Jimmy Stewart and Beau

"The truth is that it's just really hard for me to get to sleep without a dog in my bedroom. It's funny about that. I once had a dog named Beau. He used to sleep in a corner of the bedroom. Some nights, though, he would sneak onto the bed and lie right in between Gloria and me. I know that I should have pushed him off the bed, but I didn't. He was up there because he wanted me to pat his head, so that's what I would do. Somehow, my touching his hair made him happier, and just the feeling of him laying against me helped me sleep better." —  James Stewart

Good Dog!

Release the Hounds!

He Sacrificed His Weekend For You

My Grandson In The Hellscape of California

Mass Killing Owl for Direct Mail Lies

I wish Perry Plumart were still alive.

Back when I worked at the National Audubon Society, Perry — the Legislative Director — came down the hall to bust my balls for heresy.

Moi?  Heresy?  

Pray tell what had I said?  

Well, it seems I was breaking a lot of begging bowls, and not just at Audubon, but at a few other Big Green groups?

What had I said?  

Simply this:  a subspecies is not a species.  

“Sonoran Proghorns” are just Pronghorns, the “Florida Panther” is just a Mountain Lion, and there is no such thing as a “Northern Spotted Owl”, there is only the Spotted Owl and it is not endangered and lives in varied habitat from Mexican desert into old growth British Columbia.

Perry was not going to argue the science with me because he couldn’t.  

Instead he argued that the lie was convenient and that a lot of direct mail and inter-organizational relationships were in conflict with the truth. “Cut it out” was his bottom line. I agreed, but not before noting that in this instance bad science was going to bite us in the ass.

Now it has.  

See >>> https://www.opb.org/article/2024/04/08/government-proposal-to-kill-a-half-million-owls-sparks-controversy/?

“A proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to kill roughly half a million barred owls to protect the spotted owl has conservationists and animal welfare advocates debating the moral issue of killing one species to protect another.…

“But the USFWS says if no action is taken to cull the barred owl population, the northern spotted owl faces extinction.

“The barred owl is crowding out its less aggressive relative, the northern spotted owl, in the Northwestern states, according to the USFWS. To ensure the survival of the northern spotted owl, a threatened species, the service is proposing the mass removal of over 470,000 barred owls across California, Washington and Oregon over a three-decade span.“

Which is why I wish Perry Plumart was alive.  

I would never ask Perry to eat crow.  But owl?  

Maybe.

I kid, I kid!  

Perry was a good guy; he was just trying to negotiate the lie factory that is the bread and butter of so many direct mail organizations on every side in every debate.  I was making his “relationships” job harder.  He knew that was not my intent, and we both knew I was right on substance. 

But… as Bob Dylan so dryly observed… everybody is “going to have to serve somebody” some day and some way.  

Bending the truth? << shrug >> One man’s “stress position,” is another man’s torture.  

So long as we agreed on where truth was, I was not going to alert the Geneva Convention.

.

The Real Lassie Story They Never Tell

My Ideal Bathroom

Cut to La Chase

From: The Independent (London), January 10, 1999

BY: Jeremy Clarke

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To prove the mettle of British dogs, Jeremy Clarke sent a small terrier called Tonto to join a boar hunt in Languedoc - a year on, he went back to see whether honour had been satisfied.

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TWO AUTUMNS AGO I went boar-hunting in the Languedoc region of France with four of the blokes I watch West Ham with. We went down for the weekend when West Ham were away to Newcastle.

The hunt was based in Sylvanes, a tiny hamlet in the hills outside Millau. They used cross-bred griffons (lean, rangy, soft-coated, flop-eared dogs), and a couple of heavy, low-slung basset hound types, to sniff out the boars and harry them towards the line of waiting guns. One man, chef de la chasse Guy Espitalier, limped along behind the dogs (more like a zoo than a pack) while the rest of the equipe, about a dozen armed men, spread out across the countryside in a loose firing line, hoping to ambush the fleeing boars as they came by. The equipe shot and killed three boars on the day we spent with them, a good result apparently.

