Thursday, February 11, 2010

Morris? Is that you?

So there I am standing in the cat food section of Publix looking for new and interesting flavors for LT (our cat) to turn his nose up at when suddenly I am elbowed out of the way by a nasty looking snowbird troll-like fossil.

For those of you that don’t know, Okeechobee is where all the jurassic snowbirds from Ohio, Michigan and especially Canada come to in the winter months to get away from the snow and clog up the hospital and Wal-Mart.

The migration begins about Labor Day. Campers and wrinkled up fossils back up the highway from Okeechobee all the way to YeeHaw Junction. Easily hundreds of millions of dollars worth of geriatric buses and mobile homes flow into Okeechobee like ripple into a wino that just won the lottery.

Instead of a catch and release program where these old bags of skin could be taken out into the Everglades to provide sustenance for the local reptile and amphibian populations, the local merchants lure and welcome them into their establishments like a diabetics being drawn to a candy factory. I think the idea is to fatten up on the tourists in the winter months to survive the long ugly and hot summers here.

So being the nice, kind and understanding guy that I am, I engage this old codger in a bit of humorous banter. I mention that I wonder if the feral cats in the wild eat Atlantic Salmon or Turkey Giblets in Gravy (Both flavors LT likes)

And then he says "I like the sliced beef and the chicken bits myself”

He then went onto engage me in a five-minute dithyram about how he likes to mix canned cat food into a salad and have that for dinner on warm evenings.

And I swear to God he was serious.

I can tell most of the time when someone is pulling my leg, but this is Okeechobee where people take their kids to Golden Corral barefoot and then take fried chicken legs home from the restaurant in their pants pockets with out using even a napkin or a plastic bag.

So here we are in the valley of the wealthy wandering Winnebago’s where all the rich old farts from up north come to escape the cold and when they get here they eat cat food to save a buck.

I should have walked him next door to the hardware store and bought him a shovel and a rake so he could collect some of that free food that gets hit by them pick-em up trucks at night here on the highway.

I wonder if possum road kill tastes like chicken?

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