A Bird In Hand Is Better Than Two Stuck In Your Grill

I never cease to be amazed by the suicidal dives and swoops birds take in front of my speeding hulking Suburban Z71.

They swoop in from the left or right, mere feet in front of my truck, and I always check to see if the idiots made it through the other side.

I have to watch, since the truck is so big, and I always have the music cranking, so I wouldn't feel or hear anything if they didn't make it.

When I don't see a clear escape happen I know what I'll be doing when I reach my destination- on more than one occasion I've had to peel cute little birdies off the grill.

Yesterday on the back home from a post office run a bird got whacked by my truck. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the feathery lifeless lump in the road.

This morning on the way to the gym I looked to see if it was still in the road where I hit it. As I looked- whack! A bird hit my antenna and ricocheted onto my window, then fluttered up and over my roof and into the windshield of the car behind me.

Stupd birds.

Plastic Poop Problems

Sometimes I wonder if my kids have lost their minds. Can children get so creative, so involved in play and the imaginary worlds they build, that they actually cross over into complete wackness?

And so begins the story of The Velveteen Poop Dog.

A couple years ago when R-girl was about 5 years old, we bought her a little plastic dog covered in that cheap velveteen material meant to feel somewhat like fur. It came with play food to give to the little pup that also ended up on the ground after the dog did it’s business.

It was a novel idea. You load the little food pellets into the dog’s mouth, and when an appropriate amount of time passes, you lift his little tail and the pellets, looking exactly the same as when you put them in, drop out the little dog’s rear end and hit the ground with little plops. Voilà. Dog poop.

Like most toys, it broke quickly, and little R-girl complained that her dog had diarrhea.

“What?” I asked.

“She has diarrhea… when you put the food in her mouth it comes out the butt right away.”

Apparently the lifting-tail mechanism had broken and now the food pellets made a quick trip from the dog mouth to popping out the dog butt in about ½ second, no digesting, no slowing down, no relaxing glass of wine to help the meal settle. Just- plop.

R-girl asked me if I could fix it but I couldn’t. It’s one of those non-serviceable toys (as in, you have to destroy it to get it open).

She came up with her own solution- a doggy diaper held tight with a pony-tail holder.

Digital Fur

This morning I changed my Google home page theme. I’ve had Coldplay “Viva La Vida” as my theme since early this past summer and it just starting getting old. I opted for the new “theme of the day” selection knowing each new morning I’ll have a little surprise to look forward to.

As soon as I clicked “add this theme” my new iGoogle page was redesigned by Dolce & Gabbana… out with the Coldplay, in with the leopard skin. Imagine that- a fancy European designer yet again exploiting animals for profit.

It looks interesting, and though I don’t like it much I know it will be gone tomorrow. What I’m wondering though is this… how do extremist animal rights people view digital animal products?

I’ve seen leather texture files for designers, and of course all kinds of other images online. I did an image search on Google (“animal skin textures”) and got over 200K pages. What is a radical to do?

I see a whole new fundraising angle for PETA here. Imagine, hiring Chinese or Russian hackers to use Photoshop and airbrush blood on various image files at photobucket.com, shutterstock.com or istockphoto.com. Keeping tabs on celebrity blogs and sites and launching huge protests if Lindsay Lohan or Rosie O'Donnell use a zebra skin border on their blog. They can place banner ads on various sites and seek donations to help stop the gratuitous use of animals on the internet and in print. Let the cash continue to roll for PETA folks!

We Are Now Dog People

I grew up with dogs my whole life. I can barely remember the ones from my early years- Chocolate (killed by a neighbor with a shotgun when he messed in his yard once too often), Smoky, a Dalmatian, and then Daisy. Our cute cocka-poo.

She was followed by Ringo that on well beyond the time I moved out from home.

And that was it, for more than 20 years, until a few weeks ago.




We have a tradition where each of our girls gets to choose their heart’s desire for their 13th birthday gift (you can read more about that here), and L chose a dog. We spent several months thinking about the breed to get and finally found a cute Yorkshire Terrier pup.



I fought it off for along time… fearing the dog-smell and inevitable messes around the house, but I finally gave in.

Our new little girl, Bella, has already found a place in all of our hearts, despite her insistence to not use the facilities outside.

Crazy Dog People

Next month our family will finally enter the world of dog owners. We’ve fought it off for many years but the war is over. I’ve lost.

