Trading Spaces (not always a good idea)

25 March 2013

649

R. Linda:

I have a friend who decided to trade his house for one in the picturesque Provence region of France for a week's vacation. You know the deal, you lend your house to someone in, say, France, and they lend you theirs. So last year, me friend took his family of four over to the Provence region in France for a vacation, and the family of four from France arrived at his house in Apalachicola, Florida.

While me friend was looking forward to a wonderful time in Provence, the French family was having more of an adventure. More of one than they'd have at Universal Orlando. The first morning in Florida, they woke up trying to open the porch door to get the newspaper when they found they couldn't open the door at all. No, something was wedging it shut, and when the husband looked down, he saw one big alligator sprawled on the porch between the door and stairs. This was a first! The animal control people were called, but by the time they got there, the gator had meandered its way into the canal.

 

How about finding THIS at your front door?

Something to write home about, hey? So, with a lot of excited chatter, the family headed for Orlando for two days of fun at Disney World. They returned quite tired in the dead of night and went to bed. The next day no gator at the door, they decided to forgo any road trip after the five-hour trip they had the night before and hang around the house. Now me friend has an in-ground pool so that's what they decided to do, swim and sun for the day.

An outdoor barbecue was planned for lunch by the pool, and everything was ready. With the family attired in bathing suits, everyone grabbed something for the outdoor grill and off to the backyard pool they went. Only as they got out there, they noticed the pool was occupied. Yes, Mr. Gator was swimming around and couldn't seem to find his way out. How long he had been in there was anybody's guess.

It be a good thing no one blindly jumped in the pool, is all I can say

The animal wardens came, and it took a while to get that pesky gator out of the pool and transport it, hopefully far, far away. By then, our French family did not want to swim in the pool or cook outside. And well, they wouldn't because, by the time the gator was taken away, the mosquitos had come out to feast on French cuisine. Well, as you can imagine, the wife of the Frenchman, Mrs. France, was somewhat unnerved. She stayed home the next day while everyone else went to the beach to wait for the bug exterminator guy who comes once a week to spray for palmetto bugs, which is a nice way of saying Florida roach.

 

La Cucaracha in the shower

The big bugs congregate to moisture, and every morning, Mrs. France would have her husband remove the big ugly things from the shower where they seemed to like it. Once the bug man came and sprayed, Mrs. France changed into her bathing suit and was ready to head out when she opened the porch door and what did she see?

Well, at first she thought it was a camouflage tube some public works people had left on the front lawn. But just as she was about to lock the door, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the giant tube move. She swung around and realised what the tube really was and couldn't unlock that door fast enough to get inside. Yup, there sunning itself was a rogue boa constrictor. It had to be 14 to 15 feet long, she told my friend later.

Le snake in the grass

She said, "If I wanted a jungle adventure, I would have gone to the Amazon." But wait, it gets better. The children wanted to fish in the canal, but Mrs. France was leery after the gator and snake incidents. That she left the house at all was nothing short of a miracle. However, her husband poo-poohed her angst and told her to grab a beach chair and a book and join him and the boys at the canal. Reluctantly, she did, but she did say, "No good will come of this," and unfortunately, she was right.

The boys were catching a certain kind of fish as if they were fishing in a well-stocked aquarium. Yes, indeed. And when they'd take the strange-looking fish off the hooks, the things tried to bite their fingers, actually drawing blood. The fish were pets thrown into the canal because they get rather large and eat everything in the tank. Florida's canals are full of these freshwater aggressors called Oscars. They tried to eradicate the population in the canal by bringing in South American parrot bass, but the Oscars got so large that the parrot bass couldn't eat them. So these were what the two boys and their dad were catching. At first, they were stunned at the size of the fish until the biting started.

Don't be fooled. The Oscar fish has teeth and, in the canals, grows very large

I tell ya, Mrs. French person was not enjoying her "holiday" in the tropics. No indeed.

Meanwhile, in Provence, me friend had an excellent first day of walking around the hilltop village, taking in the local cuisine, the flowers, and generally enjoying the nice weather and the good life. The stone villa he was staying in was old with lots of character. The windows had no screens so the mountain breeze cooled things off nicely, and the doors had no locks and were kept open to let the coolness in. This not locking windows and doors made the family a wee bit uneasy. Still, after their jaunt into the village, they realised everyone did that, and everyone seemed to be over the age of 60 except for maybe three families around the same age as themselves. But the next day offered a wee bit of a challenge. The house was at the bottom of a rough hillside and it had been pretty quiet there until the entire family was awakened to the sound of cowbells. Mrs. Florida went down to the kitchen since the sound made it impossible for her to roll over and go back to sleep, only to find her kitchen overrun with goats! Yes, the furry creatures had been herded down from the high hills into the village and while the goatherd was busy bringing down the last forty or so, the twenty who came down first had overrun the little villa inside and out.

