Again:

I know, I know this is an old post. But I though I'd re-post it in honor of Bracie's new blog.

You, gentle readers, probably already know that my sister and I possess the lowly and slightly unfortunate vocation of Alpaca Pasture Maintenance. If you didn't know, now you know. So, since as of now, you all know and now I know that you know, I will proceed to describe an incident that happened a couple of weeks ago. I call it, "Death by Alpaca Poop." Keep in mind that this really happened and I only just barely embellished it.

It happens that my dear sister is a bit of a klutz. Don't look at me like that! She would be the one to tell you. And now, explorers of the world wide web, I will now venture to reveal to you a deep dark secret. You may have suspected this; Bracie is not her real name! Her real name is Grace. (Get it? Gracie, and Bracie? IT RHYMES! Bwahahaha! I think I'll kill myself laughing!) She has always deemed the name "Grace" an unfortunate choice for her on the part of her parents because she thinks it is so unsuited to her nature.

Anyway, it all began one rainy afternoon when Bracie and I were raking away at the seeming mountains of Alpaca poop. Every time we filled the big yellow wheelbarrow we would cart it back to the dump pile, taking turns rolling the unwieldy barrow along. At the particular moment in which this story took place, Bracie grasped the handlebars, and began to push the wheelbarrow up the wet, muddy slope. She shoved, but it was stuck! Then, she gave one great, mighty heave,

and slipped in the mud.

Bracie's feet wildly flailed and thrashed. You those cartoons, where a character runs off a cliff without knowing it, looks at the screen while his feet pound away at thin air, says, "Uh oh," and then falls? This was something like that. Anyway, she knelt in the mud, certain that the giant load of alpaca poop which now loomed over her head would fall and smother her at any second. The wheelbarrow slowly tipped back, creaking, groaning, about to crash 100 pounds of Alpaca poop on top of her! Bracie looked up helplessly at the wheelbarrow, towards her imminent death. I could see her eyes growing rounder, and rounder, wider and wider.

Just milliseconds before the load came tumbling down on her in all it's glory, Bracie displayed a superhuman feat of strength. With all that was within her, she whipped her head and torso up above the dastardly doodoo, narrowly missing being smothered by alpaca poop. If you can believe it, the monstrous load barely brushed her chin, neck and nose. She survived! You should of been there. That amazingly executed escape would have had you gazing in admiration at my dirty sister. She was so close to death. I could just see myself having to explain to friends and family, "Yes, poor Bracie came to a horrible end in the form of drowning... ina pile of poop."

You should have seen Bracie wipe the muck off her face with a soiled glove and exclaim, slightly hysterically, "Haha! Near death by alpaca poop! Typical me!"

Looking back on this incident makes me realize just how important family really is. Seeing Bracie dance with death puts life into perspective, and makes me realize that all the business and commotion that we put value on just doesn't matter. In that terrible moment when I saw Bracie kneeling helplessly under the wheelbarrow, I found out how much I love her.

Yeah right. Actually, I was dying laughing while it happened. I just thought that maybe I could squeeze a nice, cheesy inspirational paragraph in here somewhere to make up for the fact that I actually typed the words, "Alpaca Poop."

Note: About the photo: the wheelbarrow in the picture is only half as big as the one in real life.