Burdock

As in:

Poor Mitzy Marler’s morning had gone terribly. She’d spilled chocolate soy milk on her yellow pajamas at waffle time and had just changed into her favorite Saturday go-to-Costco dress, a cute little ivory number with blueberry blue trim, when Roscoe and Joshua arrived at the door in their straw cowboy hats.

To compensate for the sadness of the chocolated pajamas, Mitzy’s mommy, already on her cell phone before 9 o’clock, agreeably gestured to her that it was okay to slip out the back door with these two buckaroos.

“Stay away from the ditch,” she yelled, but with an outward wave of her hand.

Quickly a play gun battle unfolded, with the boys shooting their plastic Winchesters and Mitzy firing back with the nearest weapon at hand, which in this case was a gun-shaped hose nozzle that her father had left on the picnic table in the backyard. The boys retreated toward the ditch and the thicket along its edges and Mitzy followed, shouting her bang-bangs. She avoided falling in the ditch, this time, but returned with at least two dozen big burdock burs firmly attached to the sleeves and hem of her dress.

So now it was a really sorry morning and her mom, finally off the phone, decided that a trip to the zoo was in order, to meet the animals, including the new Sun Bear from Malaysia and a three week old giraffe. Roscoe and Joshua came along, still in buckaroo guise, and waved their hats at the elephants. A warm, misty rain had started to fall when they reached the Plains of Africa island. They’d only just noticed the young male coming over the hill to the edge of the moat when the lion cut loose an astounding roar that scared the beejeezus and almost everything else out of Mitzy, both terrifying her and, in a completely understandable way, adding further insult to the best dress.

It was all her mom and the buckaroos could do to keep pace with her back to the car. There, she sat atop an old towel in the back seat, sobbing quietly while Roscoe and Joshua talked about the sizes of the bullets they would use if the lion tried to follow them home.

“Mitzy,” how you doing darling?” her mom asked, as they came to the first stoplight past the zoo.

Mitzy sniffled twice.

“Bad kitty,” is all she could say. “Bad kitty.”