JJ and Bear Creek Adventures

 

The name of my blog “Up a Creek with no Paddle,” is literal, but was derived from a “dry creek” that runs down one side of our property. Blue-eyes later named it “Bear Creek.” She could’ve called “Skunk Creek,” as there was a family of these sweet smelling “beasties” living close by. No “Smokey the Bear” around here and I’ve never seen anything “butt naked” even close to the creek. (Bear versus bare, and I preferred the latter.) Shortly after moving into the new abode, I noticed that there was an easement for flood control. Say what? There was even a small fee on my annual tax bill along with other small fees for stuff I never use, don’t want and in fact don’t know what they are. Case in point, a thing called “vector abatement.” I think they’re after the creepy-crawlies.

We have a large chunk of property, and I went out to the “back 40” and found a four by four foot grate covered drain. I know this is boring as hell, but it gets interesting as we move along. This hole in the ground was the termination or starting point, depending on your prospective, and emptied into a 3 foot-pipe, heading off in the general direction of a real creek about 200 yards away. I didn’t bother to further investigate because it didn’t appear to me there was a potential water issue. My thought was it must be there for a reason, but I have to admit, it wasn’t real apparent as to what that reason could have been. Duh! To get water off the property, Dummy!

About two years later, I got the answer. We hadn’t had much rain, and had something of a dry spell. The area we live in is somewhat rolling hillsides, although our property is mostly level. Really no apparent threat of flooding. Wrong assumption! And then the rains began to fall and not just a little bit. The first day there was a lot of runoff, but most of it was being handled by the normal street drain, which appeared to be part of this flood control drain system. The rain let up a little, but the street drains got clogged with debris and were backing up. While cleaning out the debris, I noticed a lot of standing water between my house and my neighbors, but assumed it would eventually percolate into the cement-like Adobe.

That night the rain really came down in buckets, and as well as the next morning. The storm drains were clogged again and the street was flooded. There was over a foot of water pouring over the gutters and down a neighbor’s driveway into his backyard, swimming pool, as well as the garage. His wife was standing there with a broom in about a foot of water, sweeping water out a door. My thought was, “Man that will really work!”

About this time a car came roaring down the hill, doing about 35, smacked into this water, lost control and went into my other neighbor’s rose garden, took out a water faucet and smacked sideways into a walnut tree. Not real hard, but it sure didn’t help the front of the car. Just what we needed, more damn water. The lady driving tried to start the car, but of course that was not going to happen. She finally got out of the car, getting scratched up by the rose thorns, swearing and yelling at me, “Why haven’t you got a sign or flares out?” I felt like giving her half the peace symbol, but being the gentleman I am, better judgment prevailed. I think I said something like “Your mother wears combat boots.” I asked her if she was all right, she looked at me, didn’t say anything got back in her car and sat there. It could’ve been a lot worse.

Then another car came down the hill, going too fast and even though I stood there and waved frantically, it kept right on going into the water with a gigantic splash. Naturally, this killed the engine. A guy opened the door, started getting out into the water, changed his mind and sat there for a while. He was smart enough to take off his shoes and roll up his pants before attempting to wade through the now nearly two feet of water. He came over, really irritated, looked at me and said “How long has this been here?” I looked at him and said, “Maybe two years!” Then I said, “What kind of boat is that?” He didn’t think that was very funny. At the rate the water was rising, this guy was soon to be the proud owner of a BMW swimming pool. Wise-ass J.J. doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. I think I was still smarting from the comments from my new friend – still parked in the Rose Garden.

Next down the hill, came a kid driving one of these high suspension, oversized tire, pickup trucks. He at least stopped and I went over a told him how deep I thought the water was. He said he was going to try it because he saw where he could get around the “Beemer” on the left side, which was going to be even deeper. He got about half way, going too fast and eventually the water got into his fan blade causing steam to rise, and must have shorted out the ignition. That about did it for me. Here I am standing in the damn rain, soaking wet and wondering if the next person coming down the hill will be Noah, driving his ark too fast and looking every bit like Charlton Heston. I decided that with two cars and a truck stuck in that small river, what I really needed to do was get another cup of coffee. It was too early for a vodka martini. I looked over at the lady still sitting in her car; she had the window rolled down and was picking roses. The lady across the street was still trying to sweep water out of the garage. She really wasn’t making much progress.

Blue-eyes had been on the phone trying to get some attention from our erstwhile global town administration, but all she got was a busy signal. I finally called 911 and got through, explained what was going on, only to be told that it would be at least two hours before anyone could come out. I said, “Fine, by then this street is will look like a wrecking yard.” Great! Where is vector abatement when you really need them? Our tax dollars at work.

I went out to the corral to see how the horses were making out. They were standing in about two feet of water, watching the small river cascade down my back neighbor’s corral. I had built a nice stall and these two dummies preferred to stand in the mud and get soaking wet. I got on the top of the fence to check out the next neighbor’s yard and could see nothing but water going all the way up to their back patio. Their lawn chairs were now floating away, along with the barbeque. What a mess. They didn’t have horses, but did have chickens, all of which were squatting on top of the hen house, which was also about to float away. That proves that chickens have more brains than a horse or for that matter, J.J.

The storm drain in the corner of my property sure didn’t seem to be doing much of anything. Everything was full of debris from trees and other stuff, all headed for the wrecking yard in the front street. I assume the drain was clogged up. DUH! I would’ve needed a small power boat to get to the drain in order to clean it out, and even then with my luck, I would have been sucked into this torrent of water and become an additional piece of wreckage sitting out on the street. The only upside to all this water was I realized I wouldn’t have to “muck-out” the corral for a while. That’s horse talk referring to cleaning up the stuff that comes out of the horse’s other end.

By now the sheriff had showed up, put up a bunch of flares and told me they had closed the road at the top of the hill. There were no new automotive contributions to the river. He went over and was talking with our “Lady of the Roses,” while making notes in his little citation book. Clearly, he was pouring salt into an open wound! I wondered if he was going to say something like “Have a nice day.” At least she got a nice bouquet of roses. The guy that owned the roses was standing in his garage, with a large class of something red, and I’m sure it was just tomato juice. The rose bushes were the pride and joy of his ex-wife and I had a suspicion that he didn’t really give a damn about the damage done to the collection of florets. Mr. “Beemer” was using my phone, and I was sure he was calling Germany to order a new car. The lady with the broom had finally given up and had moved to higher ground, but she still had her broom in hand, just in case. The kid with the “high-rise” truck was sitting in its bed, smoking a cigarette or whatever, with a fishing pole. Just kidding about the fishing pole.

The rain had let up, but the water kept rising. It was now at least 3 feet deep. The Sheriff told me that the real creek was on the verge of overflowing further down the road. I asked him, “Where the hell is all the water coming from?” “From the freeway! It all drains into this here creek of yours,” gesturing toward Bear Creek. He commented that it was backed up for over three quarters of a mile and two other roads were shut down. Oh joy! It now became obvious why I was paying a flood control assessment for a system that didn’t go more than 300 yards.

A maintenance worker from the town finally showed up in a truck, looked at the situation for about 10 seconds, took out two of the things that flash, and left. It was lunch time, so I figured he went to get a hamburger and a beer. The water level began to slowly subside and “Mr. Beemer” went back to his “Bavarian sponge,” obviously waiting for a tow truck or possibly a delegation from the German Embassy. I went out back and one of our horses, Mr. Lucky, was rolling in the mud. I suggested that he wipe his feet before he went into the stall, but somehow I don’t think he was paying any attention.

