Rain

Got muck?

When I was a kid, I remember watching a “Little Lu-Lu” cartoon where Little Lu-Lu was lamenting the fact that it kept raining and she could not go out and play.  She wished it would never rain again.  Well, she magically got her wish.  The rest of the cartoon was devoted to showing her what happened to the land when there was no rain.  The ground cracked and turned to desert.  The trees withered and died.  The flowers had their tongues out, panting and begging for water.  Not a pretty picture.  That cartoon has stuck with me all these years.  It was an effective brain washing tool from Hollywood, I suppose, because even to this day, I cannot complain about too much rain without having a guilty conscience.

But enough is enough!  It has been raining here for months! I write this on May 20.  We have had 10” of rain so far this month which is double the average amount for a full month.  We are all sick of it.  Even our last remaining pet duck was spotted hiding under the truck to get out of the rain.  It is so wet and humid here that the mildew has mildewed.  The mildew has growth rings on it, like a tree.  In fact, I took a core sample and counted the mildew layers.  They dated it all the way back to the Eisenhower administration.

The sandy soil on our property is so saturated with water that it is like quicksand.  I was walking in one of the ravines the other day, after another downpour, where the rain water drains into the creek.  I was wearing tall rain boots, wading in calf deep water when I suddenly sunk up to my knees in the mushy sand.  I instantly had a vision of being in a Tarzan movie and trapped in quicksand.  And, as fate would have it, I had no Cheetah to throw me a handy vine.  Lucky for you, my avid readers that I was able to extricate myself from the quicksand or you would not be reading this.  OK, so you are not the lucky ones since you are reading this.  But I digress.

Our property has a quarter-mile long dirt road from the paved street down to our house.  A couple of years ago I had some crushed concrete spread in front of the house and barns as a driveway. But for most of our road it is just dirt.  In dry weather it is just fine.  But due to all this rain, it has become a quagmire.    

I fired up my big Case International tractor and angled the box blade on the rear to scoop a shallow trench on one side of the mud road.  I made a few passes with the box blade and the trench was starting to get deep enough to drain the accumulated water from the road.  But with every pass the tractor kept getting bogged down more and more.  The mud was like cake batter.  At the end of our dirt road is our entry gate.  I was dragging the muck to a low area on one side of the gate.  As I turned the tractor around for another pass it suddenly sank up to its axle in the loose mud.  My efforts to get the tractor unstuck just buried the rear wheels even deeper. 

I spent hours trying to dig the mud from under the tractor but it was just too mushy to scoop out.  As I pulled out a shovel full, more slush would fill in the spot.  I was soon exhausted and had nothing to show for my work except a tractor buried up to its rear axle in mud.  I was hoping none of my neighbors would drive by and see that the dumbass city boy got his tractor stuck.  Luckily I was spared that indignation.

We were leaving the next day for a week out of town, so I had to leave the tractor there until when we returned.  I feared that any of the good old boys in the area would be skilled enough to get my tractor out of the mud then take off with it.  But then… I thought that it might be easier to fill out a police report for a stolen tractor than it would be to dig that damn thing out of the sludge.  But no such luck. The tractor was still there when we got back, tilted and frozen in position, like it was emerging from the primordial ooze.   

I started again on trying to extricate the tractor.  I have been told by a wiser person than me (as if that person was hard to find) that the first thing you should do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.  Well, I debated with myself as to whether it would be easier, at this point, to keep digging, or just bury it completely.  I decided to keep digging.  I disconnected the box blade and dragged it out of the way from the tractor with my truck.  The mud was more solid now and easier to dig.  I shoveled it out from under the tractor body and then dug a trench for each of the rear wheels. 

Where the tractor was stuck was within ten feet of Cherished Neighbor Liz’s property line.  One of her large pine trees was nearby.  I wrapped a chain around the tree and connected a Come-along, (a manual winch) to the back end of the tractor. I slowly cranked the handle of the winch.  My wife, the fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler, who had joined in the fun to help me dig, expressed concern that the tree would be pulled over before the tractor moved.  I said if her tree did fall on our property I would have to charge Liz with littering or trespassing.  Fortunately for Liz, the tree held, the winch worked and the tractor became unstuck.  Free at last.

