Brain Lint

There may be something desperately wrong with my brain. It seems that the stuff that is vitally important to me is becoming harder and harder and to remember. Birthdays, anniversaries, people's names, social security numbers, scripture, important quotes, are all becoming harder to quote, place in context, much less remember. And it is getting worse. I tell the same stories over and over to the same people, I can tell partway into the story when eyes glaze over, impatience is barely hidden. Of course my kids have long since lost the hesitation to call it to my attention. Still ringing in my ears is the voice of my youngest, "Hey, old man, we have heard that story!" Which goes along nicely with:
- TURN YOUR BLINKER OFF, YOU'RE ON A FREEWAY!
- CAN WE PLEASE NOT LISTEN TO AM RADIO!?!
- THOSE SOCKS DON'T MATCH...EACH OTHER, OR WHAT YOU ARE WEARING!
- CAN WE AT LEAST GO THE SPEED LIMIT?
You get the drift, the old man is losing it.

So why do I remember and continue to enjoy stupid stories read on a whim, buried in the back of the paper?
Apparently, Sherman Texas had an alligator living in a city pond. Which made it unusable to the general public. I'm not really sure why. I guess letting your kids rot their brains on TV, roller blade in the street, take prescription drugs from toddler on are considered safe, but swimming or wading with an alligator is just beyond the pale. Go figure.
But here is what caught my fancy with this story. They trapped the alligator, in a metal trap, using a live chicken for bait. They caught the alligator for relocation, I guess to someone else's city pond, maybe a golf course water hazard. They didn't shoot the alligator, they didn't dynamite it out, they trapped it. Very humane. The last sentence in the story still makes me laugh, though.

"The chicken was unharmed"

Really??!?
Did anyone ask the chicken? You're in a nice little pen, having a nice corn snack, when suddenly a 6' reptile made up mostly of jaws and teeth lunges into the other end of the pen with one thought on his mind....dinner. You.
Let me just say, if I were the chicken, you wouldn't have to plant corn in that spot, you could dig down 6" and still not find the corn kernel.
Hey, we caught the alligator! Thanks, chicken!
You can kiss my feathery white...
Unharmed, really?!? Who is going to pay for the therapy?

Right here I would drop in a really pithy quote...but I can't remember any.

If you find yourself in a nice little enclosed dining space with a nice corn salad...watch your back.

Godspeed.
Don