Basura Blanco

The title of this post is the best Spanish rendering I can find for "White Trash," a home made candy that our supervisor has brought to share with the chaplain department. The candy is also commonly called 'People Puppy Chow,' I think. It's made up of chex mix, pretzels, peanuts and other crunchies covered in chocolate and then white confectioner's sugar. Well, we like the concoction so much that the four of us residents decided to weasle our way into getting more.

A few weeks ago our boss went out of town for the week. And it was during this time that we orchestrated a plot to ransom his beloved wooden parrot (loro in Spanish) which prominantly stood atop his file cabinet.


When boss man entered his office the next Monday morning he found an inter-office mail envelope containing a CD. Playing the CD, he watched a video of a quivering parrot including a background voice narrating a ransom note in Spanish, which he speaks. Along with the video there were pictures of the loro loose in the hospital.

The ransom demanded that he deliver lots of white trash candy to the resident's on call suite within 48 hours, otherwise the pitiful parrot would never wear his little tie again. The video ended with a maniacal laugh which I wish I could include on this blog, but for now you'll have to do your best to image a high pictched voice with a Columbian accent trying to literally pronounce, "Muahahahaha" with little maniacism in his inflection.

Playing along, our supervisor posted signs around our area of the hospital stating, "Missing, Large Parrot, Lost/Kidnapped. Please help with any information." We then orchestrated a number of random employees and volunteers to call his office leaving messages of parrot sightings. One caller caught him in his office so our boss ran upstairs to see if the parrot was still there. Alas, he came back empty handed. The parrot had evaded once more.

Nearing the deadline, and no white trash in sight, a message was left on our bosses phone of a parrot screeching in the back ground. Later, the same ransom narrator's voice left a brooding reminder on the answering machine threatening parrot demise if he didn't fulfill his end of the arrangement.

It turns out, that "basura blanco" doesn't translate well to mean White Trash candy, so our supervisor wasn't even sure how to pay the ransom. On Wednesday he finally figured it out, and by Thursday the goods were delivered to the drop location. So, later that day while we were all in a meeting with our boss there was an innocent knock on the door, and the parrot was delivered safely back home. Attached was a happy note written by the captive bird exclaiming, "Estoy en mi casa," (I'm home!).

It was an epic prank in our department, orchestrated by the mastermind Chaplain Cathie, that will likely go down in the annals of chaplaining and candy eating.