in line at the post office, picking up a pizza for dinner or on one memorable occasion, taking a final exam in biochemistry. Being no dummy, William knew a sucker when he saw one and has happily been an Urban Squirrel ever since.

And for those of you that think A Squirrel’s Place is In The Wild, don’t think we didn’t try that … his first Christmas, we thought we’d give him his first lesson in Being a Wild Squirrel by letting him play in the undecorated Christmas tree. His reaction was to shriek in horror, scuttle frantically across the floor and go try to hide underneath the nearest border collie. Since then, the only way he will allow himself to be taken outside is hiding inside Mummy’s shirt and peering suspiciously out at the sinister world.

So much for the re-make of Born Free in San Dimas. So secure is he about his place in the world that on more than one occasion, I’ve caught him sitting on his fat, smug little bottom, making faces out the window at our neighborhood (very frustrated) red-tailed hawk—like as not clutching a cashew in one paw and a bit of mango in the other.

Anyway, when I set out the bucket of beet pulp, I may have underestimated the lengths that a young and enthusiastic squirrel will go to stash all available food items in new and unusual hiding spots. I thought letting William out of his cage as usual and giving him a handful of almonds to go happily cram under cushions and into sleeping dog’s ears was sufficient entertainment for the afternoon. After all, when I left, he was gleefully chortling and gloating over his pile of treasure, making sure the cockatoo saw them so he could tell her I Have Almonds And You Don’t. So much for blind optimism.

Apparently when the almond supply ran out, beet pulp pellets became fair game and I can only imagine the little rat finding that great big bucket and swooning with the possibilities of being able to hide away All That Food. The problem isn’t quite so much that I now have three pounds of beet pulp pellets cleverly tucked away in every corner of my house, it’s that as far as I can tell, the soaking-expanding-and-falling-apart process seems to be kinda like nuclear meltdown. Once the reaction gets started, no force on earth is going to stop it.

So when I come back from the grocery store, not only do I find an exhausted but incredibly Fulfilled squirrel sprawled out snoozing happily up on the cat tree, I find that my house smells a lot like a Jamaican feed mill and virtually every orifice is crammed full of beet pulp. This includes the bathroom sink drain, the fish tank filter, in my undie drawer, in the kitty box (much to their horror) and ALL the pockets of my bookbag. Not to mention that in enthusiastically stuffing beet pulp into the air holes of the little box that hold live crickets for the toad’s dinner. William managed to open it up and free several hundred crickets into the living room. It’s not that I mind crickets springing to and fro, it’s just that it sounds a lot like an Evening in the Amazon Rain Forest in here. The cats, on the other hand, have never had such a marvelous time steeplechasing after stray crickets back and forth over the furniture, crunching up the spoils of the hunt (which wouldn’t be so bad if they would just chew with their mouths closed), and sicking up the more indigestible parts onto the rug.

I simply can’t WAIT to turn on the furnace and find out what toasting beet pulp smells like.

The good news is that in case of siege, I have enough carbohydrates hidden in my walls and under the furniture to survive for years. The bad news is that as soon as I try to remove any of this stash, I get a hysterical squirrel clinging to my pant leg, tearfully shrieking that I’m ruining all his hard work and now he’s going to starve this winter. (This is despite the fact that William is spoiled utterly rotten, knows how to open the macadamia nut can all by himself and has enough of a tummy to have earned him the unfortunate nickname Buddha Belly.)

So in case anyone was losing sleep wondering just how much final product you get after soaking three pounds of beet pulp, the answer is a living room full. I’d write this new data up and submit it as a case study paper to the nutrition and physiology society, but I suspect the practical applications may be limited.

Off to go empty the Shop-Vac. Again.

Copyright Susan Evans Garlinghouse 1997.

