Daily Archives: October 2, 2011

Shadowcats and Sugar Pills

Posted on October 2, 2011 by | 10 comments

I glanced out the window and saw this:

Niaid was curled up on the bed, [I double-checked] so whatever else that critter was, it was an outsider.  The chickens were ranging free and I couldn’t hear any alarm from them, but this guy just looked too big to have roaming around without interruption.

As I came around the cabin where I could see him better:

It was obvious the feline was operating out of a different reality.  Which didn’t necessarily mean he didn’t need to be the focus of protective measures.  But how does a person protect his chickens from a shadow-cat?  I’ve done some websearching on the various news sites and checked out the methods incorporated by the US Government into programs to avoid having shadow-cats disrupting citizen-like critters such as these:

The consensus seems to be you have to get one of these:

No matter what the cost.

I’m not certain I want to have one of those running around here loose, even when I have dangerous shadowcats skulking around peeking at my holdings.

Once something of that sort gets a foothold there’s no predicting where it will end:

Sugar pills in toy jars
Candy counter cures
For the sensory deprived
For the spirit that yearns hardship
Facade struggle for the
Stagely frightened
Sedentary soul

Living a reality
Where gangster boss of fantasy
Celluloid deeds and words
Are worth repeating;
Gladiator wars in plastic armor
Oaken clubs and pigskin missiles
Pudding danger jello struggles
Hard and real inside the mind
Inside the molded plastic
Toy of the mind

Man who cleans the windshield
At the signal is an actor
In the show last night
On MTV or HBO
Sexy girls dancing
In the background
As he postures
Rag and bucket
On the glass

Toy hero pushes button
In the Kevlar coated dragon
Of the field
Sees the enemy extinguished
In a prophylactic
Box of evening news
Before and after
Old war movies
All the same

Any loss is accidental
Cost of war’s
In higher taxes
Salaries for heroes
Fuel bullets
Not in blood
Not in blood
Sterile sealed
In plastic baggies
Plastic baggies
Hold the artificial
Flavor
Of the life
When life was real

Yet the sickness
Needs a remedy and cure

Sugar pills in toy bottles;
New candy counter pudding
For the soul.

Old Jules
Copyright NineLives Press, 2004

10 Comments

Posted in America, Chickens, Country Life, Creative Writing, Poetry, Solitude, Survival, Wildlife, Writing

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October Quietude, Dead Bugs and Old Roosters

Posted on October 2, 2011 by | 4 comments

The rains during the past couple of weeks combined with the break in the heat wave hasn’t bumped the Great Speckled Bird back into what must have been a spry, active youth as I’d hoped it might.  [The Great Speckled Bird: Respecting our Betters] [The Liar: The Great Speckled Bird, Part 2] 

From the inside of Night Fortress 2 there’s a step up through the exit hole and he’s having a lot of difficulty with it because of his crippled leg and wing.

Those chains, incidently, are part of an ongoing war with generations of Brother Coon trying to dig into the fortress at night.  The links where they meet the ground have treble-hooks wired to them to discourage digging there, but it’s a labor intensive game.  They’re the first line of defense.  Under the wood chips they’re on the holes are stuffed with prickly pear cactus, then covered with wood chips.  Brother Coon eventually gets past them all and insists on my going to the next level of debate:  The Lost Coon Diggings

Even the largest hen doesn’t have a problem with it.  But after the hens are all out harvesting the night carcasses under the bug-light he’ll still be in there crowing, evidently dreading the prospect of fighting his way through that opening.

I load the chicken drinking water up with home-made colloidal silver, catch him and soak his legs in orange-peel tincture, and it all seems to help, but gradually GSB’s hard living before I got him’s coming home to roost.

Usually GSB doesn’t indulge in cliche, but maybe his mind’s going, too.  Lately I’ve heard him say more than once, “If I’d known I was going to live this long I’d have taken better care of myself.”

If he keeps doing that I might be tempted to chop off his head.

C. W. McCall “Wolf Creek Pass”

http://youtu.be/xC_onLPc-0E

4 Comments

Posted in 2011, Chickens, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Poultry, Wildlife

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