Belle Weather Read Free Page B

I looked in the Yellow Pages and, a few phone calls later, I finally found someone who specialized in varmint removal, although he was loathe to use “the V word” as he prissily called it.
    “Vince” was extremely professional and official-sounding when I talked to him on the phone. Bottom line, he said, it would cost about $250 to remove the possum from under our house.
    “Two hundred and fifty dollars!” I screeched. “Are you planning to hire Celine Dion to sing at his frikkin’ funeral? Just go up under the house, drag his dead ass out, and take him away.”
    Vince then launched into a discussion of “humane” methods of removal.
    “Look,” I said as calmly as I could because, let’s face it, I needed Vince more than he needed me at this point. “The possum is dead. Dead! I don’t care if you go all Abu Ghraib, put a leash around his neck and smoke a cigarette with your leg propped up on his haunches. Just get him the hell outta here!”
    Once Vince actually listened and realized the possum had waddled on over to that great other-side-of-the-road in the sky, I was sure the fee would drop dramatically, but I was wrong.
    “On the initial investigation, we will ascertain as to the particular species of the possum…”
    Sweet Lord above. Deliver me from a worldly pest control expert. Whatever happened to the good old days when I could just dangle a twelve-pack in front of a passing redneck and not only get the varmint removed but also get a damn good start on a deck on the back of the house?
    I tried again.
    “I don’t care what species he is, on account of why? Hmmm. Oh, yes! That’s right. HE’S DEAD!”
    “Ma’am,” said Vince, “Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean that he’s not deserving of respectful treatment.”
    “Vince,” I said, “are you high?”
    I realized that the possum would just have to stay where he was. I’d run into Vince’s type once before when I was shopping for an exterminator.
    We’d had a little problem with those water bugs I just mentioned. Summer in the South is peak season and if they got any larger, my kid was going to put bonnets and gloves on them and invite them to her little tea parties.
    “We don’t call ourselves exterminators anymore,” huffed “Clark,” the man in the eco-green Polo shirt. He sounded genuinely hurt.
    “It’s like calling a funeral director an undertaker,” he said. “It’s called pest control now.”
    “Hey, just ’cause the cat had kittens in the oven doesn’t mean they’re biscuits,” I said, repeating the wisdom of my Great Aunt Sudavee or Suzanne Sugarbaker, I forget which.
    “What does that mean?” asked Clark.
    “It means I don’t care what you call it, just get these water bugs dead. And I don’t want you to just kill them. I want them to suffer a little first. Can you do that?”
    Clark-the-pompous-pest-guy looked at me as if I was nuts.
    “OK, OK,” I said. “You drive a hard bargain. I’ll toss in an extra twelve-pack if you can promise a little suffering.”
    “I don’t drink,” he said rather stiffly.
    Of course he didn’t. Unless it was, perhaps, an unassuming pinot noir accompanied by some fried frou-frou and a side of “I’m better than you.”
    It was a varmint, of sorts, that recently reminded me that despite all the talk of blended populations and such, we Southerners are still different from the rest of the world. And not just because the people who work at Chick-fil-A always tell you to “Have a blessed day.”
    Maybe it’s because we live in perpetual fear of monster hurricanes and unsweet tea, both plenty scary in their own way.
    The Defining Varmint Moment happened when I was visiting a new friend who had moved from Long Island, which, as I have experienced firsthand, has an entirely different take on iced tea.
    I was saying good-bye to my new Yankee friend on her front porch when I spied a snake, about four feet long, slithering its way toward my car.
    Southern women do not like