DailySusan Humor Blog

CHILI POWDER AND GRASS CARP

But godliness with contentment is great gain.
-- 1 Timothy 6:6

More, more, more is the way of the devil. The older I get, the more, more, more I believe that.

Take chili powder. Once I was making some chili. We were having someone over for dinner and to watch a big Husker football game. I put in the chili powder and noticed I had some left in the jar. It was more than a pinch or a dash. But what’s a little more? The more, the merrier! I dumped it in.

Now, our guest had just been through a divorce and hadn’t had a square meal for a while. He took his tray eagerly and headed to the TV room. We could hear the kickoff as we loaded our trays to join him.

When we rounded the corner, he was sitting with his head down over his tray, his face bright red, dabbing at his eyes with his napkin. My husband, Brain King, immediately demanded, “Did they run it back and score on us, right off the bat?”

Noooo, he wheezed, we held them inside the 20. With my superior powers of compassion, I realized that he was just having a “personal moment,” with the divorce and all. We sat down quietly and took our first spoonfuls of chili.

HOT! HOT! HOT! AA-OO-GAH! TORTURE! SEARING HEAT! MOUTH AND TONGUE INTO CINDERS!

We hurled our smoking spoons down and glugged down our beverages as if they were fire hoses.

“I’m so sorry,” I told our guest. “I guess I put in ‘way more chili powder than usual. I’m sure our insurance will cover your surgery.”

“That’s OK,” he wheezed back. “I thought you ALWAYS had it this way.”

That’s what you get for dabbling with more, more, more. It’s the way of the devil, I tell you.

And it’s the same thing with grass carp. Yes, they correlate. Work with me here.

See, we have this close friend who once got in on a neat deal with about 20 other families who owned a private lake together. You could drive a little way out of the city, plunk down some fishing poles in the lake with your kids, maybe go out in a paddle boat or canoe, and have a weenie roast on shore. Beautiful.

Well, our friend, who is terribly efficient, was put in charge of maintenance. There had been some agitation about the amount of algae and glunk that had been building up in the water.

So he did some research, and came up with the idea of stocking grass carp in there -- nature’s janitors, without the stogies and union overtime.

He called around to find a primeau grass carp “breeder.” They chatted.

The breeder dutifully told him how many he should get to keep a lake the size of theirs clean. They were only about a buck apiece, too. Perfect! But our friend is a master salesman, and he can sell anybody on anything -- including himself.

If a few grass carp were GOOD, MORE grass carp would be GREAT!

More cleanliness! More efficiency! More fun for families on their precious weekend outings!

So he got about 15 . . . and released them, feeling terribly efficient.

A while later, he got a call. “Those grass carp of yours have been really busy,” his co-owners said.

“Great!” he replied, pridefully. “They’ve really been eating that algae and stuff, huh?”

“Yes, and all the other fishes’ food, and all the other fish. And they’ve gotten so gargantuan, the little kids are scared to swim. They’ve stripped all the grass around the lake and are halfway up the trees. And now one of the picnic tables is missing.”

He has taken a lot of . . . carping . . . about this over the years. Good-natured, of course. But it’s still a fish story that everyone loves to tell on him.

Older, wiser and somewhat chastened, our friend was recently put in charge of maintenance at our lovely new neighborhood pond. This time, he decided to buy ONE lone grass carp. A dwarf variety, I believe. With anorexia.

Just to make sure, I periodically walk around the shore sprinkling some of my famous chili powder on the grass, trees and picnic tables.

More, more, more is the way of the . . . grass carp.

‘Course, with our luck, he’s probably a Mexican dwarf anorexic grass carp . . . and likes his food spicy.

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PRAYER REQUEST: A very wonderful man named Ted has recently been informed that he has lost his job. He’s not all that far from retirement, but he has lots and lots of knowledge and skills to share. He’s feeling pretty bad and is looking back, not forward. Lord Jesus, we ask for You to bless and guide this believer into an even better job and an even closer relationship with you and his loved ones. Help him realize that what he does is not what he is, but because of Who You are, he has eternal “job” security as Your child. (Luke 12:15)