Saturday, June 9, 2012

Pastor Terry Jones and my Dead Squirrel

There seemed to have been a lot of selling points for having a garden at the time. Great for the kids, BBQs etc.


Since acquiring a large expanse of urban grass I have also been counting the downsides. The fact the bugs make it too dangerous to hang out in for half the year, the pine cones that need to be removed all the time and the quick growing grass.

I have a special face for mowing the lawn. It isn't a pleasant one. Women pushing babies past in strollers tend to cross the road when they see it playing over my features. Even the rough mothers - the ones whose strollers are packed with enough crack to keep Whitney Houston going for a couple of days, look afraid.

The lawn mower's a pig anyhow. Half of the time it doesn't start and the rest of the time you have to douse it with gasoline and light a match. I thought about starting my own landscaping company.I thought again.

Now I have putrefying wildlife to add to the list of garden gripes. The kids had been going on about a dead bird so I set out to investigate one bright morning, magnifying glass in hand like Sherlock Holmes at a crime scene. I got suspicious when I saw the curled up foot. The dead bird turned out to be a putrefying squirrel and it stank. The dead squirrel was the best argument I have ever seen for cremation.

It was also covered in crawling things. Even after three garbage liners the smell was discernible. We shoved it outside gate with a vague plan of dropping it into the wheelie bin of a neighbor we didn't like. But nobody was brave enough to carry it across the street so it resided on the front lawn until Friday when household refuse is picked up.

Had I been more resourceful I would have found a way of delivering the aforementioned squirrel to Pastor Terry Jones, a man who has made more unsavory headlines by hanging an effigy of President Obama on a noose outside his church in Gainesville, Florida. This may have been a cue for some bizarre looks at the post office, though.

In 2010 Jones courted more controversy by threatening to burn 1,000 copies of the Quaran. He incidentally ruined my day when I was asked to find outraged Muslims in a city with few Muslims and worked long hours finding the information for an article only for Jones to renege on his threat and for my article to be scrapped on deadline.

Of course this wasn't the most serious casualty of Jones' actions.

He later staged the burning of Islam's holy book last year. That event was blamed for subsequent riots and the killings of at least seven United Nations workers in the Middle East.

Whatever your political affiliation or religious view, I think it's an indisputable fact that this man is a moron. And don't even get me started on his fashion sense. It's a real shame about the putrefrying squirrel because it had Terry's name written all over its fast disappearing features.



12 comments:

  1. He looks like some old Metallica fan. Wasn't he under arrest for burning books in public? Maybe underneath their façades there are more priests who just like to be so brave and do something like that. I know, it's just paranoia.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hmm - don't think he was arrested Starla as you are allowed to under the First Amandment. But he did get a lot of pressure not to do it.

      Delete
  2. There really should be a law against stupidity.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I hate it when creatures die in the yard. Yuck! Why can't they do that in someone else's yard? :-)

    Yes, that would have been a nice gift for Jones, but more than likely the post office would have come after you, and the package wouldn't have made it to its destination.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. more than likely Daisy but you are right re the backyard thing - very yucky

      Delete
  4. This does seem to be a case of missed opportunity. On the other hand, "Putrefying Squirrel" would make for a brilliant band name. I'm thinking punk.
    Some Dark Romantic

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know Mina - inspired - better even than Rotting Rat

      Delete
  5. Sounds like you like yardwork as much as I do. lol And yes, Pastor Terry Jones is a few cards short of a full deck.

    ReplyDelete
  6. about 50 short JoJo - I am not a big fan of yardwork lol

    ReplyDelete
  7. Sometimes reading your blog is like talking to you. And at the end of the conversation I'm like, "wait, how did we get started on burning Qurans? Weren't we just talking about mowing the lawn?" Haha. Maybe some day we'll get to have an in-person conversation and we can congratulate ourselves on the epic randomness which will no doubt ensue.

    ReplyDelete
  8. ha ha Jen - it all gets back to burning Quarans. Yes we will have to have that random conversation - helped by pink champagne of course!

    ReplyDelete

On Blog PTSD

Now then. What the heck. It seems I had forgotten about my blog completely rather than just neglecting it this time. To return after so long...