The next day was Saturday, the rain had quit, the street was clear and the water had gone off in its own mind’s direction, with the exception of small lake surrounding the storm drain in the back of the property. The water was still backed up over two or three of my neighbor’s properties and not moving at all. I expected to see a small boat and water-skier at any moment. Either that, or one of the neighborhood kids yelling “Hey Dude! Surfs up.” I put on my trusty waterproof boots and went to clean out the drain to get rid of this unexpected trout farm. After about ten steps I discovered, the hard way, that the depth of the water was higher than the top of my boots. Oh joy! I poked around with a shovel for about five minutes, with very little effect, but could feel some of the debris starting to move.

All of a sudden all hell broke loose. A three foot whirlpool of water develop and was taking leaves and branches with it, and to some extent I began to worry that J.J. was about to be the next item being sucked into the flood control tunnel of oblivion. I got out of there real quick, went to high ground and took off my water soaked boots. The lake was actually draining. The sweet smell of success. Over the next few hours or so I had to clean out more detritus’s material, but the drain continued to do its thing. One of the chickens didn’t make it. Probably couldn’t swim.

The following week I got an appointment with the city engineer, the objective being to discuss this particular flood control project area. I was informed the city had no records of this project and had no responsibilities regarding drainage from the freeway system. I asked if they had any of the plans on file as it related to the land development of this particular area, which had once been a walnut orchard. The wonderful world of technology, “All the plans are on microfilm, except most of our files going back this far are not legible, due to improper storage. You’ll have to go to the County; we weren’t even a city when this was done.”

Thus began a year-long odyssey involving five different governmental agencies with limitless layers of bureaucracy. The only worthwhile thing that came from this effort was a comment made by one of these civil servants which was “You’re up a Creek with no paddle.” There’s a lot more to this story which bears a distinct similarity to “Alice” and anthropomorphic civil servants. But I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date and will have to discuss more of this after my meeting with the Mad Hatter.

Moral of the story: The fastest way to blind some people is to put a windshield in front of them.

The Golden Horde: The Finale

 We left this fish story with our multiple cold-blooded vertebrates enjoying their new home, a hand-built pond with a 4 foot waterfall, developed with loving care, lots of money and more than a little of J.J.’s blood. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go back and read the other episodes regarding this major contribution made to our household by our thoughtful children.

The pond was a great success. Well, maybe not great, but at least it worked! I did install some lighting as Blue-eyes had suggested. I even put in a timer so that the waterfall would commence cascading at appropriate intervals. The downside to this pond was I could no longer turn on the “1812 overture” and watch the fish go nuts. I checked around for an underwater speaker system – they actually exist – but gave up on that idea when I saw what some of the prices were. Besides that, I was having a tough time explaining to the salespeople that I was involved in a program of music appreciation for my goldfish. The local pet store was no help whatsoever, and told me they were tempted call the Pisces police.

One of the fish, which I had named “Deliverance” because of his acute dementia and possible stigmatism, must’ve thought it was a salmon because he kept trying to swim up the falls. Some of the other fish would gather around his starting point, and I suspect they were taking bets on whether he would make it or not. He didn’t, but he might’ve, if he had abandoned his banjo. He would take a running start, flap like hell, get about six inches up only to be knocked back into the water, and I could swear the spectators were giving him the Bronx cheer. He would continue this for five or six attempts and then abandoned his efforts, swim to the bottom of the pond and sulk.

As I mentioned previously, our aquanautic population had exploded expotentially and a small horde of teeny-weeny little things were cavorting, in a large mass, all over the place. They were too fast to count, but there was a bunch. I have to assume that I had more than one or two females who were sexually proactive. There was one large, pure gold beauty that I named “Jane” and I suspect that she and “Johnny Weissmuller” were having an affair. They were spending a lot of time together playing adult fish tag.

The little additions seem to be a happy lot, but what they didn’t realize was that their population was slowly diminishing. After a couple of weeks, I noticed that there were only about half of them still in existence. My assumption was that Nixon, as rotund as he was at this point, was still making his presence felt. Clearly – they eat their young. I can only assume that this is Mother Nature at her best. The offspring of the Golden horde were going to the great unknown, to visit the guppies. The only upside to that was it didn’t cost me anything. Some survived, but not many.

Blue-eyes revisited her friend with the Japanese pond that had provoked this project, and discovered that what “we really need to have was some Koi.” So, off I went to visit my friendly pet store and to buy yet more fish. Shockingly, the price of Koi per ounce was the same as gold bullion. Before I laid more bucks on the table I asked the clerk about the mixing of Koi and goldfish. I was assured that they were compatible, “Even though they may try to eat each other.” This guy’s concept of compatibility was certainly unique. My immediate thought was that this could define the essence of politicians, and that I also knew of some marriages that fell into that category. This was not the same person that sold me the original sacrificial guppies, and I asked what happened to her. The new “Pisces expert” told me that she was now the store manager, and the reason was she had set a new corporate record for selling guppies to unsuspecting goldfish owners.

I’m now the proud owner of five beautiful Koi and approximately $160 lighter. Naturally, Koi won’t eat regular fish food, and must have a special pellet which is twice the cost of a lobster at an upscale restaurant in New York City. I figured if the goldfish ate their young, they would certainly eat Koi food, even though the clerk told me they wouldn’t. My attitude was the same for the goldfish as it was for my curtain climbers. “Eat what you’re served or starve.”

My new fish family seemed to adapt real well, but it was clear that there was a new “King of the Hill.” Nixon had lost his position of power, and was forced to abdicate to one of the larger new Koi inhabitants. He was pretty upset, probably a little paranoid and wanted to call a press conference. I had to explain to him that that was not in the best interest of the continued harmony of his previous constituency, and he had to accept the fact that he was just another “small fish in a big pond.” But I digress!

Things seem to be going along swimmingly, if you will excuse my pun, with all the flora and fauna happy with their environment, with no apparent major conflicts between these two species of carp. The hoard was consuming fish food about as fast as I could throw it in there. I bought some more guppies, at a rather astronomical price, to facilitate the cannibalistic tendencies of thier aquian brethren. I stood there for a while, expecting to see absolute carnage, but nothing happened. I was extremely disappointed that I didn’t witness a feeding frenzy and told Blue- eyes, and her comment was the usual, “My mother told me you were weird!” By this time, the goldfish were so fat, they couldn’t catch the guppies. So now I have more damn fish to feed. I decided eventually the guppies would get frustrated because they were not being consumed, and slow down enough for the other fish to catch them. Evidently, this must have happened or they got really bored, and started eating each other. As a matter of more useless information, I couldn’t find the escargot that was intended to clean up the fish residue, and I came to the conclusion that I got sold some dud snails. Naturally, the warranty had expired.

Now, all is well with Lake Shasta. Not so fast! One night I woke up thirsty and went out to the kitchen to get some ice water. There was a considerable noise and rattling around in the patio. Much to my chagrin, I found two huge raccoons on a fishing expedition. One was in the pond, and the other was standing on the edge pointing out the fish. Having already had a bad experience with raccoon’s nasty disposition, I went and got a “three iron” and ventured outside to chase them away. They reluctantly, and leisurely left, giving me dirty looks and half the peace symbol as they departed. (A good thing too, a three iron is not my best club. I lean more toward a fairway wood.)

