The Armadillo

After Mom’s funeral the whole family came back to my house.  Some of the kids were playing shuffleboard when they came upstairs to tell us that there were maggots on the table. I told them they were crazy because it wasn’t like we had raw meat down there or anything that maggots would be living on & I blew them off. The next thing I knew Jim came traipsing through the house with the shop vac and by the time I got downstairs to check he had vacuumed them all up. Everyone was freaking out and trying to figure out where they had come from. As I looked around, I spotted the armadillo that Janice had sent to me 2 or 3 years ago. It was a real (dead) armadillo that lay on its back and held a bottle of Lone Star beer to its mouth. When I got it in the mail & opened it up, it scared me. It had wiry hairs on it and it was real ugly. My first reaction was to throw it away but I knew that when Janice came to visit I’d have to produce it so I put it down on the bar. I figured it would be a good conversation piece and it was. I grew to like it.

Anyway, as I was looking around trying to figure out where the maggots came from I remembered that there had been some mysterious dust around the armadillo that I had cleaned up a couple of weeks earlier. As me & the kids looked closer, the kids exclaimed that there were maggots on it! So I got some bags out and pleaded with Morgan to put a bag on each hand, pick the armadillo up & place it in the third bag I was holding. We brought it upstairs and put it in the trashcan in the garage which should’ve been the end of the story. Nay, nay, reindeer. I got the brilliant idea to play a trick on Jim. I asked Morgan & Madison to take the armadillo to the back yard and put it down on Jim’s new path he made in the woods that he’s so proud of. I thought it would be funny for him to find it the next day. I made them promise not to say anything because he needed to find it on his own or the joke wouldn’t work.

Well, it took him a week but he finally saw it. We were under the deck & he was on the ladder getting a few of my wind chimes down for repair when he spotted the armadillo. He didn’t know what it was and started making comments to me about it & I had to turn away so he wouldn’t see me smiling. I ignored him & talked about other things. He kept looking & trying to figure out what it was until he finally walked up to the beginning of the path to get a closer look. He was freaking out thinking it was an animal and he even said he thought it was something growing. Then he realized what it was and started to get mad until I joked that the kids must’ve thrown the armadillo there as a joke. Then he spotted it. A Natural Light beer can right under some flowers at the top of the path. Ronnie! He said there was proof that Ronnie had done the dirty deed!

We went back up to the house just as Angie & Brian were pulling up. Jim told them the story and as they were in on the joke, they went along with accusing Ronnie. Jim proceeded to call Ronnie who denied ever having put the armadillo there and said that I knew all about it. Brian told Jim that Ronnie was just trying to cover his ass by blaming me. Jim called Scott next and ended up getting a good laugh out of it.

Barb said in her blog about Mom, “our family has a great sense of humor and so did she”.  This just goes to show you that even when we are grieving, we never miss the opportunity to play a good joke on someone. Mom would’ve loved it!