In the interest of equal time, here are some pictures of Jessie today. She’s getting on in years and sometimes doesn’t move as quickly as she used to, but at least there are no evil, nefarious plans behind that doggy grin. Unless of course she gets a chance to lie about having had dinner or treats yet. Then all bets are off.
Filed under Castle Willett, Dogs, Photography
That was my first thought when I took Jessie out a while ago.
In the winter, when we have a night that’s cool (in the 50s F) as opposed to cold (30s F), you’ll smell the smoke in the air as some folks light off their fireplaces instead of turning on the furnace. (I know, it’s not -30F like in Vermont, but it’s cold for LA.) But today it was almost 105F here and it’s still in the low 80s, so who’s the yahoo with the fireplace?
It only took a second to realize the truth. That wasn’t wood smoke — it was grass & brush.
The good news (or really, really bad news) was that I couldn’t hear any sirens. If it were a big brush fire anywhere within ten miles, we would have heard lots and lots of fire trucks. But if a brush fire had just now started and was near enough for me to smell, the first engines might not be rolling yet…
A quick look around at the hills showed no obvious flames or orange glows (just the blue-white glow from the football game over at the high school), nor any obvious smoke clouds. Once inside, a quick check of the local news sites showed that there had been a small (three or four acres) fire about five miles away, but they had hit it hard and got it out before it could spread much.
Brush fires are always an issue in California, and this year could be a doozie. So far all of the really big fires have been up in Northern California, but it’s just a matter of time before we have them in SoCal this year. In the third year of a historic drought, there’s a lot of brush to burn. Meanwhile, the hundreds and hundreds of fires to date this year have already exhausted the funds budgeted to fight them, despite the fact that the heart of the fire season is just getting here.
The drought’s getting critical (there are already small towns in central California that haven’t had water AT ALL in weeks), the temperatures are rising (on average, in this part of the world it’s the hottest year since they started keeping records in the mid-1800s), and the hoped-for El Niño rains are now being described as “unlikely.”
The next time I smell smoke, the proper first thought won’t be “Who’s using their fireplace?”
The correct questions will be, “How big? How close? Where are the critical documents? Where’s that bug-out plan? How soon do we have to start packing the car and how much time do we have?”
Filed under Disasters, Dogs, Los Angeles
‘Cause the baseball postseason is here and my beloved Angels have the best record in baseball, that’s why.
Remember, “Some days you win, some days you lose. Some days it rains.” That’s deep. Really. Not even being snarky. From Bull Durham, one of the finest baseball movies ever made. (It happens to be about baseball. A bit. And other things.) ((I’ll shut up now.))
Filed under Astronomy, Dogs, Freakin' Idiots!, Health, Juicy Chunks, LA Angels, Los Angeles, Ronnie, Sports
As dogs and squirrels do, Jessie and the squirrels in the yard have a love/hate relationship. Jessie hates them, and the squirrels love to taunt her. You know the game, where they see just how far down the tree or how far out onto the grass they can go to make her attack with a crazed fervor, only to have them dart to safety at the last second and then sit just out of reach making obnoxious squirrel sounds. Repeat as necessary until everyone involved will be getting a good night’s sleep tonight.
Jessie’s slowed down a few steps (she’s now 13-½ years old) and often ignores them these days, but a new crop of squirrels have grown up or moved in and they’ve been giving her all sorts of grief. It helps her keep her dog-ish figure to chase one every now and then.
This afternoon when I came home, as is often the case, the sound of me parking and then locking the car set off a round of barking and howling from the back yard. (I hope that she doesn’t do that all day long when we’re gone — I’ve always hated having neighbors who had dogs that did that and they didn’t do anything about it. It’s better than having dogs that bark and howl all night long, but it’s still annoying, and I don’t ever want to be that neighbor. On the other hand, we’ve never gotten a call or a note, so if she’s being annoying, she’s not annoying enough to make anyone complain.) Sometimes she’ll trot to the gate to see if it’s me (or The Long-Suffering Wife), but not today.
I went into the back yard, expecting to find her lounging in one of her shady spots in the dirt (it’s a dog thing) but instead found her out in the sun on the patio. Still howling and barking as I walked up to her. (In addition to losing a step in her advancing years, I suspect she’s also getting a wee bit deaf and blind.) When she finally sees me she jumps up — and grabs the dead squirrel that she had been guarding.
I’ve never seen any sign that she has ever actually caught one, let alone killed it. We’ve had them die of disease and wind up on the ground (gross!) and we’ve had them fall into the hot tub and drown (really gross!), but she’s never paid any attention to those. The one she’s got now seems healthy enough, except of course for the spots where something’s been gnawing on it. It might have fallen and been injured before Jessie got to it, but I’m not doing an autopsy (rodent-opsy? squirrel-opsy?) to find out.
