A Short Break to the Backyard Forest

PACKING AND UNPACKING AND SORTING as we move into the new place means the dogs have seen lots of strange activity, but no woods time. I finally got them out into the back woods a short stretch, and they raised four deer just as a light rain began to fall. Perfect! I’m dead tired, but the dogs got to “see the elephant,” and tomorrow is another day.

First Dog

The Wee Wolvea pause to honor the family's first dog, Scoot. She’s buried at Dupont Circle, but the headstone came with me to the new yard.

Today I Fell Down a Hole Looking at Nautical Art

Good Enough

Less is More

Who Wore It Better?

The Problem

“No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power.” —P. J. O'Rourke

My Very Cute Grandson

Outrage and Fear Is Used to Manipulate You

Purple Fields

I’ve passed this field several times a day ferrying things between the old house and the new.  At first I thought violets, but today I stopped and it’s a field of grape hyacinth!  

The #1 Killer of Lambs

The #1 killer of lambs (after weather and mis-mothering) is PET DOGS.

A red fox has never been filmed killing a lamb, despite the fact that everyone has a video camera in their pocket, CCTV in their barns and pens, and access to excellent game cameras that are cheaper than a good bottle of wine. See >> What Kills Sheep?

The big lie is that red fox impact sheep economics… but failure to provide shelter and supplemental feeding does not. 

Old School Catholic Birth Control

A detail from an illuminated manuscript depicting a medieval monk seducing a nun, who becomes pregnant and has an illegitimate baby. She then disposes of the baby in the privy (toilet). From the Miracles de Notre Dame, 71 A 24, now housed at the Royal Library of the Netherlands. 

The good news is in the modern world, Catholics generally ignore birth control given by men wearing dresses. The lowest fertility rates in the world are in Catholic countries like Italy, where both contraception and abortion are not only legal, they are paid for by the state.

The Ugliness in the Mirror

Talented and well-practiced in every vice, a stranger to compassion or empathy, a liar and a cheat so complete in perfidy that he has elevated his dishonesty to hold it up as an ersatz moral principle, violent, so long as he can order someone else to do the dirty work, grotesque in body, graceless in action, in possession of a wounded self-regard so colossal as to smother any spark of grace, treasonous, not only to country, but to every ally he has ever had, the poisoned fruit and rankest flower of racism and contempt for women, and utterly devoid of shame for his moral and spiritual bankruptcy. 

That is your leader. That is to whom you give your money. That is who you follow and laud. That is whose banner you willingly carry. 

Why? Because he is a mirror, not a lighthouse. You see yourselves in him. He is what you would be, if you had inherited money and could shed the last vestiges of conscience and shame. 

No, I do not “respect your choices,” nor do I admire your loyalty and dedication to this miserific, demoniac vision. You have demonstrated not only a lack of civic virtue, loyalty to the Republic and to the rule of law, but a willingness to engage in violence and sedition at his slightest expressed wish. And you will never, ever admit you were wrong. Because you see your dark, twisted, resentful dreams in him. And to renounce him is to renounce yourselves.”

~ Advocatus Peregrini

The drawing is Stable Genius by Siegfried Woldhek, pen & ink, October 12, 2019. Mr. Woldhek's son is an occassional reader of the blog.

We Get What We Tolerate and Reward

Answer: Capitalism

A Very Large Virginia Opossum

Skull on the left is a massive Virginia Opossum skull. One on the right is a Red Fox.

Possums rarely get this big before they are clipped off by fox, owl, coyote, hawk, eagle, dog, or car.

English Bulldog Skull

If Al Qaeda ran its own dog breeding program to craft a symbolic mockery of Great Britain and the U.S. Marine Corps, they could not have done better than the English Bulldog, a dog whose breathing apparatus is so compromised that it effectively water-boards itself every day.

Sorting Out the Ossuary

All the bones and skulls *not* on the top or bottom rows, fit into large glass canister.  The effect is a bit geologic.  

