The Saga of a Free Horse

The old adage of “if it’s too good to be true, then it isn’t,” is the basis for this next scenario. If you’ve read any of my other wanderings you’ll remember that we had a horse called Lucky. I had built a corral and a two horse stall to ensure Lucky’s comfort during the winter months, which as I mentioned before, he never used anyway.

So here’s how the story starts. I guess I never realized how much alfalfa went in one part of the horse and came out the other. Some people call it fodder, but my definition is something less delicate. I got tired of going down to the local feed store and buying two or three bales at time. There was a riding club nearby that had a bunch of horses and I got the name of an outfit that delivered the alfalfa. I learned a lot about first cut, second cut and third cut alfalfa and pricing that is absolutely useless unless you have a horse or eat alfalfa. So anyway, I contacted this supplier, and made arrangements for a ton to be delivered to my house. When I built the stall I had considered storage and was able to squeeze in a majority of the feed, which would eventually turn into plant supplements. The guy that delivered it was extremely helpful, and we got talking. He said he had a horse that was an American Saddlebred, but it had been hurt and he was going to have to render it unless he could find a good home. Rendering is not something that you want to think about, because it would mean ending up in a can of dog food which we would’ve fed to Rusty-the-dog. Rusty-the-cat, by definition, would not eat dog food.

Anyway, this horse was located about 25 miles away in small rural area. So we drove down there on a weekend to look at this potentially soon-to-be rendered animal. The poor thing had been caught up in barb-wire when it was a filly and had severely damaged one of her hind legs, and under the circumstances had stunted her growth. If you’re not aware, you measure a horse by what’s called hands and she was maybe 12 hands fully grown. The guy said if I wanted, I could have it for nothing and the next time he came up he would bring the horse and drop it off at the house. My curtain climbers thought this was greatest thing since sliced bread and I figured, “Oh, what the heck, it’s a free horse.” We had lots of room in the corral and I figured Lucky would be happy to have some company. Wrong!

Lucky had been our new-found companion for approximately a year and was fairly well-adjusted to his new home. Facts are there were horses on both sides of the corral, so he had lots of equine conversations over the fences. Every once in a while I could hear them discussing their owners and what lousy riders they were. It seemed to me that we had a very tranquil horse environment. Enter a nearly two-year-old filly!! There is a song from My Fair Lady called “Let a woman in your life” and I could swear I heard Lucky humming it one morning.

We decided to name the horse Dickens, I assumed it was after Charles. Let me rephrase that – the urchins decided to name horse Dickens. First I thought that was fairly quaint, but as time went by I realized that the horse had assumed the personality of its name which was more akin to “Little Dickens” and not in the literary sense. She was a real hellion from the very beginning.

I didn’t realize it, but horses have a hierarchy in that they have to determine who is King of the corral, or in this case Queen. We estimated that Lucky was about 13 or more, so one would assume that by default he would be the master. Dickens, being truly right brain, decided otherwise. So for a period of about three weeks you could hear them arguing in horse talk, and in fact they would chase each other all over the corral. I went out a few times with the idea that I could do some mediation, but to no avail. They chased me around the corral and continued their deep disagreement.

They would harass each other around the corral, but Lucky was extremely disadvantaged because Dickens was quite a bit faster and had much more agility. They would bite each other, kick each other in the butt, hind quarter in horse talk, and just generally disagree on everything. Rusty-the-dog thought this was great fun and would often join the chase until he got kicked, which persuaded him to stay out of it. Rusty-the-cat ignored the whole thing and would go into the stall to see if the resident mice were still alive, not that she was going to do anything about it! When it came time for feeding, we had to throw the alfalfa at two different ends of the corral in order to keep them from having a food fight. However, after about three weeks, things began to settle down. I think they declared a horse armistice and just kind of ignored each other.

The corral was made out of Douglas fir, two by sixes, and for whatever reason, Dickens thought it was more interesting to eat the corral rather than alfalfa. Lucky soon picked up on it. I could see the top string of boards was disappearing. I asked the guy down at the horse place what was going on and he said that it was called “cribbing.” At the rate these two were going, they would eat the corral in less than two weeks unless I did something about it. The guy suggested that I buy chemicals that would derail their ferocious appetite for Douglas fir. So I got this stuff, put it all over the railings and assumed the problem was cured. Not so fast! It seemed to me that they enjoyed it even more and the corral was disappearing even faster. I then found out that there was a tree called hemlock and the horses did not like the taste of this particular wood, so I replaced the half-eaten railings with this distasteful wood. This did not stop them!

I got another suggestion of painting the rails with creosote, but realized that if the horses were stupid enough to keep eating the wood, the creosote would likely kill them. I thought about that alternative for a little while, but finally dismissed it as an inhumane although economically feasible solution. I got further input that said what I needed to buy was called a “zapper.” You mounted a wire all around the fence, hooked it up to this electrical device and it would send a harmless shock to the “cribbers” if they touched it. This worked wonderfully on the top rail, however was absolutely useless when they started eating the second rail. About this time, I was rethinking the creosote solution. After about a month of continuous chewing, they suddenly quit. However, by then they’d eaten half of the second rail, but at least they stopped.

One morning I heard what I thought was a renewal of their ongoing squabble and went out to the corral to see what the hell was going on now. For some reason Lucky had decided to jump the fence between our corral and the neighbors. The problem is he didn’t quite make it. He was in what is classically and politically called the mug-whomp position. His mug was in the neighbors corral and his whomp was still where it belonged. He was stuck between the two corrals with his hind legs off the ground and no way to get any leverage. Of course Dickens saw this as a real opportunity and was biting him on his butt. She must have come from the school that dictated “don’t get mad get even.” My neighbor lady, who is a real horse person (mostly the rear-end) was out there and was very upset that I had allowed my horse to frighten her mares. I came to the conclusion that the only solution was to knock down the rail and get Lucky back into his own corral.

Once I got the board down, Lucky took off after one of the other horses with the intent that was clearly motivated by lust. My horsey neighbor lady went nuts because my mangy horse was trying to impregnate one of her mares. I told her it was her horse’s fault, I had seen the whole thing and that the little brown mare had been giving Lucky the “come hither” look! I further explained that it was something of a moot point because lucky was like a eunuch. I don’t think she believed me! I could’ve said “here, look” but decided that was too indelicate.

I finally got Lucky back in the corral, walked up to him, patted him on the head, rubbed him down a little bit and looked at him and said “well, there’s life in the old boy yet, but I think you forgot you can’t do that anymore!” He turned his head and looked longingly at the little brown mare as she was standing there swishing her tail with the “I didn’t do anything” look on her face.

During this period, I was working with Dickens in an attempt to get her “saddle broke” so the kids could at least enjoy a ride. She and I were on good terms and I thought I had made real progress. I had her halter-trained, and had even put a saddle on her back a few times without getting killed. She didn’t really mind it all. So one weekend I decided it was time to try to ride her. I put the halter on and decided not to use the saddle, but to just try slowly getting on the horse. First I lay across her back so she could feel the weight and she was fine. So I slung my leg over and got on Dickens. Big-time mistake!

She was good for about 15 feet then she took off like a bat out of hell — bucking, kicking and turning until finally I came flying off her back straight into the air and came down with my arm tucked in the wrong place. Lucky came over to check me out, which is more than the urchins did. The gang was standing there watching this event with some degree of awe at the stupidity of their father. Dickens took off to the far end of the corral and had no interest whatsoever in coming back to see if I was all right. She was still kicking her heels, showing her teeth with ears straight back. I gathered my dignity, limped away and decided that I would wait to take the halter off.

I went into the house but didn’t realize that I had cut my head and was bleeding. Blue-eyes said “what happened to you?” I said something to the effect that Dickens and I had had a disagreement and that Dickens won. What I didn’t realize at that point was that I had broken my arm and cracked two ribs, which was a small price to pay for absolute insanity. In the final analysis I couldn’t really blame Dickens because the facts are I was probably too heavy for her. At that time I weighed about 185 pounds and she was pretty small.

After some family discussion it was decided to have Dickens put into a special education class for recalcitrant horses. I took her down the road to the horsey place and talked to the guy that ran it, described the problem and he agreed to do some training. This of course was not pro-bono and I was somewhat surprised that a horse trainer can make the same amount of money per hour as a brain surgeon. We had about four or five sessions and then he announced that Dickens was going to be a very difficult horse and would require an experienced rider even after she was trained. His conclusion was that she had been traumatized by her early injury and that this would probably never improve. Great, I thought! Now we’ve got a horse that nobody will be able to ride.

All was not lost however. This trainer said he knew of a fellow that might take the horse off my hands. He had a big corral about a half-mile away and that most of the people who rented from him were very experienced riders. Okay — this is a great solution. I went down and talked to the guy. He came up to the house looked at Dickens and said that he would take the horse off my hands for 200 bucks. I thought at that point I was actually going get some money back but I was sadly mistaken. I was to give him the 200 bucks. I thought about this for about 30 microseconds and agreed. What passed through my mind was cribbing, the price of alfalfa, horse health vet bills, broken bones and multiple contusions. I did extract the promise that Dickens would not be turned into dog food.

Dickens’ new home was actually on my way to work, and every once in a while I would see her in this large pasture. She looked about the same. I have to assume that she got trained well enough for an experienced rider. I was a little worried about Lucky losing his roommate, however it seemed as though he and the little brown mare next door had established a platonic relationship. That’s more than I can say for the mare’s owner and I. To this day I contend that the little mare had a suggestive walk.

Lucky stayed with us for many years and I used to ride him on the weekends. He was a real good horse — because he had a rider that wasn’t! Finally, he was no longer able to retain weight and was eating less and less. We called the vet and he basically said there was nothing that could be done. The decision was made to put him down, which was indeed a very sad day. We estimated that Lucky was probably close to 28 years old, which is about the max to expect for horse. By then the gang had grown, and our needs for equestrian recreation were gone. After a while I quit looking to see if I could spot Dickens, but I’m sure she was happy and stayed with her new-found friends for many years, likely breaking someone else’s arm or whatever.

