Gone to Blogger or Blogspot or whatever they call it. Same title, same me. Or, look me up on Facebook------Linda Treadwell. There are dozens, but look for the icon I have always used.

It's been wonderful, and I love you all, and God Bless.

It happened about forty years ago.

Two young brothers had walked a couple of miles into town to go to the show. That's what we called going to the theater to watch movies back then.

Nobody was coming in the family car to drive them home, so when the movie was over they started the long trek back home. But they were young, and what's a couple of miles when you're a kid?

They didn't fear the dark---they were too old for THAT, only babies were scared of the dark---and they were walking down a road they had walked many, many, times before.

The night was clear and crisp. They had left the lights of town behind and were talkin' about the movie they had seen.

During a lull in the conversation, they heard a sound. A kind of swishy sound.

They stopped.

Silence.

Weird.........

They started walking again. The sound started again.

Footsteps????

They looked behind them but couldn't see anything but the road. It was dark and they couldn't see anything in the woods on either side of the road.

Now, when you are way out in the country where there are no city or farm lights, the night is as dark as the inside of a felt hat. It can be black as pitch. The only light is moonlight. If the moon is out.

Was it an animal? Being country boys, they knew what was in the woods around their house. They had hunted and fished there all their young lives.

Deer don't follow you around as a rule. Most other animals would either remain still or run away from man.

Coyotes? Well, maybe, but you can hear a pack of those when you're standing dead still, listening for them.

Could a panther be stalking them?

The only sound was the sound of their own breathing.

They were beginning to feel the fear. Just a little bit.

They began to walk again, a little faster.

The strange sound started again.

A ghost??? Ghosts aren't real...........are they??

Home is still a long ways off. It's still dark, and whatever it is is keeping up with them. Unseen.

The faster they walk, the faster IT walked. If they stopped, IT stopped.

When the last of the bravado failed, they RAN for it. Bravery be damned!

IT, whatever it was, was keeping pace, and IT chased them all the way down the road. They ran faster and faster.

Finally, they saw the lights of their house! But IT was STILL there, chasing them across the yard, and IT was still coming when they ran across the porch and burst through their front door.

They collapsed in the living room floor, gasping for breath and scared to death. Crying.

Their parents had heard them pounding across the porch and it sounded as if they tore the door off of the hinges. They tried to calm them down enough to find out what had happened.

Were they hurt?? Was there an accident of some sort??? An emergency of some kind, maybe? Were they in some sort of trouble?? Was someone after them??

When they finally caught their breath and saw that they were safe, they got up, still shaking.

But...............

THERE IT WAS AGAIN!!! THE SOUND!!!! OH MY GOD, IT WAS IN THE HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Of course it was in the house. It had been with them all day.

It was the brand-new corduroy pants that they had just gotten. Caught up in the excitement of new clothes and going to see a movie---rare treats indeed--- they never noticed the sound that the new, stiff material made when they walked. The sound material makes when your thighs rub together as you walk.

I got that story years ago from one of those two brothers. He said that if the front door had been locked he would have died on the front porch from fear.

Always remember that the worst fright of your life may be the one you create for yourself!

Senior Airman Michael John Buras, 23, of

Fitzgerald, Georgia died Tuesday, September 21,

2010 of wounds suffered during an improvised

explosive device detonation in Kandahar Province,

Afghanistan.

Airman Buras was an Explosive Ordinance Disposal

Journeyman in the United States Air Force

assigned at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada with

Headquarters Air Combat Command, 99th Air Base

Wing, 99th Civil Engineer Squadron and was a

Purple Heart recipient from a previous

deployment.

May God bless our fighting men and women, and in

the fullness of time, may He grant us

understanding and peace, that we will war no

more.

My sincere thanks to all who have served and all

who will serve.

Last Wednesday night somebody dumped a kitten at the dentist office. I guess they thought that since we are all women, we'd be a bunch of push-overs for kittens. But, sadly, I'm the only cat-lover in the bunch.

It was spotted Thursday morning under our front porch. Our receptionist called the veterinarian next door and requested that they come and get it if possible.

I cleaned the office on Monday. It was around 11:30 when I decided to go home for lunch.

I was getting into the truck and heard a kitten mewing. I looked around the corner of the building and found a tiny black and white wad of fur.

I said "Well, look at you!"

Next thing I knew I had a fur anklet. A very LOUD fur anklet.

