Our Volunteer Buddy Isn’t an Axe Murderer, But She Does Slaughter Wild Pigs and Eat Them

[FrankenFish goes camping: A heart-warming tale of breakfast booze, zombie cows, and drunken axe murderers.]

When we last left off, I was about to travel into the wilderness with Culture, Blonde Beyonce, and an older woman we barely knew who could potentially want to chop our bodies into little pieces and bury them on a remote ranch north of Santa Barbara.

Well, that didn’t happen, even though all the conditions were just right for that sort of thing.

There were definitely a few moments when fireworks started going off in my skull, like, Warning, warning, you are about TO GET YOUR ASS MURDERED, but surprisingly, nothing ever came of it. And it wasn’t like we had any means of escape. Despite how great my amazingly well thought out plan about using my car as a sailboat was, that shit never would have worked.

See, this is what I thought our situation was:

But this is what it really was:

Before we left on this little adventure, our Volunteer Buddy was all like, Do you have a four-wheel drive car? and we were like, Ummm, no? She cackled and said, This should be interesting!

You guys, no lie, I am writing a fucking letter to the Mercedes-Benz Corporation expressing my everlasting gratitude and newfound brand loyalty that will last for the rest of my sad little life. MY CAR IS IMMORTAL. I have put it to the ultimate test, and it has survived. I should get paid for providing Mercedes with their next car commercial.

It is important to note that my Mercedes-Benz 190E Sport Line is 18 years old and has more than 200,000 miles on it. Yet, for some reason, it seemed like a really good idea to drive it up a mountain with NO ROADS. I have never screamed so loud while driving. I prayed for the duration of every fifty foot, forty-five degree angle dirt climb of that journey. And when I thought I had made it to the top, our Volunteer Buddy points at a terrifying grassy knoll that is basically vertical, and tells us to back up and take a good run at it.

Spoiler alert: We didn’t make it.

[It is necessary to watch this video with the sound on because the important part is listening to us scream - and hearing me say, "Guys, let's never show this video to my mother." This video is proof that you should always listen to your mother.]

When it became obvious that we would never make it up the hill, we were forced to abandon my loyal vehicle in the middle of a field and climb into the car of our potential murderer. As I waved goodbye to my only means of escape, I discovered that the “road” we would have driven down – had I made it over the grassy knoll – would have been impossible to navigate. I would have had to leave my car in the valley, never to be seen again!

Once we were a million miles away from cell phone service and society with a woman who had apparently adopted an injured wild pig, raised it, and then shot it in the head and eaten it (this is a true story, people), we pitched our tent. There seemed to be an awfully large amount of cow poop scattered around (in fact, as we discovered later, we pitched our tent right on top of a huge cow pie). This should have been a warning sign. Sadly, at the time, we were too busy suppressing our intuition to notice that huge amounts of cow shit usually signify a large amount of cows.

We left our sad little camp and took a hair-raising, four-wheel drive journey to the beach to explore and eventually cook dinner. However, a full on sandstorm was underway and everybody (even the ladybugs) were hiding.

[I swallowed about a pound of sand while this photo was being taken.]

[In a survival-of-the-fittest situation, the ladybug on the left will survive due to its amazing shelter-seeking abilities. The one on the right? Well, it's about to be killed by a wind storm. I think this post demonstrates that I am more like the bug that is going to die.]

Cooking dinner in those wind conditions was completely impossible – we realized very quickly that we would have to drive to a small town called Buellton a few miles up the road to eat.

The worse part was that we were all covered in sand and dressed like hobos when we walked into what appeared to be a cheesy steakhouse off the freeway. Sadly, The Hitching Post (yes, that is the name of the restaurant) was completely full of swanky rich bitches from Santa Barbara who were busy vacationing in their mansions on Hollister Ranch. Our Volunteer Buddy took one look and ordered herself two huge margaritas. It was suddenly as if Culture, Blonde Beyonce and I had acquired a crazy alcoholic aunt. The kind that harass all the waitresses and hit on all the cowboys. And order way more food than we could ever possibly eat.