When Mrs. Florida had come down the stairs in a coffee-less daze, she thought she noticed three rather large dogs on the couch in the living room. Still, the sight didn't jog her to wakefulness until she walked into the sun-drenched kitchen to find five of six more "dogs" wandering around the table with one on top of it.

A sharp intake of breath caught Mrs. Florida as her eyes opened wide, and she realised the animals were not dogs but goats! In that part of the world, it wasn't unusual to find a dog curled up inside the doorway, so at first, Mrs. Florida was oblivious. That is until she started screaming for her husband, who rushed down the stairs and, seeing the goats in the living room, took pause, but not for long; he flew into the kitchen and came to a skidding halt as he stepped barefooted in something warm and well . . . moist.

There was much excitement between the two as they tried to get the goats out of the house. The two kiddos had been awakened by the commotion, and of course, the young girl wanted to keep a couple of the baby goats as pets. That didn't happen, as you might well have guessed.

It took most of the morning to get the goats out of the house and to clean up the "gifts" left behind. The adults and the one son were grossed out, but the daughter was in a sulk over being unable to keep at least one baby goat. None of them had thought they would be spending part of their holiday cleaning goat shite from someone else's house. Uh-huh.

 

Open windows, open doors = unwanted visitors

To get everyone away from the smell of disinfectant, Mr. Florida booked a day trip. They walked down to the village centre and awaited the tour bus which was 15 minutes late. It rattled up the hill and traversed S-L-O-W-L-Y over the cobblestone street to the fountain where the little family waited. Mrs. Florida was apprehensive that the vehicle wouldn't reach their destination and back. But she climbed past the cheery driver and the not-so-cheery tour guide to her seat. The people sitting in the open-air bus looked a bit harassed. But it was unusually warm for the day, so Mrs. Florida chalked the looks up to the weather.

Le tour bus looked something like this but was dented and beat up, with tyres not too full of air

The bus pulled away with such a lurch it was surprising no one suffered whiplash. The bus was cramped and not exactly clean. It chugged into the small villages and scenic hills, the tour guide telling the passengers of sights, but when asked a question or to repeat something the guide took exception to the person asking the question and was rather a rude personage. Or, as Mr. Florida said, "One snarky piece of work. She was not helpful and mostly ignored us. We were supposed to stop at five places, but because the bus wasn't fast, the tour only stopped at two places. So we paid for five and got two. When one of us on the tour had the nerve to complain, we were told we could rebook the trip the next day and see what we missed. As if!"

Our family from Florida said nothing until they got to a more populace village where they were deposited not at a bistro but a McDonald's. There, they had a bit of a time with the language barrier and the food. When asking for the third time to have the burger and not the fish sandwich, the waiter in broken English said, "Whilst I agree wiz your sentiment on ze food, your rudeness iz symptomatic of the underlying malaise of American society. Be nice or stop breathing. You choose." And away he went to the back of the store, leaving the startled looks of the Florida family far behind.
 

                                                                                      

Look familiar?

So, without a decent meal, almost all the tourists returned to the old wreck of a bus, and they S-L-O-W-L-Y rolled back to their respective village inns, villas, and hotels. Our harassed dad told the tour guide he was less than pleased with the day's outing. To which she replied, "It was a day trip, no one died, get over it."

Maybe she was referring to the tourists on the bus all being 55 and up except for the Florida families, two kiddos who were less than happy to be on a bus, a slow one at that, with "old people." I don't know if keeling over and dying be a frequent occurrence on that hot, cramped bus, but from what was said, I be willing to think it is. Oh my God, the death bus! Last meal: McDonald's! Why yes, I see it now, being old, having consumed heart attack burgers and being stuffed on an old smelly SLOW bus, is it any wonder? But I digress and am letting me imagination get carried away. Oi!

The lesson here (I guess) is that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence. It might have a snake in it. Or, maybe the lesson is that it isn't always happiness that sneaks in when you leave the door open; it could be a pack of goats. No, that can't be it. How about this: When on a tourist bus with oldsters and the only dinner you have is at McDonald's, the oldest person should always be seated closest to the bathroom if there is one. Nah! Okay, let's try this: I'd rather go to bed without a gator at my door than rise in the morning and find one in me pool! No, that won't do either.

I be clueless about what the point of this story is. I will leave it up to you, R. Linda, to come up with a moral because I got nothing.

Gabe
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