So, behold, Jessie, the mightiest hunter of the neighborhood, ruler of all she surveys, killer of squirrels! (Please, dear God, don’t let it go to her head, especially if the next critter she runs into is a skunk!)
Filed under Critters, Dogs, Photography
If the local coyote is to be “Wiley,” and the local raccoons are “Rocky” and “Raquel,” then this little guy must be “Harvey.” For a couple of different reasons.
First of all, given the popularity of the play and the movie, “Harvey” is a natural choice. I know, “Bugs” might be more popular, but this guy didn’t have a “Bugs” attitude. He was very quiet, calm, and sedate, much more like, “Good evening, Mr. Dowd…Ed Hickey was a little spiffed this evening, or could I be mistaken?”
Secondly, while I’m a huge fan of Bugs Bunny (although Marvin Martian is my spirit guide), “Harvey” was our high school senior play, the only acting I ever did (it was a blast!) so it will always have a soft spot in my heart.
Finally, and most importantly, it seemed that I was the only one who could see him. I let Jessie out into the yard knowing that the rabbit was there and Jessie showed absolutely no sign of knowing the rabbit was there. She was walking back in forth less than ten feet away and she didn’t smell the rabbit, look at it, perk up her ears, bark, chase it halfway down the block or out into traffic, all of which are her usual behavior when a rabbit dares to enter her yard.
I took Jessie back inside because I saw someone coming down the block with a pit bull on a lead, but I stopped to watch when they got by our house. The rabbit was still sitting there, but the guy didn’t notice it, nor did the young, healthy, massive, pit bull. Less than ten feet away. Nothing.
I grabbed the camera and started walking out, taking pictures as I went, figuring the rabbit would bolt at any second. Nope, I got to within about five feet. It just sat there and blinked.
I was late to get to the hanger, so I left it, still sitting there, wondering if maybe I should have brought Ed Hickey along.
Filed under Castle Willett, Critters, Dogs, Photography
I was just out in the back yard, standing there in the dark while the dog patrolled and marked her territory. It’s a nice night here, moon through the trees, still warm, starting to get a bit muggy — but what really struck me were the sounds.
From inside the house I could hear the Angels-Twins baseball game on the television. As I mentioned the other day, even if you’re not watching or paying attention to the game, even if you don’t care about the outcome, if you’ve been raised with baseball in your life there’s a rhythm, a form, a patois to a baseball game broadcast that’s all its own. That’s a sound that can take me straight back to childhood, back when there was only one game on television all week, the NBC Saturday Game Of The Week, and it was never my team. (At that point it was the Kansas City Athletics.) Every game was listened to on the radio, with Monte Moore calling the action. I’m sure that for other folks there’s a similar attachment to the sounds of soccer or basketball, but for me it’s baseball.
From down the block I can hear the high school football game, the first home game of the year. It’s a private high school, not the public school our kids went to, but it’s always great to hear the crowd, the band, the totally unintelligible blaring from the PA system. It would have been great to be back in Kansas City for this weekend’s season kickoff festivities for the Chiefs, but lacking that, the sound of night high school football games tells me at a cellular level that football season is here.
As Jessie finished her business, over the hill by the county line I could hear a siren start up. I remember as a kid being surprised to find that (as a general rule) different siren sounds indicated different emergency vehicles. Fire trucks don’t sound like ambulances which don’t sound like police cars. What I was hearing tonight was a police car, which made sense given that it came from that direction while the fire station was over that way and the hospital over that way. A minute later, off toward the Valley, the sound of an incoming helicopter indicated that something was indeed up over toward the freeway.
When we were in Vermont and upstate New York in June, one of the things that struck me after a couple of days was the total lack of sirens and helicopters. Between police, fire, and ambulance sirens and police, private, and traffic helicopters flitting about, you never go more than a couple of hours without hearing sirens and choppers in Los Angeles. It’s so routine you don’t even think about it until you start hearing a LOT of them. (If they’re fire engines, you live near the hills covered in dry brush, and you suddenly catch a whiff of smoke on the breeze, that’s a whole different alert level.) But in ten days in New England, I didn’t hear a single siren, nor did I see or hear a single helicopter. As with the dogs that did not bark in the night, it stood out once it was noticed.
Finally, off in the distance, going through the Santa Suzanna Pass, a train whistle could be heard. There’s a reason that sound is so synonymous with loneliness and longing, the call of the road, the desire to be off seeking adventures or a new life, all debts paid one way or the other, a clean slate wherever we end up. It made me wonder what sound evoked those feelings before the train was invented. There must have been one, the feelings aren’t new. I’m thinking it might have been the sound of honking geese heading over the horizon.
