"If Kafka were alive today...

...he'd just film documentaries."

The city denied his claim to be reimbursed for the damage to the door. Leonard said he was told that since the warrant listed Leonard's address, the officers hadn't technically stormed the wrong house.

City Councilwoman Belinda Conaway connected Leonard with the police commissioner's office, who he said promised to follow through as a "good-faith measure." But for the past two weeks his calls have not been returned, he said.

Meanwhile, the old front door sat in the backyard for two months. Leonard said he called the city's bulk trash pickup, but no one came.

The city inspectors who issue tickets for garbage in residents' backyards did, however, and gave him a $50 fine. The door finally was picked up last Thursday.

H/T to Radley Balko, king of the Isolated Incident.

"They Hate Us For Our Freedom"

You don't want to be hated, do you?

Well then! The solution is clear!

H/T to canadian at TMM

Another mass murder/gang rape in the news!

Oh...wait. It isn't in the news at all.

Gee, I wonder why?

Poor Li'l Guy...

I seem to have brought little Bear into a household determined not to nurture him. Even Magnus, who first greeted him with such enthusiasm, has turned grumpy. The other two boys started out that way.

Kirby made no secret of his opinion; the puppy cannot approach him (or sometimes even become visible to him) without a show of growls and teeth.

Ghost's approach is more nuanced but no less definite. When the puppy appears, he gets up and leaves. In fact both dogs have taken to sleeping outdoors - something that is fortunately now possible since the nights are mild enough that I can just cover the doorway with a blanket and leave the door open. That will continue until the bugs get bad, and then they can come inside at night or take their chances.

Bear shows no sign of even noticing any of this. His opinion is 'Gotta love me!' I felt kinda bad for him last evening; he was dancing around in front of Ghost, inviting him to play and refusing to get the hell out of his way until he did - something I've seen Ghost do with the other dogs 10,000 times - and it's the only time I've seen Ghost growl at the little guy.

This sort of puts me in the middle. I'm obviously giving Bear a lot of attention, since I want him to bond with me, while being careful not to alienate any of the others. Instead of praising them whenever they act accepting of the little guy, I'm reduced to doing so whenever they let him live.

Walky time is also an issue. The boys and I are used to taking pretty extensive walks, which I don't expect a 2-month-old puppy to keep up with. So Bear goes into Gitmo if we're taking a real walk. You wanna hear a puppy cry real loud? That'll do it.

I'm sure all this will sort itself out. It's only been a few days, and he will grow. The boys have had ample time and opportunity to hurt him if they really wanted to, and it's clear they don't. Magnus snapped at him this morning, and could have taken his head off but never actually made contact. Little Bear doesn't even seem to notice; if Magnus is in the way he just crawls right over him, ignoring the horrible snarls. But I admit I was hoping for a little more inclusiveness. Still, the boys have had it the way it was for quite a while, and I've noticed in the past that they like things the way they're used to things being; it takes them some time to get used to changes and find a new equilibrium.

In time, I'm sure they'll do more than just let him live. I hope.

His Name is Bear

He narrowly avoided being named Piglet. He's got the little piggy snout, and the little piggy eyes, and when he's chewing contentedly on your hand or trying to untie your boots he's got this Arnold-the-pig grunting thing going on. But he'll grow out of all that.

On the other hand, his coat has exactly the texture of a bear rug. He has huge clawed paws on these tiny puppy legs, with all the cat-like grace that implies. He 'follows from in front,' forcing you to watch every step lest you step on him, and he trusts absolutely that you won't. He reminds me of a bear cub. Difference between the piglet and cub references is that when he grows he'll stop reminding me of a piglet. I don't expect that he'll stop reminding me of a bear.

His name is Bear.

Emotional Damage and the Love of Freedom

I was doing some forum-crawling with my second cup this morning, and came upon this:

...[I]t seems there may be a solid and perfectly rational explanation behind the correlation of nerdishness to libertarianism. If you spent your formative years getting picked on by the 'cool' kids (for playing D&D or watching Star Trek or listening to Dragonforce or whatever) you might get the idea that the majority's preferences and priorities are not always right, at least for you, and that maybe you'd prefer it if the majority just left you the hell alone.

