For All You Know, They Can Fly!
A Tremors Fic by LMR
Pairing: Of the B/N persuasion (Don't tell me you don't see it coming!)
A/N: Nancy's my favorite character, and yet she's never saved the day. I decided that needed to be changed. **************************************************************
Rosalita stood beside the soda machine in Chang's Mart. "I don't know, Burt. MRE's for cows?! Sounds kind of loco to me." She looked at him skeptically.
"No," he protested, "It's the most nutritious food there is; if you could adapt MRE technology to cattle food, you would have the healthiest cows out there: best beef you could ever hope for."
Rosalita raised an eyebrow and turned to Nancy, who was sitting at the counter listening. "What do you think?"
"I've tasted MRE's." She looked at Burt pointedly. "And I'm against animal cruelty."
Burt scowled. "Yes, I'm sure they'd just love your tofu tetrazini,"
"It's scaloppini, thank you, and it's delicious."
Burt ignored her. "Will you at least think about it?"
Rosalita shrugged. "What the hell, this valley is messed up enough, a few mutant cows aren't going to make a difference." She started to walk away.
"Eating MRE's does not make one a mutant!" Burt called after her. He turned back to the counter. "Not one word, Nancy, not one word."
There was a burst of static. "Tyler to Burt, or. . . for that matter anybody, um, over."
Jodi rolled her eyes. Despite Burt's effort, the residents of Perfection, Nevada were not yet militant. She laughed a little and grabbed her walkie talkie. "Yeah, Tyler, we're all here. What do you need, over?"
"El Blanco's got a tourist trapped on a rock up here. I'm headed that way now, but I could use reinforcements. I'm by the welcome sign, over."
"On my way, over," Burt replied.
"I hope he hurries up." Tyler didn't say over, but the walkie talkie fizzled.
"He just left," Nancy informed him. "He should be right over, um . . . over. Oh, yeah, and out."
The man must have been in his forties, not in very good shape, and the archetypical weekend warrior gone horribly wrong, complete with black socks and sandals and Bermuda shorts so loud they could have drawn El Blanco on their own.
But as he approached, Tyler could see the real cause of the Graboid's appearance was the car idling vertically below the "Welcome to Perfection" sign. But Tyler could see that his judgment of the man had been premature. He wasn't a complete idiot. He had a gun, at least.
Tentacles shot out of El Blanco's mouth, darted toward the boulder the tourist was standing on. He fired.
"No!" Tyler yelled, throwing a concussion grenade. El Blanco quickly headed the other direction.
The tourist hopped into the truck, not waiting for it to stop. "Thanks."
Tyler did a u- turn and headed back to town. "We can't hurt him. "He's endangered: protected." He eyed the bloody ground where El Blanco had been. "But I think we can keep this to ourselves. He can't be hurt too bad."
The blood seeped into the sand as they sped away.
They met up with Burt halfway to town. Burt turned back when he saw them approaching. It was now considered SOP in Perfection, Nevada to carry concussion grenades everywhere, so Burt had figured Tyler would be able to handle it on his own.
"Tourist, car," Tyler explained. "You know the deal. No problem. No need to tell old Twitchell, anyway."
"No problem!" The man screeched. "Did you see my car?!"
"At least you're not in it!" Burt reminded him. "You're luckier than a lot of people around here."
"Why do you stay?" The tourist wanted to know.
Tyler grinned. "Haven't you heard? We're all crazy."
"I still didn't get to use my pneumatic," Burt told them when they were back at Chang's, in a voice bordering dangerously on a pout.
"Your what?" Nancy had somehow been spared the constant jabbering about his new weapon, not because he didn't talk about it, but because she never listened.
"Fancy schmancy gun," Tyler informed her.
"It is not just a gun." He continued, detailing its virtues, but the others tuned out.
Six months later . . .
Rosalita nearly spat up her grabacchino when she heard the sirens blaring. Having never been around for an all out graboid incursion (the locals didn't count El Blanco), she didn't understand what they meant. But had set up the system so that El Blanco wouldn't set them off.