Afterwards we had a piss-up in their cabin. Aflame with rough, metallic- tasting red wine, I boasted (in my mangled, lunatic French) to the good men of Sylvanes that, in terms of sheer gameness, our British dogs - especially our terriers - were far superior to theirs. After several more glasses and some pastis, I said our terriers would have their dogs for petit dejeuner. And, putting my money where my mouth was, I said I'd send them one down to prove it. The next day we drove back to England with a life-threatening hangover each; an open invitation from chef Guy, to go boar-hunting with them whenever we were in the area; and a bristly haunch of freshly butchered boar on the back seat - which startled an inquisitive customs officer at Calais.

As soon as I got home I rang around some terriermen I knew, asking if they had any good working dogs for sale. "I've just the thing you're looking for," said Eddie, who digs out foxes for an Essex hunt. "Hard as nails. Heart of a lion. Sired by one of Jack Gold's dogs."

"Jack Gold?" I said.

"Never heard of Jack Gold from the West Midlands whose terriers sell for up to pounds 1,000 apiece?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Well, Jack enters all his dogs to fox when they are six months old and if they don't perform he gets rid of them there and then. I took a bitch up there last winter and put it to his stud dog, Badger."

"Who was the bitch?"

"My old Gripper. Best foxing bitch I've ever had. Any offspring of Gripper and Jack Gold's Badger is more or less guaranteed to be dead game to anything from a bumble bee to an elephant. I swear. Too hard if anything. And this here pup is no exception. Once he latches on to anything you'll have to get him by the throat and choke him off. "

I couldn't wait.

"So what's in him, then?"

"Jack Russell mostly. But pepped up with a bit of bull terrier and possibly Bedlington. Some bullock in there somewhere too, I reckon. If you want, I can let you have him for pounds 120, which is giving him away. He's six months old and ready to work. They're early starters, see, Jack Gold's dogs. You should see the jaws on this one. Teeth like a crocodile. Good-looking dog, too, if you were thinking of showing him."

"Why are you selling him?"

"Well, to be honest, he keeps trying to kill my other dogs."

"Do you think he'd be any use on a boar hunt?"

"A boar hunt?" exclaimed Eddie, trying not to sound too surprised and failing. "Oh, he'll latch hold of the boar all right. Boar, fox, badger - he won't care either way what it is. Tonto, we've called him."

"Tonto?" I said.

"Yeah. Tonto."

As I was putting the prestige of the British hunt terrier at stake, I had to press him on this point. Did he really think, I asked him, that Tonto would give a good account of himself on a boar hunt? If he didn't, I told Eddie, I would be severely embarrassed, and it would reflect badly on him as well.

"Don't you worry," said Eddie, "he'll latch hold. Getting him off the boar is going to be your worst problem. So when can you come and get him?"

Before I could send Tonto to France, there was some paperwork to complete for MAAF. This took six weeks - and during that time I kept him at home. Tonto was a delightful, handsome and, above all, intelligent animal. Two thousand years of breeding for ability rather than looks had made all the difference. His dazzling white coat and build reminded me of Snowy from the Tin-Tin comic strip.

Admittedly he tried to kill my ferrets the moment he clapped eyes on them, but apart from that he didn't seem half as thuggish as Eddie had made him out to be. Around the house he was mostly a quiet, well-mannered, honest chap who thrived on affection, and who could become utterly demoralised by a single stern word. With other dogs he was friendly but self-contained, and he was treated with respect by all but the most hare-brained or maladjusted dogs; even with those, he only had to make it clear that he wasn't to be trifled with and they kept their distance. And still only six months old.

I would have loved to keep him, but it was out of the question. With a heavy heart I took him up to London, where I left him with friends who were driving down to Cannes the following week for their honeymoon, and had volunteered to stop off in Sylvanes and hand Tonto over to the boar-hunters.

My sister and my son cried the day he went. Tonto seemed to have this effect on people. And on his return my friend reported that after leaving Tonto with the boar-hunters, his marriage had got off to an unhappy start because his wife hadn't been able to stop crying for days. He also told me that the first thing the hunters did when they saw Tonto was take a stuffed boar's head off the wall of the local bar and thrust it at him. Without thinking twice, Tonto savaged it, much to the hunters' approval - so that at least boded well for his future. Owing to a breakdown in communication, however, or because they have a higher level of culture over there, the hunters called him "Tolstoy" and bore him triumphantly off to the kennels.

That was in the spring of '97. Last November - again, funnily enough, when West Ham were away to Newcastle - three of us drove down to Languedoc to take up the hunters' open invitation to join them whenever we could for a boar hunt. We were looking forward to seeing Tonto again, and speculated about how he had been getting on with the boars.

