Mark LaFlamme: Old man Snodgrass and the rampaging bison

Talk of the Town Ernie Anderson

Everything’s bigger in Aroostook County
As if the county isn’t cool enough already, you know what they’ve got now? Bison. Aroostook County has bison. Three of them, to be exact, wandering along its long county roads like some swaggering, big-shouldered gang. What makes the county cool is that the people who live there won’t freak out over this. Not even a little. “Eh,” they’ll say over breakfast. “Old Man Snodgrass let his herd slip away again. Grab mom and your four-wheeler, son. We better go round ’em up.” Down here in the weenie portion of Maine, we all still get freaked out by crows. Crows!

The park is open
I reckon that if dinosaurs ever evolve their way back into existence, the first of them will naturally go stomping through Aroostook County. “Eh,” some guy in St. Agatha will say over his dinner. “Old Man Snodgrass cloned another dang tyrannosaur. Grab your mom and all the rope you can find, boy. We gotta corral this son-of-a-bipedal.”

But seriously
Why do they keep letting Old Man Snodgrass DO this stuff? Clearly the fellow ought to be in a home.

DEEDLE DEEDLE what, now?
The 911 system over the past year or so has been using a new tone to mark incoming emergency calls. Where in the past it was: DEE doo DEE doo DEE doo, nowadays it’s more like DEEDLE DEEDLE DIT, all fast and furious like. No matter how often I hear it, my ear just will not get used to the new tone. Every time it blasts from the police scanner, I feel like I’m getting attacked by some punk with a toy laser gun and I react accordingly — mainly by diving into the closet where I keep the squirt guns. Oh, it’s on, punk!

Time change
Oooh, baby. Very soon now we’ll set the clocks ahead and get that extra hour of afternoon sunlight. You know what this means: It means that your neighbors can now see you when you’re out doing weird stuff in you backyard at 6 p.m. Adjust your schedule accordingly, Snodgrass.

I kiss your mother with that mouth?
There have been a lot of snowstorms lately and I’ve handled them with my usual good cheer. But the storm on Thursday? That one got to me. I looked out and saw just a couple inches of fresh stuff. No problem, I though, all confident like. I’ll deal with it later with a dainty whisk broom. But by the time I got out there, I found that those couple of wet inches were the consistency of CEE-ment and whoa, Nelly! The words that came out of my mouth, I tell you. Those swears were so extra powerful for this storm, they peeled some of the paint off the house. I can hardly wait until spring when I can go back to being a chaste, sweet-talking angel again.