Archive for the 'El Rancho Deluxe' Category

The Donkey Chronicles, Part 2

Published by Jill on November 17, 2011. 52 Comments

Certainly you are on the edge of your seat awaiting some sort of resolution to the Donkey Situation. Here’s the status report:

The donkeys’ owner has finally been located, thanks to the expert sleuthing of Sgt. Jimmy of the Cottonmouth County Sheriff’s Dept.

Daphne and Liriope, Donk InvadersCrappily, it turns out that the owner is Mr Classy from seven or eight ranches over. He is the irascible lying sumbitch who hates his neighbors, beats dogs, impales babies on pitchforks, welches on bets, drinks Miller Lite, goes to church, and eats at Cracker Barrel. He wants nothing to do with the donkeys. In fact, he’s been letting them roam free for years. Reports from ranches as far as 5 miles distant attest that these donkeys are quite the jetsetters. It’s gotten even worse since the drought. The creek that traverses all the ranches in this area has run dry, leaving a creekbed that livestock on the lam use as a sort of highway that runs for miles. These 3 donkeys are among the more notorious rogues.

Mr Classy tells Sgt. Jimmy that he is sick and tired of these donkeys, and that if he is forced to come and collect them from my place, he’ll just shoot’em.

I am now totally screwed, because although the urgency with which I require three feral donkeys is immeasurably slight, I obviously can’t send them back to that redneck dicksmoke and his cheap-ass shotgun. I mean, I jumped into 60 degree water to save that drowning jenny. It was a poignant, dramatic, and heartwarming episode that would have made an excellent feel-good segment on the local evening news. I can’t just send her off to be murdered after a thing like that, right?

So I tell Sgt Jimmy that I’ll forgive all the damages if Mr Classy will just sign the donkeys over to me. This is a pretty good deal for Mr Classy, since feral donkeys are worth quite a bit less than nothing in these days of drought and hay famine, and the damage caused by Daphne’s natatory episode, which I had intended to hit him up for, will amount to quite a pile.

So Sgt. Jimmy attempts to broker the deal, occasioning a call from Mrs Classy. She wants to know what time today I can come and get the donkeys. What do you mean, I say. Don’t I already have them? No, she says, they’re at her neighbor’s place, she can see them from the road. Sure enough. Since breakfast the donkeys have apparently traversed 3 miles of rough terrain and are now completely absent from El Rancho Deluxe.

This surprises me. It hadn’t dawned on me for some reason that the donkeys would decide to go back. Why would any donkey elect to abandon swimming pools and hay for a ranch with no swimming pools and hay? But it also drives home the realization that the three donkeys are in fact afflicted with a wanderlust woven so deeply within their mettle that even so magnetic a personality as my own is powerless against it. They’re tumbleweeds in the John Ford movie of life. “Babe, I gotta ramble” is their motto. “Don’t fence me in” is the theme song that plays during their fadeouts.

Which means I gotta fence them in.

I tell Mrs Classy that I’ll have to run some new fence before I can take custody, which should take a couple of weeks. This pisses off Mrs Classy. Since no promise of a future good deed goes unpunished, she delivers a brief but colorful monologue expressing her dissatisfaction with the time line. But what can I do?

So the anticlimax is that I still have not officially adopted 3 wild donkeys, and that the fence guy is coming out next week to take a look.

To be continued.

Posted in Announcements, El Rancho Deluxe, Heartwarming Nature Crap and Horse Blogging. Bite me, Chad.

To whomever is missing 3 donkeys near Rattlesnake, TX

Published by Jill on November 12, 2011. 66 Comments

Donkey in the pool[UPDATE: Donkey mistook pool cover for solid ground, fell in, got trapped in deep end under pool cover. Had a hell of a time -- about an hour and a half -- getting her out. Her best friend paced on the sidelines the whole time in a sort of worried panic, hee-hawing more or less continuously. I'm sure you heard it over in Australia. My ears are still ringing. Couldn't get the trapped donkey to climb up the steps, because she's a donkey. Tried to bite me whenever I'd get close enough to toss a rope around her girth. Eventually she saw reason and climbed out on her own. She stood still for a second, then shook the water off, pooped in the pool, gave me the atomic stink-eye and trotted off into the night to rejoin her anxious troupe. If I end up keeping her I'm naming her after one of the Naiades. Possibly Daphne, who fended off Apollo by turning into a laurel tree, or Liriope, the mother of Narcissus.]