I picked it up; it weighed as much as dryer lint.

I could feel every bone. And I remembered the kitten that was seen OVER FOUR DAYS AGO. Four days with no food. No water. With temperatures in the upper 90's.

Takin' it to my house was not an option. I had already been told that there would never be another animal brought into our home. Period, end of discussion. After my husbands' cat passes, there will be no more pets. Not so much as a pet rock will be welcome here.

This kitten was obviously going to die if someone didn't do something. Either starvation, or Death-By-Predator (the office is just out of town and we have hawks and foxes that come up onto the office property as we are surrounded on three sides by a cotton field). Mashed flat by a car.

I searched the bushes and under the porch but could not find any litter-mates.

I found a bowl, filled it with water, and found a piece of a breakfast sandwich that I had brought with me that morning.

Kitty had no idea of what to do with either offering.

I decided to call the animal shelter.

I couldn't take a step without trippin' over the yowlin' furball. Getting BACK into the office without Velcro Cat was a trick.

I couldn't find the shelter number in the phone book so I called a vet for the digits. The vet next door is closed on Mondays.

He told me that the shelter didn't open until 12:00. I could wait a few minutes with The Screamer.

When we got into the truck the poor animal went berserk.

It tried to nurse on my arms, bit the Hell out of me, and drew blood. I had to pry it's tiny jaws off. It climbed onto my shoulder and tried to jump out of the window twice, just to slam into the glass and fall back into my lap.

It tried to find a teat on the back of my neck. I got a couple of bites with very tiny, sharp teeth. And it had it's claws dug into my shirt and into ME.

Very difficult to remove while driving.

I got nipped on the ear twice. The poor baby was frantically trying to find a place to nurse.It was making laps around my head and shoulders like the Tazmanian Devil from the old cartoon. And screaming it's bony little ass off the whole time.

I'm trying to shift gears in my truck with a Weedeater on the loose in the cab. It made a trip or two across the dashboard and never. Once. Shut. Up.

It also made a few trips up and across my chest. I have a puncture wound or two there, as well as a few scratches.

Wouldn't you know, I missed the turn to the damned shelter. But I saw the shelters' truck and I KNEW someone was already there. I'd fob Taz off on the poor shelter worker and that would be that. And my conscience wouldn't bother me one bit. I would have gotten the kitten to a safe place with food and someone-would-fall-in-love-with-it-and-adopt-it-and-it-would-live-happily-ever-after-Amen.

I pulled into the next parking lot, turned that truck around and hit the gas. Kitty dug in and yowled some more.

When I got there the truck was gone. I don't know where it went or how it got gone so fast but it was gone. AND the sign on the door said that the shelter was closed on Mondays!!! Does Christian charity towards the least among us take a break on Monday? And why didn't the vet know that it was closed on Mondays? It gave a number for emergencies. The number was for another town nine miles down the road. I might have to wait for a while and I still had stuff to do, cat or no cat.

CRAP.

The cat is still rooting around my person for sustenance, and I still have nothing to offer. And it has screeched with every single breath.

I called BOTH daughters. Neither one could help me out, and I could barely hear them over the Banshee wailing in my ear.

Nothing to do but take it to my house or dump it off myself. I'd take it to the shelter the next day, work be damned. I was gonna be there when they opened the doors. T-Bird could just deal with it until then.

In desperation, I stopped at a store for some milk because I had no idea what else to do. Maybe God would smile on a starving animal and He'd give me some inspiration.

I had to fight the thing to keep it in the truck when I got out. I had to fight the thing to keep it in the truck when I got back in. I just didn't want to see it run over by a car in the parking lot.

Especially since I had already bled for The Cause.

I had six blocks to fight the cat who still thinks there is a nipple on me SOMEWHERE, and make up an excuse that T-Bird would accept.

When the Screaming Tazmanian Banshee Weed-Eater and I got to the house I heated milk in the microwave and we went to the back porch. It took just a couple of minutes and the cat was lappin' it up.

Success!

I was apologizing to the cat, and explaining that it had to go to the shelter, and both of us were going to be homeless if I tried to keep it, and T-Birds' cat was NEVER going to accept it, and would probably eat it herself, and I was so sorry that some heartless ass had thrown it away like trash.

When I opened the door to go back in, T-Bird was standing in the hall, asking me who was I talkin' to and what was goin' on???