We drew up outside the hunters' cabin in Sylvanes early on the Saturday morning, just as they were clambering aboard their muddy pick-ups, about to set off for a day's hunting. We shook hands all round and they looked genuinely glad to see us. I didn't ask about Tonto immediately. None of the hunters mentioned him either. Instead they brought us up to date with the number of kills since we were down last. Last season, all told, they had killed 94 boars. Since the beginning of the new one (which kicked off in the last week of September) they had killed 14. That was the good news. The bad news was that Banana, one of the more reliable griffons, had been fatally injured by a boar only the day before. Showing great presence of mind in a crisis, the boar had simply crushed poor Banana to death against a tree trunk. The boar had got away, and the hunters were wondering whether this was the animal that was currently making a name for himself throughout the Aveyron department of Languedoc. In a fortnight this rogue boar had killed two dogs belonging to one neighbouring hunt. He had also wounded all 12 dogs belonging to another. The hunters explained that from time to time a boar realises that in the long run it makes more sense to stand and fight than to run away. Once a boar has acquired the knack of feinting with his head, then getting his tusks underneath and tossing the dogs, the local vet can be seen smoking cigars in public.

As we drove up into the steep beech-clad hills, Guy pointed out signs of recent boar activity. In one field we passed, their excavations looked like the result of a ploughing match. The boar population has increased dramatically in the last 10 years, he explained, the main reason being that the boars have been interbreeding with domestic pigs and as a result the boar sows' litters are larger than they were before. Also, unscrupulous hunters are illegally releasing captive boars to increase local stocks.

We parked in some woods and the dogs were released from their wooden crates. I noted that Tonto wasn't among them, but said nothing. The dogs - about half a dozen in all - wore melancholy-sounding sheep's bells around their necks. They leapt down off the trucks and bounded melodiously away into the forest, le chef de la chasse staggering after them as fast as his limp would allow. The rest of us strolled a little way into the woods, then disposed ourselves, ankle-deep in beech leaves, at 40- or 50-yard intervals along a neglected ride.

When the sound of the bells had receded to nothing, the woods became deeply, uncannily silent. We stood motionless, waiting. Occasionally the stillness was disturbed by a foraging blackbird or a dropping leaf. I looked at the trees. Some of the colours of the leaves dying gloriously on the branches had a distinctly hallucinatory quality. It occurred to me that I hadn't really looked at a tree since I was a child. Standing stock- still for such a long time, in a flaming beech wood, in absolute silence, waiting for boars, felt, at times, like a religious experience.

We must have stood there for about an hour. And then at last we heard the faint yet purposeful music of the dogs' bells. It came from a long way off, but grew steadily louder. The dogs were coming this way, and fast. The tempo of the bells was vivace - quick and lively - they were following a strong, fresh scent. They were singing now, too. The sound of the melancholic bells was accompanied by the ecstatic, melodic yodelling of the bassets, and the baying of the griffons. It was an eerie, primeval sound that made me want to give all my money away, tear off my clothes and join them.

Although I was an integral part of the firing line, I didn't have a rifle. I don't like guns much. I prefer to see dogs working. Looking to my right I saw Emile - pouchy eyes, bandolier, beret - already down on one knee, his shotgun at the ready. I stared at the bushes in front, expecting to see boars bursting out of them at any moment. Emile flapped a hand to attract my attention. He gestured that if the boars should come out of the bushes opposite me, I must stand firm and shoo them in his direction by waving my arms about.

Unsure whether he was serious or not, I nodded smartly and took my hands out of my pockets, ready to wave them at onrushing boars. I wondered how much protection my clothes would afford me if I couldn't divert them and they attacked me. I need not have worried, though, for the boars must have sensed our malevolent presence and veered away to the right. The only thing to emerge from the woods in front of us was an out-of-breath chef de la chasse, who shook his head sadly before limping away again towards the now diminishing sound of the dogs' bells.

Dejected beyond words, the huntsmen came together briefly, shrugging their disappointment, then we walked back to the pick-ups. That's the trouble with hunting the boar, said Emile, as we drove away: his intelligence and his keen sense of smell make him the most elusive quarry of all.

