baked apples and ant-eaters

I told my father I was writing a blog. I told him I've been writing about him in it as well as daily stuff going on in my life.

My father had been a policeman for many years. He never talked about his work as I beleive most policemen do not.

But ever once in awhile, I'd get a sliver of a story or two.

He had been injured on the job twice that I know of.

While sitting in a cruiser for a detail duty some lady plowed into him with her car without stopping. His ribs were broken as a result. I think he was mostly pissed that he had spilled his coffee but he was a hurtin' puppy for quite sometime after that.

Another time while investigating a gang of out-of-control trouble-maker teenagers drinking and smoking dope. A group of them tipped over his cruiser while he was in it. He was injured as a result of that as well.

Most of the kids I knew liked him because he never bothered him (so long as they didn't mouth off to him.) From what other kids said about him, he wasn't one of those hard-ass cops out to prove anything. He was a pretty fair guy.

One day my mother made baked apples. To me, they looked delicious all buttery and steaming.

She thought she made the family "a special treat". She took the apples in a tray and offered one of them to my father.

I thought he was going to puke.

Typical of my mother, she persisted, shoving them in his face repeating, "here, have one! They are good!" Do you want one? Why not? They are delicious! Here have one!"

His face twisted in horror.

And he started gagging.

I later found out that on one of his calls there was a an elderly lady who was found unresponsive. He had performed CPR on her which included mouth-to-mouth.

She had been dead for over a week.

On her kitchen counter was baked apples sitting in a tray.

Decades later he still can't look at baked apples without puking.

He also hated getting animal control calls. Years ago, whenever there was a wildlife situation people would call the police to do something about it. He still gets the willies even looking at a hamster since he has had to patrol warehouses where inevitably, rats were involved.

One time, a lady called complaining of what she thought was a raccoon on her front porch. He entered the porch with his noose-pole to capture the animal.

It wasn't a raccoon.

He said,"hey lady! This isn't a raccoon. It is an ant-eater!"

In those days, he didn't have much training, if any, in wildlife management. The cops just had a duty to respond to all the calls. As he got the noose around the neck of the critter it went wild. It wasn't a raccoon but a really pissed off possum.

It was a miracle he never contracted rabies. If he got a call involving bats he would just grab the bat with just his bare hands and a towel. He said bats were the ugliest things he had ever seen in his life. He still gets nightmares from looking at their faces. As he would say, 'bats are as ugly as a bastard".

I had never heard anyone use that expression (ugly as a bastard) before until I met another city cop just recently. I burst out laughing.

Maybe it's a "cop" expression.