Pet passes

We're going skiing tomorrow. There's about a month and a half left of the season so we're squeezing in whatever we can. Odin is being very generous. He's still dumping impressive amounts of snow on the Sierra Nevadas so there's plenty of fresh powder for spring skiing. We're not the only ones enjoying it. A lot of dogs also have passes (to the cross country trails). If you want to see a happy dog, that's where you'll find them.

Kirkwood Pet Passes

The Wall, Kirkwood
Uh, no that's not me in the photo.

Fatty Leland
In the ongoing Mouse Tales, one fellow has gotten into the house. We're hoping it's not Fatty Leland. Anyway, the Hotel is in the kitchen tonight and it's overflowing with a scrumptious Nevada-style buffet. Now we must wait and see if anyone comes to the feast.

Spring Equinox

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Today is the Spring Equinox so early this morning I put some special treats out in the bird park to celebrate the day. I always fill the seed tubes at night and then the water bowls in the morning when the temperature begins to get above freezing. Generally I don't put extras out until mid-morning because the crows and magpies arrive first and hog everything in sight. However today I thought I'd risk it. No one was around but moments later they descended and gobbled everything. The damn party was over in about 5 minutes.


















No mice today. There's still one in the garage but he's so fat we don't think he can get in the door. Then again, maybe he is a she and maybe she is pregnant. Oh well. Come one. Come all. Happy Spring Equinox!












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"This could be heaven or this could be hell"

Over the last couple of days I've relocated about 20 mice to a nice, dense thicket by the Carson river. They're actually kind of cute and I started thinking it would be nice to keep one or two as pets. I won't. The Tin Cat works really well but it's more like the Hotel California than a cat. You can check in but you can't check out.

Last thing I remember I was running for the door
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before
Relax said the nightman. We are programmed to receive
You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave.
The Eagles

Except this is the Hotel Nevada and you can leave, but you can never return to the beginning.

Carson River new mouse house.

mice hotel

Mouse moving day

There's a mouse in the house, in fact several. They are in the garage and beginning to get into things so today I bought a humane live trap and filled it with goodies. There's all the makings for a get down mouse party; cheese, a little cup of peanut butter and a tiny bowl of water to wash it all down with. It's time for them to go.









I got the Tin Cat. I wish it were a little bigger but it will be okay for a short stay. Also, it's a bummer that it's still so cold out. I hope they do alright out in the wild. It's a hawk eat mouse world. I'd rather not do this at all. I've got nothing against mice. The way I see it, they have as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as the rest of us on this planet. I just prefer they enjoy themselves somewhere else.

I've only used a mouse trap once before, a long time ago, when I was in the Krsna Movement. I was living in a cabin on the farm commune in West Virginia. It was a very funky building with foam insulation. Sane people blow the foam inside the walls but here the brahmachari's, under order of the evil, crippled tyrant who ran the place, sprayed the insulation directly on the walls (to save time). It was a polyurethane cave. The walls were motley, bubbly, crusty and yellow from wood smoke. I moved into a tiny room already occupied by a mouse who crunched on the foam all night. I couldn't sleep so eventually, against my better judgment, I set a conventional trap and in the morning there was a tiny, little nose under the spring. I felt absolutely horrible. The Tin Cat, while probably not a fun place to find yourself, is at least something both the mouse and I can live with.

A giant blast of sun beams

Benjamin Zephaniah. I love this guy! When asked what he would eat if he was in a desert with no food in sight except a cow, he said: "I'd find out what the cow was eating and join it."

He's a Brit who prefers to simply call to himself an oral poet but with him that covers a lot of ground. All I can say is please treat yourself to one of his videos.

I just discovered him while reading an article on vegetarian ethics. He became vegetarian at the age of 11 and vegan at 13: "I was disgusted by the taste and texture, and the thought of having flesh and blood against my teeth," he said. "Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay."

His words explode like the acorn.




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Doldrums, part 2

A few years ago I decided to take up reading again. It was one of the things I lost during my early bad years. Lately I've taken to cruising second hand stores in search of books that, for whatever reason, woo my mind even as it wanders and my eyes complain. I'm not picky but . . .