I stuck with Emile. He and I drove out of the forest and on to a low, rocky hillside sparsely covered with juniper and gorse. He parked the Mercedes pick-up on a sharp bend in the road and we got out and stood a little way off. Emile had his gun with him. Evidently he calculated that this was a likely place for the boars to appear next. Opposite, the hills were topped with sheer granite cliffs, which shone golden in the late autumn sunshine. This unexpected change of scenery thoroughly disoriented me, but it was pleasant to stand on the side of an open hill in November and feel the sun on my cheek. Creamy yellow butterflies were flickering about, and there were lizards on the rocks.

I thought I heard something moving just below us. I looked, and boars - big ones - came bounding out of the undergrowth one after the other in single file, crossed the road right in front of us and scrambled up the bank on the other side. They were travelling strictly in order of size: large boars, then females, then juveniles, and finally some striped piglets. The piglets were squealing in panic and losing their footing on the smooth tarmac.

I was rooted to the spot with shock. So many wild boars, so suddenly, and so orderly, and so alive, and such a rich, dark, living chocolate colour against the pale road, and so nimble as they scrambled up the bank. As they passed - in far too much of a hurry to pay us any attention - my shock turned to astonishment, then to fascination, then finally to pity at the sight of the young ones fleeing for their lives. And then they were gone. I reckoned 15 boars passed in front of us. Emile told the others later that it was 20.

At first, Emile had been rooted to the spot too. Then he ran towards them, took awkward aim and fired from about 10 yards. They were so close that it might have been more effective for him to walk over and whack one over the head with the butt of his gun. But in spite of his proximity, and in spite of being presented with one easy target after another, like moving ducks in a fairground booth, he managed to miss with both barrels.

The adult boars weren't panicked by the two tremendous reports. They just kept on running as if they were resigned to persecution. The youngsters, I'm happy to say, were granted immunity. Unfortunately this was only the beginning of the end for the magnificent family group. Thirty seconds later a fusillade rang out further up the hill, indicating that they had been ambushed again. Emile and I ran up the hill; one of the boars, a female, was lying dead with a neat, bloody hole in her side. According to the excited man who shot her, he had also wounded a boar, and le blesse had taken refuge in a nearby thicket. I reached down and felt the dead boar's flank.

Its bristles were wet with sweat and underneath, the flesh was warm and hard. One of the dogs arrived belatedly on the scene, panting hard, its tongue right out of its head. It went straight over to the dead boar and buried its nose in the bloody bullet-hole. Then le chef arrived, also panting, and was told of le blesse in the bushes. He looked grave and stroked his beard. The dogs were encouraged to go into the thicket, but there didn't appear to be a way in. Then Emile found an egress further down. He pushed two of the griffons in and crawled in after them. Not wishing to miss anything, I crawled in after him. We hadn't gone far when pandemonium broke out. Animals were crashing madly about, Emile was on his feet and shouting, and then firing his gun wildly in the air, and then with more deliberation at something immediately in front of him. There was a sudden silence.

The boar was a big one: about 250 kilos, said Emile, kicking the corpse. It was lying in a crouched position. The bullet that initially wounded it had entered its rump. Its nose was bloody where the dogs had attacked it. Emile had blasted it in the ear. Before it died, it had managed to get a tusk into both dogs, though they were making light of their gashes. I nearly had a heart attack myself, helping to drag the boar out and heave it on to the tailgate of the pick-up.

By the time the sun went behind the hills, we'd shot four boars - all of them, I think, members of the large, united family that Emile and I had seen crossing the road. The rest of the group were dispersed. Whether they would be able to regroup and care for the youngsters was anyone's guess. I hoped so. More than one boar, I believe, had been hit and kept on running. That's the trouble with guns.

Before we returned to the hunters' cabin to butcher the boars, Emile took me to his house for a drink. It was in an ancient village perched on the steep side of a hill. On the way, I asked Emile what he did for a living. He said he slaughtered chickens.

The interior of his house was homely. His wife was lying on a battered old sofa, knitting, and there was a young boar asleep on the hearth rug. While Emile poured us a stiff measure of Ricard each, I shook hands with his wife and patted the boar's firm, hairy back. It opened its eyes but otherwise didn't move.

