THE BEAGLE MAY BE SINKING

I meant to get this picture of a Canadian hammer up before Father's Day, but somehow I think it is still appropriate. . Don't forget to click the header. Something really different this time. . There have been many things going at the old homestead. Some of them you wouldn't want to hear about, others I want to tell you about. . Old nosy here has been been reading and trying to add two and two. It ain't as easy as you might think. Shucks, I might have gotten 6 and 7/8ths for an answer. That's a hat size? Drat. Not too many men wear hats anymore. (Nor do the ladies, bless 'em.) . First, a story about some neighbors who came to America from Iraq. Legally. Green cards and all. I haven't asked, but I believe they were refugees from Sadam's rule. The names I use are fictional. Not even close to their real names. The young lady, call her Salome, knocked on our door one evening asking for help. (I'll call this brother Hakim. See Oklahoma! for source.) I'm not used to dealing with young women wearing a scarf over their heads in our hot climate. So I needed some assistance. . Now, Wild Thing has a heart bigger than anything you have ever seen. She invited Salome in, immediately found out what the young lady was suffering from and got out various generic OTC meds, heating pad, ice pack container, blankets and various and sundry other things designed to repair the evils that afflict human's bodies. And instructions on how to use all of them. In fact, she began the treatments in our home and took the the young lady back to her apartment and did some more of her magic. Wild Thing is a Caregiver. Of majestic and thorough proportions. When she got back home, she had forgotten other things that Salome might need so went back with them. WT raised four children and somehow managed to repair and mend and fix them good enough so that they are all successful even in this crappy economy. Anyway, the next evening, there was this faint knock on the door and there was Salome with a plate of Mid East food for both of us. She told us that she was feeling much better and had made dinner for her brother and herself and had enough to share with us. WT had also located a couple of other things to help Salome weather the illness. Oh, the food? We're not sure what it was (chicken, some veggies we weren't familiar with and yellowish rice all mixed together). We didn't tell her that Wild Thing's idea of spicy food is Kentucky Fried Chicken Original. I had to sacrifice myself and eat it all (over three days) by myself alone. (The food was different, a little interesting and much too hot for my Darling.) . Over the next few days, Salome improved and regained her usual strength and well being. And she began visiting us regularly. Wild Thing had made another conquest. (People love her immediately. The same people who are afraid of me. And I'm the pussy cat.) . We listened to her tell us about how a man in Iraq had been phoning and texting her for a while and she thought she should marry him. And how her father didn't trust the man. And did not want her to marry him. Her dad thought the guy just wanted a free ride to America. They had some arguments and apparently it is not a good idea to argue with a male when one is a female in the Islamic religion. (That aside, I silently agreed with her father.) . Salome, a nubile, 22 year old, had convinced herself she was in love with this guy. Even though he claimed that sending photographs of himself was too expensive. Ding, ding, ding went the alarm bells in my head. The pics he sent on the cell phone were of such low quality they were useless in seeing what he looked like. . Meanwhile, Salome had had to subdue a prisoner brought into the hospital where she was working when the two guards failed to handcuff him to the bed and then they both left the room. The prisoner grabbed up a knife he had secreted and held her from behind with the knife near her throat. The half witted guards didn't see this. Salome, reacting, could reach behind herself and ever so firmly, grabbed and squeezed "real hard" the man's testicles. The guards heard his screams, and came back into the room in time to pick him up and put him in restraints. . Yep, she was a heroine. One of the guards (the one who worked for the prison, the other was an in house security person) took a shine to her and over a couple of weeks of effort he managed to convince her to go out to lunch with him. So this was something she was not used to. She had not dated during high school, nor after. Arabian Islam, it seems, does not permit dating. We got the story as it was happening. . In the midst of this, her Daddy ordered her not to talk to the guy in Iraq. She was full of hormones. Stuff happens. Now, to us it's an old story, to the Iraqis it is not. She kept on calling and receiving calls from the Iraqi. Apparently the brother she lived with (Hakim) had had a talk with his other brothers and his Dad and they were of a mind that she needed to be straightened out. So he beat her for defying Dad's orders. Dad stuck a knife into the wall of one of her tires. One of the other brothers said she was no longer his sister. . She was hurt both physically and mentally. She had been thinking American. Her family had been thinking Islamic. Wild Thing nursed both her mental and physical pains. I wanted to call the cops, but got to thinking that she might not be able to afford living on her own. Yes, I suggested that Salome call it in, but she did not want to. . So, what's this got to do with Darwin and his theory? That'll be the next installment. (If Lin can serialize, why not me?)