Category Archives: Animals

A jackass has feelings

Posted on August 5, 2013 by | 4 comments

Hi readers.  A jackass really does have feelings.  And those feelings can land him in a pile of confusion, same is they can human beings.

For instance, human beings don’t have a hell of a lot of use for jackasses anymore.  Jennies, either.  But some human beings still have a use for mules, and a jackass is the only way you can get a mule.

But a jackass is picky about the women he runs around with.  He doesn’t care anything about getting excited over some short-eared mare twice his size.  Unlike a Jennie, who’ll get excited about anything with four hooves when she’s in the mood.

So when a human being wants a mule he has to find a jackass colt just born, barely got its eyes open, and put it on a brood mare.  Brood mare doesn’t care what animal she nurses, so she brings up that jackass colt same as if it were a horse.

And the human being who wants a mule out of the deal keeps that young jackass running in his horse herd.  Never lets it see anything but horses.  Young jack grows up thinking it’s a horse.  Time comes he starts thinking about females, he couldn’t care less about any longeared jennie.  He wants a horse mare.

So the human being picks a mare with nice markings, good bloodlines, and at the right time arranges a love affair between that jackass and that mare, joins them in holy matrimony for the duration of the romance.

Ends up with a mule out of the deal.  And a confused jackass thinks it’s a horse.

Nobody comes out of it any worse for the wear so far as anyone knows.  Except maybe Italians.  If you think back on what you read about Roman history, Romulus and Remus had something similar happen to them.  And western civilization hasn’t fully recovered yet.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2013, Animals, History, Human Behavior, Relationships

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Shiva the Cow Cat living the townee lights fantastic

Posted on August 5, 2013 by | 3 comments

http://jeannekasten.com/2013/08/04/stuff-i-did-when-i-wasnt-drawing-august-4th/

3 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Animals, Jeanne Kasten

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1965 Time Machine – The Cat-People Vote

Posted on August 1, 2013 by | 3 comments

Hydrox:  Don’t even think about this Edgewood, New Dawn crap. 

Me:  What?  You cat-people don’t like the mountains?

Hydrox:  We cat-people don’t like anachronisms.  We don’t trust them.  They let their dogs run loose.  They lie around smoking dope waiting for the uniforms to show up and confiscate everything, haul everyone off to the slammer.

Me:  We’re talking about the EAST mountains, Hydrox.  If they’re paying off the right people it doesn’t matter what they’re doing out there.  Besides, they’re looking for people willing to work.

Hydrox:  Yeah, but work doing what?  Breaking Ephedrin caps out of packages?  Stirring up the mix to dissolve it?  Watching the acetone mist boil over the sides?  Watching the crystal iodine vapor turn your whiskers purple?

Me:  No, Hydrox.  You’ve got it all wrong.  These people are into sweetness and light.  Harmonizing with nature.  Working to build a new world.  A community.

Hydrox:  I’m betting pit bulls checking the fenceline and a National Guard Armory in the barn.

Me:  I don’t know how you got so cynical. 

Hydrox:  I was living with you 2002, 2003, 2004.  So was Niaid.  Those East Mountainers made an impression old cats aren’t likely to forget.

Me:  You’re too suspicious.    Free place to park the RV, mountains, pinons and pines.  Idealistic young people.

Hydrox:  If your good sense about the rest didn’t raise your hackles enough to tell you it’s a snakepit, the idealistic young people ought to do the job.

Me:  Hmmmm.  Yeah, idealistic young people’s where you make your strongest point.  Actually they probably do have a meth lab out there.   Or will have.  How the hell could they not? 

Hydrox:  Pit bulls running around loose looking for a free lunch. 

Me:  So you’re thinking Gila?  Mimbres? 

Hydrox:  I’m thinking anywhere but the East Mountains.  Mosquero if it comes to it.  Albuquerque’s a nice place to visit.  Wouldn’t mind seeing Amy again, see how those two Chinese girls she adopted are growing up.  But you’re too old and we cats are too old to be getting involved with East Mountain people.

Me:  I hate to see you generalizing, stereotyping. 

Hydrox:  I hate to see you not using that big brain you’re stuck with.  Hell, if it weren’t for us cats you’d probably be living under a bridge.

Me:  [Sigh] I’ve got you, babe. 

Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Animals, Human Behavior, Nature, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors, Police

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Pore old Brother Rattler

Posted on July 29, 2013 by | 7 comments

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.