They had created absolute havoc, destroying most of the plants and had made a meal of a couple of the Koi and a few of the goldfish, one of which was poor ole deposed “Nixon.” As a solution, I considered using the low-voltage horse zapper used to protect fence boards in the corral. It gives the beastie a “harmless” shock, supposedly! I decided against it for fear that I would wake up one morning and find fried raccoons lying all over the place, and end up on the SPCA’s ten most wanted list. Clearly, the pond was not deep enough to keep the banditos from having a rather expensive dinner, using JJ’s credit card. Major design flaw!

A few days later, while contemplating this development, I walked in the back where the pond was, and low and behold an egret was standing in the pond, poking fish out and laying them on the side. I chased it away, assuming this was something of an anomaly. Two days later, ”Big-bird” was back, doing the same thing, only this time he brought a friend for lunch. I chased them away again, yelling that “Kermit the Frog” would hear about this.” By now what was left was one Koi, named “Kamikaze”, and about half the goldfish population. I had named him that because he had two black circles around his eyes which looked like pilot’s goggles. My friend “Deliverance” was still there, plucking away on his banjo. Even the fish gods protect those of us that are complete idiots.

I noticed the water level in the pond had gone down considerably and refilled it only to have it get even lower by the next day. After a few days of this routine, I decided to drain it to see what was going on and discovered dozens of little holes had been punched in by the egrets whenever they missed one of their targets. Some rips were clearly the result of the raccoon attacks. The rubber liner was now nothing more than a sieve. Back to the drawing board.

Blue-eyes got on the phone to her buddy with all the Koi and discovered that we should have had Lake Shasta at least two feet deeper in order to avoid this invasion of unwanted critters. Further, her pond was built like a swimming pool, and sounded like it cost a small fortune. One of Blue-eyes’ comments was, “Gee! Do we really need the fish?” I didn’t say anything, but my thoughts went back to when the “house apes” first brought the goldfish home, and how this whole thing started. “You can’t flush them down the toilet! The kids would never forgive you. They’ve named one of them after you!” I was afraid to ask what that name was. Besides the implications of sentimental history, my ego is now on the line, and this was really a matter of principle. The decision was made! You make it a cement pond.

For a change, I uncharacteristically, did a little planning. I numbered all of the waterfall rocks to preserve our architectural marvel, starting from the bottom, and then took a bunch of pictures so we could reconstruct this thing. I got my ditch digging buddy, (not Blue-eyes, as she informed me this “was not in her job description”), and after fishing (sic.) out all the fish, putting them into their semi-leaky aquarium, began the process of excavation. I found snails and they too had multiplied. Must be something in the water that always promotes procreation. (I wonder how snails do it? Slowly I suspect.) Hey! Three feet by eight by five is a real hole, especially in rock hard adobe, and the size was reminiscent of the Panama Canal. We hit water twice – some damned pipe that I didn’t know was there. Blue–eyes said that we reminded her of an “Oliver and Hardy” movie. (In case you don’t know them, they were an old comedy team like “Cheech and Chong” but without the pot and if you don’t know those two, forget that I even mentioned it.)

During this process the Blonde bombshell discovered some pictures in a garden magazine of a patio very much like ours, with a nice two-foot brick wall and waterspouts feeding into a pond. “I think this would look really nice!” she said, while giving me her big blue-eyed, enticing smile, and handing me a chilled Vodka martini J.J.is a real push-over for a Vodka martini. Slight change of plans! Goodbye “Vernal Falls” and Hello to a bunch damn feather rock that I no longer need. Now I need bricks, mortar, Portland cement, steel mesh, white plaster, plastic plumbing, a more powerful pump, cobalt blue tile for the sides, training, a second job to pay for this stuff and renewal of my weekly visits to my analyst. (Did you know that a bull-nose brick is three times the price of a regular brick? Not really important, but I thought I’d just throw that out there, in case it should be a subject of a trivia game.)

After about three or so weekends of concentrated effort, more of J.J.’s blood, our latest contribution to outdoor living was complete, brick wall and all. “Nixon” would’ve been proud! There was now new lighting on a timer that would probably keep my raccoon buddies away. I read somewhere they don’t like bright lights. Some of the “feather rock” was replaced in the bottom of the pond to provide a degree of shelter and privacy for those fish that were still sexually active. I found the snails and they were considerably larger and in greater quantity than when I originally bought them. I didn’t know whether to put them back into the pond or eat them. (Best served with butter, garlic salt-and-pepper.) There were now three spouts delivering large quantities of water from about 2 ½ feet. Deliverance was still pursuing his swimming upstream fantasy, still carrying his banjo on his back. The rest of the goldfish quit watching because they knew he just wasn’t going to make it. The raccoons gave up on the free lunch at JJ’s Restaurant and the egret returned, only to stand on the brick wall, looking longingly at the pond and leaving rather nasty deposits on the top of the brick wall. “Big bird” must have had some serious intestinal issues. Ugh!

This whole episode happened almost 25 years ago. The kids are long since gone, but the fish are still here. Their kids have enjoyed feeding and watching the horde during their visits. I never mentioned what a pain in the “tush” they were, the goldfish, not the grand kids. (Let me think about that! Just kidding!) I’m not sure how many of the originals are still around, but I suspect more than just a few, predicated on their lifespan. Chances are most of them are second or third generation. The surviving Koi bit the dust many years ago. I think he probably drowned.

Sadly, some time back, I was cleaning the pond and found a little tiny banjo floating on the surface, but no “Deliverance” to be seen. Maybe he made it up the falls after all. Years back “Johnny Weissmuller” got old, lost his ability to swing from tree to tree and “Jane” lost interest and was playing “fish tag” with someone else. But, they both subsequently have gone to fish heaven. As a constant reminder of what an idiot I am, I have feather rock scattered from one end of my property to the other.

Moral of the story: If your kids go to the fair and bring home a bag of goldfish, keep the goldfish and get rid of the kids!

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 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.

Don’t Fence Me In – or – Dude, Keep off the Grass, both types!

If you’ve been following some of my stuff, you’ll know that in “Border Wars,” I was putting up a huge grape stake fence that was reminiscent of the Great Wall of China. It took me about three weekends and couple of “sick days” to finish this job – not to mention a whole bunch of cash. Blue-eyes and the curtain climbers would alternate in holding the grape stake while I continued to pound my fingers. I had placed a level string from post to post to maintain a consistent height on the fence line. All the holder had to do was have the top of the stake just below the string line. Blue-eyes was pretty good at this, but the kids, being somewhat shorter, didn’t prove to be real competent. I came to the conclusion that they all lacked depth perception. But now the property was almost fully enclosed and the insurance company was a happy camper.

One of the things that is important in a project of this nature is called planning. I thought I’d done a pretty good job in laying out the fence line and executing post holes in their proper spacing, including positioning these all in place, facing the right direction and being somewhat level. Minor problem! J.J. forgot to plan for gates. For you “techies” that’s not Bill, but the kind that swing. I don’t think Bill is much of a swinger. This caused a minor flap in that everybody in the family had an idea of where the gates should go and what size they needed to be. I think the suggestions for gate location got around 20!