This resonated with something I've been cogitating off and on for some time. Setting aside the specific reference to libertarianism (the discussion was about libertarianism but could as easily apply to any anti-state mindview) does it not strike you that many of the freedom-lovers with whom you're acquainted are really, below it all, damaged goods? I mean people who spent terrible childhoods, or did time for bullshit mala prohibita crimes, or got fucked over by the IRS, or something that left them shellshocked and angry and highly suspicious of if not violently antagonistic toward authority in general? People you agree with philosophically, in general, but might not be comfortable (I'm speaking of extreme cases here, not the average) leaving behind to watch your children? And that last bit not because they're evil people (freedomistas rarely are) but only because their overall judgment is sometimes rather suspect? People you enjoy sharing a beer with, but wouldn't really want to marry your sister? The sidekick hero in a Niven/Pournelle disaster potboiler, who makes good in the end but who is at bottom something of a ne'er-do-well.

Because I encounter a lot of people like that. Hell, I'm a person like that. And it makes me wonder sometimes.

I mean, my antiauthoritarian attitudes stem entirely from an unpleasant youth and a phobia about official forms - or officialese in general. I'm an introverted follower, but anyone who tries to lord it over me or is even associated with any such earns my immediate hostility - whether he's actually done evil to me or not. And the few hard-core freedomistas I've grown to know well have similar backgrounds.

Not really trying to make a point here. I'm just wondering. I believe that my viewpoint is right. I have no doubt about it at all. And yet sometimes it feels as though it's all just coming from emotional damage.

Do you know what I'm trying to say? Because I'm not sure I do.

Shouldn't forget this...

Click's Reaction...

Got an email from my landlady, with a suggested explanation for Click's surprising behavior toward the new puppy:



Yes, that's Ghost. And Click. At about the same age as my little guy.

Traumatic stress flashbacks are terrible things; I'll need to be more supportive while she gets over it...

OMFG, Final update, I promise

So Magnus has fully accepted the puppy (not as enthusiastically as at first, perhaps, but his mind hasn't changed; the puppy can stay.)

Fritz is not in favor, but aware that he's not going to get a vote. Humph.

And the big question that remained was, what's Ghost's reaction going to be? There was some concern about this, because Ghost can be very territorial. Violently so. And he is the only one who has never seen a puppy join the pack.

Ghost's reaction was completely blase'. He walked up, smelled the newcomer's ass, and walked away without comment. He has, in the past couple of hours, taken to peeing on things in the puppy's presence. But other than that he seems to feel it requires no input from him. I expected something.

Click is certain that this is not a good thing; she acts as if she's afraid of the little guy, which is funny because as far as I've seen he hasn't even noticed her presence. He certainly isn't doing anything to bother her, and she's never been shy around any other dog even when they do get obnoxious.

When Ghost got home and refrained from doing anything antisocial, I decided we needed a brief group walky with all four dogs. It's a warm, sunny day; the puppy was in the shade and decided no, you guys go have fun. I'm going to stay right here. When I insisted, he went from shady spot to shady spot until he got to the edge of the yard, then absolutely refused to take another step. The rest of us went around the ridge, me anxious because he's too little to be left completely alone for very long. When we got back, he was snoozing in the shade. He followed as we all went into the cool of the barn, and that was that.

The puppy seems completely relaxed about all this. He cringed in a corner for less than an hour when he first arrived, but was very shortly exploring Gitmo and then crying for attention. After the first crate incident, Magnus' excessive attentions didn't intimidate him at all. He's not a yapper, in fact I've never yet heard him bark. I feared a hyperactive little monster like my neighbors D&L got recently, but that's not the case at all. He likes it when you pet him; he sleeps between my feet when I'm reading in the lair, but he's not a clinger or a jumper. If he gets lonely or scared he cries but otherwise he's very quiet. S&L visited a couple of times over the weekend, and each time commented on how completely he seems to have made himself at home. He's also - and this shocked me - at least conceptually housebroken. He doesn't always completely make it, but he does know he's supposed to go outside for his business. I'm now waiting for the other behavioral shoe to drop, because he seems...well, perfect. Therefore he's either got some congenital disease that will kill him right after I've decided I can't live without him, or he's just waiting to get big enough to jump on my couch so he can tear my throat out while I sleep. My life is like that, you know - lots of things are good, but nothing, I mean nothing is perfect.

I'm still not leaving him completely alone with the boys, but it does appear that all my anxiety concerning the boys' reaction was for nothing. Now if I could only settle on a name.

Mini-Walky!

