FLEAS!!

Hi! My name is Willy Ann and I live on a Diary farm in Colleyville Texas. I live with my mom and Dad, Minnie and Bobby Lee.

If you've ever been on a Dairy Farm, the first thing you will notice is the cows and the smell! Pee-ew!

Then you see all the barns and outbuildings.

My favorite place to be on the dairy when I'm not in the milking barn with my dad, is the pole barn.

A pole barn is just that, poles with a roof, no walls. We stack the bales of hay in here when we bring it in from the fields.

Another thing about a dairy, is the cats. Wild cats. You can't pet them like an old lazy house cat, they don't like people, but they love milk.

We have nine barn cats. They always know when it's time to milk, because they magically appear in the barn. I think it's funny when my dad squeezes the cows teat and shoots the milk at them. Some of them catch it in their mouth! Others just lick it up from the floor.

They will have milk all over them, in their whiskers, in their fur. Then they lick their paws and wash their face, getting every drop. When my dad shoots it at me, it usually goes in my eye!

When they aren’t in the milking barn, they like to lay in the sun in front of the pole barn.

I like to lay in the pole barn, on the very top of the bales of hay. Especially when it rains!

The pole barn has a metal roof on it and the rain pitter patters really loud when it hits. But in a storm, it sounds like a big drum it hits so hard!

I have an old blanket that I hang up in the pole barn. I use it so the hay doesn’t scratch me up and poke me in my back when I lay down.

One day, I was out in the pasture with my Uncle Elmer. He was fixing the fence and I was helping. I was holding the big U nails he was using to hammer the wire to the post.

Not only was he a dairyman and a fixer, he was a weatherman. Yep, that’s right, he was a weatherman. He could tell you the weather was coming, and it would come!

“The corn on my left big toe sure is painin’ me today. You know what that means don’t ya?”

I have to stop and think about that one. He has a weather for each toe.

“Well, I know it ain’t snow cause it’s Summer.”

“Bright girl ain't ya?” he snorts. He always snorts, that’s his laugh.

“Is it a Tornado?”

“Nah, try agin.” He snorts again, and looks to the sky.

I look up too.

Some big black clouds. I watch real close.

“I gotta go Unc!” I take off running, hollering for mama before I even get close to the house.

“What are you hollering about child?” she yells from the porch when I climb through the fence.

I have to take a minute to catch my breath before I can tell her.

“Can I sleep in the pole barn tonight? Please mama? It’s gonna be a good one. Please mama?”

Mama looked up at the sky and clicked her tongue.

“You ain’t goin’ nowhere until after supper. Get in there and get cleaned up.”

“Yes mam!”

I know how mama works. She will give me a hard talking to and say yes.

I’m eating like an eating machine when my dad slaps the table.

“Slow down girl, you eating like them old hogs out there!”

“But daddy, it’s gonna rain!”

“Oh for heaven’s sake girl, you ain’t gonna miss anything, now slow down!”

“Yes sir.” and I do.

“Can I go now?”

“After you clear the table, you know that’s your job,” Mama tries to be mean.

“Yes mam.”

When the table is clear, I run to the door and look out to watch the clouds, they’re almost here.

“Can I go now?”

“Is your room clean?”

“But mama!”

She gives me that mean look.

I have never cleaned my room so fast.

“Can I go now?”

Mama goes to the door and looks out at the clouds.

“Now Willy Ann, I know how you are. You better leave those nasty old cats alone, they will give you fleas.”

“Mama, I can’t get fleas, I’m a person, only animals get fleas.”

“You better not come home with fleas or I’ll give you a flea bath.”

“Mama.”

“Go on, But if it gets bad, your daddy will come get you. You hear me?”

I’m already running through the field as fast as I can.

A loud clap of thunder rumbles just as I hit the pole barn and I jump. I climb up the bales and grab my old blanket and spread it out just as the rain hits.

I lay on my back with my hands behind my head and close my eyes and listen.

It starts out slow, pit pit pat pat.

I smell the dirt getting wet, the smell of the hay, the cow poop. It starts raining harder and gets louder. The louder it gets I get sleepy.

When I wake up in the morning, I feel something heavy all over me and I need to itch. I open my eyes. I got cats all over me!

But I need to itch! Really bad! I try not to scare them, but as soon as I move they all jump up scared. They take off like greased lightning, yowling like crazy.

I start scratching all over me. The sun is up and I hear the cows mooing in the fields. I yawn, stretch and pick up my old blanket and hang it up.

I scratch all the way home.

Mama is sitting on the porch peeling potatoes for breakfast when I climb through the fence. I’m still scratching.

“Willy Ann. You mess with those cats?”

“No mam.”

“Then why are you scratching?”

“I itch.”

“Come here,” Mama crooks her finger at me.

She looks at my arms and face, then she looks in my hair.

“You got fleas.”

“No I don’t mama, I can’t get fleas!”

She pulls something out of my hair.

“I guess that’s an elephant then.”

My eyes almost pop out of my head.

FLEAS!!

Yep, I had fleas. And when you get fleas, your mama won’t let you in the house. She makes you take all your clothes off right outside and scrubs you down in some nasty, stinky soap in a big wash tub.