Holy Hairballs!
Holy hairballs! The quirkiness continues as we air Chapter 04 of Quirky Cat Gets Ghosted. Apparently, no one is a fan of Skitters the Cat . . . not even his handler. Today on the Quirky Cat Nips Podcast, we'll hear from Moon McKenna as she describes exactly how scratchy life with Skitters can be. Meow Kitties!
Listen to Episode #4 Now:
Transcript:
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This is PetLife Radio.
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Let's talk pets.
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Cat lovers and feline friends, it's time for Adele Park's Quirky Cat Nips.
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Today, on the Quirky Cat Nips Podcast, we're airing a chapter of Quirky Cat Gets Ghosted, which we will do until the entire audio book has been broadcasted.
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We invite all you kitties to kick back now, relax and enjoy Quirky Cat Gets Ghosted by Adele Park.
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Audio recording St.
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George Presents, Quirky Cat Gets Ghosted.
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Written, produced and edited by Adele Park.
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Narrated by a full cast.
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A cast.
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A Directive from Gertrude Fletcher, Head of the Naval Utah Department of Motor Vehicles.
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Part 04.
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Humans have selective vision.
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The dead can be glimpsed through this veil, but only under certain circumstances.
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Moon McKenna had observed the ghost of her dead father.
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I know this from seeping around Gecko's Gulch, trying to gauge whether or not she could see Blue, her dearly departed twin.
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I gather Moon wasn't exactly over the Moon with the ghostly encounter she had with her late father.
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The term Spoogee was tossed around quite a bit during a discussion I listened in on.
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You could say Moon is treading on my plot, knowing me only as her adversary from the Department of Motor Vehicles.
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Moon can't very well argue a case for her sister when she isn't able to see either one of us.
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It will be impossible to free Blue from the bonds of the great in-between if no one even knows she's trapped.
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Moon's sense of smell must have gone on permanent hiatus, a very strange dilemma for someone who has spent their adult life making scented lotions.
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The tang of the recently deceased is usually more than people can bear, even if they can't feel a spirit around them or if they don't believe in ghosts at all.
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I never believed in ghosts until I became one myself.
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In life, I would never have consorted with someone as arrogant as Moon McKenna.
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To my chagrin, she has befriended my husband, Boyd Fletcher.
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And what would bring these two polar opposites together?
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Cats.
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Yes, those foul smelling beasts who coat every surface with dander and fur.
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Thankfully, Boyd didn't acquire Miss Kitty until after my demise.
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Because I didn't have to deal with the ensuing mess, I was happy to help forge this union.
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Boyd was distraught when I died, made all the more frustrating by his inability to understand what happened when Blue perished in the exact same spot.
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The difference was, I understood the bigger picture when I made that fateful drive over the bridge at Juniper Hollow.
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In order to see a ghost, you have to believe they exist.
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Since Moon was already of this opinion, it was odd that she couldn't detect her own twin, even when her sister exuded a smell that could gag a hungry maggot.
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Next!
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I can't believe I've been ghosted by my own twin.
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Talk about rude!
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Especially after all I did to make her last day on earth truly memorable.
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I'm not talking about the morning Scotty found her squashed like a June bug on the windshield of her pick-up.
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Blue had left Gecko's Gulch before the sun was up, so you really can't count that as a day.
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My sister was never a morning person, making her actions all the more confounding.
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If only I'd found her note half an hour earlier.
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Maybe, I could have stopped Blue from driving her crappy truck down a rutted dirt road in the dark when she was seven months pregnant.
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I have some not-so-fond memories of carrying my twins, but pregnancy seemed to agree with Blue.
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Yes, she got a whopping case of morning sickness in the early days and grew an impressive size of cankles starting in the second trimester.
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Everyone in Blue's orbit was ecstatic.
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Her husband was so giddy, he could barely contain himself.
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My twins were thrilled to finally have a cousin living in Naval, or at least one destined to spend a lot of time here.
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Naval is a small Mormon community where a child is born about every 37 seconds.
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Thankfully, the locals didn't treat Blue's pregnancy like it was just another baby on the bus.
