Monthly Archives: October 2013

Furlough Day

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As our long time readers are aware we hire only the most qualified and available researchers, general staffers, maintenance crews and accurate snipers, I mean security people for employees here at the Institute. If they’re not top-notch we send them packing.

We are a multinational organization with employees from places as diverse as Lapland, The Belgian Congo now known as Africa, The Falklands, Kansas, The Aleutian Islands, Bhutan, The Peoples Republic of China, although they’re housed in their own barracks with their own internet connections and land for their rice crops, France, but only people from Provence because they will cook for their room and board, Tonga, Suriname and Yellowstone National park. As a  reward for good behavior, I mean excellence in their performance we give them 24 hours off, unpaid, to visit their homelands every three to five years. And with the government shutdown and our grant money frozen this was as good a day as any.

So everybody left including Izzy who as you are no doubt aware is Bill Faulkner’s nieces’ sister-in-law’s daughter’s boyfriend, who does a lot of the ghost writing here at Blog Central. We were excited to get someone from one of the nations foremost literary families to work here and so far he hasn’t done that badly although he tends to let his sentences run together too much but we got him really cheap so…. Anyway the lumpy dufas took off with the rest and took the cord that connects the keyboard to the computer and now we’ve got no way to post easily, I had to step in and post this from my iPhone, and so all I got for you today is a pretty picture.

Sorry.

They should be back in the morning, although our attrition rate has been in the high 70% no-shows historically, so who knows. Anyway enjoy the picture if you can. We’ll be back to normal just as soon as they get the government back in order. And you know that’s going to happen any moment now, right?

So…Ladies

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Hey there. I’m new in town and haven’t had a chance to meet many deer yet. You are two good-looking ladies but then you know that. Where’s everybody go for a good time, I was down by the cottonwoods but it was full of old bucks and they were listening to, I don’t what the hell it was, sounded like Lawrence Welk or something. Isn’t there any good mountain mahogany patches where everybody hangs out. You girls like to dance? I was on Deer Party on channel 6, it was kinda lame but did we party after the show, whoa, we even had a salt block in the meadow and I don’t know if it’s true or not, because I’m not into that stuff, but I heard they even had a mineral block back in the brush. Yeah it was apple flavored. I know where it  is, you want to see it? I’m not sure but they say if you lick it, you just want to go nuts and dance until your hooves fall off. If you want to we can go and check it out. Yeah I know, but you don’t have to tell them where you’re going. We’ll be back before dark. Yeah, let’s do it then. Man am I glad I ran into two fine ladies like you two. Well yeah, actually I did try that mineral block it was so cool, I don’t know maybe you guys aren’t with it enough to try it, well, we’ll see. It’s over here not far from the creek.

Mr. and Mrs. Mule Deer, what you’ve just witnessed is how easy it is for a stranger to come into your community and lead your young people astray. Every day dozens of young deer are led down the path of temptation and heartbreak by smooth talking young bucks out to take advantage of those innocent unwary young deer among your herd. Soon they’ll be out all night, coming home with apple on their breath, dancing until they’re exhausted rather than learning all they must know before they’re out on their own, and who knows what else. All we do know however is it won’t be good. What can you do? Be vigilant, run off those young bucks as soon as you see them, talk to your young does and bucks and explain the dangers of mineral block licking, set a good example and remind them to just say no when someone wants them to “do a block”, as they say. Remember the catch phrase “It’s not trippy to be a hippie”. Good luck out there.

First Date

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It’s Fall and love is in the air. Elk are a little different from the other animals because when the rest of the world is in love it’s in the spring but with elk everything happens in the fall, and there’s not a lot of time to get all this courtship and dating stuff done either. Soon the snow is going to be ass deep to a tall Ute Indian, and they’ll be too busy trying to stay alive to have time for the lighter side of life, so they have to get the getting to know you part over as quickly as possible.

Decisions need to be made in a hurry and there’s not much time for the usual questions at the singles bar like “where you from babe” and “What’s your sign” and “Do you like long walks on the beach”. Instead it’s more like “Hi I’m Theodore, C’mere” and if she decides she’s not that interested he’ll just run her around until she gives up out of pure fatigue. It’s a fairly normal first date for elk. Lots of relationships start out that way.

