Wild Beasties Two

When you live in a rural area, you have to accept the fact that certain kinds of critters were here before you got here. So I guess it’s natural for them to assume certain rights of domain and territorial prerogatives. It doesn’t concern them that a bunch of homes have been put in and basically interrupted their normal habitat, and the strange two-legged animals think they are the only ones that matter and that they’re in charge. “Not so,” says Mother Nature. In some regards, they see this human habitat as a possible new food supply, and maybe not even excluding consumption of the two-legged animals.

We have a lot of deer that still find their way into our little neighborhood, and I’ll come back to that in a little while. Deer’s natural predator is not just man. Not too many years back, after a good rain I was out cleaning the storm drain that goes nowhere when I noticed a number of rather large paw prints. I backtracked to where they came from and found the remnants of a freshly killed animal. It was in such a state, I couldn’t be sure if it was a dog or a cat or one of the wild beasties. Anyway, whatever got this animal did some rather intricate surgical work.

My next-door neighbor saw me in back, came out to check out what I was doing. This is the same guy that probably reported me to the fire district, but that’s a different story. I showed him the paw prints and told him that that it was a pretty good size mountain lion. We natives call them Pumas. He looked at me and said, “No, that’s a dog print.” We went across the street and could see where this “dog” had climbed over a 6 foot fence, assuming because of the blood spots, with part of its dinner still in its mouth. This guy still wasn’t buying it.

We went back and looked at the prints again and I commented that I couldn’t think of any canine that would have a foot like that. He still insisted that it was a dog. My suggestion to him was “Well, if you see it, don’t try to pet it, because it’s a mountain lion disguised as a dog!” It turns out that a number of domestic animals had been killed in our little area and a warning was issued to the residents to keep their eye out for a mountain lion disguised as a large poodle. I jest! The disguise was really not a poodle, but a St. Bernard.

One of the other examples of wild inhabitants would be the raccoons, which were extremely clever and persistent. It doesn’t seem to matter to a hungry raccoon that there is a relatively sophisticated locking mechanism on a garbage can. They could figure out how to open it faster than JJ could figure out how to close it. Many a morning I would go out to get the paper and be greeted by garbage scattered from one end of the driveway to the other. In one instance, they chewed off the locking mechanism on the garbage can. I got a new one with a twist top that was advertised to be foolproof, but it didn’t say to whom, because I don’t think it slowed the raccoons down one second. Maybe the “fool” part was meant for the guy that bought it.

One evening after it was dark, I was reading and heard a bunch of racket. I turned on the outside lights and discovered a raccoon stuck in one of the containers. I kicked it over to let this little devil out, naturally scattering garbage all over the driveway. Damn raccoon didn’t even say thanks – it just slowly walked away. I cleaned up the garbage and decided it was time to go to bed. I think the little sucker just hid until I was gone and then went back, because the next morning, sure enough there was garbage scattered all over “hell and gone.” I figured if this ever happened again I would just leave it in the garbage can, presuming it would be a wake-up call for the garbage pickup people, or as they preferred to be called “sanitation engineers.”

I thought I had successfully defeated this problem by building a wood fence that retained the cans. The problem with that was that if I forgot to pull the cans out on Monday, the garbage man would leave everything as is, meaning I was still the proud owner of 30 gallons of garbage. I guess opening a little gate was not in their job description. The final solution was called “the bungee cord,” and it worked as long as the troops would remember to attach it. Raccoons have their place in this world; I’m not real sure where it is, but I know it’s not in my garbage cans nor swimming around in my pool in the middle of the night.

We have always had our fair share of deer visiting both the front and the backyard when we leave the gates open. Most of the time the invasion is in the spring. The Does would show up with their young ones. We must have entered into the fifth-generation of these visitors. Quite frankly, they’re so pretty I don’t see how anybody can shoot them. Part of the problem is they will eat anything except the weeds and these Does raise hell with roses and other succulents. The other aspect of this is “where Bambi goes, nothing grows.” So we end up with brown spots all over the yard. But it’s okay! The grass grows back fast, but it’s the potted plants that really take hell.

Every so often we would unknowingly close up all the gates and have deer trapped in the backyard. This gets unpleasant in a hurry. They start running around the backyard, taking out anything in their way and trying all of the access points that are now closed. The mature deer have no trouble jumping over my six-foot grape stake fence, however the young ones can’t do that, and usually in a flight of panic, go crashing through the stakes. This can get expensive in a hurry, predicated on the price of grape stakes these days, if you can even find them.

One morning a few years ago, I had to go out to what I call the Back 40, where the vegetable garden is, and there was this eight point buck eating apples off my tree. He turned and saw me, and lowered his head. I turned, and lowered mine as I was running for the safety of the house. He was a big brute, for coastal deer. I could see the headlines, “Local man gored 53 times while attempting to capture Bambi’s father, barehanded. The assailant was last seen eating apples and smiling.” I told Blue-eyes what had happened and her comment was, “You mean to tell me you’re afraid of a little tiny deer?” My retort was, as Little Beaver would say, “You bet-chem, Red Ryder!” (If you don’t know who Little Beaver was, or for that matter Red Ryder, you clearly never owned a Red Ryder Lever Action BB gun. Look it up on the web, it’s too difficult to explain. And if you are at a loss about Bambi, you’re in real trouble.)

