I started early. I planned and diagrammed my garden size and general layout. The tomatoes in 5 different varieties would be in the first few rows. The peppers would be on the opposite end of the garden as I had heard you don't want to plant them too close to tomatoes. The rows in between would be a plethora of veggies.
I couldn't wait. I hadn't planted a garden in years. Dutifully I prepared the soil with compost, fertilizers, and ingredients to help the soil hold moisture for the long haul.
The tiller I rented worked well except for the patch of clay that bogged it down. My back was intact and the next day I put out the plants and set the seed.
The dry season caused my water bill to rise but I was determined to see this through. My early blooming tomatoes were budding little orbs on each plant and they were going to be right on time.
When I was an elementary age I would sit out in the middle of Mom's garden, salt shaker in hand and gorge myself on what is now “Heirloom” type tomatoes. They were juicy and tart. Not like the pasty red fruit of today.
My children might not ever know what a joy that was if I don't harvest the “Heirlooms” in the first row.
One day I noticed my plants were losing their fruit. I found 20 of them on my deck in half eaten state.
Those damn squirrels! I used to feed them when I was much younger. I thought they had a cute face and fluffy, squishy tail. I realized that the huge oak trees and 80 foot pecan tree had attracted an overabundance of fuzzy mammals.
They can't have my crop! That is all there is to it. What to do?
Being armed with an air gun, poison, bow & arrow or slingshot sounded sweet to me but got the “hairy eyeball” look from the wife and girls..
Squirrels are a protected specie. There are specific seasons you can shoot them. Big fine and jail sentence for hunting without a license.
I have to have a new plan as the garden is on it's last legs.
I trucked down to the farm store. For $29.99 s live trap could be had and I could take those rascals to animal control. Hehehe
A small square of foil and a dollop of Skippy peanut butter and the plot thickened.
In 20 minutes I had my first inmate and two others clawing at the cage from the outside trying to get my peanut butter or maybe release their buddy.
I called animal control. They want me to bring my cage in and leave it as the officer will not remove a mad squirrel at the resident's home. The officer told me they would just release the beady eyed tree rat in the park on Parker Street. Wait a minute...that is only a few blocks from my house. I had heard that squirrels will go several miles to get back home. Maybe Animal Rescue will have an idea.
I found another 40 tomatoes strewn around my yard. Good thing I planted those 40 plants. Those creatures won't be able to keep up with the main crop.
Ring....Ringgggg....Rin...”Hello Animal Rescue, How may I help you?”
“Hi, I have a problem with squirrels invading my garden. I have captured one of the offending rodents and wondered if you had a place I could bring it.?
“Well Sir, Have you considered just letting him out? After all all he is doing is feeding and aren't these creatures amazing? Did you see the show the other night on the Animal channel that spotlighted how wonderful these...Suddenly the phone was somehow disconnected on my end. I guess in the excitement my finger had somehow hit the off button. Oh Well
The wife and daughters had the saddest look on their face when I mentioned that I might not follow the law on harvesting one of God's ugliest most unworthy animals. To stop a revolt or one of them throwing themselves on the live trap, I opted to take the little cutie up to my wooded investment property and release it. 20 miles from the house and a with a very large river in between. The man who had built adjacent to my land was always complaining about the lack of mowing in my small open space next to the woods. He didn't understand the natural look.
Why hadn't I thought of this before? There are plentiful oak trees and a small river nearby. A win-win situation. I could also enhance my wonderful neighbor's life too. You know... the one with the grass ruler n his pocket. It looks like he is planting a garden this year Hehehe
Ultimately I hauled 26 squirrels, 2 possums, a couple of rabbits but released the 2 cats and one crow in my yard.
Needless to say, I got nary a tomato that year, 3 peppers, no carrots, hardly any beans. I did manage to secure some rosemary and thyme that the four legged eating machines didn't seem to care for. Their little tummies were undoubtedly too full when they got to that row.
My garden cost me a couple hundred, the gas to haul them in my guzzling pick up even more.
