My Week 239: Cracked Up, Animal Nicknames

On Wednesday, I was driving on the highway for the very last day of off-site work. I had just gotten off the dreaded 401, and was on the delightfully empty 407 toll highway. Finally able to turn off the damn traffic report on the radio, I had my iPod playing ‘Sugar, How You Get So Fly?’ (the Robin Schulz version) and I was cruising at a nice 120 kph, merrily bobbing my head when suddenly, “BANG!!!” I jumped in my seat and looked around wildly, then I realized that my windshield now had a huge, radiating crack on the passenger side. My first thought was, ‘What the absolute f*ck?! I didn’t even see anything coming!’ and my second thought was, ‘This isn’t fair—I’m wearing my favourite underwear and that means it’s supposed to be a good day!’ I’m not going to describe the underwear to you since it’s kind of personal and some things should be kept to oneself, but suffice it to say that whenever I see it, all freshly laundered and ready to go, I smile and quietly say “Yes!”. It’s like the Wordsworth poem, “My heart leaps up when I behold/A rainbow in the sky”, but instead, substitute ‘my favourite underwear’ for ‘rainbow’ and ‘drawer’ for sky’. There is nothing wrong with waxing poetic about your special lady garments by the way, and I’m sure that men feel the same about ties or fancy socks or that special jockstrap or whatnot. But enough about my underwear, because I’m trying to be more discreet about personal things, like on Thursday when I was helping Ken take some donations to a local auction. Someone had donated an antique baby carriage, and one of the old guys there pointed at it and said to me, “Maybe you’ll need one of those soon.” I shook my head and said, “I doubt it” and he replied, “Oh ho, you never know!” And I so BADLY wanted to say, “Well, I don’t have a f*cking uterus, so I think I kind of do,” but instead I winked at him and said, “I guess you need to talk to Ken about that.” Discreet, right?

Cracking me up.

Anyway, maybe the whole windshield situation was my fault because not even 20 minutes prior, the sun had come up and was blazing into my eyes, causing me to curse the windshield which, despite a recent car detailing, was once again kind of cloudy. I believe my exact words were, “I hate this stupid windshield. Why is it always so dirty? Maybe I should get a new one.” And TA-DA. So I did what any normal person would do—I called Ken.

Ken: Hello?
Me: My windshield just broke!
Ken: What? Are you ok?
Me: Well, it’s just a crack. But it’s big.
Ken: Does it go all the way across?
Me: No. It’s just above the windshield wiper on the passenger side. It looks like half of a spider web. I’m afraid the windshield is going to implode while I’m driving!
Ken: I doubt it. You should be all right unless you go over a really deep pothole or something.
Me: This is Canada in the spring, Ken, so that’s not very comforting!

But I made it to work without any spontaneous shattering, and I called the car dealership. Luckily, I already had an appointment for Thursday to get an oil change and swap out my winter tires, and they said they could do the windshield too. So maybe it was good that I was wearing my favourite underwear after all.

Here’s a link to Sugar, How You Get So Fly. You’re welcome.

Last week, I was talking about tree rats and it occurred to me that I have a lot of strange nicknames for animals that you might see outside in your yard. Here are a few of the more notable:

Squirrel: Tree Rat
Raccoon: Trash Panda
Mouse: Dirt Gerbil
Rabbit: Hoppy F*cker
Canada Goose: Evil Lake Chicken

Evil Lake Chicken

Swan: Long-Necked Psycho
Pigeon: Hobo Bird
All Other Birds: The Dawn Chorus (except for that one weird bird that I call the ‘Cool Whip Bird’)
Groundhog: Roadkill Hamster
Bat: Flappy Bastard
Skunk: Pepe Le Pew
Dog: Pupperz/Goodboi
Monkey Butler: Ralph Van Wooster (you might see a monkey butler in your yard–you never know)
Rat: I don’t have a name for rats because I’ve never seen one in real life and I doubt their existence. If I ever DID see one, I’d probably just give it a name like Bob. Maybe you’ve actually seen one and have a cool nickname for it–let me know.

