#clockwork-mockingbird

No, we don’t have feral pigs in durango (too much compettion with the bears and coyotes) and we only have Javelinas in summer when they follow the river up out of the Arizona Heat Death, and then only on the very south end of town in like, July.  This thing shows up around November and I usually stop hearing it in March, so it’s not the bears (they’re sleepin’) and unfortunately disease ran through our Fox population and I’ve seen TWO in both years I’ve lived in Durango.  

The Noise is LOUD compared to even the coyotes and owls and cats, the rancher doesn’t have a donkey.  Got cows and a really dumb horse but I know what Dennis sounds like already. 

I’m leaning toward cougar or some kind of bird becuase it’s fucking CLOSE and I can spot the coyotes and bears pretty reliably (it’s a big open field with very little cover, and I’ve got good night vision.  Also the coyotes here don’t give a shit and walk right down the sidewalk even when I’ve got the dog with me).  I wouldn’t bet my luck on spotting a cougar or anything smaller than a coyote though.  

We get Great horned Owls in the summer and they go HOO-HOO, and they tend to hand out closer in becuase the mice and toads like the garbage and night lights.  We don’t USUALLY get barn owls, but again, They could be somewhere warmer with better pickings.

OH NOOOOOOO!!

When I was a wee thing of about 10, we went to visit m Ohio family  at their “campground”  which was really more of a trailer park surrounding a reptile, bug and angry swan-infested sump, but baby Gallus thought this was AWESOME.  Spent the whole trip catching frogs and turtles and a Wolf Spider the size of my palm which damn near gave Aunt Mickey a heart attack.  Sorry.

However, I had grown up in the relatively venomous snake-free cradle of the CA coast, so I had no natural aversion to reptiles, much less knowledge of what the eastern ones looked like.

So you can see how I thought that the dark gray and kind of dusty-looking snake coiled up perfectly still outside Mrs. Bolghet’s trailer was an unusually realistic-looking lawn ornament, and I leaned down to get a better look at the detailing.

Cousin Jay Jay remembers watching me “Do A Fuckin’ Ninja Flip” to Back The Fuck Up as the Cottonmouth, in a perfectly reasonable response to having some freaky-ass mammal in it’s face, lunged at me.  I remember thinking “huh, their mouths really are white’ as it rustled it’s ass back into the lake and I waited for my heart to start beating again.

Jay Jay, realizing that there were some gaps in my outdoor knowledge, spent the rest of the afternoon with me, marching about the woods and identifying various plants and bugs and SNAKES out of his Boy Scout handbook until he was reasonably satisfied that I wasn’t going to die in the woods, and cajoled the turtle-hunting secrets out of me.  

(The secret is to look for the tiny triangle-shapes their noses make when they poke out of the water, and you have to spot them a good 30 feet off or they’ll see you first and run off.  Then, you move extra slow.  Ever see a heron standing on one leg as it takes literally 10 minutes to put the other foot down?  like that.  once you’re close enough, lower hands to the SIDE of the turtle, so you’re going to have  a good grip it can’t kick out of, then grab it with your jedi-like reflexes and lift UP immediately.

Then you can carry the snapper back to the campsite and wake up your uncle by using the turtle to bite his beer can in half and make him scream like Fay Wray while you and your cousin howl like gibbons on nitrous oxide.

mmmm... i think you’d have to redesign the cat to make that work.

I’d like to invent a little robot that follows you around and FUCKIGNG REMEMBERS THINGS. Phone apps are getting close, but they’re not quite proactive enough- I forget to enter dates into calendar apps or to even set alarms.  

shoot for like 11am and look appropriately tired. apologize for just dropping by at a weird time but tyler kept me up by being loud and throwing beer bottles at me *show video* was wondering if maybe you could convince him to not do that at 4am? *walk away slowly enough to hear angry parent yelling*

Nah, gonna go over and lay out all the receipts (I’ve got two other videos of this punk, only found out which house was his recently) and recommend that Tyler do some volunteering this summer.

Whaaaa..? Most earrings are made of nickel or gold because so many people have bad reactions to silver?  it’s normally just a little rash if I wear a silver chain or rings for a few hours.