It was finally mandated that we had to have a gate for the corral large enough for a truck to get through – and a small gate so we didn’t have to open the large gate to get the horse out. So that dictated a large gate up front, near the entrance to the backyard so a truck could get in and – naturally, a small gate so that we don’t have to open up that large gate. We had to have a small gate at the other side of the front of the house so that we wouldn’t have to walk to where the other gate was. There was an area of the property that was not enclosed because it was basically a dry creek, except in the winter, with a storm drain and was about 3 feet lower than the nominal surface of the yard. So naturally, we had to have a gate there so we could get into the area to clean out the weeds and check the storm drain. We got that sorted out, and I had to revise my layout and sink additional posts.

At this point, the priority list mandated the labor battalion (meaning J.J.) move to concentrate on the front of the house. What little lawn there was, was mostly dead. The previous owner had installed a sprinkler system, however it didn’t seem to be working. I located two control valves and turned them on. Nothing! I looked around side of the house and found another valve and turned it on. Eureka! There was water shooting up all over the area and most of it was not going anywhere near the lawn. I decided to try to isolate the problem, and discovered that the guy had attempted to put in both a drip system as well as sprinklers. It clearly wasn’t going to work. After a few hours of trying to figure out this mess, I came to the conclusion that this was the sprinkler system from hell. I suspect this guy was ether drinking something or smoking stuff.

Rather than mess around trying to fix the problem, I just ripped out the lawn and the old sprinkler system. Good decision! The guy had put in flexible tubing, and unfortunately it had kinked in a number of areas and was absolutely useless. In the process of digging out this tubing I discovered tubing for water in areas that went nowhere at all, no input, no output and no sprinkler head.

I went down to the local garden store and got a truck load of loam delivered after I had rototilled the entire area. I got it all spread out, and dug the trenches for the new sprinkler system. I used PVC and had a lot of fun gluing my fingers to the pipes and the various fittings. By the time I finished, my fingers were purple and mostly stuck to each other. One of the more interesting things I learned was that this glue likely contained either or some other interesting substance in it, and you could get a little silly in a hurry. I found myself having a strong desire to say “Hey Dude,” and to begin sniffing the can. “Surfs up!” I jest as usual.

I got some good advice on the type of grass seed and put in the new lawn. I was really quite surprised at the variations of grass available. I’m talking about the type for growing lawns, not that other stuff! The new sprinkler system worked like a champ and I proceeded to stand around and watch the grass grow. About a week and a half later, a bunch of green stuff started poking its head above the mulch. Sweet success!

The guy at the garden store told me I had to keep the new lawn very damp and should water twice a day. Because of this, any little varmint that wandered into the area would leave its little footprints. That’s how we discovered that a mass of dogs, raccoons and cottontail rabbits inhabited the neighborhood. In some instances, the raccoons had dug up small areas, but the ground was so wet I couldn’t walk on it to repair the damage. I figured I’d fix it after the lawn came in. The cottontail rabbits didn’t do much other than to leave a little trail which is not really noticeable. The dogs left some rather interesting deposits that I just chose to ignore.

One morning I heard a bunch a racket in front and went out and found three of one of my neighbors horses racing around on my new lawn. I had put up small string barrier, about a foot tall with red plastic ribbon all around the entire newly planted area so that people would realize that it was not to be walked on. Two of the horses had gotten tangled up the string, and had pulled all the stakes out of the ground and were racing around, somewhat panicked, attempting to get free from whatever was on their hoofs. My new lawn was now a great big mass of horse hoof prints.

I recognized the horses as belonging to my neighbors in the back and went over to his house and woke him up. It was at least 6:30 in the morning. Time to get up, anyway. He answered my banging on his door in his PJs, cute things with little red hearts. I told him his horses were out. He didn’t seem surprised. He asked, “Where?” and I pointed in the general direction of my house. With that he turned and shut the door, clearly an unhappy camper. That’s what he gets for wearing PJs anyway. I’m a skivvy’s man myself, but that’s probably more than you wanted to know.

By the time I got back to my place, the horses were gone, along with my little string barrier. My neighbor showed up a little later and his only comment after surveying my newly destroyed lawn was “Where’s my horses?” I felt like suggesting, “Just follow the string and the muddy hoof marks!” I don’t think he’d had his morning coffee. Naturally, he did not comment on the obvious massive destruction to my infant lawn. Maybe he thought I had planted it that way. If that were true, I assume he went home later and said to his wife, “Boy! This new guy has a unique idea about what a front lawn should look like.”

He didn’t say squat – as in a “Hey! I’m sorry. Can I help repair this mess?” or even return to the scene of the crime. I figured he must be a soul mate of my “Border Wars” neighbor. I later discovered that his horses got out pretty regularly and went down the street to visit their buddies at the stable, which was a couple of blocks away. Within three weeks, my new friend’s house was “For Sale.” J.J. strikes again, making new friends all over the place and changing the basic topography of the neighborhood. I guess maybe I had discovered yet another non-candidate for “Welcome to the neighborhood committee.” Blue-eyes’ comment was “If you keep this up at the rate you’re going, we’ll be living in this neighborhood all alone!” I actually thought about that, but came to the conclusion it would be extremely difficult and too complex to accomplish. Besides, some of them were very friendly.

Moral of the story There’s two types of grass and sometimes you need both.

Border Wars: Hawks versus Squirrels and JJ versus Squirrely Neighbor

 

So that some of this makes some sense, you may want to check out my other little story regarding the new house, called New Abode. Now, you might get the impression that this is blatant commercialism, but the last time I looked the stories were free. I’m just trying to be helpful!

As you may recall, we moved into the new house which filled the needs of our growing family. More bedrooms, more bathrooms, more space and more problems. Not only was there work that had to be done on the interior to make life suitable and get Blue-eyes off my back, but we had to go about taming the jungle on this rather large lot. Blue-eyes had developed a rather lengthy “honey do” list. After some review and prioritizing, I could see that my weekends were shot for at least the next two years.

You might say that our new home was in an open space, because there were literally no fences between the properties on either side, with the exception of fencing that imprisoned the horses, but didn’t do much to control the horse flies. There were seven horses adjacent to the property, not including our own. This produced so much horse poop that some of these flies were as big as a small bird. If we failed to close the screen door, which was often practiced by the curtain climbers, we would be invaded by these huge flies and it was reminiscent of the scene out of a movie called “The Birds.” I was waiting for Alfred Hitchcock to show up at any moment.

We had one small fence surrounding a dead or dying lawn, but it did not enclose the property. We had a swimming pool and our insurance company mandated that the property be fenced. That made it high on the priority list. The unique view from our back patio was this rather ugly fence, and then a whole bunch of dead trees and high brush growth including – much to my chagrin – poison oak and wild blackberry bushes.

This little development had been built on what had been a walnut orchard, however most of the trees were in extremely bad shape and would eventually have to be removed. What little fruit the trees produced was being consumed by a multitude of squirrels. I’m not talking about just a “few” of these little beasts. At one point, I counted 11 squirrels in two trees munching away. It was clear that the only thing the squirrels had to do was consume walnuts and reproduce. Where did I go wrong?

