Stick a Fork in Moi

I'm done.

So much so, my brain instantly shut down and I spent an hour watching Madonna catch flies while marveling at how the hummingbirds manage to stay completely out of the way of her web. Nature's so clev-ah.

This photo shows her stalking. (Clicky all photos for maximum effect. Come on, Wicked, you can do it.)



This one is her home in perspective. Can't see it too well, but there's a huge-ass web there in the corner. Actually, it's three webs, overlaying each other. She's obviously a Republitard spider because she can't remember how many homes she has.



These are the hummingbirds - black-chinned, Rufous, and broad-tailed. Each hates the other. Every day, hummingbird wars ensue. And I go broke filling the feeder.



At least the Rufous will be leaving for Oaxaca any day now and the broad-tailed and black-chinned will be left to duke it out amongst themselves for another 3-4 weeks. And I won't have to keep running to Sam's Club every 2.4 seconds for sugar.

Now, excuse ay Moi, I have to take a nap before the DNC tonight. Gubnor Bill Richardson speaks tonight and I want to see if Il Duce bothered to shave.

To the Victor Goes the Slimy Spoils

See this famblee of squirrels?

After we finished the pool two summers ago, they moved themselves in to a tony little spot under our decking. Mom, dad, a passel o' chillruns. Dad's in insurance and travels. Mom drinks and wanders the pool deck in inappropriately sized bikinis. The children are lil' punks to the core.

Of course, Snow White's Freakin' Wilderness Camp has not been the same since.

The squirrels, they completely took over the neighborhood. They knock over the bird baths. They steal my fifty million dollar a pound sunflower chips directly from the feeder. They chase the bluebirds. They titter and chitter from the tree tops, making me think I'm hearing voices. And they drive Ivan nuts.

Ivan, he'll chase or tree anything that moves: cats, squirrels, chipmunks, horny toads, rabbits, crows. Once, at our old house, he treed a bobcat. So intent was he on killing that thing, S.B. and I had to drag him off the hilltop back to the house and lock him inside for eight full hours so he could get his mind off the kitty. Fuggedaboutit. Later that day when we finally let him out, he bee-lined himself for that tree and sat sentry for another hour, whining the whole time for the bobcat.

I've written before about Ivan' love of killing all manner of creatures. All that's changed since is that he's a little bit slower.




Still, if he's patient enough and works the program, he can still get his man:

VICTORY!

Snow White is Getting Worried

My bats are here – a pallid bat nursing colony that since the beginning of time has parked itself under the beams of our porch to raise their young and decapitate every Jerusalem cricket in the universe, cavalierly discarding their carcasses onto the floor, a habit which never fails to just gross me right the fork out. And, despite the fact that S.B. built them a rocking new bat condo two years ago, they still insist on living under the porch and shitting all over my stucco.


Sigh. What am I gonna do. Serve them an eviction notice? Besides, they're really, really cute.

The hummers have showed up, too. Greedy little bastards. 'Nuff said. Except, I should own stock in Sugar Cane.

And the rabbits. Oy. Here's one I keep tossing our rotten apples to in an effort to guide its attention away from my marigolds, basil, and parsley. Look at the lil' fucker go. He had that thing gone in, like, 2.458 seconds. Then he moved on to the basil.


Where was Ivan, you ask?


But you know who I can't find anywhere? Madonna. See, last summer, she and her girlfriends were all:


But so far this year, the condo remains empty. Sniff. I miss my spiders.

Oh, and this thing? Hasn't changed a bit.


I poked at it the other day. Squishy. Double sniff. 'Twas a tomb in the end, most likely.

The Endurance of Mutability

I know, I know. If nothing ever changed, there would be no butterflies. But look, Party People, I don't think the process is very pretty.


This is a fuzzy wuzzy caterpillar that showed up in my house two weeks ago. It attached itself to an end table leg in my living room. I thought it would be gone the next day. But no. It was still there. And it seemed, well, sorta out of it. Like it had partied way too hard the night before with all its caterpillar buddies and was now busily sleeping it off.

The next day, though, not only was the caterpillar still there, it looked different. Less caterpillar-like and more, well, you'll see.

A couple more days go by and then one morning, voila! it somehow managed, while I wasn't looking, to cocoon itself. Right there in my living room.


This always happens come, spring, I swear. Suddenly, my entire household and its environs turns into a freakin' Nature Channel program.