Yeah, Ghost is weekending with S&L because I wanted a couple of days without having to deal with the Walky Issue. But the puppy has done so well, and he slept most of the morning and afternoon and he was getting restless, and it was an hour from Snacky Time anyway. So I figgered; why not a little walky, just to see how he does?

Sweartaya, those folks must have treated him very kindly. There's no way he's bonded to me yet, but he certainly behaved as if he was. He had a very good time down the driveway, but was clearly aware of just how uncharted the water was and figured his best chance was to stay close to me. Even when he got ahead, he kept looking back. If I was still plodding along, he was cool.

We only went to the end of the driveway and then circled back up the foot of the ridge. Magnus has been telling me for some time of a rat nest under a tumbled pile of irrigation pipe that has needed moving for a long time, so we went to work re-stacking it in a better place. Puppy alternated between helping Magnus watch for rats, me carry pipe, and Fritz grouse under a shady tree. For the record, Fritz wishes the puppy would go away. Not get hurt or anything, you know, just go. Away.

He'll come around.

As much as Magnus approves of the little guy, he just about clobbered him at Snacky Time. This only being his second time, the puppy is not aware that there are rules. Very important rules. He proceeded to attempt a violation of The Prime Directive, which of course is that Magnus can eat from anybody's plate unless I stop him, but NOBODY eats from Magnus' plate but Magnus. He hadn't gotten it that everybody gets a plate, and while he recognizes dry kibble as food he very much prefers canned food. He's gonna have to learn to get over that, but in the meantime I pulled him out from under a fiercely-snarling Magnus before things got ugly, and stuck his face in his own plate. He fits under Magnus very neatly, and normally Magnus would appreciate the compliment but there are social places he will never, ever be persuaded to go. Sharing his food, even with the puppy, would be right toward the top of that list of things that won't ever happen.

Just so we're clear:

This is your ruler:



This is your ruler on drugs:



Get the picture?

Meanwhile, out in the rest of the world...

I should stick with puppies. Puppies make my smile, and get me all upset and anxious in a good way. I make the mistake of peeking out at the rest of the world, and I get this...

The White House had offered Chrysler’s lenders a deal to take roughly 33 cents on a dollar to write off the company’s debt. Most took the deal, but a few holdouts said it wasn’t good enough — and their refusal to go along pushed the company into bankruptcy.

So Obama is calling them out. “A group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout. They were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices and they would have to make none,” Obama said.

Some of the hedge funds, Obama said, demanded returns twice as high as other lenders were getting.

“I don't stand with them,” Obama said. “I stand with Chrysler's employees and their families and communities. I stand with Chrysler's management, its dealers and its suppliers. I stand with the millions of Americans who own and want to buy Chrysler cars.”

It’s clear that the White House thinks the politics of battling unnamed “speculators” works in its favor.

I love this. Chrysler management steers the company into the swamp - again. The UAW, arguably a major reason any American automaker is in hot financial water, gets ownership. The feds screw over the investors at 33 cents on the dollar. A few investors balk and want to go to court because the arbitrators are all at the TARP trough. Surprise! They're to blame for it all! It's all so simple now!

DISCLOSURE: I used to work as a contractor in Detroit. I've done a lot of work for all of the American Big Three. I have opinions about the management of each company, or did back in the 'nineties. I used to get in trouble for expressing opinions (suicide for a contractor, but then I didn't become a hermit because of my great people skills) about management decisions in each company. Chrysler is not my dream corporate model by any tiniest stretch, and bankruptcy does not come as shocking news. They're a pack of %#@^ing idiots who deserve to sleep under park benches. At least, as I said, they were in the 'nineties. Evidence indicates that they haven't changed so very much since then.

That said, our story so far: Chrysler, unable to come to terms with its lenders, has filed for Chap 11 bankruptcy. In the restructuring, ownership goes 55% to the UAW, (HAH!)20% to fergodsake Fiat, because that's always worked so well in the past, and 25% to Uncle Sugar. Guess who's putting up the $6B in money to sweeten the pot? That's right. No, you don't get voting shares. But it's a free country, it says here, so you are permitted to bitch about it as long as you don't do anything annoying.

