Odd Days: Bird Perils

I cannot drop the critter thread without a brief blog on birds.

When we first moved to CO, we learned that although we had protected ourselves from death-by-earthquake, we had traded one hazard for several others.

One of the new hazards was west nile virus (our county and our neighboring county led the state in WNV cases). Another was avian flu. And in fact, an article in the local paper advised us to call the health department if we came upon a dead bird.

Within a week of the time I read that article, I found a dead bird on our porch. Naturally I called public health, but the woman who answered the phone told me to put the bird in the garbage.

Huh?

I was indignant that she had so little regard for my (and Durf's) health, but what could I do? So I put on my HAZMAT suit and dropped the bird into a plastic bag. Then I nested that bag within 14 additional plastic bags and tossed the entire bundle in the garbage.

A few days later, Durf and I were reading the newspaper in the living room when we were both thrown from our chairs by what sounded like a sonic boom right outside the house. We dashed out onto the porch and found...yep, you guessed it...a bird. It had flown into our front window. I headed toward the garage with the intention of retrieving my HAZMAT suit when Durf asked what I was doing. I said, "Two words: Avian flu."

After he was done laughing, he said, "That bird just flew full speed into our picture window. What do you think killed it?"

"Why," I asked haughtily, "would a bird fly directly into a window unless he was impaired by some deadly disease? Duh!"

Well, over the last six years, we have learned that birds are drawn to our picture window like Florida lovebugs are drawn to windshields.

Colorado score: +1 (birds safer than earthquakes)

Dissendat.

The number up yonder is the number of visits to this blog.

Here is a photo of Mr. Snake. He was leaving at the time:

Typical atypical and tree begone.

One thing that keeps Colorado from being boring is thunderstorms. They happen almost anytime and they usually disappear quickly.

Today I was sitting in my office when I saw a lightning bolt shoot out of a clear blue sky not too far in the distance. A few minutes later the sky got dark, then it started to rain. Soon we were having one heck of a thunderstorm. The wind was blowing really hard and rain was falling in sheets.

Twila was in the kitchen and I was standing at our front window, watching the show. Suddenly our tree lifted out of the ground right in front of my eyes, then disappeared to the north. My mind was boggled.

Here is the tree in its better times:

Now it looks like this:

and this:

Never a dull moment, I guess.

I love this.

State of the T-Rex.

Now she's looking more like a helicopter. There's work to do, though. The linkages that control the pitch of the rotors have to be connected (just snap them on), and some electronics need to be installed. When that's all done there's a calibration procedure that will take a couple of hours.

I just ordered parts that weren't included in the kit: a battery, a battery charger, a receiver (receives signals from the radio), a pitch gauge (to calibrate the pitch of the rotors), and a replacement for a part I broke during assembly ($1.25). The total was $390, which is almost as much as the heli cost. I probably should have picked a cheaper hobby, like worm farming, or something.

The dark side of all this is something Twila said she was going to blog, but she didn't want to jinx me. The T-Rex took many hours to build, and it was expensive, and there is about a 90% chance that I will crash it in the first 10 minutes of flying. I'm going to get a flight simulation program so I can practice on the computer, but outside there is wind and excitement and tension, and been there, done that. OOPS, crash! And $$$$$$ flying away. Just breaking a rotor blade is $50, and they break easily.

The bright side of this is that... is that... well, it's a neat looking helicopter!

Odd Days: Moth Murderer

Jan asked how I feel about our moths. I'm so glad she asked.

We have a boatload of miller moths every year, not because I keep a bug-friendly house. No, it's because we are in their migration path. And it isn't the first time our house has been in the path of swarms of insects that are on their way somewhere else. In Dublin we sat smack dab in the middle of the ladybug migration path. I'll bet you didn't even know there was such a thing as a ladybug migration.

Now, it's true that having large quantities of ladybugs in your house is not that pleasant. They are *not* cute. And when they get stressed (like when they hear a vacuum approaching) they bleed yellow blood as some kind of weird defense. But that's about it. And then they are gone in two weeks.

