MYSTIC MADAME MERKEL AND THE GROUNDHOG DAY GAMES
By Psychic Mystic Madam Misty Murky Merkel
The Trailer Park Psychic
Associate Writer
Humor News Nuts Online Publications
Wow, what a Groundhog Day. It was intense. It was insane. It was by far the most painful day I have ever spent in Northern Michigan and a day that I and others will celebrate and, a day that will live on in infamy for generations of residents of my mobile home park.
It all started with The Groundhog himself. He lived down the street from me on the corner of Sweetie Lane (where I live) and Belligerent Boulevard (where a lot of animals live.) His trailer sits on the opposite side of Sweetie Lane just about one hundred yards away from my trailer.
Nobody knows where The Groundhog came from. Some say he came from the rich people’s trailer park located just down the road from here. They say he is actually rich and decided to try “slumming it” by living in this trailer park which is mainly occupied by the lowest of the lower class.
Still, others believe that The Groundhog is an alien from outer space. I’m not sure what proof they have for the alien groundhog theory but, in Northern Michigan just about everyone up here tends to be very paranoid about alien invasions. Myself, I just believe he is just a mean old groundhog that grew up in a backwoods swamp where his only friends were mosquitos, muck-rock snakes and his still full of moonshine. Regarding moonshine, I have heard that he has a fairly large moonshine operation going on in his old trailer house. Of course if he does have a moonshine operation in his trailer he is really stingy with the product because I have yet to hear of anyone ever getting some samples. You know, a decent person would give out free samples of homemade goodies just to be neighborly. Whenever I make brownies I always give out samples to any of my neighbors who happen by.
Now, nobody ever paid much attention to the groundhog. I mean we have so many mangy critters living in and around this trailer park that some nasty hairy, little stingy alcoholic is going to be noticed as being different. But, the thing that made this creature particularly noticeable and hated is that each day the groundhog would sit outside in front of his trailer on an old stuffed sofa and every time someone would walk past his trailer he would take his slingshot and pelt the passerby in the behind with an acorn. And, those acorns really sting. And, if someone turned around to yell at the little varmint he would keep shooting acorns at them until they could take no more of the pelting and simply run away out of slingshot range. Of course the groundhog would never run out of acorns because his trailer sat directly under a giant oak tree which poured down nearly a ton of acorns every single year.
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| Above species of acorn is a favorite of slingshot enthusiasts. |
Well, on Groundhog Day I was taking my garbage down to the dump when suddenly I got hit in the rear by a really stinging acorn. I turned around and there was that nasty little groundhog sitting in his stuffed sofa and laughing hysterically at the reaction he got from me after he shot me with his acorn. I started to yell at him but, he snapped off another acorn from his slingshot and it stung me right in my left forearm. “Alright, I’ve had enough of this,” I said. “I’m going to stop you once and for all from terrorizing people with your slingshot.”
“And just how do you intend to do that Merkel?” the little varmint spouted back at me sarcastically.
“I’m challenging you to a duel, a slingshot duel and the loser has to move out of this trailer park and never enter it again.”
The groundhog grinned, a big buck-toothy grin and said with confidence, “I’ll accept your challenge and it will be nice watching you pack up and leave but, don’t expect me to stop pelting you with acorns until you are on your way out the front gate of this trailer park.”
“I’ll meet you out here in fifteen minutes" I said, "We’ll have Thurmond Carter count off ten paces then on the count of ten we’ll turn and fire, agreed?”
“Agreed Merkel,” said the groundhog. “And, this trailer park will be well rid of a real psycho-psychic and her weird looking Petoskey stones. You know I’ve always said that your crystal balls were cracked and that’s why your psychic predictions are so off the wall and of course, your predictions are always wrong.”
“Well,” I said, ”My stones and balls are telling me that you’re going to lose and you’re going to have to go back wherever you came from.”
So, I went and asked Carter to be the pace counting guy and he agreed to be the pace counting guy. Carter was known throughout the trailer park community as an expert counter. If you needed something counted accurately, Thurmond Carter was the guy to call. Carter use to work in a grocery store counting bottle returns. He worked at that job for twenty years without a raise but, he got fired after being accused of using his counting skills to misappropriate a few hundred dollars each week from the store's bottle return funds. Before the bottle return scandal people were always wondering how a bottle return clerk making less than minimum wage could live like an executive. He always had good tires on his car and never had any of his utilities cutoff for nonpayment.
After talking to Thurmond, I went home and dug out my old slingshot.hadn’t used it in years but, I was confident that I would easily take down that little rat-faced varmint especially, if I used one of my magic Petoskey stones as ammunition. I figured it would be poetic justice if it was a Petoskey stone that took that little booger out especially, since he insulted my magic stones and crystal balls. I would have liked to have shot one of my crystal balls at him but, I was afraid I’d break my slingshot and lose the duel so; a quarter-sized Petoskey stone would have to do.