Burt Gummer, you raving lunatic!" Nancy's rant was cut into by Jodi's.
What is he doing now?
A crackle of static. "All units report in, over."
"We're all here, Burt," Jodi told him. "What's going on, over?"
"My seismos show another graboid 37 miles from HQ, over."
"Another one, are you sure, over?" Tyler questioned.
"Affirmative, over."
"Well, should we go to the roof, over?" Nancy wanted to know.
"Negatory. Foundation's too weak to resist serious assault from two fronts." Jodi rolled her eyes. "All units report to HQ immediately, over and out."
The four Perfectionists trudged down to Burt's 'home.'
"Can't you ever just say yes and no?" Rosalita asked.
"And we're people, Burt, not units," Nancy reminded him.
He ignored her. "I set up the seismos to record El Blanco's movements at all times, but not to set off the alarm. I did not, however, disable the alarm." He looked smug. "I set it to go off in the event that the seismos triangulate on different vibratory patterns in two different places at he same time so that-"
Tyler raised his eyebrows. "You want to translate that for us civilians?"
"I set the alarm to alert us of the presence of more than one graboid or graboid- like creature." He checked his monitor. "It's still 30 miles out of town."
Jodi pointed to the blip outside of the screen's labeled "Danger Area." It was white. "How do you know that this one's El Blanco?"
"He's tagged. He always shows up white while anything else will show up red." He tapped the red blip. That is definitely the new guy." He grabbed is gun." And the new guy isn't welcome. Or protected."
"Oh, brother," Nancy lamented. "Burt, you can't just blow all your problems away! Now have you considered the fact that El Blanco can't live forever? If he dies, Melville is a go again. A new graboid could be just what we need."
"It'll morph into shriekers and as-" He looked between Rosalita and Nancy. "A.B.'s," he reminded her.
"We know that graboids can be born sterile, we can make it sterile, too. Cletus could help us with that. Killing it should be our last resort."
"Always with your peace-knick, tree- hugging mentality. That won't solve anything."
"As opposed to 'let's just blow everything up!'"
Rosalita poked into the conversation. "Hey, guys?"
"If you chose to be deluded about the true brutality of nature that is your choice, but some of us recognize the true way of the world."
"Guys!"
"I refuse to believe that the 'true nature' of the world is cruelty. Not everything in the world is as destructive as you."
"iKianse! iSi tengo que escuchar a ustedes para un momento mas, yo voy a matar a algiuen!" She paused. "iEl otro graboid acaba de desperarse!"
Burt turned toward the monitor. "That's impossible. It couldn't have just disappeared."
"Maybe it just waited till you weren't looking then hauled ass out of there, off the screen," Tyler suggested.
"No, I was watching. I saw the little blip. It was right there," she pointed. "And it was gone! I swear, I never took my eyes off it!"
"Maybe there's something wrong with your equipment, Burt," Jodi commented.
Burt looked mortally wounded. "My equipment is in perfect working order and I-"
"Hey, look!" Tyler was watching the screen intently while the others talked. "He's back. Rosalita was right. He just appeared halfway into the screen." They all stared at the blurb on the monitor. It was practically on top of them. It disappeared again.
Burt packed up his gear. "I'm going up top. I'm going to investigate its last location."
"Are you sure it's safe?" Nancy worried.
"Nope." He headed up the stairs. The four waited nervously. There was no noise from up above.
"Come on up! Nothing here!" They poked their heads up one by one.
"There's nothing here," he repeated. "But I know what was here." He indicated a hole in the ground, graboid size, oozing with chemicals. They stunk of sulfur.
"Ass-blasters?" Tyler wondered. "That's impossible."
"That's what we said last time," Rosalita pointed out.
Burt shook his head. My devices wouldn't register the magnitude of vibrations that would be created by an A.B. take off."
"This pit," Jodi pointed out, "It looks like the crater that would be left by a graboid."