Another type of wild beastie that we’ve seen on occasion includes some rather large bobcats. They hang around out back, and their primary interest seems to be the squirrels. One weekend I was standing on the patio looking out toward the stall, and all of a sudden this bobcat leaped from somewhere and landed a good 8 feet up a birch tree where a squirrel had been sitting. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The squirrel was toast! The bobcat slowly came out of the tree, walked onto the lawn, and sat there for a few minutes making sure lunch wasn’t going to go anywhere. Based on that event, I always look around when I go back by the birch trees. I didn’t bother to tell my flaky neighbor, because he probably would’ve said, “It’s a dog!” I can see the headlines now, “JJ’s (who as we reported was recently gored) flaky neighbor, loses three fingers while attempting to pet a bobcat. His only explanation to the press after this incident was, “I thought it was a dog!”

We used to have a few skunks when we first moved in, but they seem to have diminished. I saw one a few months back on the back lawn during the day, kind of wandering in an erratic fashion. I was a little concerned because what miniscule understanding I have about skunks is they can be prone to being rabid. I watched it for a while and it seemed disoriented. I always thought skunks were more nocturnal, so I decided to call the animal control people in our county government. Once I got through the multilingual recording, with 14 options and talked to a live person, I was told that the earliest they could get out there would be in two days. I really felt comfortable with the fact that our local government would be on the scene to support the situation, if indeed “Pepe La Pew” was rabid. Part of my concern was that my neighbor would adopt it, convinced it was a dog.

Moral of the story – Animal rights are one thing, but I think more of them need to be house trained.

JJ and The Wild Indian Uprising

This story is not about Native Americans, so if that’s what you expect you might as well not read it. What it is about is an erstwhile Little League baseball team named the Indians, and their trials and tribulations. If you read one of the previous Little League stories, you’ll know the league was blessed by my reappearance in a managerial role, much to the chagrin of the league President. Drinking a “cold one” after a game was not considered by him as something of a role model. What he didn’t realize was that I was only drinking it as a courtesy to the “offeree” ” He forced me to take it! I really don’t much like beer. And besides that, I wasn’t anywhere near the dugout, nor do I look anything like Walter Matthau. More like Yul Brynner!

Our season was divided into two halves, and to be champions you had to either win both halves or survive the onslaught of one playoff game, winner take all. There are only five teams in the majors, which is the 10 to 12 year old grouping. The Indians finished the first half at the bottom of the pile. We only had a couple of blowout games, but were close – one or two runs in most of our losses. But close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. The daunting Red Sox had won the first half.

The kids’ attitude was still quite positive, and they were having fun whooping and hollering in the dugout like a bunch of wild Indians, which in fact they were. I wasn’t called Coach. I was Chief. Our team was the tribe, but at the strong suggestion of Blue-eyes, I drew the line on the squaw definitions. When we got together for practices or games, the normal greetings were the raising of the right hand and the guttural “How.” The dugout was the “wigwam.” Drinks like Gatorade were defined as “firewater.” The team was having fun, even if it wasn’t winning, and my attitude was “that was what it’s all about.” Don’t get this wrong! When they were in the game they were very serious and didn’t like to lose.

Since the rules would not allow bunting, I taught the troops or “clan,” as they preferred to be called, how to chop down on the ball, which had the same effect as a bunt. Tough play for an infielder, but very effective and totally legal. It would draw their infield in and then the troops could swing away. We had a signal for this. It was the “tomahawk chop.” Real subtle, right? Nobody’s gonna guess what that means! The chop began to pay off. We didn’t overdo it and used it mainly to move up runners, but the side benefits were probable throwing errors to first base. With a runner on third, it was like a squeeze play. Once the other team started throwing the ball around, we could go back to our strategy of “antelope” baseball.

Most of the other teams had adults acting as base coaches, but I decided to let the kids do it, especially my two-inning players. It worked out fine, because most of the time the kids running bases didn’t pay any attention to the base coach anyway. The tribe decided that they had have signs like they had seen on the TV games, which of course they dubbed ”Indian signs.” I mean after all, no self-respecting Indian would go anywhere without their signs.

So they would stand at the entrance to the “wigwam” and go through all these gyrations. There were a couple of problems with this. First, you couldn’t steal a base, so I was never sure what they were suggesting to the guy coaching first base. The other was that most of the signs they created were rather obscene. I had no idea what they meant, didn’t care and frankly, really didn’t want to know. Unfortunately, the signs could be seen by the opposition’s spectators and of course, someone reported it. I got yet another phone call from the league President telling me to cease and desist.

