Category Archives: Animals

Controlling Complications with Simpler Opinions

Posted on June 5, 2012 by | 3 comments

“However, we must not save humanity from the future right now. It is simply too soon for such a drastic measure. We should wait a while first. We can always save humanity from the future later.”
 
 
 Me:  “So, what to do today.  Any suggestions, Ms. Shiva?”
 
Shiva:  “You might consider doing something about that damned well.  You’ve been hauling water eighteen months now. “
 
Me:  “That would have been an operable approach fifteen, sixteen months ago.  Right now I’m holding it in abeyance.  That future took an exit back at mile marker 2011.5, roughly.”
 
Shiva:  “Okay.  I suppose that makes sense.  No point dragging anything off the shelf to fill in the gaps of what you aren’t going to be doing today.  Plenty of other, more immediate stuff not to do.”
 
Me:  “I’ve got some fairly complicated near-certainties I’ll be plugging away at if I can’t find some reason not to.  But the reason needs to be something that holds up under scrutiny.  Something I probably might have done, needed doing.  Not just a rabbit I pulled out of a hat to use as an excuse not to follow the mandates of my compulsions, my daily complication rituals.  Damn I have a hard time not making myself do that some days.”
 
Shiva:  “You’re definitely showing signs of breaking down under the strain.”
 
Me:  “Yeah, I know.   I’ve got all this crap to do and don’t even know how much time I have to get it done.  Hell, I could die just about any time from now until some other time.  If I had a better idea when I’m going to kick I could plan better.”
 
Shiva:  “We cats would feel better about that, too.  If you’re going to outlast us we’re all agreed the chances would be improved if you could keep a clear head about things.  It’s a concern to all of us.”
 
Me:  “Okay.  I’ll think about it.  Maybe I’ll spend the day planning.”
 
 Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in 2012, Animals, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens

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Real Smart Cookies, Hermits and Shadow Cats

Posted on May 30, 2012 by | 3 comments

I’m having a rough time gearing up to do any outside work and my brain’s too fuzzy to try sorting out the maze of computations and comparisons on the offline comp.  I’ll be able to clear my conscience in a little while by waving the bloody flag at some other shadows, but for the moment I’m at loose ends.

A couple of days ago I was sitting in the swing bench hanging out of a dead tree when I heard a vehicle approaching down the hill.  Almost never happens, this is maybe the second time in several years, except Gale, who honks at the top of the hill as he approaches.  Simple country courtesy to a guy who’s made no secret of the fact he often runs around buckassed naked except for a pair of shoes during hot weather.

Me, since summer’s not hardened into anything desparate yet, sitting on that swing in a pair of jockey short skivvies and tennis shoes.  Naturally the sound of an approaching vehicle made me want to dress up a bit for who the hell ever it might be.

If this were December, no problem.  I’d have been spiffy as hell, ready with a joyful tapdance.  Or if they came by air later in the summer, maybe an orange jump suit.

So, I ran indoors, threw on my cleanest pair of work-dirty britches, hoisted up my galluses and re-emerged on the porch in time to see the new neighbor pull up in front of the cabin.  Likely just bored and felt like talking to someone a while.  He’s not used to living in a place where people don’t necessarily seek out company with any frequency, don’t yearn to fill the gaps of self-conversation with answers to the question, “What is this thing?” referring to a maze of wires, coils, magnets connected to a solar collector, a parabolic dish and radioesque antenna stretched across the meadow.

And not knowing what to make of the answer, “I ain’t saying!”

But we sat a couple of hours, anyway, pleasant hours, talking about this and that.  Heavy equipment.  Land.  Animals.  How many different big machines he’s got up there and how well they do the jobs.  How it was in Korea when he was there in 1959 compared to how it was when I was there in 1963.

During which time his dog slinked in, hair standing on end, bristling.  The dog got loose up at his place and  followed him down here, turned out.  He got up, scolded it gently and put it in the cab of the truck.  I didn’t learn until later during the head count when I put the chickens in the fortress that one was missing.  The Communist Americauna hen.

He’d come down here once before, you might recall, immediately after he bought the place, and we talked briefly.

Fact is, he and I are both so hard of hearing it’s fairly obvious each of us is mostly only hearing our own half of the conversation.  Which is probably why he came to visit, I reckons.  More personable than talking to a television set or radio.

Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Chickens, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Homesteading, Human Behavior

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Cunning, Intelligence and Free Ranging Chickens

Posted on May 21, 2012 by | 15 comments

I don’t think this applies to caged chickens, but my experience with caged birds is limited.  All I can actually tell you is that free ranging chickens are some of the most cunning, cagy, calculating, communist creatures on the planet.

