It's a dog-eat-dog world in the water
I have a good job. I have a really, really good job. It's fairly cushy, with lots of great perks (like free soda out of either of the soda fountains).
On the other hand, I've had some not-so-good jobs. I've been a telemarketer (okay, so it was only for 2 days, but still...). I've been a hostess at the O'Charley's on the UT Strip, trying to get all the sorority girls & fraternity boys seated on the patio so they can listen to Dave Landeo play cover songs ($2.38 an hour plus 10 percent of the tip pool. Wow. What will I ever do with all that money?). I've been the Phone Chick at the Papa John's Pizza, also on the UT Strip, explaining the menu over & over again to all the drunk sorority girls and drunk fraternity boys who've come home after sitting on the O'Charley's patio, listening to Dave Landeo all night (No, we don't have salads or calzones. We have pizza & breadsticks. No, we can't bring you a salad or a calzone. We can only bring you pizza & breadsticks.).
This brings me to one of the shows that I really enjoy watching (which means that it'll probably be cancelled, so catch it quick): "Dirty Jobs." We have PiVo (the generic form of TiVo), so I don't know what night it's on; otherwise I'd tell you, and you, too, can be disappointed when it's cancelled. "Dirty Jobs" is an hour long program where this guy (I think his name is Mike Rowe) goes around, doing dirty jobs. You know the guy who goes deep into the San Francisco sewer system to inspect the pipes? The one that tries not to let the cockroaches fall from the ceiling down his coveralls & into his shorts (no, not the outer shorts...the inner shorts)....yeah, Mr. Rowe does his job for a day.
I think it's good to maintain perspective on what I could be doing to earn a days' wages. Not that I'd be qualified to inspect sewer pipes. My aversion to cockroaches (they make me all oogy & I scream like a girl) would be the main reason I couldn't do that job....But Mr. Rowe goes on other jobs--he cleans out septic tanks. He cleans out the grease trap from a school cafeteria. He sexes chickens, which means that you've got to squeeze the poo out of the chicks so that you can look for a miniscule bump that may or may not be there, and may or may not be shiny.
On one of the last episodes we saw, he went noodling. Now, I'd never heard of noodling. I've heard of canoodling, but that's something different. Let me explain: he was in....Alabama, I think it was...with two good ol' boys who were going to show Mr. Rowe how to noodle a catfish. Here's how it works:
You jump into a pond. (See, right there, I'm gone. I don't do ponds. I just know there's a snake or a turtle waiting for me, and will bite my toe. I just know it, and so therefore, I don't tempt fate.) You feel around for a hole. You stick your hand into the hole. (Are any of you out there seeing the scene from "The Deep"? Me too.) You wait for a catfish to bite your arm. Then you pull your arm, with the catfish still attached, out of the water. That's noodling.
These catfish weren't small. They were HUGE. I think they caught one that was about 27 lbs. Okay, no record breakers, but keep in mind: these catfish were attached to your arm. With their razor-like gill slits, and their nasty little catfish teeth. (Okay, I'm not sure if they actually have teeth, but if they did...they'd be nasty.)
When Mr. Rowe commented that noodling was harder than it looked, one of the good ol' boys (who had a tattoo of a catfish with a severed arm in it's mouth...hey, Rachel--how 'bout that for your tattoo???) said, and I do quote here:
It's a dog-eat-dog world in the water.
The boys also mentioned that sometimes that the hole you're sticking your arm into will have an airpocket in it, and snakes and muskrats will get in that hole (except for the snake that's waiting to bite my toe...he holds his breath). And you gotta watch out for them muskrats--they're like a water chihuahua with teeth (another direct quote there).
I don't know what they mean, but I do know this: I've got a cushy, nice job, where I don't have to stick my hand in some pond hole, waiting for a catfish to bite me.
posted by Chauntelle @ 9:36 PM
3 Comments:
Great subject matter! "Dirty Jobs" is also one of my favorite shows and I try to catch it when I can. I tuned in a little late the other night and missed the part about sexing chickens. I was really disappointed because Grandpa Vernon and I used to witness the "art" first-hand when we vaccinated chicks at the old Riverside Hatchery in Knoxville. This was the summer before Patrick was born and I had been out of work for a few months earlier in the year. Vernon took pity on me and asked me to help him in his various chicken related activities. Talk about dirty jobs.....de-beaking chickens was a particularly filthy enterprise because we actually went into these big chicken houses all over East Tennessee and set-up our de-beakers (which sort of look like small guillotines with current running through the blades so you can cauterize the blood vessels as you cut-off the beak...well, not the whole beak. Just the tip). It seems that chickens are prone to cannabalism when they're kept in confined spaces for their entire lives. The beak needs to be blunted to prevent this. I'll tell you, the smell is something you never forget. Kind of a cross between burning hair and frying bacon. Anyway, where we vaccinated the chicks there was a Japanese gentleman named George Fuji who sponsored several young Japanese apprentices and taught them the art of chicken sexing. It's really quite fascinating but I never attempted it. I was always afraid I'd squeeze out more than the contents of their tiny feathered colons. I did become fairly accomplished at vaccinating chicks though. We used spring loaded syringes fed by a screw-on bottle. Once you got into the routine you could vaccinate about a thousand chicks an hour. Sometimes we vaccinated 8-10 thousand chicks in one evening and all those little guys had to go through the sexing process before we got to them. It's a pretty tough way to start out in this world and unfortunately it doesn't get a lot better for them as they grow older. I mentioned I got pretty good at vaccinating but I still managed to stick myself in the thumb at least once every session. I don't think it had any long-term effect but I still wake up sometimes with my head tucked under my arm.
I remember doing some of that vaccinating myself, I'm quite sure that whatever it was we were trying to prevent, I will never get!! I got plenty of shots myself! I think we got paid a penny for every ten chicks vaccinated, or maybe for each one, that whole process may have caused memory loss...what were we talking about?
I do believe that Pop Possum (in the early days of his de-beaking career) cut the beak a little too close and may have cause the demise of a bird, but I'm not pointing any fingers at anyone; just a small hint if you get my drift.
About the dinner at the G-parents, I did talk to them on Tuesday and the G-Mom agrees that it is a little overwelming and maybe she could do a little less like have Bug and me do a bit of it and plan simpler meals. Of course Mom and Pop Possum will never stay at a motel, that's just whack, don't even go there! Love everybody and can't wait ti see you guys!
Chauntelle makes me laugh my ass off sometimes.
I do wish that Dad had caught the "chick sexing" segment (say that 3 times fast). As I recall, all of the chick sexers on the program were Japanese. In fact, one of the sexers explained that only the Japanese can sex chicks with any kind of accuracy, since they developed the sexing process.
The host also had the opportunity to do some vaccinating, and he did seem to catch himself a couple of times, though the chicks really didn't seem to mind that much.
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