As she’s catching her breath she thinking he’s got pretty big antlers and he’s definitely butch enough and besides he’s already got 15 to 20 other young cows all aflutter over him and she figures she’s better looking than they are, so this just might be an OK deal after all. When she figures out that he can hold his own after knocking a few of her old suitors tail over teacup, she’ll think more highly of him and stick around. There is a halfway decent chance the kids just might turn out alright with this guy.

The herds vitality depends on this Theodore here, and all the other bulls doing their jobs so the cows can get back to putting on the pounds to carry them through the winter. They’ll soon be eating for two or maybe even three soon and snow is on its way. So let’s quit this running around and finish this party and knock this foreplay down to threeplay or even twoplay, time’s a wasting. Then we can all head down to the low country before we get stuck here for the winter.

When I was Just a Young Boy

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I was just a young boy My fortune yet untold
I have wandered thru the distance
with a camera full of miracles,
Such are promises
All sights are truth
Yet a man sees what he wants to see
And disregards the rest.

When I left my home and my family
I was no more than a boy
In the company of killers
In the middle of the induction center,
Being scared,
Saying so,
Seeking out the safer notions
Where I could safely go
Looking for the places
That I would surely know

Lie-la-lie…..

My apologies and thanks to Paul Simon and the lyrics from the Boxer

As you age things occasionally pop into your head in the form of memories, things from the past that are so vivid and real that they could have happened this morning. This one didn’t however, it happened 51 years ago and whenever I revisit this image Paul Simon’s song “The Boxer” accompanies it and the first phrase that I hear is “When I was just a young boy, my fortune yet untold” plays. I know that my version is incorrect and differs from the original but that’s the way I hear it.

It is almost impossible for me to realize that I was only 18 at the time and had already been in the service for a year. I was stationed on the South Pacific island of Guam in the Trust Territories of the United States and had already used up every new experience that place had to offer. Consequently whenever I had the opportunity I would hop a plane and go to Japan. It is difficult to explain the impact that incredible place had on an impressionable young man but I still feel the exotic-ness of those memories over 50 years later. I judge every new experience I have against those memories in fact. At every available opportunity I wandered through their country like it was another dimension, camera in hand, trying to capture what I was seeing and feeling at the time and failing miserably but loving every second of it.

I remember taking what seemed like thousands of pictures but as I search through my files I find only a pitifully few of them, faded pockmarked Kodachromes, colors becoming transparent, fading like my memory, but what treasures they are. I have pictures of open air markets on the docks with the sea smell and raw fish and the sound of a language that was both harsh and wondrous and magical at the same time.

I have pictures of movie posters that featured the latest Japanese productions of Ninja movies that I never missed on a Saturday afternoon with the locals yelling insults at the bad guys and eating fried rice out of paper boxes with chopsticks.

There’s even a photograph of a Japanese girl who I’m ashamed to admit that now I can only remember her first name, which was Midori, but I remember she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. You must remember I was young and hadn’t seen everything yet. But she was lovely.

But the one that stands out, the one that I don’t need to see to actually see if you know what I mean, is the one of the temple in Kamakura pictured above. If I could only describe the thunderous silence that surrounded it and the way the moonlight struck the roof and illuminated the garden and the feeling that what ever you might seek in your life was right here right now, I think I could die a happy man, or at least a contented one.

It’s possible I didn’t have all of those thoughts at the time, I was only 18 after all, and there was the beautiful Midori waiting nearby, but something made me take the picture and that something has stayed with me through the years. Many, many memories and experiences have taken place and added up since then but few equal the intensity of emotion that occurs when I see this image again. Just thought I’d share it with you because it’s rare, at least for me, to have a memory that is over half a century old still so vivid and clear.

Note: For those of you that are interested here is a link to a YouTube video that has the original music and lyrics. Sorry about the ad that runs in front of it, thankfully it’s a short one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYPJOCxSUFc

Blue Side of Nowhere

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Blue is one of those colors that can take you places you don’t expect. I’ve always been drawn to it and consider it my favorite color until something else grabs my attention and then off I go singing its praises but I always comeback to blue. There can be an entire page of pictures but if there is one blue one mixed in there that’s the one my eye is drawn to and the one I’ll look at first. That probably says something about my personality that indicates some deep-seated problem of some sort but at this point in my life I no longer give a big rat’s butt if it is. I just like it.

