Wild Things, Playing Spades with Humans and Tying Her Up

The stories in this column are true. Averett lives a dull life in rural Southside Virginia with his wife Management, two children and a rotating assortment of goats, dogs, cats, snakes and other local fauna.

Last night we heard a noise on the back porch indicating that one of the wild things from the wild woods was on the porch eating cat food. Now, I am a big fan of wild things WHEN they are in the wild woods doing the wild thing.

I am not a fan when they are in my house. Well, I don’t mind the spiders and snakes in the house because they don’t damage anything but my bride Management’s nerves and occasionally my ears when one of them surprises her.

I have a real problem with people who feed wild things and then say stupid things like “they are just doing what comes natural.” Or in the case of bears, “they were here first and they are more afraid of you than you are of them.”

The bears weren’t on my porch first. I would have noticed when I built it. AND if they were afraid of me they wouldn’t be standing on my porch.  Besides I am also doing what comes naturally and that is protecting my territory.

But, back to last night, I got a gun and threw open the door and there was a raccoon. He stood up on his back legs and slowly raised his hands-er- raised his front paws. Then he turned slowly around to face me paws still raised.

Having been in a similar situation and having reacted in exactly the same way I knew that he was saying.  “I am sorry if I disturbed you. I had no idea I shouldn’t have come here. It was purely a mistake. Please accept my sincere apology. You don’t want to shoot me.  It will make a big mess someone will have to clean up. The police and reporters will show up and they will put both of our pictures on the front page. They will investigate both of us and every time either of us ever spit on the sidewalk will be public news.
Even though you may have a valid reason for shooting me the cost of your legal defense will bankrupt you.  Neither of us wants that to happen. I am going to leave now and I promise you, you will never see me again.”  Then I, I mean the raccoon, slowly turned and walked to the edge of the porch. Then, as soon as he was out of pointblank range he dove over the edge and ran to the woods as if the hounds of hell were chasing him.

When Management asked why I hadn’t shot him all I could say was, “Well, he had such a persuasive argument against it. And besides he reminded me of someone I know.”

With all of the hurricane predictions Management and I went down and put new dock lines on her boat.  There is an art to tying up a boat. In fact, there is an art to tying up anything or anybody for that matter. With a boat tied to a stationary dock you have to leave the lines long enough so the boat can rise and fall with the tide but short enough so it doesn’t hit anything else.  One big concern at the marinas is people who are worried that someone else’s boat will break loose and damage theirs. They say, “I don’t want that thousand dollar junker to break loose and damage my $50,000 yacht.”

All I can say is there are two schools of thought on that topic. I don’t want their expensive yacht to sink my bride’s hundred dollar sailboat either.

Years ago I gave up playing poker.  It was about the same time I gave up alcohol. Yes, there is a correlation.  However I still enjoy a good game of Spades.  The problem is finding three other players who want to play at the same time and who are compatible.

Last year I discovered there were Spade games on line.  Even better there are Spade games where I can play with computers.  My biggest problem with playing cards with humans is that many of them take too long to play. You only have 13 cards-it really isn’t hard to decide which one to play. Then it gets easier each hand.  My other issue is I believe it is necessary to bid high or to bid zero with a difficult hand. This goes back to that ugly accusation that “Averett is a risk taker” which is of course false but bidding zero with three aces always causes humans to bring it up again. It doesn’t matter if I make it or not. I still get grief.

The computers play fast and if not well at least consistently.  Everything is fine. Then some human joins the game. There should be some way to delete a human who annoys me.