This morning I poked at the cocoon. It's fuzzy but not squishy, and now I'm wondering if the thing isn't a cocoon so much as a tomb. I hope not. I would like a beautiful butterfly to emerge. But with my luck, it may be something disgustingly creepy-crawly. If that's the case, it better do so in the middle of the night and then creepy-crawl it's ugly ass outta here before I wake up.

The Black Hole Ate Moi's Homework

I read a statistic once that postulated that before we die, each of us spends on average, like, 1.5 bazillion hours of our lives either standing in line or waiting for service. Which is fine with me, because, hell, when else would I catch up on my crap magazine reading?

Some places, though, are better than others. At the top of my list: the Jiffy Lube on the corner of Menaul and Wyoming in Albuquerque's Northeast Heights. For a place run entirely by dudes, they nonetheless know their market and thus stock a wide variety of the best evah magazines ranging from the most up-to-date Peoples in existence (no six month lag for these guys, oh no) to Time, Newsweek, O, and even Vogue. Not a snooze-a-mooze parenting magazine in sight. No offense to parents, but really, if you're childless or empty-nested, not even the ads are interesting. And if you're a parent, I suspect the last thing you want to read about is even MORE parenting stuff. Admit it: You'd rather read about Jessica Simpson's botched boob job.

At the bottom of my list: my gyno. Whose magazine selection is all about the OB and never about the GYN. And if you're 5.7 minutes away from having yourself poked and prodded in that particular manner, you want aspirational magazines out in the waiting room. Not ones that remind you of why you're here. Listen, you OB/GYN magazine Nazis: we all know how we got here. So now, take us far, far away. Architectural Digest would be good. And heck, forget Vogue, if that's too much for you. Mademoiselle will do in a pinch. Can't go that girly? How about Golf magazine, fer crying out loud. But my gyno, despite my most gentle encouragements, never catches on. He just smiles and nods in that way that tells me when I open my mouth, all he hears is Charlie Brown's parents. Men.

Anyway, yesterday was doc appointment time por Moi and while in my dermo, I was happily heartened to spot this:



Nah, it wasn't Dwayne Johnson that caught my eye. Although I guess you could make a case for his sex appeal in that shiny-suited, head-to-toe reconstructed way today's porn stars are considered sexy, only minus the highlights and tacky-ass French manicure. I likewise spent only a couple seconds perusing Laird Hamilton's "Surf God Workout." Sweet jeebus, I thought only women were susceptible to fairytale bullshit about our bodies. The workout? Puhleeze. AB could eat Laird for lunch.

Nope, the article that caught my really real attention was on Garrett Lisi, a surf bum physicist who has come up with a totally new unifying theory of the universe that he calls E8, which basically says, String Theory, Schming Theory, where it's at is this: fitting together the four forces of physics — electromagnetic, strong nuclear, weak nuclear, and gravity — into an incredibly intricate shape that looks like something you might have created with your Advanced Spirograph kit in the fourth grade.

Another thing about Moi: I'm obsessed with the Big Picture. Every time one of those PBS specials on the universe comes on, I'm glued to the set. But this, ugh, I'm going to need years to grok to this particular bit of information. Go check it out for yourself and maybe together we can process all this into some cohesive understanding.

And while you're at it; riddle me this: Ever since S.B. installed satellite radio in the Mini Coop, it seems I hear Tori Amos's "Cornflake Girl", like, sixty bazillion times a day. So if you can get a finger's grasp on what Lisi is on to, can you perhaps explain to Moi just what in the hell the woman is talking about in this song?

If Wishes Were Horses We'd All Eat Pie

In response to the Troll's challenge to come up with a pie to celebrate Secretariat's birthday on Sunday, March 30th, I submit to you Moi's all-time favorite.

But you'll have to head over to Da Baking Blob to see it.

Go now. It's Thursday. What else are you gonna do?

Make pie, not war. Or ugly shoes.

Mute Monday: Mother Nature

“They cannot scare me with their empty spaces between stars – on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home to scare myself with my own desert places.” – Robert Frost

Only Enough Blood to Run One at a Time

This is the point in the week where I give up entirely on coming up with a new post and instead point you to one written by a member of Moi's Posse, one so utterly hysterical and/or enlightening, I simply must spread da wuv.

This post was written by Moi's dear friend Wicked, a woman whose way-weird job (working with chillruns all day, yew!) is mitigated by her way-talented and gut bustingly funny ability to write about it.