Now, a lot of you are probably wondering why I would challenge the groundhog to a slingshot duel especially, when he was all day long using the back-ends of the trailer park residents to practice his sport and I had my slingshot tucked away and hardly ever used it. Well, the truth is that I am actually quite an expert hunter with a slingshot. You see one of my former husband's was an avid hunter but, because a psychiatrist testified to a judge that my husband was not mentally stable my husband lost his privilege to own any type of firearm. So, he started hunting with a slingshot and became very good at it. He eventually talked me into taking up the sport and I turned out to be a better shot than he was.
Hunting soon became like a real job for each of us. I mean hunting really paid off. With both of us hunting we hardly ever had to buy groceries since our freezer was always full of ducks and squirrels and any other little furry animals that might come creeping out of the woods. A lot of the things we ate we had no idea what they were called but, you know just about everything tastes good if you roll it around in cornmeal and drop it in a deep fat fryer.
Well, as I said we were doing really well hunting small animals for food but then one day my husband decided that he wanted to hunt some larger game. We both went out into the woods and came across some sort of large animal tracks. My husband said he thought they were raccoon tracks and that we’d be hunting a raccoon that day. Well, we followed the tracks through the woods and walked almost into a big old bear. We stopped just about twelve feet behind what looked to be about a five-hundred pound black bear. Unfortunately for us the bear heard us coming up on him from behind and he immediately spun around to face us. The bear then stood up on its back legs and roared at us. My husband thinking quickly, immediately started shooting the bear with the little steel pellets that we used to hunt squirrels and other small game. Unfortunately, the bear was not impressed. The next thing I remembered was hearing my husband screaming “shoot the bear Misty, shoot the bear.” Of course by then I was running in high gear back toward the road and I wasn’t about to turn around and try to take down that big bear with my slingshot. I just had a hunch that those little steel balls we had probably wouldn’t do much to stop a five-hundred pound bear and that one of us had better get away to get help.
And, I did get away and got help. I reached the car and drove down the road to the nearest store where I called 911. The authorities searched the area where I had last seen my husband but, the only thing they ever found was his slingshot and a couple dozen little steel balls. No bear was ever sited either but, a couple of days after the incident the local sheriff came across a giant pile of bear scat not one hundred feet from where I and my husband were attacked. He asked me if I wanted it since it was probably the only thing they’d ever recover of my husband. I told them no but, I gave the sheriff my sister-in-law’s address and told him he could ship the scat to her since I had only been married to the guy a few months and I was going to ditch him as soon as his unemployment checks ran out.
The only regret I had was that I should have insisted that my husband spend his unemployment money buying a life insurance policy instead of that health insurance policy that he said he needed. It was a fat lot of good that health insurance policy did him in the end. And, I could have really used the life insurance money since I wasn’t going to get any more of those unemployment checks now that he was officially deceased.
Well, it was time for the big duel and the groundhog, Carter and I all met in the street about halfway between my trailer and the groundhog's trailer. The groundhog and I backed up to each other and Carter started to count off the paces.
We walked away from each other one step at a time as Carter counted to ten. Once ten paces were counted off we each whipped around and the groundhog fired first. Well, The Groundhog's aim was true and he hit me square in the forehead with his acorn and that caused me be fall backward and land sittingup on my behind but, before I went down I managed to fire off my little stone missing The Groundhog as he ducked down to the ground. Well, the stone I had fired off missed The Groundhog but, it sailed down to the Groundhog's trailer and through the glass pane in his front window. The air was still and you could almost feel the ticking of a clock... one, two three seconds and then a large explosion inside the trailer caused the doors and windows to blowout in a great rush of smoke and fire then you could count off three more seconds and then the entire trailer house and the large oak tree above it exploded in a fireball so large and so hot that it melted off the snow on the roofs of trailers that were over a hundred feet away. Of course the trailers immediately adjacent to the Groundhog’s were blown down and completely destroyed. Luckily, there were no serious injuries because everyone was outside watching the duel.
Well, the groundhog had won the battle but, with the destruction of the mighty oak tree the days of the groundhog being able to shoot his insidious acorns at passersby had come to a complete and final end. And, best of all the groundhog no longer had a home in our trailer park and he had to hang his tail between his legs and scurry off back down the road to whatever trailer park he had come from but, just about fifty feet from the trailer park entrance a pyramid shaped spacecraft hovered over the groundhog and a strange light beamed the groundhog up into the pyramid and then the spacecraft just disappeared. Evidently, the trailer park this groundhog came from was not the one down the street but, was a trailer park that existed in a place called outer space.
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| The groundhog was lifted up into the spacecraft |
