As I walked into the local
hair place today, I noticed an
elderly woman walking out. She wore a smile and wished me good
Christmas tidings. I noticed the staff then, two gentlemen, staring after her with a kind of
bewildered look. I proceeded to have a
shampoo and was describing the style I wanted when one of the barbers says,
"I just can't believe that old woman
drowning those
squirrels like that."
I kind of looked up at that and was treated to a recounting of what this eighty-five year old woman had apparently told them. She had three squirrels living in her
attic and had become concerned that they were going to somehow eat the wiring up there and perhaps burn the house down. So she managed to catch them and as she described it,
baptized them. Which is to say, she drowned them.
Now I was somewhat shocked by this, as I think was everyone else, so my barber changed the subject by telling a story of how he was once bit through the
fingernail by a squirrel.
One comment I remember quite clearly was, "Well if they can
crack a nut like they do, I guess a fingernail's not that hard".
His counterpart's reaction started a diatribe I'm not likely ever to forget. He says, "The squirrel cracked your nuts?"
The conversation degraded at that point into talk of cats
attacking your nuts and then dogs attacking your nuts (this actually happened to one of them supposedly).
Meanwhile, myself and the other
patrons in the place were looking at each other
uncertainly.
After a few more minutes the talk was of how someone one of then knew had managed to get
hoof marks on his back from being
assaulted by a calf. One of the patrons then remarked that he once had a dog that used to
hump pillows.
The other barber then told a story of a doberman he once had that had freaked his entire family out in the middle of the night by
moaning and wailing. They thought someone had gotten in the house and was attacking the dog. When the barber investigated, however, he was greeted by the sight of the dog
going to town on his kid's Barney doll, the dog wailing in ecstacy and Barney singing, "
I love you, you love me..."
Aside from the
inappropriateness of much of the talk in the hair place today, I was quite amused. I'm not sure I'll ever go back there again, though...