By Tiber
Scientists have discovered the oldest ancestor fossils of the modern day elephant and, amazingly enough, the originals started out at no bigger than 10 lbs..
It’s hard enough to get Iris Nell out of her room now, but if she managed to get one of those little “miniphants,“ the only sounds you would ever hear from inside would be her constant “Awwwwwwwwwwws,” as she made pint-sized howdahs for their backs and hosted fun rides for kittens.
By Tiber
Mother Shipton was a seer or a psychic who was born back in the late 1400’s in England.
She evidently lived in a cave and I just read where her cave is still a big tourist attraction to this day.
This is partly due to what’s called the “Petrifying Water Well,” which, because of the excessive amounts of minerals in the water, can, over time, make things turn to stone.
I need to check this out as a money-making venture because we’ve got three family members in this house alone who can turn whole people into stone just by glaring at them!
Mom can do it, when someone is rude. Iris Nell can do it, if anyone’s unkind. And Vanessa can do it if anyone’s an idiot.
And they can all do it instantly! No waiting!
So line up, pony up and get your tickets right here!
Of course, the minute I suggest this, all three of them will ice me like a cube.
I’m going to have to think of a way to market them without looking.
By Tiber
My sister, Iris Nell, got a quick job I had never even heard of. She was hired out as a bridesmaid for a big wedding where the bride didn’t have enough close friends to match the number of groomsmen.
Iris Nell seems like a wonderful choice. She’s pretty, she’s empathetic, she can fit into that extra dress.
Uh…let’s go back to the empathetic part, shall we? The ever-romantic Iris Nell really got into the couples’ back story.
She was fascinated by how they had dated for so long, broken up three times but had always gotten back together again. And this time it was for keeps! It was true love! She teared up and babbled on.
Iris Nell said this was the kind of love we all seek since, in spite of their difficulties, these two were destiny-fated-soul-mates, propelled back once again into each others’ tree-like arms in a tight and clinging embrace that now would never break but instead would super-glue their entwined bodies together until the end of time.
Frankly, I think a number of people might find Iris Nell’s idea of an eternal love bond similar to being exiled to Elba shackled to a fire alarm.
And guess what? These two people were in that group, yelling “Dear God, get us out of this!”
Nothing else could rip this couple apart but Iris Nell‘s romantic love-gush did.
The last I heard, even the groom’s parents were splitting up. And by all accounts, they had always been happy.
By Tiber
My youngest sister, Erin, is getting ready to go off to college. I’ll miss her but, fortunately, I won’t have to miss her part-time place of employment – Larry’s Discount Occult!
It now looks as if another sister, Iris Nell, may be taking over Erin’s sales job.
There are always things about Larry’s and the customers that sort of perplex me but, for some reason, I like the place and now, I can still keep dropping in.
As you know, Iris Nell already runs an online business of custom-made rain gear for pets other than cats and dogs. Larry, however, said maybe she could branch out and also create some attire for witches’ familiars, even if most of them are cats.
Iris Nell is all for it but once again, this leaves me confused.
I don’t know much about the work of witches’ familiars but I have always assumed that the element of surprise was an important component. If you met someone and their cat suddenly strolled into the room wearing a tiny mask and a conical hat while toting a little wand in its teeth, I think I might begin to look for the door.
But, again, what do I know?
If it makes Iris Nell more money, I’m all for it. And if her spangly cat-capes catch on, she could branch out once again. There must be animals in Las Vegas.
By Tiber
The snails have returned and are starting to eat the plants in our new vegetable garden.
My sister, Iris Nell, has been caring for these plants but of course, Iris Nell being Iris Nell, she cares about the snails too.
When she was little, she noticed that, for some reason, after the gardeners had been near any group of snails, the snails would instantly disappear.
Iris Nell became distraught.
The then gardener told her that the snails had been taken to a beautiful snail farm in upper state New York where they were having a wonderful time. Iris Nell frowned and the gardener panicked.
“Did I say New York? It was Las Vegas! I meant Las Vegas!…Or…or Spain?”