A free ranging hen can calculate to the second how long it takes my eyes to narrow, my jaw to clamp, pause listening, and spring out of my chair when I’m trying to do something on the comp and I hear a chicken on the porch.

A free ranging hen can judge almost to the inch how far and hard a person can throw a rock with any accuracy.  A free ranging hen can predict almost exactly how far and how fast a 70 year old man can run swinging a stick before he gives out.

A free ranging hen is able to predict within a few seconds how long and how loud it can cackle and raise hell just outside the window before it needs to start dodging rocks or running into the bushes.

A free ranging chicken recognizes a slingshot and knows the difference between a slingshot stretched as an empty threat, and a slingshot with just about a bellyfull of chicken games.

A free ranging chicken usually won’t eat ants unless it thinks a person would rather it didn’t, in which case it will.  The whole flock will stand on a red ant bed pecking, so long as the ants aren’t carrying off their feed to the ant bed.

A free ranging chicken will ignore hard cat food scattered around on the ground away from the porch, but it will sneak around trying to find some on the porch everytime it thinks a person’s in the middle of something needs concentration.

I subscribe to the philosophy the reason the chicken crossed the road was for practice.  Training dodging cars.  And motivated by some human being not wanting it to cross the road.  Try to get a chicken to cross the road and it’s going to stay home cackling under the window or crapping on the porch.

Old Jules

15 Comments

Posted in 2012, Animals, Chickens, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Nature, Poultry, Solitude, Texas

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Morning Gratitude Affirmations

Posted on May 17, 2012 by | 4 comments

A previous blog post from April 10, 2005

Hokay.  I try to think of five particularly communistic things going on in my life every morning, every evening, during the day, to find reasons for being grateful for.  It’s a ritual I try to practice constantly, but if I begin the day with it, it’s a lot easier to remember for the rest of the day.

Soooooo.

I’m going to let the numbers on the lottery draw last night be my first, even though it’s really easy.  Those numbers did good and I have a lot of good feeling about what hit last night.  It’s cheating, but I’m going to be grateful for that anyway.

Hokay.  Number two.  It snowed last night.  It’s April, everything was budded out, and it damned well snowed.  Maybe you think I’m not grateful, but I am.  If the frost gets those buds for a third time there ain’t going to be any apples, apricots, grapes, pecans, but there’s always another year, and we need the moisture, probably more than we need the fruit this year.  It’s been a long drought and the moisture deficit isn’t entirely made up, even with all the rain and snow this winter.  Yeah.  I’m grateful.  Yes, I am.  I can feel it, reluctant, squirming, fighting every inch of the way, but grateful is emerging.

Number 3.  Tres.  I’m grateful for these affirmations.  That’s an easy one too, cheating, but they’ve had an enormous influence on my life for the past decade, and sometimes I forget to be grateful for knowing how good they are for me.  And besides, it fills a slot, allowing me not to have to confide to you what some of the ‘really communist’ troubles I’m going to have to be grateful for before I get past these affirmations in my private mind, this morning.  But those are none of your business, so I’m going to try to keep this clean and well lighted.

Number 4.  Quatro.  Lessee.  A cat just took a dump on the rug over there across the room.  Knows better than that, but did it anyway.  It means, hopefully, that the cat was communicating to me the litter box is getting too full.  I’m grateful that cat reminded me of my neglect.  I haven’t cleaned it up, but when I do I will examine the stool and make certain the cat wasn’t telling me something else, something more important.  I’m grateful a cat will tell a person willing to listen what’s going on with it, what sort of health problems might be hidden there in that pea brain, wanting to come out but not knowing how.

Number 5:  Half an hour after daybreak and the wind’s coming back up outside.  I’m grateful for that wind, that howling and clattering of things loose on the porch, the rabid windchimes, the cold air whistling in around the old wooden frames of the windows.

Maybe you think I’m not grateful for that wind, but I am.  Here’s why.

Hmmmmm.  Hmmmmmm.  I am.  Just give me a minute here.

Ahhhh..  I’m grateful for that wind because it’s going to melt the snow quickly.  Maybe even soon enough to save the blossoms and buds.  Maybe that old wind will just evaporate enough of the snow, good old wind, temperature 37 degrees F, maybe it will have all that snow gone in no time at all and the new grapevines won’t lose their buds, the apples will be okay.