"Elle s'appelle Prunelle," said his wife. She told me Prunelle was an orphan, and that Emile had brought her home from the hunt at the end of last season. Emile raised his glass in affirmation and we downed the pastis in one. He poured another. I asked Emile's wife whether Prunelle was intelligent. She said Prunelle was very intelligent; "plus intelligente qu'un chieng" in fact (in Languedoc, chien, vin and pain are always chieng, veng and peng).

Prunelle readily answered to her name, and was able to let herself in and out of the house when she wanted to do her business. Staggering stiffly to her feet and belatedly introducing herself, Prunelle came and shoved her slimy snout in my crotch. Emile briefly showed me his collection of a glossy magazine called Sanglier Passion, which as far as I could tell is devoted entirely to the subject of boars and how to kill them.

Emile then led me out of his house and down narrow darkening streets to an intimate village square, where a small crowd of adults, children and dogs were gathered around a brazier. They were roasting chestnuts. Someone handed a clean wine glass, and someone else splashed red wine into it. My presence was accepted without curiosity, but when Emile announced that I was a visiting Anglais, this changed. A young man with a saintly face and an absurdly long scarf stepped forward and asked whether I hailed from the town or the country. The others fell silent and peered expectantly at me as if this was a question of the utmost importance, and would determine my future relations with them.

"La campagne," I said. The man looked relieved and beamed fraternally at me. But I wasn't in the clear yet. There was another, still more important question that I had to answer, so that everyone would know exactly where I stood.

Whose side was I on, he said - Charles' or Diana's?

Even the children were agog for my answer to this one and edged closer.

"Sometimes Charles's and sometimes Diana's," I said, as honestly as I could. This equivocal answer clearly disappointed them, so I tried to explain that it was difficult to tell what people are really like when all you have to go on is what you read in the papers. I'd not met either of them, and I didn't know anyone who had met them either.

And then I saw Tonto a little way up the street. He was smelling his way along the bottom of a crumbling old wall. "Voila Tolstoy," said Emile, looking at me and smiling for the first time all day.

His lovely snow-white coat was grey with dust and dirt, but otherwise he looked very well. I called to him and he came gambolling up to me. He was friendly but not hysterical. I was glad of that. When a man came out of a nearby house and whistled proprietarily at him, Tonto galloped over and jumped affectionately at his legs. Emile introduced me to the man, who was called Joel. Joel was Tonto's new owner. I told Joel it was good to see that Tonto looked so well and that he had the run of the village, and he smiled at me without comprehension.

Emile explained what had happened. The first time they had taken Tonto out to hunt boars, he said, Tolstoy was so bewildered he wouldn't leave the men's sides. Here Emile gave a classic Gallic shrug as if to say that no great shame attached itself to this. (And I suppose he was right. It would indeed be asking a lot of a type of a terrier that has been bred for centuries to bolt British foxes, to fly at the first boar he ever saw. Now I came to think about it, I had been foolish to assume otherwise.)

They couldn't be bothered to persevere with the dog, said Emile, so they had passed Tolstoy on to Joel, who is a lorry driver, and who was looking for something to keep him company on the road. No sooner had Tolstoy arrived in the village than he made his mark by killing two village dogs in separate incidents. One belonged to one of the women at the brazier, who, when prompted by Emile, confirmed it without a trace of resentment.

When we got back to the hunters' cabin, the rest of the hunters were gathered in the yard, inspecting the headless corpses of the boars, which had been suspended upside-down from a steel frame. Someone cut the livers out and placed them, still steaming, in a large frying pan.

Three of the griffons had been injured by boars. One, Gypsy, was laid on a workbench, and a huntsman, who was also the local doctor, was using his scalpel to shave the fur from around the hole in the dog's hindquarters. I asked if I could do anything to help, and he said I could help hold the dog still if I liked. I cradled Gypsy's head in my arms and talked to her. After he'd cleaned the wound and injected it with an antibiotic, the doctor stapled it together with an office stapler. Gypsy was very stoical. I think I may have underestimated those French griffons!

Three On One

Hot Fight by Carl Reichert (Austrian,1836-1918)

Installing Bees in Two Hives

I picked up my bees last night. It was warm today, so perfect. I transferred two 5-frame nuclear hives into the 10-frame box. Not a sting thanks to the jacket and veil. The Nucs are ripping healthy! They are going to fill that box fast — when they fill in two more frames, I will add the second brood box on top of each.

Each hive has its own queen. There are about 7,500 bees in each box now. They will expand to about 30,000 bees in each box when the second deep super is on and full.