It has been pointed out that this is not new for Chrysler. In the early eighties, under Lee (that other messiah) Iaccoca, the fedgov kicked in $2B in loan guarantees and a whole raft of tax breaks. That actually didn't end badly; Chrysler never defaulted on its new loans so the guarantees never kicked in, Chrysler rebuilt its line-up to a bunch of things people actually wanted to buy, and life went on for a while. Then of course management led the company back into the crapper and Daimler Benz made arguably the biggest mistake of its corporate life bailing Chrysler out AGAIN. And now here we are. 55% UAW ownership, total fedgov control. What could go wrong?

OMFG, Continued...

Well...Magnus is a mother. Fritz is a grumpy uncle. Life is going to be very entertaining while we sort this all out.

Magnus is utterly besotted with the puppy. He follows him everywhere, licking his head, cleaning up his poops, hovering. It's disgusting. Yesterday evening after Snacky Time I brought everybody to the lair, and after an hour or so had to practically force Magnus to come lay down and leave that poor puppy alone. "Oh, god," I thought. "I sound like a suburban mother with too many kids and a new puppy." But seriously, the poor little guy had had a big day. All he wanted to do was lay down now, and Magnus wouldn't let him. Lick, lick, lick, hover, hover, hover, pant, pant, pant. Geez! Get a grip, dog! Show some dignity for god's sake.

Fritz, on the other hand, is offended and threatened. I was afraid he'd either be violent toward the puppy or too exuberantly welcoming - which amounts to the same thing. I let him into Gitmo yesterday afternoon with Magnus and the puppy, and he decided he wanted nothing to do with the whole sordid matter. When we went to the lair, Fritz jumped on my couch and growled if the puppy came near him. And then - he has never done this in my entire experience with him, and possibly not in his whole life - he left and spent the night outdoors. He would not share the lair with that puppy.

The puppy himself is adorable. Not shy, but not a jumping, yapping bundle of nerves, either. He's pretty fat at the moment. His paws are half as big as his head. His looks are predominantly Akita; he's got the blunt muzzle and the ears and the curled tail. Longish fur, all black except a patch of white on his chest. He's clearly very familiar with people - once he got over his initial fright he took to me right away but not in an obnoxious way. When I woke at four he wanted attention. I took him on my couch and he curled under me for a while, but then wanted back down. I brought his crate into the lair last night but didn't insist that he spend the night in it. That was a mistake; he did leave me a puddle on the floor.

I'm still torn on the name thing. Thunder, it's not out of deference I'm reluctant about "Spooner," it's just that it's been done - it feels like a Claire fanboy thing to me. I've toyed with "Booker," which is not a Firefly reference (god forbid - I'm not 16 even if that's the way I'm acting at the moment) but a shout-out to Booker Washington. Anonymous - "Remember you're going to have to yell this name over and over and over. Just something to keep in mind. :)" LOL! I got a belly laugh from that this morning. Good, very good advice indeed. Reminds me of the old rocker adage - never record a song you're not prepared to sing every night for the rest of your life.

I don't know what I'm gonna do about a name. Probably Spooner, when it comes down to it. Haven't improved on that yet, and I have to call him something.

It's going to be an entertaining day. Got a call from J last evening; my new boots came in and I need to go see if they fit. I'll want to crate up the baby and show him around the neighborhood. Normally I laze around the Lair in the morning, but it's not quite six and I'm already out in the scriptorium. Fritz is laying on his bed behind me and growling at passers-by; Magnus is following the puppy everywhere and panting protectively. The puppy is exploring his surroundings and making plans for renovation or maybe world domination. Hmm! Genghis? Khan? (Oh, god, no. I'd think of that horrible ST movie every time... No.) Aargh! Maybe something ironic, like Neutrino...

OMFG, He's so cute!

My kingdom for a camera. He's a short-muzzled ball of fur, coal-black except for a little tuft of white on his chest, whose combined paws probably mass as much as the rest of him. I do believe he's going to be rather large.

S&L showed up at about two, with two grandsons in the back of their truck, and loudly proclaimed that I couldn't have him; they wanted him. They put him back in his travel crate (where I noticed he was very happy to go) and I put him, still in his crate, in the Big Doghouse in Gitmo. My landlady and I have been trading emails, setting up a familiarization strategy. I sent Ghost off with S&L, because we're going to need a couple of days without Walky Time and while the old fellas don't mind that it'd drive Ghost nuts.

