February 4, 2012 by mike.

   I am often told that you should learn something new every day.  Well, the problem with that is sooner or later that something new gets lost.  Maybe, because it is of no real use or you just don’t use it at all.  It is tough to imagine that there isn’t enough room in the brain pan to store everything.

There are things that just slip or have no real importance.  My latest slip was not knowing this was a leap year.  No big deal.  I have over the years lost a day here and there.  But, they always seem to catch up with me.  Or vice a versa.

I do, however, still learn new things.  Most recently I learned that the body produces a quart of mucus a day.  Both curious and icky isn’t it?  I imagine that is on average among people.  The last few days I can testify as to my own production of that viscous fluid.  We all have our own stories concerning mucus production, so I don’t need to go into all the icky stuff that we associate with it.

My difficulty is how do I take this new found information and work it into a conversation, without bringing up the icky?

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January 22, 2012 by mike.

   My colony of moles have finally forecast an incoming storm.  I have seen in past years as the moles correctly gave me warning to approaching storms.  This year they haven’t quite gotten their predications right.  There has been a disconnect between mole hills popping up and storms coming in from the Pacific.

This year the heavy winds and buckets of rain have been pushed to the North.  I am not sure why.  It might be because of some geo-physical reason.  A waffling la nina, the big time quakes (one in Japan, one in Chile) or some other unseen thing that has upset the normal flow of weather.

I have noticed that many of the big Western Pacific storms that follow the Japanese current from the west up around the Pacific basin, have been pushed north into Russia or to the Northeast into Alaska or the West coast of Canada.  The early fall storms that come roaring onto the coast of Oregon didn’t arrive.

I noticed this because Sister Nancy has had to hold onto the Bellingham hillside where she lives, to keep from being washed into the bay.  And the rain that we have gotten here has been below average.

However,  my moles correctly predicted this past storm that dumped nine inches of rain in two days.  Being fair they did predict the storms that were pushed North.  I think I will start calling Nancy the next time my moles become active.  She has none of her own and might appreciate if I let her know when the next big storm is heading her way.

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December 25, 2011 by mike.

I used to get socks twice a year.  Once in the fall when we went back to school and again at Christmas.  Whoopee!  However, over the years I have learned to appreciate that piece of clothing.  They keep your feet warm, cushion you when you walk.

They can also be used for a variety of other purposes.  Mittens is the first that comes to me.  But, there is a host of others also.  bandage, rags, or to stuff with valuables. What I have recently been using them for is a chew toy.

No, not for me.  I have bought all sorts of bones and chew toys.  Most of the rawhide bones Goldie won’t even venture a sniff.  They lay tucked into the back of her hutch.  Tennis balls she devours.  She doesn’t play catch, she just lays down with the ball between her paws and proceeds to chew and bite. Leaving only bits of green fuzz and small chunks of rubber.  The same goes for baseballs, sans green fuzz.

I caught her chewing one of my socks one day.  Well, I put a stop to that!  I started picking up my socks. I had gotten her a rag woven bone a week before and she tore it up.  Thinking about it as I watched her.  It was as if  she was trying to untie the knot with her teeth.  In any case I now had a pair of socks with holes.  So I tied them together and said fetch.

This arrangement seems to be working rather well.  She runs, fetches, she chews.  There is some reason that chew toy has lasted longer than any other. But that is in her head. And as it turns out I have a rather large cache of socks with holes in them.

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December 20, 2011 by mike.

May your joys and happiness be as many as the leaves of the great oak.  May your cares and worries melt as snow in the warm sun.  May your heart be filled with kindness and your life be long.

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December 13, 2011 by mike.

I’ve gotten my second pallet of pellets for the year.  Fifty bags at forty pounds each.  That makes a ton.  We’ve been burning more these past two weeks.  The weather here has turned chilly to cold.  The days are sunny, bright and nice.  Chilly but nice.  The nights have stayed clear and cold.

The local Krealings say that we are in a La Nina.  But the weather pattern has been pushed north of us.  We haven’t had rain since November.  Just this chilly to cold temperature range 40’s daytime 20’s at night.  The only time it clouded over was the morning of the Lunar eclipse, go figure.

