What is THAT???

It’s a beautiful central Texas afternoon.  The sun is starting to set and it’s begun to cool off a bit and I hear this shriek.  Well maybe shriek isn’t the right word.  Blood-curdling scream! Yeah, that’s the right phrase.  I realize that it is not a pteradactyl swooping down upon us, which is at first the only thing that I could imagine making a grown woman make that sound.  The grown woman I am speaking of is Jess.  The horrific, blood-thirsty, hideous, repulsive, grotesque, monstrous and just plain butt-ugly creature that has caused Jess to behave in this very uncouth manner is a duh, duh, duhhhhhhhhh, TOMATO HORNWORM. Now some folks say that I, Biggie From Texas, have a tendency towards the overblown.  That I have from time to time been known to s-t-r-e-t-c-h the truth for dramatic effect.  That’s a bunch of hooey I say.  I call ‘em like I see ‘em.  That’s all.  Anyway, back to my terribly engrossing story about the TOMATO HORNWORM. And speaking of gross, that thing really was.  Take a look right here and see if I’m full of hogwash or not:

Come on now and tell the truth.  That’s got to be one of the ugliest creatures you have ever laid your eyes on.  And where was this ghastly creature residing?  In my tomatoes, that’s where? So now I am equally horrified after seeing this thing that has taken up residence in my beautiful organic garden. I however maintained some dignity and coolness, unlike Jess who sounded like a teenage girl being chased by Jason Voorhees carrying a pitchfork.

So, what do we do now?  It’s an organic garden for Pete’s sake.  And right about now I was wishing it wasn’t so that I could spray that monstrosity with a lethal, cancer-causing, baby-deforming, wildlife-poisoning, Agent Orange and send it back to the pits-of-hell where it came from!  Unfortunately, however, I do sorta have a liking for the environemt.  I enjoy the butterflies and hummingbirds that dine in my Texas purple sage and the flowers on my blackberry vines.  I like knowing that I am not contributing to the poisons that make their way into our watersheds everyday.  I like knowing that when small children and/or expectant mothers eat vegetables from my garden that they aren’t going to grow another head or pop out a baby with an extra leg (growin’ outta it’s back.)  OH TO HELL WITH ALL THAT!  I DON’T REALLY LIKE KIDS AND I DON’T HAVE ANY KNOCKED UP FRIENDS RIGHT NOW SO THEY WON’T BE GNAWIN’ ON MY POISONOUS VEGGIES ANYWAY. Okay, I feel a little better since I got that out of my system.  Oh, and I do love children.  Well, I love them when I can play with them when they’re happy and playing and then send them back to their parents when they start to get fussy or smell funny.

Oh, so what did we do about the tomato monster?  We called my sister, CODENAME: PIONEER WOMAN. You see, my sister is the toughest woman I have ever known.  We could spray her with Agent Orange and she’d swallow it, belch and then shout “Thank you sir, may I have another!” Tough, as most good Texas women are.  She even eats meat.  RAW.  So my sissy comes on over to save my chicken-shit ass.  She’s all like “where is it?” I point, with a 6 foot piece of bamboo in my hand, as I am most definitely not getting any closer to that thing.  She walks over to it, picks it off with her bare hands, throws it on the ground and smushes it into the crushed granite on the ground with her bare foot.  Okay, maybe I did take a little liberty there.  She was wearing flip-flops, but she did grin as she ground it in.  I was a little horrified by this display.  I don’t kill anything, ever, but I most definitely wasn’t going to say anything at this point.  She saved me from that thing and that was really what I cared most about at that particular moment in time.

So, where are we today?  The hornworms are still with us.  I guess that one, may he rest in piece, had family.  They are happily munching their way through my slicer tomatoes, but not all of them.  So we sort of have a truce going.  They don’t eat all of my tomatoes and I don’t call my sister to come over, pick them off and bite their heads off.  It’s sort of a gentleman’s understanding, even though none of us are gentlemen.     peace