Monday, August 6, 2007

And then she skinned the cat for dessert.

I really like Matt’s grandparents. They’re good people, they really are, but I like them mostly because they’re so darn entertaining. His grandmother loves to drink cheap beer and gamble (anything from bingo to slots), and his grandfather loves to regale us with tales of animal cruelty and slaughter. I’ll never forget the day we went to visit and he pulled the BB gun out into the living room and told us how he’d shot a couple stray cats in the head with it the week before because they were attacking the birds at the bird feeder in the back yard. I don’t know that it was the story itself that was so disconcerting or if it was his enthusiasm about it.

Anyway, they were in town this weekend and stopped over at the house for a little bit. We’ve got a pet parakeet and Grandma was asking about it – if it talks, flies etc. and then Grandpa starts telling a story about how there used to be a lot of pigeons that lived in the barn at the farm where he grew up and they were always having babies etc. and I’m soaking in the story, expecting some lovely tale of how he perhaps found an abandoned egg and kept it warm and hatched it and cared for the chick; hand feeding it and letting it sleep on his pillow until it was strong enough to be released, and then he says, “Yeah, Mom used to cook ‘em up for dinner every once in a while and they were pretty tasty.” And I remembered who was telling the story.

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