The moral of the story is “beware of a Trojan bearing a gift horse.”

The New Abode

 “Mi casa, su casa” in Spanish literally means “my house, your house.”  “It seems to me that your part needs fixing up!” This is what Blue-eyes said to me shortly after we moved in.

In some earlier commentary I mentioned that we had moved to a larger house. It was not without a certain degree of pain and anguish that this was accomplished. On the positive side I was less than 10 minutes from work. On the negative side I was less than 10 minutes from home! This meant I was spending some lunch hours running home to make certain household adjustments that were being dictated by my blue-eyed señora.

Don’t get me wrong! She could handle about 90% of the minor little things that happen when you move into a new home. But not problems like the “garage door will only open halfway and if you want dinner tonight, you best come and fix it because I have to go to the store!” The only perplexing problem here was her assuming I had any concept of how to fix a 17 foot garage door. Her trust in my skill set was admirable, but often misplaced. In this particular instance I came home, fixed the garage door so she could go do her shopping and unfortunately discovered when I got home later that we couldn’t close it. Whoops!

That night I got out my trusty toolkit and was trying to figure out what could go wrong when one of the older members of our gang look at me and said “dad, what’s that little metal thingie up there?” I thought to myself, “You’re a10 a year-old, Gimme a break.” So as not to cause any permanent damage to the self-confidence of this budding genius, I looked at this particular little metal thingy, pushed it up and the damn door came down.

One thing you have to understand is that this house was not quite complete! The guy that had built it fell off the roof and hurt his head. He was not a carpenter, nor contractor but a physicist. Think about that one for a minute.  Anyway, there were a multitude of issues and tasks that my skill set, being an erstwhile dyslexic engineer fit right into. Such as the installation of a toilet in one of the extra bathrooms where the plumber, who must’ve been drinking or smoking something, left the flange that the toilet was to sit on short by at least 2 inches.

That proved to be an interesting dilemma and was only solved by going down to the plumbing store and explaining what the heck was going on. An arm and a leg later, I came out with a 2 inch extension and was able to set this contraption and install a marvelous pink commode, which by the way I refused to use. Did you know that there are at least five different types of connecting fittings for water to a toilet? If you don’t believe me, check it out.

Everything worked fine once I was finished, except for one minor problem. One of the gang used it for an inaugural whiz.  Success?  Not quite yet. It would not shut itself off! I finally figured out that this large copper ball thingy had to be set at a certain point to close the shut off valve. I shared this newfound knowledge with my engineering team the next day, and they all thought I was nuts! I didn’t mention the garage door incident for obvious reasons. They already had serious doubts about working for a dyslexic and ambidextrous engineering manager, let alone one that could be outsmarted by a 10-year-old.

We had a swimming pool with new house — huge sucker. The only problem is it was empty, like no water. Well, a little bit of water that had turned a serious green and had a bunch of funny things swimming around. The first task was to eliminate our non-invited pool guests and see if the equipment would work. This was serious business because being well-versed in swimming pool maintenance and the associated equipment, like pump, filter and how to make the water flow, I undertook the rehabilitation of this cemented hole in the ground. I got some cleaning stuff and clean the entire 20’ x 40′ cavity and figured out how to make the pump and the filter work. I figured I needed to rinse all the chemicals out, sprayed everything down and with a portable pump got the monster dry. It was nice and clean and white, and ready for some sparkling water!

After a weekend of this I felt we were ready to fill this new recreational device and start to have lots of fun, as it was still warm out. I came home from work one afternoon and there were my gang and six of the local bomb-throwers skateboarding in this empty cavity, screaming up the sides, careening down the deep end and halfway up only to turn around and come back down. I went berserk! There were skateboard wheel marks all over my nice clean white bottom. Let me rephrase that — the pool bottom not my bottom, but beyond that I figured if one of them fell and broke something, other than the pool, I was likely to get my bottom sued! At that point I did a backflip into a vodka martini.

After a little discussion, which included many threats, I succeeded in convincing the troops that this was not “a good thing.” I was very happy when all it took was a little bit of water, some cleaning powder and scrub brush to get the marks off the pool, which I made the skateboard urchins do. I decided then and there to fill the pool before they established a statewide tournament to determine who could break their neck in JJ’s cemented hole.

Do you have any idea how long it takes to fill a swimming pool with a garden hose, let alone how much costs? I got out my slide rule, and input in the dimensions: length, width and depth, and came up with a figure of approximately 32,000 gallons of water. My reference to a slide rule is a clear indication of my age, and for those few that don’t know what it was, then I suggest you look it up. This was an engineering tool used prior to the silly thing called a handheld calculator. I still have three of them saved somewhere because I figured at some point they would have antique value. But I digress.

Before it was over I was seriously thinking about renting it out as a skateboard arena, but once again was outvoted. After a couple of days there was enough water for the gang to go in and get wet, only to discover that the water was extremely cold. Heating the pool now became a priority, and after a little investigation as to the costs. We had a budget, but like our federal government it was completely ignored based on what our family termed as mandates. Does that remind you of anything?

We believed in democracy in our family and everybody had a vote. The differentiation was each of the kids had one vote, I had five and Blue-eyes had 22. Some democracy!  As an example of family cooperation we tried to decide on priorities, but no votes were extended to the horse named Lucky, the dog named Rusty and my cat, also named Rusty. The animals’ voting record was considered suspect in that you could sway their vote with a little piece of meat. That’s somewhat consistent with the pork belly system currently popular in Washington.

One of the issues that surfaced which required a family congressional subcommittee was the carpeting throughout the hall and in the bedrooms. Nobody liked it, so we decided collectively, meaning Blue-eyes decided on that as a priority. We developed the caucus system to allow each representative to make a choice as to coloring and type. This went to committee, was passed and executed. Carpet samples were brought for review and a decision was made similar to that of Henry Ford and the model A! “Any color they want as long as it’s black.”  The color wasn’t black but you get the inference. So the next decision was what colors to paint the rooms, and in her wisdom she allowed the kids to pick the color scheme as long as it matched the carpeting which was selected through the aforementioned democratic process.

We had the carpeting ripped out and began the process of painting each of the bedrooms and this was indeed a family event. The kids lost interest after I painted them once or twice instead of a wall, and Blue-eyes suggested that I really wasn’t interested in painting — I was keener on tormenting our offspring. I suddenly became the proud owner of three vertical Navaho White enamel stripes on my back. Fortunately it was water-based paint.

The gang got even by developing a game where they took my golf balls, which I wasn’t using anyway, and a putter to see who could get closest to the end of the bare wood 60-foot hall without touching the end wall. It was really very clever. They would mark each spot where the ball stopped with their initials in chalk. It was a good idea, looked like fun and I joined them figuring with my skill set I was sure win. I didn’t! They cheated. What I hadn’t counted on was they had been practicing and knew the idiosyncrasies of the hall and I was destined to command last place. Good thing I didn’t bet money on it.

Blue-eyes wasn’t working at this point, so she finished painting the rooms, as well as the hall. She was a damn good painter and I offered to get her a sideline, which she promptly told me what I could do with — which I cannot repeat here.  I renewed the mandate and associated cost of the new pool heater, but to no avail.  The carpets came and everybody was happy, except we noticed that one room, which was the wrong shade of pink, did not quite match the color scheme. We lived with it for a while and eventually made some changes, much to the chagrin of the occupant of the pink room.

The new house also had a basement that was approximately 60’ x 30’ and fully cemented, with radiant heating. My plan, from the get-go, was to develop this into a huge family room for winter time activities and entertainment. There was only one minor problem. Even though it was built with tons of concrete, it had developed cracks and unfortunately was sitting below the ground level of the water table, mostly in the winter. Hydronics is not one of my skill sets. This was an adventure unto itself, which I will address in a later blog because of my frustration in trusting the construction wisdom and acumen of a physicist.

Moral of the story is “sometimes physics is something you take for constipation!”

School Daze

If you were paying attention to any of my other meanderings you’re aware that blue-eyes and I had a number of kids, had outgrown our first house and had moved into a somewhat rural area. The various schools that the “curtain climbers” attended were a considerable distance from where we lived. So every morning it was our, meaning blue eyes, dubious task to get the offspring packed up and ready to board the Yellow Dragon that took them to their institutions of learning. One of our dogs, Rusty – not to be confused with our cat “Rusty” – would chase after the bus. My job was to chase after Rusty!

It got to a point of routine and eventually after the third designated stop for the bus, Rusty the dog would be sitting on the curb waiting for me to pick him up. After some consideration, I came to the conclusion that Rusty was smarter than I was. When I would come home with the dog, Rusty-the-cat would come over and say “you have been out chasing dogs again, haven’t you?” I would usually retort “Yeah! True, but at least I can catch gophers!” I think the cat was getting revenge because I named him after the dog. I would also remind the cat, “You’re a damn stray, I didn’t ask you to join this crew!” Rusty-the-cat would look at me, lick his paws and I could I tell he was thinking, “Hey! I’d have thought twice if I had known you were so creative that the best you could come up with was to name me after the dumb dog, Dip!” Clearly, the cat had learned the Dip part from blue-eyes. Rusty the dog would usually stay clear of these conversations simply because he was scared spit-less of Rusty-the-cat.

The school district we lived in was in a different town, somewhat snobbish, and their obvious attitude about us “rural” folks was less than sanguine, but they didn’t refuse the revenues generated by the tax base of our little city. They had actually built one school in our little town, but much to our chagrin it was on the list of closures, which was not overly surprising. The only surprising thing is the district leased it to a private charter school which turned out to be a huge success and reduced this forward-thinking school district’s student count, and affected both state and federal money. The only bad thing was the district retained the money from the lease and raised our taxes. Our government in action!

