 |
by C.J. Mouser After growing up in Texas, C.J. Mouser and her husband, Fred, eventually found home on a small farm in west central Florida, where they and children Jenny, Jillian and Jake grow oranges and raise swine. A collection of goats, cats and dogs also call the farm home, along with the occasional rattlesnake, alligator or "marauding wild hog intent on a little romance" in the sow pasture. Other articles focus on family. "Sometimes the threads that hold the family together are as fragile as spider silk, and as convoluted and complex as the main switchboard at the IRS." Their farm spans thirty acres in Hardee County, where they raise livestock, oranges, and the occasional few acres of some type of cash crop. Although her husband had some background in animal husbandry and livestock management, life on the farm was a new experience for C J and their three children. Her readers have learned to expect to laugh and occasionally cry, as she describes her joys, trials, and tribulations in such tales as Ricardo Ropes a Pig, The Maternal Instinct, Memories on the Hoof, and Never Take a Duck to Bed. Mouser, who is also a freelance writer and columnist for several different Florida newspapers, followed her own path to become a writer. "I have no formal education. In fact, I'm 45 years old and haven't finished high school," she says. "I am a prime example of 'don't let this happen to you'." Faithful readers who can't wait for her next story, however, would say she's done just fine. |
Year one on our farm, it dawned on us that we could save some money by picking our oranges ourselves. The first in a series of miserable farm faux pas. Each of us has our own unique escape mechanism to use when faced with mundane hours spent in the grove. I'm mentally spending the proceeds from the load, my husband Fred, is worrying about getting stuck in the mud. My oldest daughter, Jillian, loses herself in thoughts of her boyfriend. My youngest girl, Jenny, is formulating her next complaint, and our son, Jake, falls into a pattern of nitpicking. I learned how to tune this out long ago, so when the 'incident' occurred, I was caught completely by surprise and watched the following chain of events unfold helplessly. Jake apparently stepped over the line and smarted off. I didn't catch it, but Fred did, and he went off like a homemade firecracker; no warning, devastating results. I heard a low growl, and looked up to see Fred's face go red as a beet. Jake, being somewhat used to provoking this type of reaction in his dad, was suddenly alert and wary, waiting for a sign that he should flee. The sign came in the form of a misplaced swat. When Fred gets like this, he does things that make no sense at all, and when he swatted and missed, the troublemaker took off splashing through the mud and the muck with my husband more or less on his heels. It was kind of like watching a lion chasing a gazelle on the Serengeti. You don't really want to see the lion catch the gazelle, but you're held transfixed by the whole thing and can't not watch. You can feel the panic of the gazelle, but there's not a dang thing you can do to stop that lion; you can only hope that he gets tripped up and the gazelle gets away. If Jake had had a mishap; slipped, charged into a tree or got hung up somehow, and my husband by some bizarre stroke of pure unadulterated luck had managed to catch him, by the time he actually got his hands on him, Jake would have been screaming so long and so loud, and so gosh-darned girl-like, that they both would have collapsed into helpless laughter. So, we have this agile deer-like boy gracefully dodging trees and puddles, dancing between branches with intricate turns and leaps like the most seasoned ballet dancer, and we have this grizzly-like man banging into branches and blundering through these same puddles, and drying 'em up as he went. Sometimes it seems that God sets these things up on purpose, just for the pure enjoyment of the innocent standers-by. I keep hoping someday that Fred will realize that short of a miracle he is not going to catch this boy, and he will try to find a more useful and less hilarious approach to these incidents. But, when his eyes are all bugged out, and he's got that nervous tic going, there is no reasoning with him. No matter how many times he chases and loses, he still tries with a determination that can only be described as remarkable. A lesser man would have given up a long time ago. When it became clear that the chase had ended predictably, we all went back to our picking, while Fred shook his fist, rattling off all the things he would have done to him had he been able to catch him, and giving Jake final warning not to "say one more word ever in his pitiful life again". "You gotta go to sleep at some point, boy," he said ominously. "don't ya know that? Aren't ya gonna answer me?" "But dad, you just told me not to say…" "Are…you…talkin'?!?" We finally got the trailer full, and while pulling it out it got stuck in the mud, of course. We had to summon the neighbor to bring his 'hog' (some mud-slinging, jeep type thing) to pull us out so we could get the oranges to the scale before they closed. With all this going on, Jake had a chance to redeem himself by doing all the running for this, that, and whatever thing might be needed to get us out. He fell into grace with Fred again and was allowed to sleep peacefully through the night. I guess it's true that time heals all wounds. |
|
CLICK HERE |