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Blue's husband Scotty made sure of that.
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His strategy was to ingratiate himself within the medical community, hoping in turn they would protect his privacy.
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Most of the people in Naval have never even heard of Scotty's band, the Rectal Surgeons.
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Sacred Sounds, the local music store, doesn't carry their CD's.
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Winning over the hearts of a citizenry as tribal as Naval wasn't easy, even for a doctor with a fancy title.
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At the time of the crash, Scotty's gastrointestinal practice was in Las Vegas.
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Naval is just where he hides from the paparazzi.
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Attempting to keep Blue's birthing plan quiet, Scotty donated a sizable chunk of money to the Naval Base Hospital.
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Blue even asked people attending her baby shower to do the same in lieu of gifts.
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This bought a lot of goodwill, but in the end, Blue's delivery became actual news and not just tabloid gossip.
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Rudy, a regrettable name for a young child, was delivered through a savage C-section performed on a nappy mat in the middle of a dirt road.
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Blue could have given birth live on Barack Obama's inauguration dais, and it wouldn't have generated more interest than this tragic scene.
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Even more lamentable was the fact that Blue was just getting to the good part of her life when she clocked out.
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Prior to meeting Scotty, Blue had drifted from one dickish dud to another.
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For the first time in the 35 years since we were born, Blue wasn't acting like her name.
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If I had to call her a color after she married Scotty, it would be HR Puffin Stuff Pink.
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I'm surprised she didn't bleed cotton candy.
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I stayed awake for nearly three days after Blue died.
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Sure, she would appear, irritated as hell when she didn't.
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In my younger days, I thought people who believed in ghosts were a little tippy canoe.
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Like Blue, for example.
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She would have slurped spooks for lunch if she could have.
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Not me.
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I spent a year being haunted by our father after he died in a plane crash outside of Naval.
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I wasn't on board, but my mother was.
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She died along with the pilot.
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Besides owning a plane made of paper mache, this perma-fried flyboy was tripping on magic mushrooms at the time of the accident.
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Blue, who was along for the ride, survived, only to be killed in a car wreck a few miles away, 16 years later.
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When she was alive, Blue had a real thing for ghosts.
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She was downright jealous of the fact that our father showed himself to me, but not her.
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Not something to be desired, let me assure you.
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Unless you like feeling clammy and the smell of fermented garbage, I'm not sure if all apparitions stink, but our father was the olfactory definition of death warmed over.
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He showed up almost immediately after the plane crash, and didn't leave until we accidentally set fire to the oasis near Gecko's Gulch, my home in Utah.
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My sweet mother-in-law, Marta, died last summer.
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Hers was a peaceful, merciful passing.
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After a brutalizing battle with cancer, there was little to no chance she would ever return to earth, even as Casper the Friendly Ghost.
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The only frightful thing that happened was the ensuing skirmish over the family estate.
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My husband Randall has two brothers, both of which he used to be close to.
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Then came the human cock fight.
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Randall tried to stay out of the fray by offering to sell his portion of the Smoot family holdings, most of which involve agriculture in California.
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This should have gotten Randall off the hook, leaving the two brothers to duke it out over who bought his shares.
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Instead, the brothers' Smoot launched a strange charm offensive.
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When Randall offered to let the brothers split his shares, even Stephen, the charm simply became offensive.
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Members of the Smoot clan have vastly different ideas about the family business, and none of them involve running it together.
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As a form of punishment, Randall's brothers stuck him with the task of selling the family ranch during a time when no one wanted a house in the middle of nowhere if they couldn't own the surrounding orchards and vineyard.
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The solution?
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Convert the family home into employee housing.
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Pretty fancy digs for people who literally toil in the soil for a living, but that's the shaky compromise reached by the Smoot brothers three.
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Although annoyed at refereeing the family feud, Randall was looking forward to financial freedom.
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The overhead at Gecko's Gulch is too obscene to even mention.
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One wing of our compound is used to house the laboratory for Good Karma, my skincare company.
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Spending the summer in California during the end stages of my mother-in-law's life effectively put me out of business.
