Just when you think you’ve patched up a wooden fence as much as you can, a bunch of cows come knock it down and then you patch it up again after you chase them out of the yard. Truly, the challenge is getting a little repetitive and boring though. Just thought I’d share that.
Incidentally, this coincides with the theme for this illustration friday, which is ‘farm’, so I drew a quick sketch for the occasion:
Had a little fun with the whole Pluto Controversy – in the form of t-shirts of course – “Save Pluto! Persist Against Pernicious Planetary Plutocracy!”
An astonomer I heard being interviewed on the radio the other day made a good point. We have very clear cut definitions for when things are defined as ‘suns’ or ‘comets’ but the dividing line between what a planet is or isn’t, based on size, is really just arbitrary and doesn’t really make that much difference where they’ve drawn, or redrawn the line. Something to think about.
It seems like we’ve been having one small animal incident after another here lately! First, we had our friend the goshawk hanging around again. Sorry for the graininess of the photo but I took it through the screen in the front window. Then the other day, although I didn’t get any photos for obvious reasons, suddenly there was a bat swooping around inside the house! After dark we stop using a particular door because there are bats flying around that side of the house and a couple have slipped in that way before. But this was only 6:30 p.m. and I hadn’t been outside in a few hours so I’m not really sure how it got inside in the first place. I quickly tucked the dogs away in the bathroom, closed the door, and opened up a screen and door so the bat had two possible escape routes – I didn’t see it leave, but I’m sure it got out just fine.
Then just recently, we were eating hamburgers we had just grilled on our small electric grill, inside, but near an open window with a screen. Suddenly bees started showing up, attracted by the smell. (These are the bees from the ‘bee’ guy’s hives down the road. I never knew bees were such carnivorous scavengers until earlier this year we saw them skeletalize a dead mouse – I know, it was pretty creepy and gross!) We didn’t think anything of it until somehow they started getting INSIDE and flying around the remnants on the grill. A good number of them snuck right inside the grill and the grease trap, so we sacrificed the grill and took it outside, setting it down on a folding chair in the yard. (Which attracted MORE bees, but at least it was outside!) So then, after much debating and failed attempts at bee coersion, John and I each settled on our own method of releasing the other inside bees into the wild. I was using a plastic pitcher and a sauce pan lid – I’d scoop up a bee, slam the lid down, then let it go outside, which was actually easier than trying to kill them all. Luckily they weren’t very aggressive and were pretty easily scooped, but there must have been over twenty rather active bees zipping about.
In the meantime, of course, the hamburger slathered grill was attracting more than bees – by this time I was finding the whole incident amusing and ridiculous and so took photos through the blinds on the window in the door. First, there were two ground squirrels who noticed the grill and tussled a bit, probably trying to determine who got the booty.
Then, another one joined the challenge, and there was much sudden running around and general squirrely activity.
Ahhh, it seems a champion was chosen somehow from the brief yet poignant squirrel olympics. Said squirrel wasted no time approaching the prize.
And finally, with all four feet on the grill, it was known far and wide who was top squirrel in the bunch!
Needless to say, I’m pretty sure we’re never going to use that grill again – LOL. We’re thinking about donating it to the squirrels for their annual barbeque and nut gathering they hold in mid-October.
Okay – I thought I was done with the wildlife but yesterday morning had yet ANOTHER incident. Every so often when I’m spraying water into the turtle pond in the morning, a hummingbird will buzz by, attracted by the sparkling spray. Sometimes they even dip their feet in the stream and take drinks. Yesterday morning was no exception – a little green hummingbird flew up, about 1.5 feet from my face, and was dancing in the spray, flying out and coming back, resting on the chicken wire, then doing it again. Except at one point it misjudged a bit and caught the spray (which I didn’t have going FULL blast, thankfully) with too much of its body and ended up plastered against the chicken wire! It all happened in an instant and I stopped the spray as fast as I could. I felt so bad for this tiny little bird, all soaking wet, and hoped I didn’t hurt it. As soon as the spray was off though it sort of shook itself off, slightly dazed, but then flew off just fine. I guess we both learned a lesson – I’ll make the spray as SOFT as possible if there’s a hummingbird around and they’ll be more careful about keeping their little bodies out of the way. Geesh!
And I was just about to post this when we had an ant attack in the kitchen – fire ants attacking the dog food dish. Enough already with the wildlife for a little while, okay?!
I think this cartoon pretty much says it all!
About ten years ago I bought a copy of “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole in the local bookstore. I had gone through most of the science fiction and fantasy books on the shelves at the time and while I wasn’t in the habit of reading random general fiction, the title caught my eye while I was browsing for something new to read. The blurb on the cover described it this way, “The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel featuring Ignatius Reilly and his marvelous, madcap adventures in New Orleans.” At the time, after I read a few chapters, I was somewhat repulsed by the characters and the harsh meanness and stopped reading, eventually pushing the book aside completely and forgetting about it.
The other day I found the book again – it’s a small hardcover with one of those smooth/slick, but not shiny jackets – still looked good, if a bit dusty. Since I was once again looking for something to read, I decided to give it another shot. I got to the same point in the book again and remembered why I stopped reading it before, but this time I kept reading. I wasn’t exactly “interested” in the characters, but the writing itself was actually rather good and I didn’t have any other books on hand and was rather desparate. So I forged ahead.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to say that I “liked” the book, as stories that involve a lot of severely maladjusted and unconscious characters usually just depress me (and I like to be inspired by what I read) but I’ll still say it was a GOOD book. Well-written. Characters and plot all worked really well and intertwined in perfect and unexpected ways. I had to skip some of the diatribes written about the horrors of societal decline by the main character – they were just too long and too well-done – written just like someone with a masters degree and a persecution complex would write them – but they DID fit the story (from what I skimmed/gleaned.) I’d probably call the adventures “insanity and disfunction” rather than “madcap”, but maybe that’s the difference between now and 1980 (original publication date).
Interesting – just now when I was looking for the publication date, I found a quote on an adjacent page that I had missed before, “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” – Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting. If you take that with a note of implied sarcasm and paranoia, you’ll be well on your way to understanding Ignatius Reilly.
Another note about this book… it was brought to a publisher’s attention by the author’s mother after the author’s death at the age of 32, by suicide. Considering that the main characters are about an adult son who still lives with his mother, that’s very interesting. Life is weird, and “fiction” seems more and more a useless sort of label when you look at the whole of things. (As an aside – I also found this blog while googling: Confederacy of Dunces, which is about New Orleans and Katrina.)
