Content Warning: Animal Abuse

I love my dogs. I have two dogs that I frequently take out for walks. Both are rescues and have gone through way more s*** than I have.

I decide to take Josephine (the oldest) out for a walk since Millie (the youngest) is fast asleep. We take the route we usually take when we go out for walks, and I notice that there is a new donut shop that just opened. The donuts look nice and delicious, so I decide to grab some. The only problem is that dogs aren’t allowed to go inside, but the owners have been nice enough to leave a spot outside for dogs with a bowl full of water and everything.

I chain Josephine outside. I am inside for around five minutes since there are a few people already there. I’m in line browsing on my phone when I hear my dog scream.

I look up and see this lady smacking my dog with her umbrella at full force numerous times. I quickly rush outside.

Me: “What the f*** are you doing, lady?!”

I pull Josephine away, but the lady keeps trying to smack her; she even hits me in the leg a couple of times.

I kid you not, these are the exact words that come out of this lady’s mouth.

Lady: “Your dog scratched my car!”

She gestures to her car, which is across the street, far away from Josephine. Then, she goes on this rant.

Lady: “You let your dog wander outside without a leash, and I had to it up after it scratched my car!”

I am legitimately confused because I definitely chained my dog before I went into the shop.

I immediately call the cops. The cops arrive while the woman is still ranting and screaming that I’ll have to pay for her car with my insurance. I’m fifteen, and I don’t know anything about insurance.

The cops intervene and try to defuse the situation. The lady then decides to play the victim.

Lady: “That dog viciously attacked me!”

Me: “My dog did snap at her because she was getting hit with an umbrella by a person she doesn’t know!”

The cops pulled her to the side and let her tell HER side of the story. I heard stuff about how my dog had scratched her car and attacked her and how she had “bravely” chained my dog.

Then the cops pulled me to the side and I got to tell my side of the story.

Guess who the cops believed?

While I was tending to my dog and checking for any wounds, I saw the cops handcuff the lady and forcefully shove her into their car because she was resisting arrest. She then threatened to sue me for harassment while screaming profanities.

No one sued me. My dog and I were fine, but she was whimpering all throughout that situation. She was definitely traumatized, but she’s doing well now.

I considered suing the lady for animal abuse, but then I found out that she was already in jail for insurance fraud and assault. I dont know about the insurance fraud part, but she apparently tried to push her coworker out of a window?

Anyway, I didn’t continue with the charges because she’s serving five years in jail now.

I was walking down the street when I saw a wallet fall out of the pocket of the man walking in front of me.

Me: “Sir? Sir!”

He didn’t turn to look, just kept walking, so I hurried forward, scooped up the wallet, and followed.

Me: “Sir. You dropped your wallet!”

It took me repeating that a second time for him to finally look back and see me holding out his wallet to him.

He scowled as he snatched the wallet out of my hands.

Man: “Why do you have that? Are you trying to steal from me?”

I was kind of shocked by the nasty attitude.

Me: “If I was trying to steal it, I wouldn’t have called out to you or been handing it to you.”

He turned around and got in my face — or tried, given that the top of his head barely cleared my chin.

Man: “You think I’m stupid, huh?”

Me: “I don’t see anything to disprove that theory.”

He stood there for a moment with his face screwed up, like he wasn’t quite sure what I’d just said, before giving a last sneer and turning around and stomping off.

The last I saw of him was him trying to step into the road at the crosswalk when the signal was red and getting honked at, forcing him to scurry back onto the sidewalk.

I grew up in California, and we have a species of Condor called… wait for it… the California Condor! I was and still am an animal lover. In elementary school, I would read books about all kinds of snakes, lizards, vultures, and condors — basically, creatures that most little girls wanted nothing to do with. (To be fair, once I learned how spiders “ate” and then about “spider wasps”, I kind of noped the hell out of the insect/arachnid kingdoms.)

As a little girl with eclectic tastes, I spent my childhood perking up with a lot of interest upon hearing about how the California Condors had gone extinct in the wild and how conservationists were reintroducing them from captivity breeding programs. By the time I hit high school, I was ecstatic when condors began wheeling and circling in the skies around my hometown. For some odd reason, they really seemed to like our imported-long-ago eucalyptus trees.

Enter [Girl]. [Girl] went to the same school as I did, and we ended up butting heads off and on throughout my childhood. Now, for whatever reason, [Girl] believed that it was her life’s goal to out-knowledge the local animal lover. Unfortunately, [Girl]’s life’s goal coincided with absolute conviction that she was right about so very many — VERY, VERY many — wrong things.

Snakes are slimy — regardless of what the books say. All snakes are poisonous. There is no such thing as venom; that’s the incorrect and out-of-date term for poison. Constrictors are poisonous, too. Frogs and toads can give you warts — because the human papillomavirus (HPV) can be contracted from amphibians. Cows are animals, NOT mammals — because the two are mutually exclusive. Ants are NOT animals; they are insects — again, mutually exclusive.

And the crux of our story: the giant birds circling over our town were red-tailed hawks. As I watched our condor population soar (pun intended) from six to twenty-plus individuals over the years, [Girl] and I had several verbal altercations over the identity of our birds. This sums them all up.