I do love dogs. I’ve had a total of four dogs in my life. Chocolate (killed by a neighbor with a shotgun when he pooped in his yard one too many times), Smokey (a gorgeous Dalmatian who we gave up when we moved to Hawaii), Daisy (died of old age after a happy life) and Ringo (ditto).

The reason I pushed hard against dog ownership as an adult is two-fold. One- at least two of our four kids have bad allergies. Two- much more selfish… we have a nice home, and the thought of a dog fouling rugs, scratching wood and doors and other mischief is bothering me greatly.

We have a family tradition though- and that is when each child reaches 13 years old, they get to choose their hearts desire for their gift. Anything in the world (with certain rules and restrictions you can read about here).

L turned 13 in June, and her choice? A puppy.

We’ve all been warming to the idea. It took a couple months for L to choose the breed she wanted (Yorkie), and find the right breeder and puppy. We landed on a cutie earlier this month and the deposit has been paid. We pick up Bella (or Brooklyn, or Piper, or whatever other name L thinks about between now and then) later in November. I have prepared myself for the new family member. I am starting to even look forward to it.

Until just now.

I have been at Panera Bread outside of Indianapolis for 2 hours now getting work done while waiting for my first film of the day to start. I’m attending the Heartland Film Festival as part of my work for Sony and have a few hours to kill before the “work” day begins.

For 90 minutes of that two hours I have been treated to a NON-STOP barrage of chit-chat between a mother (appears to be in her fifties) and her daughter (mid-twenties) about their dogs. It’s nauseating. I use the present tense because ITS STILL GOING ON AS I’M WRITING.

I now know the following about these two ladies dogs: diet, medical conditions, medical treatment, other dogs in the neighborhood (by name) they like to play with, toys, tv shows they like, clothing, what mom and daughter did (with their dogs) on vacation this summer, where the dogs sleep, what they do during the day, how excited they are when their respective owners get home, the condition of their fur and teeth, how cute they are in the morning, where they sleep (“she’s so cute…she crawls up under the electric blanket between my legs and licks my knees, blah, blah, blah”). The attached photo was JUST taken showing these two going at it with this blog entry being written on the screen to the right.

I’m going insane.

A warning to L and my lovely wife Michelle- if you turn into these two ladies I’m going to build a guest house on our land and move in there.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Finally. After several unsuccessful attempts to reduce our skunk population in time for campfire season (those amazingly cool and crisp Oct-Dec weekend nights), my new shiny expensive “Skunker” caught something other than a raccoon.

As dawn broke over the grounds, I walked up to the sprung trap and peered through the viewing slots in the trap door. There he was- a cute and pungent skunk peering back at me.

A friend tipped me off that Williamson County Animal Control will come and pick up trapped skunks and “take care of them” for me. I have a pretty strong hunch what that means, but the prospect of disposing of the skunk myself, and in the process risk becoming a stinking skunk target, was enough to pick up the phone and call the government for help (a recent trend it seems).

I had no idea how finely tuned the system was for taking care of live trapped animals. When I called I spoke to a nice and efficient operator that asked how she could help me. After telling her about the catch she transferred me to a “dispatcher.” After another minute or so describing the situation, I was put on hold while the nearest control officer could be contacted. She patched me through to an officer that was on his rounds not too far from my house. He told me he’d be there within the hour, and I let him know where the trap was since I was headed out for the rest of the morning.

I got a phone call after lunch that my trap was ready to be picked up. I stopped by late in the afternoon after running errands.

The control officer that picked up the skunk told me how much he liked my trap. He hadn’t seen anything like it and wanted to know where I got it (http://www.skunker.com/). We chatted for a bit about the merits of the Skunker, how many skunks I’ve seen wandering around our yard (at least 3 more skunks including a massive albino skunk that’s white with a black stripe), and other chit-chat. What we didn’t talk about was the elephant in the room:

I didn’t ask “so, buddy, what did you do with the skunk I gave you?”
And he didn’t reply with something like “oh, yea, that- well, we killed him dead. He won’t be spraying you and your family and friends out by the campfire anytime soon.”
And I didn’t reply “so, how did you kill him?”
And he didn’t respond back with possible techniques like “well, we poisoned him, or shot him, or suffocated him, or …..”

I really didn’t want to know. I didn’t ask. He didn’t tell.

A couple days later I caught another skunk. And despite Tennessee law that stipulates live trapped skunks are not to be released, I couldn’t bear sending the little bugger off to the big house. I strapped the trap onto the back of my truck and drove to a remote area and let him go. And I will continue to do so until we clear the population of stinkers around the house.

