Missionary Kid: Rule Number One

Get in the house before dark

By Vic Midyett

Anita and I were too young for watches, so Dad told us the following:

No matter what you are doing, come home and get in the house before your shadow becomes as long as you are tall. The reason for this is that the animals of all kinds would be needing water.

    As I’ve said before, our home was on a hill. The rice paddies and jungle were on one side, and a lake covered in lilies was on the other. There was always a very interesting menagerie of animals that would cross to the lake over our front lawn, right there in plain view for us. It was absolutely awesome! There were deer, wild pigs, wild cats (like bobcats), jackals, and the occasional big cat.
    One particularly eventful evening, as Dad and Beejooly were getting ready to set out on a night hunt for wild pig, I was gazing out the window and saw a black leopard walking across the yard. I yelled out to them, and they grabbed gun and flashlight and headed out, my heart pounding. Dad wanted desperately to nab a big cat and take the skin back to the States as a trophy. (Remember, this was the 1950s.) But alas all they saw of this leopard was its tail as it disappeared into the darkness towards the lake, now at full gait.
    So Dad and Beejooly went on out for their wild-pig hunt. Dad most always shot pheasant, but we had told him we were tired of chicken. That was why they were going for wild pig this time. They had only been gone a couple of hours when they both ran back into the house, Beejooly laughing so hard he couldn’t talk. Dad was taking large jumping steps on one foot, then the other, while stumbling out of his clothes in the direction of the shower.
    When he came out, he was holding up his blood-stained white shorts. You could see completely through them. Torn to shreds they were.
    What had happened was that in the dark, on a known pig trail, Dad had inadvertently sat on an ant mound. As the ants started munching on his posterior (ants never sleep), he yelled to Beejooly to turn on the flashlight. It was then that the dadgone pig showed up.
    Dad was gone, all right! He and Beejooly ran in one direction and the pig in the other, they said. Only I bet the pig stopped way before Dad did. Dad’s gluteus maximuses were red and maximum for a couple of days!
    Dad would have been better off if he had followed Rule Number One himself that night. It was a while before we got any pork on our fork.

Copyright © 2016 by Vic Midyett