A plate of mussels, a huge stuffed chile, soup, salad, a baked potato and a steak later, our Volunteer Buddy is drunk as hell and ready to go back to camp.

And because I’m the loser with all the large vehicle driving experience (I blame this on The Boyfriend and his sixteen-passenger van) I get behind the wheel of our Volunteer Buddy’s blue SUV and take off towards the pitch-black roads of the ranch.

At this juncture in the narrative we begin to realize we are in way over our heads.

After we get deep inside the ranch (after much panicked steering around sharp corners and cliff-edges) I turn over the car to our drunken Volunteer Buddy. Why? Well, I calculated our survival rate. And, after thinking about it, it was much more likely that we would survive the descent down the mountain into the valley if a drunken – yet experienced – driver was behind the wheel instead of me.

Bad plan.

Volunteer Buddy interpreted our screams as she swerved merrily around corners as an invitation to tell us stories about how the authorities were going to find the car empty at the bottom of a ravine with no trace of our bodies.

I couldn’t even make this shit up.

Blonde Beyonce grabbed my shoulder from the back seat in fear and whispered my name repeatedly in a panicked What-The-Fuck sort of tone. We were laughing hysterically - only Volunteer Buddy didn’t know it was because we were in a hysteria brought on by the absurd way in which our lives were destined to end.

We were basically shitting our pants when we reached the peak of the mountain. How would she kill us? Would we even make it down this valley without crashing? WAS THIS THE WORST JOINT DECISION WE HAD EVER MADE?!

The SUV lurched down the slopes of the valley as we yelled, and shrieked, and laughed. About halfway down, Volunteer Buddy changes subjects abruptly from death and murder to cows. She wonders aloud, What if the cows are in our camp?

OH MY HOLY SHIT STOP THE CAR WE ARE ABOUT TO BE MURDERED BY ZOMBIE COWS.

The headlights wash over at least a hundred cows only feet away from our car. They have completely obliterated our camp. Our tent is nowhere to be seen. The only thing visible on this completely ink-black night is a mass of swarming cattle, their eyes glowing evilly in the glare of our headlights.

We abandon the last remnants of our self-control.

The whole car explodes into sobbing, wet, blubbery laughter. Tears are running down my face and I can no longer breathe. This is it, I think, They will find my body two months from now, crushed instead the shell of a SUV trampled by cattle.

Our Volunteer Buddy takes in our reaction and smiles. She wails triumphantly, “You guys are THE BEST!”

She then proceeds to save our lives by driving into the massive herd of cattle with her car and frightening them away from our camp.

It’s like a war zone. Our tent is flattened, and the ground has become a minefield of cow pies.

We re-pitch our tent to the best of our abilities and crawl inside, still shocked and shaken by the night’s events. We pass out immediately, and I am plagued by nightmares of cows sticking their heads into our tent.

The sun rises, and we face the day knowing we are not going to be murdered.

We celebrate by busting open bottles of alcoholic cider at 10 AM and driving with gusto down the mountain, open containers in hand (yes, in my poor Mercedes). We visit the wind caves and the horses and cows (which are not nearly as scary in daylight) and frolic in the fields like jack rabbits on meth.

As for our Volunteer Buddy, well, the jury is still out on whether or not she is a serial killer...

...but if the fortune cookie I ate today has anything to say about it, our Volunteer Buddy is probably not a cold blooded murderer.

But fortune cookies aren't really the most reliable source of information. Hence, my next vehicle will be equipped with four-wheel drive.

You can never be too careful.

I Don’t Even Know What I Want From Life Anymore, Except for Dogs to Stop Peeing on My Face and - Oh Yeah - a Real Job

Ahhh, Monday. A fresh new week to conquer. I smiled, stretched out my arms, and then, like a gruesome and swift omen from God, a dog pissed on my head.

Not a joke.

Okay, well, actually my roommate's puppy missed my face with his stream of urine by about two inches. And therefore urinated on my pillow. I should have heeded the warning, but instead I got up and readied myself for work. And threw my wet, smelly pillowcase in the sink.

[God did not want me to even attempt getting through this Monday unscathed, obviously.]