Boys, this all about y'all. Girl's you'll find yourself doing a lot of ah-ahing. In between the laughter.

The Week of the Penii

Now excuse ay Moi; I have to go write about pizza.

A Rose By Any Other Name

If I'mbuh soundinguh widdle fuddy, dat's becauf I'm writing dis post wid a cloze pid on Moi's nodz.

Becauf at exactly 6:47 dis morning, while od our walk wid Ibin, duh widdle fudcker decided to tangle wid dis cweature:






Dat would be Mephitis mephitis (get it?), or duh common striped skunk. Who wud ambwin down duh paf sniffing duh trail of a nest of wobin's eggs dat had bwown from a twee. Sure nuf, whed Ibin spotted it he wed bwalistic and chawged. And got spwayed bout ted bazillion times.

Hab you all eber sbelled skunk? Id mudst be duh worst sbell knowd to Gawd ad man in duh ubiverse. An' you eber try to get it oud a dawg fur? Da forbula: 1 quart hydrogen peroxide, 1/4 cup baking soda, 1 Tablespoon dish washing liquid. Mix up. Chase dawg dowd. Catch dawg. Howd dawg. Rub in fur. Rinse ab repeat. Sdiff dawg to see if sbell gone. Throw up cause id not. Repeat.

Gib up.

Fidally let dawg id house. Boil ciddamon in water and burd ebry caddle in da house. Throw up again.

Seribously consider puddin a bading suit and some flid flops in ad obernight bag and takin duh first flight oud of here to St. Bart's. Decide against it becauf dat wud leab S.B. all alodne with Ibin and hid funk. Bud S.B. says he can't smbell it at all. Moi, I neber not sbell it. I sbell it all day. Id sbell it all night. I sbell it until duh day I die.

Fudkin' hell. Dat's what I get for puddin a bow od duh dawg's hed.

Bees Obscene and Not Heard

If there's anything I hate more than crap science, it's crap journalism. Gone are the days of Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe, savvy observers of the American political, social, and cultural scene who before ever putting pen to paper, first totally and fearlessly immersed themselves in the topics they were covering, whether those topics included California car culture, Russian revolutionaries, or the inner workings of the Hells Angels.
Today, we rely primarily on television "news" shows to bring us investigative stories and in depth profiles. And for ages it seems, 60 Minutes has been considered the cream of the crop. But over the past couple years, the show I've been watching has slowly devolved into something with all the journalistic integrity of The Tyra Banks Show.

Witness last night's coverage of the collapse of hundreds of bee colonies across the United States. Most of us know the gist of what's happening: over the past several years, millions of bees have simply up and left their colonies. Not died, but just, well, left.

While no one has as yet discovered the reason our bees are disappearing, no one is in dispute that they are. (I don't dispute it, either, although, oddly, my own garden has never been as lush, as healthy, and as overrun with bees as it has been these past 2-3 years. Hmmm . . . )

Like almost all of the newspaper, magazine, and online coverage of colony collapse, last night's show focused exclusively on the disappearance of honey bees from commercial colonies. That is, those colonies which are cultivated by professional beekeepers – like Dave Hackenberg, profiled in the show – to travel across the country to pollinate commercial farming operations. Like the bazillion acre pumpkin farm owned by Brian Campbell of Berwick, PA. When asked by reporter Steve Kroft what would happen to his operations if he didn't have tens of thousands of bees on the job, Campbell answered: "Well, my business wouldn't be as profitable." AS profitable, Party People. In other words, he wouldn't be able to grow mass quantities of pumpkins. Pumpkins headed not for our dinner tables, but for Wal-Marts throughout the eastern seaboard as eventual Jack-O-Lanterns for Halloween.

So.

After listening to about half the story, it occurred to Moi that maybe the bees are disappearing because they are continually being carted thousands of miles across the country on flat bed trucks, plunked down in the middle of hundreds – many times thousands – of acres of one single crop, and forced to spend the whole season pollinating not just said single crop but also one most likely treated with God only knows what kind of chemical(s).

In other words, the very industry that relies on bees for its profit may be stressing its main workforce right the hell out. And we all know what stress leads to. It leads to the fight or flight response. And the last time I checked, honey bees don't wear little honey bee boxing gloves.

Surely, if that theory occurred to lil' ol' Moi, it would occur to the Powers That Be at 60 Minutes. Right? Uh, that would be a big NOPE.