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It also ruined my smeller.
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I used to sniff out and categorize every scent in the entire essential oil universe.
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Now, I couldn't detect a rotting carcass if I was riding in an elevator with one.
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I was able to accept the closure of Good Karma.
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What stung was watching a supplemental vitamin company called Regenerant use my business plan right down to staffing it with polygamous women from Zion Flats and offering meals as a perk.
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They even used my idea of providing these women with uniforms so they could get a break from those drab, full-length stage curtains they call dresses.
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I must say, I was impressed with their duds, color-coded for the type of job they were doing, stylish yet cleverly stitched with doomsday Christian conservativism.
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The packing plant for Regenerant was constructed at a manic pace, using whatever men were able to duck charges during a federal raid in Zion Flats last summer.
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Scores of repulsively repugnant polygamist men, including their prophet, had been arrested for orchestrating a massive welfare scam.
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All of them had deflowered at least a couple underage girls, but so far, none of them have been charged with sexual assault.
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More proof, the government only cares when someone tries to rip them off.
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I wasn't responsible for tipping off the feds, yet the prophet of Zion Flats made sure I got a good bitch slapping anyway.
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The women who I employed, cared for, and sometimes even helped escape the bondage of polygamy stopped showing up for work.
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Adding to my financial woes, there was Randall's ill-considered purchase of a Victorian home which he converted into the best little hair house in Naval.
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My husband is the most talented stylist in town, far better than anyone who works at his competition, the second combing hair salon.
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There are other beauty shops in Naval, of course, but if you care about how you look, you go to one place or the other.
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Well, you go to the second combing if you can't get an appointment at the best little hair house.
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I don't mean to brag about my husband.
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He's just that good.
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Randall attributes this to having exceptional gay genes, but who knows?
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The only thing for certain is Randall doesn't give a figgy Newton about running the family ranch in California.
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Great with me.
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Gecko's Gulch, my elegant desert harem where I happily dance and dwell with my twin daughters and flamboyantly homosexual husband, is definitely worth the money.
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Randall and I haven't exactly been open about our sexuality with our kids.
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They're only in first grade, so our arrangement isn't easy to understand.
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The passing of their grandmother, followed by their Aunt Blue's tragic death, made it easy to keep shoving this discussion under the carpet.
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I'm not convinced my sister's demise was just a haphazardly lamentable turn of events.
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Admitting this is a terrible idea, however.
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They would just think I was nuts.
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Since I have no proof, they would have a good point.
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Still, I can't help but wonder how it all happened.
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The accident report filed by Kip Nichols, a deputy with the Pitt County Sheriff's Department, said it appeared Blue was trying to avoid hitting something in the road, prompting her to yank the wheel hard while simultaneously stepping on the brake.
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The combination of these two things caused Blue's pick-up to slam into the bridge so hard it chipped the granite.
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The bridge was constructed by the polygamists, who settled naval in the mid-1800s.
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Say what you will about the founders of Plig Town, but these people knew how to build stuff.
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Every pioneer structure in naval, and probably even Zion flats, is a testament to durability.
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Leave it to my sister to be the one to put a crack in that façade.
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Perhaps if Blue had been driving her SUV, instead of that rusty clanker she kept at Legacy Grove, she'd still be alive today.
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Blue's bridge-busting incident unleashed a whole lot of unanswered questions.
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Why was Deputy Nichols, Blue's ex-boyfriend, within earshot when it happened?
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It was five in the freaking morning, for hell's sake!
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Kip provided exactly zero assistance when it came to administering medical aid to my sister.
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The general consensus is Kip is dumb as dirt, so no surprise there.
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Fortunately, Blue's husband Scotty arrived in time to save their baby.
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Kip was stepping out on his wife during the time he was involved with my sister.
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Even after she married Scotty, Blue had trouble getting this cheater-cheater pumpkin eater out of her patch.
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Blue had lost her appetite for this insatiable carnivore, or whatever you call someone who has a name for their penis.
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In case you're wondering, Kip calls his General Custard.
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That's wrong on so many levels.
