I have already introduced you to my new age friend, Vivi, in a couple of previous stories. This is about the time her 4 foot long Iguana lizard died.
Vivi lived in a 30 foot travel trailer with two tilt out extension rooms, one in the living room and one in the bedroom. A large permanent room had been added to one side of the travel trailer so the whole affair was fairly roomy. The tilt out room added about 4 foot to the width of the living room but Vivi had built a large wire cage for her pet Iguana's that was about 6 ft wide, 6 ft deep, and 6 feet high that took up most of the living room. I helped her cut some limbs to string around inside the cage for the lizards to crawl around on. Papa Iggy was about 4 foot long, Mama Igga about 2 foot long and Baby Iggy was about a foot long and growing fast. Adding to Vivi's menangery was the most well behaved three cats I have ever seen. They were the only cats I ever seen who answered well to voice commands. So we have this pastoral scene of the 3 lizards crawling around inside their cage and the three cats sitting watching them and licking their chops, thinking about all that good old lizard meat.
Papa Iggy got a little off his feed and was acting puny so Vivi decided to doctor him the same way she doctored herself. The first herbs didnt help. She said she needed some greasewood leaves but where we lived was too high an altitude for grease wood. I drove her over toward Sedona and she picked some greasewood leaves. When she got back home she dosed old Papa Iggy up real good with a concoction of greasewood leaves and twigs. Or maybe it was a tincture she cooked up, I dont know nothing about that herb stuff but I do know it stunk so bad I got up and left. Even the cats were hanging around the front door looking like they wonted to leave and I had to keep kicking them back inside to get the door closed. Evidently they had been on the recieving end of some of Vivi's Tincture/Concoctions.
The mobile home parks mailboxes were located in front of Vivis trailer. As I was checking mail the next morning, Vivi came stumbling out of her yard gate, knuckling her eyes like a ten year old kid and with tears streaming down her cheeks. "Iggy died," she said and my stomach turned over in memory of the smell of that boiling greasewood. But you have to be careful when dealing with someone who just experienced a death in the family so all I said was "Gee, Im sorry, Vivi," and she collapsed sobbing loudly against my chest. I was patting her on the back and doing the there there there thing and thinking I should be as helpfull as possible in her moment of greif so I offered to throw old Papa Iggy in the back of my truck and haul him off for her. At that suggestion Vivi let out a squall like a scalded cat, doubled up like she had been hit in the stomach, and staggered back thru her yard gate and into her trailer.
Vivi's next door neighbor, Betty, had been standing in her front yard observing all this and she screamed at me, "What did you do to her." Some of the other neighbors were staring too. "Geez," I said, "All I did was offer to haul the damned lizard off and get rid of it for her." Betty said that was cruel and I should go apologize to Vivi right that minute. Some old woman still wearing a night gown standing at the mailboxes agreed with Betty. I told Betty I wasnt going in no house with a squalling woman and a dead lizard unless she went in with me.
So Betty came stomping out of her yard gate and went around to Vivi's trailer. By the time I sneaked in behind Betty, she was holding Vivi and patting her on the back and doing the there there there thing. Old Pappa Iggy was laying peacefully in his cage, all four feet of him stretched out on a limb. I asked Vivi if she was sure he was dead and she wiped her snotty nose and opened the cage door and stroked that nasty lizards head and said yes and I could feel how cold he was. I said I would take her word for it and trying to be helpful I said she ought to watch them other lizards or they would start eating on him. Danged if Vivi didnt start squalling again and collapsed in Betty's arms again. Betty was looking daggers at me for some reason. The three cats were sitting, lined up in a perfect military formation, their heads and eyes moving in unison from Vivi and Betty to me and then up to all that Lizard meat and licking their chops.
I was getting a little perturbed and had taken about all that girly guff I cared for. "Allright," I said, "I wont say nothing else, just tell me how I can help." I even handed Vivi my handkercheif and as luck would have it, it was an unused clean one. She wiped her eyes and blowed her nose and handed it back to me and asked if I would help bury the lizard. I figured that was the least I could do and suggested we haul old Iggy out to that ridge off of Ponderosa road where she and I and Betty often went to watch the sunset. I knew some places up there where the digging was easy. But no, Vivi would have none of that, she wonted the damned thing buried in her yard. Now her yard was only about 8 feet wide and forty feet long and had a huge tree about 100 years old with surface roots running in all directions. Vivi said it had to be in the side yard where all the tree roots were. I said I wasnt digging no graves unless Betty helped me.
