The First Time Blackie Died…….

So My Dearest Husband, my mom Rocky, and me were sitting around the dining room table telling stories, which is what you do in the south in the evenings after dinner.  We had already discussed why MDH and Rocky didn’t ride horses: MDH because every time he had ever gotten on one there ended up being a bad story to tell afterwards, and Rocky because she had one when she was young and it had taken off running into the barn and knocked her off by slamming her head into a rafter.  (yikes!)

This started us talking about pets.  MDH had a peculiar series of pets, so to speak.  They were Blackie.  Blackie were cows.  His stepdad ran a van conversion shop that MDH worked at when he was young.  They kept a black cow in the yard out back.  This was done because they spent long hours at the shop and they could care for Blackie better if he was at the same location they were at.  Every year Blackie was taken to the slaughter house and *gulp* dealt with.  He then resided in the deep freeze until such time as he became dinner.

At this point another black cow was purchased, named Blackie, deposited in the yard at the shop and they started all over again.  Rocky and I were horrified to say the least.  I asked MDH how he felt when they took Blackie off to the slaughter house.  His reply was, “The first time Blackie died I felt pretty bad, the second and third times I felt bad but not so much.  After that I got used to it.”

Holy Crap!  I envision this never ending line of Blackie dying and reappearing again over and over while I’m simultaneously eating him on a sesame seed bun with cheese and a dill pickle!  Talk about things that make you shudder! 

After that we got on the subject of how it’s getting to be hog killing time.  If you know anything about the subject you know that it has to be coldto accomplish this particular task.  MDH was describing his first big boy job in the hog killing field.  He was finally old enough to go outside and help the menfolk kill hogs.  This was a yearly happening because his uncle had a “hog parlor”.  That’s right.  A place where hogs are kept in large barns, that have a huge pond where the hog …..um…..crap is dumped to fester and ferment, a place that stinks enough to knock a buzzard off a shit wagon, is called a “hog parlor”.  Cute ain’t it? 

Anyway, his first big-boy job at the hog parlor was when he was about 12 years old.  The hog is ……I’m trying to find a way to put this delicately………de-lifed, then hefted aloft by a piece of heavy equipment and dumped unceremoniously into a huge vat of boiling water.  This is done in order to scald the hair off of the carcass.  MDH’s job was to use a large paddle that resembles a boat oar, and push and turn the hog carcass under the water in order to make sure all the hair was scalded off of the dead hog.

Yeah.

I just picked fruits and vegetables, sold stuff, you know, things like that.  I was a townie.  None of my first jobs involved carcasses of any kind.  As a matter of fact, only one of my jobs ever involved carcasses, and that was just incidentally.  That was when I worked at the vet.  My first job there was squeezing dog butts.  Yeah, you heard me.  I squeezed doggie and kitty butt-holes for a living.  And you thought Blackie and the hog parlor were bad!

When I first started working at the vet, my job was bathing the animals when they first came in.  One of the most important parts of bathing them was expressing their anal glands.  There is actually a reason for this.  The anal glands contain the pure essence of dog and kitty shit smell in its most concentrated form.  It’s where that ever so distinctive scent comes from.  If it is expressed when the animal comes in, their feces doesn’t smell so bad while they are there.  Considering the number of doggies and kitties at the vet, this is a good thing.  It’s the Martha Stewart kind of good thing in the vet biz.

So, my job was to accomplish this ever so desirable state of affairs with each and every creature that graced our doorstep each and every day!  Yippee!  A little secret you might not know about doggies and kitties.  They take deep exception to having their butt-holes squeezed!  Yep, it’s true.  They really didn’t think much about it when I put them in the bathtub to bathe them and dip them, it was nuttin but a thang to them.  When I lifted their tails they sort of cocked their heads sideways as curious animals are wont to do, but still it was only a little out of the ordinary.  But when I took hold of that butt-hole and started to squeeze that baby like half an orange on a juicer………about seventy different kinds of horrified came over them all at once.

For the most part, the dogs were willing to forget the whole thing as long as I was willing to agree not to tell anyone that they cried when it happened.  The cats on the other hand…….a totally different story.  They gave me the sad, crybaby eyes like Puss N Boots in Shreck.  Then they went for my eyes.  It was like being inside of a blender.  All spinning and blades and blood.(mine) 

Yep, after dinner in the south is story time!  Yall come!