“I’m pretty sure it’s a road,” I explained. “You can tell because there’s a fire hydrant next to it.”
He stared at me in aggravation and clenched his jaw as he turned our car onto the road that wasn’t a road. Several minutes (and one dented oil pan later) we reached a dead end and Victor glared at me. Then something ran out from the brush and I screamed, “CHUPACABRA!” And then Victor slammed on the brakes and just stared at me like I’d gone insane. Probably because I’d been so flustered that I’d accidentally shouted, “CHALUPA!” which I’ll admit is disconcerting to have someone scream at you while you’re being attacked by a dangerous creature. In my defense, though, no one could be expected to communicate properly after seeing a vicious Mexican goat-sucker monster running through the woods. Victor said he’d agree with me completely if the chupacabra hadn’t actually just been a small deer. It was disheartening. Not only were we living in a neighborhood littered with chupacabras1 who were great at impersonating deer, but also we never found the graves. And now I wanted a chalupa, and there wasn’t a Taco Cabana within sixty miles of us. It was a failure by any standard, but I consoled Victor by reminding him that at least we didn’t own any goats that we’d have to worry about getting sucked. Then Victor asked me to stop talking, and he told me (for the first of what would eventually be eight thousand times) that we had made a huge mistake in moving to the country.
I defended our new town and assured him we just needed to readjust, but he was right. Clearly we were in over our heads, and I felt it was just a matter of time until one of us got dysentery or yellow fever. Until then, though, we settled back, safe in the knowledge that in moving we’d somehow cheated death . . . certain that when the end came, it would not be from Victor and me stabbing each other from work-related stress, but more likely from the unchartered wilderness (and possible chupacabra zombies) outside our door. Victor and I were comforted in the knowledge that our offices were now far enough apart that we would be safe from each other, but still we were worried.
And we were right to be.
1. Spell-check refuses to recognize the word “chupacabra.” Probably because it’s racist. Spell-check, I mean. Not chupacabras. Chupacabras are monsters from Mexico that suck blood out of goats. They don’t care what race you are. Bizarrely, spell-check is perfectly fine with the word “CHUPACABRA!” in all caps, which makes no sense at all. Unless it’s because it recognizes that you’d use that word only while screaming. Touché, spell-check. P.S. Actual words used in this book that spell-check insists are not real words: Velociraptors. Shiv. Chupacabra. Yay. It’s like spell-check doesn’t even want me to write my memoir.
Honestly, I Don’t Even Know Where I Got That Machete: A Comic Tragedy in Three Parts Days
Day 1:
The day that Barnaby Jones Pickles died was a difficult one.
We were still getting used to our new house, and we were planning how to build a backyard fence that would keep him in and the scorpions out. Until then, though, we’d simply let him run around the house most of the day, terrorizing the cats, and then put him out on an incredibly long leash/dog run attached to the back-porch banister, so he could run down to the meadow behind our house. But having a dog in the backyard, even for a little bit a day, is risky, and in the country I learned that it was just damned dangerous.
Learn from my mistakes, people.