My wife and daughters did get to taste the Heirloom tomatoes though. They weren't wild about them. I paid and arm and leg for them at the Farmer's market.
Fast forward to 2007. Youtube has a great video. An person with a great sense of humor and much smarter than I am invented the perfect tool.
April 2007 Archives
Source: Special to The Daily Standard
Joe Lieberman addressed supplemental appropriations bill on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Specifically the Iraq withdrawal provision.
"Mr. President, the supplemental appropriations bill we are debating today contains language that would have Congress take control of the direction of our military strategy in Iraq....
In his speech Monday, the Majority Leader described the several steps that this new strategy for Iraq would entail. Its first step, he said, is to "transition the U.S. mission away from policing a civil war--to training and equipping Iraqi security forces, protecting U.S. forces, and conducting targeted counter-terror operations."
I ask my colleagues to take a step back for a moment and consider this plan.
When we say that U.S. troops shouldn't be "policing a civil war," that their operations should be restricted to this narrow list of missions, what does this actually mean?
To begin with, it means that our troops will not be allowed to protect the Iraqi people from the insurgents and militias who are trying to terrorize and kill them. Instead of restoring basic security, which General Petraeus has argued should be the central focus of any counterinsurgency campaign, it means our soldiers would instead be ordered, by force of this proposed law, not to stop the sectarian violence happening all around them--no matter how vicious or horrific it becomes.
In short, it means telling our troops to deliberately and consciously turn their backs on ethnic cleansing, to turn their backs on the slaughter of innocent civilians--men, women, and children singled out and killed on the basis of their religion alone. It means turning our backs on the policies that led us to intervene in the civil war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the principles that today lead many of us to call for intervention in Darfur.
This makes no moral sense at all.
It also makes no strategic or military sense either.
Al Qaeda's own leaders have repeatedly said that one of the ways they intend to achieve victory in Iraq is to provoke civil war. They are trying to kill as many people as possible today, precisely in the hope of igniting sectarian violence, because they know that this is their best way to collapse Iraq's political center, overthrow Iraq's elected government, radicalize its population, and create a failed state in the heart of the Middle East that they can use as a base.
That is why Al Qaeda blew up the Golden Mosque in Samarra last year. And that is why we are seeing mass casualty suicide bombings by Al Qaeda in Baghdad now.
The sectarian violence that the Majority Leader says he wants to order American troops to stop policing, in other words, is the very same sectarian violence that Al Qaeda hopes to ride to victory. The suggestion that we can draw a bright legislative line between stopping terrorists in Iraq and stopping civil war in Iraq flies in the face of this reality.
I do not know how to say it more plainly: it is Al Qaeda that is trying to cause a full-fledged civil war in Iraq.
The Majority Leader said on Monday that he believes U.S. troops will still be able to conduct "targeted counter-terror operations" under his plan. Even if we stop trying to protect civilians in Iraq, in other words, we can still go after the bad guys.
But again, I ask my colleagues, how would this translate into military reality on the ground? How would we find these terrorists, who do not gather on conventional military bases or fight in conventional formations?
By definition, targeted counterterrorism requires our forces to know where, when, and against whom to strike--and that in turn requires accurate, actionable, real-time intelligence.
This is the kind of intelligence that can only come from ordinary Iraqis, the sea of people among whom the terrorists hide. And that, in turn, requires interacting with the Iraqi people on a close, personal, daily basis. It requires winning individual Iraqis to our side, gaining their trust, convincing them that they can count on us to keep them safe from the terrorists if they share valuable information about them. This is no great secret. This is at the heart of the new strategy that General Petraeus and his troops are carrying out.
And yet, if we pass this legislation, according to the Majority Leader, U.S. forces will no longer be permitted to patrol Iraq's neighborhoods or protect Iraqi civilians. They won't, in his words, be "interjecting themselves between warring factions" or "trying to sort friend from foe."