A lot of people mightn’t be grateful for that wind howling to blue blazes out there, me sipping my coffee here, typing, feeling the cold air on my bare ankles, but I am.  Yes, I am.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2000's, Adventure, Animals, Country Life, Human Behavior, Lottery, New Mexico, NM, Placitas, Spirituality

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No Limit to Benevolence

Posted on May 16, 2012 by | 11 comments

I’d just settled in for my afternoon nap when the phone rang.  Sheeze!

Radio announcer voice explained he was Dan Somebody-or-Other with the Police Benevolent Association fund raising.

“This number’s on the no-call list.  It’s illegal for you to call here.  Same as if you’re giving me a ticket for five miles over the speed limit.”

“Uh…”

“I paid a $35 fine for a burned-out license-tag bulb last time I had any dealings with your kind.  Think of that as my contribution.”

Spang hung up on me just when I was getting warmed up to ask to see his license and proof of insurance.

Meanwhile, went up atop the hill with my spyglass.  Counted 14 buzzards circling around the ranch house for the 4000-plus acre ranch half-a-mile to the north.  Widow lives there alone, but maybe she had grandkids visiting killed something last night.  The buzzards are swooping but not landing, maybe skittish because it’s so close to the house and barn.

No buzzards circling over toward Gale’s, the new neighbor’s place, or the CopShop Party Hunting Cabin.  Only other buzzards swooping are probably checking out a coon that was on the front porch a couple of nights ago, tore half-an-ear  off the invader cat.  I shot it through the window screen during a pause in the action and it flopped some, dropped a lot of blood on the porch.

But by the time I got my shoes on and went outdoors it was gone.  Looked around all over from hell-to-breakfast for it next day, but couldn’t locate it.

Buzzards think it’s under a clump of dead cedar 100 yards from the cabin.   Glad it didn’t die on the porch and dump all those fleas for the cats.

Built a humongous rock and brush dam I’m hoping will prove to function as though a beaver built it.  I’m a firm believer the only reason a beaver dam holds water is because nobody ever told it science don’t allow beaver dams to hold water.

Old Jules

11 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Country Life, Government, Human Behavior, Outdoors, Police, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Texas

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Cacahuate Japones and Other Weirdness Among Townees

Posted on April 26, 2012 by | 11 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.  This is the real, honest-to-goodness, 2012, worn down to a small nub ‘me’ coming to you this morning from the Middle of Nowhere.

I’m a bit stiff and sore, slow getting moving this morning, so I’m stalling the inevitable by sharing a few bits and pieces of a reality that’s becoming decreasingly real.  The package above might save me a lot of words, say it more succinctly than anything I could contrive.  It’s no surprise those things ended up hanging on a rack in the Dollar Tree store.  Maybe the lousiest marketing strategy for a food item in the history of mankind.

Then there’s this:

I’m the sort of person who naturally does everything bumper stickers tell me I ought to do.  Keeps me following a straight and narrow path in one hell of a lot of mutually exclusive directions.   So when I saw all those blue plastic drink cups pushed into the chainlink fence across from one of the thrift stores in Kerrville, I immediately resolved myself to quit using AB, whatever the hell that is.  I figured it must be the latest recreational drug of choice.

I thought on it a lot driving back to the Middle of Nowhere, tried all manner of words beginning with A and B, certain there was something out there I needed to quit using.  Got on the Internet when I arrived home and did a Dogpile dot com search on AB Use.  Couldn’t find a damned smidgen about it.

But I swear to you, if I ever do find out what it is, I’m dropping it out of whatever it is I’m doing with it.

As for everything else, I’m having a fine old time devising and constructing a watershed management plan here the likes of which very few of me in my past lives have ever done.  I’m tackling that runoff water from rainfall if we ever get any, making it stand up on its hind legs and whinny, then behave itself.

I’ll probably post a few pics of some of it, though it’s just mainly a matter of persuading water to treat the thin soil here with more respect than it’s done in the past, explaining to it about how the damned cattle aren’t fighting over every blade of grass anymore.  Showing it the error of its ways.

Other major events around here worth mentioning won’t bowl you over more than that.  The invader cat’s decided to demand a lot of petting when he’s here, which pisses off all the other felines.  But he’s only here Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, nearly as I can figure.  There’s a ranch woman a mile or so to the west feeding him sometimes, Gale’s heard, and I always see him coming out of the woods to the east.  Makes a series of stops, I reckons, trying to keep everyone happy.

Then there’s the other project, the subtle energy investigation.  Major steps forward, lots of learning, mind openings, having to go back and recalculate a lot of areas because previous premature assumptions stopped me before they were thoroughly tested.  But the doors are opening more daily and the corridors behind them are narrowing.

