Cat Skinning and
Other Hobbies
by Matt Mok
Joe had spent
nearly an hour digging at the dense unrelenting
ground with his hoe in a futile attempt to remove
the tree stump. He was drenched in sweat and
tired and sore, but all he had managed to
accomplish was clear the soil around the foot-wide
trunk. He wiped the sweat from his brow and threw
down the hoe.
"You
gonna give me a hand or what?" he asked Ben,
who laughed.
"Who, me?
No way." He swatted away some dirt
that clung to his shirt from Joe's last swing.
Joe grunted,
picked up a pickax and swung it at the stump near
its base. He wedged it under a large entrenched
root and using a rock as leverage, tried to pry
the trunk loose. But it was useless.
"Well,
there's more than one way to skin a cat," he
said as he threw the pickax onto the accumulated
pile of useless garden tools.
"What cat?"
asked Ben.
"Huh?"
Joe started walking to the shed. Ben followed.
"What cat
are you skinning? You making a hat? A
scarf?"
"You
realize you're an idiot, right?"
"Seriously,
that must be one of the most nonsensical sayings
around. I mean, on any given day, what person
would be faced with not only the task of skinning
a cat, but also the conundrum of finding
alternates methods for it?"
"Mmhmm." He
was used to Ben's ranting and was already
rummaging through the shed for a solution to the
current predicament. Meanwhile, outside on the
grass, Ben continued his tirade against idioms in
the English language.
"I mean,
why not 'There's more than one way to murder a
hobo'? Or, milk a spider monkey? Or--"
He was
interrupted by the loud revving sound of the
chainsaw Joe had brought out of the shed.
"You keep
thinking about that while I take care of this
stump."
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