This Little Piggy Went to Arby's

When the cop met me at the front door holding a long pole with a slip noose on the end I knew that it couldn’t be a good sign. The poles are used for catching animals, but my dogs were in the backyard. It was their incessant barking that led me to investigate the source of their aggravation. I thought the pole was a little extreme for a chicken. My six-year-old daughter can catch our hens with her bare hands, so if one of them had jumped the fence, I’d just send her out for a chicken round-up. The image of two uniformed officers running around the yard, trying to catch a chicken, briefly crossed my mind. Apathy police are generally a pleasant lot, so I ignored the amusing thought and addressed the officer.

“Good afternoon.” I smiled.

“Do you own a pig?” he asked.

“A pig?” I replied. That was an unexpected question. “No, I don’t own a pig. Did you get a report of a pig running the neighborhood?”

“We have one cornered by your gate,” he informed me.

A pig? In my yard? Seriously? Why? WHY? Why do these things keep happening? Most people get a stray dog or cat on their property. Occasionally, a coon or a possum. But, Arby? Noooooooo! Arby gets a stray pig!

Sure enough, when I walked around the corner of the house, another officer was standing with his long pole in one hand. Secured at the end of the pole was a young, black, ornery, squealing pig. Two feet away, on the other side of the fence, were two dogs thinking, “Bacon and eggs! Yup, yup! Bacon and eggs!” They were telling the entire neighborhood of their excitement.

The pig wore a red harness similar to a training harness that you’d place on a dog. This was obviously someone’s pet.

I offered to take the pig off their hands. I know a guy in Missouri who would love to fatten this hog before adding it to the contents of his deep freeze. It was about that time that my neighbor arrived home. She pulled into her driveway, opened her window, and asked, “Did you get a new animal?” She was laughing as she asked, as if the addition of a pig in my yard was completely within the realm of possibility. Really? It also appeared that the idea of a pig in my yard was no big deal for her. I have to be grateful that she is so flexible.

The police put the animal in the back of their cruiser and went in search of the owner.

No, I didn’t grab a camera. That was the first question The Boss asked when she arrived home from work. “They’re going to think you make up this stuff,” she told me. “I wish you grabbed a camera.” I kinda wish I had proof of this story, too. If it makes the police blotter in my local paper, I’ll scan a copy and post it.

This little piggy went to Arby’s

It Was Just One Of Those Days

My alarm clock yesterday morning was a comment from the Boss.

“Hey, are you awake? I’m leaving for work.”

My snooze alarm was a phone call from the Boss.

“Did you know that our license plates are expired?”

Now that woke me up.

Yesterday was one of those days. It was one of those days where a simple one step process was broken down into twenty-three little steps all because of two words that aptly sum up life: Stuff Happens. In this case the “stuff” was the fact that our insurance cards for our vehicles were at home while the paperwork from the state of Kansas for renewing our license plates was on the Boss’ desk on post. The state Treasurer’s office sits halfway between our house and the Boss’ desk, directly across the street from the local juvenile detention facility and about a million squad cars. Isn’t it always the case that the day you are driving on expired tags you see every uniformed officer in a tri-county area on the road with you?

“Our plates expired on the last day of March but I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to stress out,” the Boss told me. She knows me well. Ignorantly driving on expired tags for a week was bliss.

So, I left the oldest in charge of his siblings and drove to Fort Leavenworth to get the renewal paperwork from the Boss. That was the paperwork for all three vehicles that I apparently took out of the mail box and threw on the bedroom floor sometime in late February or early March. I say “apparently” because I have no memory of having done so, but the Boss found the paperwork on our bedroom floor while cleaning last weekend and she rarely gets the mail and even more rarely chucks it on the floor.

The lady at the Treasurer’s office was very nice as she renewed the tags on two of our three vehicles. She would not renew the tags on the Boss’ scooter because the Boss had not signed the renewal form and did not think to put my name on the title when she purchased the bike three years ago. The state absolutely refused to allow me to purchase the tags for my spouse. I left the Treasurer’s office, put the new tag on the minivan, drove back to the fort and put the new tag on the car, and handed the scooter paperwork back to the Boss along with the insurance card and told her, “You need to do this one.” She replied, “Okay,” and promptly went out to lunch for Thai food.

Sigh.

I drove home. I fed the kids. I dressed the girl for preschool and the boys for running club. We all drove to the preschool to drop off the girl and drove back to the fort for the running club, meeting up with the Boss at the track in order to give her, her MP3 player. Conducting top secret analysis of combat operations is always more pleasant with tunes.

The scooter still needs new tags.

It was just one of those days.