Then I brought Magnus into the BD, dusted off a chair, and opened the travel crate. The puppy decided he liked it in there just fine, thank you very much whoever you are. Magnus, all welcoming grin, put up with that for a few minutes and then decided the mountain should come to Mohammad. So he proceeded to attempt to enter the crate himself. He got as far as his ears and that's as much as would fit, and he refused to leave until I hauled him out. At this point, the puppy clearly decided he was never leaving this crate ever ever ever. So I put Magnus out of Gitmo, closed the gate, and that's where we are now. I figure I'll let him settle down, and then he and I can spend some time together, and then I'll try again.

UPDATE: He was hungry, poor baby. When I went back in a few minutes after writing the above, he was out of his crate and rather timorously exploring the Big Doghouse. I brought him some food and water and put my chair against the opposite wall; it didn't take him long before he was chowing down on dry kibble like he knew just what it was for. (It hadn't occurred to me to ask the previous owners what they'd been feeding him.) Magnus and Fritz prowled the Gitmo perimeter, wanting in bad. A little later on when I left him alone, he started exploring the outside; M&F came to the fence where he was standing and he didn't shy away and they didn't get aggressive. Looked good, they were sniffing at each other. And then...Magnus lifted his leg and peed all over the puppy.

Okay, see, I'm just gonna go ahead and interpret that as love.

UPDATE II: Oh, he's definitely not going to be named Trouble. This is the sweetest little guy! He started crying for attention, and maybe got more than he bargained for but definitely didn't seem to mind. I let Magnus into Gitmo with me; they'd been playing footsie through the fence for some time. Magnus went into full-love mode, with maybe just a little dominance thrown in for spice. I was so proud of him! He did the ritual ass-sniff, then proceeded to hold the puppy down and give him a whole-body lick, dragging him back gently when he got squirmy. The puppy bit him on the chin and rolled over and did all the proper puppy protocol things, and Magnus was smitten.

And so was I. Everywhere I went, the puppy wanted to follow. I was mostly showering attention on Magnus for being such a good boy, but Jeezus this little guy just makes you want to take a bite out of him all over.

I've got to get serious about a name. Spooner's kind of taken; who's a contemporary black freedom fighter sort? To Google and Wikipedia, go!

LAST UPDATE, I PROMISE!: Well, Magnus loves him; Fritz seems threatened. Fritz didn't even want to go into Gitmo with Magnus and the puppy, (what do you think about "Booker"?) and, once coaxed in, kept his distance and growled when the puppy approached him. He never offered violence, or indeed seemed to want anything to do with him at all. The puppy has decided this isn't so bad after all, and is already complaining about being confined to Gitmo when his new friends are outside. I'm not too sure I want to turn my back on Fritz, though.

The Milagro Beanfield War

A group of down-and-out Chicano farmers are struggling to make a living in a patch of New Mexico desert. They raise sheep, they grow beans, they drink to excess, they laugh and screw and murder one another. They and their ancestors have been doing this for 300 years or so, and that's just sort of the way it is.

Except that's not the way it's going to stay, because about 40 years ago somebody passed a law and half the town of Milagro lost all its water rights. Things have been a lot harder since; the only ones left are the ones living on inertia and welfare. Surprise, there's a land baron who owns pretty much all the land around Milagro, wants their land too, and has no problem getting water and grazing rights. His grandfather started putting the squeeze on the community, he's still up to it two generations later, and just can't seem to get rid of the Chicanos.

This next law's gonna do it, though. A new dam and land conservancy will make property values (and property taxes and user fees) skyrocket. In another ten years the only residents will be the ones cleaning the resorts our villain plans to build.

Except one day Jose Mondragon, who always was kind of a troublemaker, takes it into his head to illegally irrigate his father's dry old field and plant him some beans...

Between all the sub-plots involving Pacheco's wayward sow, Herbie Goldfarb the profoundly misplaced VISTA volunteer, the apparently immortal Amatante Cordova whose pistol is bigger than he is, Onofre Martinez' mysteriously missing arm (the literate one, alas), Pancho Armijo's insanely oversexed dog Esperanza, Nick Rael's crazy mother's habit of pelting his customers with rocks, the gunfight that never happened, the Smoky Bear santo riot, Charley Bloom the cowardly lawyer, and too many more for this poor head to remember, the book sometimes wanders from the plot just a tad. But it's pretty funny while it's doing that.

And there's not a superhero or a lecture in 600 pages, which puts it on my list for pretty darned good freedomista lit.

Stirring the pot

I think I'm going to name him Bueller.