If I run into the animal control agent again hopefully he won’t ask me if I’ve caught more skunks. And I won’t tell.

Skunk Hunt

I could see it coming a mile away.

As fall approaches and we resume our traditional bonfires out by the fire-pit, I could foresee a crisp clear night enjoying the roaring fire and each other’s company right up until the moment a skunk sprayed one of us while getting more wood from the wood pile.

A skunk moved into the wood pile this summer and I’ve been plotting on how to take him out. I discovered him one Saturday morning earlier this year while mowing the lawn. I roared up in my mower and we each surprised the other and I can only imagine the look of fear and shock on my face matched that of the skunk.

He tried to squeeze into the wood pile but wasn’t in front of his (or her?) den entrance. He turned to look at me and I though for sure I was about to get very stinky. I didn’t stay to see if he raised his tail- I pulled back on the mower, went full-speed into reverse and got out of there.

So, how to get rid of him…hmm….

I thought about poison, using my BB gun, a kill trap and much more. I couldn’t bear killing the bugger so I looked for an alternative. I found one called “The Skunker.”

It’s a live trap that allows the skunk to slide into a tube seeking the bait (dry cat food was recommended) at the other end, and then WHAM. The trap door at the back end of the tube slides closed and the skunk is trapped. He (or she) can’t turn around, can’t lift their tail to spray, and can’t even see you as you approach and pick up the trap. Perfect.

The only problem was I didn’t know what to do once I caught it. I thought about leaving it in there until it died (only briefly… but that is just too cruel), and a friend suggested a tie a rope to the handle and lower it into our creek for 10 minutes. Couldn’t do it.

I found out Williamson County Animal Control will come and pick up live trapped animals and remove them at no cost. They call when the trap is ready to be picked up. I have no idea what they do with the skunks after they pick them up, and frankly, I don’t want to know.

By the way… the trap is AMAZING. Its brilliant and worked great. I set it out for 3 nights, and the first two nights we caught Raccoons (which we immediately let go). Here is a video from our second night:

ChickenGirl

Last week the whole crew went to Franklin on the Fourth (& Fifth). It was the standard outdoor downtown festival- funnel cakes, lemonade, music stages (featuring teenage girls playing electric/acoustic guitars singing other peoples county music hits) and the requisite inflatable games/rides for kids that are way overpriced.

I'm not positive, but I think this was the first year for this particular festival. And if so, my guess is that it will be the last. I've never seen so many downtrodden, sad looking booth vendors selling so much crap no one wanted in my life.

Michelle and 3 of our girls and I hung out while K connected with a couple friends. It promised to be an uneventful afternoon until we met ChickenGirl.

Shortly after we arrived we found a petting zoo and A & R asked to go inside, mainly because they had a cute baby pink pig and A is a PIG NUT. We paid the $3 per kid entrance fee and both A & R were handed a little Dixie cup overflowing with some sort of omni-animal food. You know the kind- looks like a cross between chex mix and rice-a-roni that all animals will eat except for the ones in petting zoos getting the stuff shoved at them by little kids 10 hours a day for years.

A & R made a bee-line for the pigs while Michelle and I enjoyed watching a little girl totally focused on capturing a small white chicken. She ran it round and round the enclosure until she got the poor thing cornered between a llama and donkey. She grabbed for it, and then spend the the next several minutes posing so her mom could take pictures, and then taking the chicken on a tour of the petting zoo.

She introduced her little chicken friend to all the other animals- rabbits, a baby cow, donkey, llama, two pigs, a few goats, some sheep and various others. She put the chicken right into the face of each animal and informed the chicken what each animal was and made sure chicken got a real good and up close look at each animals face.

Then, the fun began. The girl decided to let the chicken take a ride on each of the animals. The pig was first. She sat the chicken on the pig and amazingly the chicken just sat there. The pig stood unfazed as if this happened everyday. Next up- the brown sheep.

Bug Sounds And Bats

Today was a wonderfully pleasant day.

It started out a bit off-center for me as my suggestion to have our Sunday school class start a Nooma film and discussion series was met with approval from our two class leaders. They liked the idea and asked me to lead it. Today was the first day- we watched Rain 001 and chatted about the film and its message for more than an hour.

After church we headed to Sportsmans Grill for lunch and then home for some time in the pool. I cleaned all the charred grass from my mower and then pressure washed a few things before taking a dip.