Girl: “Oh, the hawks are back!”

Me: *Looking up* “Nope. Those are condors.”

Girl: “No, they’re hawks! Want to know how to tell the difference? The shape of their wings. The wing shape of those birds says they’re red-tailed hawks.”

Note: these birds were circling and coming down to land on our eucalyptus trees at a height of about three stories up in the air. They would land awkwardly, flaring their huge wings until they got their balance. Even from this distance, you could see that their heads were naked of feathers.

Me: “[Girl], these birds don’t have feathers on their heads. Their tails aren’t red. And their wingspan is huge.”

A condor’s wingspan is about 9.5 feet. A red-tailed hawk’s is 4.8 feet at most, y’all.

Girl: “Nope. You’re wrong. You just can’t see the red of their tails from below. This is one thing I know more about than you.”

Me: “No… No, you don’t, [Girl].”

Girl: “Yes, I do. The shape of their wings says hawk, so you’re wrong.”

She turned her back and walked away the instant I held a science book about animals anywhere near her. She wouldn’t even acknowledge anything that could possibly prove her wrong. On the plus side, this provided me with a very “cross versus vampires” way to make [Girl] shove off during my school years.

Twenty-two years later, [Girl] is a staunch anti-vaxxer. She found me after a twenty-year gap and spent far too much of the next two years yelling at me on social media to wake up, do my research, and stop injecting my body with autism before I blocked her. Yes, vaccines don’t GIVE you autism; the injections ARE autism. I just can’t even anymore.

We have a little creek behind our house. It’s a nice peaceful spot to unwind most days. Today, my boys, being the avid outdoorsmen that they are, decided to go catch some crawdads and swing on some vines like typical little boys. After I got done mowing some grass, I had to fix my wife’s heat-press, and after MacGyvering the s*** out of it, I felt I deserved a break.

After about three minutes of peace, [Ten-Year-Old] came in all flabbergasted and being his usual diva self.

Ten-Year-Old: “There’s a snake at the creek! It almost bit me! Get a gun!”

Blah, blah, the usual. I kind of blew it off and continued with my lackadaisical afternoon. After a few minutes, my wife gently “encouraged” me to go check on them. Off I went.

I begrudgingly sauntered off to the creek. Upon my arrival, I was witness to quite a sight.

[Ten-Year-Old], my eldest born, the leader of the pack, the standard for my other boys, was ankle-deep in the water, frantically waving a cattleprod taser thing — I’m not entirely sure where he found it — taunting this phantom snake to bring it on.

While I was simultaneously in awe of his fearlessness and dumbfounded about how he had survived as long as he had, I can only assume the snake went full-on “Don’t tase me, bro,” and noped the h*** out of there. I seriously don’t blame the snake; [Ten-Year-Old] was about to take them both out.

I face-palmed but immediately explained the intricacies of electricity and water to my son. He nodded and then ran off to go poop in the woods or whatever [Ten-Year-Old]s do.

[Four-Year-Old], my smartest child, looks at me and says:

Four-Year-Old: “[Ten-Year-Old]’s not very smart.”

And then he proceeded to yeet a rock straight into [Two-Year-Old]’s forehead.

If the children are our future, mine are not going to be very productive. Sorry, everyone else.

I am a patrol police officer. I am with my partner patrolling a busy party street on Halloween, so it’s pretty crazy. So far, despite a couple of people drinking way too much, most people have been in a good mood and wearing amazing costumes, but we’re always on the lookout for things to get ugly.

A drunk and loud Marge Simpson comes running up to us.

Marge Simpson: “Help! I’ve been mugged!”

Me: “Are you injured, ma’am?”

Marge Simpson: “No! But I’ve been mugged! Follow me!”

She frantically runs down the road, and we quickly follow. She approaches the outside of a bar, where a bunch of people are smoking.

Marge Simpson: “There! They stole my bag!”

She is pointing to a literal group of pirates.

Me: “Which one, ma’am?”

Marge Simpson: “Jack Sparrow!”

There are about four reasonable impersonations of Jack Sparrow among the group, but thankfully, one of them walks up to us.

Jack Sparrow: “We told you, lady, we don’t have your d*** bag! Someone else must have taken it!”

Me: “What does your bag look like, ma’am?”

Marge Simpson: “It’s an expensive blue leather bag! It’s Gucci! Gucci!“

Just then, Jack Sparrow and I see the same thing at the same time and lock eyes.

Jack Sparrow: “Your bag is in your hair, you stupid woman!”

Marge Simpson: “What?!”

Me: “There is a bag fitting your description… uh… currently positioned securely inside your wig.”

She reaches above her head and grabs the bag, and her eyes widen with shock. She then turns around and starts screeching at a group of costumed women.

Marge Simpson: “Which one of you b****es put my bag in my hair?!”

She storms off and I am left standing there with Jack Sparrow.

Me: “Has she been bothering you tonight?”

Jack Sparrow: “A little, nothing too bad. She just saw a bunch of pirates and assumed.”

Me: “Well… you take care, then.”

Jack Sparrow: “This is the day you will always remember as the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow.”

Gotta love Halloween!