No, not the puppy. Two mornings running I'm making breakfast or cleaning up after breakfast, look out the kitchen window and see a plump little cottontail working on the grass that grows around my gray-water pool. Just outside the Lair. Just as if there weren't three big, carnivorous-as-hell dogs hanging around all about me. And he just loiters out there, with not a care in the world. This morning I went outside to dispose of some cans, and he moved out of the way so sluggishly I could have killed him with a rock if I'd wanted to.

Used to be you never, ever saw rabbits near the Lair. No rabbit is ever likely to be a Nobel Laureate in mathematics, but they're not that dumb. Either this one really is that dumb, or my boys are really, really slowing down.

If all goes according to schedule, the new puppy (puppy name TBD) is due to arrive tomorrow morning or afternoon. If that doesn't stir things up on the dog front around here, I surely don't know what would. I like the peace and quiet, but too much of a good thing is just plain bad. I think maybe a few things around here could use a good stir.

Granted that in another six weeks or so if all goes according to plan (and no such thing has gone to plan yet) it'll all be moot. Soon there'll be other people here, and other dogs. That will sure as hell stir things up, and I'm coming to the belief that that'll be good all around. I can't seem to rouse myself to get much work done anymore, either physical or literary; all I want to do is play with the dogs, read and nap. Even if it's aggravating as hell at first, the dogs aren't the only ones around here that need to get their somnolent asses in gear.

So bring it on, Bueller. Let's see how long you last in our sleepy little desert world after we've stirred the pot just a little!

Hummingbirds!

One of my favorite things about the spring is the return of the hummingbirds. We've got'em all here: Ruby-throated, Rufous, ... oh, who am I kidding? I'm no gorram ornithologist, I just know they're pretty, they're dumb as rocks, they're basically bees with feathers, they entertain me, and they're pretty. Haven't seen one around the place yet, but S&L had their feeder up and running last weekend and already had a couple of customers so this morning I decided it was time to get my own going.

Now, you can buy hummingbird nectar, of course, and some folks do. But it's simple as pie to make your own; all you need is to dissolve some sugar in four times as much water, let it cool, and you're in. Hummingbirds are drawn to bright color; the first time I bought a feeder I got dive-bombed before I'd even put any nectar in the damned thing. Store-bought nectar has red food coloring in it, and you can do that if you want to. But if the feeder is already bright red that's good enough; they'll come. Funny thing; the expensive ones you buy at garden and birding stores and the like are really pretty, with lots of cool filigree and such, but they come in subtle, muted colors and don't attract birds terribly well. There's nothing subtle about a hummingbird; all he cares about is bright red or yellow. The cheap dollar-store feeders work best but the crappy plastic doesn't do UV very well and they come apart in a season or two. If you get an expensive one, use the food coloring.

The trouble with hummingbird nectar, as I learned my very first spring here, is that it's also the very perfect ant bait. It's just sugar water, but sugar water is an ant's idea of heaven. Leave a drop anywhere and they'll come for miles to drown in it, drown happy. If you offered an ant a delirious, sweaty, sex-filled afternoon with whatever ants use for Milla Jovovich, if only he'd leave your hummingbird feeder alone for that one afternoon, he'd sigh unhappily and turn you down flat. Then he'd stalk purposefully off and drown in hummingbird nectar. Happily.

So when you're making your nectar and filling the feeder with it, it is vitally important to be very, very neat. Don't splash that shit around, or you'll be up to your armpits in the industrious little bastards. After you fill the bottle but before you carry it out to the pole, you wanna wash the outside in warm water, get all that spilled sugar off the outside. Even then you'll need to clean rafts of dead ants - all of whom died stoned - out of the thing when you go to re-fill it, but at least you can keep the mess to a necessary minimum.

The hummingbirds come here for some sweaty sex of their own, and when they get going the males put on a helluva show. They park their lady loves on a juniper branch, then demonstrate their ardor and skill by flying straight up till you can barely see them, turning around and power-diving toward her; pulling up at the last second, flying straight up, then turning and doing it again. And again. All the time buzzing and chirping like demented ... well, hummingbirds. There's always some alpha male who tries to keep every other hummingbird except his own mate away from the feeder, and I've spent hours laughing at the greedy little SOB as he works himself into a hysterical lather diving at all the other birds, all the time they're getting more and more worked up while queuing for their turn, until finally he gives up his vain efforts and watches helplessly as a cloud of them descend. Seems like he get less of it than anybody.