I figure I spent at least 8 hours total trying to get that damn machine out of the mud.   The good news is that the trench I created before the tractor got stuck, was draining the water off of the road.  That was fortunate because it has continued to rain almost daily, ever since.  I am sick of it.  I am tempted to find that old cartoon and see what Little Lu-Lu said or did to get it to stop raining.    What’s a few dying trees or panting flowers compared to a mildew-less life?

Backlash - follow up to "Death on the Farm"

If it was only this simple to fix.

Wheeuu!  Did I ever get blow-back from the article I wrote about the unfortunate destruction of some wild bird eggs on our property!  (See previous post, if you must).  I heard from friends, relatives, and strangers about how badly they felt after reading it. (I actually was shocked that some of my friends could read).  After the story came out I was lambasted for entangling my wife, the Fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler, with these sordid details.  (I heard that from the Fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler).  

I went to sleep last night with all this on my mind, and had a terrible nightmare about it.  I woke up in a pool of sweat, choking and struggling to breathe. (OK, this could have been because the cat was sleeping on my face).  But the dream seemed very real.  This is part of what I remember:

In my dream, Al Sharpton was conducting a news event saying he was representing the estate of Humpty Dumpty.  Sharpton said my mis-treatment of the eggs was the continuation of a pattern of mis-treatment that white men have been doing to eggs for hundreds of years.  And he was here to collect reparations.

Then, the Easter Bunny drew a red line around our property and banned us for life from ever getting to dye Easter eggs again.  So, of course if we don’t have boiled eggs to dye this meant that deviled eggs were out of the question.  And apparently the Easter Bunny was also indignant about my preference to bite the ears off of chocolate bunnies.  But that should have been part of another dream.  In a related story, it was announced that I have been banned for life from attending any more White House Easter Egg Rolls.  

Our favorite Chinese food restaurant informed me I can no longer order egg rolls.  “Only fo goo customer”, I was told.

Local villagers stormed the gate of our property carrying pitchforks and Tiki torches (on sale at the Dollar store for .99) in a menacing manner, until another rain storm put out the torch’s flames.  Soggy villagers without their lighted torches, are not nearly as menacing, so they quietly disbursed without incident. 

The Soup Nazi from the old Seinfeld TV show appeared in my dream and knocked me on the forehead with his ladle and said “No Egg Drop Soup for you!”

Woody Woodpecker showed up and pecked the words Baby Killer in the wooden siding of our house. 

A herd of domesticated hogs marched in unison (they seemed to be goose stepping), carrying frying pans like weapons.  They were chanting something about I get no more bacon since I mistreat eggs.  I had no idea there was solidarity there.

You know how PETA protests the wearing of real furs by sending beautiful naked models an event wearing fake furs?  Well that didn’t happen in my dream.  They sent, instead, a naked Rosanne Barr, covered with powdered eggs.  She dared to jump in the lake and rinse off to punish me further.  That would have just been too much.

Then, the Iron Chef stormed into our kitchen with a camera crew, shooting a live TV broadcast.  He immediately berated my culinary skills, and took away our egg whisk.

My nightmare continued when I saw a giant yellowish slimy omelet oozing its way slowly thru my house, like the horror movie, the Blob, absorbing everything it touched.  I escaped only by luring the omelet blob to a nearby IHOP and changing the breakfast special to omelets.

Near the end of the dream, disgraced NBC newsreader Brian Williams appeared.  It was his first broadcast after his suspension for his exaggerated claims while reporting in the Middle East. He said “I have never heard such a horrendous story”, referring to my post.  He went on to say that “it was a shame and tragedy for those eggs to have been wasted”.  He continued with “back when I was inventing the Polio Vaccine I used eggs to propagate the vaccine”. 

And the worst indignation was when the Fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler told me “this is why I don’t have your blogsite linked to my blogsite.  I never know what you are going to write and I don’t want ANYONE to know there is a connection between us!”

Lost in all the focus on the wild bird eggs that were destroyed was any concern for the poor fishing worm.  No one seemed to care about his plight.  But the worm had no comment.  After his encounter with the largemouth Bass, he still did not have a head.

Death on the farm.

Death on the farm.

