Cammie said she has mice in her basement. She told me she catches them in sticky traps and takes them to more upscale neighborhoods to set them free.
"I want them to have better lives," she said.
* * *
Christine said she has mixed feelings about guys who drive pickup trucks.
"On icy winter days, when they race past my car at dangerous speeds, it pisses me off," she said. "They think they're so high and mighty up there, with their four-wheel drive, extended cab, gas-guzzling beast splashing slush up onto my windshield.
"But when I get stuck in a ditch and a guy with a pickup shows up with a tow chain and voluntarily crawls around in the dirt to hook up my car and pull me out for free, he gives all the pickup truck guys a good name."
* * *
Stephanie said a lot of bizarre things in her sleep. Suddenly she'd sit up and look at me with disgust, then blurt out something confusing.
"Why are you green?" she asked one night. "Are you full of crayons?"
* * *
Billie Jo said her dog took off after a rabbit one morning and chased it around the yard. In a state of panic, the rabbit tried to smash through one of the two-inch-square holes in the chain-link fence to escape.
"Being thicker than two inches, the rabbit got stuck in the fence," she said. "Its little head and front legs made it through, but its hind legs and ass were trapped inside the yard. Morgan was so stunned by this she didn’t even bite the rabbit and rip it apart like usual. She just stood there and sniffed its butt. The poor rabbit kept trying to run, but it was like it was on a treadmill -- those little legs kept chugging along, but that rabbit wasn’t going anywhere."
Billie Jo spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to free the rabbit from the fence.
"I didn't know whether I should just squeeze his little hind legs and shove him through or what. Eventually I grabbed some wire snips and cut the fence. The poor thing hobbled away and probably got mauled by something else before noon."
Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. His book, "The Spowl Ribbon," is available at the Electric Fetus and online at paullundgren.com.