The Chicken Feud

Preface: This post does not admit any guilt to punishable crimes; nor can its contents be used against me in the pursuit of compensation for over priced road crossing chickens.

Let us begin.

The neighbors on either side of us have been feuding for months. Until this week I have managed to stay on the outskirts of said feud, being amused by the sneaky moves of either side but never participating. 

Due to my terrible driving skills and the inability of chickens to cross roads, I was nearly a participant. 

The "Capulets" are organic chicken farmers (which just means they don't feed their chickens store bought chicken feed but let them eat whatever crap is the ground instead)

The "Montagues" are field farmers that sell their products to a neighboring dairy. The Montagues also have children, which is why they recently procured a golden retriever puppy.

While still in training the puppy returned to the Montague home looking like this: 

And the Capulets had 12 less organic chickens. 

In retaliation, the Capulets charged the Montagues $50 per chicken - handing over a hefty $600 bill. 

The Montagues tried to avoid the bill by buying 12 new chicks for $2 each - which was a clever but unfruitful ploy. 

The Capulets rejected the replacement chicks and the Montagues were left with 12 unwanted chickens, 24 less dollars than they started with and a $600 bill that had not disappeared.


Begrudgingly, the Montagues paid the Capulets and immediately started to plot their revenge. 

The Montagues then put their revenge plan to action: They planted a strawberry vineyard just across the  skinny dirt road from the free grazing "organic" chickens.

Now, when the hungry chickens inevitably wandered across the road and into the strawberry patch, the Montagues could hypothetically charge the Capulets for both the seeds that have been consumed and the plants that have been pooped on until the 600 dollar restitution was recouped.

The Capulets have tried to keep their chickens on their own side and the Montagues have tried to catch the chickens in the act of strawberry stealing - neither have been very successful. They have, however, been successful at broadcasting the various disputes and entertaining the rest of the road. 

Here's where I come in.

A few morning ago I was driving to work, eating my ice cream breakfast, trying to put on my makeup without looking in the mirror and steering with my knee. 

Don't ask me why my mouth is open, for some reason I, along with the rest of the female sex, feel it's somehow necessary to open my mouth in order to properly apply mascara to my eyelashes. 

I turned the corner from our gravel road onto the dirt road that separates the Montague vineyard and the Capulet chickens. As I started to drive past the Capulet's house I noticed far fewer chickens surrounding their home and far more chickens across the road. 

A majority of the organic chickens were in the strawberry field plucking at the berries and scratching at the ground.

Neither the Capulets nor the Montagues were around to witness the infraction so I snickered to myself just imagining the neighborly mess that would ensue later that morning. 

All of the sudden the chickens decided they'd had quite enough stolen breakfast and decided to cross the road, right in front of my car. 

Chickens are possibly the stupidest animals alive. 

I threw on the breaks, and sadly my mascara, but thankfully didn't hit any of the chickens. 

Whew.

I then tentatively started to pull forward, checking the whole time for more chickens trying to cross the road. 

I continued through chicken territory, waiting patiently for the animals to make their way out of my path before lightly pushing the gas. 

When I thought I had finally successfully traversed the road without any expensive casualties and I could see no more beaks in the front of my fender I started to pull forward. 

I then heard a sharp squawk and felt a slight bump beneath me. 

One stupid chicken decided to shoot the gap and I somehow managed to run him over going a whopping 5 mph. 

Then I panicked. 

And then I weighed my options. I could:

A) Fess up and pay for the $50 chicken

B) Pluck some feathers and frame the golden retriever

C) Flee the scene of the crime and leave the body for investigation 

D)  Hide all evidence 

I chose D. 

So I exited to the car to commence covering up my crime. 

First I had to find out if I had really killed the chicken or just injured it. 

When it didn't respond to verbal advances I decided to poke it

It didn't move. 

The $50 chicken was definitely dead. I now had to dispose of the body. 

I happened to have some mail from the day before in the back seat of my car. 

Fortunately for me, we are not very popular. Thus the only thing the post master ever has to bring us is coupon papers for local grocers. 

They served quite nicely as a seat cover.

I hesitantly picked up the dead chicken and threw him in the back seat, on top of the newspapers of course. 

As I started to drive away it dawned on me that I had a Capulet corpse in the back of my car. 

I couldn't leave it there when I went to work

In fact I didn't want it there while driving to work. 

Panic set in once more. Sadly, there are no shady swamp lands nor mob dumping grounds to successfully hide corpses in Cache Valley, much less on the way to work. 

I had no where to conspicuously dump the body. 

So I did what any humane person would do and I abandoned the body near the stop sign on the corner of the Hyde Park Cemetery. 

