Not a pullet

Years ago, EG and I went camping. This was BC, before children, as taking a fifteen year old away from her electrical hair appliances and technology is punishment, both for her and for the rest of us who have to hear the editorializing. Throw in a bug-phobic fourteen year old boy who needs to justify his fears ("It's a wolf spider! It's the size of my hand!" Dude, only if your hand is the same size as Barbie's ex-boyfriend Ken's), and tent camping is not going to happen.

Anyway, we were in a crowded state park, and the place was also occupied by really rather tame skunks who swaggered around like Hell's Angels doing security at a rock concert. One of my favorite pastimes was watching the skunk go in to the restroom. When a man would go in, knowing I was nearby, he would be relatively discreet in his approach. However, the exit, while almost immediate, was quite speedy and frantic. It was the high point of the evening's entertainment. After we went to bed on the first night, some campers pulled in. There were at least ten of them, and they spoke only in Spanish. One was on crutches. They piled out of a huge old Crown Victoria and another car, and they set up camp. Pretty soon, the smells of carnitas, cumin, peppers, and onions wafted through the campground. The skunks, thinking Mexican sounded (or smelled) quite tasty, now that you mentioned it, arrived post-haste, and the biggest one parked himself under the Crown Vic.

The campers, by now enjoying their meal, noticed Pepe LePew. They started discussing his presence, using the word "perro." The guy with the crutch was attempting to chase the critter out from under the car, telling his friends that the perro was not cooperating, and deliberately stabbing at it with the pointy end of his durable medical equipment. I thought he was either very dumb or very urban, and I wondered what accident had caused him to have the crutch in the first place. Perhaps a bear attack? EG became distressed, as we had just brought our sleeping bags back from the laundromat, where we washed and dried them after the previous night's downpour. However, he could not think of the word for "skunk" in Spanish, and he didn't want to say something like "stinky kitty" or "small animal armed with napalm." So, instead, he shouted, in Spanish, "Not a dog! Not a dog!"

So, "not a dog" has become our catch phrase for a situation where someone is misinformed and doing something stupid.

Which leads me to my chickens. I bought alleged pullets from the breeder, who said his son knew how to sex chicks. Six pullets came home, but Junior has demonstrated a remarkable fifty percent accuracy. I called the breeder, and he said he'd give me replacement pullets to take the place of the mistake birds. Take a look at the picture below. I have one thing to say: Not a pullet.