After several hours we decided to grill some bratwurst for dinner and eat outside. As we wrapped up dinner and the sun was setting, our nearby bat colony came out for dinner. Sometimes we can see 10 or more swooping through the air eating bugs. We love them since they keep the mosquito population near zero even though we have a creek on one side of our property, and a river back behind us.

Our 6 year old R asked an interesting question as we let dinner settle and watched the bats. “If we make a sound like a bug, will the bats come and bite us?”

Yes, You Can Make A Horse Drink

There’s an old saying that I always assumed was true: You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him (or her) drink. I found out its not true at all. You can make them drink by taking them on another hot trail ride right away.

About a week ago I took L (my now 13 year old daughter that just celebrated her birthday a few weeks ago) and my visiting mother-in-law horseback riding. We headed out to Creekside Riding Academy in Franklin, TN, and plopped down $120.00 for the three of us to go on a “trail ride.”

As our trail guide Anna brought me my horse (Cinnamon) she proudly announced that Kellie Pickle had just ridden Cinnamon the day before. I told her that while I had no idea who Kellie Pickle is, I appreciated her telling me that.

Anna confirmed in her mind I was an idiot city-dweller with no sense of pride in Tennessee and its country music heritage.

Off we went on the “trail ride” which really was nothing more than a 200 yard path along the side of a creek, just inside the tree line, that we re-traced back and forth 4 times. There’s no way horseback riding like this could beat the current gas prices. We paid $120 to go about ½ mile total distance.

At the end of the ride, what coolness there was from the morning turned into blazing heat. Anna instructed us to dismount and walk our horses over to the watering bucket. L’s horse just stood there. He wouldn’t bend his head down or take a drink.

Anna told us not to worry- he was about to go on another trail ride and would soon regret (as much as horses are able to feel regret) not taking a drink. He would surely hustle to the water hole on the way back to the barn after the next ride.

Dog Attack

At dinner last night the family stumbled into a discussion about dogs that brought back a distant memory. I then shared that story with the family. And the kids were so kind to sit there and humor the old man by listening to my story of way back then…

I was a door-to-door salesman for CableTV Montgomery. My purpose was to get in peoples home by knocking on the door, telling them I could get them a month of free cable service, free installation, free premium channels and a free cable box. Absolutely no cost! Free! Seriously!

I then would sign them up and leave with a $72 check. We did give them a free month of cable, but they had to buy months 2-4 in advance to get it. Oh, and if you didn’t want hole through your hardwood floor it would cost $50 for the “advanced/quality installation.”

Yes, I know, might as well sold used cars.

So, anyway, I pulled up to one huge house in Chevy Chase Maryland, stepped out of the car grabbling my giant presentation book, and walked towards the house. A heard a strange noise- a pounding and rushing sound. And then I saw it. A massive dog, probably 100 pounds, running full speed with teeth bare in an amazingly quiet sneak attack. As he closed in on me the barking and growling started, and he did not appear to be bluffing me. He was going for the kill.

I didn’t panic (at least I didn’t tell my family I did) and did the only thing I could think to do. As the dog lunged at me, I brought my huge binder (about 5 inches think and probably weighed 10lbs) down on the dogs head as hard as I could. He collapsed to the ground with a whimper and laid there.
The homeowner, a nice lady in a dress far to formal for a Saturday morning, came running over to me surprisingly much more concerned about me than her dog. She apologized, asked me into the house without knowing why I was there, and handed me off to her husband as she hurried upstairs.

The man explained to me that the dog does this all the time, no worries about knocking him out cold- he’ll be fine- and that they were in a hurry to get to their daughters wedding. I told him I was sorry for intruding and would come back another time. “Nonsense”, he said, “how can I help you?”

I gave him the 30 second version of my sales pitch, just wanting to get out of there with my life. He pulled out his checkbook, wrote a check, asked me to fill out all the paperwork for him and that installation next week would be fine. He escorted me out to my car, holding the now awakened beast by the collar and I drove away.





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Save A Life, Take A Life

It looks like my effort to save a young Red-tailed Hawk was not in vain. He (she?) faced fairly certain death hobbling along on the pavement at the Hillsboro Elementary & Middle School parking lot last Saturday. Relocating him to our peaceful 11 acre spread seems to have been the right thing to do.

We saw him yesterday sitting high atop our kids playground set keeping a watchful eye for field mice in the yard. I startled him and he flew to the trees nearby. As I watched him fly he looked much better than he had the day I found him.