All the bees, other than the queen, live and die in about 40 days in the summer, so each queen has to lay about 30,000 eggs a month or 1,000 a day without any days off.

.

Arthritis Won One

Arthritis got me yesterday. I’ve got limited mobility in my hips, which does not impact walking, but makes it difficult for me to get my leg over the bike. Dismounting yesterday, my Croc shoe got caught on the top bar, and I went over tumbling backward down a brush-filled slope. The dogs fell with the bike, but were no worse for wear. I got an impact cut on the face and a big bruise and scrape on my right hip, but I will probably live. The camera took a hit and the screen does not work, but otherwise the camera fires up. I will send it in for repair. The impact has left me with a number of floaters in my right eye, but I assume these will go away in a few weeks. A bit sore all over.

Biking With the Wee Wolves to the Bluebells

Wee Man in California

Vultures Among the Sheep

As I passed a small sheep pasture near the house, I spied a very large number of Black Vultures —perhaps 30 — on the ground among the sheep.  

Huh.  Was a sheep giving birth, which would mean placenta in the field?  

I figured that was it, especially with half a dozen vultures huddled around a downer sheep in the grass.  But when I stopped to look a bit closer with a lens, this sheep stood up and ambled off, and all the other sheep appeared mobile. No newborn lambs were evident, and my presence got the vultures taking off to kettle overhead.

So… I don’t know. 🤷‍♂️

I do know these sheep could use a good shearing, but that’s a different thing, isn’t it?

All Hail the Queen of Surf

AS SOME OF YOU may know, I am a devotee of Galactus, destroyer of worlds, whose one true emissary is the Silver Surfer.

I am now thrilled to report that Julia Garner is playing a female Silver Surfer in the new ‘Fantastic Four’. 

“In every part of the globe it is the same! Hatred, fear and unreasoning hostility have possessed men's hearts! But the Silver Surfer will have no part of it!” 

Imagine There Is No God

A rabbi was asked by one of his students “Why did God create atheists?” After a long pause, the rabbi finally responded with a soft but sincere voice. “God created atheists” he said, “to teach us the most important lesson of them all – the lesson of true compassion. You see, when an atheist performs an act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that God commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his actions are based on his sense of morality. Look at the kindness he bestows on others simply because he feels it to be right. When someone reaches out to you for help. You should never say ‘I’ll pray that God will help you.’ Instead, for that moment, you should become an atheist – imagine there is no God who could help, and say ‘I will help you’.” — Martin Buber, “Tales of the Hasidim”

Woodland Treasure

I went out to dig the last 25 holes for the tree slips coming next week, and after digging the holes, I set out a quart of cracked corn for the deer, and walked the two wee wolves down the hill and up.  After that, I checked out the remains of a windfall oak I had gifted to my neighbor’s chainsaws and splitters.

Guess what?  

Left behind were four pretty large hollow sections perfect for Pileated Woodpecker or smaller owl houses. I collected four of those, and will cut plywood tops, bottoms, and entrance holes as needed.

These hollow cuts are 15-16 inches deep and 6-8 inches across on the inside.

Along with the nice hollow bird house bodies, I also collected 10 inhabitants of one of the hollows —  the larva of Eastern Hercules Beetles, the largest beetles in the eastern U.S.  They have now been put into a glass terrarium with decaying oak substrate for them to feed on. This terrarium joins another terrarium with year-old

Hercules Beetles inside.  There’s not much maintenance associated with these pets; no feeding or walking, poop cleanup, or training.  All that need to be done is to keep the substrate reasonably moist, which is not too heavy a lift if you have large lidded glass tumblers.

Feeding the Bees

I am making fondant to feed the bees that should be arriving in a week or so.  

The small “nuclear” hives that I will be receiving will grow out in my two larger 10-frame boxes, but they will arrive with too little food, and it will be cold and wet, so supplemental feeding is needed.

Fondant is 8 pounds of white sugar mixed into 4 cups of boiling water to which a teaspoon of lemon oil and a teaspoon of vinegar has been added.

The fragrant candy that results is placed on top of the frames to feed the bees. I also have a pollen packet which will stimulate bee larva production.

I will be traveling the last week of April, so I want to make sure the food needs of my bees will be taken care of during this critical early-Spring time.