The problem with the moths is that they think the house belongs to them. As soon as you sit down in the evening to read a book, they join you, flapping around the light and dive-bombing your book. They also like to hide in the folds of towels and jump out into your hair just as you reach for the towel. Oh yeah, they also like to hide in the toes of your shoes, but they don't always escape before you put your feet in. What's really annoying is that they die wherever and whenever they feel like it. You are forced to spend a significant part of your day (for a month, btw, not two weeks) vacuuming them up because if you wait for the dust-to-dust part of death, you're going to have a rancid-smelling house.

I don't like miller moths. And I'm not alone. A woman wrote an article for our local paper in which she described in gory detail the methods she has devised to murder the moths that enter her house. Durf thought she sounded sick and insane, but I'm not so sure. The water boarding torture chamber she built looks like just the ticket.

Colorado score: -1

State of the T-Rex.

Odd Days: Don't tell PETA!

When we would go running on trails in CA, we never had to worry much about rattlesnakes because other runners went berserk when they saw them. No sooner did the snake hit the dirt when a virtual telephone tree of runners sent word along the trail.

That doesn’t happen in CO. The attitude here is: If you move to CO, you should expect to see snakes. Caveat emptor and all that. And in fact, we see snakes all the time. As some of you already know (and have seen), we found this beauty in our driveway. (See video below. Ophidiophobics beware!)

Most of you know Durf as a gentle, reserved and compassionate man. But when he saw this rattlesnake in our driveway, he yelled at me to get a broom. I thought he was about to sweep the thing away, so I complied. But no. What Durf wanted to do was poke at the creature until it coiled so he could get the whole thing on video.

The video is much better with sound, but I had to convert it to a silent film because of all the screeching in the background. While Durf was poking and shooting, I was busy screaming (literally) at him to back away. Really I was beside myself and I sounded like Roseanne.

It’s not that I have a morbid fear of snakes or anything. Far from it. After all, we had snakes for pets when I was a kid. But geez. What if something had happened to Durf? Who would mow the lawn? (just kidding, sweetie)

Colorado: +1 (excitement factor)

Not even...

When Twila read the last line of my politics post she said, "You sound angry and despondent. But I guess you are." But I wasn't despondent, because I never had any hope. I was angry, but I'm much better now that I'm apolitical, and those Mitch McConnell nightmares seem to have gone away.

I never should have posted about politics, anyway, because my Golden Rule is to never discuss politics or religion. I mean, what's the point? It's possible to intelligently argue politics, I suppose, but most people are entrenched in their views. And religion? Well, "intelligent" is off the table when discussing religion. That's what "faith" means. Since I'm already dirty, though, this is my religion post.

Probably you should know that I was raised Catholic. As late as my senior year in high school I was considering becoming a priest, which shows the power of indoctrination. That year my principal, a Christian Brother whom I liked and respected, told me that I'd lose my faith if I went to a non-Catholic college. He was pushing for Manhattan or Notre Dame, but even in my fuzzy, religion-addled brain, I had to wonder why he was concerned about my being outside the Force. So I went to Hamilton and renounced Catholicism before the end of the first semester in my freshman year.

I used to have this thought: "The good news is that there is a God. The bad news is that he's dying." That was creepy, but it isn't difficult to imagine worse.

One of the other things I used to think about is Hell. It really sounds like a nasty place, worse than a cheap Indian hotel. Hopefully only the worst of the worst would go there. So I wondered, if I showed up at the Pearly Gates and St. Peter asked me whom I would send to Hell, whom I would choose. Whom would you choose?

My answer was no-one. Not terrorists, not Hitler, not Mitch McConnell, no-one. For one thing, I am in no position to judge anyone. The other thing is that an eternity of punishment is way too harsh for anything a human might do in a century on Earth. It's ridiculous. Even the United States prohibits that kind of torture. (Let's leave Dick Cheney out of this, for the moment.)

In fact, if St. Peter asked me that, I think I'd say, "Me." Because I wouldn't want to be in Heaven with a God who would create a Hell for his creatures. I cannot even imagine that. I'd rather be burning for all eternity and knowing that I was a loving person, instead of being in paradise with an evil god I hated.

Round Mountain visuals.