It has been a wet winter and spring this year in South East Texas.  The Farmer’s Almanac nailed it again with their weather forecast.  I don’t know how they do it, but they always seem to get long term weather forecasts right. They say the upcoming summer will be a dry one here.  We shall see.  I believe what they print. If the Farmer’s Almanac ever writes that Global climate change is man caused, then I might finally get on board with that theory. 

Anyway, the small lake on our property has been full to over-flowing for months now from all of the rain we’ve been getting.  It is nice to sit with my wife, the Fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler, on the small dock that I built and absorb the simple beauty of the water and surroundings.  She and I have spent many evenings sitting on the dock, chatting about life.

One evening, as she and I were out there, I was casually tossing a lure into the water with my fishing rod.  I never catch anything worth keeping and said so.  She commented that in the nearly six years that we’ve lived at the farm, that she has never fished. I never really thought about that before, but I did not recall her ever doing it. That would not stand.

The very next day I went to the store and bought a tiny package of night crawlers for her to use as bait.  I figured her kind of fishing would be to cast and watch the bobber type of fishing so I rigged up a hook and float for her. I baited the hook with the worm, but that little fellow squirmed around so much that I almost could not do it.  His body was so pliable that I could hardly hold it tight enough to force the barb into it without mashing him flat.  And as soon as the worm realized that it is about to be skewered on to a pointed metal shaft it started thrashing about like it was being electrocuted.  I don’t blame the little fellow. 

My wife and I often anthropomorphize animal behavior by giving human traits to the wild creatures that we live with. We did the same to the night crawler.  We were imagining what it would be like to be that worm.  One minute you are comfortably buried in a lovely moist tub of compost in a tidy Styrofoam home.  Suddenly the roof is pried off, and these giant fingers appear out of nowhere and begin to re-arrange your living room furnishings.  You are rudely grabbed by the belly and jerked right off your couch.  Suddenly you are in the harsh open air and blinding light.  You are being squeezed by those monstrous fleshy fingers.  You vainly thrash about, hoping that somehow you will win your freedom. 

The monster fingers force a hideous spiked object right thru your guts!  What did you do to deserve this?  You were just minding your own business, at home, reading the Worm Street Journal, when your earthworm world was turned upside down.  Ouch!  You would scream for help but don’t have vocal chords.  You’d fight back but don’t have hands, feet or teeth.  How unfair is this fight, anyway?   Even with the giant barbed spike thrust right thru your body you continue to valiantly struggle.  The hook is tethered to a string that is connected to some kind of flexible stick.  What is this, some medieval torture device?  Suddenly you are flung out into space, like being on an amusement park ride.  But you are not amused.  You and the barbed torture mechanism abruptly hit water.  You can’t breathe!  And you can’t get off the hook.  You wonder to yourself can it get any worse than this? ....just as a largemouth bass bites off your head. 

Worms are not the only creatures that have had deadly human encounters because of us recently.  And it is not that my wife and I are bloodthirsty.  Quite the contrary. To paraphrase the worm’s situation, compost happens.  

We’ve tried to encourage more variety of wildlife to visit our property, so last year I built a duck nesting box.  We wanted Wood Ducks to build a nest in it.  I mounted the nesting box on a galvanized pole in about two feet of water on the edge of the lake.  I used the exact specifications provided by Texas Parks and Wildlife for the box. I made it from cedar so it would not rot, and put wire mesh inside it so the baby chicks could crawl out and drop down to the lake water right below the box.

I was checking on the duck box a few weeks ago, and noticed nesting material falling out of the bottom of the box.  That did not make any sense.  I got closer and realized that the bottom board of the cedar box had curled up and popped loose.  All the nesting material was falling out.  Worse yet, I saw eggs floating in the chilly water just below the box.  I counted a dozen eggs that were ruined.  I mentioned at the beginning of this piece that we had been getting a lot of rain lately so it appears that the cedar wood curled up from the moisture, and pulled the trim nails out that I used to build the box with. My poor choice of using too small of nails, meant I was responsible for the death of a dozen baby Wood Ducks.  Damn.  I slowly walked back to the house, dreading giving the news to my wife.