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Blue should have run for the hills the second Kip shared this information.
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As horrible as I feel about what happened, it's possible I helped save the life of Blue's baby, Rudy.
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Left at the scene with no one to help but Kip, little Rudy would probably be history.
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As it was, I woke up early, intending to get things in order for a brunch I was hosting for the people who had traveled to Naval for Blue's baby shower the night before.
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As I was putting on the coffee, I saw her note, just a few words saying she was taking some of her gifts to Legacy Grove before the brunch.
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That immediately set off alarm bells.
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Gifts?
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What gifts?
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The shower invitation specifically asked for donations to the Naval Base Hospital instead of baby presents.
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Blue and Scotty tried to ingratiate themselves with the locals, hoping to buy some privacy when the baby came.
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The only gifts Blue received were a gold sparkly mobile for the baby's room made by my daughters and the photo album of Juniper Hollow put together by me.
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The mobile was already up in Rudy's room, so that just left the photo album.
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Hardly anything that required a special trip.
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Unless, Blue had noticed something in one of the photos that escaped me.
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That was the whole purpose, wasn't it?
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To give Blue a look at the gory and woeful history of Juniper Hollow from every angle?
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With shaky hands, I dialed Scotty's number.
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He sounded like someone had put his head through a paper shredder.
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My husband said the party Scotty hosted while we were having the baby shower was a bodaciously drunk and disorderly event.
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Scotty snapped out of it quick when I asked if Blue had made it back to Legacy Grove.
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Somehow we both knew that Blue had cut through the desert via Juniper Hollow rather than taking one of the more well-traveled dirt roads.
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There aren't any paved roads in this part of southern Utah except within the city limits of Naval.
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The road that goes by Juniper Hollow is a short-cut if you're talking distance traveled, but it's the long way time-wise.
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Every shot in the photo album I put together was of that insidiously wretched property.
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A lot of the photos were taken from Boyd Fletcher's vantage point on Granite Ridge, some dating back as far as the late 1920s.
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Normally, I'd try to avoid a surly sardine-like Boyd, but his cat is seeing our cat.
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Yes, this is a real thing.
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Failure to provide regular conjugal visits for our cat Skitter's and Boyd's cat Miss Kitty throws my life into a living migraine.
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If we wait too long between visits, Skitter's revolts and waddles over on his own.
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Since he's a good 20-pounder, it nearly takes one of his nine lives just to get there.
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His absence causes my twins to star in a midsummer's nightmare.
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It's just easier to take the damn cat up to visit.
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Boyd is the poster boy for the old man screaming, Get off my lawn!
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My daughters aren't the least bit bothered by Boyd's grouchy disposition, probably because of the ginger snaps.
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When he knows we're coming, Boyd always picks up a dozen cookies from a Taste of Heaven bakery.
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We eat them on the porch of his cabin, while Boyd regales us with stories about Juniper Hollow.
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Blue was convinced Juniper Hollow was haunted, so she tagged along whenever she was in town.
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Most of Boyd's stories were about the violent history of this picturesque dominion.
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Juniper Hollow is smushed between the polygamist wasteland known as Zion Flats and Boyd's cabin on Granite Ridge.
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The main feature is a small, spring-fed lake, enclosed on three sides by the ridge.
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The Fletcher family initially owned the place, then lost it to a mob syndicate out of Las Vegas when the two groups were distilling and selling moonshine.
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Juniper Hollow was the perfect place to brew spirits during Prohibition.
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Clearly, their customer base wasn't in Naval.
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Pitt County is dry and no one here drinks anything but Jesus juice.
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Seriously, you can't believe how religious these people are.
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I'd say it's a cult, but cults are secretive, and the citizens of Naval will tell you anything you're willing to listen to.
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Good folks, but definitely naive.
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The residents of Zion Flats are another thing.
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This group staged an open insurrection when the city of Naval finally caught up to the rest of the state by outlawing polygamy.
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The state of Utah did this in 1890.
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Navalites didn't get around to it until 1937.
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This resulted in a huge rift in the community, with many of them leaving to form the nuclear dumping ground known as Zion Flats.
