Dinner Conversation

(In case you're a new reader, Pete and Irma are my parents.)

Irma: "What would you like to drink?"

Anna-Lisa: "7-UP, please."

Pete: "You can use plastic 7-UP bottles to catch snails."

Anna-Lisa: "Really?"

Pete: "Yeah, it works the same way as a fly catcher. You make an opening that they can crawl into, but one they can't get out of. Farmers will put them near the chicken coop."

Anna-Lisa: "Really?"

Pete: "Actually, a two-liter 7-UP bottle works best." (see here)

Irma: "But I won't buy two liters of anything."

Pete: "Beer is good bait."

Irma: "That's a waste of good beer."

Anna-Lisa: "Can I have another sausage?"

Irma: "We have a creature in our yard that is eating all the snails and leaving empty shells in the planter. I think it's a tree rat."

Pete: "I think it's an opossum because I don't think rats eat snails. Maybe we could raise them for escargot. Remember when Pinky (the cat) caught a rat in the neighbor's yard when we lived in Somis? The neighbors who owned the carnival rides?"

Anna-Lisa: "The O'Connor's? You've got your timeline wrong because they didn't move in until about 1987, and Pinky died when we lived in Germany. Kidney failure."

Irma: "No, it was the neighbors who were from New York and the wife worked as a nurse at Pleasant Valley Hospital."

Anna-Lisa: "The ones whose car rolled down into our yard because they didn't put the hand brake on?"

Pete: "Yes, and when Pinky caught the rat in their yard they told us they only had one rat."

Irma: "Yes, and she was a nurse. I couldn't believe that she would say that. She was a nurse after all."

Anna-Lisa: "Pinky died in 1980. It was Mirri who caught the rat."

Pete: "Well it was one of our cats."

Irma: "That reminds me of the time I was walking Muffin at night and I almost pet an opossum."

Anna-Lisa: "Can I have more 7-UP?"