The Pageant and the Rodent

Shame, shame and double shame if you forgot to do your part for world peace and neglected to watch the Miss America pageant on Saturday night.  If we are plunged into WWIII this week I am going to be pointing the righteous trembling finger of rage at you.

The daughter and I celebrated the big event with our traditional Miss America cuisine; Hershey syrup right out of the bottle, BBQ pork rinds, Lil' Smokies and a hunk of cheese.  Nothing makes me hungry like watching fifty emaciated women prancing around in their skimpies with vaseline on their teeth.




Of course, the husband considers the pageant an affront to his manliness and responded by fanning his hunter/gatherer side to life with an assault on predators in the backyard.

Earlier in the day he found several hollowed out oranges hanging on our tree.  There was only one possibility…

Roof Rats!!!

Oh knock it off dear reader, I can sense your hoity toity thoughts and delicate sniff of disdain.  You think that anyone who eats Lil' Smokies deserves rats don't you?  Well I'll have you know that roof rats slither wherever they find citrus hanging ripe and luscious, and they don't care if it is in a yard littered with auto parts, or in a 40 acre manicured estate.

So, while the daughter and I watched Miss Iowa introduce herself to America by saying "From the state leading in Ethanol production, my state gives you gas!" the husband set his trap in the tree branches.

 image found here

While the daughter and I were wiping away tears of admiration as Miss Arkansas performed a stirring number involving a shiny red jumpsuit, blinding teeth and two yodeling dummies, a stealthy rat was creeping to his doom.

 image found here

 Miss Nebraska won

 The rat lost

The Road Not Taken

When my mind wanders back to my youth, I sometimes heave a sigh for the many roads I left untraveled.  Sometimes this was due to lack of gas money, other times it was due to my poor sense of direction.  But every year when I plop on the couch with a tower of oreos and a glass of skim milk to watch the Miss America Pageant, I heave an especially poignant sigh over that unexplored runway of possibility.

I had the dress

I had the shoes

I had the hat







I had the platform

Preserve Endanger Species Today

(P.E.S.T.)

I had the talent 

Cheese ball juggling

And I had the acceptance speech

...and I'd like to thank my mother, who gave me my first Barbie, and my brothers who taught my Barbie survival skills by making her a parachute and throwing her off the barn into the cow manure, where she taught me a valuable lesson about enduring adversity...

The only thing I lacked was adequate sponsorship.  Oh sure I had the usual small town lineup; Western Auto Hardware ($50.00), Fernie's Dairy Freeze ($30.00 and free french fries), Les Ballard's Garage (1 free oil change), Eastside Pigs  (50.00 and a side of bacon), The Beefmaster Cattle Ranch (an orphan calf to raise and sell), and Aunt Augusta ($10.00 and a pack of raisins).  But it just wasn't enough.

I'm just going to have to live with the regrets.