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Located within hollering distance of Juniper Hollow, it was no surprise the dwellers next door in Zion Flats tangled with the mob, just like the Fletchers had done before them.
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These righteous racketeers took over the distillery when the Fletchers were forced out.
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You can never get an accurate account on anything involving the people from Zion Flats because they all lie like their lives depend on it.
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In some instances, they do.
00:23:58.877 --> 00:24:08.497
As with the Fletchers, the mob had a major falling out with the people hired to do their dirty work at Juniper Hollow, only this time somebody snitched.
00:24:09.377 --> 00:24:13.637
Once the FBI got involved, heads were rolling, literally.
00:24:14.317 --> 00:24:21.157
I think the strategy was to simply kill these mashmakers because six of them were gunned down immediately.
00:24:21.917 --> 00:24:26.117
Three FBI agents were caught in the crossfire and died as well.
00:24:27.037 --> 00:24:30.957
This happened during Prohibition, but the scars are still fresh.
00:24:32.577 --> 00:24:36.157
The shootout put Juniper Hollow on the radar with the Feds.
00:24:36.897 --> 00:24:42.897
The mob continued to own the property, though it remained largely vacant for several decades.
00:24:43.877 --> 00:24:53.657
Then a few years ago, a swarthy mafioso named Nicholas DeLuca used the place to dodge charges related to a murder in Las Vegas.
00:24:54.757 --> 00:24:59.417
It didn't take long for DeLuca to climb in bed with his polygamist neighbors.
00:25:00.257 --> 00:25:07.397
He even married a couple of them and went to work building a temple in Zion Flats at the behest of their prophet.
00:25:09.477 --> 00:25:14.537
Most polygamist women from Zion Flats behave like the abused women they are.
00:25:15.437 --> 00:25:19.237
Not so with the ones the prophet married off to Nicholas DeLuca.
00:25:20.217 --> 00:25:23.237
The first wife was an informant for the prophet.
00:25:23.997 --> 00:25:30.097
The second one liked to mix it up, indulging in fist fights that DeLuca didn't always win.
00:25:31.037 --> 00:25:33.537
Their last skirmish was a real doozy.
00:25:34.357 --> 00:25:39.577
Wife number two either jumped or was pushed from the widow's walk at Juniper Hollow.
00:25:40.477 --> 00:25:46.577
Nicholas got carved up a bit, but he was still able to flee his unholy multiple matrimonies.
00:25:47.577 --> 00:25:51.697
Both the polygamist and the mob share one supreme credo.
00:25:52.357 --> 00:25:54.097
Leave no evidence.
00:25:54.857 --> 00:26:00.557
Subsequently, the grandiose house at Juniper Hollow was torched like a burnt offering.
00:26:01.537 --> 00:26:03.477
No telling who lit the match.
00:26:05.597 --> 00:26:16.637
In case you're wondering what happened to DeLuca's first wife or the daughter from his deceased second wife, they were able to escape the plight of polygamy, thanks in part to me.
00:26:17.517 --> 00:26:20.737
Rescuing damsels in distress is kind of my thing.
00:26:21.577 --> 00:26:31.737
When it comes to the women from Zion Flats, describing their situation as being distressful is like calling an STD epidemic a mild irritant.
00:26:32.497 --> 00:26:38.697
Easy to say when it isn't your cherry pie feeling like it's been sauteed in Tabasco sauce.
00:26:40.997 --> 00:26:45.437
I didn't set out to be the Harriet Tubman of the polygamist underground.
00:26:46.217 --> 00:26:54.257
It's just that the local authorities basically ignore the seething, simmering cesspool of crime happening in Zion Flats.
00:26:55.257 --> 00:27:04.877
Their offspring are bred as chattel, forced to work in the naval orchards and do other manual labor for which the adults are paid and the kids are not.
00:27:06.017 --> 00:27:13.497
When these children of misfortune grow up, they're divided into two groups, sex slaves and their masters.
00:27:14.497 --> 00:27:20.777
Keep in mind, half the boys are banished from Zion Flats before they're old enough for their testicles to drop.
