I’ve got a laundry basket on my hip, preparing to go out the back door to the clothesline. My cats are milling about my feet. I finally get the door open and suddenly a blur of fur darts INSIDE my house and races off into the kitchen. My cats proceed to lose their minds.

I close the door, put the basket down, and follow my cats, who now have something baled up behind the fridge and are hissing and yowling at me to make it go away. I look behind the fridge and see a small ball of fur. We have a lot of strays in our area, so I assume it is one of the kittens I have seen running through the yard.

I try the tested and true kissy noises, which only seems to get my cats to headbutt me and purr. I click my fingers, and the ball of fur continues to quiver and stays jammed behind the fridge.

After about fifteen minutes of this, I decide to pray to the cat gods and reach back there to grab it. I shove my arm behind the fridge, grab the furball, pull it back out, and realise I am holding a small, very ANGRY ferret by its butt. I manage to get a grip on its scruff and hold it, dumbfounded, while it squirms and tries to get away. My cats have realised how long the furball is and have performed tactical retreats. How brave.

While I stare at this ferret and wonder what the heck I’m meant to do next, I hear a knock on my door. I gingerly carry the increasingly angry ferret with me to the door and open it to find a neighbor from up the street and his clearly distraught daughter who is around eight.

Neighbor: “Sorry, love, I was wondering if it would be okay if we went in your backyard to look for my daughter’s ferret? She’s gotten out of her cage somehow and we’ve been looking for hours.” 

I pull my right arm out from behind the door, revealing the squirming fur-tube I am currently holding.

Me: “Is this her?”

Little Girl: “PEACHES!”

As soon as I handed the creature back, it was entirely calm, laying in this little girl’s arms like a baby and wriggling happily. I told them what had happened and the dad laughed, saying the ferret scared the h*** out of his cat, too. I even got to pet the little fuzzbutt now that it was happy and back with its small human. 

The dad marveled that none of the neighborhood dogs had gotten to it and said it was lucky I only had scaredy-cats. When I started laughing, he seemed confused until I whistled. From around the side of my house, my 70-kg pitbull/lab mix stuck his head out, saw the ferret in the girl’s arms, and whined, refusing to come any closer.

At least the cats had given chase; my giant “vicious guard dog” hadn’t even barked!

My sister and I have gone horseback riding and have just returned back to the stables. My sister is in front of me and I start to notice that her saddle is sliding.

Me: “Excuse me! Her saddle is sliding!”

The instructors quickly notice and begin to shout directions at my sister.

Instructors: “Lean left! Try and counteract the saddle going right! Lean to your left!”

Despite the fact that my sister is over the age of twenty, she still struggles with her left and right; she leans to the right, causing her to fall into a giant pile of horse poop. However, she has not let go of the reins, trying to remain upright.

Instructors: “Let go of the reins immediately!”

The horse has become spooked and I can tell the instructors are worried about the horse striking my sister. My sister, however, has other worries.

Sister: “But I don’t want to go further into the poop.”

Instructors: “LET GO!”

Thankfully, my sister wasn’t hurt, but she was an absolute stinky mess. They refunded us for our ride and we could tell that they were panicking about us suing them. We are not that type of family, however, and accepted the refund. The only problem was that our parents were late picking us up, so we had to walk a bit back to our campground with her covered in s***. Once they finally came, she was forced to ride in the trunk and throw away her clothes.

I fumble a coin in my kitchen and it rolls under the stove. Shining my flashlight under the stove to find it, I’m mortified to see the body of a mouse, staring glassy-eyed back at me. I call a pest control company and the exterminator arrives the next morning.

Exterminator: “’ll just check under your stove, get rid of the dead rodent, and check for signs of any current infestation.”

The exterminator looks under the stove.

Me: “Thank you. I try to keep things clean, and I worry about my little boy crawling around on the floor when there’s—”

Exterminator: “Sir?”

I’m surprised at being interrupted.

Me: “Yes?”