Gale had a hip replaced recently, and he’s doing the recovery routines. Called me a few days ago asking me to search around in one of the storage buildings for a wheel chair and walkers stored in there somewhere. I used to store chicken feed in there and hadn’t looked inside much after I got rid of the flock.

So I opened the door and began clearing away all manner of things before the first rattler announced himself, followed by another somewhere on the other side of the path I was creating. I moved something else and a third, maybe a fourth kicked in to the orchestra.

I tippee-toed around and carefully got the wheel chair and walkers out without anything attaching itself to my leg, called him to let him know it’s all down here where it can be picked up. We discussed the plethora of rattlers, how to get them out of there. And whether I actually wanted to get them out of there before I’m ready to hit the pavement.

On reflection, I like them a good bit better in there than outdoors where they can get underfoot. My thought is I’ll leave them to themselves for a while if they’re happy there. When the time comes he can run them out with mothballs or ammonia. He’s thinking he’d like to try forcing them out the hole they came in and have people standing around to shoot them as they emerge. Which I want no part of. I mostly have no argument with pore old Brother Rattler. If he’ll leave me along I’m content leaving him alone, tending his own affairs.

However, half-hour ago I was inside the RV when Niaid announced she’d come on prey, or caught something. I looked out the screen door and watched her leap on something in the weeds. Quicker than I can tell it she had a 3 foot rattler in her mouth dragging it toward the RV, meowing out the sides of her mouth as she came.

Brother Rattler was still trying to grasp the fact he was dead, his head and neck squashed. Squirming and wiggling between her forelegs as she brought him to show off.

I’m keeping a close eye on her. No way of telling yet whether she was bitten, but she seems okay. Not favoring any body parts.

Life in the big city, I reckons.

Old Jules

7 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Animals, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Nature, Senior Citizens, Texas

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The underlying fundamental truths

Posted on July 27, 2013 by | 7 comments

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

If you’re like me, you are probably asking yourself why Johnson grass, crabgrass, beggars lice, goatheads, thistles and, say, salt cedar, thrive through the most difficult of times while all the stuff you deliberately planted requires care, nurturing by various means, irrigating.  You’re probably wondering why skunks can overwinter with rabies, throwing off the virus to all their kinfolk, while almost everything else dies within days of manifesting symptoms. 

Yeah, you’re probably wondering also why the skunks in Homeland Security run you about as you’d figure,  and the entrepreneurs in the private US penal systems are wallowing around in profits without ever getting their lives dirtied by contact with inmates.  Wondering why faceless ghosts in places such as the NSA would, not only wish to know the intimate details of your life, but actually be able execute a plan to do it.

You’re probably wondering why classy, wonderful aircraft with glide ratios and whirling propellers are rotting in hangars and on airstrip tiedowns while unnatural aluminum monsters incapable of manned flight zoom around carrying people places they didn’t need to go.  Why the only damned propellers anyone cares around are horizontal wings beating the air to death and crawling over the carcass.

Well friends and neighbors, if I had more time I’d explain it to you.  Because it’s one, or part of one of the fundamental truths of the Universe.

Unfortunately, this has gotten a bit long and there’s no point in me doing it right now.  It’s a proven fact that people don’t read long blog posts and that they click somewhere else the moment anything gets fundamental, or truthful.  Or if there are no pictures of naked dancing girls, celebrities, politicians, or tsunamis.

And hells bells, part of one of the basic truths of the Universe is that I can’t upload a damned thing.  So you’ll have to figure it out for yourselves.

Old Jules

7 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Animals, Current Issues, Education, Flying, Government, Nature, Police, Politics, Science, Spirituality, Transportation

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The Smallpox People Project

Posted on July 18, 2013 by | 4 comments

The Whale and Dolphin People Project got me talking it over with the topcat around here.

http://thewhaleanddolphinpeopleproject.org/

Me:  So, Hydrox, what’s your thinking on this thing of trying to save dolphins and whales by making people of them?

Hydrox:  Does it concern you at all that if dolphins and whales began behaving like humans there wouldn’t be room in the oceans for any other species?

Me:  Hell Hydrox.  You know better than that.  They’d starve.

Hydrox:  Think about it a minute now.  Try the perspective of a domestic cat.  Back earlier than I can recall you cut my chorizos off so’s I wouldn’t be a part of what human beings think of as a cat-over population-problem.  Same with the rest of that litter.  When you protected all those chickens, both back in Y2K, and later here, killing coons, coyotes, skunks, you got an over-population problem.  Meanwhile you humans, during my own feline lifetime, have possibly doubled your population.  Does that tell you anything?