Honestly, I look at the ocean data every day and have no more of a clue than anyone.  I have noticed that the yearly storms that come across the Pacific and wet us down are being pushed north into Kamchatka and Siberia.  Or across into Canada and Alaska, when they do get to this side of the ocean.   There is a tremendous amount of moisture in the air.  But again, what to make of it?

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November 11, 2011 by mike.

   On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 the guns fell silent on the Western Front.  The Great War was over.  It had been horrendous, with ten million dead and twenty million wounded.   Those numbers do not reflect civilian causalities nor the fifteen million who died of influenza during the war.  It was brutal, savage, and endless.  A whole generation of men,was erased.  So terrible was it, that in Earnest it was labeled “The War to end all Wars”.

Many of the weapons that were used first came to fruition; in fact were invented for use in our Civil War.  Rifled breached loading cannon, steel hulled battleships, submarines, revolving turrets, even balloons for forward observation. Gens Grant and Lee saw what at that time was modern warfare.  They would have retched had they seen what happened on the Western Front.

There were other inventions unique to the war.  Mustard gas, Nerve gas; both truly ugly things.  But on November eleventh 1918 at eleven AM the fighting on The Western Front ceased.

We now use this day to commemorate all of our nation’s fighting men and women.  It is a noble sentiment.  However,  I believe that we should remember this day for what it was: The end of a horrific war, a dark stain on humanities face.  The mark of Cain if you will.

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October 21, 2011 by mike.

   It turns out that I know quite a bit about moles.  The moles I have living under my less than manicured lawn push up the dark black soil and make symmetrical mounds.  They live in colonies.  I am not sure if the colonies interact. But they do seem to have territory.

My sister believes that allowing her lawn to be over grown by moss has chased her resident moles from her yard.  I guess that it is possible.  Moss will keep moisture in the underlying soil. Who likes to have a wet living room or bedroom for that matter.

My way of fighting the little buggers has not really changed over the years.  First all I did was to stomp the mole hills down.  Or to kick the dirt and scatter the pile away from what I perceived to be their entrance.  I have kept my lawn(in past years)trimmed and neat with the idea that the local owls will thin their population.  I have even used package after package of mole spikes.  They are a solid chemical packed into a cardboard cylinder.  You ignite the fuse and push it into the mole hole.  The noxious gas sinks and fills the tunnels and kills the inhabitants.

The years of mundane combat and mole patrols has taught me something about their place in nature.  Other than annoying me, it turns out that they are pretty good indicators of inclement weather.  When I find signs of activity i.e. mole hills popping up,  within seventy-two hours a storm will come through.  That is how I know it is almost past time to ladder up and clean my gutters.

I think that so far they have had as much difficulty predicting the weather as the phalanx of electronic goobers with weather maps and radar.   The hills of black dirt popped up after the showers that left only an inch or two of moisture in my rain gauge.  Since then only gray skies.  The local Kraeylings were no more successful in their predictions.  It could be that my moles are only getting a jump on what nature tells them will be a wet and stormy year.  But, my gutters are clean for now.

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October 2, 2011 by mike.

The hummingbirds I mean.  They were gone back in mid to late August.  So why, you ask, have you only now taken the feeder down and cleaned it?  Well, at first it was lazy.  But then, I noticed that it was useful as a barometer.  Yes! Right there for me to watch was a primitive tool of weather forecasting.  I would watch the local weather for the pressure readings.  Then compare them to the level of juice (colored water) in the abandoned feeder.  I don’t think that a proper amount of time is spent interpreting those measurements.  But, to be honest I must fall back to lazy.

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August 16, 2011 by mike.

   Summer is half gone and things are different.  The things that are different are not what you might think.  One is that the summer heat was late in coming.  Which this year was notable.  The cool weather kept the yellow jacket population down.  The bright side of that is the local bumble bee and wild honey bees have flourished.  The hornets are savage and kill the other insects.  I have  cleaned my hornet trap recently and it is filling up quite fast.

The chipmunks have migrated out of the woods and taken up residence along the edge of the brush.  The local squirrel tries to chase it away.  But, since he has moved back into the woods for the summer,  his attempts have been half hearted and the chipmunk comes and goes as it pleases.