Fast forward to a day ago.  The fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler asked me to help her deal with a dead tree that was rotten and was starting to lean over the road near our barn.  It was about the size of a small telephone pole.  It was only being held upright by the branch of another tree.   She figured it would fall right in the road and block her from being able to drive out.  The “tree” was just a dead stump, about 20 ft. tall.  It had no branches since they long ago rotted off.  It was riddled with holes made by birds and other critters who like the high rise lifestyle.  This was the same tree that she spotted a small Screech Owl in last year.

I asked her if the owl was still living in the tree stump.  She said she hadn’t seen him for months.  We started pushing on one side of the tree, when suddenly a large bird flew from the top of it.  It was brown, and I could tell it was a raptor, but since I am not a bird guy I could not accurately identify it. We figured it was probably was the owl.  But now we had made the tree even weaker, so we had no choice but to finish the job. We pushed the tree over and it hit the ground with a big thump.  The stump broke upon impact and the rotten wood burst apart.  In the debris we spotted three small broken bird eggs.  The owl must have built a nest in the tree after all.

So the death toll for birds in the past few weeks is twelve that were my fault and three for the wife.  Both events were unplanned and unwanted.  But both were preventable.  It saddens me to know that we killed a generation of Wood Duck and Screech owls by our ignorance.  Bad humans.  Bad.

I hope the wild life here on the farm does not blame us for these tragic events.  We want to make a good environment for them to prosper.  That goes for the all the critters here; the mammals and birds, all the way down to the lowly worms.  In fact, I would have liked to hear the comments from our friend the night crawler about all of this.  But sadly, he cannot comment because he does not have a head.

 

 

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME

Yes, Officer, the Emergency Room is right over there.

I recently read a back issue of Popular Mechanics magazine and took the “are you handy” quiz from the Nov 2014 issue.  When I was taking this quiz, I thought to myself that it was possibly the perfect “are you handy” quiz.  Then, as I reflected on the questions, I realized it was not the perfect “are you handy” quiz because it did not mention Mamma, getting drunk,  or trains.

But since this was an “are you handy” quiz and not a Country & Western song, I guess those elements don’t have much of a place in the quiz.  But the time I used to reflect on the quality of this quiz did allow me to wonder why certain handy man situations were not covered in it. Therefore, I have written some additional questions to add to the Popular Mechanics “Are you handy” quiz. My hope is that you, the reader, will judge this to now be the perfect “are you handy” quiz.

Let’s get started:

1. How many trips to the local hardware store do you average for a typical project?

               a. 3   I spend more time in checkout lines than I do on the project itself.

               b. 2   I have gotten my purchases down to a fine science, almost.

               c. 1   I make you sick with my efficiency, don’t I? 

               d. 0   Never.  If I can’t build it out of wood, rock or dirt found from right off of the land, it doesn’t need to be built.

2.  During your project, how often do you consult your “Handy man’s guide to fixing anything” book?

               a. 0   I don’t need no steenkin book.

               b. 1   I am a quick study and have this book almost memorized.

               c. 2   I always double check my reference material before proceeding.

               d. 3 or more times. Geez, my project looks nothing like the drawings in this damn book.

3.  When is it acceptable to call a home improvement expert doing a call in radio show?

a. Never.   You can’t bear the thought of every listener in the entire broadcast region laughing in unison at your stupid question.

b. Always.  You don’t want to go back to the hardware store and ask the sales associate to explain it to you for the fourth time, so calling in to a radio show is the lesser of the two evils.  Especially since you can use a fake name and a foreign accent. 

4.  When doing a home improvement project, the very first thing the home handyman should do is:

               a. Check for deed restrictions and city permit requirements

               b. Watch the weather report to see if the weather will negatively impact your home improvement project

               c. See if your power tools are in top working condition

               d. Make sure your medical insurance premium is paid and you know where the nearest emergency room is.

