Salt the Tail

I have an interesting challenge facing me. Someone would like to buy two of our peacocks; a mating pair. We have never sold any of our peacocks before. They wander around mostly for our amusement and for decoration. So I have never had to confront the problem of how to catch one. Peacocks are pretty much independent fellows. They like to be left alone. They do just fine left to their own devices. They don't mind if we hang around, but they don't really want us getting too close. They aren't what you would consider your touchy-feely kind of a pet. We admire them from a negotiated distance and they tolerate our presence; a mutually agreeable coexistence.

I think the balance might be upset if I started going around trying to grab a couple of them. I don't think they're going to appreciate the benefit of that. Besides, I don't think trying to grab peacocks is going to work. Not only will it make the peacocks hate me, but, if you can imagine this, it will be an amazingly comical sight, feathers flapping, dust flying, birds squawking, me lunging, grabbing, yelling. And in the end the birds will all be up in the trees, I will have nothing in my hands but feathers to show for it, and that will be the last time I ever get close to a peacock again.

You see, peacocks aren't like chickens and ducks and geese. Chickens and ducks and geese are slow, fat, dumb and don't fly so good. They're a piece of cake. I grab them all the time. I grab them for fun when I'm bored and there's nothing to do. But peacocks, they're quick, strong, wary and fly really well. And they have very sharp and pointy beaks. I bet they peck pretty good too. I've never given them a reason to before.

Someone suggested that I trap them. That is a possibility. I have a live trap. I don't know if that would work either though. I got the trap originally when we wanted to get rid of some possums that were terrorizing the neighborhood. You know, we wanted to do it in a humane way, they being so cute and all, and catch them in a live trap. The plan was then to take them off somewhere and release them into someone else's neighborhood.

Possums are night creatures. So I set the trap at night, put possum bait in it, tuna I think, then went to bed. The next morning I eagerly visited my trap to see what I might have captured. I was surprised to find a very unhappy cat nicely trapped inside. I was an excellent cat catcher with that trap. I didn't catch much else, but boy could I ever catch cats. Trouble is, nobody needs to catch cats. Every time you walk out of the house you have to peel cats off of you. They're everywhere.

I'm afraid peacock traps, even if they were baited with peacock food, with my luck, would still just catch cats. I could give it a try, but cats in a cage may be all I get. So I am pondering the solution. Nets? Herd them into a bird corral? Catch them sleeping? Leg hooks? Maybe I should just get it over with and have a peacock nabbing party. Have 20 friends come over, spread out, surround them, jump them all at once before they even know what hit them. It would be over in a flash. I only need one male and one female. Then we could toss some steaks on the grill and celebrate our conquest. The surviving birds could honk at us the rest of the evening from their roosts in the trees.

Ahh, it hardly seems worth it. Maybe I'll just say they're not for sale. The peacocks are just part of Green Acres, like everything else. Yeah, wouldn't have it any other way.

Time Goes Fast

Cindy and I met with our financial advisors last evening. We plugged assumptions into their fancy computer program with its Monte Carlo simulation and then we ran different what-if scenarios to see how we could improve the chances of reaching our financial goals. It was pretty cool stuff. Driving back home we commented that we both felt as if we had a better understanding of how we stood and more confidence that our plans were sound. But most of all we noticed how fast time seems to be going. And the older we get, the faster time seems to get. Is life supposed to zip by at light speed? Does it for everyone?

It seems like just yesterday that we moved into Green Acres, the name we have affectionately attached to our ten acre corner of the world. We planted our first garden, our first trees, raised our first chickens. Then it seems that we have barely turned around and we have raised two children, planted thousands of trees, built two houses and birthed, rescued or saved I don't know how many animals. My daughter is in vet school in part as a result of the experiences.

It just goes so fast. I suspect that the perception of time speeding by is likely a good thing. Part of the human mind's experience of life as being overall pleasurable or enjoyable, and therefore desiring more of it. Because the opposite would be when time passes inexorably and painfully slow when life is tragic or boring. Overall we consider ourselves exceedingly blessed. Blessed beyond measure. And so, it seems to go by so fast.