Honey bees are not native, and are extremely susceptible to varroa mite infestation, hive beetle infestation, and starvation. Keeping them alive involves a certain level of maintenance.

Digging Lots of Holes

 

I’ve got 75 small native tree slips coming by mail from the state arboretum: 25 Blackhaw Viburnums, 25 white Dogwoods, and 25 Beautyberry. They should arrive one week from today, which means it’s time to dig holes.

These new tree slips will be about two feet tall, so they will not be very noticeable for the next 4-10 years, but they are all deer-resistant. The Dogwoods are less deer-resistant, but I am planting these where human activity should provide a little additional protection.

The Blackhaw Viburnum needs moisture, so this morning I dropped 25 holes in three down-slope areas that I know to be moist.

Fifteen of the Dogwood holes were also put in this morning, and another 10 holes in the afternoon following the rain.

The Beautyberry is a bit shorter when fully grown, is less finicky about moisture, and is quite deer resistant, so it’s going in last, along the forest line near the house and along the path to the two bee hives.

These 75 tree slips are joining four 5-foot tall non-native dogwoods planted earlier this spring, along with three 6-foot crabapples and two 8-foot Fuji eating apples planted at the same time.

Everything I am planting is designed to benefit wildlife, especially birds. 

There’s a decent chance I will be dead by the time these small trees are fully mature, but isn’t that life itself — a baton race in which we receive from the past and pass on to the future?  We dig and plant, recognizing that the tree slip is the hope, and not the promise, of something that will go on.

Ed Sayres Will Do Anything For a Dollar

Back in 2015 I wrote:

The former president of the ASPCA is now a lobbyist for the puppy mill industry.

Yes, that's right: Ed Sayres, the former President of the ASPCA, is now the head of the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council (PIJAC), the Washington, D.C.-based lobby group representing pet stores, pet products, pet dealers, and pet breeders.

Sayres resigned from the ASPCA last year amid questions about his $500,000 a year salary and just after the organization was forced to pay $9.3 million to settle a RICO (racketeering) violation over their direct mail operations.

As I have noted in the past, ALL of the major national humane groups are scams of one sort or another.

In the case of the ASPCA, the entire focus of the organization became direct mail.

As former ASPCA investigator Bob Baker told The New York Times:

... show one picture of a mistreated dog and the funds would pour in... [I]t got to the point where animal welfare was not the priority, fund-raising was. It felt as though the animals were being used for fundraising, rather than using funds raised to help the animals.

As Amy Worden over at The Philadelphia Inquirer notes, some of the leaders of the puppy mill industry seem to think hiring Ed Sayles might take the stink of death and systematic abuse off of their industry:

PIJAC regularly fights against humane animal legislation in Congress and in the states. Most recently the group has been engaged in trying to block efforts to ban the sale of commercially-bred dogs in pet stores. In a letter to members Andrew Hunte, president of the Hunte Corporation, in a letter implored dog breeders to ‘set their doubts about Sayres behind and unite around PIJAC’ to face the threats from ‘over-regulation’ endangering their industry.

Good luck with that!

Ed Sayres's departure from the corrupt money-chasing ASPCA, and re-emergence over at the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, simply underscores how morally bankrupt and money-grubbing the world of dogs, cats, and pets has become, and how desperate both the PIJAC and Ed Sayres have become.

Sayres is, no doubt, desperate for the kind of ridiculously high-paying job he had at the ASPCA, while the PIJAC is desperate for someone to ‘save’ the business of pet store puppy sales and puppy mill commercial breeders.

The main person pushing for Ed Sayres to head PIJAC was none other than the Hunte puppy mill corporation which sits on the board of directors of the PIJAC, as does Petland which markets Hunte puppy mill dogs (now registered by the AKC)

Liars for hire?  Yep, and at every turn.  Look for more corruption ahead.

So what’s the latest?

Why more sock puppetry!

An organization called the “Center for the Environment and Welfare” put out a press release saying they have hired Sayres as an “advisor”.  See >>   

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/former-ceo-of-aspca-national-groups-should-do-more-for-local-pet-shelters-302080208.html

Who or what is the  “Center for the Environment and Welfare”?

The short story is that it’s one of Rick Berman’s many “astro-turf” organizations, so-called because it’s a fake grass roots outfit. 