This overpopulation was corrected – not by me and my trusty lever-action, Red Ryder BB gun. The local hawks initiated a slow elimination program of this squirrel heaven with a “swoop and grab” strategy, mostly executed in the morning. Breakfast is served.

I would watch this demonstration of Mother Nature in action with my morning coffee. Blue-eyes didn’t want any part of it and told me I was being “ghoulish.” My reply to that was it was not much worse than the morning news on TV. We were getting our butts kicked in Vietnam, and I found watching that was a pretty disgusting way to begin the day.

The hawks would sit patiently in a tree and wait until a squirrel hit the ground with its booty filling its cheeks, and usually the little varmints were toast. The more combat-savvy squirrels would wait until this predator would finish its dive and then take off for shelter, zigzagging like a World War II convoy. Sometimes they would wait, and two or three would scamper away at the same time. Those survivors were clever little devils. I could swear on more than one occasion I could hear the Hawks humming “Come fly with me.” The rest of this problem was resolved, for the most part, when I removed many of the trees.

The area that I wanted to enclose was about 200’ x 200’ x 150.’ That’s a lot of grape stakes and a whole bunch of holes for fence posts. I found the real meaning of terra firma was really “terribly firm.” The ground was not just adobe, but clay adobe, and during the summer, was hard as a rock. You couldn’t dig a hole without soaking the ground with water. Even though I had an auger, it was pure hell. I did discover that if things ever really got tough economically, I had a lot of adobe brick raw material and could go into the brick business. I did in fact make a small adobe wall out of our marvelous soil, however, the second time it rained it melted!

So, I began the process of digging post holes every eight feet, and approximately 18 inches deep. I know this is boring, however it will get interesting in a hurry. I’m putting holes adjacent to one of my neighbor’s property lines and as I got down about a foot or so, I noticed the hole filling with water. What the hell is this? I can’t believe that the water table would be that high, and then there was this terrible odor. I came to the conclusion that this was runoff from my neighbor’s septic tank. No wonder his small lawn was so green. This emission also provided an answer as to why that part of my property was like a bloody jungle.

I called him to show him what was happening. He was already unhappy with me because I was putting in fencing. He didn’t even offer to help install this proposed good neighbor fencing, let alone pay for any portion of it. I got even though, by placing the rough ugly side facing his property, not mine. Now he was even more PO’d because I had uncovered the fact that his septic tank was not working properly. The guy had no sense of humor. The upside of this was I didn’t have to put water into the ready-mix to plant the post. This area had so much fertilized water that the redwood posts seemed to me to begin to grow. I exaggerate, but I really expected it.

After I had dug all those holes and had secured the fence posts, my buddy came out and stated he thought the fence was on his property. I commented that I had found the property stakes and had basically put the fence better than 3 feet away from the property line. I took this friendly son of a gun (I cleaned that up), and showed him the surveyor stakes that revealed the property lines. This proved that the fence was indeed well behind that line. He didn’t say much, turned around and left.

Now, after the fact, the fence is up and I happened to go out front where one of the surveyor stakes had been driven into the ground. This is an 18 inch, metal stake. The stake was missing! Someone had dug it up. Hell, we’re talking over an acre of ground – three or four feet don’t much matter. Clearly this guy had a severe burr up his behind. I think that’s one of the last conversations we ever had. We eventually signed a non-aggressive treaty which included a clause that stated neither one of us existed.

To confirm the old saying “fruit does not fall far from the tree,” one of his sons came over about a month later and said that our dog’s barking was keeping him awake at night, and that if we did not control him he would call the Sheriff. I mentioned to this “Chip off the old block” that I was pretty sure it was not our dog, and he stated unequivocally that he knew it was “Rusty.” I looked at him and said that would be very difficult, because Rusty had been run over by a truck three weeks ago. This interesting young person just looked at me, turned around and left. I don’t think he was Chairman of the “welcome to the neighborhood” committee!

The guy on the other side was the complete opposite. He was a Naval Academy graduate and ex-pilot who had bent up some airplanes, and decided that real estate was a better place to be. So he was very happy when we moved in and began making improvements. He helped me put up fence posts and grape stakes, and watched as I consistently hit my fingers rather than the nail. He thought that was pretty hysterical, and I think I called him a “swab jockey idiot.” They had this huge Palomino horse that was slowly eating his corral, and I mentioned that I hoped he would not go after my fence. He said not to worry, they were moving him on to some other property. I got to ride this beast a number of times and I took Lucky, our horse, along just to show him what a real horse looked like. It did not improve Lucky’s disposition at all.

This was a really nice neighborhood, with the one exception duly noted. The houses were better than 100 or more feet apart and you rarely heard your neighbor. Facts are, you rarely saw your neighbor. We got to know most of the neighbors through their offspring, because we became Kids Central shortly after we moved in. When we bought our house it could’ve been classified as the ugliest house in the neighborhood. So for the most part, we received a warm welcome with our various projects. Over the years, it became a really great place to live and we all have very fond memories of the new abode.

Moral of the story – Love thy neighbor, but make sure you know where the property line is.

Vacation Home – Duex

If you’ve followed any of my nonsensical meanderings by reading the “vacation home,” then this discussion by a non-literate will provide the conclusion of this erstwhile “let’s get away from it all” endeavor.

We left off with JJ and the clan being the proud owners of the vacation home that I had grown up with and decided it would really be fantastic to have our own place. The assumptions were of course, as the kids grew, they would enjoy the same experiences that I had in escaping to the great outdoors. Blue-Eyes was in love with the canyon and was willing to put in the extra effort to keep our young ones in something of a corral, because we are talking about the great outdoors and wandering off amongst the Redwood forest is not a good thing.

The first summer I spent about six weekends attempting to reduce the jungle-like conditions that surrounded the cabin, while at the same time learning how to use the chainsaw without dismembering various limbs and other body parts. Fortunately, I had an Uncle who is a part-time tree trimmer and had all the accoutrements necessary to get up a 40 or 50 feet to trim dead Redwood limbs. After some instruction I took this task on, imagining that I was in the wild – and wild as a Lumberjack working in the great Northwest. Once I had mastered the technique of planting the climbing spurs and maneuvering the safety rope with a 14 inch chainsaw dangling between my legs I decided I was ready. I scampered up the first 20 feet and began to cut away some of the dead limbs. I made sure that safety was my major prerogative by yelling “timber” as each limb went crashing the ground. I do this more for effect. There wasn’t a soul around except possibly some squirrels and few chipmunks but it seemed to me that if I was 40 feet up a tree, that was the proper lumberjack thing to do.

I finished the first tree and selected another one, and had to get up about 50 feet in order to accomplish the trimming. When I got to the point to begin trimming, my climbing spurs dislodged and I tumbled, safety rope and all down about 40 feet before stopping. Fortunately, I let go of the chainsaw – otherwise I would’ve probably come down in two or three pieces. When I was safely on the ground I began shaking like a leaf and decided that the better part of valor was to hire my uncle, because a Lumberjack I was not! I think he left off some important information, knowing I would do some dumb thing and hire him to do the work. The front of my body was one huge mass of redwood splinters and multiple rips and gouges caused by my hasty descent. In my attempts to sink a spur I had sunk one of them into my left foot, but fortunately did little damage except to my ego.

