Creepier Than Celebrity Ghost Stories At Night

Look away! It's hideous!

This topic is not for the faint of heart. Like a giant twisty dippy roller coaster disclaimer, I must advise you that this post is not for those with heart ailments, recent neck surgery in which a titanium plate was used to attach two vertebrae, children not yet THIS tall, or pregnant women. Stand aside. I've got no business with you today.

However...if you pass the physical, and enjoy a good scream, are one of those thrill-seekers who live for haunted houses, an adrenaline junky...read on. At your own risk, of course.

In the Mansion kitchen, nobody can see you turn green.

Farmer H has a stash. Not a 'stache. He has one, of course, but it's not the subject today. Farmer H has a stash of treats that he keeps on a corner of the kitchen table. It's his space. We don't sit down to the kitchen table for regular meals. We're on the go, or just returning from the go. Farmer H puts his animal-tending before his repast. So The Pony and I go our separate ways when feeding. This isn't Mayfield or Mayberry. The nuclear family is decaying.

In Farmer H's stash are a variety of non-sugar snacks. It may be a beef-and-cheese stick, hard candies, pudding cups, a Whitman Sampler, pork rinds, zucchini bread, oatmeal raisin cookies, or pumpkin pie. It all depends on the season, and what Farmer H has requested from The Devil's Playground no-sugar-added shelf. In the evening, he grabs a little bite to tide him over through the long night of breathing under a quilt, disrupting my pillows with his roving arm, emitting rumbling gaseous emissions, and slicing my ankles with his toenails. Quite the workout over a nine-hour session of snoozing.

For Thanksgiving, I bought Farmer H a pumpkin pie. We took it to my mom's dinner, along with sugar-free Cool Whip, a sugar-free chocolate pudding-pie, and assorted side dishes. Mom insisted that we bring our stuff back home, after she lopped off a few sections for next-day company. Farmer H apparently preferred the pudding-pie. Oh, I know he also partook of the pumpkin pie, because all of my serving spoons were re-bent from being forced against their will into the depths of the frozen sugar-free Cool Whip.

I don't mess with Farmer H's snack hoard. In return, he barges into my dark basement lair at will and rifles through my mess. I agree. There's some sort of inequality going on here. But that's how it is. Every morning, and every evening, Farmer H sits down on the kitchen chair near his stash, and removes or applies work boots from and to his feet. I know this not because I get up for his 6:00 a.m. departure on snow days, but because I am generally warming food in the microwave or heating it in the oven or washing dishes by hand when he arrives home. Farmer H loves little better than sitting in the kitchen doing nothing while I am doing what I perceive as work. Unless maybe it's walking around underfoot while I am doing what I perceive as work.

Yesterday morning, as we were leaving for the dead-mouse-smelling post office, I told The Pony that when we returned, he was going to carry some recent FedEx/UPS packages from the kitchen table to the basement. He walked over to see which ones could go directly to The #1 son's room, like those small ones from China. And all at once, The Pony started crowing. "Whoa! This is great! I've got to get a picture of that! It has EYES!" He grabbed something from the table and put it on the counter. Before I could stop him, he had snapped this photo. LOOK AWAY if you don't have smelling salts handy. This is your last warning...ready...set...HERE IT COMES!

Yeah. You would think a man so repulsed by mold, in fact, more repulsed by mold than by squirming pink hairless baby mice in the pockets of his BARn coveralls, would pay closer attention to his treats. That, perhaps, he would toss out a leftover pumpkin pie on the Monday after Thanksgiving, what with it having expired on Friday. Or at least have kept it in Frig as I recommended. But no.

I suppose he was going to leave it there until I stepped in to tell him what to do with it. In fact, when The Pony tried to shame him that evening by showing him the picture, Farmer H asked, "Did you feed it to the dogs?" As if the dogs are not warm furry outdoor children to be loved and cherished, but some common garbage receptacle with HazMat disposal properties.

Maybe he was just trying to start a penicillin farm for a sideline at my proposed handbasket factory.