Often our wondrous, bright eyed, crew would miss the bus, and I was usually the designated driver. For awhile we had a network of phone numbers for our neighbors whose offspring were classmates, and if necessary would divvy up the responsibilities of “missed buses” or “bus no-shows,” which I was convinced was intentional, and the district’s method of getting even with us rural folks. As an example, if there was a bus breakdown, we were the last on the priority list. At one point, I offered my services to the district as a mechanic to help with the maintenance, but they told us it was a union issue and I couldn’t do it. It’s just as well, because I knew absolutely nothing about buses, other than they are normally painted yellow.

After a while, I abdicated membership in the “network” because I began to suspect, correctly, that we had a number of members who like to sleep in and knew we would be driving, because their kids began to show up at our front door without the phone ringing. I solved that problem by writing a note, and pinning it on their jackets, stating that we had contracted Typhus fever! When I got home one night, blue-eyes said “Guess what, Dip? That was my name when I knew I was in trouble. “I got a visit from the county health department!” “You’re really weird! You know that?” “Keep that up and we’ll have to move to another state!”

Parent’s day was usually absolute chaos.The teachers all seemed to schedule this unwholesome event at the same time, and we had a lot of trouble balancing the schedule for different useless meetings about how our offspring were handling their educational experiences. There was one teacher in grade school that unfortunately three of my kids suffered through. My private name for her was BrunHilda. She had clearly graduated from the school of Wilhelm the Great, and was just a tad pedantic. My meetings with her regarding our perfect children were a little bit better than a proctological exam, but not much!

Now, don’t get me wrong! This was an excellent school district and our kids were good students, for the most part, and excelled in most activities. This was enforced by their demonstrative father, sensitized by blue-eyes, however, reinforced by her superior intellect. Facts are, this was all an inherited trait from their mother, and thank God they were not aware of my trials and tribulations. If you’ve been following my rambling antics, you know I was kicked out of kindergarten, but the only personal redeeming value here is I was 13 years old. Just joking!

By this time, blue-eyes was working full-time and we developed a method for sharing school responsibilities for the kids, which as was 80/20, with her getting the 80 and J.J. the 20. This unique division came about because of as I had suggested, my lack of “sensitivity.” I was concerned about my ability to provide the positive reinforcements necessary for our kids at that age. That’s the “clever” rationale I used, so I thought. I was somewhat dismayed when she agreed wholeheartedly, stating that “anyone who would write a note to other parents telling them our family had Typhus is good candidate to be institutionalized!” I had thought this through before hitting her with the “sensitivity” part, figuring I was really ahead of the game — only to discover that I had been outsmarted once again. As Belafonte says in one of his songs “That’s right, the woman is smart-ahh.” (If you don’t know who Belafonte is, you’re wasting your time reading this stuff!)

Actually, the kids enjoyed school and required very little oversight when it came to homework and grades. It was their friends used to scare the hell out of me! You couldn’t call them wild, just free-spirited! The law would’ve called it something else. If you’ve got kids, you know that as they get bigger, so do the problems. Blue-eyes and I handle this with our usual acumen, meaning blue-eyes handled it, and I was kept in the dark. I’m sure had I known some of the antics my sweet dear urchins were involved in, they would still be on restriction and it would probably have lasted until they were 37.

I would hear about some of the stuff they had pulled from other people, or one of their more astute buddies would let certain information surface assuming that I knew all about it. To keep myself in the loop, I had developed a network of spies, and to keep them loyal to me, I threatened devious methods of retribution or dark, bewitching spells that would stunt their growth, after attempting to convince them I was a Warlock. It did not work! I made the mistake of telling them that “Rusty-the-cat” was my medium! One of the more knowledgeable refrigerator raiders, commented “cats for that purpose have to be black.” I looked him in the eye and said “I’ll paint the damn thing Black!” Rusty-the-cat heard that comment, and took off like a bat out of hell yelling,”This guy is really bonkers.”

Facts are, the kids had a secret society which consisted of a blood oath not to let any of the parents know what the hell was really going on – especially J.J. – because they all figured he was some kind of flake!

Moral of this story is “if you can’t beat them join them.”

Right-Brain, Left-Brain Phenomena

A few of my more enlightened and astute blog followers have pointed out what they consider as an error regarding my use of “right-brain,” depicting some of the feeble-minded things males of our species do and say. I admit that these intelligent and well-read followers were correct, however, being a male I have an excuse. I was left-handed, ambidextrous and slightly dyslexic! So for most guys, they were left-brain, for me, I bounced between the two sides – confusing not only myself but everybody else!

When I came into this world, lo these many years ago, at an early age it was clear my brain contained a certain mental deficiency likely caused by my forefathers, who came from Northern Scotland where it never got much over the temperature of 10°F. Many of them suffered from frost bite of the brain and I suggest it’s possible that this crept into the gene pool and became part of the family DNA train. At any rate, I am told, but don’t remember, that at an early age I could not make my mind up about much of anything other than when it was time to eat, and would do many things with both hands and sometimes backwards.

I remember being called ambidextrous and thought it was a derogatory comment about my family’s shortage of Highland cultural content, by not being able to play the bagpipes, or for having backed Bonny Prince Charles, which is why they got run out of the old country to begin with. In those days the English had no sense of humor! I still have nightmares about receiving baseball gloves, one for the right hand and one for the left hand. I must assure you that this left psychological scars and has affected my Id. For you left-brain types, the Id is not part of the physiology of man, but as Sigmund and friends pointed out – can be a major brain flatulence.

At the proper age I was shoved into a highly-touted parochial kindergarten, and promptly felt totally abandoned by my family, and unfortunately based on some early stories that I heard, could not find a great deal of fault for this decision. The teachers within the school had a calling, or call it a habit, which was to instill in each of its students those things the current social norm dictated as an imperative behavioral pattern.

I started this journey at a little over four, full of childish wonder in anticipation of all the great new things that would be brought to my attention and thus, would be able to conquer the world. Little did I know I was considered somewhat backward and destined to become a public nuisance. The public nuisance part came true, but I was far from backward. I was more sideways!

In those days, in that particular parochial society, left-handed people were considered the “Devils tools” and the teachers, with their habits and methods, had an objective to correct and sanctify any of their charge-lings that showed this less than desirable trait, using the tried-and-true methods left over from the Spanish Inquisition. Lefties were the targets, and in most cases were smacked with a ruler on their left hand. That only applied to the male students. Gee, I wonder why? Thus started a life-long resentment toward left-handed females.

After a while and a multitude of whacks, I got the general idea — use your other left hand, dummy! However, when I felt I was not being watched, I would take my crayon from my right hand as soon as the coast was clear and would stick it back in my left hand. I got caught a bunch of times and was punished by not allowing me to have our normal graham crackers and cold chocolate milk, which was never cold anyway because they stuck it on the heating radiator. To this day I can’t drink warm milk!

This lefty thing just wasn’t applied to learning the alphabet, but was extended to recess as well. Kick ball, ball tag, and catch were the big things then, and unfortunately I would kick the ball left- or right-footed and throw the softball with either hand. This got the attention of the recess monitor, who was really short, rather rotund, and reminded me of a rather large penguin. She would blow her whistle and yell “ J.J. ’What do you think you’re doing?” As punishment, I had go all over playground and pick up and bag the equipment. This task would make me late for class and cause even more consternation from the power structure.

On more than one occasion, I was sent home with a note pinned to my shirt describing my disturbing attitudes and displayed disobedience, which was considered anarchy and an attempt to over-throw the school hierarchy. Sometimes on the walk home, I would just “can” the note pretend like nothing untoward had happened. I would get sent to my room as discipline, pull out my crayons, my coloring book and spend the next two hours filling in the blank spots, you got it, left-handed. After about three months, one of my parents was called in and I was described as incorrigible and summarily booted out of kindergarten. I was really disappointed because I had been chosen as the leader of the ”stick and triangle” band, which was surely the last straw because I kept time with my left hand!

Needless to say, I was not one of the favorites at home but to be candid about it, I really didn’t give a damn because I wasn’t that worried about getting smacked on the wrist. I had actually grown very tired of graham crackers with warm chocolate milk! I won’t mention the brand name of the graham crackers nor the milk because they don’t sponsor this blog.

At any rate, I was beginning to grow into manhood, so I thought, at about six or seven and my brain finally made a decision. I became somewhat right-hand dominant, almost – maybe. I would still do many things left-handed, such as athletics, which rather than being thought of as a nasty handicap was deemed by the “jocks” as an asset. Now my brain was really screwed up!

To add to my dilemma, I was about 11 years old and having trouble in my studies. The general complaint of the educational system was I very often got things backwards and my handwriting was slanted the wrong direction. “What the hell difference does that make if you can read it,” was a question that occurred to me. But I knew if I mentioned this objection, considering the progressive methods and nature of the school I was in, that I would summarily be chucked out once again. Tests showed that I wasn’t stupid, but was still considered backwards. Oops! You have to love the thought processes of those progressive teachers during my youth.

I was eventually diagnosed as semi-dyslexic and was really upset because I figured people with that inflection had to go to prison or possibly even be burned at the stake (if I had lived during that period of the Spanish Inquisition)! I finally got a teacher who attempted to build my self-esteem by telling me about a whole bunch people who were probably dyslexic and left-handed, a really lethal combination. I had never heard of any of these people, so I was not overly impressed. The only one I could equate to was Babe Ruth, and I really wasn’t sure he could help me with my homework.

They sent me to one of the school psychiatrists or psychologists who scared me half to death, asked me a bunch questions, showed me a bunch of pictures and wrote back to the school that I was incorrigible. I think this guy must’ve been a buddy of that group that had the habits.

Time heals most things – not completely – but maybe almost. Being a good athlete helped me get through the balance of my “public school” experience.