"El Blanco could have been there, then an ass blaster shot off from there, right?" Nancy theorized.
Burt frowned. "That still wouldn't explain the second seismic reading."
Rosalita's eyes widened. "Guys, I think we should speculate inside!" She pointed.
A graboid was coming at them rather rapidly. From the sky.
Rosalita grabbed Tyler and Jodi by the arms and hurried with them to the basement bunker. Burt had already started pushing Nancy to the door, and turned back to see that the others made it inside before he got in and sealed the outer door. They were safe now, but still outside the main room. Burt moved to the keypad and punched in his combination. he pushed the little button beside the speaker and did his best to whisper. "Password."
"Password?" Rosalita stared with incredulity. "That's the best you could do. I'm disappointed."
Nancy nodded. "I'd have to agree, Burt. I'd expect more from you. It's so . . . unparanoid." Well at least it wasn't still his ex-wife's name. Behind them, Jodi and Tyler were having an animated discussion.
"It doesn't really matter right now, Jodi."
"I'm just saying, if it really is a new species-"
Burt and Nancy chimed in with her, exhasperated. "We should name it."
Burt turned to her. "Jodi, how about we find out how it came to be and how to kill it, first."
"There we go with the killing again," Nancy said, exasperated.
"Well, do you have any better ideas, Earth Mother?"
She faltered. "Well, not at the moment."
"Yeah, yeah, guys, what is it, first of all?" Tyler reminded them. "It looked like a graboid with wings to me."
"No, they were gliders," Burt reminded him.
"A gliding graboid," Rosalita pondered.
"Tyler nodded. "Must have had ass-blaster DNA. Mixmaster, I'd say. When those guys from Las Vegas darted Meserschmit, some of those chemicals were left behind."
"It must have mixed with some of El Blanco's DNA," Rosalita figured.
"I know!" Jodi yelled. "Ass grabber!"
"Jodi, forget the damn name!" They all yelled at once.
"I remember something Val said," Nancy remarked, "The first time around. "For all you know, they can fly." She laughed a little. "I guess he was right."
"He's back," Jodi alerted them. She frowned. "Rosalita, he's um, at your ranch." She flinched away from Rosalita slightly in anticipation.
'iPendejo! He's eating my cows! I gotta go!" She started to leave the room, and they all dragged her back at once.
"No!"
"It's too dangerous," Nancy told her.
"As soon as he leaves," Rosalita asserted. Nancy raised her hands permissively.
"Okay, but we're going with you."
"Negatory, if you insist on going back to your ranch tonight, which I do not recommend, I'll go with you, and Tyler if he wants." Tyler nodded. "Nancy and Jodi stay."
"Now wait just a minute!" Both women protested at once.
"You can't tell us what to do," said Jodi.
"Yeah."
"He's gone," Tyler informed them. He grabbed a few guns from Burt's wall. "Let's go."
Burt went to catch up.
"iMi vaca es en fuego!" Rosalita screeched, coming upon a burning heifer that wasn't even half-eaten. (That's for Stephanie A. ;) )
"Looks like he took off without finishing his meal." Tyler poked the corpse with a stick.
Looks like the didn't much like what he was eating," Burt commented, examining pieces of meat that had been regurgitated.
"Could he have inherited Meserschmit's taste for French food?" Rosalita wondered.
"No, experience can't be transferred through DNA. Have your cows been eating anything unusual lately?"
"Well, actually, they've been eating the MRE's you gave me."
The others stifled laughs.
"What do you know, Burt," Tyler said. "You never have to be worried about getting eaten. You taste bad." The others laughed some more.
"Back to HQ," he said humorlessly.
"Burt," Jodi told him. "You do realize that no normal person calls his house HQ?"
"Jodi, I've been telling him that for twenty years. It doesn't make a bit of difference."
We stay in my bunker until this situation clears up."
Everyone groaned.
The next morning, Burt woke first, at precisely o-six- hundred. Quick head count. Tyler, Rosalita, Jodi, Nancy . . . Nancy? Nancy! She knew better than to leave the bunker, surely.
