So I'm a Cat Person Now

I generally hate cats. I don't like their smell, their features or their adorable little antics; and their freaky owners usually wig me out too.

 In this one case, however, I am 100% pro-cat. Pro-mountain lion, specifically. To be precise, I have become a die hard fan of the estimated 22 mountain lions that inhabit the state of Nebraska; the ones upon which the State of Nebraska has declared open season. In any conflict between hunter and cougar in Nebraska, I am absolutely and without reservation rooting for the big cat.

I don't have a problem with hunting. I think harvesting one's own meat is actually superior to purchasing corporate raised and slaughtered beef and pork at the supermarket. I also have no problem with killing a threatening animal (key word: threatening). Furthermore, I really don't have an issue with a farmer shooting a predator endangering his livestock.

Here's the thing, though. According to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission there is not one documented case of a mountain lion attack on a human in Nebraska. Not one. Game and Parks has also been unable to definitively attribute any livestock deaths to mountain lions. I don't doubt that there have been farm animals killed by one of the big cats at some point since 1867, but the number is so few as to be statistically nonexistent, particularly since their virtual extermination in the state in the 1890s. Nobody is being attacked, and the current population of less then 30 cats is not a viable threat to people or livestock. In addition, Nebraska law already allowed for killing mountain lions that threaten people or attack or attempt to attack livestock. Given that we live in a Gun Lust red state, that allowance would be stretched as far as necessary for anyone who saw a cougar and, a la South Park, yelled, "It's comin' right at us, Ned!"

 Of course, safety, conservation and sense don't matter one bit to the dumb rednecks in this state, who would like nothing better than to power their ATVs with spotted owls, sandhill cranes and bald eagles. They just gots ta git thar shoot on when they're not gettin' liquored up watching other dumb rednecks turn left for three hours, or beating their wives when the Huskers lose (seriously, domestic violence rises measurably after a Husker loss). So who cares if mountain lions aren't a threat? Who cares if there's only 22 of them? Who cares if there's no use in shooting them? By Jesus Holy Christ, it's our goldurned right to shoot anything that moves, and we're gettin right tired of only pluggin' away at them deer and pheasant.

Our dumb, redneck, tobaccy-chawin' lawmakers, of course, agreed with their dumb, redneck, tobaccy-chawin' constituents, and they've opened two hunting seasons on a population of approximately 22 mountain lions. Sometimes it's embarrassing to be a Nebraskan.

So: I'm rooting for the underdog, or the under-cat in this case. If some dumb hick goof in his uber-cool wraparounds takes his gun and goes hunting for, to quote the World Herald, "... elusive and reclusive mountain lions ... ," I hope he finds them, and I hope the big cat wins. I hope the dumb redneck bastard gets caught looking the wrong way and gets his stupid redneck ass mauled.

Go Cats!

much peace, sort of,

tjb

All the Wrong Reasons

I've become far too accustomed to removing various articles of clothing at the behest of strange young women. I mean, they're all X-ray techs, but I feel so used. Am I a slut? much peace, tjb

Blood of the Lamb!!!

I don't give a flying fuck about the co-opted reason for the season; I just hate the motherfucking season. Bad music, bad movies and more blatant greed and profiteering than at any other time. Every divorce begins with Kay, buy your wife a BMW, your kids are entitled to a truckload of forgettable crap..etc., etc., ad nauseum. ... and don't get me started on Black Friday. I automatically hate all of you fat slobbery piglets frothing at the mouth while you push and shove and oink over the latest must-have small consumer goods. Give me some would-be witches dancing naked in a frosty field any day over this Roman-Capitalist consumer bacchanal. Once, many years ago, I allowed an ex-girlfriend to seduce me into a Black Friday foray to Best Buy. It was worse than anticipated. Hundreds of pairs of flat, dull eyes, lit only by a mean, petty avarice. It was like stepping into a sewer full of enormous starving rats. I could almost hear the chittering and salivating. The aforementioned witches were just as misled about supernatural mumbo jumbo as current christians, muslims, jews, etc, but drinking and fornicating out in the cold on the winter solstice sure beats manhandling each other over the latest tablet or game console. much peace, tjb

Transitory

Roses in frost. Sometimes the universe says it for you.

much peace, tjb

A Great Plenty

I've avoided posting much about my accident and subsequent recovery. While it may occasionally have made for interesting reading, doing so would have felt like a bunch of woe-is-me, narcissistic, looking-for-sympathy stuff. In strict definition of the the term, I have already received more overwhelming and humbling sympathy than a man could possibly ever deserve. In addition, most of my days are good, and most weeks are measurably better than the preceding ones. Minus the six pack and mutton chops, I've felt like The Wolverine in how quickly I've healed. I took the boys fishing shortly after getting out of the turtle shell brace, and I limp around pretty damn well for an old broken guy. I hit the gym pretty hard about five days a week, and I throw the football and frisbee with the boys frequently (I can't plant hard on my back foot yet, so my passes flutter a little, but all things in time...)

Anyway, the only real regret I have is that Max and Will and I have all suffered somewhat from our deprivation of nature this spring and summer. Since they could walk, we have been hiking whatever trails we could find, even the little one at Elmwood park that runs along the south side of the creek. I remember their faces alight while they trudged through the snow there one winter, and the way they ran laughing through the woods north of Omaha, and in the bluffs in western Wisconsin. This summer they got to come to the hospital and watch nurses try to find a good vein somewhere on their dad. While interesting in its own right, and an invaluable lesson in confronting adversity, hanging out at the hospital is a poor substitute for marching through sun, shade wind and rain. Their little souls, therefore, while taught some wisdom by the situation, suffered in the absence of nature.

So we went hiking on Saturday down at Indian Cave State Park by Nemaha, NE. We did about four miles on some very strenuous trails. Several steep grades shuffling through piles of leaves and some soft, almost spongy, earth. The boys groused a bit, as they had lost the habit of breasting these challenges, but their reticence was just more proof of the necessity of said struggles. We crested the last ridge towards the trailhead and, like they always do, my little foot soldiers realized the significance of the moment. We stopped and listened to the wind sing through the trees, and watched figures of light and shadow move in joyous harmony around us. They both talked about taking "photographs" to put in their memory boxes, all metaphor, of course for, "Remember this. Remember." They get it. I hope when they are middle-aged men, and I am old and perhaps more broken than I am now; I hope that sans eyes, sans ears, and stuck in a wheelchair on the deck or in the nursing home; I hope the three of us can perhaps recall the way the sun and wind felt up on that ridge, and the way the river glistened far off to the east. I hope we can recall how rich and just stupidly fortunate those moments were.

I tried to pay my brother Mike for part of the fishing trip one year, and he would not, of course, accept the amount I tried to give him. He took a portion and said, "That's a great plenty, Tommy." Those words, and the way he said them, stuck with me, and I think they're relevant here. A great plenty. That's how I'll remember this summer, I think. A great plenty, indeed.

much peace, tjb

Slug Habitat

While trying to catch crickets the other day, the boys discovered several garden slugs at the base of the neighbor's windsor wall landscaping. They asked if they could keep them as pets. Strangely, the neighbor did not object to the removal of the critters from her landscaping. Below is their temporary habitat, with food and decorative flowers included.

much peace,
tjb

Let There Be ...

I was driving home early yesterday evening when the back end of a three-day cold front began to pass over the city. The buildings and trees to the east were awash in eldritch light, and to the west, beneath the long line of cloud, the setting sun blazed forth. It felt like the first time I had ever seen the sun.

much peace,

tjb