As I got in my car, I was still smiling. The world was sunny and peaceful – that is, until, a completely inexplicable power outage struck just as I was about to pull into an intersection. The red lights flashed, and then died. It was my turn for a green, so I started to drive – albeit slowly – like the other cars in my lane. But the power was back on as swiftly as it had gone out, and, apparently, God thought the traffic moving in the opposite direction should have a green.

I only barely made it out of that one alive.

When I finally made it to work, Blonde Beyonce gave me the news that the Big Boss was trying to sabotage the event we had been working on for weeks – and, it was very possible that we would have to call up the volunteers we had already informed of honoree status, and tell them they were no longer being honored. Because Big Boss didn’t think they were worthy. Even though we had gone through all the other directors to make our decisions. And the event is less than a week away.

Ah, hell no.

This is all on top of our impending homeless situation – one of the roomies is fighting an epic battle with the economy and is unfortunately losing. But we can’t get out of our lease anyway, so it’s kind of like being trapped in a sinking ship full of Ikea furniture.

Also, my Americorps service ends in July, and there is not one job in all of Los Angeles that is not a soul sucking fuckhole with 300 other applicants.

Hello? Life? This is not how our relationship is supposed to be! I’m supposed to be fabulous. I’m supposed to be spending my second decade of life vacationing on the beaches of remote islands, counting my butt loads of cash. And having sex with super models. And rocking four inch $600 heels on the deck of a yacht.

I’m totally going to break up with you, life.

Oh. Wait.

If I keep running with this analogy, I’m going to have to commit suicide, huh?

Scratch that.

I’m just going to get drunk and practice archery in an illegal location, like the beach at midnight. (That’s fucking awesome, right?!)

Luckily I have coworkers who don’t question my sanity – they just assume I’m preparing for the zombie apocalypse.

Beaver Attacks, Severed Animal Paws, and Other Reasons I'm Convinced I Have Rabies

So I legitimately almost died from fear last night. We were searching for beavers in the dark, and found about six million of them. In the lake. Where they belonged.

But then the bushes started rustling on the opposite side of the walkway from the lake. And, obviously, my brother, cousins, mother, aunt, and myself all started screaming and swinging the flashlights around like crazy people. But, as it turned out, our portion of the walkway was right over a beaver trail.

The beaver in question was harvesting branches from the other side of the walkway, and then dragging them through his tunnel down to the waterfront.

Whew. Mystery solved.

There are an exceptionally large number of beavers in Coppell, Texas. Today, on a nature walk through “the jungle,” we hit the beaver dam mother load.

I’m fairly certain this is where the mutant three hundred pound beavers live. So I stayed the fuck away from there.

However, my hesitation did not stop my intrepid young cousins from venturing into mutant beaver territory. This is not surprising, considering my youngest cousin brought home this in his pocket today:

Unfortunately, I thought that thing was a piece of plant matter, and I tried to demonstrate to my cousin that it wasn’t a squirrel tail (as he suspected). I picked it up off the ground and discovered that the “plant,” though flat, most definitely had distinctive toes and claws. OH MY GAWD.

Dear friends, if I start foaming at the mouth at your next house party, please assume I have rabies and shoot me. Old Yeller style. Even though, honestly, I’m pretty sure you can’t catch rabies from dead animal parts. But you can probably catch other things, which is why I almost burned off my own hands with hand sanitizer and soap. And also why I don’t think you should hug or hold the hands of any males under the age of 13, because they are probably covered in disease from the dead animal paws they carry around in their pockets. Or maybe that’s only my cousin.

The rest of our adventures where fairly mellow…

[This is the Texas state flower, the blue bonnet.]

[Little cousin is scary good at finding body parts of dead animals. It's bordering on obsession, and I'm getting concerned.]

[My brother is king of the mother fucking forest, yo.]

…and my family fully embraced the idea of a dead piranha tagging along.

Also, I’m sure a lot of you have heard stories of my very peculiar eleven year old cousin. So, just to prove that I’m not one to over exaggerate (well, at least not all the time) here is video proof of the insanity:

The Back of Your Head from Brittany Swanson on Vimeo.