I got this e-mail a long time ago.  Since we’ve had our own Possum Adventures, it makes me laugh … a lot.  I can just see this happening.  And I laugh some more.  I have no idea who wrote it – I’d love to give them credit or, delete the post and link to the correct authors website.  Anyway, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
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Now, I live in the woods and, by definition, I’m surrounded by trees.  Yet, for some unknown reason, the only lumber yard within 100 miles of my house is located in the industrial district of downtown Newport News. My wife, Helga, also being a person of rural descent, is very apprehensive about the inner city. Understandably, she insists that I make my journey during periods of extreme daylight. So, one morning early last month, I set off on my most recent expedition.

For those of you who have never had the good fortune of visiting Waterfront Lumber, it is a vast stockpile of extraordinary wood. The sheds are jammed with seasoned lumber of every variety and I’m always surprised at what I find. Being a regular customer, I parked the station wagon in front of the oak shed and made my way to the front office. A quick nod to the manager, and a young apprentice was sent to help me load and tally the booty.

As I said, the contents of the wood barn never fail to surprise me…

The young boy slid back the shed door to reveal the much anticipated stack of rough oak.  Of course, what neither of us had expected to find was the enormous, furry, bug-eyed possum that was sitting like a cherry on top. I turned to the apprentice, hoping to comment on our circumstances, but found nothing but a dropped tape measure and a dust trail.

Now, where I come from possums are a regular and equally unwelcome occurrence. In fact, the last one that dared to encroach on Helga’s territory was batted over the back fence with a broom stick. She takes no prisoners. Unfortunately, she wasn’t with me and most of my dealings with possums had transpired through a windshield.  I decided to follow the boy’s lead.

Upon arriving back at the office, I caught my breath while the young man painted a disturbingly accurate picture of the beast… describing him as a ‘greazy, red-eyed fiend’. I nodded in concurrence… he was greazzzy. The yard foreman, a renowned naturalist, set his jaw and delved into the closet looking for the right tool for the job… something heavy.  He emerged with a broom. I should have known, this was the expert’s tool of choice.

We promptly departed the office and marched lock-step to the frontlines, emptying a 50 gallon drum of rainwater along the way. In a raspy whisper, the foreman began to reveal his plan of attack. He would throw open the shed and give the animal a good shove, whereupon one of us would catch it in the drum where it could be ‘disposed of’ at our leisure.  Needless to say, no one was volunteering for the second part.

As it happens, though, when we rounded the corner it became clear that we would be spared this trial. Elvis had left the building.  He was now, instead, sitting comfortably in the front seat of my wife’s station wagon. I resolved that Helga must never know about this as I watched the ‘greazy-eyed fiend’ glare at me over the steering wheel. As they say, the ‘great circle of life’ was now complete.

I took the broom stick and moved forward, intent on putting mankind back in the driver’s seat. The foreman grabbed the drum and moved to the passenger’s side door. We threw the doors open in unison and with one tremendous thrust, I lunged at the beast. It was in that precise moment that I realized the flaw in our planning. This was no ordinary animal. He was a city possum: streetwise and crafty. He latched on to the broom and quickly reinforced his grip by wrapping a prehensile tail around the broomstick. I jumped back with the broom (and the possum) in tow.

Now, on the upside, the possum was out of the car… unfortunately, I was now the proud owner of 20 pounds of hissing meat at the end of a four foot stick. The spectators backed away quickly, choosing to watch the negotiations from a distance. They were brief. For those of you who have never tried something like this, I recommend that you get in shape first. After running around the car twice, I tripped over the 50 gallon drum and we tumbled to the ground. I landed with a thud, his landing was reminiscent of a grocery bag full of wet newspaper. The time had come for a deal. As I lay there, face to face with the angry possum, we reached an understanding… He would amble back to HIS oak pile, and I would purchase a load of walnut instead.

Hours later, as I sat at the gas station washing the stains out of my wife’s upholstery, I realize that she had been right. The inner city really was a dangerous place. I beat a hasty path back to Seaford… home of the country possum.