Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Worms



Old Grave stone


It's hard to beat The Hearse Song for Hallowe'en fun. Yet my sons and I have always thought it far too short. Why leave the grossness to just a verse or two? Last year, in the true folk tradition, I decided to do some research and compile what I believe to be the definitive version. After much reading and listening, this is what I came up with and how we sing it today. Enjoy.


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The Hearse Song


If you ever see a funeral go by
Remember you may be the next to die
They'll wrap you up in a great white sheet
And bury you about six feet deep

The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
The ones that crawl in are lean and thin
The ones that crawl out are fat and stout
Your eyes fall in and your teeth fall out
Your brains come tumbling down your snout
Be merry, my friends, be merry...

They'll put you in a big black box
And cover you up with dirt and rocks
All goes well for about a week
But then your coffin begins to leak

The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
The ones that crawl in are lean and thin
The ones that crawl out are fat and stout
Your eyes fall in and your teeth fall out
Your brains come tumbling down your snout
Be merry, my friends, be merry...

The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
The worms play pinochle on your snout
They bring their friends and relatives too
And then they'll make a mess of you

The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
The ones that crawl in are lean and thin
The ones that crawl out are fat and stout
Your eyes fall in and your teeth fall out
Your brains come tumbling down your snout
Be merry, my friends, be merry...

They'll eat your eyes, they'll eat your nose
They'll eat the jelly between your toes
Your stomach turns to a slimy green
And pus squirts out like whipping cream

The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
The ones that crawl in are lean and thin
The ones that crawl out are fat and stout
Your eyes fall in and your teeth fall out
Your brains come tumbling down your snout
Be merry, my friends, be merry...

The worms crawl out, the worms crawl in
The worms crawl over your mouth and chin
One little guy, who was so sly
Crawled up your nose and out your eye

The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
The ones that crawl in are lean and thin
The ones that crawl out are fat and stout
Your eyes fall in and your teeth fall out
Your brains come tumbling down your snout
Be merry, my friends, be merry...

Your hair falls out, your teeth decay
Your brain turns to marble and rolls away
You'll spread your guts on a piece of bread
And that's what you'll eat when you are dead

The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
The ones that crawl in are lean and thin
The ones that crawl out are fat and stout
Your eyes fall in and your teeth fall out
Your brains come tumbling down your snout
Be merry, my friends, be merry...

And when they're done there is no doubt
They've gobbled you up from the inside out
And when your bones begin to rot
The worms are there but you are not

The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
The ones that crawl in are lean and thin
The ones that crawl out are fat and stout
Your eyes fall in and your teeth fall out
Your brains come tumbling down your snout
Be merry, my friends, be merry...


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A Happy Hallowe'en to You and Yours.
Be merry.


Cricket and Porcupine




Thursday, October 21, 2010

S.A.M.







October is Squirrel Awareness Month. What's that? Oh, you knew? Well, then.

Be that as it may, perhaps this might be the perfect time to share a tale, or even a tail, or two, regarding several squirrels of which I have become aware. Why not take a minute today to be more aware of the squirrels in your world? Do your part to avoid Squirrel Unawareness.


Squirrel roadkill photo
Squirrel Unawareness: the tragic consequences.


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Squirrel FAIL #1

It's kind of unusual to see an animal screw up, don't you think? We take it for granted that a cat will land on its feet, or that a squirrel will run along power lines without a care in the world. Not so.

One day, as my father and I sat on his front porch, talking about this and that, we paused to watch just such a squirrel. He ran along the power line, seemingly without a care. He reached a telephone pole and stepped onto the cross-beam.

ZISH! A flash of blue light, the sound of arcing electricity, the dull thud of squirrel hitting ground. The end.

You don't see that every day.


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Squirrel FAIL #2

I have been blessed with an enormous oak tree: home and grocery for numerous squirrels. I like to watch them. They're at least as interesting as anything on TV. Still, they usually just go about their squirreling. This includes chasing each other around for reasons known to them alone.

The cable line from my house runs about eighteen feet above the street below. One morning, as I watched one squirrel chase another onto it, the chaser inexplicably lost his footing. He fell to the street, landing with a sickening thwack. It sounded like two pounds of raw meat falling eighteen feet onto concrete.

Which kind of makes sense, if you think about it.

He lay in the road, unmoving. Chasee descended the oak across the road, looking curiously at Chaser. I could almost hear a tiny voice:
"Al? Yo, AL! You ok? Hey Al! Can you hear me?"
Finally, Al revived a bit. Groggily, he got to his feet. He stumbled off to the side of the road and sat there stunned. Eventually, he came around and climbed back into the trees. More carefully.

Or so it seemed.


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Squirrel Undercover

"What the hell is that ?!?" I heard my wife cry from the kitchen. She pointed out the kitchen window to an odd gray critter in the yard I didn't recognize. Too small to be an opossum, plus it was daytime. Too puffy to be a rat. It looked like some sort of alien hedgehog.