The Indians were prevailing. We were well into the second half and had only lost one game, and that was to the Red “Sods.” Our pitching had improved greatly and there were far fewer walks. We had lost two 12-year-olds, and I had to draft from the minors. It turned out the additions we got were very good pitchers and frankly, better all-round players than what I had lost. We only had two 12-year-olds left on the team, and one of them was a two-inning player, which was totally disproportionate to our competition, especially the Red Sox, who had eight 12-year-olds. The chop was an effective tool and was being imitated by some of the other teams, but their execution was not as good as ours. Part of the reason for this was that we focused on the lead runner, which for some reason the other teams neglected to do.

One interesting event that occurred is what I like to call the “double-double” play! Now you know that’s impossible in baseball, but it happened. We were leading in one game by about four or five runs when our starting pitching imploded and we could not get anybody out. The bases were loaded and the batter popped up right in front of the catcher. He caught the ball, threw to first base and the first baseman stepped on the bag because the runner had taken off and was now standing on second with another runner trying to get back to second and was tagged before he could get back. The runner at third was halfway between home and third base and had to tag up and he was tagged out. By this time we had kids running from one base to another, coaches out waving their arms and absolute chaos. At that point I thought the next thing that can happen is they’ll tag out the guy standing in the on deck circle. That’ll make it five outs!

The umpire was a young kid, and with all of this happening so fast, could not be expected to have seen, let alone interpret what the hell had just happened. Both teams were on the field and he was caught right in the middle. By this time it had dawned on me that we had just done the impossible, and made four outs in one inning. Naturally, it didn’t stand. We were given credit for a double play, and a runner was allowed to stay at third base. I pointed out that that meant one of their “runners had just disappeared off the face of the earth.” To no avail! Syllogistic logic has no place in baseball. We got the final out, and that was that. I did not argue about it because the kid umpire was clearly out of his depth. One of my gang wanted to know if we got credit for that fourth out in the next inning. Seemed like a good idea to me.

Another incident occurred, but fortunately did not involve in the Indians. Thank God! I just didn’t need another phone call from the President. In this instance, it was a case of “loaded bats” in a game that the Red Sox had lost. After the game, the Red Sox manager was picking up the gear, which was always the case, being the first item on our job description, and he picked up a bat which belonged to the opposition. As he was walking to the dugout, he saw what appeared to be black tape around the head of the bat, but was in fact a very thin lead weight used principally on golf clubs. He refused to surrender the bat to the other manager and went looking for league official.

The Red Sox manager insisted that the game be decreed a forfeit. He called me and wanted me to support his position, and I told him “no,” and that I personally doubt if the weighted bat had anything to do with their loss. My thoughts were that this was much ado about nothing. The way these kids swing, a little bit of weight wasn’t going to do a damn thing to improve their hitting. If anything, it was probably a disadvantage. The team that had beaten them had replaced the Indians at the bottom of the barrel. Next thing that happened – some of the parents got involved and actually got a lawyer to write a letter to the President of our league, which was a good thing because it would probably keep him busy, and keep him off my sad little butt.

As it turned out, the manager of the other team didn’t know anything about the lead weight, and this major felony had been perpetrated by one of the players. If the Red Sox’s parents had their way, the kid would’ve been sent to San Quentin. For the most part, Little League kids are great, but some of the parents can be a royal pain in the “tush.” I don’t know for sure, but I suspect Ms. Congeniality had something to do with this endeavor. If you don’t know who she is, then you’re not reading my other baseball stories, which indicates you have superior intelligence and more important things to do. But I digress!

The season was winding down and we were in a dead heat with the Red Sox. We had one more game to play, and if we won it, we would force a playoff for the second half – and if we won that, then we would have to play another “winner take all” playoff game. The Indians did not play at all that well in this last game. I think the war chants got their blood up and it was just way too much adrenaline. We were in the last of the seventh inning, two outs, bases loaded, with one of my “prima donnas” at bat. As he went out to hit, I heard one of his teammates tell him that this pitcher was going to put it over the plate. He went out there, and sure enough got two quick called strikes and then stood there as the third called strike hit the catcher right in middle of the plate. He was very irate and said some things to the umpire, and on his way back to the dugout told me that those were three (expletive deleted) bad calls. I didn’t say anything to him because I know he felt bad, but my thought was, “If you’re going to be a prima donna, you’d better perform. Otherwise, turn in your tutu or jockstrap – whichever is most fitting.”

There was a pizza party after this loss, and the parents had gotten together and presented me with a little engraved pewter cup that was meant to act as a disguise for the “cold one” after future games. I thought that was very nice, but what they didn’t realize was this cup had a glass bottom and when I tried to use it, it leaked like a sieve. I still have it, but use it principally to hold my crayons.

Moral of the story – The old baseball saying of “wait’ll next year” is just so much horse pucky.

JJ versus the National Fire Hazard Dilemma

When Blue-eyes and I first moved in to the new house, we were faced with multiple landscaping dilemmas. Neither one of us knew much about horticulture and little about landscaping architecture. For the most part, I left the selection up to her, principally because she had a friend that was a part-time professional landscaper. All in all, things worked out real well, with the exception of a few minor issues. Over time we discovered we could not grow azaleas or rhododendrons. We did all sorts of things to improve the soil, but it just seemed as though the great plant-God in the sky had deemed our land not suitable for the continued growth of these plants. Frankly, the best we got from them was about two years and maybe one blossoming cycle. We murdered more azaleas and rodies than I care to count because we just kept trying, but to no avail.

