The old white man with white hair with Grinch eyebrows and mean eyes. Never touched by smile no creases or dimples cold and sharp intense in focus on his target. Reason his shield logic his sword with sharp tongue he degrades you. Your life status always lower than especially to she. It’s all driven by his need to hunt emerges to strike at what he despises in you, me and them. We are not worthy to share his glory at being him.
Has anyone else noticed that for such a grass roots movement, the Stop The Steal/Trump folks have somehow all managed to get their hands on professionally made, previously prepared, and ready-to-go signs, banners, flags, bumper stickers, and t-shirts, all of which somehow appear to have the same identical color schemes, font choices and design elements that indicate that they might have been created according to a specific branding style guide?
I have one of those giant useless tufts of grass in my front yard. It was there when I bought the place and it grows back every year, so that also explains why I still have it. It pretty much requires no maintenance, nor does it appeal to the local fauna for much of anything more than as a spot of protective cover between two more important places. So clearly you can see why I keep the thing. Nothing much happens with it. That is, until the other day…
As I am sort of waking (I’m extremely slow at it) up I hear my wife open the blinds next to me and then say, “What the hell is that?! Is that a groundhog? No, that’s a bird. Is that a bird?! What the hell is that?!” That last one was finally enough to get even me out of bed to look out the window.
As I looked straight down out of my window on my giant tuft of useless Suess-grass, I saw a big, brown feathered something sticking out from underneath it. It was just lying there with its front end into the base of the grass with it’s ass sticking out. The amount of body I could see indicated that it was easily larger than a duck. The only birds in this left in this area of New England large enough to still fit the bill were going to be either waterfowl, or raptors.
So I went downstairs to get a closer look, but in order to do so I had to open a door, and unfortunately that made enough noise for the bird to skedaddle. But not before I saw the tail and one giant wing open up as it took flight and headed off around a bunch of bushes and trees out of my line of sight. To the best of my limited knowledge, and based on the size of the talon marks it left behind in the bark mulch (below), there is only one bird in the area that it could have been.
But why the hell was it laying in my bush?! Contrary to what my kid’s think, I really do move enough to be considered a living thing by scavengers.
After reading a lot of stuff written by a bunch of smart people I have concluded that it was, well… sleeping I guess. And I am not even 100% sure I am right about that, but it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility after what I have read.
While not necessarily their go-to, according to All About Birds by TheCornellLab“Turkey Vultures nest in rock crevices, caves, ledges, thickets, mammal burrows and hollow logs, fallen trees, abandoned hawk or heron nests, and abandoned buildings.”
So, here is my question finally: Does this mean turkey vultures just occasionally fall down and pass out in the nearest bush like Otis The Town Drunk?
I have been setting up an area in my back yard that is animal friendly. It’s their section. There is a little bird bath and I have been starting to put in plants that will attract and feed them. Unlike half of my neighborhood, I also don’t use pesticides and try to let everything around here live and eat the food they like. The birds and squirrels seem to love it the arrangement. Something is always back there poking around. And I love observing them. Their way.
I also have a dog that is at least part beagle and black lab. And she loves to chase all things critter, period. And admittedly, I sort of enjoy watching her do what makes her happy (this is all helped immensely by the fact that she never catches anything). So as a way to make her backyard pee-trips a little more fun for the both of us, I like to psych her up by repeatedly asking if there are any squirrels outside… Yes, in a taunting voice. Anyway, once she is good and wound up, I open the door to witness a glorious mass scurrying and flying for the next 10 seconds.
Coming face to face with my own duality is harsh, man, I feel like the United States in the Middle East, here.
a single bird sits outside of my window on a branch of maple his beak sharp orange shrill bits chirp from it he pauses and considers — my concerns aren’t his
I once set out to create a religion as a prank, in true Prankster tradition.
You know, just to see if I could… like everyone does, right?
Now this was back in the days before Photoshop existed. And at the time I had unique access to systems that could perform that kind of “image magic”. And as an added bonus I could also print stuff in color, which was practically unheard of at the time.
This religion itself centered around a friend of mine who had long hair and a beard of the requisite brown color usually found in your stereotypical Hollywood-style light-skinned Jewish carpenter.
And as an added bonus, the guy’s name it got based on just happened to be a linguistic variation of yet another significant religious figure’s name.
And neither of these religions are known for their sense of humor in some areas. But I’ve always had an irreverent side. In hindsight, I am probably lucky I didn’t end up with some curse on my head, or much worse.
It lasted for a couple years. Myself and a few friends spread ‘The Word’ by sending out unsolicited prank mailers to our friends in far away cities.. We would include poster-sized color images of the (what I always thought was) buffoonery. And we would include some textual reading I wrote up that were probably about 2 steps above fortune cookie.
The whole thing ended because we met some people one day whom we didn’t know, and they way they acted made us wonder if they really believed this crap or they were just never breaking character in their own prank! Either way, it was time to put away the pulpit and hide for a while.
It’s a complex world, and some people are really susceptible to these kinds of ideas. But what is worse is that there are too many who would have looked for any opportunity to take advantage of these people.