Sure do love watching the little critters. Last year I had to get a taller pole, because Butch the tomcat worked out a perfect hummingbird-catching protocol. He'd tried running at the feeder from every possible angle, but they'd just hover till he was sailing through the air and then contemptuously flick away at the last second. But he figured out that if he crouched directly under the feeder they'd forget he was there: Then when one was in a perfect position he could spring straight up and he'd snag it every other time or so. Sometimes he lost it on the way down, before he could get his teeth in play, but still all too many very dead hummingbirds were ending up inside the lair. Butch wouldn't do useful things like catch rats - that was beneath him - but he loved him some hummingbirds. So I got a taller pole, which he considered a terribly dirty trick on my part, and the problem went away. This spring, of course, Butch himself went away so I guess that's the last of that.

Kinda wish I missed him more than I do, I must admit.

Just got back from some shooty goodness...

My friend J has his mother and her friend visiting, and he invited me to join them at the range for some loud fun. He brought his Bushy M4 and a new Charles Daly pump 12-gauge, along with a nearly-new wonder-nine that (if I remember correctly) is on semi-permanent loan from H's mother. J apparently hasn't spent much time with shotguns; he was very interested to see what a slug will do to a 2X4. Well, J, it blows a hole through it that you can wiggle your finger in, that's what it does. He's got a couple of little 38 Special snubbies that he and H carry around their hacienda, and he was starting the ladies out on those for some reason. They were getting a bit discouraged with an inability to hit anything, so I suggested maybe the nine would be a better starter-upper. It's a S&W, didn't catch the model, but it's as heavy as my 1911 and only shoots these little nine millimeter thingies so maybe they won't flinch so badly and between that and the longer sight radius...yeah, they started hitting the target with that.

Practice has been an issue for me for several months, what with the price of ammo and my extremely limited cash income. Sure I've got stored ammo, but that stuff doesn't breed no matter how tightly you pack it so every time I empty a magazine it feels like I'm donating an organ, y'know? But it must be done; must be done.

BTW...a bit of gory strange on the Click/rodent front this morning. Does anybody know if there's any significance to a feline practice of leaving two mouse ears on your sitting bench? Nothing else - just the ears. I have to admit that weirded me out just a tiny bit. Maybe it's ... I don't know, like a prize of some sort?

Thanks for all the responses!

I do appreciate you folks' answering my query concerning content. It's encouraging. TUAK ain't going anywhere. I've also got a line on a new donated camera, so hopefully we'll be in full-color again soon. Otherwise coming up with $100+ dollars would probably have taken months. Thanks, Unnamed Benefactor!

Click the Prolific, Magnus the Lucky!

I was up and down last night with an upset stomach brought on by too much actual food. So this morning's normal rising time came and went without too much notice taken by me. Magnus and Fritz didn't mind this very much; Ghost was getting a bit testy about it.

At maybe eight in the morning, a time when I've normally been up for three or four hours and usually out of the lair for at least one, Click came in through her little door and started tossing something about. The noise and movement was unusual, so I looked up from my book (Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsyth) to find Click bouncing a dead - or nearly dead - field mouse off the furniture. I wasn't the only one paying attention. Magnus looked up from where he had barely stirred all morning - bladder like a cistern, that boy - and roused himself just as Click gave a mightier-than-was-good-for-her toss and momentarily lost the mouse up on my sitting bench. Magnus knew just what that was all about, and apparently decided little Click could use some help retrieving her toy. He surged off the couch, padded to the bench, reached over, and ... crunch.

She just looked disgusted and went back outdoors. Later in the morning I found TWO mice drowned in the dogs' water bucket. One isn't real unusual, but I never saw two in the same night. The body count rises, heh heh.

BTW, there's a puppy update! Our new little friend is coming to live with us later this very week, probably Friday. I sent the pet carrier to the city with my weekender neighbors, S&L, and they'll be bringing him here. It's the all-black Akita/Shepherd/Doberman(?) mix. Unfortunately no pictures available at present. It was down to two, and the owners decided that, we having traded some emails, the pretty brown & black one was too shy for our purposes. Probably wise; I fear too shy more than too rambunctious. Though my other neighbors D&L recently got a puppy from hell that's got me re-thinking the wisdom of the whole enterprise. Geez, that little guy has a tightly-wound spring. I hate that. But here we go anyway...