Three donkeys

I have your donkeys (not pictured: the third donkey).

Longhorn cow

Oh, and those 12 gaudy Texas longhorn cattle you bought so you could make like Ross Perot and keep your ag exemption in style? I have those, too (not pictured: 11 other ginormous cattle with 6′ racks). I will happily return them to you once you’ve reimbursed me for the damages.

Thank you.

Posted in Announcements and El Rancho Deluxe. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster Aunt Hiatus Diaries: I’m surrounded by invisible turkeys

Published by Jill on February 27, 2011. 41 Comments

Turkey

It’s 7:30 in the morning. I just got back from tracking a flock of wild turkeys through dense underbrush and am now plucking cactus needles out of my ankles.

I am an award-nominated spinster aunt, but my nomination was not, alas, in the field of wild turkey tracking. These turkeys were definitely in close proximity, but I never did, technically, espy one. Many people think of turkeys as stupid, goofy birds, but they are actually — for 20-pounders with brains the size of garbanzo beans — extremely accomplished in the art of not being seen.

They’re also extremely eloquent. I wish you could hear the eerie and sort of magical (but not really magical; as you know, I promote the scientific Weltanschauung) echo of their chill, burbling murmurs as it reverberates through the valley. This chill, burbling murmur is known in turkey circles as a “gobble.” It’s loud as fuck. The turkey flock wafts invisibly through the woods and the gobbling swells and seems to surge from everywhere at once and then suddenly – zippo. Like they just got beamed up.

The musical and poetical impact of this heartwarming avian nature crap experience rivals that of the celebrated lone-loon-on-a-misty-Minnesota-lake.

Posted in El Rancho Deluxe and Heartwarming Nature Crap. Bite me, Chad.

What I did on my summer vacation

Published by Jill on September 17, 2010. 74 Comments

Got a new horse. I’m not gonna lie. She’s more fun than patriarchy blaming. Her name is Iz. For those who give a fig about equine particulars, she’s a bloomy 10-year-old chestnut 15.3 Thoroughbred/Oldenburg cross who never puts a foot wrong. We’ll be doing the low hunters, Spinster Aunt Division. In this award-nominated video Iz demonstrates her delightful disposition.

Will this blog ever be its old self again? Well, the racket of the crickets has tapered off such that I can now hear the toads, which make a noise like a game show buzzer only louder and more interminable. I know of no sound more likely to hurl me into a frogicidal mania. The other night, dripping with sweat and sleep deprivation, I completely lost it and actually tried to brain one with a shovel (no need to call PETA; I missed). I’m on 2 hours of sleep right now. Something’s gotta give. It doesn’t look like the toads are gonna give, so I’ll probably just claw my own face off soon.

But blaming will resume nevertheless. I’ve recently seen some shit on TV that blew my entire lobe, and I can’t wait to complain about it on the Internet!

Posted in Announcements, El Rancho Deluxe, Heartwarming Nature Crap and Horse Blogging. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt posts photo of wagging tail without comment

Published by Jill on July 16, 2010. 28 Comments

Franny with white chair, 1963
Jilroy Silliphant. Franny with white chair. 1963.

Posted in Art is my LIFE, Dog Blogging and El Rancho Deluxe. Bite me, Chad.

The heartwarming zubiks of Obstreperon

Published by Jill on June 8, 2010. 52 Comments

Posted in El Rancho Deluxe, Heartwarming Nature Crap, Not Altogether Depressing, Pre-recorded Twisty and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.