One of the more enlightened suggestions made by her semi-professional landscaping buddy was to put in what she termed as “fast growth eucalyptus bushes” that were supposed to achieve 15 feet in approximately a year and then stop at that height. To bore you with some of the details, we had an area that basically would be partially underwater during the wintertime. This area was what we called Bear Creek, and we used to ask each other after a good rain “Is Bear Creek rising?” (This was really no joke, as I will explain in a future story about a storm sewer that goes nowhere, funded by mandatory property liens and easements.)

Based on the information that we got, it sounded like these “bushes” would be a suitable barrier between the two properties. They could live in a rather inhospitable environment, meaning a whole bunch of damn water in the winter. Euke’s are a hearty breed.

Well, Blue-eyes’ buddy was partially right, and what started as a 2 foot bush at the end of two years was approximately 12 to 15 feet high. Great! That did the job. One minor problem! They didn’t stop growing. Fast forward 10 or 15 years and we now had six 50 to 60 foot gigantic eucalyptus trees in our backyard. Under the circumstances, it was okay. They’re actually a very pretty tree and one of the benefits was they were the home for a multitude of our avian brothers. They were relatively clean trees, with minor issues of dead leaves and branches, but for the most part, maintenance free. Or so I thought!

One of the standing jokes between Blue-eyes and me was the definition of a bush. Whenever I mentioned this to her I was usually greeted with “half the peace symbol,” which was very uncharacteristic – meaning that I’d hit a nerve. Sometimes this was soon followed by “Do you want to sleep on the couch – again?”

One summer day I came home from work, greeted by a note in the mailbox from our local fire district. It basically said that my eucalyptus trees were considered a fire hazard by one of my “wonderful neighbors.” I found this somewhat intriguing in that there had been no discussions with us by our “wonderful neighbors,” not that we talked that often, if I could possibly avoid it. According to this citation, I had so many days to correct the problem of dead or dying limbs in my deviant “bush” Eucalyptus trees. There was a number to call regarding the problem. I spoke to what I assume was a fireman who explained that he had been on the property and had inspected the trees and concurred they were hazards.

So, I called a number of the so-called tree trimming services and had estimates running between 1720 and 2500 bucks to come out and trim the dead branches, which did not include hauling the debris away. Sticker shock! A day or so after this, I noticed some construction being done in our area, and there was what could be euphemistically called a “cherry picker” that had a sign indicating where it had been rented from. The one I saw could extend approximately 60 feet. It was a monstrous, self-driven unit with a basket control system to put you where you needed to be while 60 feet in the air. I watched a guy operating this thing for a while, and came to the conclusion that it was a no-brainer. JJ in his wisdom decided, in that he had already invested in a 14 inch man-killing chainsaw, that he would undertake this project himself. Mistake number one!

When I got home I told Blue-eyes what I had in mind. She immediately got out my life insurance policy to see if it covered my death by a tree trimming accident, or being crushed by a 60 foot hoist or possibly decapitating myself with my trusty chainsaw. We sat around that night wondering which one of our “wonderful neighbors” filed the complaint.

I ordered this humongous thing for the weekend and it cost me 250 bucks. I got home on Friday and there it sat in my driveway. I had to figure out how to get it into the back yard. It was a close call, but I did not have to take down any fences and maneuvered this beast over to Blue-eyes’ 60 foot bushes. It was early spring and we had had a little bit of rain, but not a lot, but mother nature decided to dump a bunch of water on us that night.

In that the little device was not to be picked up until mid-afternoon Monday, I held off until after lunch Saturday. I fired this devil up and hoisted my dumb butt up to the first candidate and began trimming and yelling timber as each branch fell to the ground. After about two hours, I was working on the third tree and was becoming a little more accustomed to the unnerving and rather unsteady motivations of the cherry picker. It had a tendency to do a lot of swaying as I moved from branch to branch.

While I was doing this, our “wonderful neighbors” came out with a camera and was taking pictures of stupid (meaning me), swaying back and forth 60 feet in the air. I could only assume it was for insurance purposes, in case I came crashing down onto their property. Naturally, neither one of them offered to come and help clean up debris, but I naturally would have declined their services because I was having so much fun.

Predicated on my inexperience, I cut some of the branches in such fashion as they fell on both me and the basket, which created some interesting moments while perched 60 feet in the air on a mechanical device that now seemed to have a mind of its own. I quit for the day after successfully trimming half of the trees without killing myself or dumping the beast over on its side.

I finally went into the house, did a backflip into a martini, shaken but not stirred, while Blue-eyes tended to my various cuts and abrasions, while commenting, “You’re really weird, you know that?” At least she didn’t say, “You dumb jar-head.” One of the disturbing elements was I noticed a great many birds’ nests in the debris, lying on the ground. I was certain that I had thoroughly pissed off a number of our avian nation inhabitants. I assumed that the next fun thing that would happen is I would have picketers in my front yard from the National Audubon Society.