Any day now I expect to have a lot better understanding of the mechanism.  But it’s clear it involves reflective light from unlikely celestial bodies, and evidently includes interactions between the axial tilts of various objects and that of the sun.  With complications resulting from Old Sol’s communistic notion he doesn’t have to spin at the same speed at his equator as he does in his other body parts.

That’s about all worth mentioning for the moment.  Thanks for the visit.

Old Jules

11 Comments

Posted in 2012, Animals, Astronomy, Human Behavior, Science, Solitude

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When Bad Things Happen to Good Megafauna

Posted on March 26, 2012 by | 10 comments

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

Old Sol and I continued our conversation from the previous morning yesterday.

“So.  You’re saying you think I need more diversity in my art?”

“I’m sure as hell not saying you need more ego.  You’ve got more than enough of that, what with your astrophysicists, Hopi Witch Doctors and Mayan-bean-counter buddies.”

“That was a hurtful thing to say.  What are you so irritated about this morning?”

“I’m not irritated.  Sometimes your bluster’s a bit tedious though.  You’re forever trying to take credit for everything that happens, whether you had anything to do with it or not.  But the most cataclysmic event, for instance, that’s happened since man has been around, you had nothing to do with.”

“Um.  You’re referring to the megafauna?”

“Yeah.  Millions of rhino, mammoth, hippos, sabre-tooth tigers all killed in the space of a few days.  Lots of them frozen fast enough to keep them from decaying much.  Carcasses stacked up like cord wood over half the planet.  If you’re able to do that, big fella, I say go for it.”

“I never said I did.  That wasn’t me.  We stars are mostly uniformists, gradualists, except for a few rare renegade exceptions.  We don’t go in for drama.”

“Okay.  I’ll buy that.  I envy you, though, getting to see all those giant beasties wiped out.”

“Yeah.  It was a sight to behold.  Just out of curiosity, what do you think happened?”

“It’s obvious what happened.  All a person has to do is discount everything he believes he knows already that would keep it from happening.  Then allow himself  to look at whatever options are left on the plate.  There aren’t many.”

“I’m about out of time.  But you’re admitting the reason nobody looks at the obvious isn’t my fault?”

“No.  I guess it isn’t.  They’re all lap-dancing to their own agendas.  Sometimes you end up as part of the agenda, is all.  I reckons.”

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:  Adopting an Illusion?

Old Jules, if you act like something for long enough, will you become like the illusion?  If you acted as a good moral, rule-abiding citizen, could you eventually adopt those beliefs and habits?

10 Comments

Posted in Animals, Astronomy, History, Human Behavior, Liars, Nature, Science, Solitude

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Commitment to Dogs That Won’t Hunt

Posted on March 23, 2012 by | 20 comments

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

Searching around in my mind as I drove to Kerrville yesterday I was trying to find something, almost anything, the word ‘we’ could be applied to that included all of humanity.  Not an easy task, despite most of the lofty notions humans have about themselves.

Intelligence and thinking came to mind, but didn’t survive even long-range scrutiny.  Whatever else we might be, human beings are only intelligent when compared to one another within a miniscule range of options.  Probably the least intelligent human being able to function is somewhat smarter than the next-best up for consideration in the animal kingdom.  And a few notches up on the yardstick, the smartest human being isn’t much more intelligent.  But there’s enough difference top-to-bottom to demolish the word ‘we’ when it comes to defining anything all humans have in common.

As for thinking, there’s just not a hell of a lot of it going on.  The overwhelming majority of humans are riding along on shock waves created by thinkings of an underwhelming few individuals.  Of the several billion humans on this planet there’s not more than a shot-glass full who could figure out how to manufacture a lead pencil.  Or, for that matter, a shot-glass.  Or build a fire without materials provided by some autopilot composite of individuals not-thinking somewhere else.

Pride held up a lot better, but as I turned it over examining all the nuances I found it was handcuffed to something else.  Commitment.  This species couldn’t have survived this long without it any more than a tribe of beavers could survive without the non-thinking commitment to building community dams.

And pride is the glue holding it together.  A necessary virtue to keep things moving, even though the commitments most frequently to dogs that don’t hunt, haven’t hunted for centuries, but nobody’s devoted enough thought to the matter to notice.

When I was a kid the adults used to say if a snapping turtle ever got a bite on you it wouldn’t turn loose until it thundered.  One of the places in this reality where the word ‘we’ can be applied to humanity is our commonality to that imaginary snapping turtle.  Commitments come along, sometimes the result of someone thinking something, sometimes just out of the blue, and ‘we’ lock our pride into it and don’t turn loose until it thunders.