RIP chicken. RIP. 

I then went to work, threw away the corpse contaminated coupons and washed my hands about 16 times (with scalding water) to ensure cleanliness for the preggo ladies I work with. 

I also cleaned the backseat of my car. 

Twice. 

Conoco Can't Service Me

As previously featured on raspy wit (see the post entitled "the mobility quest" or click Here to be automatically redirected) getting my drivers license was a hard earned achievement for me. Not only did I have to take the drivers test 3 times but I was 16 for a full month before my parents, and the state, finally trusted me with a motor vehicle.
But I got my license.
The first thing I did after securing that glorious piece of paper was drive to my best friend Elise's house. There I honked, waved and shouted for her to join me in "Roger".

Sidenote: Roger is the name of my first car - he is a 1981 Volkswagon Rabbit with cracked white vinyl seats, a shiny red paint job, that mothy "vintage" scent and a leaky convertible top that takes 30 minutes to change and gets stuck in the rain.

Elise joined me in Roger and since she didn't have her license yet and we essentially had no other friends we relished in our first taste of unsupervised vehicular freedom. 

Problem was we had nowhere to go and nobody else to share our freedom with so we ended up driving around for most of the afternoon visiting various grocery stores and flashing our keys at each and every pedestrian. 

Oh, and of course, there was ice-cream. 

After driving around enough to deplete 1/2 a tank of gas we realized the little glowing light on the side of the dash meant we would most likely run out of fuel. 

Excellent, we would fill up the gas tank like real adult drivers do - one more adventure to check off our driving check list.  

As novice drivers we had no idea that gas prices vary depending on the grade of station you choose. We chose the closest one to our current location, a conoco. As most of you know - conoco is not a cheap station.

 I now use only flying J, Maverick or Sams Club for 1-2 cent cheaper gas.

Am I getting questionable gas grades? Yes.
Is my gas possibly cut with water, food coloring or other non-fuel products? Yes.
Am I saving almost a full dollar per fill-up? Oh yeah.

Anyway - filling up at Conoco went something like this.

On the first pass we drove up to the wrong side of the terminal.

Honest Mistake. Quick Fix.

So we drove around. 

.... But were still on the wrong side. 

So we drove around again

And Again

After failing to master the art of gas tank siding we decided the hoses were long enough they must be made to reach OVER cars since our car was obviously incompatible with right sided pumps. 

Nope. 

This meant only one thing, conoco could not service us. 

 We thought we had learned a new lesson, that gas stations were brand specific.

VolksWagon is a german company after all, and Conoco didn't sound german at all.

We considered finding a 7-11 or a maverick but decided the blinking red gas light may not allow us to make it all the way. The last thing we wanted was to run out of gas in the middle of main street, in a stick shift roger with a license for one day. 

This required much thought. 

The thought payed off and we had a brilliant idea. 

This was our brilliant idea: 

It took us 20 minutes, mad reverse skills and the total of our combined allowances but we finally filled up Roger. 

The End. 

How To Bribe A Mexican Police Officer

As some of you, actually, all of you, know (since the chances of you reading this and not knowing me personally are slim to none) I recently got married. And yes, my brief experiment with "the pill" was a precursor to that.

This post is not about the wedding, however, it's about the events that immediately followed the wedding. And no I am not planning on delving into the horrors of the honeymoon enlightenment phase. 


This post is about Mexico.

We went to Puerto Vallarta on our honeymoon. My parents gave us a weeks stay in a 5 star hotel complete with four different restaurants, seven bars and an attached mini-mall. The resort afforded us no reason to ever leave a five mile radius from our suite.

We left anyway.

The first day we took a taxi to explore. It cost mucho dinero for not so mucho time and we swore off taxis.

The second morning we decided to walk. It went like this.

Twenty Minutes Later

Another Ten Minutes

Walking didn't work. 

Not only was it 103 degrees outside but the air was so humid I felt like I was swimming, and I'm pretty sure I looked like I'd been swimming due to overactive sweat glands. 

Gross. 

We thought about getting bicycles for transportation.

 We then remembered the total lack of driving ability on the part of the Mexican population and the torrid Mexican climate and decided against death by heat stroke/collision with a rouge low rider. 

We tried the bus system.

Please note that the buses are not labelled in Puerto Vallarta - it seems the bus system consists of picking a bus and hoping it goes where you live.

The buses we chose did not go where we lived. 

After ending up in the complete opposite place than we intended to go (not just once, but twice) we decided the buses were a terrible idea. 

With taxis, walking, buses and bicycles out of the picture we were left one choice - rent a car.  

The compact economy choice got us a tin can for $8 a day plus gas, a pretty screamin deal when you consider the "gringo discount" cost us 99 cents a minute in a taxi. 

