Back when we lived in Iowa, our nearest neighbors owned an acreage that they dubbed Last Chance Ranch. And, it wuz an apt name because the owners took as their serious life mission to provide care to injured animals or animals suffering from mistreatment or malnourishment. I’ll note that both their home, and ours, were located at the far west end of a dead-end road.

Among the menagerie that the Last Chance Ranch took in included an assortment of three-legged dogs and cats, a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig that required a hind-quarters cart because its hind legs were paralyzed, a few decrepit, arthritic, crippled up old horses, a bovine or two on the downhill slide, a few flightless birds, and I’m sure a few nondescript critters that I can’t recall.

However, from that assemblage of mournful critters there eventually emerged a story — humorous to me, at least. Here’s what happened:

On many nice evenings the lady at the Last Chance Ranch took the opportunity to exercise her collection of three-legged dogs. It wuz safe because we had very little traffic on our road. Her normal route took her by the end of my driveway and within eye-sight of my garden and chicken-flock pen.

Well, one fine evening, the friendly lady spied me working in my garden and veered down my driveway to see me. Of course, her 3-legged dog pack hobbled down with her, including an eager-beaver tri-pod Beagle.

As I left my garden to converse with her, I noticed that a baby chick from the brood of one of my setting hens had made its way through the fence and couldn’t seem to find its way back inside the pen. Unfortunately for the week-old chick, the rambunctious Beagle hound spied the chick at the same time — and pounced on it, and crunched it to an instantaneous bloody death.

The lady owner yelled in panic at her Beagle and the startled hound dropped the mutilated chick’s carcass at my feet. I picked it up, sighed, and said something like, “Well, that’s what you get when you venture out of your pen.” And, I threw the dead chick far away down in the ravine east of the driveway.

The poor well-intentioned lady was absolutely aghast. She apologized. She sobbed and broke into tears. I told her to forget the whole episode. Stuff happens when you mix chickens and dogs. She sniffled up and offered to pay me. Of course, I declined and said that someday I might accidentally run over one of her dogs and I didn’t want to feel obligated to pay for it.

So, she gathered up her hobbling pack and headed home. However, in about 15 minutes, she returned — with a $20 bill in her hand — and insisted I take the Andrew Jackson as payment for the dead chick.

That sort of triggered my ire a bit and I replied, “Ma’am,” I said. “If you’ll pay me $20 for a dead week-old chick, go home and get ol’ Tri-Pod and come back. At that price, I’ll let the chicks out one at a time for him to kill.”

She went home with the $20 in her pocket. However, our neighborly relationship was cool to aloof from there on.
***
Last week I wrote about some melancholy remembrances of my fun-loving, musical, maternal grandmother Ann. I included some of the lyrics I remembered from the silly, nonsensical songs she sang to me and all her grandkids.

Well, this week I’ll conclude those fond memories by including a couple more sets of Grandma’s silly lyrics. Here’s a set about an animal fair:

“I went to the animal fair.
All the birds and the beasts were there.
The big baboon by the light of the moon
Was combing his auburn hair.

The monkey, he got drunk.
And fell in the elephant’s trunk
The elephant sneezed and fell to his knees.
And, what e’re became of the monk?”
***
And, here are the lyrics to a silly sing-a-long song that Grandma pounded out on the honky-tonk, ragtime piano. The song is not a creation of hers, but an actual commercial song that I assume was popular sometime in grandma’s childhood. I remember most of the words, but I checked on the internet and there were a few stanzas that I only partially remembered. At, any rate, here are the lyrics to the song, “Mrs. Murphy’s Chowder:”

“Won’t you bring back, won’t you bring back, Mrs. Murphy’s chowder?
It was tuneful, every spoonful made you yodel louder.
After dinner Uncle Ben used to fill his fountain pen
From a bowl of Mrs. Murphy’s chowder.

“There was ice cream, cold cream, benzine, gasoline
Soup beans, string beans, floating all around,
Sponge cake, beef steak, mistake, stomach ache
Cream puffs, ear muffs, many to be found.
Silk hats, door mats, bed slats, Democrats
Cow bells, door bells, beckon you to dine.
Meat balls, fish balls, moth balls, cannon balls
Come on in, the chowder’s fine!

Won’t you bring back, won’t you bring back, Mrs. Murphy’s chowder
It was tuneful, every spoonful made you yodel louder
If they had it where you are, you might find a motor car
In a bowl of Mrs. Murphy’s chowder.”
***
Enuf drivel for one week. The words of wisdom for the end of February in a leap year come from Dinesh Kumar Biran: “February the month of love?!! No wonder it’s the shortest one in the calendar.”
Have a good ‘un.