He jotted a note. "Right back," then headed next door. (Granted next door is about a half mile away, but it's still the next door.)
"Nancy! Nancy! You in here?"
"Yeah, I'm right here Burt. Sorry, I didn't want to wake you. I figure I'd be back before you got up. I should have known: o-six-hundred, right? Anyway, you don't have to worry about the ass-grabber anymore." Burt rolled his eyes at the name. "That's why I came over here. It occurred to me last night that he probably doesn't have much taste for meat anymore. If the beef was really that bad, well sorry, Burt, but it was. Well, it's a real phenomena. It's called taste aversion. He doesn't want to eat meat anymore, but he doesn't have much of a choice, seeing as he hunts by vibrations and body heat. He'll eat meat if he has to, but if he had any other options, he would take them."
Burt was getting annoyed. "Your point?"
The oven timer went off and Nancy removed . . .
Tofu scaloppini.
"He loves it," she said enthusiastically. "Burt, Perfection, Nevada is now home to the worlds' only vegetarian ass-grabber! He won't eat anything that moves. No guns necessary! Problem solved!"
There was a shriek from outside the artist's house. "Coming, Elmez!" She headed out the door. Burt tried to stop her, but she raised her eyebrows. "Relax, he knows me." She walked right out onto the patio and put the food right outside her front lawn. "Hey," said soothingly. "Have a nice meal. And don't brake the casserole, please, that's an original."
Burt was dumbfounded. "He's not trying to eat you?"
"Nope. I move. He's smart enough to know that I'm meat. He has no way to know that I don't eat those awful MRE's."
"Because you save our hides, I'll let that little remark slide. But I still didn't get to use my pneumatic."
Nancy shrugged. "Sorry, Burt, peace prevails.
Burt frowned. Like it or not, he was going to have to wait until next week to shoot something.
****************************************************
El Blanco Lives
In Burt we Trust
R&R and I'll be your best friend!
A Tremors Fic by LMR
Pairing: Of the B/N persuasion (Don't tell me you don't see it coming!)
A/N: Nancy's my favorite character, and yet she's never saved the day. I decided that needed to be changed. **************************************************************
Rosalita stood beside the soda machine in Chang's Mart. "I don't know, Burt. MRE's for cows?! Sounds kind of loco to me." She looked at him skeptically.
"No," he protested, "It's the most nutritious food there is; if you could adapt MRE technology to cattle food, you would have the healthiest cows out there: best beef you could ever hope for."
Rosalita raised an eyebrow and turned to Nancy, who was sitting at the counter listening. "What do you think?"
"I've tasted MRE's." She looked at Burt pointedly. "And I'm against animal cruelty."
Burt scowled. "Yes, I'm sure they'd just love your tofu tetrazini,"
"It's scaloppini, thank you, and it's delicious."
Burt ignored her. "Will you at least think about it?"
Rosalita shrugged. "What the hell, this valley is messed up enough, a few mutant cows aren't going to make a difference." She started to walk away.
"Eating MRE's does not make one a mutant!" Burt called after her. He turned back to the counter. "Not one word, Nancy, not one word."
There was a burst of static. "Tyler to Burt, or. . . for that matter anybody, um, over."
Jodi rolled her eyes. Despite Burt's effort, the residents of Perfection, Nevada were not yet militant. She laughed a little and grabbed her walkie talkie. "Yeah, Tyler, we're all here. What do you need, over?"
"El Blanco's got a tourist trapped on a rock up here. I'm headed that way now, but I could use reinforcements. I'm by the welcome sign, over."
"On my way, over," Burt replied.
"I hope he hurries up." Tyler didn't say over, but the walkie talkie fizzled.
"He just left," Nancy informed him. "He should be right over, um . . . over. Oh, yeah, and out."
The man must have been in his forties, not in very good shape, and the archetypical weekend warrior gone horribly wrong, complete with black socks and sandals and Bermuda shorts so loud they could have drawn El Blanco on their own.