I was covered in cat hair and dirt, and I was bleeding here and there. Blood on my jeans---my blood---and what might have been kitty urine on my shirt. I really didn't want to investigate that
too closely, but my shirt was dry when this fiasco started.

"I couldn't leave it there with no food or water, and I think it was too young to be separated from it's mother, and the hawks and foxes were gonna kill it, and I'll take it to the shelter tomorrow when they open, it's not staying here,..........."

I can get creative when I have to. If you can't blind 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.

Yessir, that's my motto!

"Well, let me see it." He sounded somewhat disgusted.



This is Mullet, our newly-adopted fur-baby. T-Bird's as big a sucker as I am.

I was workin' on another post, but when this came to my attention, I thought I'd pass it along.

We were trying to get our act together for work this morning and caught this story on the local news. I went to the stations' website for more details.

Here's the deal so far:

In a remote area of the county, folks were fed up with an outbreak of burglaries.

When I say remote, I mean reeeee-mote. Way back in the sticks. It's farms and woods, and that's about all.

Monday morning someone placed a call to law enforcement to report suspicious persons trying to steal an ATV from a home.

When the homeowner hung up from calling 911, he called his brother-in-law. And everyone else he knew out that way. Lots of friends and even more family showed up at his house. And they brought hunting dogs.

Several items were missing, including a gun. So they knew that whoever it was was now armed. This family has a grandmother that lives close by and they were afraid for her. They decided not to wait. Ain't nobody gonna mess with Granny.

They started tracking the thieves through pastures and down dirt roads looking for tracks and signs with the added help of the dogs.

It took them a while to get clear across the county, but when deputies arrived, there was one of the thieves-----handcuffed to a huge cattle gate. They had caught him after a chase and affixed him to the gate for safekeeping.

They didn't use those zip-ties that are now used for handcuffs. They used by-golly metal handcuffs! "Bracelets"!

The deputies took the first one in for questioning.
The impromptu posse took off again looking for the second suspect.

They tracked him for about six hours and the thief covered about 2 1/2 miles of countryside, woods, and swamp. Not too shabby, actually, considering he was trying to remain hidden, and wasn't really in good enough shape to run very fast for very far. He's trying to outrun trucks, ATVs, and dogs.

He even managed to cross into the next county before the posse caught up with him.

Now, they say they "leashed" him to a truck AFTER they handcuffed him, and I'm wondering exactly how he got back to this county. I'm thinking he walked back across the county line tied to a pickup truck. Somebody else picked him up with a truck and took him back to the farm.

He was handcuffed to the truck when the Sheriff came to get him.

All of the stolen property was recovered except for one check, and they had stopped payment on that while the suspects were still running.

The thieves had been stealing from hog hunters. Since hunters do a lot of tracking, they knew what to look for so trailing them must have been fairly easy. Especially with the dogs.

It was probably the easiest hunting trip these dogs had ever been on.

The whole handcuff thing threw me. The men said that they used them for hog huntin'. I asked my in-house redneck/hunter what the heck did a hog hunter use cuffs for??

A lot of times they'll catch a wild hog alive and pen him up to "feed him out". They'll feed him corn or whatever for a couple of weeks to clean out the hogs' system because they'll eat anything they can get a-hold of.

As dumb as I am I know you can't call "here piggy-piggy-piggy" and slap cuffs on a wild hog.

I asked for more info. And got it.

According to T-Bird, if you can get the hog down, you can get handcuffs on the feet. And yeah, sometimes they just jump on the damn thing and wrestle the cuffs on. To my way of thinking that's just freakin' INSANE, jumping on an already frightened and/or pissed off animal that's thrashing about with sharp hooves and quite possibly, TUSKS!!!

No man has EVER had to prove his manhood to me in such a manner, and if I want pork that bad I know where the gettin' place is!

(I prefer wild pork--it's called "pig" here--to domestic but I don't want it THAT BAD)

Handcuffs are also used to cuff two or more dogs together by their collars. You only need one leash to walk several dogs at a time.

Or you can use a catch stick. It's a long piece of pipe with a rope loop sticking out of the end. Slip the loop around the snout, grab your end of the rope, twist, and that hog will not move. You can put on cuffs AND a tutu if you desire.

Also works on horses.

No doubt there are ways to use a catch stick on a man that are effective too, but I don't wanna go there.

Now I'm wondering what charges, if any, will be leveled against the hog hunters.