As I headed out for the day today to catch a meeting I saw him once again on top of the swing set looking as content as a Hawk can look.

It felt good to have helped save the life of that little bird. As I pulled out onto our main road and hit full-speed I thought about how cool it would be if he hung around permanently and added to our rich array of wildlife in the DigitalRich Crew’s backyard.

Just then a large bird flew right into my windshield and died instantly.

Weird.






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Red Hawk Down

Saturday morning and a rare weekend business meeting. 8AM breakfast with a kids video company at the Vanderbilt Marriott (while the DigitalRich Crew is still asleep), and then a rushed drive home to get our girl A registered for Kids On Stage week 2.

Kids On Stage is a wonderful benefit of living in Music City- a week long camp training kids aged 7-17 in singing, dance, guitar, art, painting, digital photography, songwriting and much more. A had decided at the last minute she wanted to attend this year, and Gene Cotton, the event director, was kind enough to let her in with hardly any notice. We had exchanged email at 11PM on Friday night, and despite the fact that registration had closed about a month earlier, he said if I got to the school by 11AM the next day he would get A in for the week.

After making it to the school with about 5 minutes to spare, and getting A’s classes all set, I headed out to the parking lot for the quick drive home. A few feet from my car was a gorgeous young red-tailed hawk standing on the pavement. As I got closer he hopped away but didn’t take flight. I decided to try to approach it, and as he noticed I was coming right at him he took flight…barely.

His left wing appeared broken and he got only 3 or 4 feet off the ground before crashing in a rather ungraceful way. I approached again, and he lifted off, only to smack head-on into a light post. He fell to the ground dazed.

He was breathing hard, moving his head up and down very fast, and in all ways looked to be in his last few minutes of life. I didn’t know what to do. My sister-in-law is a veterinarian so I decided to try to catch the hawk and bring it to our birthday lunch for our daughter L that was to begin at our fave Mexican hangout Garcia’s. I grabbed a towel from the car and got close enough to the hawk to throw it over him and carefully lift him up. He became completely still and played dead so well a possum would be impressed.

I stared at him for a full minute and he didn’t move. I was convinced he was dead and so poked him with my finger. He blinked. I smiled.

I drove home with one hand on the steering wheel and the other gingerly holding him in the towel. By the time I got home I thought for sure he was dead again. He was amazing. I called the girls downstairs to the garage and everyone got a chance to admire him. Michelle called her sister Jackie and she told us there was nothing they could do. The hawk would either heal on his own and make it, or die of starvation. The only other option was to call the local wildlife refuge but they were closed on the weekend.

We set him down in the grass near our patio- at least it was far away from speeding cars in the school parking lot. It was a hot day so we doused him with water and put our little bird bath near him loaded up with fresh cold water. He hoped around a bit, then cried plaintively for his mother. I realized then I probably should have left him in the area I found him. No doubt his mother watched me whisk her little baby away and was none too happy about it. We had to head out to lunch so we decided to leave him there and Jackie would return from lunch with us to see the hawk. I figured I would take him back near the school after she looked at him.

When we returned he was gone. We searched the area but couldn’t find him anywhere. I hope he makes it.






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Invasion

I have been amazed at the types of wildlife that wander around our house. They’re just going about there normal business, and our family are the invaders. The interlopers. We have moved into their world.

Recently we added vultures to the list (see my post Death In The Front Yard), and now they are frequent visitors looking for another dead animal laying about. The girls were hitting softballs in the backyard today and a few stray softballs littering the field attracted a few curious vultures wondering what the very still, plump round white balls were. They came in pretty close to inspect them.

The list so far includes field mice, owls, woodpeckers, rabbits, moles, snakes, hawks, raccoons, possums, giant frogs, skunks, coyotes, deer, pheasants, bats, shrews, quail, turkey, goundhogs, crows, ferrel cats, and of course squirrels.






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Death In The Front Yard

We had a death in our front yard. A rather grisly one.

A deer got caught in the barbwire fence that runs along the side of our property. From what we could tell, it tried to leap over the fence (we have seen them do this often) and got one of its hind legs caught between the two upper layers of wire. It looks like it slipped in between the two, and then as it fell over the fence, the lower wire twisted up and over the upper wire, and bound the deer’s leg between the two.

The last few days we have driven past this trapped deer but did not see it. The place where it got caught up in the fence is tucked into a group of trees and hard to see from our driveway. It must have happened sometime between Monday at 1PM (I was mowing in that area about then) and yesterday (Thursday) afternoon.