Never once in his report did Steve Kroft point out this irony. Never once did he wonder aloud at industry-wide reports suggesting that, unlike traditional industrial beekeeping operations like Hackenberg's, organic beekeepers, even those who operate at the same commercial level, are experiencing NO instances of colony collapse. Never once did he point out that this particular practice of beekeeping is still in its infancy, and we are only just now beginning to study it's implications for bee health and behavior. Finally, Kroft never once wondered if feral bee populations in non-agricultural areas (like the one that includes Moi's garden) were undergoing the same colony collapse (it seems they are not).

So, a story that should have been inspired and of-the-moment ended up just feeling kind of shabby and way too much like yesterday's news. Yes, we all know the bees are splitting for parts unknown. But tell us something new, why don't cha? I have a feeling that someday soon, you'll see 60 Minutes reporters undergoing their own kind of collapse: from boredom, disinterest, and lack of ideas.

Life's a Bitch . . .

. . . now so am I.

I'm sorry. I cannot contain myself any longer. In 1.5 weeks, S.B. and I will be attending our first Halloween party in a coon's age. And, we're actually dressing up. Not dressing up as in nice shoes and shirt dressing up, but dressing up as in for true, purchased-over-the-Internet, Halloween costume dressing up. Because that's what the invitation says we should do. And I, for once, am just going to go with it.

So can you guess who I'm going as?

I did think about:


(The only comic book hero to ever garner a Ms. Magazine cover, complete with essay by Gloria Steinem. So, you know. She's steeped in feminist cred.)

I also considered:


'Cause she's dark and conflicted and also has the requisite on-again, off-again love affair with a super duper hero dude (yes, I am a comic book nerd – deal with it).

But then I realized that both costumes are likely to be a wee bit too chilly for a late October evening.

So I decided on Cat Woman. The Michelle Pfeiffer version, though, not the Halle Berry one. Because:

A. I do not have the ta-tas to fill out Halle's costume.

and

B. Halle's Cat Woman sucks ass. Pfeiffer's is, was, and always will be, the über coolest of them all.

Sometimes Denial IS a River in Egypt

Because I do not want to think about my stepfather getting old, about hospital rooms and the smell of decay. Of minds going forgetfully, of roles reversed, of me no longer the child but wanting to be. I will instead look for some kind of sign in the fact that although it is fall:

The roses still bud.



The flowers still bloom.



The spiders still spin, waiting.


The banded garden spider – Argiope trifasciataz. I haven't seen an egg sack yet.

But this one . . .

Nature Loves Her Little Surprises

Yesterday afternoon, as I was shamelessly surfing the sofa post-La Luz, one eye on my eBay search, the other on Tiger Woods, S.B. pulled me from my perch to witness this:



The Nature Channel's version of Alien Vs. Predator, right there on my front porch. And Madonna lost. Do you know that little shit dragged her for about a yard and then flew away with her? Upsetting as it was, from an ethological standpoint, it's all good. I mean, that's some pretty single-minded determination right there. Not to mention muscles . . .

RIP, Madonna. Thank goodness there are two more of you left to pass along your DNA.

Live Fast, Die Eaten

I know, it's gross. Blame Wicked. She started it.

So I was feeding the hummers last night, hurrying to provide them with their evening repast before the skies split open and scared me rotten from going outside ever again, when I saw it. Right there on my front stoop. This half masticated sumpthin' or another that I know, just know, is the fault of my ever lovin' bats. Cute tho they may be, they're blood thirsty as hell. You should see the bug carcasses gathering on my porch.

Which explains this fun fact about bats: they can eat up to 1,000 bugs – or nearly their entire body weight – each, per night. I can relate. I have been known, on occasion and especially when S.B. is out of town and I'm left to my own devices, to eat nearly my entire weight in cupcakes while perusing celebrity gossip Web sites instead of watching something edifying on television like how Alexander the Great smashed and bashed his way to conquering the entire known world except Antarctia and New Jersey. Even Alexander didn't want New Jersey.

Anyway.

I now return you to your regularly schedule blog to make these additional observations:

1. Well, Scooter Libby may now be officially pardon-ay-moi-ed, but hey, there's a silver lining to every cloud: That right there seems to me to be such a WTF!?! moment, that fo' sho' Congress will finally get all righteously indignant and prosecute Da Shrub for gross misconduct of office or some such similarly slimy-assed thing. Right? Right?

