Aachoo Voo, Private Eye Episode 27 There Is No Peace And Quiet In A Swamp

 

DIARY ENTRANCE EPISODE

Aachoo Voo, Private Eye

Episode 27

There Is No Peace and Quiet In a Swamp

We are here. But where in God's Name are we? I don't know. MiMi Voo doesn't know. Hopefully God does but if MiMi doesn't know where we are here in her very own swamp, we are lost. It's over. Done. Fini. Deja fini. Hopeless. Mon Dieu. We are fee fah founce. We are foufou. Or foo foo or fi fie fo fum however you spell it! We are perdue. LOST!

           

An alligator ate our pirogue. No, not our pierogi. I wished we had some dumplings! I was starving. No, our boat, Our canoe. An alligator ate our boat. Came right up out of the murky green swamp and ate it right out from under us! CRUNCH!  You could have heard my screams from miles away. I was terrified. MiMi just grinned and poked the thing with her umbrella and said, "Lands Sakes, Cheri, it ain't nuthin' but an ole gator!  He just hongry fer a beignet! Well, I reckon he done got all of 'em!" I stared at her like I didn't know who she was. I was soaking wet, hanging on to a bit of boat and all I could think of was .....my Grand Mere has lost every bit of English grammar she had learned in New York City! My parents would be mortified. Poppi Voo would be smiling from ear to ear with stars in his eyes because MiMi's Cajun vernacular was part of the reason he fell in love with her at first sight and first hearing. I just wasn't used to hearing her go full "Swamp Girl" in some time. She was loving it.

It had been her idea to get in the canoe and go on a picnic as we floated along dodging things that looked like they could have been starring in their own horror movies. And the noises! Good grief!  Nightmares, crime scenes and New York City parades never produced sounds like that! I would have put my hands over my ears but they were too busy covering my eyes. Which made it hard to swim. I knew my mother would be devastated if I had fled to Voo Bayou only to drown alongside my grandmother. She would have much preferred that I'd been run down by a Black and White cab on 5th Avenue. She could never show her friends a Louisiana newspaper obituary. She would die of shame. I had already tarnished the sterling reputation she had so meticulously invented for herself with my incarceration even as she  had enjoyed the notoriety of it. If I had never been proven not guilty of the crime she told me she was going to put me up for adoption. My father reminded her that I was a grown woman and therefore ineligible for her foolishness. I entertained myself for a short while with the thought of being a part of a normal family with normal names but it gave her too much joy. So I dropped it.

Now we were here waterlogged and covered in green slime and I didn't know  what to do. I had survived more unthinkable things than you could think of in the city and yet here I was anticipating a demise one could only read about in a comic book while surrounded by lamenting bullfrogs. It was sad. Finally, MiMi Voo slung me onto a chunk of canoe and pushed me towards the shore just as the gator showed back up for seconds with his entire family. All his kids were ugly. I would have kissed that shore too, but it seemed to be moving.  In a blind panic, I picked up my brave, exhausted, crazy little grand mere and I ran.

                                                              

That ancient homestead had never looked more inviting. A welcoming committee of assorted cats, dogs, raccoons, possums and possibly a baby Bigfoot accompanied us to the porch excitedly but I slammed the door in their faces and we collapsed on the floor. Later, I pried the black tattered umbrella out of MiMi's hands and put us both to bed in fresh dry clothes where we slept for three days. After three days and nights of unending indescribable nightmares, I opened my weary eyes to the sight of a big horrid creature bending over me all cloaked in black. I sat up and screamed my lungs out and MiMi Voo dropped her black hooded raincoat and fainted dead away. It was storming like crazy outside, it was dark and cold and I was shaking like a leaf. I just let her lay there.