|
|
|
last quill
Friday, May 7 2004
The other day the veterinarian who makes housecalls came out to our place and tried to remove the last of the porcupine quills lodged in the lip of our dog Sally. After injecting her full of sedatives and then waiting for her to get groggy, the vet tried to approach her, but Sally rallied right through the sedation and fled the scene. She doesn't trust veterinarians, particularly those seeking to poke fingers in her mouth. Sally did, however, let Gretchen and me touch the part of her lip where the quill was embedded, but she wouldn't let us "work" it out. By then the quill had been completely subsumed in the surrounding tissue. Eventually the vet gave up, leaving us with a tiny set of forceps to remove the quill if Sally ever succumbed to her sedation.
Sally never did let us pull the quill out, at least not that day, but today when I touched Sally's muzzle I could feel the quill protruding, sharp-end-first. It had migrated at least a half inch from where it had been only two days before. Eventually Gretchen was able to grab it with her fingers and yank it out. Quills passing out of the body sharp-end-first are relatively easy to remove because you don't have to fight the backwards-pointing scales in that direction. Those scales give porcupine quills all sorts of magical powers inside the body. The other day I read something disturbing about a guy who stepped on a porcupine quill and didn't see it again until it emerged from his leg above his knee.
This evening Gretchen invited the Meat Locker People over for dinner, but they'd already dined on Indian-style potatoes. They came over later, while we were still drinking wine and eating Thai-style curry out on our south deck. Eventually we played a "rousing game of Boggle" (as Gretchen likes to say). Actually, we played a good half-dozen rousing games of Super Boggle, the kind played using a five by five letter matrix. Mr. Meat Locker proved to be an unexpectedly formidable Boggle champion. Later we entertained one another by telling jokes. Actually, since Gretchen and I don't retain jokes very well, we mostly just listened to jokes from the Meat Locker People's oral tradition. These ranged from the cleverly-stupid to the hilariously pedophillic. Examples included:
Question: What is a sheep with no legs?
Answer: A cloud.
Question: What's the best thing about sex with twenty eight year olds?
Answer: There are twenty of them.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?040507 feedback
previous | next |