2. Memo From Moi to the Eight Terroristos Thankfully Snagged by Our Good Buddies Across the Pond, Wot: Next time why don't cha all LEARN yourselves a little more about explosives, huh? Oh, sorry. I forgot. No light in caves to read the instruction manuals provided along with your training course, How to Jihad in 10 Easy Steps For Fun and Profit. So I guess y'all had to wing it. Oh, and I suppose the fact that you also attended medical school in a cave means your instructors just skipped right on over the Hippocratic Oath entirely. Especially the part about : "I shall do no harm . . ."

May a 1,000 pallid bats chew happily away at your innards. Fucktards.

Baby Killer

This is Howie. Howie is a four-week-old pit bull puppy one of my RAAPers, Jami, rescued from a dumpster outside where she works (RAAP stands for Responsibly Adopting Albuquerque's Pit Bulls, a pit bull advocacy, foster, and education organization I founded in January 2006).

Jami is always finding pit bulls. Or, rather, they find her. About once every couple months, I get an email from her with "Look Who Followed Me Home" in the subject line, along with a photo of some big ol' dorky pit bull smiling for all the world like Hollywood's calling. Which is one of the reasons I love the breed. They are so unabashedly full of themselves.

Over the years, Jami has rescued dozens of pit bulls. Currently, she shares her home with eight permanent residents and one RAAP foster dog. Howie makes the tenth. But that's okay, he's pretty little. I'm sure he doesn't take up much room.

Here's the other foster, a six-month-old white pit bull named Stevie Rae:



Stevie Rae is blind. But she doesn't know it. For all she knows, not only is she normal, she's also simply fabulous and deserving each and every day of tons of hugs and kisses. And treats. Another reason why I adore the breed. They bring new meaning to one of my favorite lines of poetry: I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.

So anyway, it's been two weeks since Jamie found Howie and she has been diligently hand-feeding and caring for him. Looks like the little fella is going to make it. I can't wait until he grows up because I think he's going to be a looker. But I have to admit, he is sorta cute as a puppy. Just look at that face. The baby, he kills me.

Jaguar, Baby!

Highly endangered and once extinct in the United States, the jaguar has once again been seen in New Mexico. Right on, big spotted kitty dude.


From a Nature Conservancy article in 2006:

The jaguar—the largest cat native to the Americas—has been making its way north from a core population of a couple hundred cats 140 miles to the south, according to biologists. “Historically, jaguars ranged as far north as the Grand Canyon,” says Peter Warren, a Conservancy grassland manager in Arizona. “The return of these big cats is an indicator that conservation work near the border is paying off.”

You can read more about it here.

According to a local news report last night, the most recent jaguar spotting in the United States was back in August, 2006, in New Mexico's Hidalgo County, which is located in the state's boot heel. The lucky spotter was Arizona rancher Warner Glenn, who was in New Mexico hunting mountain lion. Only three people have seen the Jaguar in the wild in the United States in the past ten years. Glenn wins the eagle eye prize for two of those instances.


Here's the photo Glenn took last year.


The jaguar is one of the most popular symbols in Mesoamerican artwork, and first showed up in "jaguar baby" carvings by the proto-Mayan culture, the Olmec. The jaguar would subsequently figure very prominently in the artwork of all Mesoamerican societies, whose rulers naturally wanted to associate themselves with one of the most regal and powerful creatures of their area. The jaguar was respected for its hunting prowess, agility, strength, and aggressiveness.

I see their point. If I were to come back as an animal in my next life, I think I'd like to be a jaguar. I mean, just look at it. That is one bad ass, smooth-moving, tres chic kitty.

Here is a photo of a Mayan "jaguar baby" carving. You can read more about jaguar baby or were-jaguar symbolism here.


The jaguars are believed to be coming up from Mexico. Which begs the question: if GWB is so all fired up to merge Mexico, Canada, and the United States, why is he building a wall between New Mexico and Mexico? 'Cause if we're once again going to claim this enchanted animal for the Land of Enchantment, it's going to need to move freely between our borders.

Tough Guy

My dog Ivan, he thinks he's Jake LaMotta. He just loves a good fight. Not with people, mind you. With people he's as sweet as apple pie. Most dogs, too. But if you're a cat, coyote, deer, bobcat, squirrel, or just about anything else, he wants to rumble. It's just in his genes.