I just reviewed the latest batch I retrieved from the dimly lit shelves along my route, Elmore Leonard's "Get Shorty" - Joyce Carol Oates' "Expensive People" - Robert Ludlum's "Sigma Protocol" - Johathan Franzens' "Strong Motion" - a copy of New Directions #31, 1975 (a real treasure for 25 cents) with a nice piece by Gregory Corso (one of my favorite poets) but nothing, other than the New Directions which I currently keep with me to read as I go, caught my fancy. I know. Give a book what? one or two hundred pages before you decide? Sometimes I can do that but at the moment I really don't have the patience.

"Shorty" looked good but I put it down anyway. I liked the movie. What's not to love about Hollywood crime stories? However I just finished Ludlum's movie/book "Prometheus Deception" and haven't been able to bring myself to even crack his "Sigma Protocol". Obviously he writes these with Hollywood Blockbuster in mind. Fine, but on the page it's beyond preposterous. I can only take so much. "Protocol" and "Shorty" will have to wait until I'm in a different mood.


The birds loved the bananas I put out for them this morning. They really drilled em. It was the big event in the bird park today. Excellent. I have an entire bunch that refuses to ripen.

I took perverse delight purchasing the Franzen book. Karl (King) Wenclas and the rest of the gang at the ULA, (United Literary Alliance!) positively hate Franzen (and Rick Moody) and have made it part of their life's work to demolish the pedestals on which they (think) these guys stand, so naturally I had to buy it. Franzen perfected the opening paragraph but I have a sinking feeling it inadvertently outlines the book's own fall from wonder. Perhaps not, but I didn't get very far before the fog of distraction arose from the Straits of Boredom on my way to the Sea of Imagination. My beautiful pea green boat languished under limp sail and I abandoned the journey. Maybe later, Franzen. I still might read him if, for no other reason, than to see what all the fuss is about.

Which reminds me ... Patrick King, no relation to Karl other than he's another ULAer, asked me to send him a few poems for his next publication. Note to self: Do it, damn it!
"Expensive People" starts with the lines, "I was a child murderer. I don't mean child-murderer, though that's an idea. I mean child murderer, that is, a murderer who happens to be a child, or a child who happens to be a murder. You can take your choice." Could be interesting. Oates is supposed to be a good writer. I've always thought I would probably like her so I put that one on the short list. Just not today's. That left me with one last hope, Tom Wolfe's "I am Charlotte Simmons". It looked promising over a bowl of cereal this morning, especially when he indirectly made fun of himself on page six.

Marvel Meal Party

I've been hosting a Marvel Meal party in the bird park all week. Everybody has stopped by, even Minerva the crow who I haven't seen for nearly a year. And her friend.

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Winter doldrums

Here's a couple of photos I took along the side of the road a while ago. Secret worlds. Lovely in their own right, even blasted with highway grime.

Dinner for two

I spent most of the day updating my website, mostly tweaking layouts and background information like keywords and page descriptions but I did finally complete the Seagull French Fry Party page which was a project long overdue. This evening we went to dinner at a Chinese buffet that recently opened nearby. Where we live, things like that are a big event. There was a complete traffic jam around the steam tables as the Saturday night crowd jockeyed to get their fair share. We elbowed up to the trough, grabbed a helping and returned to our seat. Two fat clowns were sitting in the booth next to us gobbling up greasy mounds of noodles and flesh. I assume they had just come from work. I doubt their clown shoes, his baggy pants and huge, brightly colored, horizontal striped shirt and her bright red polka dot dress flouncing above dimpled knees on top of layers of starched, white netting and her plastic ruby red wig, and the white oval outline framing the pig-like features of her colorfully decorated face were every day attire. It was fascinating watching her shovel food in through her bright red, heart shaped lips. When they left, her little bow-shaped lips were still as sweetheart red as her red dress and her red, red plastic hair.

But the show didn't end with their exit. A worn down, 50s something, redneck couple immediately took their spot. They were wearing snazzy, matching yellow and black nylon wind breakers and wobbled off for the food like a couple of obese, excited honey bees. When they returned, I noticed that under his plastic baseball cap, what was left of his hair was bound in several places with rubber bands and hung down his back like a rat tail. The woman had long, yellow hair highlighted with bold, clown red streaks. Her industrial eye and lip lines, two-inch lavender nails, and pasty pancake make-up rivaled any B grade Kabuki actor ever to strut across the creaking stage.