Have an excellent weekend, dear readers.

I Am Becoming Terrifyingly Good at Sleeping Through Zombie Murder and I Think This Means I Have to Quit My Job

It is a very rare thing that I get enough sleep. Although, to be fair, I don’t think there is any amount of sleep that would get me through an entire work day without wanting to pass out on my keyboard. But that’s because sitting in a windowless room with only a screen to look at for nine hours is bound to make you groggy.

So really, I just try to get enough sleep so that I will be able to get out of bed in the morning. You see, what happens once I actually get to work is not important. But, sadly, The Boyfriend does not understand my schedule, and thinks I should be able to wander into the office anytime I want. Which is why I had to develop some fucking hardcore sleeping abilities.

The Boyfriend has his own business, which means he gets to wake up whenever he pleases – and go to bed at dawn if he so chooses. I, on the other hand, have to be sitting behind a desk at 8:30 a.m. And because he is my boyfriend, he regularly wants me to spend the night (or so I would hope. Otherwise I’ve just been inviting myself over on a regular basis for two years).

Nine times out of ten, this means I have to A) beg him to go to bed at a decent hour, or B) pass out to the sounds of a zombie apocalypse.

The latter has become the norm.

The Boyfriend and his roomie are completely obsessed with Left for Dead – in fact, they are so obsessed and speak of it so frequently, they don’t even say the full title anymore. Nope. They just scream, “LFD!” at each other from across the house. And then run into The Boyfriend’s bedroom. And turn on the Xbox.

If the Xbox weren’t in The Boyfriend’s bedroom, things would be a lot easier. Except it is in his bedroom. And The Boyfriend makes ridiculous kitten noises and sad faces (gross, I know) when I try to leave and go back to the apartment I pay rent to live in to get a goodnight’s sleep. So because I am a complete and total sap, I sit in bed and watch The Boyfriend and his roomie (and sometimes an additional two or three dudes) murder zombies with hatchets and shotguns.

Until four in the morning.

Now, you might be like, Brittany, why the fuck don’t you bitch slap the undead with flamethrowers too?

Well, my friends – I suck at Left for Dead. I suck so bad that The Boyfriend has to yell directions at me the whole time, because I’m too busy trying to figure out how not to accidently look at the sky every three seconds. I get hopelessly lost. I’m old school – I like Sega Genesis. Mostly because in those games, there was only one logical direction to move in. And you didn’t have to look up, down, behind you, and in front of you to make sure you didn’t get eaten. Nope, in the Sega Genesis days, all your enemies were visible. Those kinds of games relax me. Left for Dead makes me dizzy (my own fault, because I can’t use the controls properly) and frustrated. I usually just charge into a flock of zombies, shoot as many as I can, and hope to die.

But, sadly, that doesn’t really work – because, for some reason, your teammates can revive you about twenty freaking million times before the game is actually over.

Yes, Left for Dead even makes suicide difficult. Fuck. That.

So, recently, I discovered that I can pass out cold with several people yelling and cussing and shooting zombies in the room. I’m not sure if this is a good thing. Because if the zombie apocalypse for serious fucking went down, I’ll be dead instantly. Because, hell, my subconscious would think everybody was still using the fucking Xbox, but there’d be REAL FUCKING ZOMBIES and unfortunately The Boyfriend does not have any real incendiary ammo or axes in his house. Which makes me wonder, what is all this Left for Dead game play really mean when we are woefully unprepared for the real fucking zombie apocalypse?!!

So while my new sleeping-through-zombie-warfare talents allow me the ability to get up for work, they may ultimately cause my death. And well, I hate my job. But I kind of like being alive because booze, sex, piranhas, and international travel are really bad ass.

So what conclusions can we draw from this?

Well, fucking DUH people.

It’s time for me to quit my job! I’m going to be much too busy learning how to REALLY kill the undead (take that, Xbox people) and when the earth is populated by zombies, I will survive.

And that money I would have had if I had remained employed would be completely useless anyway.

So there.

Dear boss - please consider this my two weeks notice.