To get around this problem, I used to carry a card that said “I am dyslexic and ambidextrous.” My peer group used to tease me because they thought it might be infectious. It was a ploy! I have to admit I had a lazy mind! I was bored stiff and was 13 going on 22, I thought. I managed to get through high school barring these existing cultural misconceptions with reasonably good grades, in spite of this so-called handicap, which I milked to the nth degree. Anytime I got trouble, I’d whip up this card and would be forgiven, or the inquisitor would be of the impression that I was a foreign exchange student.

I graduated from high school when I was 15, not because I was smart, but because they were fed up and wrote on my transcripts “this student is incorrigible, but is infected by dyslexia and is ambidextrous and should be monitored closely.” What a hell of a way to start life.

At that point in time you could not get a job unless you had a work permit, and you had to be at least 16 to get that. Although I had the grades, I wasn’t sure that college was for me, mainly because of the experience that I had with the enlightened education system. I lied about my age and went into the military, feeling very strongly that there was a place for a guy who was ambidextrous and dyslexic.

My first indication that this was not to be the case was when the drill instructor, commonly known as the DI, would call out the cadence “gimme — your right, your left – gimme your right your left” which is English for whatever the hell he was actually saying. These guys had a language of their own and I think this is on purpose, so they could punish us for not understanding what they were saying.

Naturally I came to the attention of this wonderful intellectual individual because in his words “JJ, you *#%&* meat head! Don’t you know your left from your right, boy!” I almost answered “no,” but thought better of it because I figured I’d be a cleaning out the little boys’ room, which should read latrine, for the rest of my enlistment. I finally got the hang of it and had developed a skill set that improved my relationship with the military. I qualified on the rifle range with about as high of score as one could get, and the thing that tickled them pink, that doesn’t quite fit, is I could do this either left-handed or right-handed. I was tempted to do it shooting through my legs while upside down, but was talked out of it by a nasty mouth Master Sergeant noting what he would do with my lower body parts. The politest thing he called me was smart ass! I managed to live through this military era and will write about that in another story that has nothing to do with right-brain, left-brain activity.

In college, I majored in engineering and I have to tell you it was one hell of a challenge because a disconnected, incorrigible, ambidextrous, dyslexic engineer can be an absolute, unmitigated disaster. In my last year at college we were required to design a basic battery charger and my professor took one look at my design, and said “JJ, you idiot, that’s a fuse!” I made the mistake of asking why, and he responded “because every time you plug it in, it’ll blow up.” My first job was in aerospace, and I think it was shortly after, that we fell behind in the race for space. Not true! When you have a handicap like that, you pay close attention to what you’re doing, and believe it or not, sometimes it’s an advantage. I eventually got out of engineering and went into management and really screwed things up, but that’s another story.

So there, that’s my story, spelled rationalization — and I’m sticking to it. I’ve been accused of having a brain that’s in the middle and am not sure if that’s good or bad. Blue-eyes was aware of this phenomenon and her only comment was, “You’re really weird, you know that!” My answer was always, inasmuch as I was a left-brain idiot, “Yes dear!”

Moral of the story is “What’s left is right, but not necessarily correct.”

Hawk Hero Meets Fuzzball

In one of my earlier meanderings, Criminal Crows, I mentioned emergency surgery on a baby hawk. As I mentioned, this was not voluntary, nor was I qualified in any way to attempt this. The story goes like this, and it’s true, and I can prove it because I have pictures. I will not post these because the top of my head looks like Yul Brynner, but that’s the only part of my body where there’s any similarity or resemblance. Some have referred to me as butt-ugly, but not my spouse. She just leaves off the butt part.

Anyway, some years back, I came home from work after an arduous week, and was looking forward to a quiet weekend in that we had successfully chased most of the gophers away, and the dust bowl administration had been dissolved for approximately 20 years. I was standing on our completed back patio, with my usual vodka martini, very dry and on the rocks, shaken but not stirred.

Over the past weeks we had noticed a Hawk’s nest in one of our neighbor’s pine trees. Although we live in a rural area, it is fairly well-populated, and some of my “birder friends” told me it was relatively unusual to see a nest in the area. The “curtain climbers” were well on their way to full adulthood, having realized that the college tuition money tree had died. In reality, they all had jobs, which was financially, in ecclesiastical terms, a blessed event. This has nothing to do with the hawk. It’s just background information to waste more of your time.

It was early spring when we began a routine of watching the nesting habits of these killer birds. The tree they chose is not all that stable, and the nest was clearly exposed and about 60 feet in the air. It was clear that there were eggs because of the continual racket made by the raptors during this hatching process. A few days earlier, my spouse told me that she thought the babies had come into this world. I guess the proper phrase is hatched.

We had a couple of binoculars and would often sit after dinner and watch the comings and goings of mom and pop Hawk. It was clear the “young-uns” were growing because we were able to see a number of tiny little heads, without much fuzz. At which point my spouse mentioned certain similarities between the baby birds and my semi-chromed-domed overly exposed scalp. As a side note, I had what is laughingly called a buzz cut, which leaves about an eighth of an inch of whatever hair you might have had. That’s probably more data than you needed. I digress, back to the story!

On this Friday evening, I was watching with my trusty binoculars as one of the parents was feeding its siblings, and much to my shock, watched it reach over and push this little gray bundle of fuzz out of the nest! “Holy mackerel,” I said, but admit that I cleaned that up to maintain a PG rating if such a thing exist on blogs. I watched as a baby gray bird tumbled at least 60 feet, hitting branches and dead limbs before disappearing behind a six-foot fence, and I assume smacking into the underbrush. I went into the house where dinner was in final preparation and told “blue-eyes” what had happened. She flipped out and said “you’ve got to save it.” I asked her “where are my leotards and cape?” Actually, I said, “unfortunately the gray bird is probably D.O.A.” I think she asked if I wanted to eat dinner off a plate or off the floor? As slow as I am, I got the message.

I went back out by the fence, which is 6 feet high, peeked over and saw nothing. I then went next door to sound the alarm, but no one was home, or my wise neighbor wanted nothing to do with me. I yelled a few times but got no response. I went back to the fence and in a single bound, leaped over to begin the search for a gray bundle of fuzz. Not really, I went and got one of our ladders!

My neighbor had let this area turn into a small jungle and I organized a search team of me, myself and I, to begin the process of looking for the remains. Within a few moments, much to my horror, I found this poor devil, split wide open to bird flesh from just below the breast bone down to what could eventually be called talons. Amazingly, it was still alive, but in bad shape. I called to the corpsman for plasma, but realized I was too far behind enemy lines. God, I’m hallucinating again! I picked the poor baby up, leaped over the fence and went back to a table on the patio. I called blue-eyes and told her of the situation and suggested she look. She promptly told me what I could do with that.

Clearly, fuzzball was in a state of shock. I was tempted to give it a shot of brandy, but realized that we didn’t have any. I wrapped the outcast in a towel and noted that it had enough strength to attempt to bite me. I thought, “What the hell, I’ll sew it up!” I immediately wheeled the patient into surgery. Actually, I went to my spouse’s sewing kit, selected some white cotton thread and a small needle. The danger here was that the bird would kick the bucket before this left-brain idiot could thread the needle! Think about that!

Finally, success in passing this little thread through a hole smaller than the thread. I began emergency treatment. I sterilized the wound with some bourbon and spread a big gob of Neosporin all over the belly, if that’s the right phrase, of fuzzball. It looked at me with somewhat blurry eyes, and I thought it was motioning for more bourbon. I muttered something to the effect, “you can not fly for 24 hours after having a drink. FAA rules!” Fuzzball looked at me and I believe it was thinking “dummy, you can call it an antiseptic.” I have big fingers, which is not the stuff surgeons are made of, but I attempted to align the ripped outer layer of skin and feathers simply for cosmetic purposes, in case the bird lived and wanted a career in motion pictures, likely flying scenes.

Sweat was pouring off my brow, and I ordered nurse Nightingale, otherwise known as blue-eyes, to fetch me another vodka martini, strictly for medicinal purposes! Her question was, “who’s going to drink it, you or fuzzball?” I thought God, I could get disbarred for this, then realized that applied to lawyers, not doctors. This was a waste of thought, because I don’t think it has ever happened to lawyers, but I digress! I did what I remembered of stitching up wounds, which I think was, “knit one – pearl two” for you of the right-brain portion of civilization. (Left-brainers, forget it, it’s too hard to explain!)

Fuzzball was sent to recovery, which in fact, was an old shoebox in the garage with some towels for heat and comfort. I forgot to put on our handy respirator. My assumption at this point is if it gets through the night, we can allow visitors, but not the parents because I’ve sworn out a warrant for their arrest. I made a mental note before falling asleep to check on fuzzball because we had no call button that was working. My garage is not state-of-the-art.

The next morning, much to our surprise fuzzball was still among the avian nation, although a little worse for the wear. I checked him over for gangrene, but not knowing what gangrene was, I finally gave up. The bird was actually standing, if you could call it that and weaving a little, probably the results of the bourbon.

After breakfast, I took it outside to give it some fresh air, and consistent with current post-surgery practices, made fuzzball get up and walk around the patio table. Now keep in mind this happened on a Friday night and we did try to get help from some agency that had a clue as to what to do, but to no avail. We tried again on Saturday with no luck. It seems our national medical system has no provisions for bird emergency situations, only human bird-brain situations are supported. Once again, our tax dollars at work! But I digress.

Nurse Nightingale and I conferred. The general prognosis was good, however we knew fuzzball would not make it without sustenance. Knowing full well that raptors are carnivorous, we decided that raw meat was the best prescription. Fortunately, we had some fresh sirloin steak which I chopped into tiny little small slivers and decided to attempt to feed the bird. At first fuzzball completely resisted my nutritional attempts to provide the much-needed energy for full recovery. I couldn’t get it to open its beak, even after explaining that this was nine-dollar a pound sirloin steak. Finally, in desperation I put my that fingers around its beak forcing it open and shoved in a piece of sirloin. Fuzzball went berserk. I couldn’t cut the steak fast enough. I think fuzzball said “where’s the mushrooms?” At this point, nurse Nightingale was worried about overfeeding fuzzball. My comment was “this bird is like our kids, it just keeps eating!” Better judgment prevailed, and I quit feeding it.