But as he approached, Tyler could see the real cause of the Graboid's appearance was the car idling vertically below the "Welcome to Perfection" sign. But Tyler could see that his judgment of the man had been premature. He wasn't a complete idiot. He had a gun, at least.
Tentacles shot out of El Blanco's mouth, darted toward the boulder the tourist was standing on. He fired.
"No!" Tyler yelled, throwing a concussion grenade. El Blanco quickly headed the other direction.
The tourist hopped into the truck, not waiting for it to stop. "Thanks."
Tyler did a u- turn and headed back to town. "We can't hurt him. "He's endangered: protected." He eyed the bloody ground where El Blanco had been. "But I think we can keep this to ourselves. He can't be hurt too bad."
The blood seeped into the sand as they sped away.
They met up with Burt halfway to town. Burt turned back when he saw them approaching. It was now considered SOP in Perfection, Nevada to carry concussion grenades everywhere, so Burt had figured Tyler would be able to handle it on his own.
"Tourist, car," Tyler explained. "You know the deal. No problem. No need to tell old Twitchell, anyway."
"No problem!" The man screeched. "Did you see my car?!"
"At least you're not in it!" Burt reminded him. "You're luckier than a lot of people around here."
"Why do you stay?" The tourist wanted to know.
Tyler grinned. "Haven't you heard? We're all crazy."
"I still didn't get to use my pneumatic," Burt told them when they were back at Chang's, in a voice bordering dangerously on a pout.
"Your what?" Nancy had somehow been spared the constant jabbering about his new weapon, not because he didn't talk about it, but because she never listened.
"Fancy schmancy gun," Tyler informed her.
"It is not just a gun." He continued, detailing its virtues, but the others tuned out.
Six months later . . .
Rosalita nearly spat up her grabacchino when she heard the sirens blaring. Having never been around for an all out graboid incursion (the locals didn't count El Blanco), she didn't understand what they meant. But had set up the system so that El Blanco wouldn't set them off.
Burt Gummer, you raving lunatic!" Nancy's rant was cut into by Jodi's.
What is he doing now?
A crackle of static. "All units report in, over."
"We're all here, Burt," Jodi told him. "What's going on, over?"
"My seismos show another graboid 37 miles from HQ, over."
"Another one, are you sure, over?" Tyler questioned.
"Affirmative, over."
"Well, should we go to the roof, over?" Nancy wanted to know.
"Negatory. Foundation's too weak to resist serious assault from two fronts." Jodi rolled her eyes. "All units report to HQ immediately, over and out."
The four Perfectionists trudged down to Burt's 'home.'
"Can't you ever just say yes and no?" Rosalita asked.
"And we're people, Burt, not units," Nancy reminded him.
He ignored her. "I set up the seismos to record El Blanco's movements at all times, but not to set off the alarm. I did not, however, disable the alarm." He looked smug. "I set it to go off in the event that the seismos triangulate on different vibratory patterns in two different places at he same time so that-"
Tyler raised his eyebrows. "You want to translate that for us civilians?"
"I set the alarm to alert us of the presence of more than one graboid or graboid- like creature." He checked his monitor. "It's still 30 miles out of town."
Jodi pointed to the blip outside of the screen's labeled "Danger Area." It was white. "How do you know that this one's El Blanco?"
"He's tagged. He always shows up white while anything else will show up red." He tapped the red blip. That is definitely the new guy." He grabbed is gun." And the new guy isn't welcome. Or protected."
"Oh, brother," Nancy lamented. "Burt, you can't just blow all your problems away! Now have you considered the fact that El Blanco can't live forever? If he dies, Melville is a go again. A new graboid could be just what we need."
"It'll morph into shriekers and as-" He looked between Rosalita and Nancy. "A.B.'s," he reminded her.
"We know that graboids can be born sterile, we can make it sterile, too. Cletus could help us with that. Killing it should be our last resort."