Me:  I think I see where you’re going with this.  What you aren’t taking into account is that we value human life.  We don’t believe in going around cutting the nuts off human beings and clipping the whatchallits of our females.  We rely on disease, war, hunger and other natural causes to keep our population down.

Hydrox:  Does it occur to you that the natural forces aren’t doing the job?  That the reason dolphins and whales need to be made into people so you can’t kill them legally might be going backward into the problem instead of approaching it head-on?  For instance, if you really want to save those whales protecting them from humans by calling them humans would be a lot less likely to actually save them than calling Bubonic, Ebola, Cholera and whatever other disease you can invent ‘people’ and protecting them.  Get rid of all those damned shots and pills and the whales will do fine just being whales. 

Me:  You’re saying …. hmm.  You’re saying make diseases PEOPLE?

Hydrox:  Actually I’m not.  If you change the wording around a bit you’ll see what I’m saying about what’s a disease.  Heck, if you could just find a disease that would kill off heart surgeons and fast food workers you could take care of a huge part of the problems of dolphins and whales through starvation and heart failures.  Whale and dolphin people my ass!  Tell those folks they’re human, convince them of it, and they’ll be beaching themselves into extinction!  Maybe that’s already what’s causing them to beach themselves to death.  Someone told them they’re people and they believed it. 

Me:  Seems to me we’ve got a failure here somewhere, to communicate.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Animals, Education, Government, Human Behavior, Science

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Gloobal cooling terror

Posted on July 18, 2013 by | 4 comments

Good morning readers.

Thanks for coming by for a read this morning. Temps dropped unseasonably a couple of days ago and had enough intermittent rainfall to get the neighbor out burning all the trees he’d knocked down and piled up since the last one. 

I’d been fooling around with one of the longtime experiments of the Burt Lancaster/Kate Hepburn in the Rainmaker movie, so naturally I accepted that I’d made it all happened without having to argue with logic, the Universe, or modern science about the matter.

But the overwhelmingly satisfying result of it all was the cats moving indoors.  They’re not big on rain, not big on gloobal warming.  Naturally a twist to gloobal cooling was to their liking.  Tabby slept purring occasionally with her nose in my armpit last night, which is a major step in the right direction, both in matters of laundryism, and matters of Tabby coming back into the tribe.

If the mud’s not too bad I’ll be tripping to town for groceries today and might actually squeeze in another laundry trip.  Heck, if it works and I load the tank with water before I come back I might have three cats arguing for the armpit position.  Have to grow another arm for the duration of the gloobal cooling crisis.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Animals

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Learning to trust dishonesty

Posted on July 6, 2013 by | 12 comments

liberty

Me:  “Okay Tabby.  This has gone on long enough.   Time we had a heart-to-heart about whatever’s bothering you.”

 Tabby:  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Me:  “That’s obvious enough.  But the fact is, I’m holding all the cards.  We’re going to work this out, or you’re going to find yourself out of a job.”

Tabby:  “I knew it was going to come to that.  You’ve never liked me.”

Me:  “Well, it’s true I didn’t pick you to be part of the clan.  You’ve never been one I’d have deliberately selected.  But I’ve tried my best to be dishonest about it consistently and not show it.”

Tabby:  “The other cats have never liked me, never accepted me.”

Me:  “Yeah, you’ve bullied them and they’ve bullied you.  I’ve had to pull you off Niaid, and I’ve had to pull Hydrox off you.  I’ve tried not to show a preference.  I even used to have to pull you off Shiva, your own mother. 

“But I’ve also held you upside down, sweet talked you, petted you, treated you as affectionately as all the rest of them were treated anytime you’d allow it.  You quit allowing it.  I didn’t quit trying.”

Tabby:  “That’s because I finally realized you’re a liar.  That you were being dishonest.  That you really don’t like me at all.”

Me:  “Yeah, but I’ve been consistently dishonest.  I’ve tried to hide the fact I don’t like you much during those times I didn’t and I worked hard at liking you.  If you want to stay around here and be a part of the ‘us’, Hydrox, Niaid, you and me, you’re going to have to trust me to keep on being dishonest.”

Tabby:  “I’m not sure I can do that.”

Me:  “If you can’t you stand a good shot at me starting to be honest.  I’m an old Jellicle cat man from ‘way back.  You’re a Tabby.  I learned to love your mom, even though she’s a Tabby.  I’ll keep working at it, and meanwhile I’ll keep being dishonest.  But don’t push it too far.  The clock’s running.”