I decided that was the end of my workday and went to the cabin and did a back-flip into very dry martini, shaken but not stirred. I’m talking about the martini, not me. Blue-Eyes looked at me and said, “God you’re a mess! What happened?” I explained what had occurred, and her comment was “Next time, take a parachute.” I think secretly she was hoping I’d go back up, as I was heavily insured for things like falling out of a tree and breaking my neck. There was a specific clause in the policy that said if it was a Redwood tree and I was killed, it was basically double indemnity. Like an aging Lumberjack, I hung up my spurs.

One of the things that needed doing, for safety’s sake, was installing chicken wire all along the rickety bridge to keep the urchins from falling 60 feet into the Creek. There was a railing, but it was clearly dangerous. So, I had purchased a couple of hundred feet of chicken wire and a bunch of staples and was hanging this on the bridge. My son Junior, who was probably six or so, was out helping by being the staple handler. At first he would hold the staple and I would nail the chicken wire to the railing, but after hitting him twice on the finger, he decided to move in to the role of management. He would hold staples and show me where it needed to be attached. After a couple hours he look at me and said “Hey Dad! Would you like a beer?” It was about 10:30 in the morning, but I thought it was a good idea because I was thirsty. What a great thoughtful kid, huh!?

He ran up to the cabin and out he came with a “church key” (which really had nothing to do with a church) left over from my college days and two cans of Buckhorn beer. Cheap stuff that only cost $1.25 a six pack. Using the term “church key” really dates me. There was no pull tab on beer cans then and packaging technology had only begun to develop a self opening sardine tin. The Buckhorn tasted like “elephant you-know-what.” If you’ve never tasted “elephant you-know-what,” which I haven’t, but have heard enough about allows me to define Buckhorn as falling into that definition. That’s not actually true! It was a lite Bavarian lager, made by two little old ladies in in their bathtub in downtown Cucamonga. I bought it only because being a charitable and benevolent person, I wanted supply some financial support to the aging.

When Blue-Eyes decided to economize, the first thing that went south was my personal refreshment budget, but she kept on buying her own personalized Habana cigars, 42 ring, hand wrapped and shipped from Cuba until the feds decided to punish Castro by forbidding the importation of a halfway decent cigar. Boy! We really taught him a lesson! Freud had to be rolling in his grave because one of his more famous comments was “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Or was that Groucho Marx? I always get those two guys confused. Sorry, I digress.

JJ, Junior, opened one and handed it to me. My first thought was he assumed I was really thirsty and would drink both cans. Then he opened the second beer and proceeded to drink it. I looked at him and said “you know that’s beer.” He looked at me and said “Yeah, but it’s really rotten beer.” He didn’t mention the “elephant you-know-what,” and if he had I would’ve really been worried. Furthermore, I was concerned that the six-year-old might drink that one and go help himself to another and I had a very limited supply of dear old Buckhorn, and really wasn’t ready to share – even with a family member.

I decided this might be a good object lesson, so I didn’t say anything and went back to hitting my fingers with the hammer. About two thirds of the staples went into the Creek rather in the railing. He drank about half of the beer and set it down. About 10 minutes later he said he had to go up to the cabin. Blue-Eyes had gone into town, an oxymoron for one street with one store, four bars, two small restaurants – one with Mexican food and the other Portuguese – which is just fantastic, a gas station and a fruit stand. Some shopping center! It had three churches, but from what I understand, two of them went out of business. After about 30 minutes when Junior didn’t come back, I went up to see what was going on and found him sound asleep on the floor of his bedroom. I thought about waking him up and asking if he would like a cigar to go with the Buckhorn, but I figured Blue-Eyes would nail my ass to the wall for that kind of object lesson. Besides, as I mentioned they were her cigars. I’m assuming that was his last beer for a while, like maybe many years.

A few years after our first couple of kids were born I came home from work one night with a puppy stuffed in my jacket pocket. It was a miniature poodle that I bought from a fellow I knew at work. I put the jacket on the couch where the kids were watching Capt. Kangaroo. If that needs explaining we’re in real trouble. I went into the bedroom to change from my mandatory suit and tie. The dog had crawled out of my jacket, very fortunately, because he immediately let loose on the couch. Otherwise I would not have discovered it until the next day, when I went to get something out of that pocket. Nature at work is real ugly stuff.

We let the kids name the dog and they came up with Moose in that he would probably not get much more than 6 inches off the ground. He was white, and a great dog during the early stages of his tenure. He had one major problem. If a door was open he was out like a bat out of hell, and I suspect looking for sexual gratification. Moose had been fixed! I had tried to explain the situation to him a number of times, but I don’t think he understood. He was a runner and stupid enough not to be able to find his way back, which is reminiscent of some of my cousins. Many days I would be circling the neighborhood on my bike yelling “Moose, Moose.” Some of my neighbors thought I had lost it and one even called the cops. Oh great! On another occasion the guy came out the door stopped me and said I was a long way from where I could find any Moose’s, and besides the season didn’t start until September. I told him thanks, went home did a backflip into a martini and forgot the whole thing. The dumb dog was tagged so eventually we got a telephone call and said we’ve got your dog. They were right around the corner and Moose had spent the last two days doing you know what on their back lawn, for which I’m sure they expected to be compensated or a reward but were very disappointed. I gave the guy a firm handshake and said thanks. I almost wished that he had kept the dog so that he could run around the neighborhood making an ass of himself.

Naturally, when we went to the cabin we had to take Moose with us, and in my long list of “honey-do’s” I had to build a chicken wire fence to keep this darling dog from becoming some raccoon’s lunch. I did, but to no avail. Moose broke out of jail. For the next two days, we spent our time running down the canyon yelling “Moose, Moose” with pretty much the same results regarding the dog’s ability to recognize his name, as well as many of the residents in the canyon responding similar to my neighbors at home. At one point, one of my canyon neighbors came out with the 30/30 rifle wanting to know where the Moose was. I didn’t bother to explain because I didn’t really like the guy anyway, and was hopeful that he would sit on his front porch for the remainder of the day waiting for a quick shot. Sunday was time to go home, and we’d given up all hope. The kids spent most of the weekend running around the canyon calling for this inbred moronic running poodle. We left quite late, curtain climbers crying all way home.

I was in grad school and still working full-time in aerospace, I called in sick, went to my two classes and pointed my car toward the canyon. I spent the rest of the day running up and down the access road still saying the stupid first name and expecting to get shot at any moment. Finally, I was getting extremely tired and needed to head back. I tried one more time starting at about 2 miles down the access road calling the dumb dog and trying to be responsible, but in my heart was really hoping that he’d been eaten. Finally, at the last minute as I’m climbing back into the car to head home, this little white beast full of all kinds of junk – weeds and burrs, and stinking like a skunk – came bounding down the road, and to my unjustified delight came directly toward the car. I assumed that it finally recognized his name and came to rejoin the family. Not so! The dog was so stupid he walked up to the car, took a leak on the tire and started to walk away. I had to chase him for a couple hundred feet and finally caught him and put him in the back of the car. If it wasn’t for the kids, I would have left him there. About six months later, there was a sad ending. He went thrashing out of the front door and right into a car. We had a burial service in backyard and made little wooden marker that said “Moose RIP” but in Spanish I noted “stupido morta canino.”