Heartwarming $20 Bill of the Week

Published by Jill on May 26, 2010. 19 Comments

American money (and spider)

The picturesque Texas Hill Country is full of pleasant surprises. Take this abnormally tiny $20 bill, for example. I sure did!

Posted in El Rancho Deluxe, Heartwarming Nature Crap and Not Altogether Depressing. Bite me, Chad.

The Hot Flash Chronicles

Published by Jill on April 18, 2010. 47 Comments

Big sky
View, from a 40-foot crane, of a crane operator, and of my fascinating roof.

Bizarre hot flash anecdote of the day:

The time: 3:30 in the morning. Spinster aunt was awakened from moist and fitful sleep by hot flash accompanied by usual aura of hopelessness and impending doom (by the way, the Spinstitute for Post-Hysterectomy and Oophalectomy Studies is researching this fucking doom-aura: please contact the department if you, too, have been rudely separated from your reproductive organs and regularly experience the Despondent Melancholic Aura along with your hot flashes).

Anyway. Unable to go back to sleep, I flipped on the TV. The show was PBS workhorse “This Old House.” Some strawberry blonde dude was converting a purlin into a hex-jig, or installing a new blart box in an old neffit; I don’t really remember on accounta I was in a stupor at the time. All I know is, I watched through swollen, sleep-deprived eyes as the strawberry dude effortlessly pulled heat-sensitive galvanized conduit through a wooden alloy breezeway and had the new helicopter landing pad or low-voltage window-washer all up and running in about three minutes flat. Impressive!

The next thing I knew, the phone was ringing. It was my mom, who thinks nothing of calling me at 7 in the morning with results from “Dancing With the Stars.” However, this morning her news was even less dire: some shady ‘collection agency’ was threatening to kneecap her unless she could convince me to call’em up and give’em a blank check. My mom did not grasp the scamminess of this dealio. So would I please call them?

“Chin up, Mom!” I said. “Don’t let’em take ya without a fight!”

The next thing I knew, there was a young assistant TV producer named Tristyn on my doorstep.* This was fairly unusual. I have erected fences and laid land mines and taken other antisocial measures specifically to keep assistant Tristyns off my doorstep. But still, here she was. Having sprinted the mile or so from my front gate, she was moist. Would I mind giving her the gate code so the rest of the crew could get in?

It all came rushing back. It turns out that last month, in a moment of weakness, I foolishly agreed to let some home improvement show come around to videotape footage of my rainwater collection system, which system is apparently endlessly fascinating. I had forgotten all about it, because along with hot flashes and fucking auras of doom, my memory banks have been battered, deep-fried, and served with blueberry mustard on accounta all the chemo and radiation. But the zero hour had arrived, and here, of a bright spring morn, were a bunch of TV-people, infesting the Spinster Compound with cameras, lights, on-air talent, and, yes, a 40-foot crane.

Tristyn introduced me to the crew. They were were all very pleasant (Tristyn had even brought me a coffee), which immediately made me suspicious. I found myself giving one of’em the old eyeball with particular intensity. He was handsome and outgoing. He was genial and sparkly. He had strawberry blonde hai– hey, wait a minute! Things had taken a sinister turn indeed. This was, in fact, the same exact dude from the PBS hot flash incident a scant 4 hours before!

Now that television personalities have begun squirting out of the TV into my living room to exude good-lookingness, congeniality, and a convincing interest in my roof gutters, I am going to have to take security up a notch around here. I have instructed Phil to install a robotic machine gun, and of course, to double up on the Gilligan’s Island-style camouflaged spring-loaded net traps. The gate sentries have orders to shoot to kill any 40-foot cranes.

Well, that’s the end of the anecdote.

____________________________
*As a patriarchy-blaming side-note: young Tristyn was the only woman in the production crew. It was her job to run herd on 5 adult males, and to mediate between them and the outside world. Naturally it was she who had been sent on foot to traverse the mile of rough terrain between the gate and my front door, and who later was dispatched to the nearest town to pick up lunch, a hour’s drive away. While she was gone everyone stopped working and lapsed into a coma. She schlepped a giant notebook full of production and travel-related paperwork and intimated to me that her head was about to explode.