On Sunday we made further attempts to contact responsible people that might know what the hell they’re doing, which is more than we did. No luck! Finally, from work on Monday, I got a hold of some outfit locally, who showed some interest in fuzzball’s dilemma. Finally, we got someone to agree to send out an associate who would take fuzzball to a more suitable environment, thank you very much. As something of an afterthought, I noted that mom and pop Hawk could care less what happened to fuzzball. Philosophically my thoughts were, “I thought only human beings did that sort of thing.”

The erstwhile deviant avian society made arrangements to pick up fuzzball late Tuesday afternoon. A lady came to the door, was very professional and I explained what I had done. She shook her head in something of a negative inclination giving me the impression that I should’ve just killed it. I mentioned to her that I had been feeding it sirloin steak and she just shook her head in utter disgust saying that there will be severe physical handicaps for fuzzball. I looked at her and commented “yeah, eating sirloin steak has caused me physical deprivation. I’m sure you’re right, I probably killed the bird!” She said that the proper feeding routine was to chop up a mouse, because it needed the bones to create the proper level of protein. I almost got sick!

With a parting comment she left a card suggesting that we send a donation to their organization, noting their policy was if the bird lived, which she said was questionable at best based on my maltreatment, they had a practice of bringing the creatures back to release them  where they were found. Naturally, after her comments I wanted to make a donation. I was running for my checkbook, which unfortunately I couldn’t find.

Over the months I often wondered if fuzzball made it.

About three months later we got a phone call from the same group, but a nicer personality indicating that they would like to release fuzzball. Nurse Nightingale and I were overjoyed that our medical expertise had been successful. When the release expert came out, I explained what we had done with fuzzball and her comment was a very commendable statement, that at least I knew enough to align the feathers on the birds breast. Had I not done this, fuzzball would’ve flown crooked all its life. She had with her large cage, put on some leather gloves and reached in, and pulled out the biggest damn hawk I’ve ever seen. I concluded the sirloin steak did it. Fuzzball was really pissed. She put her arm in the air and released this magnificent looking bird which promptly flew to the tree it was pushed from, stopped, looked down, and I could swear I heard it say “where’s the bourbon?”

Every so often I go into the backyard, and guess what? There’s a hawk sitting in the same general location, looking at our house. Now I’d like to think that it’s the same fuzzball, but I really doubt it. However, the spooky thing is I notice every so often I’m missing some bourbon. I know it’s not blue-eyes because she thinks it tastes like iodine. Could it be???

Totally Wired and Really Worried – Part 2

If you didn’t read part one then this is a waste of your time. Of course, it might be construed that if you’re reading this stuff at all – it’s probably a waste of time.

As you may recall, I left off by comparing my impending battle with that of Great Britain during the early 1940s. If you don’t know anything about the 40’s then it might be worthwhile to get a history book and not bother reading blogs! That’s entirely up to you! The story hasn’t got anything to do that, but I thought I’d just mention it anyway. As a disclaimer, I have to tell you I was around, but had no clue as to the chaos being fermented in Europe, nor the challenges of what we now refer to as the “greatest generation.” To repeat, this has nothing to do with being between a rock and a hard place as it relates to my full-service provider or by definition full-non-service provider. As usual, I digress!

As you may recall, I was faced with an unreliable Internet connection, questionable phone service, and was totally screwed in attempting to record programs or download any films from the other service that I subscribed to. It actually, in some ways turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because I rediscovered some old films back in the days when their intent was to make you happy and feel good leaving the theater, rather than so depressed or scared that you want to jump off a bridge. The oldies had little in the way of the messages on morality or the lack thereof. To digress for just a moment, I think the last time I walked into a theater was to watch “Lawrence of Arabia.” I really love musicals, and the closest thing that I’ve seen in the last 10 or 15 years has been “Dances with Wolves.” I kept waiting for Kevin Costner to break into a song and dance routine accompanied by Fred and Ginger, but it did not happen. And if you don’t know who those two people were, I can’t help you. Anyway, I digress.

Where we left off was the supervisor of the service technicians came to visit me. He reviewed my synopsis, however failed to congratulate me for being so diligent and supportive. I took that opportunity to mention of my lack of satisfaction with his erstwhile service technician, pointing out that the use of the word “service” was an extreme exaggeration. I suggested politely that this guy did a cursory job at best, and I was extremely disappointed. I made the point that his technician was superficial on both occasions, and suggested there might be a trend here. I was tempted to make a couple of nasty suggestions of my own, but better judgment prevailed, especially if I wanted the problem fixed. I may have mentioned he couldn’t find his ass with both hands, but I don’t really remember.

Anyway, the supervisor took a look at a few things, and made a few more suggestions. He played around with the modem, played around with the wireless network during which he informed me that it wasn’t working, and I informed him “you guys installed it!” He played around with the TV, and my general impression was this was more of a PR call than a technical support call, but in spite of this inclination and impression I remained calm, thanks to my Marine Corps training in self-control and anger management.

We talked about the wireless router as possibly being the culprit and I let him continue for a short period of time before hitting him with a sneak attack! I informed him that I had replaced the suspect router with another router which I knew worked, and the problem didn’t go away. I know this was probably an unfair thing to do, but I had reached the point of exercising the old adage of “don’t get mad, get even.” So, soon Dr. Watson exclaimed, “clearly the “non-working” wireless router was not the culprit!” The supervisor, having recognized that he had been outmaneuvered by Sherlock’s superior intellect, commented: “Oh!”

He really didn’t achieve much – like in nothing at all. When I told him that the phones had also quit working, he kind of ignored that and moved on to issues within the DVM supplier and that it was highly possible that was the problem with the degeneration of picture quality! I said “I find that interesting because your illustrious company just announced a great big huge deal with them to carry your subscription service, and it’s all over their menu.” I noted, “I would show it to you if the picture wasn’t so blurry!” You probably think that was a low blow, but as far as I was concerned I had not won a single round in this fistfight.

He finally agreed to send out a specialist to take a look at the problem and my system. I corrected him, “You mean our system.” Another blow to the lower body by the bloodied, but unbowed customer. He said “you probably have some bad wiring” and I commented that my doctor thought so too. I said, “well if that’s the case, you got a problem because your folks put it in when you installed the system.” In all fairness, I must admit he had a number of ideas, some of which were logical and some of which made no sense technically.

My basic point was that this had been going on for a little better than two weeks, that I know of, and it seemed to me they have a responsibility to correct the problem. He quickly agreed, and made arrangements for two specialists the visit as soon as possible, which meant two days, and naturally they would show up between 2 and 4 PM. I don’t think these guys work except during the hours between 2 and 4 PM.

A couple of days later I got a call, and sure enough, the guys showed up at the appointed hour. They called the office, ran some more checks and said that the signal was well within range, and in fact very strong. I showed them my diligent list of symptoms which I had presented to the original technician and they skimmed through it. Of course, I mentioned the phone problem, and their general response was “that’s not possible, it must be some other issue.” I have wireless phones in the house and their thought was that the system was probably going south. I responded by noting the two hard-line instruments in the house, and neither one of those were working. Their collective response was “Oh!”

Down they went to my “man cave” and looked at the system, ran some speed checks and basically told me that the router I had there was operating in such a fashion as to interfere with the wireless router, which didn’t work wirelessly, because of something called the same IP address, and that the solution was to replace that router with one that has a different address, or was basically a dumb router. The “dumb” part was a defining moment. I had no idea what the hell they were talking about and asked them to write down a recommended product (which shall go unnamed for previously mentioned reasons). They had come to the conclusion that, in their expert opinion, this was the issue, simple interference between two competing wide area network services, or in my vernacular, routers.

I was still hung up on the fact that everything was going down on a random basis. Nothing in the system had changed since their original installation the previous June. Why was I having this unique competitive issue with the routers after nearly 9 months of getting along rather well. Did one router say something the other router took exception to? The nature of this problem demanded that I consider all sorts of conflicting scenarios. It’s possible that the two routers were pissed off at each other. I know that electronic gremlins can be a real devil, but I just wasn’t sure that the problem was that innocuous, and there was a real issue as to why I hadn’t seen it before? Once again, thinking about the two phone lines, I knew that the routers have nothing to do with them, and as Dr. Watson had previously said, “it’s the modem, Sherlock.”

Nevertheless, I have to tell you I was impressed. I will say these two fellows paid more attention to the problem and the symptoms, and convinced me that it was my problem caused by this router phenomenon, and it could be cured very simply. Phenomena strikes again at the heart of Sherlock’s investigation. I was convinced that Moriarty was behind this entire devastating situation.

The next day I hopped in the car and drove down to the big-box electronics store. I spent an ungodly amount of time trying to find somebody to help me find this product, and eventually walked out with a $35 product that was going to cure all my problems. Driving back home, I was still concerned about the loss of telephone service, but a lack of any cogent explanation forced me to rationalize it away by thinking “they probably had a problem with their system and it was just a coincidence.” Wrong! I installed the new server/router into the system and it came up and was working fine — for three hours.

I now had the ever familiar “no Internet service” all over again, and I’m back to where I started, on the phone again, talking with someone in Guadalajara, asking for them to call the local supervisor and tell him that his experts were incorrect. I gave them my cell phone number with the suspicion that the service to my telephone lines was probably intermittent. The next day, the supervisor called me back, told me how busy he was and that he was going to send his best technician, likely an oxymoron, out within the next day or two, you guessed it, between 2 and 4 PM. By this time, I had made at least 20 phone calls to the provider, had been basically without consistent service for going on three weeks, and there was still no solution in sight. I had lost rounds three, four and five.