So I went back to my place for a shovel and under Betty's supervision I poked and punched amongst the tree roots searching for an area where I could dig a hole big enough to bury a big lizard in. I thought I had found one untill I ran into a root about 3 inches in diameter but it still looked like the best place I was going to find
I went back to my house for my little folding "Sierra Club Approved" saw. I sawed one end of the root and then pitched the saw to Betty and said start sawing. She looked down at her inch long shiny imitation finger nals and said she couldn't saw that root. I told her to just shut up and start sawing it while I checked to see if Vivi had something we could wrap the lizard in before buring it. I knew by then that Vivi wouldnt go along with just throwing an old dead raw lizard into an old raw dirt hole with out some fancy wrapping.
It was worse than that. Vivi demanded a box for Papa Iggy. I went back outside and told Betty to keep sawing while I went looking for a box. "You are cruel" she said but she kept on sawing. I went across the road and scrounged around thru a nasty dempsy dumpster intill I found a pasteboard box that would fit the hole we had chopped and dug. The minute I walked back into the yard with Iggy's casket, Betty looked at it and said it wasn't big enough. I threw my hat down on the ground and stomped on it a couple of times just to let Betty know I had reached my limits. Then I told her the gameplan. Vivi may have seen me coming in with the Box but so far had not come out to see how small it was. So I would sort of hide the box. Betty would get Vivi and take her over to her mobile home but keep her away from any windows so she couldnt see me cramming old Papa Iggy into the box. Betty asked how I would fit Iggy into that 1 foot by 2 foot box. I told her if necessary, I would fold that sucker up like and accordian but one way or another Iggy was going into the ground, that I was fed up with all the fooling around.
So we went in to get Vivi. She had to tell Papa Iggy good bye one more time. She was patting his slimy scaly head and patting and loving on him and if she had kissed him I would have vomited on her living room floor. After I figured Betty had safely removed Vivi out of eyesight, I took a deep breath, reached in the cage and jerked old Iggy out and slammed the cage door before the other two slime balls could get out. Then I fought the cats off Iggy untill I could get him out the front door and still manage to kick the cats back inside and slam the door on them. Then I ran back in under the tree and put my back to Bettys mobile home just in case Vivi might be trying to peep out and I didnt wont her to see me trying to fit a fifty pound lizard into a ten pound box. Iggy didnt wont to fold. Seems like rigor mortis had already set in. But finally I figured that if I put my knee down in Iggys middle and grabbed him by both ends, I could fold him to box size. But when I turned him loose he sprung right back to a regular 4 foot long lizard. I tried folding him inside the box and tore the box up. Finally, I put what was left of the box down in the hole. I twisted old Iggy into as small a pile as I could and stuffed him into the box. I throwed some dirt in around him so there would be no voids which would let the grave settle later. Slapped the box lid on top of Iggy and the dirt and then piled on the rest of the dirt.
I reached over and beat on the side of Betty's mobile home as a signal for she and Vivi to return. Vivi let the three cats out and they lined up and set down by the grave. Vivi borrowed my handkerchief again, blowed snot and sniffled and talked about what a tried and true companion Papa Iggy had always been and about how long she had had him and the fine times they shared together and some other gooey stuff. The cats just looked at the grave and licked their chops.
I spent the next couple of nights having nightmares about slimy things crawling all over me and man eating lizards attacking me. After a couple of days, I stopped to check my mail at the mail boxes and could look into Vivi's Yard and see her sitting on the ground by Papa Iggy's grave. My heart went out to her in her greif so I drove uptown to the Dollar Store and bought a sprig of imitation flowers for about $2.98 and went back and gave them to her for Iggy's grave. She said that was real sweet and just trying to be more helpful, I warned her about the citified coyotes that might try to dig Iggy up and the javelinas that had dug up and eaten all the flag and other bulb type flowers in my yard and danged if she didnt start sniffling again and Betty was standing at the yard fence glaring at me again and I figured I must have done something wrong.....again. Danged women!! Then Vivi got this bright Idea that she needed some rocks to put on Iggy's grave and that I should take her and Betty down to a section of Granite creek to pick up rocks and they had to be flat and just a certain size and color and preferably with some quartz runners thru them. When we got to Granite Creek and started digging rocks, Betty got to trying to color co-ordinate them by laying them out in certain patterns without breaking her new shiny fingernals. Of course I was the one that had to dig out all the nastiest rocks with the right colors and wash them off in the creek and then it was no, no, that wasnt the right one, throw it back and get another one and on and on it went. And all the time I was thinking that it was me stopping in to check my mail everyday that got me in trouble. That was when them two women got their hooks into me danged near everyday.