Where do those geese go, and when can I follow?
Filed under Dogs, KC Chiefs, LA Angels, Los Angeles, Paul
This week the Flash Fiction Challenge from our beloved Chuck Wendig is to write a story with a title including a color. I rolled a 6, so I get to play with “fuchsia.” Okay, I’ll admit, I hear the word all the time, but I have no clue what it looks like, so, “Hello, Google?”
So, you wonder how a story gets written out of thin air? If it’s a story like this, it helps to have a Robin Williams special going in the background. You sit and think and you’ve got nothing. Any genre? Not a glint. Any style? Not a glimmer. Any ideas? My skull is pulling a hard vacuum. “This one is pretty easy,” Chuck said. I might have a different opinion.
You’re looking for any kind of a hook, a starting point. Finally, the Muse takes mercy on you and says, “Robin thinks you should write something silly.” Great, now my muse is talking to Robin Williams, and Robin is stating the semi-obvious. Say hello for me!
Does Robin have any suggestions on how to write this thing? “Yes,” says the muse, “you should start by thinking up a bizarre, silly, stupid title and then figure out what the story has to be for it.”
Oh, you mean like this one?
Thanks, Robin. Again. For everything.
ZOMBIES DON’T EAT FUCHSIA POODLES
Our backs against the tree, trying to pant and wheeze as quietly as possible while being absolutely motionless, I tried to analyze where the experiment had gone wrong.
Since the ‘Lypse we had all been busy trying to either be fast, good, or lucky. We hadn’t had a lot of time to figure out what had happened, or why, or who was responsible. Research was the luxury of a populace which wasn’t constantly five minutes away from being ripped to shreds. No atheists in foxholes? Maybe, but definitely no paranormal epidemiologists had survived the ‘Lypse.
A few of us had tried to keep our eyes open as we ran for our lives. We would jot down some notes when we found shelter. It was up to us to remove ourselves from the endangered species list – no one was going to do it for us.
There had been a lot of changes real fast. The zombies were the most obvious, but there were massive, overnight, seemingly random mutations throughout the animal kingdom. Among us survivors there were tales of stinging insects the size of blue jays down south, and dolphins big enough and mean enough to sink aircraft carriers along the coast. We hadn’t seen any of those things here in Minnesota. On the other hand, I personally had seen a herd of miniature moose the size of rabbits taking down a bear.
The household pet population had seemed to get hit particularly hard. As a result, no matter where you were, you had been attacked by zombies, and you had seen bizarre cats, dogs, hamsters, birds, snakes, goldfish, and pot-bellied pigs. There were huge ones, tiny ones, weird colors, and psychedelic patterns. Scales where there should be fur or feathers and vice versa.
It was like God had dropped some bad acid and took reality along with him on the trip.
I was the one in our pack who first noticed the growing population of the fuchsia poodles.
While the mutant pets had gotten weird, they hadn’t gotten deadly. Kittens still wanted to play with string. Puppies still wanted their tummies rubbed. They were just as much prey as we were when the zombies came through and they were far less prepared to fight back. Their populations had dropped faster than ours had.
Occasionally we would see packs of feral dogs. More and more they were comprised of fuchsia poodles. Not blue, not green, not yellow. Not Dobermans, not German shepherds, not retrievers.
Fuchsia. Poodles.
We were desperate. We were losing the war. We were being eaten. We had to do something.
Helen was convinced it was the fuchsia color that was the key. She argued we only saw fuchsia poodles because only poodles had turned that color. She went out and found every piece of fuchsia clothing she could and dressed in it head to toe.
It was Helen’s belief that the zombies couldn’t see anything fuchsia colored, sort of like how the Predator couldn’t see Arnold when he was colored in mud. She believed it right up to the point where she stopped screaming after the zombies got her.
The packs of feral fuchsia poodles got larger. The packs of feral humans got smaller.
A week ago my pack ran into another group that was heading north from the Chicago area. We gave them a place to stay overnight. Over a cold dinner we swapped stories and information.
Their leader had also noticed the fuchsia poodle anomaly. Better yet, she had seen in person what was happening. They had been hiding up in a stand of trees, waiting for a zombie pack to shamble on by, when a pack of dogs had run through. The zombies had started to attack the pack, but a handful of fuchsia poodles had counter-attacked without being touched, driving off the undead.
Other breeds, other colored poodles, all turned into zombie chow, while the fuchsia poodles could as well have been invisible.
