Making the Big Guy chuckle

Today my major goal -- meticulously planned out, mind you -- was to move scrap metal out of one Roll-Off Dumpster (ROF) in preparation for placing it in a different but far much more betterer ROF tomorrow.

I should probably explain...

In our clean-up zeal we decided that the convenience of someone else hauling away junk would be worth the expense. So we arranged for a local trash hauling service to bring us a ROF, which we would fill and they would haul off and dispose of when it was full.

After careful questioning of both the service's home office and their delivery/pick-up driver, we confirmed that the cost would be $400 per load. So we filled a ROF with scrap iron, had it swapped for another empty, and began filling the new one.

Then we got a bill for $600. The explanation was that "well of course there's a dumping fee!"

It's possible that the service's home office phone-talker and the driver are both waterheads and lack the capacity to process and properly answer the simple and many times repeated question, "$400 covers everything, right?"

It's perhaps more likely that they feel like they have a foolproof way to put a 50 percent thumb on the scale.

Mom had already paid the bill when we figured it out. So yesterday I gave the service very simple and clear instructions. "Come and get your shit, and you've already been paid."

Their truck is broken down and they won't be here until next week.

"That's fine. If it's not gone by noon on Friday you'll find it parked in the ditch on the other side of the road thereafter."

It seems they'll be able to fetch it tomorrow.

You might think that we were stupid to agree to pay $400 for the use of a 20 yard ROF.

You would be right.

A much more better company is delighted to bring us a 40 yard ROF and haul it away.

And pay us $50/ton for scrap metal.

The quicker, easier, softer way is seldom that. There's always a catch.

However,

My metal moving plans were instantly disrupted this morning. From out of the blue my phone alerted me that I had a 0800 appointment over at the VA. This was at 0700. The drive is 60 minutes, and my fancy "go-to-big-sity" F-150 is parked in the shop 15 minutes away. Kind of odd that I didn't remember this appointment, and I couldn't check on the details because the web site is down. All of those VA employees are part of the big impeachment hearings you see. Well, not just them. All Federal Employees are in warshington to do their patriotic part.

Of course none of that's true, except about the web site being down. I just had to toss it in there to maintain my on-line curmudgeon score.

Anyway, a closer examination of what my phone actually said, as opposed to what I thought I read, revealed that it was a phone appointment to check on how my blood pressure is doing.😡

The big Guy got a charge out of that!

So it was off to the races to manhandle scrap iron in a manly way.

However,

My phone dinged with a text from Mom.

"Red killed a hen!! Feathers right in front of back door and in yard!!! Am very angry😣!!!"

When I got there it was clearly a murder scene.

A bloody murder scene.

Feathers everywhere.

Red feathers.

For months now a red and a black hen have lived most of their daytime lives outside the wire. They just fly out and back in as it pleases them. None of the others are ever out and I doubt they even know they have wings or the ability (theoretically) to fly. But running loose seemed to have sealed the red hen's fate. 😧

It was a very strange and unexpected happening. Neither Red nor Nona have ever bothered the chickens. Many times the red and/or black hen can be found scratching the dirt only a foot or two away from the dogs.

It seems as if Mom convinced Red that she'd done a bad thing. She seemed very sad.



However,

The hen wasn't dead.

"Would you believe that hen is alive?" asked Mom? "She ran off in the tall grass while I was yelling at Red!"

The hen had indeed skedaddled, but she was also pretty beat up. Mom picked her up and carried her back to the chicken house, so she was safe at last. 😁

However,

As soon as mom put the injured hen down, the rest of the flock charged her and began savaging her. 😱

So Mom kicked a bunch of chickens and yelled a lot of bad anti-chicken words. This allowed the wounded hen to get herself inside and backed into a corner under a shelf where she could defend herself.

So what to do? I examined the chicken like any good corpsman would and said, "I cut myself worse shaving this morning, get back to work!"

Actually, the chicken seemed in pretty good shape all in all, and you couldn't really tell she'd lost all those feathers. Kinda. In the dim light of the chicken house.

She was a bit wobbly and was probably in some level of chicken shock, but she was breathing, not bleeding, and both conscious and alert. So she'd probably be fine if allowed to recover. If her flock mates would allow her to recover.

The only viable solution was to set up the old wire dog kennel for her, which I did. So this evening she's still alive, eating chicken food and drinking chicken water, and she's safe from her mean flock mates.

Four of those flock mates, however, have decided that life outside the wire might be nice. We'll see how it goes. I think Red learned a lesson from Mom today (and Mom is very good at imparting such messages), but she is a dog. Have to see how things develop.

And that's the story of why I didn't never get no scrap iron shifted, Boss!



Be well and enjoy the blessings of liberty.