The Hav-a-Hart trapping life of a river wrat, grammar groaning idiom
By Chuck Wiser, I write the words to share what my eyes see and my heart feels
There is a word used to depict what I’m going to say first but I will define it a little later. My title referring to being “skunked” is a lead in, to a rather smelly topic. For several weeks now we have been blessed (Not) by the company of a stray cat. The cat showed up first in early spring and has been a visitor every day since. I don’t have a picture but could get one easily as the cat is not exceptionally shy and I can approach it within a couple of yards before it takes off. That “couple of yards” part of the previous comment is very apropos in that the cat spends the entire day either in our yard or my neighbor Don Kear’s yard.
This year we have our typical infestation of chipmunks, many of which I make disappear, and they have burrows in a couple of places in the back yard. The burrow and its accompanying entrance/exit holes that the cat stalks are at the back edge of our lawn. I fill the holes with dirt or gravel, only to have them re-open within a few days. This paragraph is a lead into the next topic.
We have grown tired of having the cat around as there have been traces of its visit to our back porch/deck, and into our garage with its door that I occasionally forget to close overnight. So, my wife convinced me to set our live trap cage to catch the cat. I did so and the first night surprised us by catching a “nearly all white” skunk. I disposed of it with a courtesy ride to my standard relocation spot.
Still desirous of capturing “kitty” I reset the trap and placed it at the back of our property while also setting a second one in front of the garage. That following morning my wife greeted me with the statement that “You aren’t going to like what you see” when you look out the windows. That, of course, was all the motivation I needed to immediately look out the window(s). The picture here shows, there was a skunk in the trap in its trapped location in front of the garage and a possum in the other trap which I had carried up from down back preparatory to being transported. We were previously aware that there was still a skunk in the neighborhood having noticed its “scat” pile in the yard previously. I placed the traps in this location for picture taking convenience.
I will start the many Grammar Groans to follow, by sharing the definition of “scat.” The first meaning we intuitively learned is that of an admonishment to “quickly depart.” The next meaning, as described in this copy/paste was encountered much later in life.
“Scat” has several meanings, most commonly referring to animal droppings or a command for something or someone to go away quickly. It can also describe a style of jazz singing that uses nonsense syllables, or it can be used in various other contexts, such as slang for heroin, a part of the body, or an acronym.
First, I loaded the caged possum in the back of my truck. Next up, grabbing my “moving blanket” to be used to cover the caged skunk. With considerable experience in trapping such critters I have had great success in avoiding a “spray of fragrance” by cautiously draping a blanket over the caged skunk. This has always before served to avoid spooking them into spraying.
I have read, or been told, I forget which, but it is surmised that the confined area of the cage prevents the skunk from “hunching up” into its “spraying posture.” After carefully placing the blanket over the skunk I slowly lifted the caged skunk into the back of the truck. I noticed a “little” fragrance all the while through the loading process but that is not unusual as the skunks often carry a little odor on their body. All loaded I provided the courtesy ride, then returning home, unloaded all of the “equipment” from the truck. I thought nothing of it, but when I went into the house my wife “wrinkled her nose,” (cutely) and told me I smelled like the skunk. So, I took a cleansing shower, and all was well with me.
I seem to forget the order of where I went on my errands next, but the first stop resulted in the comment that they smelled skunk. I apologized and said that I had had an encounter with a skunk earlier that morning. Next stop, same comment, same explanation. I later discovered that there was a strong skunk odor in the cab of my truck. I guess when your senses (or lack thereof) get used to something, it is no longer apparent or noticeable by you. I guess that is why people that are unkempt will carry their body odor around and not be aware of it.
I will place the Grammar Groans segment in the middle of this Wrambling so as to let it wear off by the time I get to the end. The first word, newly added to my vocabulary is “Idiom.” Earlier in the week someone shared a common old phrase that something “hadn’t happened in a coons age.” Having heard that I immediately reached out to my current thesaurus source Google Search. I often use “older” uncommon words because I like them and like to share my “age old” vocabulary. Idioms are described as: a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words (e.g., raining cats and dogs, seeing the light).