It rained a little bit that night, but not enough for real concern, or so I thought. Mistake number two! The next morning I started the process again, but a little less aggressively. By five o’clock that night, I had finished the project and lowered the basket to its normal passive position. I then decided I would put the unit in the front driveway so that it could be picked up Monday while I was at work. What I hadn’t noticed was that I was in a soft area of the lawn and the tires had sunk approximately 6 inches. It was stuck! I attempted to move the unit by going from fast-forward to fast reverse – only to be rewarded by sinking it a little further.

I sat in the cab with my head on the steering wheel, contemplating that it was going to cost me at least $1000 to have this sucker towed out of my backyard. Then I got a bright idea! I extended the basket and boom out in the direction I wanted to go, to take a majority of the weight off the tires and low and behold, it worked! I gleefully drove this monster to the front driveway, unfortunately taking out one of my gates in my haste to get this devil off the soft soil.

Sweet smell of success. I had conquered the monster cherry picker and saved myself a couple of grand. I still had one hell of an amount of debris, but we had a chipper and could resolve that issue in a hurry, plus those larger branches were cut into firewood, which I rationalized as additional savings.

Later that week, I called the number to report that I had cleared out the branches, etc. and was ready for the mandatory inspection. The fire guy said he would come out Friday afternoon at about three o’clock, so I took off work early to meet him. They showed up in a big red fire engine, pulled into the driveway and knocked off two big branches off a birch tree. That was O.K., it needed trimming anyway! We walked into the backyard and I showed them my handiwork. At first they were a little confused, and then pointed to some eucalyptus trees in an area in the back of the property and said, “That’s great, but those are the trees that needed trimming or removal!” At that point I’m sure I had tears in my eyes and said, “Those are not my trees, they belong to my neighbor!” They left, and I went in and did a backflip into a martini.

We never did determine who complained. Nothing was ever done about the trees that were the real culprits until they fell over a few years later and took about 50 feet of my grape-stake fence, which was covered by insurance at an estimated 30 bucks per foot, paid for by my “dead eucalyptus” neighbor. I wish that insurance company had bought all of my fencing.

Moral of the Story – Jack had his bean stalk, which grew to the sky. Blue-eyes had her bushes that were ever so high.

Wild Beasties – Raccoons, Ducks, Squirrels, Potatoes, Baseball, World War I and John Wayne

 

I came up with that title figuring some of you would be screwing around surfing the web, and I figured on getting a bunch of hits just by mentioning the “Duke.” Baseball is only mentioned because it’s October and the end of the season is near. However, if professional baseball keeps going the way they have, we won’t have the World Series until the day after Christmas. I just thought I’d throw that in as an editorial comment. But I digress!

Some years back, in the middle of the night I woke up to this god-awful noise in the backyard, and a lot of splashing. If you’re not aware of it, we have this huge pool that has attracted many things that are not human – and least of all, poor swimmers. I hauled my butt out of bed, turned on the outside lights and discovered two raccoons in the pool on top of my thermal pool blanket. They couldn’t get out of the pool because they were heavier than the solar blanket. So every time they would move, they would sink. They couldn’t swim because they were on the blanket and their nasty little sharp claws were not doing it a lot of good. They were in what you could call “panic city.” There was a third one sitting next to the pool watching this action. For a second or two, I thought this insensitive beast was laughing, but I couldn’t be sure. At the very least it was grinning, if indeed a raccoon can grin.

So like a Good Samaritan that I am, I grabbed the pool cleaning net and fished the two raccoons out. They did not take off like I would’ve expected, but instead continued the fight which more than likely had caused them to take a dive in the first place. One of them went splashing back in the pool again and the others just stood there. Raccoons can see well in the dark, but don’t do real great with the lights on. Clearly, the two combatants were fighting over the third raccoon which was most likely a female. I guess raccoons have some human traits after all. Clearly, the female was at fault, as usual. Possibly, it was two females fighting over the male, which is the way that it should be in the first place. I digress!

So, I fished this love-sick diminutive bandit out of the pool again and decided it was time to chase this trio into another county. I had a large push broom sitting next to the pool, and got it with the intent of scaring these potential participants in a ménage à trois into my flaky neighbor’s yard, with the hopes that they would wake him up. Much to my surprise and immediate concern, the female got up on her hind legs, showed me a huge amount of her teeth and clearly she had decided she needed a chunk of JJ. At that point, I decided discretion was the better part of valor and did a hasty retreat into the bedroom.

By then, Blue-eyes was awake and had been watching from the door. As I scurried into the house, her comment was, “I didn’t think anything could make a Marine retreat that fast.” I think I grunted and began humming the Marine Corps’ hymn. We watched as the trio silently made their way into the darkness. A couple of nights later, there was another fight, but this time they did not end up in the pool, but did manage to knock over some patio furniture.