Part of my frustration was the fact that from the get-go I had made it very clear to the first mentally diminutive support technician that the situations seem random and somewhat intermittent. Further, I made it clear that I had attempted to check out all of the internal plug-in connections, the coaxial cable going to the DVM, all of the ethernet connections, and had lit candles to the Internet God for a quick solution, or for that matter, any solution.

On a Saturday, I got phone call from yet another service technician who said he would be there between two and four to take a look at the situation. He showed up, instrumentation in hand, spent 10 minutes doing the same signal checks and then said he wanted to take this modem and test it in his truck. He came back in the house and said “it’s not the modem, it’s not your wireless router, but I got an idea!”

He disconnected a 4-foot ethernet cable going from the main outlet into the modem, and replaced it with a new cable, and guess what? He looked me and he said “I’ll bet you lost your phones, too?” My thought was “this guy is brilliant!”

I watched the system very closely for the next five days, and no problems! After three weeks, many phone calls, much frustration, a multitude of hate and discontent, damnation and destruction, the problem was resolved. The culprit was a 4-foot, three dollar piece of cabling which had been provided by my erstwhile new service provider and likely had a couple of loose wires. Unbelievable! As I said before, my doctor had suggested the same thing applies to me.

I had been smart enough to get a business card from the supervisor and called him, leaving a message. He called, and once again made a point of how busy he was. I was just a little more than frustrated that this could’ve been resolved by the first service call, had the technician paid any attention to my critique of the symptoms. As an after-thought, I was convinced that the supervisor didn’t know what the hell the critique was. I suggested that an adjustment should be made to my bill simply because I was basically in “never-never land” for approximately three weeks. His comment was that he would take care of that. So I hung up with at least a little satisfaction after having to contend with all of this misery. Customer wins round six, maybe.

To pour salt in an open wound, the following Monday I got my bill from this provider which showed an increase of $30 a month for services. Naturally, I got on the phone and ended up, you guessed it, in Mexico. I asked if they had seen a credit and they said yes, and it was for $25. I hit the roof. I had paid more than that for the dumb router that I didn’t need. I asked to be directed to someone in the continental United States so I could discuss this billing or possible cancellation of our entire relationship. He said, “I will transfer you” but in truth I never got out of Mexico. I talked to a section supervisor, who asked if he could put me on hold while he looked at the records. At this point I could see round seven going down the tubes. I was cut, bleeding and staggering around the ring when the bell rang. The supervisor came back on the phone and made a major financial concession that at least made me feel as though this imminent provider wanted my business.

All is well! I now have the ability to stream dumb movies without being told I have no Internet service, I haven’t had to reboot the modem, nor the router, nor my computer, nor my DVR, which leaves me very little to do but to sit around and write stupid blogs like this one.

There is no moral to this story other than “if it is too good to be true, it ain’t, Sherlock!”

Totally Wired and Really Worried

If you’re reading this, I have to tell you that you and I helped create this problem. This could happen to you! Last June I finally got tired of my major carrier of both my telephone lines and the Internet. We live in something of a rural area that is serviced by 60-year-old twisted pair wire, and I signed up for high-speed DSL that was marginal at best, and frequently down. My large corporate carrier continued to raise their prices. After some research I decided to bundle all my home services with a single carrier. I was a happy camper from both the service and price of this decision. However – the following somewhat dampened my enthusiast endorsement.

Some weeks back I had some surgery and after returning I noticed some issues with my high-priced, 42-inch high-definition television in the family room. My first reaction was to assume that somehow the surgery, which was lower down than my belly button, which is more info than probably needed, had caused my eyesight to begin to show the signs of years of wear and tear. This TV normally had a relatively sharp and clear picture, and I was able to read the small print, read the menu of my DVR, which I shall not give you the brand name because they’re not sponsoring this blog, and in general, a deterioration of the total picture quality.

I realized that the eyesight issue could not be the case because I was capable of reading a book without my cheaters, and didn’t seem to have any difficulty in seeing other things like the “use by date” on my bottle of Corona and most onrushing cars when I drove.

At that point, I began to suspect that for some reason the TV was about to crash and burn. However, while scanning channels, I noticed that some were clearer than others. Strange! All of a sudden my DVR, which is connected through a computer via a modem provided by my new carrier, who also shall not be named because of not sponsoring this blog, continued to come up with. message that I had no internet connection when attempting to view online streaming meaningless movies from another supplier, which I will not mention because they don’t sponsor this blog ether. Facts are, nobody’s sponsoring this blog, and I don’t blame them. The real reason I’m not mentioning the manufacturers nor service suppliers name is I don’t need a bunch of lawyers calling me!

I went down to my office, which has been referred to as “my man cave,” to check the computer and LAN, which provides signal to the DVR which talks to my online streaming service, both of which I will not name for fear of retribution and as mentioned, a lack of sponsorship. I imagine you don’t need a lesson in technical verbiage, but I just want to show off and let you know that I’m not just another pretty face.

The computer told me that it was online, I checked the LAN, and the little green flashing lights said “we’re okay.”

“Houston we have a problem.” The modem and the master computer are sitting in, naturally, the master bedroom, along with a Wan that is supposed to be wireless, but has never worked anyway, and I won’t tell you manufacturer’s name because they don’t support this blog. I have been trying to buy products made in America, and what I fail to remember is that includes Mexico and Canada, not necessarily the US. The modem which was provided by my new carrier at a cost of seven dollars a month, was sitting there blinking and nodding and telling me that all networks were up and running.

Sometimes having a little technical knowledge is a dangerous thing. Being brilliant at troubleshooting things that go bang in the night, at least with electronics, I did the mandatory recycle on both the modem and the Wan. I then went back down to my “man cave” and recycled all that stuff. If you’re starting to get bored don’t give up, because it’s going to get exciting very soon.

I then went back up assuming that my DVR would recognize that it has a signal and it promptly and in polite terms, told me to “stick that in my ear.” “You have no Internet signal.” I found the number for the customer service support group and got a technical customer assistant executive, or I think that was the title. We talked for a few minutes. I asked if the service was having problems and he promptly told me “No, but what kind of issues are you having?” After a few minutes he decided that what I really needed to do was recycle my DVR. Great! So I did that, watching 10 minutes of funny little cartoon characters, in a screen telling me “just a minute we’re almost there” and the issue of Internet connection went away. Wonderful! As we finished the conversation, the assistant casually mentioned that the DVR had recently received a new software download, which in my past experience has been an unmitigated disaster. It would appear their software quality control function is nonexistent, or they’re smoking some strange stuff.

I’ll shorten this by saying my exuberance was short-lived because for the next four days I was constantly running back and forth between the modem, my man cave, the DVR, and on the telephone because I constantly lost Internet signal, which of course blows up the DVR. Now don’t forget I just got out of the hospital, and saying I was not a happy camper is an understatement. I was on the phone with the DVR customer support, with the Internet service support and with the provider of the streaming movies, all of whom suggested that I called their counterpart because it wasn’t their problem. I finally came to the conclusion that I had some kind of a provider problem. So – there’s a box outside where the main supply cable hooks into the house, and lo and behold the box is open and I can see a bird’s nest in there. Now if you read any of my other blogs, you know that I’ve had a number of experiences with birds and bird-brains.

I kept calling my Internet service provider, most of the time ending up somewhere in Mexico, once in a while in Philippines, and not to mention northern Canada. We wonder where all our jobs went? I finally got a service support tech relatively close to where I live and he ran what is euphemistically called a signal check, stating that the signal was rather poor. He provided me with a glimmer of hope and set up a service call for between 2 and 4 PM the following Monday. Keep in mind I pay a monthly fee to this service provider for guess what – service!

So on Monday at around two o’clock I started watching for their white truck in anticipation that I would no longer have to run around resetting a bunch of electronics stuff in order to watch TV, or for that matter get on the Internet. Naturally, four o’clock came and went! No service rep in sight! I got on the phone and called my service provider and got a computer telling me that they had tried calling me three times to confirm the appointment, and that I wasn’t home. What I said to this computer is not something I’m going to repeat here, and if they do their usual bit of “this call is being recorded for quality assurance and training purposes,” they got a real ear full. I placed another call and ended up in Mexico again and said I do not understand what is going on because as I’m sitting here cooling my heels, there has been no phone call. After a little discussion, it came to light that the number they were calling was wrong damn number, which I find absolutely amazing since they also provide the phone service! We should reset for another tech call two days later.  And — Oh! By the way, the problem had continued, and frankly was getting worse.

To try to be of assistance I wrote down all the symptoms to help facilitate a proper solution to this problem. I had run some speed checks and quality checks on the service provider’s website, all of which indicated poor signal quality. I included this information. The tech showed up at the appointed time, climbed a pole, and checked the signal there as well as at the input to the master computer. He did not clean out the bird’s nest, and after he left my consideration was he may have thought that they were some of his relatives. He said, “There’s nothing wrong.” I showed him my list, he glanced at it and said “There’s nothing wrong.” I took him down to the TV area and showed him what the DVR said, and the lousy picture quality. He stood there for a couple seconds and then said “There’s nothing wrong.” I suggested he look at my list because it appeared to me as though this was some kind of an intermittent or random failure. He looked at my list ever so briefly and said “There’s nothing wrong.”  As a compromise, he changed out the modem and left.

I was a happy camper for about three hours and then the whole problem started over again, same damn situation. I called customer support again, back to Mexico and rescheduled another tech visit. However, this time I specifically stated I didn’t want the same guy for the simple reason that the scope of his technical expertise was covered in a single sentence, “There’s nothing wrong.”

Guess who showed up at the door two days later with another modem in his hot little hands. This time he did a little more in the way of troubleshooting, and was having his office run through a series of checks and guess what he said about the signal, “There’s nothing wrong.”

Then, all of a sudden while he was on his little cell phone, he said “I just saw your WAN fail.” At first I thought this was an obscene comment. I sat there and believed every word, and asked if he would order a new one and he promptly told me that this was not their equipment. I found this rather strange, since it was part of the original deal to change carriers and they brought the WAN with them and set it up when they did the original installation.