12 Comments

Posted in 2013, Animals, Human Behavior, Relationships

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Picking your symbolism: The biggest food bird, or the biggest predator?

Posted on June 30, 2013 by | 9 comments

hero patriot2

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Hydrox, Niaid and I were out in the RV a little while ago, two of we three scurrying for new places to hide every time a new dash of thunder rolled across the landscape, rain pelting the roof and some edifying lightning to season it all.

Finally the drama ended, but the rain continued a while and the cats decided the world wouldn’t end.  I sat there gazing across the meadow, opened a side window to let the odor of fresh rain inside.  Something big moved around the other RV ……. six wild turkeys grazing on apple cores I’d thrown out the window.  Occasionally letting out enough turkey noise to scare the bejesus out of the cats and have them scurrying for cover.

Watching those turkeys got me thinking about how they were runners-up to become the National Bird, once.  This is no BS.

Time was when most of the people in this country were acutely aware they had relatives, distant cousins somewhere, still laboring for nothing, starving to death, fighting wars and living under the iron heel of aristocrats.  Aristocrats who had histories as far back as anyone could remember of using the biggest predatory bird anyone could think of as a symbol of what aggressive sons-of-bitches they were.

Eagles.  Imperial eagles.  Regal Eagles.  Birds that didn’t do a damned thing but come down out of the sky and kill anything they could catch.  Birds nobody anywhere ever ate.

So a lot of people in this new land thought they’d donealready had everything they wanted to do with eagles and starving, and having heavy heels on their necks by a bunch of damned aristocrats.  They figured if they were going to pick a bird to symbolize the way of life they wanted, a the biggest bird people could make a meal of would be a good symbol.

A symbol of common people with full bellies for a change.  A symbol of people being able to go out into the woods and get a wild meal without some aristocrat telling them that deer, or turkey, or rabbit belonged to them, the aristorcrat, and common people would do better to starve than get caught eating one.

Well, friends and neighbors, we donealready had an aristocracy putting itself together, deciding whether we wanted to be represented by the biggest predatory bird with a complete history of aggression, repression and exploitation.  They knew whether they wanted to be represented by a turkey, or a Regal Eagle.

You can look around you and see which one they picked.  And you can consider the 50 tons of laws they’ve made since they adopted that eagle for their symbol, the several tons they’ll pass this year, and know why they picked it.  50 tons of laws telling you what you can’t do, a few tons more this year.

But you have the satisfaction of knowing you have a proud bird for a national symbol.  Not some damned turkey you could make a meal of in a pinch if there weren’t a law against it.

Old Jules

9 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Animals, Free, History, Military, Police, Politics, Survival, US Army

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Getting nasty old Brother Coon safely into the past

Posted on June 21, 2013 by | 13 comments

tabby asleep outdoors3

Although I don’t believe I’ve come right out and said so, I’ve been keeping a close eye on the felines since June 9th when old Brother Coon made his debut.  Even though I’m not inclined to think he was sick, it’s not easy to reconcile with my past experience with wild animals.  If it weren’t for the single episode a year or two ago when Hydrox and I stood off a somewhat aggressive coon [described somewhere on this blog] I’d be more concerned.

But even so, I don’t trust this last one.  In 70 years of being around wild critters this qualifies as the first time I’ve ever been attacked by one, even though I’ve been in close woods-proximity to a lot of them including bears and cougars.  Always was able to stand off the bears without any increase in heartbeat rates and the cougars never had much interest in me.

But when I consider how big I must have looked to old Brother Coon I can’t help thinking this incident might involve something wrong with his thinker.

And as I’ve describe on some other recent posts, Tabby’s been acting uncharacteristally stand-offish, paranoid, etc.  Usually I wouldn’t be much bothered by that, because Tabby’s a cat with a long history of behavioral changes, more-or-less when the wind changes.

She seems healthy enough even though she barely comes to the porch for food and definitely doesn’t want any attention, affection, etc.  This morning she only spent a few minutes up here eating dry cat food then headed off across the meadow to sit staring back.  I took some canned food out there and she devoured it, but didn’t encourage me to scratch her behind the ears or stroke her.

I gave her what she wanted without any arguments.

Today’s June 21 and the Great Coon Incident happened June 9.  I’ll return to being insistent with Tabby when two weeks have passed, assuming she’s not foaming at the mouth or wobbling on her hind legs.

Old Jules

13 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Animals, Outdoors

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