You on the other hand might be different. You’re probably a red freak, or maybe you’re an early riser and sunshine yellow gets you all gooey. And then of course there’s you Irish where every color is your favorite as long as it’s emerald-green. It doesn’t matter and I sure don’t care. That’s why they have 120 colors in the Crayola box and they say they have introduced over 400. Just for you folks who haven’t made up your mind yet.

So I’m going to continue to take pictures of every single color I can find just in case you ask for one and I don’t have it. But today the color is blue and I really hope you like it because I’m not changing it. Your turn will come and you can pick the color, just let me know and I’ll put it up.

Fishkiller

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Bosque del Apache can sometimes be a rough place if you’re a bird or more likely if you’re a fish. Located in the southern part of New Mexico near Socorro, it is nestled right where lots of drama of the most violent kind has occurred. The entire area has been a hotbed of bad behavior since people have known about it, with more than its share of seedy characters of all sorts hanging around doing dastardly deeds and generally being unrepentantly unrepentant.

You can go far enough back in history to find that even one patch of dirt didn’t like the patch next to it in the area around Bosque del Apache and it didn’t get any better as time went on. Just recently, like in the 1700’s, the Comanche’s, the bad boys of the southwestern tribes were active and doing every manner of awful stuff, raiding settlements, capturing or killing the inhabitants, causing a high level of fearfulness to the point where people just said the hell with it and moved back to where ever they came from.

Then you had the Mexicans who ran the place with a pretty tough hand in the early 1800’s, they forced everybody to eat those really hot little green chilies, habernos I think they’re called, it makes my mouth burn just to say the name, whether they wanted to or not. That ought to have been a hanging offense right there. Even Kit Carson, and you know how bad he was, he was like the Honey Badger who wasn’t scared of nothing said “OK I was going to retire here and start a sheep ranch, but these people are just too damn hard to get along with.” and he packed up and went somewhere safer like the Indian Nation or somewhere, and this was in the mid-1800’s already. They had movable type back east and weren’t far off from electric lights and radios by then, and he was scared to live there. Kit Carson! That would be like John Wayne saying he was scared to live near L.A.

Billy the Kid was a regular and you know he liked to tear stuff up. The place was just stuffed to the gills with outlaws. Even today in the 21st century they will charge you more for gasoline down there than anywhere else and just laugh at you when you complain about it. It’s a rough place that New Mexico, just watch it when you go down there.

All through its history the desperadoes, malcontents and just downright mean characters have passed through this neighborhood and one of the worst to come down the pike has been this guy. Simply known as Fishkiller, no ones knows his real name, where he’s from or  how long he’s going to stay, nothing at all, except they know not to mess with him. When you see him sitting there on the bank putting out that evil eye you know that soon some fish is going to die. Known to be a holy terror with that rapier-like bill he has no compunction what so ever about removing the life force from any living fish he sees. There’s many a grieving carp widow hiding in the long grass under the bank sobbing over her missing husband because he went out for a minnow and never came home. All that remained was the sinister shadow of the Fishkiller splayed across the calm surface of the stream and the spreading ripples of the departed.

I told you Bosque del Apache could be dangerous. I wasn’t kidding. So if you’re going to be down there some time and you have a favorite fish don’t be calling for him if you even think the Fishkiller is in the area. I’m just saying. Not wanting to tell you what to do or anything but now you know and if you go ahead and get that fish killed it’s on you. I warned you. OK then, have a nice day.

Sittin’ In The Morning Sun

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It’s time to take a break. It’s fall the kids are back in school learning how to catch all the little creatures that live in the mud and the shallow water. All the nest duties are over and about all that’s left to do is to decide if they want to winter in Texas or Southern Cal.

Right now Southern Cal is looking pretty good. The entire summer has been spent making a nest, sitting on eggs, watching the kids, running off gulls who get too close for comfort, keeping on guard at night so weasels or coyotes don’t come in get a chick or two. All in all it’s been exhausting so a little R&R on the beach seems like a pretty good deal. Plus the surf always sounds so cool in the winter months.

However their reservations don’t kick in for another month so sneaking in an occasional nap or catching some rays feels really good. The only problem is making sure the spouse stays awake while she’s catching some z’s. You can’t ever let your guard down when you’re a shorebird because who knows who is lurking in the tall weeds, but today all is good and the sun feels wonderful on her bill. Just a short nap, then we’ll start thinking about closing down the nest for the season.