Goodbye, Earth Shoes...

...parting is such stinky sorrow.


Right.

So.

I know I have been kind of MIA for a bit. It's just been a bit crazy, what with sonny boy graduating, a second job, a bunch of animals, etc., etc., etc.

However, I am taking a quick break from the madness that is my life to relate an odd little event.

Of course odd. You know, it sometimes seems that there is no other kind.

So I was getting changed from my "professional" work clothes into my "amateur/non-profit farmer" work clothes the other day. I sat down and grabbed my pair of Earth Shoes hiking sneakers.

I bought this particular pair of sneakers about a year ago at the Goodwill. It was a really great buy - $4 and hardly any miles at all. Sweet deal. Unfortunately, the toe of one of the sneakers was promptly chewed off by a mischievous beagle who shall remain nameless. But it did not daunt my enthusiasm for my new footwear - I just figured I wouldn't wear them on rainy days.

Anyway, I sat down and pulled one sneaker on, tied it and grabbed the other sneaker. I started to put my foot in and felt something in the toe of the shoe (this was not the shoe with the chewed out toe, otherwise I might have been spared).

"Hmmm..." I thought to myself, "I guess I stuffed some socks in here the last time I wore these." Which I have been known to do.

I reached my hand into the sneaker and felt...not socks. Definitely not socks. It felt...silky.

I lifted the sneaker up and peered into it and saw...fur.

"GAH!!!" I ran into the bathroom and threw the shoe out the window.

I peered out to where it fell - 2 stories below into the tall grass - and waited to see what, hopefully, would crawl out and scamper away.

Nothing.

Drat.

I washed my hands, got new socks and a different pair of sneakers, regained my composure and walked out into the yard. Cautiously, I approached the jilted singleton. I picked it up by the egde of the sole and bopped it off the ground.

And out popped a dead squirrel.

Not a full grown squirrel and not a baby squirrel. More of a teenage squirrel. But dead as a doornail nonethelss.

Now, as you might well imagine, this perplexity leaves one with a few questions to ponder:

-Why was there a dead squirrel in my shoe?
-Where exactly (not "How" for I know my hole-ridden house well enough to know "How") did the poor unfortunate gain entry?
-Are there more squirrels where this one came from?
-Are Earth Shoes really that much more comfortable than say, fleece lined slippers, that a squirrel would choose one as it's final resting place?

and last but certainly not of least importance...

-Do my feet really stink bad enough to kill a squirrel?


I posed the last question to my dear hubby and he assured me that my feet, do not in fact, stink. At least not most of the time.


So, it is with great regret that I must send my Earth Shoes to the great beyond. That big trail in the sky. Because, even I, even I with my...odd...sense of style, cannot bring myself to wear a sneaker that smells like a dead squirrel. Just the thought of traipsing around with a deathbed as a shoe would make me feel less fleet of foot.


So, that's the kind of stuff going on in my life. And you?


Edited to add the following:

You know, it just occurred to me that my dear hubby and I have this ongoing practical joke. It started about 2 years ago when we were at my mom's cabin in New York.

For some reason that only God knows, I put some acorns in his shoes one night. The next morning I found them in my shoes. That was our last day at the cabin and I'm sure he thought that was that.

But no. I brought more acorns home with me and for the past two years they have been passed back and forth between various sets of our shoes.

I asked him if perchance he happened to put an acorn in my Earth Shoe, thus luring the squirrel into the lightweight yet rugged trap. He said that it was entirely possible.

You see, the ideal is to put the acorn into a pair of shoes that the other person doesn't wear on a regular basis so, by the time they do go to put them on, they forget all about the joke and then "Ha! Ha! Acorn in your shoe!"

Um...yeah. So that's the kind of stuff we do for fun.

And now look. It's all fun and games until someone winds up with a dead squirrel in their shoe.