Aunt Leena and the Butt Zapper (not a typo!)

I’ve introduced you to my cousin Ollie - great guy, but about a leg short of a chair, if you catch my drift. Today, I’d like to introduce you to Ollie’s ma, my Aunt Leena. She taught him everything he knows, which explains a lot.

Now Aunt Leena doesn’t have a lot of book learning, but you really can’t fault her logic. Like when she tells Ollie if he doesn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain he might as well go on down to the mailbox and get the mail. Or when she’s been canning tomatoes all morning and her husband, Sven, hollers from the door that there might be a few extras for lunch. She looks out the window and sees a good half dozen beat up trucks down at the barn, and hollers back, “Keys are in my purse. Make mine extra crispy!”

But even Aunt Leena can miss a gear now and then. Like the other day when we were down in the calf barn. Leena loves taking care of the calves, but I don’t much enjoy mucking around in there. Anyone who’s been in a cow barn knows it’s kinda smelly and that’s not mud your Teva’s are disappearing into. But I like feeding the calves and playing with the barn cats (well, the ones too slow to run away or not so mean you end up missing a finger or two!).

Anyway, Sven had put up a section of electric fence because he was having trouble with the milk cows trying to take a shortcut. Leena wanted to use that shortcut because it was raining outside and she wanted to holler at Ollie to go down and get the mail. Now Leena’s not what I’d call overweight (at least not where she could hear me!), but she is “big boned”. She got down on her hands and knees in the muck and started shimmying under the wire...and let me tell you, Leena shimmying is a sight to behold. The problem started when that bare patch of skin between the tail of her shirt and the waistband on her pants came in contact with that little tiny wire. Things started getting real interesting, because the natural reaction from that kind of “goose” is to jump up, which doesn’t work well when you’re pants are caught on the wire. You just get zapped again, and maybe fall face first into the muck.

Uncle Sven then displayed the most amazing feat of bravery I’ve ever witnessed. He ran up, reached down…pulled out his new camera phone and started snapping photos! By the time Leena got loose, Sven had wised up and beat a hasty retreat. She let him off pretty light, ‘cause he was laughing so much the pictures were a little fuzzy. He couldn’t tell they were fuzzy, though; he was having some trouble seeing out of those two black eyes.

Gotta go now, looks like we’re having KFC for lunch again today!