Take this morning. It can be dicey, walking in the hills this early in the morning in spring. Coyote raise their young between March and May, and they get out just after dawn to hunt rabbit, who are likewise early risers. That's Mother Nature's logic for you. The rabbits feed off the lush, plump greens, the coyotes feed off the lush, plump rabbits. Everybody's happy (well, except a few rabbits). Then toss Ivan into the mix and things get interesting.

Sure enough, five minutes before the end of the walk, Ivan spotted a coyote and took off. Within seconds, I heard it, that high pitched warning chatter the pack makes when danger is near. It went on for what seemed like ages. Then silence. Then Ivan trotting up behind me, tongue lolling, legs limping, face bloody. But he was smiling. This is fun for him.


Ivan's cut up pretty badly around his right eye, but I know the vet can't patch it up so we'll just have to wait it out. He's also got about a half dozen puncture wounds around his neck and haunches. I washed him off best I could, gave him a couple antibiotics I have in store from his last tussle, along with his morning liver treat, and left it at that.



He looks a little pathetic in this photo, but believe me, that's just because I won't give him any of my breakfast. Soon, he'll commence to grooming his feet and then go patrol the property for intruders.







So the lesson for today, courtesy Ivan?

1. Dogs may be canis lupus familiaris, but they're still canis lupus.

2. Despite all our optimistic anthropomorphic urgings, canines remain blissfully free of moral judgment, shouldas, couldas, or wouldas. They can be trained, but they cannot, under any circumstance, be reasoned with.

3. Dog spelled backwards is God. Laughing.

Let's Talk About the Earth, Baby

Yeah, yeah, I know I'm a day late. I just couldn't face it yesterday, what with the general air of self-satisfied smugness oozing from all those environmentalists' chemical-free pores.

This is what I got to say:

1. The earth is 4.5 billion years old. So far hominids have been here, what, 3.5 million? Do the math. The difference is akin to the affect a pin prick to your pinkey has on the millions of nerve cells in your entire body. The earth was here long before we were. It will be here long after we are gone. We can blast it all we want, but, like the cockroach and dandelion, it will not die back entirely. Until it is ready. Then, it will simply burn itself out. And if you can stop that, well, you must be God.

2. The earth is not static. It is fluid, flexible, ever changing. Hundreds of thousands of species over the eons have gone extinct with no help from us whatsoever. Well, you say, that was Mother Nature working. But isn't Man part of Mother Nature? Were we not created out of the same evolutionary forces? Who made us the sole blight?

3. So does that mean we have license to party like it's 1999 and crap all over our home? Uh, no.

4. But, tell me, who is to blame for our current polluted, denuded, over-cooked predicament? The BIG CORPORATIONS backed by the UNFEELING REPUBLICANS who blithely refuse to be the pusher man for alternative fuels? Uh, no. If you don't think Al Gore et al are just as beholden to their own economic interests as the republicans are to big oil, then I've got some land in a former Nevada test site I'd like to sell you.

5. So who is responsible for our current predicament? We are – that's you plus me. The little guy who packs a powerful punch, whose demand creates the supply. We want to live in 5,000 square foot Taco Bell mansions in the middle of nowhere instead of moving back to the cities and learning to get along with our brethren. We want to breed with abandon. We want to drive our big cars and travel the globe. We want to purchase stuff.

6. Is this right or is this wrong? To me, it's neither. Because I do not believe it is ethical to legislate lifestyle choices or subjugate individual civil liberties in favor of the greater good.

7. Why? Because I do not believe there is a greater good. Again, we face a problem of definition here. Who gets to decide what that good is? Hundreds of people over the ages have tried, not just to define it, but to also put it into practice. Let's trip lightly through a short list of those busy little bees, shall we?

Caligula
Muhammad
Louis XIV
Catherine the Great
Stalin
Hitler
Castro
Pol Pot
Kim Jong-il
George W. Bush

You can put that in your pipe, take it to a public park, and smoke it. Well, uh, okay, so you can't. But you can go clean up your own yard.

Sugar Mama

For the past couple days up in the hills, I’ve heard it. That sound. A top note rising above the cacophony of springtime birdsong, asserting itself through plaintive mourning dove coos, crisp chickadee cheeps, and pissy jaybird squawks. The half trill, half buzz that signals the arrival each spring of the micro-mini jet fighter of the bird world, the broad-tailed hummingbird.



I've tried to ignore it. But this morning in the yard, one flew right up to me, hovered mid air in front of my face, fixed its little hummingbird eyes on mine, and chirped what I can only assume is the hummingbird-speak equivalent of, “Where’s my damn breakfast, woman?”