I was tired of running and sick of being prey. The best defense is a good offense. Insert your favorite platitude here. I finally had a plan.
We kept our eyes open and the next time we saw a pack of dogs, we didn’t ignore them or scare them off. We tempted them with food, got them to come near, and performed a quick re-domestication operation.
So it was that I found myself strolling across an open field with two dozen dogs, including five fuchsia poodles, just tempting the zombies to appear. Which, of course, they did.
I don’t know what I was expecting. I guess I was hoping my new, magical, magenta canine friends would attack the zombies and protect me. I wanted to find the silver bullet that could even the playing field against this ravenous horror.
The dogs saw the zombies and took off running for safety. Some of the zombies broke away to chase them, but they were driven back by the fuchsia poodles, allowing the rest of the pack to escape.
The rest of the zombies kept coming straight for me. My friends in the trees yelled, “RUN!” I didn’t need to be told. The fuchsia poodles could not have cared less. I was not part of their pack.
So now we’re here, once again trying to catch our breath, once again trying not to give away our position. Failure is an option that equals a horrible, painful death.
The scientific method is apparently dead, along with ninety percent of the world’s population. So much for working hypotheses, testing of theories through experimentation, and revision of the theory based on new data.
We’ve been transported to a universe of chaos and insanity, but we probably won’t be here long.
The universe has gone mad. Rules? None. Logic? Dead.
“But that’s not the way it is,” you say, “it can’t be!”
Tell it to the zombies behind us and the herd of miniature piranha-like moose thundering toward us from the other direction.
Filed under Critters, Dogs, Farce, Science Fiction, Writing
I’m more of a “dog person” than a “cat person,” which is not to say that I don’t enjoy a warm, purring ball of fluff in my lap on a cold evening. But given the choice, I would (and will in the future) have a dog (or two) but no cats. For now however, I “inherited” my daughter’s cat when she went off to college, so Joey Chan is “mine.”
The Long-Suffering Wife is mildly allergic to cats, so the two of them have long since reached an uneasy truce. The only time they’re supposed to have any real interaction is when I’m gone and Ronnie has to feed Joey for a day or two. Joey seems to be forgetting this as she’s gotten older and more senile (Joey, not Ronnie) and she will occasionally try to hop up onto Ronnie’s lap for petting and snuggles. Much hilarity has been known to occur during such events.
Both household critters, Joey the cat and Jessie the dog, are getting on in years. Neither is as spry as they used to be and they both sleep about twenty-three hours a day. (Since they used to sleep twenty-two hours a day it’s not much of a change.) We’ve noticed that both are exhibiting odd behavior. Jessie has started sleeping in places she’s never slept before, i.e., right next to my side of the bed, which makes it interesting when I get up in the dark and have to remember she’s there and try not to step on her. Jessie’s also doing that “digging through the carpet” thing that dogs sometimes do before they lie down. Another thing that she’s never done before, and another thing that’s a real joy at 3:00 AM.
Joey on the other hand is showing her senility in other ways. As the joke goes, she’s forgotten to be aloof. Where for years I was tolerated only because I was the “food guy,” now I’m the number one source of attention and petting and scratching. I don’t remember her ever wanting any attention or petting at all from anyone when she was younger.
The other thing she’s doing is taking over my office chair the instant I get out of it and then refusing to get up when I come back.
Doesn’t she look innocent? “Who, me?” “Is this YOUR chair?” “I was just keeping it warm for you!”
“No, that doesn’t mean that I’m giving it back. Go away.”
In the past when she did this there was an easy solution. Now it no longer works at all and she actually seems to enjoy it:
Good thing that she’s cute. And that she gives me an excuse to post “emergency cat pictures” at the end of a week where the world’s had a tough time.
Be cool out there, folks. The world’s a better place when we stop acting like assholes, and that goes double for international leaders. (You know who you are!) Do unto others and all of that.
Let’s put the “peace” back in “Peace out.”
Peace out.
Filed under Cats, Critters, Dogs, Photography
…some days you don’t have two neurons to rub together at the end of the day and all you want to do is post a couple of nice pictures to cheer everyone (and yourself) up because you try to keep the highs from being too high and the lows from being too low (the test pilots referred to this as “maintaining an even strain” according to Tom Wolfe) but it’s hard some days when you were foolish enough to get a little bit of encouragement and then when it gets smooshed like a bug you still have to go through the rest of the day despite the fact that you would really like to find a dark spot to curl up in and while you’re carrying on you see a bunch of bad car accidents near your home and you want to realize that it could be worse, you could be one of those guys, but that’s not helping much and then you get weird phone calls that just piss you off and when all is said and done you need some cheering up and while traditional (going back almost ten years!) internet wisdom says that cat pictures are the way to go you really would prefer dog pictures and you just happened to have found a couple the other day of the Lucky Puppy who was just the best dog in the world ever and you set them aside for just such a situation as this so that foresight is going to pay off in spaces since it will cheer me up to look at them and share them and THAT’s why we have dogs!