Vivi lived in a 30 foot travel trailer with two tilt out extension rooms, one in the living room and one in the bedroom. A large permanent room had been added to one side of the travel trailer so the whole affair was fairly roomy. The tilt out room added about 4 foot to the width of the living room but Vivi had built a large wire cage for her pet Iguana's that was about 6 ft wide, 6 ft deep, and 6 feet high that took up most of the living room. I helped her cut some limbs to string around inside the cage for the lizards to crawl around on. Papa Iggy was about 4 foot long, Mama Igga about 2 foot long and Baby Iggy was about a foot long and growing fast. Adding to Vivi's menangery was the most well behaved three cats I have ever seen. They were the only cats I ever seen who answered well to voice commands. So we have this pastoral scene of the 3 lizards crawling around inside their cage and the three cats sitting watching them and licking their chops, thinking about all that good old lizard meat.
Papa Iggy got a little off his feed and was acting puny so Vivi decided to doctor him the same way she doctored herself. The first herbs didnt help. She said she needed some greasewood leaves but where we lived was too high an altitude for grease wood. I drove her over toward Sedona and she picked some greasewood leaves. When she got back home she dosed old Papa Iggy up real good with a concoction of greasewood leaves and twigs. Or maybe it was a tincture she cooked up, I dont know nothing about that herb stuff but I do know it stunk so bad I got up and left. Even the cats were hanging around the front door looking like they wonted to leave and I had to keep kicking them back inside to get the door closed. Evidently they had been on the recieving end of some of Vivi's Tincture/Concoctions.
The mobile home parks mailboxes were located in front of Vivis trailer. As I was checking mail the next morning, Vivi came stumbling out of her yard gate, knuckling her eyes like a ten year old kid and with tears streaming down her cheeks. "Iggy died," she said and my stomach turned over in memory of the smell of that boiling greasewood. But you have to be careful when dealing with someone who just experienced a death in the family so all I said was "Gee, Im sorry, Vivi," and she collapsed sobbing loudly against my chest. I was patting her on the back and doing the there there there thing and thinking I should be as helpfull as possible in her moment of greif so I offered to throw old Papa Iggy in the back of my truck and haul him off for her. At that suggestion Vivi let out a squall like a scalded cat, doubled up like she had been hit in the stomach, and staggered back thru her yard gate and into her trailer.
Vivi's next door neighbor, Betty, had been standing in her front yard observing all this and she screamed at me, "What did you do to her." Some of the other neighbors were staring too. "Geez," I said, "All I did was offer to haul the damned lizard off and get rid of it for her." Betty said that was cruel and I should go apologize to Vivi right that minute. Some old woman still wearing a night gown standing at the mailboxes agreed with Betty. I told Betty I wasnt going in no house with a squalling woman and a dead lizard unless she went in with me.
So Betty came stomping out of her yard gate and went around to Vivi's trailer. By the time I sneaked in behind Betty, she was holding Vivi and patting her on the back and doing the there there there thing. Old Pappa Iggy was laying peacefully in his cage, all four feet of him stretched out on a limb. I asked Vivi if she was sure he was dead and she wiped her snotty nose and opened the cage door and stroked that nasty lizards head and said yes and I could feel how cold he was. I said I would take her word for it and trying to be helpful I said she ought to watch them other lizards or they would start eating on him. Danged if Vivi didnt start squalling again and collapsed in Betty's arms again. Betty was looking daggers at me for some reason. The three cats were sitting, lined up in a perfect military formation, their heads and eyes moving in unison from Vivi and Betty to me and then up to all that Lizard meat and licking their chops.
I was getting a little perturbed and had taken about all that girly guff I cared for. "Allright," I said, "I wont say nothing else, just tell me how I can help." I even handed Vivi my handkercheif and as luck would have it, it was an unused clean one. She wiped her eyes and blowed her nose and handed it back to me and asked if I would help bury the lizard. I figured that was the least I could do and suggested we haul old Iggy out to that ridge off of Ponderosa road where she and I and Betty often went to watch the sunset. I knew some places up there where the digging was easy. But no, Vivi would have none of that, she wonted the damned thing buried in her yard. Now her yard was only about 8 feet wide and forty feet long and had a huge tree about 100 years old with surface roots running in all directions. Vivi said it had to be in the side yard where all the tree roots were. I said I wasnt digging no graves unless Betty helped me.
