My mom lives outside city limits and she kills things. Critters, not people. Mostly by accident.

My mom has neighbors; she's not isolated like Texas Chainsaw Massacre style. She lives on a hilly plot of land that's almost three acres. There are woods, lakes, fields, blackberry bushes and cows next door to her house. It's a lot to take care of. She has carpal tunnel so she relies on me to do the heavy lifting and man-type stuff because she's divorced and lives alone. But she has good neighbors that help her out when I'm not there and do the man-type stuff.

She mows nearly all three acres by herself every week. Her lawn tractor recently broke down for like the 55th time and finally for good, so she bought herself a nice new, shiny red Snapper riding mower.

There are many critters and strange things on, around and that pass through her land. Deer, coyotes, foxes, snakes, lizards, cats, dogs, geese, moles, mice, opossums, mud puppies (which are GUHHHRRROOOSSS) and various other critters, insects and strange creatures. Shit, I've even seen a Remax hot air balloon crash in her yard when I was kid. Down came the basket containing people and this giant ass balloon deflated on her hillside. They called in a truck and trailer, packed it up and drove off. No one was hurt. It was a gentle crash landing.

Anyway, back to the killing and critters. With her last mower and I'm sure with her shiny new red Snapper, she's obliterated snakes, splattering their guts on trees and within a few feet radius of her path of destruction. Lots of snakes. And she's terrified of them. She found a snake skin the other day, which I'm sure gave her spine-tingling heebie jeebies. She just charges on, blades spinning, chopping up critters and creatures hiding within the blades of grass on her plot of land, unbeknownst to them, their fates sealed should they cross paths with my mom on her death machine.

Lately, she tells me she's got this groundhog digging up a bunch of dirt by her steps and the end of the driveway, which drops off. It's become quite a pain in her ass and is causing quite a bit of destruction. I'm sure she conferred with one of her neighbors and they decided to set up a cage to trap it. So far, the groundhog has thwarted her device, but a poor opossum wasn't so lucky. Ugh, those things make me heave with their gross tails and teeth and pointy noses and creepy eyes....BLEHHHH.

So I'm at work and she texts me:

Texts from my mom. She's gray and I'm blue. She asked me to blur out her neighbor's name. I said okay. Photo by BK.
Texts from my mom. She's gray and I'm blue. She asked me to blur out her neighbor's name. I said okay. Photo by BK.
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Mom's text continued. She's still gray, I'm still blue. Photo by BK.
Mom's text continued. She's still gray, I'm still blue. Photo by BK.
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HAHAHA!!! God love my mom, she thinks I'm a sick bastard. But I know an entertaining blog opportunity when I see one, and I pounced on this. Her neighbor that will not be named came to retrieve the dead opossum. I'm glad I was gone for that dirty job. For the record, the idea is to trap the critter, not kill it. An opossum on its last leg had the misfortune of stumbling upon it.

The expired opossum. Photo by LK.
The expired opossum. Photo by LK.
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R.I.P. buddy.

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