A few years ago in the early spring, Blue-eyes came in and exclaimed that a bunch of ducks were in the pool. I went out and sure enough, there were 15 or 16 wild ducks paddling around in our chemical-infested pool. They paid no attention to us whatsoever. I didn’t know if it was duck season or not, but I was really tempted to go get my Remington 22 and have smoked duck for dinner. But then I started to think about Donald, Daffy and Daisy and decided it really wasn’t a good idea. Besides, firing a 22 where we live would have the Sheriff, FBI, the National Guard and the Border Patrol in our front driveway in a matter of seconds. It was kind of fun to watch them paddling back and forth, then all of a sudden I realized that they were leaving a whole bunch of deposits that were completely unwanted. So I ran around waving my arms and eventually they took off.

About two weeks later they reappeared, only this time there were more. I did the same routine that I had done before, barking like a dog and making loud noises and attempting to emulate a shot, assuming that would get their attention. They eventually flew off, but returned the next morning. I couldn’t figure out how to dissuade them, but Blue-eyes, in her omnipotent wisdom came up with a solution. “Go get a large picture of a 12 gauge Winchester shotgun and hang it up by the side of the house.” I didn’t do it, but I thought it was a hell of a good idea. I did get my leaf net and attempted to capture one. They were too fast. Blue-eyes rushed into the house to get a camera, because she wanted to have evidence that I had finally gone over the edge. They eventually left and we only had one other sighting, but that was only three birds.

The other day, while I was standing at the back patio door, I saw this demented squirrel absolutely intent on planting walnuts in the seat cushions of my patio chairs. I chased her away and found five walnuts stuck in the creases of the cushions. This girl didn’t go far, sat about 40 feet away on the lawn and looked at me. I threw the nuts at her hoping she would get the message. She scampered away leaving her winter’s dietary supplement laying in the middle my lawn. I suspect she figured that nobody in JJ’s family would realize that they were sitting on a bunch of walnuts. Hell, she may have been right! I’ve certainly been called “hard ass” more than once. For the educators reading this – first of all, shame on you, and second, I want to explain that this is a figurative condition and not literal.

Well, she’s back, and now unfortunately she is digging a hole into a $20 cushion and I suspect it’s to get even with me for throwing nuts at her. Notice I say “she” and “her!” Do not assume that I’m being a chauvinistic, because the females are mainly responsible for the “nut burying process.” Ask any squirrel devotees and they’ll confirm what I just suggested. You can also tell that they are females because they have to carry a GPS system to remember where they put the last nut. Oh hell, I just couldn’t resist!

I made a decision to get out my trusty Red Ryder lever action BB gun, and pop this little product from an illicit relationship in the butt. I don’t want to kill it, but only to make sure that it gets the message that it and its actions are persona non-grata. I assure you, if you’ve ever been popped in the butt with a BB, you remember it. It hurts you just enough to make you a little squirrely. I didn’t really say that, did I?

The squirrel episode reminds me of an event last week or so when I was driving downtown behind an SUV with a bumper sticker saying “I brake for Squirrels.” I thought, “Now that’s a kindhearted soul!” After following her for a few moments, I came to the conclusion that the squirrels had to be about the only thing that she could possibly brake for! She (this is an assumption on my part because it could’ve been a weird-looking dude in drag) didn’t stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk; blew through a stop sign; honked at some old guy with a cane, jaywalking; and cut off another driver on a left turn. All of this within three blocks. If you read one of my blogs you might assume this could be the same lady that kicked my left front tire while she was talking on her cell phone while parked in the middle of the street. At the very least, these two went to the same driving school. Had that been me, I would’ve had at least five tickets and be qualified for the ”three strikes and you’re out” law.

My turn to cook, so I started dinner, which is going to consist of a shrimp and lettuce salad with creamy ranch dressing, steak and potatoes served on paper plates because it’s also my turn to do the dishes. I’m a little worried about the potatoes because they have these little green things growing on them, so I figure it best to use them quickly before they develop into large flesh eating carnivorous beasts. I suspect I will have to go plant the unused spuds in my garden, as I’m sure that the gophers that have infested this area are starving to death.

What’s the derivation of the word “spud?” I think it’s from a World War I movie! “Capt. Goodheart was flying his trusty, bullet-riddled “Spud” when the German “Fokker” came out of the clouds and into his gun-sights. He pressed the trigger of his twin Balfour machine guns and saluted as the Fokker went down in flames. Actually, I don’t think it was “spud,” I think that was “Spad.” Fokker is another one of those words you have to be very careful pronouncing.

Why do they call those little spots on potatoes “eyes?” Can they really see what you’re about to do to them with the potato peeler? I use the tip of the peeler to gouge these spots out because I’m not keen on eating eyes. Most everything else is okay, but I draw the line there. I could swear I heard one of them screaming in a loud voice “Help me! Help me!” (That’s from an old movie called “The Fly,” and could have ended within the first 5 minutes if they’d had a spraying can of Raid handy.) This event could go down in history as the Great Potato Massacre of Wounded Knee, which is a reference to my left knee cap or whatever still remains.