So I went back to my place for a shovel and under Betty's supervision I poked and punched amongst the tree roots searching for an area where I could dig a hole big enough to bury a big lizard in. I thought I had found one untill I ran into a root about 3 inches in diameter but it still looked like the best place I was going to find
I went back to my house for my little folding "Sierra Club Approved" saw. I sawed one end of the root and then pitched the saw to Betty and said start sawing. She looked down at her inch long shiny imitation finger nals and said she couldn't saw that root. I told her to just shut up and start sawing it while I checked to see if Vivi had something we could wrap the lizard in before buring it. I knew by then that Vivi wouldnt go along with just throwing an old dead raw lizard into an old raw dirt hole with out some fancy wrapping.
It was worse than that. Vivi demanded a box for Papa Iggy. I went back outside and told Betty to keep sawing while I went looking for a box. "You are cruel" she said but she kept on sawing. I went across the road and scrounged around thru a nasty dempsy dumpster intill I found a pasteboard box that would fit the hole we had chopped and dug. The minute I walked back into the yard with Iggy's casket, Betty looked at it and said it wasn't big enough. I threw my hat down on the ground and stomped on it a couple of times just to let Betty know I had reached my limits. Then I told her the gameplan. Vivi may have seen me coming in with the Box but so far had not come out to see how small it was. So I would sort of hide the box. Betty would get Vivi and take her over to her mobile home but keep her away from any windows so she couldnt see me cramming old Papa Iggy into the box. Betty asked how I would fit Iggy into that 1 foot by 2 foot box. I told her if necessary, I would fold that sucker up like and accordian but one way or another Iggy was going into the ground, that I was fed up with all the fooling around.
So we went in to get Vivi. She had to tell Papa Iggy good bye one more time. She was patting his slimy scaly head and patting and loving on him and if she had kissed him I would have vomited on her living room floor. After I figured Betty had safely removed Vivi out of eyesight, I took a deep breath, reached in the cage and jerked old Iggy out and slammed the cage door before the other two slime balls could get out. Then I fought the cats off Iggy untill I could get him out the front door and still manage to kick the cats back inside and slam the door on them. Then I ran back in under the tree and put my back to Bettys mobile home just in case Vivi might be trying to peep out and I didnt wont her to see me trying to fit a fifty pound lizard into a ten pound box. Iggy didnt wont to fold. Seems like rigor mortis had already set in. But finally I figured that if I put my knee down in Iggys middle and grabbed him by both ends, I could fold him to box size. But when I turned him loose he sprung right back to a regular 4 foot long lizard. I tried folding him inside the box and tore the box up. Finally, I put what was left of the box down in the hole. I twisted old Iggy into as small a pile as I could and stuffed him into the box. I throwed some dirt in around him so there would be no voids which would let the grave settle later. Slapped the box lid on top of Iggy and the dirt and then piled on the rest of the dirt.
I reached over and beat on the side of Betty's mobile home as a signal for she and Vivi to return. Vivi let the three cats out and they lined up and set down by the grave. Vivi borrowed my handkerchief again, blowed snot and sniffled and talked about what a tried and true companion Papa Iggy had always been and about how long she had had him and the fine times they shared together and some other gooey stuff. The cats just looked at the grave and licked their chops.
I spent the next couple of nights having nightmares about slimy things crawling all over me and man eating lizards attacking me. After a couple of days, I stopped to check my mail at the mail boxes and could look into Vivi's Yard and see her sitting on the ground by Papa Iggy's grave. My heart went out to her in her greif so I drove uptown to the Dollar Store and bought a sprig of imitation flowers for about $2.98 and went back and gave them to her for Iggy's grave. She said that was real sweet and just trying to be more helpful, I warned her about the citified coyotes that might try to dig Iggy up and the javelinas that had dug up and eaten all the flag and other bulb type flowers in my yard and danged if she didnt start sniffling again and Betty was standing at the yard fence glaring at me again and I figured I must have done something wrong.....again. Danged women!! Then Vivi got this bright Idea that she needed some rocks to put on Iggy's grave and that I should take her and Betty down to a section of Granite creek to pick up rocks and they had to be flat and just a certain size and color and preferably with some quartz runners thru them. When we got to Granite Creek and started digging rocks, Betty got to trying to color co-ordinate them by laying them out in certain patterns without breaking her new shiny fingernals. Of course I was the one that had to dig out all the nastiest rocks with the right colors and wash them off in the creek and then it was no, no, that wasnt the right one, throw it back and get another one and on and on it went. And all the time I was thinking that it was me stopping in to check my mail everyday that got me in trouble. That was when them two women got their hooks into me danged near everyday.
Flakey I can live with. Whiney ?......that's a little tougher. Great read Jbird.....I really enjoy these Vivi tales !