Morning Deer

This morning on the way to work I came over a hill and spied in the distance a large doe standing on the side of the road. Instinctively I let off on the gas and started to slow down as I approached. I glanced in my rear view mirror to make sure that no one would be coming up behind me as I slowed. She stood broadside to me facing away from the road on my right, as if she had just crossed. She was all attention, looking straight at me, frozen, beautiful. The morning sun coming from behind me lit her up in the beautiful golden brown color of her summer coat. She was radiant against the verdant hue of the tall grass along the side of the road. I don't think the whitetail deer is ever more beautiful than at this time of the year, so vibrant, literally glowing with color.

This morning, as I frequently am, I was in awe, and in reverence, at being in the presence of a wild animal. Seeing the wild animal evokes in me something that I like. Maybe some part of me that is wild too, a part that feels real, and grand, and connected to the earth, and to creation, and to the creator. I became aware of my creator, and I felt gratitude for receiving such great gifts. I prepared to stop the vehicle as I drew closer. She poses a danger, I know, because she is unpredictable. I am alert, as she is. My pulse quickens.

I scan the ditches on both sides of the road, and the fields as well. Were there is one deer there often will be others. It is not the deer you see that you hit, it is the one you don't see. The one that pops out at the last minute and jumps in front of the vehicle when your think you are clear. Then I see them on the opposite side of the road. Twin fawns. They are standing in the grass, almost blending in. They appear to be following the doe. She must be their mother. They are at the edge of the road, they have not crossed yet. They stand frozen, staring at me as I approach. Although they still have their white fawn spots, they are maturing, nearly half grown. They are trim and agile and wonderful.

I slow way down. I draw closer. What will happen? Who will move? Suddenly the two fawns turn around and bolt away from the road and away from their mother. They are running off away on my left. A half of a second later the doe bolts and goes the opposite direction and runs away from the road and away from the fawns off away on my right. Now the road ahead of me is clear and I can pass without worry. The deer have run away from the road. And I have enjoyed the serendipity of a rare brief close-up encounter with nature's beauty and elegance.

But... I do know a little something about does and fawns. They do not want to be separated. They may have started out running in different directions, but they are going to end up together, and a road is not going to get in their way. Someone is going to circle back around and run across the road to get to the others. So I waited. And I watched. And sure enough. Mother doe made a big circle, came back around, and dashed across the road in front of me making a bee line to where the twin fawns went. She could easily have been nailed by an unsuspecting driver passing on by. But thankfully, today she wasn't. So we all went happily on our way, and had nice days.

It Goes Unsaid

There is something going unsaid between my wife and I. The weekend before last we loaded up the horse trailer with odds and ends of furniture and things to take with us to the college campus on our visit with the kids. When I was backing up the trailer onto the driveway I had some trouble getting the Trailblazer to roll up over the dropoff at the end of the concrete slab, so I just gave it more gas. I figured the trailer was heavy and all and it just needed a little more oomph. But it just couldn't get up over the edge, so I rolled it back down a little bit, put it back in reverse, then gunned it real good and got some momentum going. It almost made it. So I went back down and got a rolling start again. This time I was really determined and I got it really going pretty good but it became obvious that I wasn't going to get back up on that driveway. Something was wrong.

I got out and took a look. Sure enough, something was in the way. We have a basketball hoop and backboard that is mounted on a very sturdy post at the side of the driveway. It is one of those nice jobs that adjusts up and down so that you can make the height of the hoop anything you want so that even little kids can play. On that day it was at a height that matched perfectly with the back of my horse trailer. My efforts to back into the driveway with the horse trailer successfully twisted the basketball backboard so that it now points at a nearly 45 degree angle from where it is suppose to point.

You can call it shame. You can call it cowardice. You can call it immaturity. You can call it being mad and disgusted and in a hurry and just not wanting to deal with it, but I loaded up and we left and I didn't say anything to my wife about it. Now, I wasn't intentionally hiding it. I mean, you can just look at the thing and see that something is amiss. It's out in the open if you just look. In my mind by not saying anything I was just postponing the unpleasant conversation, not trying to avoid it altogether, maybe just trying not to add something that would maybe spoil the weekend.