Filed under Dogs, Photography
We haven’t done this in a while, and since the muse-driven spark plugs in my brain seem to be missing on all four cylinders (I only wish that there were eight or sixteen), let’s see if this little exercise can jump-start the neurons. Remember, if you think there should be rules, they’re here, but the first rule of Random Blatherationings is that we’re making this up as we go along. What? You mean it’s not blatantly obvious?
Tonight’s three random seed words are “assentatory”, “maleberry”, and “sourwood.”
ASSENTATORY: The short definition is “flattering or obsequious,” but it’s an obsolete term. Apparently over a hundred years obsolete, since the last reference to the word seems to be the 1913 Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. Looking for a reference where the term is used, I get nothing except a prompt asking if I’m really asking about “USS Sentry.”
Sure, let’s go with that! The USS Sentry is an Avenger-class mine sweeper (officially a “mine countermeasure ship”, or “MCM”), commissioned in 1989. She’s apparently based out of San Diego at the moment, with a complement of six officers and seventy-five enlisted, although there is a note on Wikipedia that she’s been designated a reserve ship and only at full crew-capacity when the reservists are aboard. Interesting.
I’m sure when people volunteer or enlist they all imagine that they’ll be driving a tank or on a nuclear submarine or aircraft carrier or flying an F-18. But some end up on the smaller ships that are just as important, just as critical with their jobs. It may not be glorious, it may not be flashy or spectacular, but all of the pieces count in the big picture. Plus, these days, it’s a job, and that’s not to be sneezed at.
MALEBERRY: Isn’t that where Opie, Andy, Gomer, and Aunt Bea lived? While the black and white, “aw shucks” attitude, and happy ending with goofy residents every twenty-nine minutes looks a bit dated, the show still holds up pretty well.
Plus, it gave us Ron Howard, who may have only been six years old when the show started in 1960, he must have really been soaking up knowledge about how things worked. As impressive as his acting credits might be (“Andy Griffith Show,” “The Music Man,” “Happy Days,” “American Graffiti”), his directing credits are just amazing. (We’ll just overlook the live-action version of “How The Grinch Stole Christmas.”) “Splash,” “Cocoon,” “Parenthood,” “Apollo 13,” “A Beautiful Mind,” “Rush,” and those are just the ones that pop out of the list as being fantastic instead of merely good. Best of all, he’s in negotiations to do a film version of Neil Gaiman’s “The Graveyard Book”? Please, please, please, please, please make that happen!
Ignoring my blatherationings above, a maleberry is “a deciduous, much branched shrub, Lyonia ligustrina, with dense downy panicles of small, bell-shaped white flowers — also called swamp andromeda.” Oh, yeah, that stuff. (I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it, and if I did, I didn’t know what it was.) Apparently it’s only found in the United States along the Eastern seaboard, inland as far the Ohio River Valley, then in the south along the Gulf Coast as far north as Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.
It’s also apparently toxic if your dog eats it. Why your dog might be eating it is beyond me, but dogs do strange things. They’re weird creatures some times.
See, the blatherationings were more interesting! (That’s sort of the point.)
SOURWOOD: This is another word for the sorrel tree, which is great information if you know what a sorrel tree is. For the rest of us… Google it. It’s a big tree with big, long, flat leaves and bunches of little white flowers and pods at the end that look like tiny white bells. It looks like it can grow pretty much anywhere in the US except for the central-northern tier of states, Idaho over to Minnesota. From the pictures I see, it seems that it turns bright, bright colors in the fall, red, yellow, and purple, which I really like, but I can’t say that I remember ever seeing one.
I really enjoy the fall colors when the trees turn, something that I miss here in Southern California. We do have some trees that turn and some of them do so with spectacular color, but it’s a tree here or a couple there, all surrounded by dry brush, palm trees, cactus, and so on. In the midwest, northwest, or up in New England especially, it’s every stinkin’ deciduous tree from horizon to horizon that each turn their own palate of colors, with the pines and evergreens thrown in for contrast.
Of course, that simply a sign that snow is around the corner, and while that’s also something I miss in SoCal, I’m not so sure how well I’ll react to it if and when I end up back in a climate where there are actually four seasons. It should be “interesting” when it happens.
Filed under Dogs, Entertainment, Flowers, Random Blatherationings
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We Love The Stars Too Fondly 