Grey Squirrel, Grey Squirrel Swish Your Bushy BANG!!! or "finding something in the family tree for dinner"

Far be it from me to tout myself as an example of sophistication and gentility, afterall, I'm the guy who was asked to wear "big boy" shoes (instead of sneakers) for a date in the City, but when my sister brought home Bean (the man of her dreams who turned out to be a guy that, by comparison, makes Jeff Foxworthy's definition of a red neck seem like an urban metro-sexual) I should have said "something".  I didn't... not really.  ...not enough, anyway...

Sadly (and thankfully) he has moved on to wife number two.  She is credited (thanks to Bluetooth enabled pick-up trucks and nieces that don't miss a trick) with such great lines as "Darlin', pick up a couple six packs for me so that I can stand you this weekend" and "I got dinner for us at Taco Bell this afternoon, be a Darlin' and run by Walmart for some fresh cheese..."  I've not met Numero Dos (thank heavens) but I just can't get the image of  a shabby cotton house-dress and "Baby, grab the big spatula;  come help momma off the couch" out of my mind.

Must kill mental picture...

Must kill mental picture...

Alas, Bean moved my sis far and away from the real world (or at least my world) and there she lives with her three kids; all of whom I adore.

..and their world is very different from mine...

...so much so that when Mom read to me a letter from Sparrow (the youngest) that she had received in the mail it caused my brain to short-circuit.  It was as foreign to me as though she had moved her children to a distant country, one south of Bukina Faso, and raised them on the bugs that live under the lava rocks.

His letter read something like this:

Grandma,

Thanks for the birthday card and the check.  (How sweet! and how very gracious...)

I shot a raccoon.  (GASP!)

Mr. [the neighbor] helped me skin it.  (Bag please)

Mommy helped me nail the skin to a board and put salt on it so I can tan it.  (This Mommy person is clearly not the little girl who used to puke at the site of a frog and hang Andy Gibb posters on her bedroom walls)

But we didn't make stew with it like we did with the squirrel.  (BLANK)  

There was more, but nothing that my brain could take in; it was enough.

How did this happen?  Afterall, this is not about them... this is about me...  (rule number 1: it's always about me) ...these children will take care of me in my old age.

What will become of me?  

Sitting in a rocker just too close to the out-house on a warm summer day...

Staying warm under the skin of an animal killed in the backyard...

Listening to my sister telling stories of how she nailed that hairy thing to the wall... (the raccoon, not Andy Gibb)

Eating squirrel stew...

...and then I think...

...at least I'll finally be thin.

-silly