So now, if you ever see me outside early in the morning yelling, “Get off my lawn, ya hoppy f*ckers!” you’ll know I’m cursing at the rabbits, not the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who, by the way, literally just appeared while I was writing this as they’ve done the last twice I’ve mentioned them in a post. How do they know? It’s as if I’m conjuring them or something, like in a horror movie but instead of saying “Bloody Mary” three times, you have to say “Business Biblical” and then their well-dressed asses come to steal your immortal soul. Or your favourite underwear.

59 thoughts on “My Week 239: Cracked Up, Animal Nicknames”

    • When Tristan was little, we tried to teach him not to be afraid of insects by giving them cute nicknames. Spiders were all”Spidey” as in “Let’s not scream at Spidey—you’ll hurt his ears!” Maybe it’s my karma for screaming at that one in my car!

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  2. windshield cracks. Or cracked comments like mine.
    And you’re lucky you don’t have armadillos in Canada, even in the spring. Down here they’re aptly known as possums on the half-shell. They’re also living speedbumps.

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  3. Oh my… thank you for the good laugh, as usual!

    I’m sorry about the windshield, but luckily it didn’t cause an accident, and you weren’t hurt!! I bet your underwear would have gone a couple of steps down your panties’ hierarchy, right?

    About the rats, I don’t know how we could call them, but Bob is the name I give to squirrels, here. It started when one of them started spending time on our kitchen window sill with my late Cissy (well, the cat was inside, and the squirrel outside) and we felt obliged to give Cissy’s friend a name. Now all squirrels are Bobs 😛 I can add one to your list, though. Here, we call seagulls flying rats!

    I hope you are enjoying a lovely weekend! xx

    P.S. I am obviously not normal, because I wouldn’t have called Ken. But maybe that’s just because I don’t have his phone number. Do you think you could send it to me by email, please? You know, just in case I hit something on the highway… 😛

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  4. Sorry, I just wanted to add something…

    About that “you’ll be alright unless you roll over a deep pothole”… I thought to myself “don’t they live in Canada too??” before I got to the next line… LOL I guess springtime potholes are not a myth from coast to coast 😛

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  5. Pot holes are notorious here in Cheyenne. The quick fixes they use never last, which is a typical government answer to why not do something right the first time? Maybe they’d money to do that if they weren’t jetting the Trump family everywhere. Ok, I’ll stop there. I must tell you I needed your post today, I look forward to it every week. Have a good week.

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  7. First of all, do you have a sticker on your windshield that says Vulcan on it? I mean maybe when you cursed at the windshield it’s Vulcan soul said “wtf, why are cussing at me being dirty when it’s clearly the DIRT!” That “ice” crack on your windshield (that’s what we call it here in Texas, because it doesn’t travel across right away) isn’t bad at all. But then again your Vulcan windshield probs only did it to scare the shit out of you, lol. So, what would you nickname a snake? A dirt belt?

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  8. This happened to my windshield last year, some rock got kicked up from the road on the interstate and WHACK! Scared the bejeezus out of me. I was surprised that the crack was less than an inch long, it was so loud.

    Took it home with plans to get it fixed in the next week or so, and lo and behold, came out the next day and the Florida sun had turned the teeny tiny crack into a 36 inch wide monster from one end of the windshield to the other. I didn’t even know that could happen!

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  9. You make my weeks better, Suzanne. I hope you realize you can never stop writing this blog!!!! It’s hard to choose, but I think my favorites are Evil Lake Chicken and Hobo Bird!!!!! Laughter tears happening over here this morning!!!!