I’m recording a baseball game so that I can go back and play it on a fast-forward basis. I can watch the complete nine inning game in 22 minutes. Baseball is at best semi-boring as a player, and extremely boring if you have to watch it. I am fascinated by the fact that the batters play with their Velcro batting gloves, taking a long time adjusting the gloves after each pitch, whether they’ve swung at the ball or not. What did these guys play with before they allowed the batting gloves? Don’t go there!

Think of the time they would save if they would outlaw batting gloves. This is something that I’m absolutely certain you will ponder over for the next three or four days, and more than likely come up with a meaningful solution that can be inserted into the rulebook for next season.

Another thing that strikes me as bizarre is the amount of “crotch grabbing” when they get on base. These professionals should have an award for whoever grabs their crotch the most during the season. The trophy could be a Golden Cup and a lifetime supply of talcum powder.

Tonight after dinner and throwing away the plates, I’m going to watch a John Wayne film called “Sands of Iwo Jima.” I always cry at the end when “Duke” gets killed, but I do the same thing with “Old Yeller” and ”An Affair to Remember.” I really didn’t think Nicky was that great of a painter! Based on the one scene where you see her portrait, I can understand why the dealer gave it away. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ll have to watch the movie.

As far as Old Yeller is concerned, I think the guy that shot him would have been better off using a shotgun. If he had missed with that rifle and just wounded him, it would have pissed Yeller off no end, and he was close enough to cause all kinds of problems and that would’ve made a whole different ending to the movie. Yuck! The movie promos would’ve been “Come and watch the latest Disney family thriller about a rabid dog that kills family of six. This film is rated PG-4.”

Moral of the story – If you’re going use paper plates make sure you don’t forget the plastic utensils.

JJ in the Majors – Little League, that is!

After a two-year hiatus, my professional responsibilities had changed once again, and I was given the opportunity to manage in the “biggies.” In our Little League community this was called “the Majors,” and consisted of players between the ages of 10 and 12. When you reach 11 years old you were out of the minors, regardless of skills, and so the Dauntless Dodgers were disbanded after succeeding to multiple championships, thanks to the tutelage of yours truly. Don’t I wish?

The coach that followed me knew what he was doing, and “Dem Bums” had a rather fantastic record, mostly because of the few players like “Scooter,” who, when on base didn’t know when to stop. I was happy to hear that his Mom, “Miss Congeniality of 1901,” was continuing her quest and was harassing the new Dodgers coach. I had begun to think I was not going to be in her will.

The new team was given the name “Indians,” and I was pretty unhappy about that for a couple of reasons. One – the Indians had to be one of the worst teams in pro baseball, and two – I was worried that the parents would develop the “chop” and “war chant” adopted by the Atlanta Braves. I had a plan to have the kids put on war paint before every game, but Blue-eyes talked me out of this idea as being somewhat insensitive. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

I did teach the kids a few steps of a war dance and we would yell “Geronimo” anytime someone got a hit. The gang decided that everybody’s nick name was “ke-mo sah-bee.” I heard later that they were doing the same thing in school, and that it didn’t go over real big with the administration. Nobody has a sense of humor anymore! By the way, “ke-mo-sah-bee” means good friend or good scout, not the more popular interpretation of the old joke “**it for brains.”

The rules were pretty much the same as the minors; however the skill sets of the kids were greatly improved. You could no longer just run rampant on the bases, because some of the curtain climbers were quite capable of fielding a ball and delivering it to the proper place, in a reasonable location and at the proper time. For me, that was a great revelation and I would clearly have to change my winning strategy, which could best be defined as “antelope baseball.” These kids could actually get the ball out of the infield and in some instances the 12-year-olds could hit that thing a ton.

Come draft time, I really didn’t know much about most of the players and the only tryouts that were held were for new kids just coming into the league. The Indians only had four returning players. Tom was one of them. I had to rely on JJ Junior and Tom, whose acumen in these matters exceeded mine. I got JJ Junior because he was my son and I think he regretted it when jokingly one day I said, “Thank God, we’ve got an experienced catcher.” He worked me up a list of names for the draft, and one of the top players was Scooter. He told me I really needed to draft him, and my comment was “Yeah, but the problem is – you get Scooter, you get his Mom.”

Junior confessed that I had a good point. I thought about it and the solution I came up with was to draft Scooter, and make his Mom our assistant manager, figuring if she had some complaint I could just look at her and say “Talk to the assistant manager.” Also, that way I could fire her. It didn’t happen because Scooter went in the first round to the Red Sox. I was able to draft a couple of the old Dodger doofuses.

So, we started the practice routine with the same rule – make it to practice if you want to play more than two innings. True to form, I had drafted a couple of prima donnas that figured they didn’t need to practice, and come the first game, which we lost, they did not start and were relegated to two innings. They still didn’t show up for practice and they didn’t start the second game, which we won. They again only played two innings and got the message. The Indians still had their fair share of the less than competent, two-inning players. Unfortunately, none of them had Doc’s unique one-liners. The neat thing was these kids didn’t complain and were team players, and when they were playing they did indeed concentrate.

