Sweet Tea and Chicken Poop

A pox on me for not writing in the past forty-eight hours, but November IS a sweeps month after all, that special time of year when the Nielsen people measure our audience and the newsroom suits hyperventilate. I don't want to say we live by ratings in my business, but I sometimes think oxygen masks should be provided with every copy of the 'overnight numbers'. Me, I don't focus too much on the digits. I'm far too busy following my lens from one absurd location to another. Sometimes, I even get souveniers! Why, just yesterday I exited this chicken coop with a thick layer of manure, mud and hay stuck to the bottom of my boots. I can't tell you what a delightful texture it left in the bottom of my news unit, a chunky meringue of straw and fecal matter made all the stickier by the thirty-six ounces of spilled Sweet Tea I inadvertently left congealing in the floorboard. It's a floor wax! It's a dessert topping! It's...time to shampoo the interior of Unit Four. Stupid chickens...