Waiting

I had been waiting to shoot the pistol for almost a month. I finally got to shoot it yesterday with Lynae... we had a ball. We set up a target out back and each fired ten shots at it... let's just say the target wasn't full of holes when we were done. For those of you who don't know, I bought a 22 handgun about six weeks ago, but because of the laws in MN, we had to get a special permit before we could pick it up. After we got it, things were pretty busy and I didn't have much time.

I have been waiting to get my driver's (apostrophe? EDITOR?) license for about six months. I could have gotten it long ago, and I've been driving for a year and a half now. I'm still waiting, because I can't pay for car insurance. One more summer of hard work ought to cure that though. But until that summer comes along, I'm waiting.

I will wait until January 2nd to start bragging to 2poor about my weasel. See, every year there is a Largest Weasel Contest on Trapperman.com, and the amount of prizes involved... it's through the roof I'm telling you. Last year I was in the Kids' Division, and I won 1st place. This year I'm in the Adults' Division, and my biggest weasel is a full 2 inches longer than the one I had last year, so I'm beginning to think maybe 2poor was right... I do have a shot at 3rd place (behind the Jack Pine Savage, a phantom and weasel whisperer, and 2poor himself).


I know how much my readers like folklore, so here is your dose for a little while. It occured to me some time ago that in much of Europe there are tales of elves and fairies who played tricks on people and sometimes did good things too. I looked at African folklore and found the same was true there, although in possibly less abundance. I looked at "Native American" legend and found the same was true here. But what got on my nerves is that in the local newspaper, people are still today talking about the same kind of creature... only it has a different name: a nisse. Now something you must understand about this community; the town I live in was settled by a certain group of people from Poland, the town south of us a few miles was settled by Danes, and the town south of that was settled by Finns. Each town has a name in a different language. But the Danish town is still very, very Danish. The street signs are all in Danish, with the English name in parentheses. The Welcome signs are in Danish. And this town is responsible for the newspaper.

In this newspaper, I saw that there was much ado about a nisse sighting in town. Apparently there was a cash reward for anyone who caught or found the nisse. There was a suggestion in this last paper, that to deter any nisses while you were celebrating Christmas, you should carry an Æbleskiver pan around with you.

This information in a reputable paper got me worried. Go ahead, try and translate "nisse" from Danish into English. I tried it using several different translators and while I only got "certain" sometimes, most of the time I got "goblin." Now while this suggests something exciting in the language, I will not go there. The point is, this nisse is out and about. Look out.

All this to say, I am going to wait to drive to the Danish town to shoot a nisse with my pistol under the pretense of checking my weasel traps.


Don't worry folks. This is a joke. I have learned that most of the time, your local nisse will help you out unless you offend him. So I will not shoot an innocent, sweet little nisse.