The bluejays and the squirrel are busy harvesting the hazel nuts.  The jays pluck the nuts and fly into a tree.  They peal the husk and tap the nut on a branch until the meat comes free.  Sometimes they will drop down to the ground and bury it.  Other times they break it up and eat.

The hummingbirds are back and have kept me busy filling their feeder.  I think they are from this years hatch, because they have none of the color or markings of the adult birds.  I did see something that I haven’t seen before.  A hummingbird “stalking” a match head size flying bug.  It hovered behind it, then darted in and caught it.  Never saw that before.

The weather has been nice.  The temps have been in the seventies and mid eighties.  Cooling of to the mid fifties at night.  Nice sleeping.  The local weather people are fretting over the fact that we’ve had no ninety degree days.  So it can’t really be summer.  Now they are pointing out that we’ve had no rain since early July.  What a bunch of goofs.

All in all I think it has been a very pleasant summer and we are only half way done.

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July 4, 2011 by mike.

   I grew up out in the woods, as has been mentioned many times.  I was fortunate enough to have all of the things that made life sort of Tom Sawyer-ish.  A bike, baseballs and bats, and a B*B gun.  Dad also made rubber guns.

Rubber guns were a piece of wood cut in the form of a pistol, with a strip of wood nailed to the butt and strapped with a piece of rubber.  The bullets were other strips of rubber that would be stretched from the trigger to the end of the barrel.  A simple squeeze of the mechanism with the hand and the strip of rubber (real rubber) would fly thru the air and slap against the target.  In my case a younger brother or sister.  I think that is why Nancy has an aversion to the outside.

Both her and Tom were my perennial targets.  I was such a shit.  The television was rife with cowboy shows. Movies and half hour shows fed my imagination.  When I tried riding my bike and shooting my B*B gun on the run nothing was safe.  Cowboys and Indians shot from the back of a moving horse, with my imagination, me too.

There was another game that was played, B*B tag.  The difficulty is that in order to play, all participants must be equally armed.  My brother and sister were not so equipped.  That left me to play with the neighbor boys.  One rule: no shots above the shoulders or you became a free target and could not shoot back.  It didn’t matter, because the real target, point of aim, was the buttocks.

David was better at ambushing. Jed was sneaky and silent in the woods.  Kevin hid behind trees and took pot shots.  Me?  I just ran through the woods shooting from the back of my horse. (My legs were my horse).  I forget why we quit playing.  It could have been that our parents found out and told us to.  Or maybe because they quit buying us ammunition.  Or maybe because we got tired of getting shot in the butt or any other place.

I am not sure what ever happened to my trusty “Ol Betsy”, But she was a dandy, a long barreled weapon with a forceful charge that spit BB’s out hard and far.  The point of all this is to announce that in the last few years I have been playing B*B tag again.

I bought a small gun, half the size of Ol Betsy with  less than half her range.  And my targets are not the neighborhood kids.  But the annoying cats that in the past seem to believe that I am the attendant to their personal toilet.  They learn rather quickly and are no longer so foolish as to prance and prowl around when I am present.

Then about three years ago rabbits started to graze out onto my lawn from the edge of the brush.  So I have a whole new set of targets to play with.  The rules are the same; no shots above the shoulders.  Some of the rabbits get smart quick.  They hear the door open and they head for the brush.  The BBs rattle in the barrel and they head for the brush.  They hear me cocking the gun and they are gone.  I only care to move them off and away.  If I wanted them dead, I would be using my .22.  Then the game would be called “one and done”.

My last target was a pretty clever bunny, showing up at various times, hiding behind a pieces of wood or the tire on the car I have stored in the backyard.  But, as clever as he was, I too was resourceful.  I will not go further in describing our war of attrition.  My current weapon has neither the range nor the force of Ol Betsy.  But when I did connect that cottontail was gone.  Some times it just got tired of being shot at and would saunter off back into the brush.  Other times it would take one in the hip and scoot.

But, all good times end and the time I wiled away playing tag are over.  My playmate has gone away.  I do keep my new Ol Betsy in the mud room waiting for the next incursion.  But, I have not seen Peter for at least a month. I doubt that I have injured him beyond the welts on his behind.  And the redness and sting go away.  Mine have any way.

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