On our first game with the Red Sox, all of the gang showed up with feathers stuck in the back of their hats. Our faithful gallery of parents and friends thought this was hilarious. Where they got all of the feathers, I will never know and probably don’t want to. I suspect there were some poor unsuspecting chickens running around somewhat bare-assed. No question – these kids were resourceful.

Scooter’s Mom was there and came to our dugout somewhat indignant. Her comment was to the effect that we were being politically incorrect. She said our name was bad enough, but all of the war whoops and general Indian antics was really an insult. I looked at her and said “It’s really okay, because one of our player’s name is Inder Singh.” She looked at me as if I were two cans short of a six-pack and went back to her bleachers, shaking her head. Score one for JJ! I was thinking that maybe she should move to Cleveland and start a crusade. I’m certain she wrote her congressman that night. I guess I should say congress-person.

We lost that game to the Red Sox. Scooter got walked on four pitches, and scored the winning run on a legitimate hit in the last of the seventh. He was still doing the squat routine at the plate, no strike zone, which irritated me no end. I guess that’s what you could call being hoisted on your own petard. Scooter came over after the game to say hello. His mother, Ms. Congeniality, came quickly to our dugout, scowling with the obvious assumption that I was contaminating his mind, probably teaching him swear words in Navaho. She gave me a look that could only be interpreted as triumphant, and that this loss was my penalty for being politically incorrect. I never met Mr. Congeniality, but I suspect that she nagged him to death and that he was buried someplace in their back yard.

When I got home, I did a back-flip into martini, shaken not stirred, and Blue-eyes commented that she had seen the encounter. She said she was going to make it a point to sit next to her the next time we played the Red Sox and cheer for the Indians while humming the Braves’ war chant, accompanied by the Tomahawk Chop. Clearly, Blue-eyes’s Bohemian-Indian blood was up, because she headed directly for the “fire water.”

On another game days, one of the kids showed up with a can of eye black. The next thing I knew, not only was it under their eyes but it was on their noses and a couple of the more inventive ones drew a mustache and sideburns. One of the league officials was there, and of course, they were required to remove this distasteful display of non-adherence to the sacred rules of Little League. I didn’t know this person and asked that he show me where in the rulebook it said they couldn’t wear eye black. Granted, they over-did it a little bit, but I think this fell in the same category as jockstraps and cups.

Naturally, I got blamed for having a bad attitude and received a phone call from the league president, who also had no sense of humor. I’m sure the feather episode didn’t help, because I’m certain they got a phone call from some irate chicken. I think I offered to share the eye black with any team that wanted to use it, and if necessary, by the chickens – dead or alive.

For the most part, the Indians were good group of kids, with the exception of one of the prima donnas who did nothing but complain about his fellow teammates and their lack of skills not being equal to his own. He was getting called out on third strikes, and of course, this was always an umpire’s bad call. I told him one of the strange idiosyncrasies of this game is that if you want to hit the ball, you must swing at. This kid was a real pain, but I know where he got it from. His dad, or possibly his custodian, was obviously vicariously reliving his youth, and had stopped me after another game which we had lost and made a bunch of suggestions.

One of his more brilliant observations was, “We should really do the double play more, because we were allowing too many runners on base.” My answer was, “Hell, we’re lucky to get the ball to first base, let alone thrown it all over the field trying to do a double play.” He was somewhat insistent, so my solution was to invite him to come and help me during practices and he could concentrate on the “double play.” That ended that, he didn’t have any more constructive ideas about how we should try to play baseball. I say “try,” because at that point that’s the best that could be said about the Indians’ efforts. Our “war whoops” were getting more authentic, however.

We actually did get a double play in a subsequent game and I looked around for him, but he wasn’t there. He was probably busy writing the memoirs of Abner Doubleday. Some of the parents were thoughtful enough to offer me a “cold one” after the games, and of course I got busted and got another phone call from the league president. His position was that we should be considering the kids and I think I commented “The kids should bring their own beer!” Whatever happened to “beer; hotdogs, peanuts and Crackerjacks” being part of the grand old game?

Our record was dismal and unfortunately matched the performance of our professional namesake. The kids were taking it pretty well, and the general comments they made after yet another loss was “We are in a rebuilding mode.” We came in at the bottom in the first half of the season, and I lost two of our better players and had to draft up a couple more ten-year-olds from the minors. Thanks to JJ Jr’s scouting report, they turned out to be better players than the two we lost.

The “pappoose’s” comments were that we would do better in the second half. I think they were thinking along the line of “Little Big Horn,” and that I was “Custer.” The team was positive, but I was less than optimistic. After our last game at the halfway point, which we had won rather handily, one of the dads came up afterward and said “Well, there’s light at the end of the tunnel.” My answer was “Yeah, I just hope it isn’t an onrushing train.” Old Doc would’ve been proud me.

Moral of the story –  If you’re going to have a “cool one” after a Little League game, make sure it’s in a plain brown wrapper, and tell the kids to bring their own damn beer.