Other sources describe it as often consisting of sarcastically stated terms that are often put into a sentence like; It happened on one of those dark nights. I have to attribute that phrase, first heard by me when expressed by my now departed old friend Tom Geyer. Tom was the source of many of those idioms, some of which are a little “racy” or offensive like “A cow pissing on a flat rock,” but most were “obvious” in their simplicity like: “It’s darker than the inside of your hat.” RIP Tom, you are missed dearly.
A second term, and one which I used to describe a newly found friend through my Wrambling writings, is “doppelganger.” Recently Joe Steinwachs reached out to me honoring me with his observations and enjoyment of my Wramblings. Through a gathering of comments from messaging back and forth I discovered that we had very similar backgrounds, almost so scary as having been identical. They covered things like high school and college experiences, birthplaces and/or places lived, military service, and its timing and motivating enlistment reasons. Joe reached out and said something along the lines of: “I hope we can be friends.” That really won my heart over. I replied to him that we already were and would remain so. Joe is 86 years “young.”
The similarities of our backgrounds were what motivated me to use the word doppelganger. This one was somewhat familiar to me having used it before. It’s not one of your dining room dinner phrases that you hear every day. The word in simplicity means “an apparition double of a living person.” It is typically used to describe “look alike” individuals but I expand that to someone who nearly doubles you in features, characteristic’s, background or histories, as Joe does.
I may be abusing poetic license in the definition expansion used above, but if you can’t bend a word to suit your purposes the “Funk-n-Wagnel” tomes would only be half their size. Historically civilization creates new words or applies meanings to old words through their recent common use. My fictitious research source prior to Google was technically named the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. I re-named it many years ago
At this point in my Wrambling I have barely touched my “to do” or my version “to write” list. The following are going to be shorter crib notes. I can’t seem to escape the Grammar theme of this writing as I used a familiar term there and despite using it in its proper context, I had never checked its real, or technical meaning. The term “crib notes” likely originated from the 1700s verb “to crib,” meaning to plagiarize or cheat, which itself comes from the idea of stealing or copying. My vocabulary, which has been both taunted and applauded, comes from a mother who was quite well versed in our language despite no formal education beyond high school, and my voracious appetite for reading. When I encounter a new word in my readings, I typically look it up to see what it means. The word Idiom mentioned above is an example of how my vocabulary was (and still is) being built. I do also have somewhat of a history of creating my own words by combing two real words to give my words a double meaning, or to make a noun into a verb. “Combinulating” is an example of my creationability.
A good portion of my activities late last week and earlier this week have been trying to climb out from under that bank account theft fraudulent usage problem. I think Julie Roeske at Community Bank NA, is beginning to think of me as her full-time customer, or “pain in the neck.” She has worked tirelessly trying to sort out and straighten out the details and results of the identity theft and usage of my account. Given the cancellation and blocking of monetary action of our original primary ban account I receive almost daily emails or notices that “We cannot obtain our payment from your account…” I then have to provide them with an alternate account from which to draw their payments. This second nearly identical happenstance has us seriously considering our payment and purchasing options. If you make purchases “online” you are vulnerable to this same illegal situation that we are in. I can’t begin to imagine how many thousands or multiple-thousands of people are put in this situation nearly every day. I have been told by many friends that this same thing has happened to them. With the seemingly blossoming use of these “lazy smart persons” talents these days, coupled with the prevalence of online shopping I’m not sure where we are headed.
Here are a couple of topics meant to be discussed in more detail but which I didn’t get to. I will pick up on these later for further explanation: Corner rounding of furniture; Cars at or approaching intersections; More on Idioms; Compression Stockings and their use; My roads less traveled; Words of success of former students; Changing seasons; County “gravel pile” ongoing or future use; St. Bonaventure game tickets acquisition, and many more. I feel that I do occasionally repeat my topics but there are always new Wrambling readers, or the topic is repeated with a new twist.
If you have any comments, questions, cares or concerns email me at IM.Wiserdad@gmail.com