Here's what I thought would happen. We would come home. My wife would see the travesty of the basketball hoop and ask "What happened?" and I would explain everything. But that didn't happen. She hasn't said anything. Nothing, nada, zilcho. And so goes my dilemma. I have passively been waiting to react, but there has been nothing to react to. Now its been nine days and I'm stuck. It seems that there are two possibilities here. First, she has noticed the mangled basketball hoop and isn't saying anything waiting for me to say something. In that case, she knows that I know that she knows. Furthermore, she also knows that I know that she knows that I know that she knows. So the longer I go before I say anything the more embarrassing it gets and the more power I give her. This is not good.

The second possibility is that she hasn't noticed at all. Now, this is hard for me to swallow because the thing is all bent to hell. But it is possible, because basketball hoops don't exactly rotate in her universe. So, let's say she hasn't noticed that the basketball backboard is now facing a different country. If she does happen to notice, or when I do end up telling her, I will have to deal with the "Why didn't you say anything?" question. And that won't be good either. Actually, it's not a bad question, even though I really would rather avoid the answer. As for now, however, it goes unsaid.

Saving the Trees

Yesterday I spent some time removing branches from several of our trees. This has become an annual necessity due to a vile little insect that attacts the trees by working in packs. I have to hand it to the little buggers, they have a very effective strategy. These are little caterpillars. Not the pretty green and yellow kind. These are an ugly brown with black hairy spikes. There are literally dozens, if not hundreds of them, setting up shop on one whole branch of a tree. They encase the entire branch in a thick web, just like a spider web. This makes them impervious to any threat from the outside, like from birds and such. They are then free to wreck havoc on the branch to their hearts content. Do caterpillars have hearts I wonder? If this was all it wouldn't be so bad, my trees could loose a branch or two here or there. But no, these are greedy little bastards. They move from one branch to another, reproducing, eating, web-making, until they literally kill the entire tree. It is a sad and sorry sight. So, every year I go out and start cutting out the cancer that threatens to do in my trees. Every webed-up branch has to be cut out in order to stop the relentless march of death and destruction. I wish there was an easier way. I wish I could get rid of them once and for all. But once again, I rise to the challenge, take up my loppers, and hack away. Its me against them. Either that, or I end up with a graveyard of dead trees.

Journaling in a Blog

I should start off by saying something about what I think about blogs. I have seen some blogs, but I don't read them, so I don't really know that much about them. I'm self-conscious about that, being blog naive, but I think it might be good too, because then I won't be constrained to fit any kind of blog expectations. I'm sort of free to discover my own blog style.

There is a risk in that, I know. I might end up with a very un-cool blog. In fact, it might be too late. I might already have made many hapless blog blunders. On the other hand, I could hope that maybe I might tap into some as yet unknown creative resource and produce an amazingly fresh and wonderful blog. Chances are however, this will actually end up just being a short-lived exercise in self-absorbed navel watching and end up measuring zero on the Richter scale.

I worry as well about being too personal in a public forum. I'm used to writing privately in a journal, and I ask myself, what parts would be OK to publish? And if they were published, what would the consequences be? Now the really hard part is, I can make decisions about myself and about what I share and about how life and everything relates to me, but what about the people in my life? I find it much more difficult trying to decide how far to go in sharing not just things about them directly, but things about me that would reflect on them indirectly, with the people that know us.

So I guess that if I were totally anonymous, a fictitious character created only for the blog, one that not even my wife could discern from reading my blog, I could then be more revealing in a safe way. But there would be the risk of being found out. And there would also be the basic problem that I would be creating a fictitious world. In other words, my blog would be a lie. There would be no accountability. No one would really know if what I was saying was true, or real, or hard-earned, or hard-felt, or genuine, even if it really was. And I really value things in life that are really real. Getting under the surface to what is really real.

Journaling in a blog, knowing that people will be reading it, keeps me, in my mind at least, to the task. I want to find out what I find out doing that.

Blog out. For now.

First Post

Yes, I do resort to shameless cute puppy pictures. This is our new boxer puppy "MoneyPenny". I have so many things to write but as I sit here actually poised and ready to go, my mind goes blank. Isn't that how things go? This first post will just have to serve as an ice breaker for me to see how this all works. I'll be back.