When I began this post I intended it to examine human commitments to failed ideals and myths.  I planned to reflect on our often failing repeated attempts to commit ourselves to individuals, to political parties, to geographic boundaries.

But I’m going to have to save that for some future post. 

I was watching bumper stickers as I drove along considering all this.  Proud to be an American.  Proud to be a Texan.  Proud to be a Native Texan.

Presumably those declarations are a source of pride because of the effort and personal hardship involved in achieving them.  If pride had anything to do with personal achievement.  Or thinking.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:  Views on Atheism?

Old Jules, what is your view on my religion? I’m an atheist.

 

20 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Communication, Current Issues, Education, History, Human Behavior, Solitude, Survival

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Dancing With Roosters

Posted on March 16, 2012 by | 8 comments

Good morning readers.  I’m obliged you made a swing by here.  I’m going to do my best to give you something to have read by the time you leave if the Coincidence Coordinators and the commie phone line will sit still for it.

I’ve about decided I’m going to have peace and harmony around here, and I don’t care who I have to kill to do it.  The roosters are driving me nuts with their sneaky non-harmonizing ways.

The Great Speckled Bird surprised me by surviving the winter, feeling better most ways than he has in a longish time.  But more crippled up than ever.  Not much use of the one leg anymore, one wing weak or useless.  So when he falls, the usual ritual is to lie on his back waving his legs around.  Struggling for a shift in reality to get into a position where the one foot can get a hold on something.

But even so, he’s out there ranging with the hens, doing what roosters are supposed to do as often as he can see his way clear to do it and he can find a willing hen.

But meanwhile I keep my bachelor roosters penned most of the day.  Mainly because they’re of a mind that if I’m not looking it’s okay to open up a can of whoopass on TGSB.  They can knock him down and peck the bejesus out of him in less time than it takes to tell it.

But I’ve digressed.  I was going to tell you about dancing with roosters, which is the only way a person can establish harmonious society with them.  A rooster isn’t long on understanding the ways of a human being, but he does understand who’s the cock of the walk.  And if he doesn’t understand, or he forgets, he’s forever trying to reassure himself about whether he’s boss, or someone else is.

A rooster has two main dances.  One he does for the hens, which I’ll describe some other time, though it’s important to know how to do it so’s to keep him and the hens on their toes.  But the one used to communicate “I’m a contender,” and “You want some of this?  Come get it!” is an absolute necessity.

The last couple of days when the bachelor roosters and TGSB were out concurrently I’ve had to do a lot of dancing around stiff-legged, acting like I was pecking the ground watching them out of the corner of my eye and flapping my arms threateningly.  Reminding them if they want to mess with TGSB they’ve got to go through the bull-goose-looney to get there.

I think where I slipped up was when the warm weather started I quit wearing my red stocking cap they considered a comb, and forgot I’m a rooster too.  Got thinking they could each be a contender.

Old Jules

The Great Speckled Bird: Respecting our Betters

The Liar: The Great Speckled Bird, Part 2

News from the Middle of Nowhere

October Quietude, Dead Bugs and Old Roosters

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, Animals, Chickens, Communication, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Nature, Poultry, Relationships, Senior Citizens

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Fire Ants, Food Sanitation and the Old Cottage Try

Posted on March 15, 2012 by | 1 comment

Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning. I’d thought that moth might survive a while because the cats were intimidated by it, but I was wrong.  Tabby made a meal of it before sunset.

The phone line’s being a communist this morning, so I don’t know whether I’ll be able to finish a post and get it up.  If I save frequently enough I can progress two steps forward and one back, losing the connection but only losing the unsaved part of the immortal prose.

The fire ants came out of hiding yesterday, so I’m back in business food-sanitation-wise.  It will be a considerable relief getting their help on the dishwashing around here.  Fire Ants, Dishwashing and Drought

Good news from Kay on the phone yesterday about the Invader Cat.  Seems it’s doing the Texas Two-Step.  A neighbor a couple of miles the other side of them asked recently if they ‘had’ a black cat, or had seen one.  Turns out the Invader Cat migrates over there a couple of days at a time, also, and has done for a considerable while.

That puts to rest any concerns I had about it joining the household.

I had a considerable bit of immortal prose I was going to do this morning, but the distraction of this dial-up is killing my muse.  I think I’m going to have to save it for sometime else.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules: Old Jules, I love one girl very much, but she is not responding, what should I do?

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Animals, Nature

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