Good Lord, is it mid April already? Time to clean Sam’s Club out of sugar.

And if the broad tails are here, that means the black chinned hummers are sure to follow. For about three months, both will live peaceably in my back yard. They’ll drink my sugar water silly, of course, and occasionally, the females will get a little sassy with each other, but by and large they'll share the feeder and the flowers in perfect harmony.

It all goes to hell in August with the arrival of the Rufous. Glinting like flashes of liquid copper, these hyper aggressive little buggers storm onto the scene looking to push everybody around. Suddenly, my back yard is no longer Snow White's happy little haven for all critters great and small. Suddenly, it's a noisy, perilous war zone in which the world's smallest birds jockey with the ferocity of velociraptors for control over feeder, bush, and lawn. Even the humans aren't safe. I can't count the number of times one of the little fuckers has buzzed my head en route to a dog-fight.

Then, suddenly, they’re gone. Off to their winter homes in Mexico leaving in their wake an exhausted but relieved set of mammals. A month or so later, the broad-tailed and black-chinned head that way as well. Hasta, hummer dudes. Finally, a reprieve from the relentless work of refilling feeders and dodging needle-billed whirligigs.

But I'm putting the cart before the horse here. Hummer season has just begun, and I have to get myself in the kitchen and cook.

Bunny Hop

Our house was built on a two-acre parcel in a rural neighborhood. The majority of this property, therefore, is undeveloped. It is also a sloping piece, which prevents any kind of farming or livestock-keeping activity. In other words, it's awfully pretty and affords us a great deal of privacy, but it is essentially useless.

Still, that didn't stop the original owners from optimistically carving out for themselves at least some small semblance of civilized yard. How they did it, I don't know. Must have been some mighty intrepid landscaper, the guy who was able to amend this soil enough (with jackhammer? dynamite?) to sustain one dwarf apple tree, a half dozen fussy rose bushes, two buddelia, a set of greedy-ass Japanese iris, which despite my best efforts to deliberately kill off still somehow manage to optimistically send out a few blooms each spring, a monster of a lavender bush, one pink pom-pom-puffed flowering almond, and, I'm ashamed to say, a rather large strip of lush green lawn. And lush only because, unlike my actions regarding those silly iris, I do everything in my power to nurture, reseed, fertilize, water, and otherwise keep alive at all costs. If on any given morning from late March to end of May my neighbors emerge from their homes to hear a kind of low, desperate-sounding keening that's half prayer and half cuss-out, that would be me regarding my lawn. What is S.B. doing all the while? He's shaking his head and laughing himself silly. The boy's from South Louisiana. He's had his fill of lawn.

But I do it all for the bunnies. Each day in the late afternoon, early spring to late fall, here they come. From burrows God only knows how far and how wide, little buds of cotton white tails bobbing merrily, noses twitching eagerly, ears perked at the ready to discern the slimmest threat to the task at hand (the dogs have long given up the chase and are instead, fast asleep on their beds in the living room), the bunnies gather on my lawn to eat.

Only my lawn is not mainly a source of nutrition for the merry little critters. Oh no. It's also a hot bed of bunny courtship. If you wait long enough, you'll see it. All of a sudden and with no warning that I can discern, one of the bunnies will position itself in front of another bunny, fling itself up into the air a foot or two, make a 180 degree turn, and land behind the other bunny. The other bunny will then turn around, rear up on its hind legs, and biff the other bunny in the nose with a swift, boxing-like motion of its two front paws. Then the two bunnies will commence to chasing each other furiously around the lawn, pausing only to repeat the whole jumping/spinning/biffing sequence two or three more times.

When I first witnessed this bizarre behavior, I did what I always do when puzzled by something. I Googled it. According to several sites, including www.alexandgregory.com/rabbits.html, this display is the bunny equivalent of, "Hey babe, what's your sign?" At the end of which, the bunnies supposedly run off together someplace private and commence with, well, you know. Funny bunny business. But I've never seen this happen. What I have seen is that usually, after two or three of these courtship dances, one of the bunnies turns tail and completely ignores the other bunny, choosing instead to ingest the tender green shoots of my lawn. Most likely this is the female bunny. All that courtshipping has simply given her a bunny headache. Then again, I suppose it could also be the male bunny, if it also happens to be bunny football season.