Berman creates sock puppet organizations that seem to represent public interests when they are actually corporate public relations shops gaslighting lazy reporters and serving as a stalking horse for industries that want no rules or regulation when it comes to food, animals, or the environment.

For a run down, see this post, entitled “Toxic Sludge is Good for You!” >> https://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2010/08/toxic-sludge-is-good-for-you.html

Back in 2015, one of Rick Berman’s spear carriers decided that since I had written quite a lot about the chicanery at the Humane Society of the US, PETA, and the ASPCA, as well as the RSPCA, I might be a good person to meet and lunch with.

It was interesting to see how quickly the Berman curtain collapsed in person when asked simple direct question.  You can read how that lunch went here >> https://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-liars-for-hire-of-washington.html

So what is the “Center for the Environment and Welfare” trotting out Ed Sayres to say?  

Believe it or not, Sayres is saying the ASPCA has “lost its way” because it raises $390 million a year and gives only $5 million a year to pet shelters.

But guess what?  

Those kind of numbers were true when Ed Sayres ran the ASPCA!

And when Ed Sayres was head of the ASPCA the organization was so lost and corrupt, it had to pay $9.3 million to settle a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) lawsuit over their direct mail chicanery.  You can read about that here >> https://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2012/12/aspca-to-pay-93-million-to-settle-fraud.html

So what’s the take away message?

Simple:  Be careful of who you support and be skeptical of what you read.  Assume *every* piece of direct mail you get from a national “humane” organizations is a fraud and a scam.  And assume any organization calling itself the Center for the Environment and Welfare wants to poison the environment and scuttle all the welfare.  

Caveat emptor in all things!

Bring Out Your Dead

Feeding Creatures

Cracked corn for the deer, Purina for the four dogs, and sunflower seeds for the seed-eating birds.  Soon, I will be adding a bag of white sugar for early supplemental bee feeding.  

Incidentally, cracked corn and white sugar are a good starter base for moonshine.

No Name Needed

Bald Eagle Nest at the Dairy

Waiting for the Wood Thrush

Waiting for the Wood Thrush to come back up from Central America.  They fly across the Caribbean twice a year in a single night’s flight.

https://www.stateofthebirds.org/2016/resources/species-abundance-maps/wood-thrush/

My Heart and My Brain Divorced

my brain and

heart divorced

a decade ago

over who was

to blame about

how big of a mess

I have become

eventually,

they couldn't be 

in the same room

with each other 

now my head and heart 

share custody of me

I stay with my brain 

during the week

and my heart 

gets me on weekends

they never speak to one another

 

    - instead, they give me

the same note to pass

to each other every week 

and their notes they

send to one another always 

says the same thing:

"This is all your fault"

on Sundays

my heart complains

about how my 

head has let me down

in the past

and on Wednesday

my head lists all

of the times my 

heart has screwed

things up for me 

in the future

they blame each

other for the 

state of my life

there's been a lot

of yelling - and crying

so,

    lately, I've been

spending a lot of 

time with my gut

who serves as my

unofficial therapist

most nights, I sneak out of the

window in my ribcage

and slide down my spine

and collapse on my 

gut's plush leather chair

that's always open for me

~ and I just sit sit sit sit

until the sun comes up

last evening, 

my gut asked me

if I was having a hard

time being caught 

between my heart

and my head

I nodded

I said I didn't know

if I could live with 

either of them anymore

"my heart is always sad about

something that happened yesterday

while my head is always worried

about something that may happen tomorrow," 

I lamented

my gut squeezed my hand

"I just can't live with

my mistakes of the past

or my anxiety about the future,"

I sighed

my gut smiled and said:

"in that case, 

you should 

go stay with your 

lungs for a while,"

I was confused

  - the look on my face gave it away

"if you are exhausted about

your heart's obsession with

the fixed past and your mind's focus

on the uncertain future

your lungs are the perfect place for you

there is no yesterday in your lungs

there is no tomorrow there either

there is only now

there is only inhale

there is only exhale

there is only this moment

there is only breath

and in that breath

you can rest while your

heart and head work 

their relationship out."

this morning,

while my brain

was busy reading

tea leaves

and while my

heart was staring

at old photographs 

I packed a little

bag and walked

to the door of 

my lungs

before I could even knock

she opened the door

with a smile and as

a gust of air embraced me

she said

"what took you so long?"

   ~ john roedel (johnroedel.com)