Ah, a Friday off work and the sun is shining. I’m up bright and early. It’s going to be scorching hot today, so I decide to go out and start working on mowing the yard early to beat the midday heat. The property is 3.5 acres and all mow-able acres, so if I choose to do the entire thing myself on my little Sears Crafstman putt putt mower, it takes me nearly 6 hours. Not my favorite thing to do. So the usual routine is that I call my ‘boys’, Kevin and Smiley, and they come out to do the front half and the trim work and I do what I affectionately refer to as the back 9. Looks like golf course to me, so why not? They weren’t going to come out until Saturday, but I wanted to do my half today, so I could relax tomorrow.

So off I go, equipped with iPod, sunglasses, water bottle, hair pinned up in ‘claw clip”, pink and blue bikini on (of course) and shorts. Hmmmm, I can’t help it, but it’s impossible for me to be in the sun in full clothing and not suffocate! So I’m moseying along on my little riding mower, listening to my jams, having a lovely little morning, when all of a sudden I feel this sudden tug on my left leg, so hard.. wait!!! My sandal! Something has my sandal..it’s..taking…my sandal..off!! It’s the grape vine, I swear, it’s alive! It wrapped itself around my sandal and grabbed my sandal, the sneaky, vine! The little tractor is still in motion and my leg is going in one direction, so I let the vine have the sandal and I keep on going.. I’ll get it on the next pass. Score one point for the vine. I hope it’s not too hungry and it’s still there on my way back around….

So I continue up the next row, and it leads me in where there are a few of my trees. I have some lovely cherry trees that actually had some delicious cherries this year! YUM!! I managed to eat some before the crows got them all. I have peaches, pears, plums, an apple tree and…BONK!!!!

The top of my head gets caught in a low branch, it yanks out my hair “claw”, my sunglasses are all askew, and one of my ear buds are pulled out of me ear! I think I saw butterflies!! …. pretty …..

This time I am forced to bring the tractor to a full stop because my hair is literally tangles in the branches,…and as the motor goes quiet, I’m almost positive, I can hear the sound of strange laughter in the distance. I turn around and I see my property’s resident ground hog, “Son-of-a-Bitch” sitting up with his hand on his mouth, laughing at me, and wife pushing the little ground hog children, (I won’t mention their names) down into the ground hog hole not too far away from him as quickly as she could! No, .. seriously!

Now… I’m sure you’re all wondering why the ground hog is named Son-of-a-Bitch, right? There’s another story I have to share with you. I have a friend named Rajani that rented a room from me for about a year and a half while she was doing her residency at a local hospital here. A lovely young lady from India who was very polite, never cursed, never said anything inappropriate, was always courteous and respectful and proper… you get the picture? Well, one season we were wondering why the peaches were disappearing from our tree so quickly as soon as they were ripe. We just couldn’t figure it out and we really wanted to eat them ourselves.. It seemed like every time one of the trees bore fruit, it all disappeared within a day or two! Made no sense! So, Raj went out to the trash can one evening to put out the trash and comes running into the house and says (now.. imagine the most wonderful Indian accent you possibly can… be very stereo-typical as possible, because that makes it even more fun) “Toné!!! Come look! You are not going to believe this…. That Son-of-a-Bitch! He is eating all of our peaches! He has climbed the tree and is eating the peaches, that Son-of-a-Bitch!” And sure enough, there was this large brown, fat blob of ground hog in my peach tree, reaching for the peaches, and eating them. Up until that very moment, I never knew a ground hog could climb a tree, let alone knew they liked fruit so much. But that explained a lot… like how my ground hog, Son-of-a-Bitch, was always so fat, and why all my fruit was always gone! At one point I thought it was the deer reaching for them, but deer can’t reach that high… I never laughed so hard because it was the first time I had ever heard a curse come out of Rajani’s mouth.. and it was all so wonderful… especially with her accent.. Oh, I so wish I had it on tape!

I apologize to anyone for the nature of the expletives in this blog…

So back to the mis-adventures of Georgette of the Jungle. By this point I’m singing, George, George, George of the Jungle, watch out for that tree! Right then and there I decide that I am going to spend the rest of the day when I am done mowing the grass, cutting down some low tree limbs!!! I’m done with getting my hair caught in those branches. This was not the first time this had happened, but… after Son-of-a-Bitch laughed at me, I had had enough!! The family declined to be interviewed later on in the day. We tried, however, he and his family refused to come out of their hole. One of the neighbors said they overheard Mamma say they children were much too traumatized after last week’s episode seeing me tumble over with the cherry tree and she didn’t know how much they could handle!! Can you imagine?