LOL!!! Well, y'see, MM, it was this way...out on the canebreak as a boy, usn's useter raise them razorbacks to hep mek ends meet. An' I useter slop 'em. So we hed this big slop barrel outside the galley an' Ma ud alwez keep it full from cooking fer the hands an' all. But then one Friday night Ah had an adventure with some white lightning and the next morning I was staggerin' around but naccherly I didn't want Ma to know. Come about 9 AM Sa'ddy, I was stumbling around an' realized I didn't know if I hed done mah chores er not I was so bumfuzzled fum thet likker. So went over an' hefted the barrel. It felt like there musta been fifty or a hunnert pounds of slops in there! Dang!! Thet's how I knew I hedn't slopped them hogs yet!

So I jes' swung thet barrel up on mah shoulder an went ovuh tuh where them razorbacks were kept. Aimin' to ketch up on mah chore before ma found out, ya see. Them canebreak razorbacks, now they somethin' else annyhoo -- dunno ef you ever see'd one or two when they get cranky but they as like as gore you as look atchoo if they is in a Mood, an' these 'uns were cuz it was special hot thet day.

Now I didn't reckon on a couple of thangs on account I had been outta commission a tad late that morning. One is that Deda and Maisy hed been shooed outen the house by Maw and hed been trying to pass some time playin' Allie-In-Free down by the stock area, an the other was that Deda was supposed ter be "Iyut" an' count to a hunnert but she always did get kinder hung up on those eleventies so she was goin' back to one and startin' over to get it right and meanwhile Maisy, she not thinkin' just clambered right on inter that slop barrel which was empoty because, see, I really HAD done mah chore before I woke up to wonderin' 'bout it. But once she was in there, the fumes kinder got to her -- them slops are potent, down thet way -- and she had kinder curled up and fallen asleep in the bottom and no one finding her on account Deda was still goin' "Eleventy one....no...lesseee...two, three...." over an over.

So when I tipped that slop barrel, ol' King Eye, the biggest meanest canebreak razorback ever born, came galloping over, and Miss Fish Queen, the second orneriest was right behine, and they tuck tuh fighting and stompin' , so a course the other thirty-'leven of 'em had to jump in and scrap some too, and afore anyone knew from a goose there was Maisy all hoof-cut and diced up and then she was gone right along with the first rasher of slops!

So I 'splained it to Ma and she said it was okay cuz I was at least tryin tuh do mah job and no man could ask for any more'n thet, so noboddy felt too bad an' Deda an' I split her rations at dinner so hit was okay I reckon.

Anyhoo that's how it happened, an' I hope yore satisfied!!

Oh -- and don't be mixing our Mudcat Cletus up with Cleatus up in Ellensberg, what is a Ford-engine-blue Cleat whut I made an' installed on the back of the Whassup Dock down on Jen Ellen's lake, see, where the rowboat is. Cleatus the cleat, different from Cletus the unknown species, huh? Cleatus is modeled after a world class cleat I saw one time at a Marine Parts store called Cleat R Us, but that's another tale....

Regards,

A