So Iris Nell quickly wised up. And she put a stop to it.
Even Dad agrees now that she was right about the chemicals. But we still haven’t found a fool-proof way of keeping the snails off the vegetables.
So this time, we’re transporting them, by hand, as far away from the gardens as we can.
Even more surprising, the volatile and insane Saskia was out there helping us – or helping her new boyfriend, Nestor, the gardener, I should say.
The snail transport won’t help for long, of course. Somehow, even across huge snail distances, the intrepid little gastropods always find their way back.
But then again, Saskia and Nestor have found their way to each other too and the distance between them was a hell of a lot greater.
By Tiber
I went out on the balcony and I saw my sister, Iris Nell, pass by a big tree out in back.
Suddenly, she stopped, looked up into the branches and proceeded to have some sort of long, emotional conversation.
Later, when she came inside, she told me that she’d heard two squirrels arguing. So she’d stopped to see what the problem was.
They both seemed to her to be teenaged squirrels and one of them had a skinny tail. I’ve seen a grown skinny-tailed squirrel here before and decided that her mother must have had a memorable, drunken one-night-stand with a rat. Well, evidently, the rat gene lives on.
And now, Iris Nell was worried that maybe the other teenaged squirrel (who had a normal, full tail) was bullying the skinny-tailed teen squirrel.
So she stepped right in, yelling up into the branches to knock it the hell off…that bullying another rodent because of a physical difference is just plain wrong…that bullying can cause suicide… that squirrels are better than that.
And evidently the fight stopped. Iris Nell said the two antagonists then eyed each other in a new light and she felt strongly that if they’d had thumbs, they would have shaken hands.
Therefore, my sister felt she could continue her walk and return home.
I love my family and I’ve learned to just nod at whatever that say. But I have a strong feeling that everybody else on the planet who was taking the same walk at the same time would just have passed by and thought,
“Yep. There’s a tree.”
By Tiber
Last year, on May Day, my sister Iris Nell built a maypole with streamers for the triplets to dance around.
I’m pretty sure this goes back to some pagan custom but then again, no one would be surprised to find more than one Druid in the old family tree.
Anyway, last May Day, I looked outside and was admiring the blue sky, the green plants, the mummy on a stick, the birds in the- wait, go back. We hadn’t had a mummy on a stick in the yard before and I didn’t think we’d ordered one.
It turned out the triplets had conned Iris Nell into climbing up the maypole. As I said then, it’s not that hard to get my sister to do anything. (“Look, Aunt Iris Nell! There’s a bug up there! And I think it’s in trouble!”)
Once they had my sister up there, the kids raced around so fast with the streamers that before she could get away, they had Iris Nell lashed to the maypole like a mummy on a stick.
When the kids wanted a maypole this year, Mom agreed but only on the explicit condition that they not wrap their aunt up in it.
So they just wrapped up Nestor, the gardener, instead.
We all flew outside and barely managed to save him. And even then, he said it was always important to have patience with the children.
Well, sure. That and an escape route.
Let’s not kid ourselves. We’re all grateful that the triplets came fully assembled but compared to them, there is no tech item, furniture piece or appliance that has ever been in more acute need of an instruction manual.
By Tiber
In spite of all the rain, my sister Iris Nell’s custom-made, All-Weather Gear for Other Animals online business has not been doing too well. Then, suddenly, this week she got an order for 30 hamster hats.
Don’t you find that odd? To me, this immediately brings up a lot of questions.
Is someone throwing a hamster party?
Is someone’s hamster just very rich?
Is there a new hamster restaurant but it has a dress code?
Is someone’s hamster neurotic and he eats his hats?
Is someone’s hamster so large that they’ll need to sew thirty hats together?
Is Paris trying to drum up tourism so now they’re having All- Mammals Fashion Week?
OR…are RATS planning a government takeover and they can pull it off if they’re in a more innocent disguise?!?
As usual, I am alone in asking the interesting questions.
Dad just inquired, “So, how much did your sister make?”