It looked at me. Then, it slowly let down its tail, which had been lying flat along its spine, covering its head. Squirrel. Oh.

He stood up, and gave me a wink and a wave.


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Squirrel Under-the-Covers

"What the hell is that ?!?" I heard my wife cry from the dining room. On the back porch, unmoving, lay some sort of animal-thing. From the window, it almost looked like a lizard: not too likely during a cold, rainy March in Rhode Island. I went out to investigate.

Abandoned baby squirrel. I figured we should give it some time, maybe an hour or so. Perhaps Mom would come and get him. I'm sure they have ways of managing. I mean they do, right?

An hour later he was still there. My wife called animal control and was referred to a licensed squirrel rehabilitator. This struck me as a little odd. There seems to be no shortage of squirrels. Then again, why not? I can think of worse hobbies. Calls were made. Pickup was arranged.

Since the squirrel was now officially our guest, it seemed he should be taken in out of the rain and put to bed. The which I did.




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Squirrels Gone Bad

I always blamed the local kids for our smashed pumpkins: Occam's razor and all. Not anymore. One fall, we were blessed with a surfeit of pumpkins, enough of them that I decorated the back porch as well as the front.

I was sitting at the table, drinking my coffee, when the two furry thugs arrived. They looked around nervously. There was evil in their beady little eyes. Teaming up, they rolled a pumpkin onto its side, pushed it to the edge of the stairs, then over. The buffet now open, they descended to feed. I opened the slider. Pausing, they stared at me.

One of them gave me the finger.


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Squirrel FAIL #3


For some, the entire purpose of life is to serve as an example to others. Poor Mr. Squirrel. Not much left of him. Yet his tail remained for a week, almost vertical, waving in the breeze along Broad Street. I thought of my youngest sister, returning home from preschool one day, desperate to perform a new song for us. I could almost hear her four year-old voice singing: Gray Squirrel, Gray Squirrel, shake your bushy tail.

I know I'm not the only one who noticed this gruesome display.


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Just Like Chicken

Over the weekend, Mr. Squirrel, or what was left of him, vanished. Where did he go? Well, I can't say for sure. I do know he met his end by an eclectic little sandwich shop. You know the kind of place: where the only thing flakier than the home-baked rolls is the counter help?



Interesting specials, no? Relax. It's a joke.

I think.


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Well, there you have it. In honor of Squirrel Awareness Month, seven tales, and one tail, of squirrels I have known. Why not raise a toast to the Sciuridae? May I suggest New Glarus Brewing Company's Fat Squirrel Nut Brown Ale?




Whether you love our little furry friends or think they are nothing but tree-rats, I hope you've been entertained. And I know you will find the beer excellent. That alone should be worth something.

I think.


Rodently Yours,


Porcupine

Porcupine



Friday, October 15, 2010

Value Added







The local vandals have been at work. This time, I appreciate their efforts. Each time I drive by this sign it makes me smile. The world could do with a little more of that, I think. I hope the city doesn't "fix" this.

If you're a Journey fan, well, enjoy. If not, read it however you would like. We all need to believe in something.

Don't stop believing.


Respectfully Yours,


Cricket



Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Go Play







When the leaves fall, I can see my son's school from my bedroom window. The walk takes about five minutes. Three if I hurry. I walk him there and pick him up every day. So do most other parents. It seems to be the custom.

There is a corner store a block away, a Dunkin' Donuts and a Del's Frozen Lemonade. He has friends who live in the neighborhood. He has a good bike that he rides well. There are parks and playgrounds and athletic fields all within walking distance.

So why don't we let him walk to them?

No, we arrange activities for him: soccer, swimming, choir, basketball. We drop him off at his friend's houses, or they get dropped off here. We know where he is and who he's with all the time. We're not alone. That seems to be how things are today. Everyone does it. It's all about safety now: car seats, helmets, afterschool activities and all the rest. So why does it bother me?

It doesn't seem right, somehow.


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"Go play!" Most of us will remember those words, I think. "Turn off that TV! Go outside and play! And be back here for suppertime. Now get out."

And my folks didn't mean go out in the yard, either. They wanted you gone. Go play.

So I would walk down to a friend's house. Always to the back door, that was the custom. Children call at the back door. And I would knock or ring.

"Can Bob come out?"

Either he could or he couldn't. If he came out, we'd move on to another house. "Is Mike home?" "Can Tim come out?" "Hi, Mrs. Quinlan. Is Francis here?" Our little gang of urchins slowly grew.

No one asked where we were going. No one asked what we meant to do. We couldn't have answered anyway. We didn't know. We were going somewhere to do something. And we would all be back by suppertime.

Or else.