Posted in El Rancho Deluxe and The Entertainment Industrial Complex. Bite me, Chad.

Rednecks vs hogs

Published by Jill on January 24, 2010. 44 Comments

Feral hog track

Do you often say to yourself, “I wonder, what does a feral hog track look like, anyway?” Look no further. Behold the goods. This track was huge enough that I have no wish to encounter the hog what made it. It probably has giant venomous fangs, spiked tail, and 6-inch claws.

Texas has more feral hogs than any other state. That’s because Texas has more rednecks than any other state. It is the fondest dream of certain of these rednecks to hunt wild hogs with pit bulls, so they make sure there are always plenty of’em roaming the countryside, terrorizing the citizenry.

I can get rid of my feral hog by calling one of these rednecks. They offer free hog removal in return for the thrill of the hunt. But then, of course, I’d have rednecks on the farm. I don’t know which is worse. It is, as Stingray said, a question for the ages.

Posted in Bloodsport, El Rancho Deluxe, Heartwarming Nature Crap and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.

Feel-good post of the week

Published by Twisty on December 4, 2009. 39 Comments

The other day I rode a horse bareback for the first time in 30 years.

This horse.

Stanley

It was just like riding a bike, if the bike were 6 feet tall, 1300 pounds, and would spook like a deer at the terrifying sight of a cigarette butt on the ground.

I had to get a leg up. Actually, it was more of a push-and-shove up. It turns out that I’ve completely forgotten how to mount a horse without stirrups, stairs, or a jetpack. Further complicating the situation was my choice of mounts. Rather than one of my demure little Arabian mares, the animal I was attempting scale was that Matterhorn of equines, the giant gelding Stanley.

“Don’t forget to jump!” pleaded my reluctant assistant Christina, just before she heaved me up. She was worried that I would be like unto a sack of shit and throw her back out. She is a delicate flower.

So jump I did. Even so, the situation quickly emerged as a classic confrontation between gravity and romantic delusion. As I was hanging there off the side of the horse, wondering with no small interest whether the exercise would eventually go north or south, a separate compartment of my brain was busy accessing my Idyllic Childhood Nostalgia Module.

Memories of youthful vim superseded all awareness of my present clumsiness. I recalled the agile young Twisty executing innumerable effortless vaults onto innumerable tack-free horses. And what was this? A dim recollection of my old brown mare, at whose plump rump I’d take a running jump, like a movie stunt rider, springing into place from behind. Somehow I’d always end up on the right part of the mare, and like as not go tearing off down a wooded trail somewhere.

That little brown mare was snappy as heck.

Thus it was that, at a critical point in mid-dangle, some memory-based self-preservational impulse kicked in, and I managed to scramble my skinny ass up out of half-mounted limbo.

Or maybe Christina gave the skinny ass in question another good shove; I can’t remember, it all happened so fast.

And then I tore off. On Stanley. At a lumbering walk. Around the dusty old round pen. But in my mind it was 1975 and I was galloping that little brown mare down a wooded trail with a Grape Nehi in my hand.

For about 30 seconds. Then I looked down. Christina waving at me from the rail, and she looked like an ant from way up there. I briefly considered busting out into a full-on jog, but came to my senses in time to conclude that the horse would infallibly bounce me off in two strides or less, so robust is young Stanley’s trot, and so non-existent is old Twisty’s seat.

I hope it will not be too heartwarming to note the simple pleasure I experienced when the ride was over? I slid uneventfully from Stanley to the ground, without spraining anything, exactly as I’d done a thousand times before (gravity is kinder to the spinster aunt on the dismount). But the best part was the sweaty, horsehair-encrusted britches sticking to my legs. They were like an old bud I hadn’t seen in years, who just happened to be carrying a bottle of pretty good wine. And a corkscrew.

Posted in Easy Persiflage, El Rancho Deluxe, Heartwarming Nature Crap and Not Altogether Depressing. Bite me, Chad.