Dad here; most guys bring home flowers, candy, or some other frou frou nonsense for Mother’s Day; I bring home hay and donkey treats from the Farmer’s Coop. Wait, wait, wait, before you start dragging out your pitchforks and sparking up your torches, you have to understand Mom. A Hispanic family has bought the property at the end of our road, and installed a few head of cattle, some goats, and three donkeys.
About this same time I bought Mom a shiny red Honda CT125 so she could go on excursions to escape the constant demands of her own 85 year old mom. But when I put one of Charlie’s crate on the back of the 125 to give Jude rides around the back yard, Mom saw it as a chance to carry hay and feed to the livestock down at the end of the street. Even though it’s a few hundred yards from the Casa to the corner of the fence where the freeloaders wait impatiently for Mom to come putt-putting up on her Honda, they know the sound of the bike and immediately start a cacophony of mooing, braying, and whatever sound it is that goats make every time they hear that little bike fire up.
The weird goings-on at the Casa del Whackos are already the talk of the neighborhood, and this has definitely added fuel to the fire. Imagine if you will, looking out of your own front window every afternoon only to see a middle aged woman ripping down the street on a shiny red scooter with a bale of hay perched precariously on the back; surrealism at it’s finest.
What makes it worse is that Jude absolutely loves for me to take him for rides around the back yard; 5000 times a day is not too much for him. But every time the cows hear the little bike crank up for one of the Jude Bear’s constant excursions, they assume it’s Mom bringing them treats and they resume their caterwauling which can be heard as far as the next county.
And are these animals starving, you’re probably wondering? Not a chance; Mom just likes having her own personal combined bovine fan club and mobile petting zoo. You would think that 5+1 dogs, countless hummingbirds and songbirds and a turbopowered grandson would be enough to satisfy her maternal fixation, but nooooo…
This is just one of the plethora of reasons we call this place the Casa del Whackos.
Happy Mom’s Day; there ain’t another one like her !