"Always with your peace-knick, tree- hugging mentality. That won't solve anything."
"As opposed to 'let's just blow everything up!'"
Rosalita poked into the conversation. "Hey, guys?"
"If you chose to be deluded about the true brutality of nature that is your choice, but some of us recognize the true way of the world."
"Guys!"
"I refuse to believe that the 'true nature' of the world is cruelty. Not everything in the world is as destructive as you."
"iKianse! iSi tengo que escuchar a ustedes para un momento mas, yo voy a matar a algiuen!" She paused. "iEl otro graboid acaba de desperarse!"
Burt turned toward the monitor. "That's impossible. It couldn't have just disappeared."
"Maybe it just waited till you weren't looking then hauled ass out of there, off the screen," Tyler suggested.
"No, I was watching. I saw the little blip. It was right there," she pointed. "And it was gone! I swear, I never took my eyes off it!"
"Maybe there's something wrong with your equipment, Burt," Jodi commented.
Burt looked mortally wounded. "My equipment is in perfect working order and I-"
"Hey, look!" Tyler was watching the screen intently while the others talked. "He's back. Rosalita was right. He just appeared halfway into the screen." They all stared at the blurb on the monitor. It was practically on top of them. It disappeared again.
Burt packed up his gear. "I'm going up top. I'm going to investigate its last location."
"Are you sure it's safe?" Nancy worried.
"Nope." He headed up the stairs. The four waited nervously. There was no noise from up above.
"Come on up! Nothing here!" They poked their heads up one by one.
"There's nothing here," he repeated. "But I know what was here." He indicated a hole in the ground, graboid size, oozing with chemicals. They stunk of sulfur.
"Ass-blasters?" Tyler wondered. "That's impossible."
"That's what we said last time," Rosalita pointed out.
Burt shook his head. My devices wouldn't register the magnitude of vibrations that would be created by an A.B. take off."
"This pit," Jodi pointed out, "It looks like the crater that would be left by a graboid."
"El Blanco could have been there, then an ass blaster shot off from there, right?" Nancy theorized.
Burt frowned. "That still wouldn't explain the second seismic reading."
Rosalita's eyes widened. "Guys, I think we should speculate inside!" She pointed.
A graboid was coming at them rather rapidly. From the sky.
Rosalita grabbed Tyler and Jodi by the arms and hurried with them to the basement bunker. Burt had already started pushing Nancy to the door, and turned back to see that the others made it inside before he got in and sealed the outer door. They were safe now, but still outside the main room. Burt moved to the keypad and punched in his combination. he pushed the little button beside the speaker and did his best to whisper. "Password."
"Password?" Rosalita stared with incredulity. "That's the best you could do. I'm disappointed."
Nancy nodded. "I'd have to agree, Burt. I'd expect more from you. It's so . . . unparanoid." Well at least it wasn't still his ex-wife's name. Behind them, Jodi and Tyler were having an animated discussion.
"It doesn't really matter right now, Jodi."
"I'm just saying, if it really is a new species-"
Burt and Nancy chimed in with her, exhasperated. "We should name it."
Burt turned to her. "Jodi, how about we find out how it came to be and how to kill it, first."
"There we go with the killing again," Nancy said, exasperated.
"Well, do you have any better ideas, Earth Mother?"
She faltered. "Well, not at the moment."
"Yeah, yeah, guys, what is it, first of all?" Tyler reminded them. "It looked like a graboid with wings to me."
"No, they were gliders," Burt reminded him.
"A gliding graboid," Rosalita pondered.
"Tyler nodded. "Must have had ass-blaster DNA. Mixmaster, I'd say. When those guys from Las Vegas darted Meserschmit, some of those chemicals were left behind."
"It must have mixed with some of El Blanco's DNA," Rosalita figured.
"I know!" Jodi yelled. "Ass grabber!"
"Jodi, forget the damn name!" They all yelled at once.
"I remember something Val said," Nancy remarked, "The first time around. "For all you know, they can fly." She laughed a little. "I guess he was right."