5.  When you know your project will require more than one person to do the project safely you:

a. Ask your handy man neighbor to help out in exchange for a future time when you will help him.  The only problem is that he seems to disappear whenever you open your garage and get out the saw horses.

b. Get your wife to hold the other end of whatever you are moving, lifting, nailing, cutting, or otherwise manipulating.  She will be especially happy to help since she knows her input into the design and planning of this project has been taken into consideration until the moment you tell her it can’t be done that way.

c. Go to the home improvement store and find a couple of undocumented laborers from the parking lot.  They can’t speak English, and they don’t know how to do what you want or understand what you want done, but they are cheap labor.  They don’t need to get paid a lot of money because now they know where you live and can come back to steal whatever you have that they want.   

d. You don’t need no steenkin help. 

6.  What is an acceptable loss of blood on the average do it yourself project?

               a. A small trail of it from the worksite to the kitchen sink.

               b. A small trail of it from the worksite to the emergency room door.      

               c. A puddle large enough to slip and fall down in, injuring your head, causing significant brain damage.  Injuring your    head and  causing significant brain damage.  Injuring your head and causing significant brain damage.  Injuring your head and causing  

               d. What’s a little blood?  I still have most of my fingers.

7.  Who do you admire most in the home handyman world?

               a. Yourself.  You are a loner, a rebel, a home handyman god.

               b. Bob Villa’s face is tattooed on your bicep

               c. The guy who does the power tool infomercials on TV.  He can make those tools do ANYTHING

               d. Your handy neighbor.  IF you could ever find him.

8.  Bonus question:   _?_  is a reasonable number of times to use swear words while doing a project:

               a. If I were a reasonable person I would NOT be doing this damn project.

               b. If non-swear words were as effective as swear words, I wouldn’t need to use them

               c. I only swear during the actual project time.  When in the home center, the emergency room, or at the liquor store during the middle of the project, I do not need to swear.

               d. Swearing is an integral part of the home handyman process.  I know this to be true.  Otherwise, why would the Home Handyman radio program host always swear when I am on the line?

Scoring:

You get 10 points for a right answer and zero points for a wrong answer.  It is all or nothing.  Sorta like when you wired up the 220V dryer to a 110V circuit.  You get nuttin.

Correct answers are arbitrary, just like choosing between a Binford 9000 Power Washer and a DurtBGone XL Power Washer.  Just as it is completely arbitrary if the machine will start the next time you need to use it.   And the probability of whether the engine starts is inversely proportional to the cost to rent the same machine from the home center. 

And finally:  don’t try this at home.  Get your Handy Man neighbor to take this test, instead of you, if you can find him.

Was this so wrong?

The pet store

Years ago, I was in a pet store with one of my daughters who was probably a young teen at the time.  We were in the checkout line and the register operator had a parakeet, or some kind of pet bird on his shoulder.  I figured that anyone working in a pet store with a bird on his shoulder was someone who probably had a good sense of humor.  When it was our turn to pay, I casually said, to no one in particular, “Gee, it looks like that bird has an ugly growth on its butt”.  My daughter thought it was very funny.  The checkout guy was not amused.  The bird was non-committal.  Was I wrong in making this joke?  Was I wrong not to double-check the invoice to see if he charged me for a 1,000 lbs. of elephant dung in addition to my purchase?

Who cut the cheese?

Sometime around 2008, I believe, I made my first trip to Romania.   I budgeted a week to be there but was done early.   That was nice because I was hoping to spend a full day as a tourist in the old part of the city of Medias.   I am not a good business trip tourist.  Normally I just fly in, do my work, and leave on the next available plane.  But I had already booked my return flight and I was happy for the extra day to explore the city.

I spent most of that week traveling with a German fellow, Peter, who was in Romania to help as an interpreter and as our meeting facilitator.   On our last day together we stopped in a Romanian food market.  There were dozens of open air booths outside and many more shops inside the market.   This is the kind of place you see on travel shows where the vendors all wear white aprons and have big toothless grins that appear when tourists with money stroll by.

I wasn’t buying anything but Peter made a beeline for a particular cheese shop.  He wanted to bring home a specific kind of goat cheese that this shop sold.  We found the shop and after a few moments of them haggling back and forth she pulls up this grapefruit size ball of white cheese.   Its texture was like stiff cookie dough and the color was that of cottage cheese.  She sliced off a thumb sized piece for me to sample.  I love cheese so I popped it in my mouth with no thoughts.   It had a bland flavor, as I recall but I vividly remember thinking that the cheese was tainted. 