I finally finished my Master’s and was in the process of changing jobs to another company in the non-defense industry. Blue-Eyes went back to school to work on her Master’s, but soon got disinterested and didn’t finish, although she did accept a part-time position working for a University vice president and provost. This was the beginning of a 30-year career which found her in a top administrative position within the University prior to her retirement.

By now our family of five had grown to a family of six, and at this point it was a good thing to have the cabin because Blue-Eyes was starting to go stark raving mad and had not had her hands out of the toilet for about eight years. This was well before the disposable diaper option, which has summarily polluted the world and created blowflies the size of a small pigeon. I expected at any point to walk into the house and find her staring and talking to a lampshade. But she was made of good stock and really never complained. In order to retain her sanity, Blue-Eyes was working part-time and was able to capture the services of a 12-year-old daughter of one of our neighbors, which in itself is another story to be told at a later date. The sitter’s name was Emmy and she was a godsend, being raised in the middle of an eight child family. No training was involved and I gave her a lavish salary of $.50 an hour and all Buckhorn she could drink. I also offered her mileage but that really didn’t amount to much because she lived right next door. JJ was the last of the big spenders!

The next spring we started our “vacation home” ritual. By now I had a system down where I wasn’t breaking my back every weekend trying to maintain the cabin, but still had a continuing list of things that needed to be repaired or replaced or liquidated. Our budget was such that I can now actually afford to buy brand-name beer, but discovered that I was so used to the taste of Buckhorn that the expensive stuff tasted like “elephant you know-what.” One weekend we found a note from the fire district indicating there were some branches of a redwood tree that were too close to the fireplace. Fortunately, they were low enough that I could reach them from the roof because as I had mentioned I had hung up by climbing spurs. So – Junior and I went to work, got the tools, got the ladder and set about trimming the branches.

I had a small hatchet and sunk it into the redwood tree started to climb the ladder, when all of a sudden a swarm of hornets hit me and Junior at the same time. This was one hell of a big nest and we had really pissed them off. Junior was covered with them. I grabbed him jumped off the roof and ran down to the creek and threw him in. He had been stung at least 30 times and I had about half that many. Fortunately, right across the creek lived a doctor and I took him over and he gave Junior an antihistamine shot because of the amount of venom that was probably invading his bloodstream. He gave me a shot also, but it was bourbon, which I appreciated a lot more than the meeting of a syringe in my derrière. Anytime I see a needle in the hands of a nurse or a doctor I usually pass out. When I got back to the cabin Blue-Eyes asked me what had happened because she saw me beating up on the kid in the creek and thought I had finally gone over the edge. I got some hornet spray and went up cleaned the nest, sealed it and finished my trimming job.

When the kids were old enough, I taught them how to recognize poison oak and other flora and fauna that could be considered dangerous or at least create a high degree of discomfort. The creek (which had a sand bar) was the perfect spot to build a fort of rocks and tree branches. They had run out of convenient raw material and went further down the Creek, dragging back some branches and small logs. I was building a sandbag barricade to prevent additional erosion caused by the winter velocity of the Creek. All of a sudden I heard a bunch of screaming and yelling, and ran down the Creek to find all four of them deep into a pod of stinging nettles. Of course I had to rush in, being the Boy Scout, and rescue them from their life threatening battle with the demons of stinging nettle. Second opportunity to get my life-saving merit badge. I was wearing shorts, no shirt and was barefoot, and after about 30 seconds was screaming for help. We all grabbed each other and ran out, jumped in the Creek, and went up to the cabin to find Blue-Eyes and four gallons of calamine lotion.

In retrospect, the canyon was a great place! However, now people were living there full-time and had lots of rules and ownership prerogatives that had not existed before. The ambiance had changed. The atmosphere too! The nonresidents were looked upon as interlopers and the quality level of the canyon’s social content went to hell in a hand-basket. We now had a number of break-ins and stolen articles and general vandalism which was extremely discouraging and had never happened before. The other thing I noticed was the younger generation was not drinking beer and playing flashlight tag, but doing hard drugs. A member of a very prominent rock ‘n roll group of the 60s and 70s bought a place called the “chalet” and it turned into an unending party hangout for his buddies. Unfortunately, this also created a bad atmosphere, as well as attracting more attention from various law enforcement organizations. I made some money off the problems by leasing my cabin to one of these organizations, but didn’t know that until I got a check.

As I mentioned in my short chronicle called the “New Abode,” our first house was just too small and we moved. The new abode required a tremendous amount of not only maintenance but remodeling. The next summer we were so involved in our primary home that we did not get to the canyon at all, and after a family discussion basically voted to sell the property. In some ways it was a sad situation when I signed the papers, because I knew that a important part of my youth was gone. But I think Thomas Wolfe said it best; “You can’t go home again,” and not much stays the same. I regretted that my kids would not have the same gratification and memories of the canyon that I did, but the facts are they have their own and are probably just as satisfied.

Moral of the story – Most things don’t stay the same and you can’t dwell on the past, but only look to the future, and never name a dog Moose, because it’s a good way to get shot.

The Vacation Home, or Do you really want to be a “Tree-Hugger”

Many people have the notion that it’s really important to have a place to go to on the weekends, to get away from the humdrum of their daily routine.  Enter the idea of a weekend retreat for the purpose of relaxation and enjoying the great outdoors.  Really good concept – however, there are a few drawbacks regarding this marvelous “let’s get away from all” routine.

A sub-six section of my family – third cousins twice removed – owned property in a remote Redwood Canyon about 12 miles from the Pacific Ocean.  The facts are the property goes back as far as 1860, maybe more, when the first lumbering operation took place in this magnificent secluded area of gigantic redwoods, which was ravaged to build the booming town of San Francisco.  After lumbering operations stopped, some enterprising individual subdivided the land into one acre plots in a rather narrow Canyon, with a medium-sized Creek, placidly running except in the winter, from the top of a 2400 foot mountain, to 100 foot waterfall and meandered through the remainder of the occupied Canyon. It was pretty fantastic in the wintertime.  Outright scary!  In the early spring, steel-head salmon used to come up the Creek all the way to the waterfalls, but not anymore.  The skill of the Army Corps of Engineers took care of that problem by redirecting the mouth of this little tributary to build a military road that went nowhere and never got built. However, the salmon may be back.  (As a political comment, clearly nothing is changed, we still spend money on roads to nowhere.)

As a kid I had fond memories of our occasional visits and what a great deal of enjoyment the surrounding area provided: fishing, crawdad catching, swimming, snipe hunting and running around in the redwood forest with an occasional trip to the ocean. I had always dreamed that someday I would have my own place in this tranquil departure from civilization. Maybe I should change the word “dream” to the word “fantasy.” As a kid you have to remember nothing is ever quite as it seems.

There were very few people living in the Canyon on a full-time basis. It was mostly weekend or summer holidays where people would come in and stay for a couple weeks, but then pack up and go back to their normal routines.  There were probably 40 or 50 “summer places” of varying size and quality.  Some of the families would move in and stay there for most of the summer, but normally leave when the weather seriously reduced outdoor activity, or when school was about to start.