Therefore, I ask the supporters of this legislation: How, exactly, are U.S. forces to gather intelligence about where, when, and against whom to strike, after you have ordered them walled off from the Iraqi population? How, exactly, are U.S. forces to carry out targeted counter-terror operations, after you have ordered them cut off from the very source of intelligence that drives these operations?
This is precisely why the congressional micromanagement of life-and-death decisions about how, where, and when our troops can fight is such a bad idea, especially on a complex and changing battlefield.
In sum, you can't have it both ways. You can't withdraw combat troops from Iraq and still fight Al Qaeda there. If you believe there is no hope of winning in Iraq, or that the costs of victory there are not worth it, then you should be for complete withdrawal as soon as possible.
In his speech Monday, the Majority Leader described the several steps that this new strategy for Iraq would entail. Its first step, he said, is to "transition the U.S. mission away from policing a civil war--to training and equipping Iraqi security forces, protecting U.S. forces, and conducting targeted counter-terror operations."
I ask my colleagues to take a step back for a moment and consider this plan.
When we say that U.S. troops shouldn't be "policing a civil war," that their operations should be restricted to this narrow list of missions, what does this actually mean?
To begin with, it means that our troops will not be allowed to protect the Iraqi people from the insurgents and militias who are trying to terrorize and kill them. Instead of restoring basic security, which General Petraeus has argued should be the central focus of any counterinsurgency campaign, it means our soldiers would instead be ordered, by force of this proposed law, not to stop the sectarian violence happening all around them--no matter how vicious or horrific it becomes.
In short, it means telling our troops to deliberately and consciously turn their backs on ethnic cleansing, to turn their backs on the slaughter of innocent civilians--men, women, and children singled out and killed on the basis of their religion alone. It means turning our backs on the policies that led us to intervene in the civil war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the principles that today lead many of us to call for intervention in Darfur.
This makes no moral sense at all.
It also makes no strategic or military sense either.
Al Qaeda's own leaders have repeatedly said that one of the ways they intend to achieve victory in Iraq is to provoke civil war. They are trying to kill as many people as possible today, precisely in the hope of igniting sectarian violence, because they know that this is their best way to collapse Iraq's political center, overthrow Iraq's elected government, radicalize its population, and create a failed state in the heart of the Middle East that they can use as a base.
That is why Al Qaeda blew up the Golden Mosque in Samarra last year. And that is why we are seeing mass casualty suicide bombings by Al Qaeda in Baghdad now.
The sectarian violence that the Majority Leader says he wants to order American troops to stop policing, in other words, is the very same sectarian violence that Al Qaeda hopes to ride to victory. The suggestion that we can draw a bright legislative line between stopping terrorists in Iraq and stopping civil war in Iraq flies in the face of this reality.
I do not know how to say it more plainly: it is Al Qaeda that is trying to cause a full-fledged civil war in Iraq.
The Majority Leader said on Monday that he believes U.S. troops will still be able to conduct "targeted counter-terror operations" under his plan. Even if we stop trying to protect civilians in Iraq, in other words, we can still go after the bad guys.
But again, I ask my colleagues, how would this translate into military reality on the ground? How would we find these terrorists, who do not gather on conventional military bases or fight in conventional formations?
By definition, targeted counterterrorism requires our forces to know where, when, and against whom to strike--and that in turn requires accurate, actionable, real-time intelligence.
This is the kind of intelligence that can only come from ordinary Iraqis, the sea of people among whom the terrorists hide. And that, in turn, requires interacting with the Iraqi people on a close, personal, daily basis. It requires winning individual Iraqis to our side, gaining their trust, convincing them that they can count on us to keep them safe from the terrorists if they share valuable information about them. This is no great secret. This is at the heart of the new strategy that General Petraeus and his troops are carrying out.
And yet, if we pass this legislation, according to the Majority Leader, U.S. forces will no longer be permitted to patrol Iraq's neighborhoods or protect Iraqi civilians. They won't, in his words, be "interjecting themselves between warring factions" or "trying to sort friend from foe."