Exterminator: “Here’s your mouse.”

He holds up a little cat toy — a cloth mouse, complete with shiny little plastic eyes.

Me: “How much do I owe you for the trip? And how much extra to never, ever, speak of this again?”

My grandma was recently hospitalized, so when our local grocery has her favorite soda on sale, my uncle makes a special, hilariously huge order of three dozen bottles to surprise her, and I go to pick it up.

I manage to score a close spot that is perfect for getting the large order, right next to a small, beat-up pickup truck that is covered in highly-charged propaganda and political stickers. I can see a couple of people and some dogs in the cab of the truck, but I think nothing of either the dogs or the stickers. That’s unfortunately common where I live, and worth nothing more than a mental eye-roll. It’s important to note that I generally avoid public confrontation if at all possible.  

I step out of my vehicle already wearing a mask, and before I can shut my car door, a large, scary dog in the truck leaps halfway out of the truck window, snarling and attempting to bite me!

I am so startled that I yell quite loudly.

Me: “WHAT THE ACTUAL F***?! HOLY JESUS CHRIST!” 

Apparently, my compliance with the store’s (unenforced) mask mandate is a gigantic problem for the jerk in the passenger seat, too. He shouts back.

Passenger: “Shouldn’t have been wearing that g**d*** mask, ya stupid b****!” 

My sassmouth responds without hesitation.

Me: “What the f*** does that have to do with your psychotic dog trying to bite me, you ignorant f***?! I literally got out of my car and that’s all. Maybe if you didn’t have a vicious-a** dog in a public place trying to bite people, this wouldn’t have happened! F*** off, dumba**!”

He clearly did not like a woman standing up to him. He started screaming that I should never speak to a man like that, I was nothing but a stupid, uppity b****, etc. I didn’t even bother turning back around; I just threw my middle finger up and kept walking as he continued shouting. 

I was shaking by the time I got into the store; it was so out of character for me. But it felt really, REALLY good to finally stand up to one of these jerks who thinks that masks are useless and that women should know their place!

This story is part of our Best Of October 2020 roundup!

Read the next story in the Best Of October 2020 roundup!

Read the Best Of October 2020 roundup!

I’m a substitute school bus driver. While most students behave well on the bus, there are a few who have some trouble.

One day, I have a thirteen-year-old student yelling and being disruptive. After a few warnings to keep conversations quieter, I pull the bus over onto the shoulder and walk back to him.

Me: “It’s getting awfully loud back here; I need you to come and sit closer to me. You can make sure I’m following the route correctly.”

Usually, giving disruptive students a “job” helps them behave better.

Student: “Okay, fine.”

He follows me to a seat near the front, but instead of having fun telling a grown-up what to do like most other students, he continues to annoy the other students around him. I decide to try distracting him.

Me: “[Student], do you know what the loudest animal in the world is?”

Student: “No, I give up.”

Me: “Blue whale. Do you know how long it takes light to travel from the sun to Earth?”

Student: “No, but do you know what a Deinonychus is?”

Me: “That’s my favorite dinosaur — a dromaeosaur discovered in the 1960s by John Ostrom that revolutionized the way we view dinosaurs as active, warm-blooded animals. I know what it is, yes. And it takes almost eight and a half minutes for sunlight to reach Earth.”

Student: “Um… What about Stygimoloch?”

Me: “A Cretaceous ornithopod that’s recently been thought to be a juvenile form of Pachycephalosaurus rather than a distinct species.”

[Student] is no longer disruptive, just curious.

Student: “How did you know that?”

Me: *Friendly tone* “I’m wearing Triceratops earrings and a Tyrannosaurus necklace. I like dinosaurs. You can’t out-dinosaur me, but you’re welcome to try.”

He was indeed unable to stump me on dinosaur facts, but trying kept him distracted until we got to his bus stop!

This story is part of our Best Of October 2020 roundup!

Read the next story in the Best Of October 2020 roundup!

Read the Best Of October 2020 roundup!