Exuscitatio

Exuscitatio (ex-us-ci-ta’-ti-o): Stirring others by one’s own vehement feeling (sometimes by means of a rhetorical question, and often for the sake of exciting anger).

“This one’s for Mary, may she rest in peace. She risked everything (including her life) to save our zucchini plants from the herd of marauding groundhogs. They overwhelmed her and pushed her into the hole they had dug in the garden box, and clubbed her to death with our prized 2.5 foot zucchini.”

This was Arnold’s attempt to rally us to hire an exterminator to rid us of the groundhog family wreaking havoc on our garden boxes. Mary was there standing alongside him while he tried to rally the The Darnsville co-op to the aid of his cause. The groundhogs had burrowed under the toolshed, spending their winters there, and roaming free range during the warmer seasons destroying our small gardens.

We had to hit them and hit them hard.

I interrupted Arnold to say, “Although Arnold is full of shit, we do need to address the groundhog problem. These little fat bastards are tearing our gardens to hell—leaving us with empty uprooted tomato vines, half-eaten zucchini’s and eggplants and small holes in the ground where our yellow squash used to be. This can’t go on. This can’t continue. They are evil. We must kill them—kill, kill, kill them by the ruthless hand of the exterminator man.”

Co-op members began yelling “kill, kill, kill” and searching their smartphones for exterminators specializing in groundhogs.

We settled on “Dead Grounhog,” clearly specializing in groundhog extermination. “Bomber McPhee,” the proprietor, showed up the next morning. We hired him on the spot after he gave us his pitch. He would mount 11 AR16’s in a motion-actived crossfire positioned to blanket the garden boxes in “hot lead.”

We were all set. We retreated to the clubhouse to await the sound of gunfire as the groundhogs were sliced and diced by “hot lead.” Suddenly the guns began firing. Over the din we heard the occasional squeal as a groundhog was fatally wounded and crawled off to die.

The gunfire died down and stopped and bomber knocked on the clubhouse door. He came in and told us “three KIA and three took shelter under the toolshed.” He asked if he could blow up the tool shed and “finish the job.” The toolshed had come prefabricated from Lowe’s for $650. That was a small price to pay to end the groundhogs’ rampage..

Bomber rigged the toolshed with four sticks of dynamite and blew it up. We observed groundhog chunks flying into sky as the remains of the toolshed flew in all directions.

“Mission accomplished,” yelled Bomber. We paid him in cash. We give him 5 stars on the “Extermination Nation” website for his flashy uniform, courtesy, pathological desire to kill groundhogs, and his cleanup crew leaving our co-op gardens “like nothing ever happened.”