The Red Hartebeest at top left is from Africa, the six-point whitetail next to it was a hunters’ lost deer found in thick vegetation a week or two after it was shot, and allowed to decompose before collection.

Skulls in the middle include American Badger, Pitbull, English Bulldog, Red Fox, Raccoon, Possum, Gray Squirrel, Rabbit, several birds, Groundhogs, Snapping Turtle, and Muskrat.

A Cascade of Rats

Pitbull Skull

Fox vs Coyote Skull

Two Coyote Jaws

The smaller jaw is to a regular coyote. The larger jaw was found while out digging, next to the rest of the skeleton (minus the rest of the head). Several months earlier, I’d seen a MASSIVE coyote (I first thought it was a deer) bound across the road in front of my truck. It stopped about 25 yards inside a field and looked back at me. This might have been that fellow. It’s open season on coyote around here.

Jaws

Tiger Shark jaw. Picked this up in Hawaii.

A Case Full of Natural History

Resting Between Unboxing

On Saint Patrick’s Day, Everyone Is Irish

Things That Did Not Break in the Move

So far as I can tell, nothing broke in the move — not even delicate shells, eggs, and crumbling fossils.  Amazed!

Reframing the Outrage

Unboxing Teeth

Top:  Megalodon Shark, Cave Bear, Mammoth

Bottom:  Hippopotamus molar.

The Stone Dog House

Years ago, when Mountain Girl was old, deaf, and arthritic, I built her a stone dog house so she could stay warm in winter and cool in summer without going up and down the steps in the garage. It was very deep inside and was heavily insulated with foam panels (top, bottom, sides) and banked inside with deep drifts of hay. If I would call the dogs, and deaf old Mountain Girl would not come trotting in with the others, I would look inside the very small entrace to see her like this. A bit heart-stopping, but she was always very much alive in the Land of Nod. 

Later, I trained ivy up the sides of the stone dog house, fixed a game camera to a very close tree, and put a few bits of loose kibble amid the ivy trailing across the flat stone roof — a photo shoot stand for the local fox who would visit to see what they might find.

More Steps Forward on the New House

The inside paint and floors are finished in the new house, and today we moved everything out of storage. There’s still furniture in the small house downtown, but that too will move in a few weeks.  Plumbers will hook up four new sinks and switch out some taps on Thursday.  TVs and computers will get wired up that day as well. A new king-sized mattress is coming tomorrow, and our old bed will become part of a guest bedroom. Furniture will move around a bit in the next week or two, with small stuff still coming over from the current house, and stored things to be unwrapped, placed, sorted, and organized.  There’s a lot left to do, but today was a big lift, and everything is out of commercial storage, which feels like a big deal.

Pi Day

Who Wore It Better?

The History is Written; The Future Is Dim

The April 2021 cover of The Field focused on terrier history. 

The future of working terriers in the UK, however, does not look bright. The island is an environmental mess where “shooting” has long replaced hunting, where hanging on to suicidal sheep economics is seen as cultural touchstone, and where direct mail liars for hire are never challenged by sound science. Nothing is registered or regulated — it’s either “go wild” or banned, and there’s not much in between, which means there is no sanction for the worst except for punishment of the whole. Bag limits? Licenses? Seasons? Apprenticeships? There’s none of that.

Dog Yard Gravel Is Down

Three tons of gravel shifted and spread. Actually shoveled it at least twice, so 6 to 8 tons of lifting. About two inches of hard ground covers very hard rock, and all this is covered by landscape fabric lawn-stapled to the ground. The edge next to the fence is covered with 3 feet of chicken wire that is also lawn-stapled to the ground, and then the chicken wire is topped with sak-crete. Over everything goes the pea gravel. This system has worked well for me before. This hard-fenced yard is open to the house. The dogs can rest in 10 by 30 feet of shade or loaf in 10 by 30 feet of sun. Elevated resting benches go in next. Outside the hard fenced yard is a very large area that is is a double loop invisible fence, so the wee wolves have a large play area.