His comment was extremely pedantic. “We don’t do that anymore. It’s your problem! Our only responsibility is to that connection,” he said as he pointed to the back of modem with cable which is the primary connection for the whole system. Now I’m remembering what this Internet provider told me when they convinced me to do a full switchover from my previous carrier, who had demonstrated that they were no longer in love with me. I won’t say who they are either, because they don’t support this blog. By now this guy was adamant and got a little carried away because I had questions that he could not answer with anything other than “there’s nothing wrong.”

Once again he changed the modem out, but told me the WAN was defective and I needed to replace it. By now my confidence level in this guy’s competency was zero. Clearly, his attitude was that what I was telling him was of no consequence, and I’m sure he told his supervision “There’s nothing wrong, and this guy is an idiot.” He left in a huff with a rather sarcastic “have a nice day.”

Two hours later my whole system went down, but this time it took out the telephones as well. What I didn’t know was while this stuff was going on, I was losing my telephone service. New clue! This points to the modem, “but that can’t be,” exclaimed Dr. Watson, “he’s changed out the modem twice.” Okay – Sherlock, the game’s afoot.

My first suspicion was that good ole “there’s nothing wrong” guy went back and pulled the plug on the whole system. This is getting rather Machiavellian or perhaps I was getting paranoid. Fortunately, I had my cell phone and dialed the service number, went to Mexico again and after 20 minutes, was put through to someone in the continental United States. I finally got her to agree to telephone the local area supervisor in a nearby city and have him call me, but I cautioned her that the phones were down. She took my cell phone number and about two hours later, the supervisor called and he made arrangements to come out the next day, naturally between two and four. By now I had been in Mexico so often I thought I was probably qualified for citizenship and would not be able to get back into the US without a visa.

By this time, the phones came back up but the rest of the system was still having Internet hiccups. I did a backflip into a vodka martini and watched old movies on one of the cable channels whose name I will not mention because they don’t sponsor this blog.

Now, this one is not over, and as Winston Churchill said after the Battle of Britain “this is not the beginning of the end, but is likely the end of the beginning.” You remember Winston Churchill? They named some cigarettes after him. Further, as Winnie said about possible invasion “we shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them in the hills, we shall fight in the streets, we will fight to our deaths and we will never, never, never give up” or some stupid thing to that effect.

There is much more to the story, but I need to go find out if I’m still on the Internet, and take a backflip into a vodka martini. Just joking!

A Not So Fortunate Horse Named – Lucky!

Some years back we left the city to find more comfortable and larger dwellings to accommodate our growing family, both in size and numbers. I didn’t realize that if you fed kids they would grow. We bought a house that had a bunch of land in what could be euphemistically defined as “a bedroom community” with a myriad of hiking and horse trails, dirt and dust, and one huge population of flies mostly the size of a small Piper Cub. After a period of settling into a general state of acclamation I began to get severe subliminal pressure to acquire the means for equestrian delight, meaning a damn horse. Indirect comments such as “Gee, Daddy, all my friends have one,” prevailed, winning the day.

I had the sinking feeling that this was going to go the same direction as the acquisition of our fish tank and the eventual allocation of responsibility. (But that’s another story.) You have to keep in mind that our family already had:

• A dog called Rusty,
• A myriad of goldfish whose names I couldn’t keep track of,
• A stray cat that I named “Cat,” which later social pressure and demands required that “Cat” have a real name,
  so I call it Rusty simply because of it’s color, figuring that if I called “Here Rusty,” the damn cat wouldn’t come anyway, and
• An uncountable array of gophers, which neither of the Rustys paid any attention to.

During this time I was trying to domesticate the horde of the furry cave dwellers to teach them birth control, with no luck whatsoever. Besides that, my loving spouse suggested if successful I would be in big trouble with the Humane Society.

One day at work I was discussing some of these family matters with an associate who lived a few miles from me and whose daughter had grown and left home, leaving behind an aging Wyoming Mustang that had been trained for working cattle. He told me the horse’s name was “Lucky” in that “he used to be a stallion” (active words “used to be”), however, he had been neutered or spayed or whatever they call it. I did not say anything, but I wasn’t convinced that this was a real appropriate name. Think about that for a minute! Anyway, you know what I mean. Good old Lucky would whinny in a very high voice, thereby eliminating any doubt whatsoever about his sexual proclivities.

As part of the deal my so-called friend would throw in all available accoutrements which were collecting dust in his stable. I thought this was all the paraphernalia needed for any kind of equestrian activity. Wrong! This included a Western saddle, multiple halters with multiple reins – as in bridles, which has nothing to do with weddings.

He touted a horse blanket and a saddle blanket, and I thought “with all that hair, what the hell does a horse need a blanket for, and do saddle blankets have to be warmed up before you can ride?” Included was a horse brush, a real brutal looking implement for scraping hair off the horse’s rear end, which might be useful as a discipline tool for the kids should they get out of line, and the perpetual horse droppings. Just kidding about the droppings. Wrong!

When you buy a used car one should look at the tires, ask about the brakes, check out the engine, ask if it burns oil. You try to find out how many miles are on the heap and what type of fuel is used. In buying a horse, these questions are slightly different. For example, “how much is a ton of alfalfa? Do you feed it corn? When was the last time the horse was shod, like in new tires? What’s your annual vet bill? (This is a high-priced horse mechanic!) Has the horse had its teeth floated in the last year? (What the hell is that? Picture yourself having your teeth floated!)  Naturally, I asked all ask these questions. I’m lying through my floated teeth!

Somewhere in there I agreed to take his Wyoming thoroughbred off his hands for a mere 400 bucks. When I got home that night, sitting in the yet-to-be-constructed back patio, having prided myself on making one hell of a deal, I suddenly realized that I had put the “cart before the horse.” Stark realization hit me — I had no corral!

I did a backflip into double vodka martini and thought about the problem. I had planned on a nice quiet relaxing weekend. Those concepts suddenly went up in smoke when I realized I better think about building a corral, which of course I was an expert having been educated by a well-founded Jesuit institution, (Mea Culpa is Latin for getting hit in the head with a hammer) — let alone a stall, now that I was the proud owner of a horse. Notice I didn’t say “we” because when it came to the corral construction, the “we” part went south with the ducks, but that’s another story. As an alternative, I thought about selling the kids, but we passed through that proposition during the “Curse of the Golden Fish,” so I won’t bring it up again.

I won’t bore you with the details of construction, but the local lumberyard was about $800 richer and counting. My schedule was in complete disarray. The family ganged up on me exclaiming that my attitude and demeanor were questionable, and my logic was dismissed as inconsequential because I was incapable of understanding why the damn horse had to have a house, in horsey talk — “stall.” I was learning a bunch of new phrases that are unacceptable in this narrative, if we are to maintain a PG-rated story.

You need not be reminded that the only “stud” in that corral was a 2 x 4 spruce, and not Mr. Lucky. I’m still hung up on that name and can only define it as something of an oxymoron, with an accent on the moron being the guy who bought a horse without a corral! My rebuttal to these insistent passionate inquiries was “Hey, when the horse was in Wyoming I doubt if they provided it with shelter which included hot and cold running water!” The collective common retort was “this is not Wyoming, Daddy!” I lost it again.

Any form of syllogistic logic fell on deaf ears and I was once again outnumbered 5 to 1, so I hastily drew up the plans that included a tanning booth, a Jacuzzi and a massage table for good old Lucky for relaxation after a hard day of standing around in the yet to be completed corral. I’m sure you think I’m exaggerating. Well, maybe just a little bit. To pour salt in an open wound, my ex-friend wanted to charge me rent for his corral. He was fortunate that I didn’t have any ammo for my trusty Colt 45, version 1904.

At that time I had a vintage Porsche that could be called a project car, meaning it was a real wreck, according to my spouse who knew squat diddly about vintage foreign autos. It was one of the first Cabriolets that had roll-down windows. Because of the horse, Mr. Lucky, I no longer had the time nor the funds to complete this male-oriented right-brain project. I often thought of buying a harness for Mr. Lucky and attach it to the Porsche and have him drag the wreck downtown. Said spouse suggested that I “had lost my ever-loving mind” and that I would be “incarcerated for not having the proper license or documentation for horse-drawn Porsche.”

Sometimes after work, when it was too dark to go slosh around in the uncompleted corral and its subsequent 8000 foot luxury stall, I would sit, with my vodka martini, in my Porsche dreaming that I had just taken first place at the Laguna Seca, but someone had named the car Mr. Lucky!

Now if you get the impression that the kids didn’t help, you’re wrong. They would cart the necessary two-by-fours and two-by-sixes, mix cement for at least 15 minutes a day, not including wicked weekends where their quota was at least doubled. By now, it was winter and I took my customary two weeks off for the holiday season which was spent sloshing around in the mud completing Lucky’s new abode. I came to the conclusion that there is no Santa Claus!

I’ll finish this at some other time because Mr. Lucky turned out to be a rather extraordinary member of the family even though it, (“IT” versus he or she only because of the previously mentioned loss of “ITS” stallion status and to be politically sensitive, no gender discrimination was intended. I think this is called a legal disclaimer) cost a small fortune, but had tremendous long lasting side effects that aided the growth of the flora surrounding the residence. Now that’s no bull. Lucky put new meaning into the words “Mucking around” and brought life to many heretofore dying azaleas, some tuberous begonias and one pomegranate tree.

The disappointing aspect was when we brought him home, which means I rode him 10 petrifying miles, and once in the corral, IT completely ignored the stall and spent both day and night standing in the rain, or whatever. When I went out there to suggest he use this elaborate facility, he bit me! My soon-to-be disowned offspring stayed up most of the night worrying about Lucky standing in the cold rain. My response was “Hell! If he’s that cold he will put on a blanket!” At this point, I began to suspect that when Lucky got his you-know-what cut off, whoever did it slipped up and performed a frontal lobotomy. Some people don’t know one end of a horse from the other. That could be construed as a political statement. I tried to explain this to my kids, but my lovely wife told them that “Your Dad had one, (frontal lobotomy, not the other procedure) when he was 13.”

