That's A Wrap

Today is Baci's birthday.  He 's one.  I was hoping to be able to give him a surprise on his birthday - like sneaking up behind him while he's eating his birthday basil cake with one carrot candle and mounting him.  However, since I no longer have a physical presence in the world that won't be possible.  I'll just have to satisfy myself by putting naughty thoughts into his hormone ravaged teenage brain.  Thoughts like -"Maybe it's a good idea to chew Billy's female staff's best Turkish rug." or perhaps "I bet Billy's male staff would be delighted if I ate a few pages from his work diary."

Coincidentally it's also my female staff's birthday. For the last thirty years she's been twenty seven, so I expect she'll be twenty seven again this year. Humans are funny like that, they never seem to be satisfied with their real age.  As soon as they're old enough to talk they make the most of whatever age they are. "I'm nearly six." A child who has just turned five a week ago will say." Then when humans reach a certain age (particularly female humans), they start subtracting a few years.  "I'm sort of in my mid-thirties a lady who has just turned fifty will say. Then later in life humans will start adding years again.  Someone who's just had their ninetieth birthday is likely to utter in a shaky voice "I'm nearly ninety five you know." Humans really should be more like guinea pigs, we're just happy to be alive whatever age we are.

Anyway, it's the same every year in my staff's house.  A week before my female staff's birthday my male staff will ask her the age old question. "What would you like for your birthday?"
 "Oh nothing really...........I don't know" My male staff has learned from long experience that those last three words "I don't know" mean that she really does want something and heaven help him if he doesn't buy her anything...........again.  So he spends six days thinking unsuccessfully what to buy her and then on the day before the big day, which for some reason always seems to be a Sunday so that he has a limited choice of shops, mostly hardware stores as it happens. Then he flies into a blind panic, leaps into the Hyundai Getz and races into town to ransack the hardware store in a desperate attempt to find something that my female staff would like.  A chainsaw perhaps, or a bag of horse manure.  One year he bought her a bale of sugar cane mulch and a hacksaw.  I know, I went with him that day and it wasn't pretty.  He stalked up and down the aisles of the shop for hours with me perched on his shoulder, picking up items to inspect and trying to gauge whether or not it would be a suitable birthday gift for my female staff.

From my perch on his shoulder I did what I could to help by biting his ear each time he picked up something inappropriate - which was often. A box of Taiwanese made mosquito coils - BITE.  A set of plastic buckets in different colours and sizes - BITE. A firewood splitter - That earned him a particularly hard BITE as we don't even have an open fire. It even elicited quite a loud yelp much to the alarm of the other customers. Still, it served him right for being so stupid. He also tried his luck with an electrical extension cord - BITE and a tin of varnish - BITE.

His language became more X-rated the longer he took to find something suitable. He muttered and sighed until finally the store manager came up to him to say he was about to close the shop.  My male staff didn't want to get her something that said "Happy Birthday. I want you to do more housework."  That's why he didn't buy her an iron or a vacuum cleaner. So, with the store manager tapping his foot and repeatedly glancing at his watch, my male staff grabbed the mulch and the hacksaw, and despite repeated warning bites from yours truly he made his purchases and was ushered hurriedly from the shop by the relieved manager.

The next thing he had to do was wrap the presents and wrapping presents is not his favourite task and on this occasion he had a large bale of mulch to deal with and an awkwardly shaped hacksaw.  Normally he'd ask my female staff to do the wrapping for him, but even he wasn't silly enough to ask her to wrap her own birthday presents. Though I suppose he could have asked her to wrap them with her eyes closed. She'd still have done a neater job than him anyway.  Of course the problem now was that there were no no shops open at all, certainly nothing that sold wrapping paper.  Fortunately back home in the shed my staff keep an enormous stack of old newspapers to use as an absorbent layer under our bedding. (They always try to find a photo of Tony Abbott to put face up.) A couple of hours and several paragraphs of foul language later my male staff had completed the wrapping process and stood back to admire his handiwork - two tatty great lumps of newspaper held together by three quarters of a mile of masking tape, one the size of a bar fridge and the other.......well the other could have been anything. At least there was no way my female staff was going to guess it contained a hacksaw.
 "Whaddya think Bill?" My male staff asked.  I just deposited a pile of bush chocolate in the middle of the floor and waddled back to my pigloo.  My female staff was delighted with her presents by the way.

BACI'S BALONEY

Dudes, I'm wun today. As soon as I woke up I shouted to Alfie. "Hay Alfie!" I sed. "Gess wat. I'm like wun today."
 "You're like wun wat today?" He shouted back.  He can be a funny ginny pig sumtimes.
I wanted a gerlfrend for my birthday, but I don't think I'm going to get wun.  Billy's male staff sed I should just be thankful that I still have my testostricles and that I should konsidder that my present. I hope that doesn't meen he's going to wrap them up in noospaper.