"He's back," Jodi alerted them. She frowned. "Rosalita, he's um, at your ranch." She flinched away from Rosalita slightly in anticipation.
'iPendejo! He's eating my cows! I gotta go!" She started to leave the room, and they all dragged her back at once.
"No!"
"It's too dangerous," Nancy told her.
"As soon as he leaves," Rosalita asserted. Nancy raised her hands permissively.
"Okay, but we're going with you."
"Negatory, if you insist on going back to your ranch tonight, which I do not recommend, I'll go with you, and Tyler if he wants." Tyler nodded. "Nancy and Jodi stay."
"Now wait just a minute!" Both women protested at once.
"You can't tell us what to do," said Jodi.
"Yeah."
"He's gone," Tyler informed them. He grabbed a few guns from Burt's wall. "Let's go."
Burt went to catch up.
"iMi vaca es en fuego!" Rosalita screeched, coming upon a burning heifer that wasn't even half-eaten. (That's for Stephanie A. ;) )
"Looks like he took off without finishing his meal." Tyler poked the corpse with a stick.
Looks like the didn't much like what he was eating," Burt commented, examining pieces of meat that had been regurgitated.
"Could he have inherited Meserschmit's taste for French food?" Rosalita wondered.
"No, experience can't be transferred through DNA. Have your cows been eating anything unusual lately?"
"Well, actually, they've been eating the MRE's you gave me."
The others stifled laughs.
"What do you know, Burt," Tyler said. "You never have to be worried about getting eaten. You taste bad." The others laughed some more.
"Back to HQ," he said humorlessly.
"Burt," Jodi told him. "You do realize that no normal person calls his house HQ?"
"Jodi, I've been telling him that for twenty years. It doesn't make a bit of difference."
We stay in my bunker until this situation clears up."
Everyone groaned.
The next morning, Burt woke first, at precisely o-six- hundred. Quick head count. Tyler, Rosalita, Jodi, Nancy . . . Nancy? Nancy! She knew better than to leave the bunker, surely.
He jotted a note. "Right back," then headed next door. (Granted next door is about a half mile away, but it's still the next door.)
"Nancy! Nancy! You in here?"
"Yeah, I'm right here Burt. Sorry, I didn't want to wake you. I figure I'd be back before you got up. I should have known: o-six-hundred, right? Anyway, you don't have to worry about the ass-grabber anymore." Burt rolled his eyes at the name. "That's why I came over here. It occurred to me last night that he probably doesn't have much taste for meat anymore. If the beef was really that bad, well sorry, Burt, but it was. Well, it's a real phenomena. It's called taste aversion. He doesn't want to eat meat anymore, but he doesn't have much of a choice, seeing as he hunts by vibrations and body heat. He'll eat meat if he has to, but if he had any other options, he would take them."
Burt was getting annoyed. "Your point?"
The oven timer went off and Nancy removed . . .
Tofu scaloppini.
"He loves it," she said enthusiastically. "Burt, Perfection, Nevada is now home to the worlds' only vegetarian ass-grabber! He won't eat anything that moves. No guns necessary! Problem solved!"
There was a shriek from outside the artist's house. "Coming, Elmez!" She headed out the door. Burt tried to stop her, but she raised her eyebrows. "Relax, he knows me." She walked right out onto the patio and put the food right outside her front lawn. "Hey," said soothingly. "Have a nice meal. And don't brake the casserole, please, that's an original."
Burt was dumbfounded. "He's not trying to eat you?"
"Nope. I move. He's smart enough to know that I'm meat. He has no way to know that I don't eat those awful MRE's."
"Because you save our hides, I'll let that little remark slide. But I still didn't get to use my pneumatic."
Nancy shrugged. "Sorry, Burt, peace prevails.
Burt frowned. Like it or not, he was going to have to wait until next week to shoot something.
****************************************************
El Blanco Lives
In Burt we Trust
R&R and I'll be your best friend!