00:27:21.517 --> 00:27:32.737
You can't indulge in a baker's dozen of wives unless you wean out all the testosterone-laden lads who might pose a challenge to the mildewed peckers of the elder statesmen.
00:27:34.237 --> 00:27:45.037
While I sympathize completely with the so-called lost boys from Zion Flats, my efforts have been focused on the females, especially those who are underage.
00:27:46.057 --> 00:27:51.537
So far, I've helped three victims de-camp from that fetid clam-bake of inbreeding.
00:27:52.117 --> 00:27:55.277
The first was the daughter of the prophet of Zion Flats.
00:27:56.057 --> 00:28:17.077
As if that wasn't like lighting a meth lab on fire, my second feat was a twofer, the first wife of Nicholas DeLuca, career criminal turned polygamist, and the daughter Nicholas had with his second wife, the one who either jumped from the widow's walk at Juniper Hollow or was shoved over it during their last smackdown.
00:28:18.097 --> 00:28:25.317
This rescue operation had been in the works ever since DeLuca escaped the murderous clutches of his favorite betrothed.
00:28:26.077 --> 00:28:35.037
Then my sister's stepson, Brandon, and his buddy Taj caused a bunch of trouble at Juniper Hollow, putting the whole plan in jeopardy.
00:28:36.117 --> 00:28:42.697
Despite these two gumming up the deal, in the end, I was finally able to get these women to safety.
00:28:44.417 --> 00:28:56.597
Liberating these last two polygamist women from sexual bondage, bad hairdos, and burka-style dresses happened in concert with a long-awaited federal investigation into Zion Flats.
00:28:57.477 --> 00:28:59.257
Forget the locals in Naval.
00:28:59.617 --> 00:29:08.657
They ignore the plight of these people like it's a pillar of their religion, which, incidentally, is the same one being practiced in Zion Flats.
00:29:09.437 --> 00:29:13.497
It's the degree of Mormonism that matters in this part of the country.
00:29:15.557 --> 00:29:20.217
It's unclear when the feds got involved, but their reason was obvious.
00:29:20.737 --> 00:29:24.497
The residents of Zion Flats were ripping off Uncle Sam.
00:29:25.537 --> 00:29:31.217
In this country, you can apparently have a barn full of underage sexual hostages.
00:29:31.537 --> 00:29:39.157
Just don't cheat on your taxes, or refuse to pay them, or take the food stamps given to your victims and use them for yourself.
00:29:40.597 --> 00:29:48.677
By the conclusion of last summer, the authorities had arrested more than a dozen men from Zion Flats, including their prophet.
00:29:50.277 --> 00:29:57.537
It was this last raid that caused the mob to finally give up the golden goose known as Juniper Hollow.
00:29:58.457 --> 00:30:02.557
Nicholas DeLuca had been captured after several months on the run.
00:30:03.297 --> 00:30:11.397
He was never indicted for killing his second wife, but he was brought up on charges relating to another mob murder in Las Vegas.
00:30:12.457 --> 00:30:15.437
DeLuca didn't pull the trigger in that incident.
00:30:15.777 --> 00:30:18.497
He just aided and abetted the person who did.
00:30:19.557 --> 00:30:24.697
Knowing that snitches get stitches, DeLuca continued to cover for his buddy.
00:30:25.517 --> 00:30:32.357
He did, however, cut a deal for a reduced sentence in return for signing over custodial rights to his daughter.
00:30:33.457 --> 00:30:39.797
Once DeLuca's first wife was granted custody of his child, I helped both of them get out of town.
00:30:41.037 --> 00:30:46.377
Nipping at the heels of my rescue effort came the arrest of the Prophet of Zion Flats.
00:30:47.357 --> 00:30:51.657
These two things weren't related, but I got blamed for it anyway.
00:30:52.497 --> 00:30:56.937
All the women I hired to work in my skincare lab quit en masse.
00:30:57.997 --> 00:31:02.237
Now I'm out of business, out of a sister, and out of hope.
00:31:03.737 --> 00:31:05.177
Pack your bags, kitties.
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