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    • We called our late pet rats collectively the carpet torpedos… 😉 Anyone who ever kept rats will know why. And since I’m living on a farm I’m also loosely aquainted with a few wild ones (usually we meet about 5:30 am) – they don’t have nicknames, except maybe “eeek”.
      Btw, love the evil lake geese, but imo it fits better with Egyptian Geese. They even look like brawlers.

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  12. desertcurmudgeon says:

    Whenever I’m lucky enough to score a copy of The Watchtower, I place it in the reading rack located right next to my toilet. My guests may not cop to it, but I know they read ’em because the only other choice of reading material that I’ve made available in there is Archie comics.

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  14. Every time I see an evil lake chicken, I say something like, “I love all things Canada, but they can keep their damn geese.” Man, they’re awful. Sorry about your windshield, but I’m relieved you weren’t hurt when it popped like that. So scary! BTW, Caleb is a puppers too!

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  15. My vehicle has had a windshield crack for over 5 years. Happily, it runs close to the bottom of the windshield so it’s not in anyone’s way, and it hasn’t gotten any bigger over the years. I’m strangely attached to it, oddly enough.

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  16. You forgot the affiliate link to the underwear manufacturer. You are a published author for Christ’s sake make the underwear people work for you. I give all birds names like Fred, Nigel, Bob, Heather…I thought that was normal. I thought a lot of things were normal until I started blogging. I need to re-evaluate my life in my comfy seamless mid rise briefs – come at me Hanes & Jockey make me an offer that doesn’t ride up my ass or cause a seam.

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  17. Hilarious post, as is your norm!

    I was drawn here by the promise of funny animal nicknames (something I enjoy very much) and received, as a bonus, much underwear talk. This has turned out to be a really excellent Monday!

    Here are a few more funny animal names to add to your collection:

    Seagull — Beach Chicken
    Camel — Hot Moose
    Hippo — Danger Water Cow
    Platypus — Duck Puppy
    Ostrich — Pantless Thunder Goose

    Sorry … I don’t have any funny names for undergarments … except … you know … the word “undergarments” itself.

    Great post!

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  18. I have a favorite shirt: It’s all black with an orange devil face that reads Bad Boy in orange lettering at the bottom. I once greeted Jehovah’s Witnesses with it on. They never returned. Who knows???

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  20. Do you know what hit the windshield, or did I miss that? A rock? That is scary. Love the correlation between good undergarments and a good day. Reminds me of my mom always saying, ‘Throw those ratty underwear away – what if you were in a car accident when you were wearing them?’ yes, that would be a bad day. I never really considered being embarrassed by bottom of the barrel underwear – I mean, doesn’t car accident trump that?

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  22. I think it’s slightly worse when you hear that big BANG! but then there’s no crack. Where’s the crack? I swear a boulder-sized rock must have just demolished half my windshield, but no crack? It’s like when you hit your shin and you pray there’s a bruise because otherwise it was all for nothing. You know? Just me?

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  23. First off, I love your animal nicknames. They need to put those in books for children so that they can just use them right the first time. “And then the Hoppy F*cker said to the Tree Rat, get your f*cking nuts out of my face.”

    As for the comment about the uterus, I actually had a guy at our old church ask if my husband and I were going to be having a baby boy, since we had two girls. I blurted out, “Not without a uterus, I’m not.” Poor old man. Funny, though.

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    • I think we need to collaborate on that book—I’m pretty good at drawing cartoon Hoppy F*ckers! I wish I had your guts—I would have loved to see the look on that guy’s face!

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      • OMG, I love drawing Hoppy F*ckers too! My mother used to draw them on my bandaids, so I drew them on my kids’ bandaids and now my youngest draws them on mine. We could really have something here. I need to see more of your blog, specifically the hoppy f*cker parts. 😀

        As far as the comment goes, that was actually rather unusual for me. I usually just keep it to myself but it just sort of popped out. And I was so glad it did, as it was hilarious. lol.

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  24. Pingback: My Week 260: Wardrobe Malfunctions – mydangblog

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