And so we wandered around, looking for trouble, and usually finding it. We'd go hang out at a playground, or at the corner store. We'd go down to one of the factories and play on the docks. Or down behind the factories, to the visibly polluted swamp we called The Muck. Maybe we'd cross over and watch for trains by the tracks. The freight trains were long ones then, very good for flattening pennies. In summer, under the railroad bridges was shady and cool, and there were plenty of empty bottles to break.

There was something strangely satisfying about whipping an empty beer bottle at a stone wall, hearing it pop and shatter.

We walked to school, alone or in impromptu groups. School was a half mile away. The crossing guards were never where we wanted them to be. We weren't too eager to get to school in the first place. We certainly wouldn't go out of our way to get there. We curb-danced. We crossed busy streets. We took our chances. We managed.

We learned about big kid-little kid. Run your mouth at the playground, you might find yourself dumped headfirst into a trash barrel. Ask me how I know that. We learned that keeping your mouth shut is often smart, that certain people should be given a wide berth, others avoided altogether.

Adults were among those to be avoided. We stayed as far away from supervision as possible. Get off school grounds as soon as the bell rings. Don't go straight home. On a bus, sit at the back. Swear a lot. If you don't get caught, you don't get punished. Freedom.

We were latchkey kids and we loved it, I did, anyway: that glorious time between school and supper when the house was mine. Raid the fridge. Turn up the radio as loud as you want. Or have some quiet. The silence of the empty house never bothered me. Not if quiet was what I was after. Those are some of my fondest memories. I know I can't be the only one.


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We weren't neglected. We weren't unloved. Our parents did what they needed to do. They lived in their world; we lived in ours. Sometimes these worlds intersected. At least half of us were polished up and brought to one church or another on Sunday. And God help you if the school ever called home to report misbehavior, or if one of the neighbors ratted you out for some misdeed. I think we were all a bit afraid of our fathers.

We lived in a decaying factory town: the kind of place people from the tony suburbs think is very dangerous. It wasn't, especially. There was crime, of course. Every city has that. Still, it was more run-down than anything else. Most of us managed.

Most of us.

It was a different time then, but not the way people often mean that. When I was in first grade, one of my classmates was kidnapped and murdered by a serial killer. I'm not making that up. You don't forget something like that.

We didn't know that then, of course. He wasn't part of our little group. We didn't know him well. We knew who he was, though. We knew he had come to grief, and we knew he would not be coming back.

You don't forget something like that.

For a year or so after, I couldn't explore the woods, or go behind the factories or down by the railroad tracks without a bit of fear. I wasn't afraid of the killer, though. I had this nagging fear that the next time we stirred up a pile of leaves, or crawled through a drainage pipe, or went down to The Muck, we were going to find the body. I know I can't be the only one.

They found his body in a basement six years later.

Our parents gave us all the standard lecture: "If you're out somewhere and someone bothers you, if you don't feel right about it, you get the hell out of there. You just run like hell, ok? And don't you ever get into a car with someone you don't know. Ever. You understand?"

We understood.

And yet, what is remarkable is what our parents didn't do. They didn't forbid us to wander the city. They didn't keep us home in the yard. They didn't make us call home regularly. They hugged us. They told us how we were to handle ourselves. Then they sent us back out to play. Go play.

It was a different time back then.


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The boy sat at the edge of the schoolyard, crying silently. He didn't seem hurt. He was far too old to cry in public without a very good reason. Two girls came over to console him. One put her arm around him and said something softly in his ear. A strange display in the swirl of running, laughing children waiting for the morning bell.

Then I noticed the balloon.

In her hand, she held a yellow balloon. On the balloon, the boy had written in black marker "Alexis - we will miss you." And I remembered that one of my son's classmates had been killed in a car crash that weekend. The car seat and belt had not saved her. The bell rang. The three children took their place in line: a line with one child less than the week before.


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An email circulated in the community last year. It seemed there was a registered sex offender working at a local store. He had tried to get the name and address of a 5 year-old girl. Her mother had intervened, confiscated the credit card slip, and confirmed everything with the police.

The email passed from parent to parent. It was picked up and forwarded by teachers and principals. Within a few days, almost everyone had received it. There was just one problem.

None of it was true.

The following week, the police announced that the email was a hoax. They were investigating.


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I walked my son to school this morning, as always. I'll be there at quarter to three to pick him up, as always. Maybe he'll do his homework and ride his bike on the sidewalk in front of the house after. I don't know why this bothers me, but it does. It doesn't seem right somehow. Why don't I just tell him to go play?

They say it's a different world today. Perhaps. Compared to where I grew up, my world is cleaner, safer, and nicer now. We have almost everything within walking distance. It's why we moved here. Yet we keep our children close, almost never out of our sight. Why? Are we trying to protect them? Or are we trying to protect ourselves?

Why don't I tell him to go play?


Respectfully Yours,


Cricket