Peter dropped me off at my hotel and I looked forward to playing tourist all the next day. But my guts had a different agenda.   I started to get seriously sick within a few hours after checking in to my room.  I was either throwing up into the toilet or sitting on it for the next 24 hours.   Sometimes I had to make a split second decision between sitting on or bending over the toilet since things were happening on both ends simultaneously.  Needless to say it was the sickest I have ever been or ever hope to be.  Every time I would start to throw up my brain replayed the memory of the cheese lady handing me that sample.  I am fortunate that I had the extra travel day in my schedule so I could use it being sick in my hotel room rather than being sick on the plane.    Gee…let me think…was eating that cheese so wrong?

The voice of a terrorist?

A few years ago, I was with a colleague on a multi-day business trip.  We flew to another state, rented a car, and had several meetings with customers.  I am the one who always has to make the trip connections and accommodations, as well as conduct the actual business with the customer.   I made sure the rent car had a GPS device in it to tell me how to find the various addresses we were scheduled to visit.  The GPS told us in a cheery Mid-Western American woman’s voice exactly where to turn and what road to look for.  It was a demanding trip.  I was glad when it was over.  

We returned the rent car and I parked it in the return lot.  On a whim, I changed the language of the GPS device from English to Arabic.  I also may have tweaked up the volume of the device.   So when the next person turned on the GPS, they would suddenly hear a loud voice blathering on in Arabic.  I wish I could have witnessed the reaction of the next driver when he heard an Arab’s demanding voice shouting out of the GPS.  Many people don’t know it is possible to change languages, so the Arabic language might stay on the device forever.  Changing the language was my little bon voyage to this stressful outing.  Was that so wrong?

A bad taco

It was probably 20 years ago, when a trio of buddies and I went down to Belize, South America for a four day fishing trip.  I believe it was late spring time.  The weather down there was hot, as it is year round and during our trip it was no exception.   We were on the island of Ambergris Kaye, and so it was breezy but still hot and humid.  We were staying in a very nice condo with great air conditioning, which was quite a contrast to the outside air temperature.  

One morning, after a late night of beer drinking at one of the outdoor bars, we stumbled into town from our condo to find some breakfast.  It was a short walk down the beach from the condo to the area where we knew a few eating establishments were located.  The sun was beating down on us like an infrared oven.  I am not going to admit we were hung over, but as I recall, we did consume a vast quantity of adult beverages the night before.   Our hike into town was driven by the need for caffeine and food, but there did not seem to be anything open.  We were on “island” time and the few eating establishments that were in Ambergris Kaye apparently did not open until mid-day.  Damn.  I needed coffee badly.

We kept searching until the aroma of cooking food was in the air.  Picture us, following this invisible aroma like we were zombies looking for new flesh.  We kept walking till we finally found the source, an outdoor taco stand.  The “restaurant” was just a guy with a hot plate, cooking scrambled eggs and some kind of meat products.  He’d wrapped the eggs, meat and condiments in soft flour tortillas.  I kind of doubt that the Health Dept. has ever inspected this establishment, but my empty stomach told me to order food, and NOW.      

We each purchased several breakfast tacos and found a quiet area in the shade to eat.  The ocean breeze felt wonderful.  I scarfed down my first taco but one of my buddies, John, just could not bring himself to eat his.  He just did not trust it.  He noticed a skinny, half-starved hound dog walking past us, so John lured the dog over by waving a taco near the ground toward the dog.  I had just starting my second one when the dog trotted over.  John tossed the starving dog his taco.  The dog quickly ran to it and sniffed it.  He looked at John, then looked back at the taco, and just turned and shuffled off.  That skinny, half-starved mongrel dog just refused to eat something that I was happily consuming.  I looked at the remains of my second taco and wondered if I had made a horrible mistake.   Was the dog wrong?

In conclusion:

So, there you have a few snippets of my travel experiences where you the reader can decide if what I did was wrong.   If you feel so compelled you can comment on this blog if you have anything clever to add.  I will pick the best “Was I Wrong?” submittal and send you a commemorative T-shirt.  The Fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler begs me to discard my worst worn out T-shirts annually so I might as well put one to good use by pawning it off on you instead of a real prize.   Is that so wrong?