This little community had what could be euphemistically called a homeowners association, another term for “you are required to work your butt off on the roads, creeks and anything that would impede the ability to get into this remote Canyon.”  Ergo – the concept of the “work weekend” which was mandatory for all homeowners. The junior grade residents were not exempt from this activity, but were normally relegated to cutting brush away from the road and cleaning out certain areas of the Creek. This is of course is an oxymoron, because we spent more time screwing around in the Creek than we did working.  I’m sure it was adult psychology being applied, keeping us from being something defined as a “pain in the ass!”

The only fun part of this was on Saturday nights when there would be a big barbecue down by the new pool near the old swimming hole and afterward we would all play what was called “flashlight tag.”  Most of the older adults had retired to do whatever it was they would do without the kids around. Based on some of the laughter coming from the various cabins, I got the impression that the adults had a game of their own, which they did not wish to share with the younger generation.  Keep in mind, this was long before sex education, females were not liberated and were not even allowed to play “stick in the mud” with the boys.  (If you don’t know what “stick in the mud” is, check out the web.  Most of our attitudes were “they are here and had to be tolerated.”   We thought chauvinism was one of King Arthur’s knights.  Needless to say, my attitude forever changed in the next few years – not by social pressure but by a non–cultural definition called puberty, which was the worst two years of my young life.

Being young and innocent, I didn’t realize that the older “youngsters” were playing a game called “Beer Can” flashlight tag, whose rules were basically boy finds girl and both disappear into the night and wait for someone to find them, while secretly hoping they didn’t.  I didn’t think much of this, one way or another because at that point, in my short little existence I wasn’t interested girls. “Duh!”

One of those evenings, while hiding, I heard this scream and then a big splash over in the area where the old natural swimming hole used to be.  Being trained as a Boy Scout, I ran over and heroically shined my regulation BSA flashlight into the creek area, totally ready to dive in, to earn my life saving merit badge, and discovered that one of the girls had fallen into the Creek.  By my best estimation and limited knowledge of anatomy, she was missing some of her clothing.  Like in most of her clothing.  She promptly told me to “turn off the damn light” and her partner mentioned something about “get expletive deleted lost!”  I do remember my first thought was this game has taken on a new twist! Over the next few years I became very interested in playing flashlight tag and discovered it was much more fun to have a girl as a partner than one of the guys or hiding alone. I was tired of hugging trees.

A few years later, for some reason we did not go to the Canyon on a frequent basis, maybe once or twice a year to attend some big shindig.  Like most things in life, time forces different priorities and perspectives.  Although I never lost interest in those youthful events and endeavors, I didn’t seem to miss going there. Unfortunately, as I grew older, I discovered other activities and elements of life while in high school, such as girls, football, baseball and cars, but not necessarily in that order.  Plus, I usually had a job during the summer months.  After graduating from high school I made the decision that I wasn’t ready for college, meaning I didn’t have the grades, and essentially wanted a certain level of emancipation.  I ended up in the Marine Corps and didn’t see the Canyon again for at least four years.

After my military obligation was over, I went back a few times, but unfortunately things had changed or perhaps I had changed.  It was still a beautiful place, but as a young adult it did not fit my current lifestyle as an erstwhile part-time college student and full-time chaser of the females.  One of my first questions to the opposite sex was “have you ever played flashlight tag?”

Before Blue-Eyes and I were married, I took her up there a number of times and she just loved it.  We stayed with friends and I rediscovered the beauty and ambiance.  Several years after were married, with three kids and our first house with a mortgage, we began to investigate the possibility of buying into the Canyon.  We found a place whose owners had moved to a different state and hadn’t used the place for well over two years.  Although it was a tight fit monetarily, we figured if we watched ourselves it could be done.  The cabin came furnished, at least for the most part although it had the need for a couple of extra beds and household stuff, but that was easily resolved.  It was just short of a turnkey event.

So, dream come true!  Not so fast there JJ.  We bought the cabin towards the end of the fall and did get to spend some fun times setting things up and getting organized and making a list of what had to be done to corral our ambulatory two little ones.  Number three was only about six months old.  Our first house was small, two bedrooms, one bath and required very little weekend maintenance.  So, for the first few months we would spend most weekends fixing things as we wanted.  When the weather turned wet, we would go up maybe once a month or maybe even less.  Thankfully, people that live there year-round were kind enough to check on the various cabins and had a list of phone numbers if there were problems.  So, my thoughts at this point were “JJ, this is snap city, a no-brainier and you got to love it.”

The next spring was the beginning of what could be called “the worm turning.” We went up there in late February.  The weather was beautiful and we had a great time wandering and hiking up to the falls, and well beyond to what was an abandoned auxiliary airfield on top of the mountain, built during World War II. We didn’t spend much time in the Canyon until April.  I was extremely surprised at the unnaturally rapid growth of the vegetation surrounding the cabin, including multiple fallen trees, limbs, and various and sundry flora that required considerable trimming.

I did not have the knowledge or tools for this newly acquired responsibility and spent a considerable chunk of change needed rehabilitate our “get away from it all and relax” investment.  I didn’t have a clue as to what was really required and discovered a whole new world after talking with some of the other cabin owners.  Plus, I’m one of the ego, left-brain types when using most tool stuff, and subscribed to the theory that “if all else fails, read the manual.”  The only garden tools I had at home were a water hose, power lawn mower, a rake and a shovel.  And I had trouble with those!  No manuals! Blue-Eyes took control of the mower after watching me spend an hour trying to get it started, commenting “Not only are you weird, but you’re a total klutz.”  She had not played fair – she had read the manual.

So, starting in early spring we began spending most weekends in the Canyon for rest and relaxation.  Blue-Eyes’ job was to stock up the kitchen, clean up the accumulated dust, and make the perpetual “honey do” list and watch the curtain climbers.  My job was to clean up the winter debris and clear out the multitude of brush and stuff around cabin.  I also had to determine how best to discourage a family of raccoons who had taken residence under the cabin. Keep in mind, the place had been relatively unoccupied for approximately two years.  I’m sure the “diminutive bandits” were upset because someone had invaded their home.  You might ask, as others did, “Why would you want to do that?  They’re so cute and lovable!”  Well – they’re not cute and lovable when they decide to play their version of “flashlight tag” all around the patio and roof in the wee hours of the morning.

I tried a number of non-lethal things to extricate them during the few first months, with little success.  That June they just disappeared.  Mother Nature in action had prevailed.  I think they eventually found other accommodations with less noise and distractions during their sleeping hours.  Possibly the raccoons had a “let’s get away from it all” routine for the weekends.  Hell, why not!  If I were a raccoon, that would be an inviting concept.  They didn’t even leave a goodbye message nor any apologies for the multiple garbage can raids or for having supplied sleep deprivation during their tenure.  I later discovered my failure at varmint extrication was seriously and negatively augmented by the kids who were secretly – meaning “don’t tell Dad!” – feeding them leftovers and only stopped when one of the larger “cuties” became extremely aggressive and scared the living hell out of the two good Samaritans and Blue-Eyes as well.  We still got the occasional visitor, but the accommodation contest was over.  I naturally congratulated myself on my ability and skills to conquer certain elements of the great outdoors, but too late for my merit badge.

Over the next four years we did have many extremely memorable and fun weekends communing with the trees and becoming avid “tree-huggers.”  But like all things, time has a way of creating unknown circumstances and adjustments.

Watch for part two, it gets to be more fun, but not for JJ.

Moral of the story; “If it’s national Arbor Day, take a tree to lunch.”

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???