The detailed exploits of Mr. Lucky will continue once I recover from the depression caused by the memory of these transcribed events.

The moral of the story is that proper orientation is very important and one should never look a horse in the rear end when you should be looking at its teeth to determine when was the last time it had its teeth floated. Think about that if doesn’t hurt too much!

A Ringing Event

Lo — these many years ago, when we first started our family we had a small house which we quickly outgrew as our fourth offspring came into this world. It’s still not clear to me how this happened because I was rarely home, but it did and it was kind of a great thing.  I love kids, especially when they belong to somebody else. Clearly we needed to get a bigger house or sell two of the four children, which at that time was against some federal law or another.

Most of this effort was relegated to the weekends because I was working about 50 hours a week, and going to grad school. Facts are this fourth edition was born during my finals in the last class required for me to graduate. I went from an “A” in this computer science class to a “D,” but the good Jesuits had mercy on me and kicked me out if I submitted a pledge not to return nor put the institution on my resume. As you might surmise I had little time to spare househunting. My spouse did most of the preliminary grunt work and we drug the family around on weekends looking for reasonably economic solutions. We finally located a suitable potential new home on a rather large chunk of ground that was absolutely inundated with wild flora and fauna. It was really poor planning on my part in that the backyard, so to speak, was approximately a half-acre of dead apricot trees and 50,000 gophers.

Of my few demonstratable accomplishments and encompassing accouterments was my college class ring. At the time I was employed in an area which was dominated by individuals with BS degrees or greater, and all had a prominent display of this achievement by wearing their class ring, mostly on the pinky finger. My degree was, at the time, a BS in Technology and in many instances I began to suspect these other guys’ degrees as being just plain BS.

I digress! It was midsummer and my loving bride informed me that the maid was not capable of keeping up the amount of soil and corruption being drug by in both the kids and our dog. The housekeeper had the same comment and I was instructed to do something about it. I may have neglected to mention that the housekeeper, the maid and my spouse were one and the same. Women are capable of true multiplexing and men are unfortunately categorized singularly as right brain idiots, which is likely the truth of the matter.

I digress! So while undertaking the task of converting this vast wasteland into something less than a dust bowl, I began the process of removing trees, moving around the ground and general stuff. I had no clue of what I was doing. I hate to wear gloves, as I have rather large hands and can never find a suitable fit. As part of this laborious endeavor I would remove my much cherished and important, egotistically, class ring.

During one of these weekends, having removed the all-important symbol of my intellectual capability, I placed it on a windowsill in the kitchen, or so I thought. At the end of this workday, having cleaned up a little bit, I came in for my customary backflip into a vodka martini, shaken not stirred! I went into the kitchen to retrieve this priceless piece of cheap jewelry only discover it was gone.    I looked around, but being infallible I knew exactly where I had left it. I asked the maid, I asked the housekeeper, and I asked my spouse, and all gave me the same answer, “it was not my turn to watch your damn ring.” I sensed a degree of real hostility and began an inquisition of the children, including our dog Rusty, who was knowingly smiling and wagging its tail! Little did he know that sooner or later, he would be traded in for a couple of bags of gold fish. But I digress!

I finally got around to our youngest who had cost me that “A” and who at that point was about 2 1/2 years old. But she had already figured out that the old man was a dolt. I asked her if she’d been playing with my ring and she admitted, being of the Washingtonian School of Honesty, “yes” by nodding her golden locks! I said very sweetly, “Aha.” “Gee, gosh, golly! Just where were you playing with this?” She looked at me with with her mother’s blue eyes and totally honest demeanor, and pointed to the backyard.

“Aha,” I thought, a clue! So we went hand-in-hand into the dust bowl with 50,000 gopher holes and she pointed to one and I asked her “did you put it in there, sweetie?” With her blue eyes sparkling and her sweet honest expression, she nodded her head “yes.” I went and grabbed a shovel and began digging away, now having completely forgotten my much deserved martini. After a couple of shovels full and sorting through the dirt, I looked and asked “is this the right hole?” She looked at me and gave me the negative response that I was hoping to not see, pointing to yet another hole. Need I go on? Clearly she was punishing me for some indiscretion that I was totally unaware of.

Keep in mind this was a Saturday and by Sunday I had given up all hopes of recovery. It was a case of every time I asked her where the ring was, she would point to yet a different hole and in utter frustration I discarded the balance of operation “ring recovery.” My spouse, after conferring with the maid and the housekeeper, informed me that I was overreacting and the three would save their pennies and buy me a new one. After that I did a backflip into two martinis and decided to forget the whole damn thing. The lesson I learned was I didn’t need a ring to be successful with my peer group, even though the ring represented a lot of effort involved in achieving a BS or what is laughingly referred to as “Toro droppings!”

It’s pretty humiliating learning a life’s lesson from a two and a half-year-old kid, but I guess it happens.

About two weeks later, there was a knock at the door and some friends of my darling young one were standing there with their mother! I looked at them and said “Hi, how are you?” They looked at me and said “Did you lose a ring?” Behold! The fairy godmother of BS had come to my rescue. There in the wee hand of one of my daughter’s playmates, is my “gopher-holed,” now meaningless class ring. I was so overjoyed, I ran to my wallet and presented the finder with a suitable fee. Curiosity got to me! I looked at her and asked “Where did you find this?” She looked at me and pointed across the street to a horse trail that I hadn’t bothered to dig up. I thanked them and closed the door. My youngest blue-eyed beauty was running down the hall for the protection of her room. The maid, the housekeeper and the spouse all accosted me and said “Some hot shot management guy you are — you just got led around by the nose by a two and a half-year-old!”

Moral of the story is not to allow ringing in your ears that gets in the way of your better judgment. The best thing to do is a backflip into a martini, shaken not stirred, and forget how whole damn thing got started. Only good thing that came out of this was that I had dug up half the damn backyard.

Criminal Crows – Duex

“And now the rest of the story,” as we used hear on the radio by some clever news commentator! I have to admit to a rush to judgment on avian parenting.

Sometime after dinner on the same day, my daughter came and said “there’s two large robins hanging around the box,” which you may recall contained the highly irritated Chin Wa How Do. I went out and looked and sure enough there was mama robin, with a worm the size of a small snake, trying to figure out a method to get in the box containing Chin Wa. I watched for a few minutes from the patio door and made the decision that it was better to let mama robin be harassed by baby bird than continue my clumsy and clearly irritating attempts at shoving inchworms down Chin Wa’s gaping beak.

I got a paring knife and cut a small hole large enough for mama and waited for the anticipated results of the assumed successful ingestion of this small snake. For whatever reason, mama robin continued to walk around the box, every so often sticking her head in a hole but not providing the much-needed nourishment. Chin Wa in the meantime had wandered to the front of the hole clearly trying to contain mounting frustration and salivating as it eyeballed the size of dinner. Chin Wa continued to opened its beak, but mama paid no attention and just kept circling the box.

I begin to suspect that mama must been high on pyracantha berries until I realized it was spring not fall and there were no berries available. I went back out to the box, made the whole a little bigger and put a cardboard perch to facilitate the deliverance of dinner. At the rate mama robin was going, the worm was going to die of old age before Chin Wa could make use of it.

By this time pop robin showed up with a small twig in its mouth and I assumed he was going to whack mama robin for being so incompetent. I’m sure this could be considered as avian domestic violence. Finally, Ma figured out how to accomplish the feeding issue and summarily crammed the dying worm into Chin Wa’s gaping beak. He squawked a couple of times and in robin-eez more than likely said “About bloody time. The idiot with tweezers was doing a better job.” I came to the conclusion at this point that Ma and Pa had things under control and left them to their reunion and privacy.

Later, as it started to get dark, I went back to the box to take a peek to determine if all was well and there was Chin Wa sitting by the opening as if expecting a nighttime snack. My daughter was worried about predators and convinced me we should close the box up for the night. I scanned the area for mom or pop, but they were not to be found, so as my daughter insisted, I closed the box for the night.

I woke up at approximately 1:30 AM, in that I suffer sleep deprivation whenever we have an Avian patient, got a small flashlight and went out to check on the well-being of Chin Wa. My motivation was that if baby bird had kicked the bucket I wanted to dispose of the remains prior to my daughter coming out to check on its well-being. Birdbrain was sitting in a plastic cup of moist soil that contained midnight snacks of small inchworms as well as a few slimy slugs. I had also provided a Ritz cracker and chocolate chip cookie for dessert, but they seemed to be untouched. Chin Wa looked up at the flashlight and squawked something to the effect of “Turn off the damn light, we’re sleeping here!”

The next morning I went out, opened the box and immediately saw papa bird sitting on a branch of a nearby bush. I left assuming that breakfast was about to be served in the form of another gigantic worm. I got my cup of coffee and walked back just in time to see Chin Wa depart from the opening in the box, do a quick dump on the patio table, flap its wings become airborne and heard, squawk-squawk which I interpreted to mean “Houston, we have lift off!”

Baby bird got about 5 feet in the air and crash-landed on the lawn. It immediately got up, furiously flapping its wings, got airborne for another 15 feet and ran headlong into a bush which cushioned yet another lousy landing. Old pilots say that if you can walk away from a landing, it’s a good one. I’m not sure this applies to birds because baby bird clearly needed more time on “touch and goes,” which is aircraft talk for practicing landing. I watched all this with a small tear running down my cheek because the damn bird didn’t even say goodbye.

My daughter then came out and asked where Chin Wa was and I was so distraught at this less than grateful departure that I told her “I ate it for breakfast.”

She fainted.

I guess the moral of this story is don’t expect much in the way of gratitude from birdbrains.