Fancy Feet

You want to know what to do when you have a lot of deer? You get a free pedicure.

A few weeks ago, my friend Lori and her daughter had gotten a pedicure together. I have NO IDEA how this came up in her conversation, but she was talking to the girl who was scrubbing her feet, and somehow Lori found out that the people at these nail salons will barter for things they can't buy in the grocery store. Hey, we won't even talk about what goes into Asian cooking.

Lori then came up to me at church and said, "You can trade deer meat for pedicures!" It is public knowledge that my freezer...it has a ton of deer in it. This was great news, because I have been wanting a pedicure since my feet felt like brillo on the bottom. My last one was about a week before I had Abigail, so I guess they were due for a good pumice-ing.

I asked my friend Angie if she wanted to go with me, which she did (who wouldn't?). Then I made the craziest-sounding phone call I have ever made.

"Hi. I have a friend who was there a few weeks ago, and she said that you....I know this sounds really crazy....will buy deer meat? Well, I have a lot of it. Would you like to buy some, or say, oh, I don't know....discount a pedicure or something?"

So, Angie and I went last night, armed with an Igloo full of frozen venison. The guy met me at the door to take it, assuring me that it isn't as strange as I thought, and that a guy had brought them a 15-pound catfish earlier that day so that his daughter could get her nails done. Well, that put me at ease right away because, you know, I guess I'm not the only one.

When it was time to pay, I thought at best, maybe they would give us half-price or something. And I thought if they offered me a free one, and not Angie, I would ask if they could just give us both half-price because I'm just nice that way. But the lady came up and said, "Thanks, girls! You're fine!"

We tried to play it cool. Really, we did. But we felt like we had just pulled off the heist of a lifetime. I mean, it's real deer meat, we didn't give them chicken livers or something. I just mean that it felt like we gave them a very small portion of the deer meat that I have, and got 60 bucks worth of pampering! I don't know what deer meat is worth, but it seemed like a good trade-off.

Moral of the story...if you have wild game of any kind in your freezer and just don't know when you will get around to working it in to your weekly menu, go get a free pedicure.

So, thank you, Lori, for somehow finding out that odd piece of information, and thank you a thousand times, Willmores, for giving us a freezer full of deer.

Maybe next time I will share with you about the time I bartered with Ecuadorian flute players at the Covered Bridge festival....turkey legs and fried spiral-cut potatoes for scarves. Because that really happened.