Therefore, I ask the supporters of this legislation: How, exactly, are U.S. forces to gather intelligence about where, when, and against whom to strike, after you have ordered them walled off from the Iraqi population? How, exactly, are U.S. forces to carry out targeted counter-terror operations, after you have ordered them cut off from the very source of intelligence that drives these operations?
This is precisely why the congressional micromanagement of life-and-death decisions about how, where, and when our troops can fight is such a bad idea, especially on a complex and changing battlefield.
In sum, you can't have it both ways. You can't withdraw combat troops from Iraq and still fight Al Qaeda there. If you believe there is no hope of winning in Iraq, or that the costs of victory there are not worth it, then you should be for complete withdrawal as soon as possible.
In spite of excerpting a large piece, there is still a lot more you shouldn't miss. Please read Lieberman's Senate floor speech in it's entirety.
...But this is carrying a relationship just a little too far.
This one I have to link. Here is a woman that is too stupid to own a horse.
Cats I know are pretty smart animals because I have raised many of them, but they all have personal traits and quirks. My last cat (who died a year ago age 19) was white just like the one in this article. Her quirk was that she liked string and small pieces of rope. Not to play with, she would just collect them from the neighborhood and stash them under the porch.
Here is another cat with an interesting quirk nicknamed Macavity, from the poem by T. S. Eliot. Macavity's quirk is that he likes to ride the city bus two or three times a week. Macavity always gets on, then off at the same stops.
Driver Bill Khunkhun, 49, who first saw the cat jumping from the bus in January, said: "It is really odd, the first time I saw the cat jumping off the bus with a group of passengers. I hadn't seen it get on which was a bit confusing.
"The next day I pulled up on Churchill Road to let a couple of passengers on. As soon as I opened the doors the cat ran towards the bus, jumped on and ran under one of the seats, I don't think any of the passengers noticed.
"Because I had seen it jump off the day before I carried on driving and sure enough when I stopped just down the road he jumped off - I don't know why he would catch the bus but he seems to like it. I told some of the other drivers on this route and they have seen him too."
"The next day I pulled up on Churchill Road to let a couple of passengers on. As soon as I opened the doors the cat ran towards the bus, jumped on and ran under one of the seats, I don't think any of the passengers noticed.
"Because I had seen it jump off the day before I carried on driving and sure enough when I stopped just down the road he jumped off - I don't know why he would catch the bus but he seems to like it. I told some of the other drivers on this route and they have seen him too."
What next for Macavity, a limousine to get a nail trim and something better than the fish and chip shop near his debarking stop? Oh and BTW Macavity is listed on Widipedia.
Update: Over at Deans World, in the comments, cardeblu links another cat with an entertaining quirk.
There are times that Google Maps has come up with information that just made me go huh...? Well here is the worst I have seen yet. At one of my daily forums someone posted the googled directions from New York, NY to Paris, France. Of course google maps isn't a completely reasoning piece of software, therefore sometimes the directions can be a bit disconcerting.
At the top of the directions google says:
Drive: 3,800 mi (about 29 days 7 hours) [ or 703 hours ].
Well drive is not quite accurate, as step 23 of the journey says:
"23. Swim across the Atlantic Ocean 3462 mi" 
*blink*
Because I have a lot of time on my hands, here is some useless but possibly interesting math trivia about google maps silly nonsense.
The actual driven miles, 3800-3462 = 348 miles. Lets assume that we break every urban/suburban speed limit and travel the 348 miles in 7 hours which averages just a tad under 50mph (49.7). Improbable but within the realm of possibility if the law doesn't catch us. That leaves us with 696 hours to swim the 3462 miles if we can swim at an average speed of 4.97mph.
Of course impossible even if we could endure the distance. Here is the speed of the worlds two fastest human swimmers. We would have to swim almost as fast as David Holmes Edgar's 5.05 mph, and faster than Mark Spitz at 4.367 mph. And they swam flat out for only 100 meters.
