Squirrel Bait and Other Stories
By Thomas P. Hanna
Copyright 2011 Thomas P. Hanna
Table of Contents
Squirrel Bait
The Never-Ready-Good-For-Nothing Gadget
Call Your Floor, Please
Check It Out
You Can’t Go Home Again - Without a Tour Guide
Clancy’s Funeral
Masterworks
The Store Angel
Discover Other Books by Thomas P. Hanna
Squirrel Bait
Cindy Sue Chandler sat rocking and humming to herself as her brothers tried to reason with her. Tom, the eldest of the siblings, argued, “By all means by friendly with the guy but don’t get serious about him. I’m telling you, that guy’s as nutty as any can coming from the Planters people.”
“He’s a real oddball. Have you heard the stories about some of his so-called inventions?” asked Jeff, the baby of the family.
Cindy Sue replied evenly, “They’re imaginative solutions to complex problems. Not everybody is able to appreciate keen insights.”
“Oh please! Tell me you’re kidding,” Tom moaned. “Keen insights? What does the guy apply for a patent on? A doghouse with an inflatable moat that you blow up and then fill with water.”
“Really a doghouse sitting in a wading pool,” laughed Jeff. “Why this great invention? To cool off your dog on hot summer days.”
“Except that most dogs won’t go near the darned thing and the little one that did almost drowned,” Jeff shouted as he fell over backwards off the footstool he was perched on onto the floor holding his sides as he laughed.
“He also claimed in the patent application that it would eliminate the need for a separate water dish for the dog and would simplify the dog washing problem if you just put some shampoo in the pool once in a while.” Tom practically screamed this out since he was laughing so hard.
“That idea didn’t quite work out but it was a novel approach to the problem,” Cindy Sue pointed out.
“So was his solution to the energy problem,” answered Tom.
“Let your bath water sit in the tub all day. Now what in the world was that supposed to do?”
Cindy Sue replied calmly, “Ralph simply realized that most of the heat we expend fuel and therefore money to put into the water for washing gets dumped into the sewage system where it’s useless. What he proposed was letting the hot water from any source, not just baths, sit a while inside so it could give up some of its heat to the air before we dump it into the pipes under the streets. But it turned out that there were side effect type problems he hadn’t foreseen.”
“Like what?” Jeff asked.
“When he tried it for a week he found it made a monumental bathtub soap ring,” Cindy Sue answered quietly. “It did occur to him to suggest that people let the water sit and give off the heat before using it but nobody likes a cold bath. Anyway, he was at least trying to come up with new solutions. They don’t always work out but it’s more than most people do.”
“Okay, there’s a certain logic to that even though it didn’t work out,” Jeff conceded. “But what about that one of screwing the furniture to the floor? Please explain to me what that’s supposed to accomplish.”
Cindy Sue stuck out her chin a bit defiantly as she said, “Ralph knows that when people come home late at night and the lights are out they tend to stumble around knocking over furniture exactly when they’re trying not to wake up anybody else. By screwing any light piece of furniture to the floor with little tabs he invented to attach to the legs you prevent them from moving. Therefore you can’t make any noise and wake others up by knocking them over.” She gestured to stop Jeff’s objection, “Yes, except when you start shouting and cursing because you hurt your shin on the unyielding furniture you bumped into. So it won’t help everybody. But many people do have more self-control than that even in the dark late at night.”
“Thank you for recognizing my point,” Jeff said.
Cindy Sue plowed on. “Note that those tabs also cut down on your work because you don’t have to keep putting the furniture back in place if people can’t move it out of place to start with. Also since it makes it too much trouble, you don’t feel compelled to rearrange the room every time a little inspiration hits you or you get a new picture for the wall.”
She held up a hand to get full attention for her next point. “Which also means that you’re less likely to walk into the furniture in the dark because it’s always in the same spot even though you had company that day.”
“When you explain it like this, it almost makes sense. Why does it seem so dumb at other times?” Tom asked.
“Maybe because you’re looking at the action without considering the reason for it,” Cindy Sue replied. “Like seeing a tennis player running around the court without being able to see the ball or the opponent.”
“But what about this chicken thing,” Jeff persisted. “Now surely that has to be plain old-fashioned craziness. Why would you try to raise one-legged chickens?”
Cindy Sue said, “The project was to raise better tasting chickens. Ralph reasoned that the only way to be sure which ones tasted best so you could use them as breeding stock was to taste each one. So he carefully amputated one leg from each chicken and cooked it up. Unfortunately despite a lot of peroxide and bandages many of them didn’t survive the surgery. Plus, those that did weren’t very successful at breeding. They kept falling over and the roosters kept falling off. So Ralph scrapped the project and had a big chicken fry.”
“Unbelievable!’ Tom shook his head in amazement. “Well, remember that we warned you. Marry Ralph and you’ll spend the rest of your days in poverty wondering what he’s going to try next.”
“Thank you for your concern but I can make my own decisions about the important things in life,” Cindy Sue said as she got up to leave and end this conversation.
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