Our little car provided a new found freedon; we drove to the next town over and explored the less travelled markets, we could venture into the city center at will and (here's the best part) we found delicious local taco stands in the barrios of Puerto Vallarta. 

By the way, the traffic flow in Mexico is about as senseless as the unlabeled bus system. Depending on the street you're on there are three different ways to turn left. 

1) Sometimes there are actual turning lanes on the paved roads, just like those found in the U.S. You put on your blinker, merge to the left most lane and yield to oncoming traffic until you have the chance to turn. 

Good system. 

2) Sometimes there is no turn lane, you just turn whenever possible. 

Less Good System. 

3) Sometimes there are completely unattached roads on the RIGHT side of the street. These frontage type roads are not marked, nor are they paved, nor can you get to them from the left lane. You have to turn onto these roads some 40 feet before you desire to turn left and follow a traffic light completely unattached to the rest of the road. Did I mention these roads are often riddled with deep trench like pot holes, hordes of uncollected garbage and random squatters?

Horrible System. 

Since we are not native Puerto Vallartans, we had no way of knowing which system to use on which roads and since it changed every four blocks we usually just took our chances and stuck with method #2 - turn when possible, try not to get hit. 

Our fourth night in Puerto Vallarta was stormy. Given these unfavorable weather conditions it would have been smart of us to hole up in our hotel room, order room service and watch the lightning from the balcony. We are cheap though, and instead we decided against our better judgement and ventured out to find a street stand selling tacos.
Problem- taco stands are usually haphazardly set up on the side of the road with no lights, advertising or food handling permits, which also means they are impossible to find on a dark stormy night.
 We drove for almost twenty minutes to no avail and decided to turn around. 
Turning around entailed turning left. 

Unfortunate fact #1 - There was a Mexican cop behind us when we tried to turn left. 

Unfortunate fact #2  - We used method #2. 

Unfortunate fact #3 - We should have used method #3. 

Unfortunate fact #4: Allstate doesn't cover the Munks driving a rental car in Mexico. 

The lights came on and our stomachs churned. 

We pulled over on a deserted side road with absolutely no lighting and only one way out. 

Poor choice.

The police came up on the side of the car and started speaking spanish. My new husband does not speak spanish. I speak SOME spanish, SOME being the operative word.
I decided to take over. 

The cops were surprisingly friendly, they chatted with us about our hotel, wanted to know what attractions we liked and didn't like, and were over joyed when they found out we were newlyweds. They even offered to escort us to their favorite taco stand after we squared away the traffic misunderstanding. 

We thought we had this in the bag - we would get off with a warning and have an excellent story. 

Only one of those statements was correct - we now have an awesome story but we did not receive a warning. 

Upon returning, our new friends informed us they were forced to issue a ticket due to our "failure to respect the light" and our "illegal left turning".


 I tried to "fix things" subtly. 

They said we can "fix it" by paying the ticket at the court house two towns over. Oh, and they needed to confiscate either a drivers license or the car as collateral until we "fixed it". 

Big Problem.

We could not give the police our rental car. 
We could REALLY not give them our licenses. Not only could we potentially have an identity "twin" in mexico ruining our credit scores but there is small possibility we'd never get on the plane without two forms of ID. 
In an effort to avoid owning a Police sequestered car south of the border and having our identities sold online we decided to risk bribing the authorities in a foreign country. Smart? Maybe not... but what choice did we have? 


I kicked the bribery suggestion up a notch. 

I caught the hesitation in their voices this time.
Just in case my inferences were getting lost in translation we decided to go full blown obvious. 


We blatantly bribed the police. 

That worked. 
They agreed to "pay the fine for us" since we were on our honeymoon and they "go to the courthouse all the time." 


How sweet.

They then got less sweet. 

They were not very good with math. 

Unfortunately they weren't THAT bad at math. 

Since all we had in our wallet was 600 pesos and 10 american dollar bills the cops decided 600 Pesos and 6 American Dollars were payment enough. They let us keep four dollars to buy tacos.

We had to discretely hand it out the window in the dark so "the people don't see and think we are doing illegals" 

psh. We were so "doing illegals." 

As promised, the deal came with a police escort to their "favorite taco stand". 

We broke several laws on the way there. 

Stopped traffic in two different directions, and almost cause three crashes.  

All while driving a total of 20 feet to the right. 

The "taco stand" didn't even sell tacos. 

They sold empanadas only. Empanadas cost 25 pesos each. 

25 pesos is the equivalence of $2.50. 

We only had $4.00

We drove back to the hotel with four dollars, zero tacos and one awesome story. 

The End.