The deer was finally discovered when Michelle was driving home from a doctors appointment and saw a large gathering of vultures near the tree-line. She strayed off the driveway and towards the vultures. As she neared, she said she could smell death and then saw what was left of the deer- one long hind leg trapped in the fence. Everything else- and I mean everything- was already consumed by the disgusting creepy vultures.

It’s very sad. That poor creature was trapped there and died, and we must have driven past it while it was still alive several times. If we had only known it was there and needed help we could have easily freed it.

Interesting insight into life. How many news stories, or maybe even personal stories, have we heard about someone trapped and desperate, near death or near exploding inside and causing death, and we don’t even know it. How easily we could start to help them if we only knew.






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Today I Had A Visitor

Working hard. Deadline. Stuff to do. Phone’s ringing. Something moves outside and catches my eye.

I dropped what I was doing because what I say out of the corner of my eye I think was fairly large and seemed to be walking. I went to the door of my office (that looks out on a patio and several lush acres of grass and trees) to find an interesting looking visitor.

I stepped out to say hello, but he was not very friendly. He started clicking and clacking his mouth and/or teeth at me, and at one point turned around and buried his head first in a corner, and then in a drainage hole in an ostrichesque attempt to make me go away.

Is it a ground hog? A Beaver? No big tail though, so I guess not. A Wolverine? I have no idea. If you know what it is let me know.

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When Trees Fly

Our girl A loves pigs. She has a collection of pig toys, figurines, plush, pillows, pictures, and much much more. While her sisters want pets like horses and dogs, she wants a pig. Yesterday was a big day for her.

My mom and dad found a place near their home that sells fresh sausage. So fresh, they raise the pigs right there on their farm. My mom noticed they had a new litter of piglets and asked the owner if she could ‘borrow’ one of the piglets for a day. They agreed and mom and dad planned on bringing him to our house on Saturday afternoon for our kids to play with.

Saturday dawned cloudless and incredibly windy. Mom planned on stopping by later in the day with the piglet and so after breakfast I figured there would be time to go get a new kite and take it for a run with the girls as we waited outside for the piglet to arrive.

I had kites on my mind as the day before I took one of our two old (as in 10+ years old and falling apart) kites from the garage out for a quick fly, and struggled to keep it aloft. Shortly after getting it a few hundred feet in the air the string broke and it sailed off into the distance. I decided then if we flew a kite again soon we needed to get a new one that wasn’t about to fall apart or was permanently attached to tangled dry-rotted string.

Michelle and I headed out to Target, only to find they didn’t have kites in stock yet. We stopped by our local toy store on the way back- no kites either. We left and got home a few minutes after the piglet arrived. Mom had very uncharacteristically arrived early.


A was ecstatic, and I was a little weirded out. I mean, I dug having the pig over, but knowing he was on the only field trip of his life and a short time from being sausage links on someone's breakfast table was just a little unsettling. After spending some time with the shaking frightened little pig, we decided to get our last remaining old kite from the garage for a fly. The wind was still strong and it was too much to resist on the gloriously sunny day.

I fancied myself a good kite flyer, despite the disaster the day before, so I walked A through the basic steps of kiteology, with just a hint of that fatherly know-it-all tone. We started off with about 30 or so feet of lead, waited for the right wind coming from the right direction, threw the kite up above her head, and got tension and altitude quick by running into the wind.

It took 3 or 4 tries to get it aloft to the point it didn’t break right or left and crash to the ground. In a few minutes we had it up a couple hundred feet when the wooden dowel spine of the kite broke. We retrieved it from the top of a tree (miracle) and took it into the garage to fix. A few minutes later we were at it again.

The kite kept swooping low in the strong wind, and I was talking A through all the rules of kite flying- pulling it in when the line goes slack, letting string out as it pulls hard, when to let the string flow out quickly to gain altitude- all that stuff. I thought I was good at it until I dropped the string spool and lost my second kite.

The spool shot up in the air and lodged in the top of a large tree some 40 tall. The string extended its full length beyond the tree, and the kite soared more perfectly that it had the entire time I was flying it. A mentioned that the tree was doing a really good job of flying the kite. Ouch.

So, in a matter of 24 hours I had lost two kites, crash landed them a total of 4 or 5 times, broke one of them, and got a nasty string burn on my left hand. Total flying time of both kites combined when DigitalRich was flying them? 15 minutes. I lost the second kite to the 40 foot tree at about 1:30PM…the last time I checked at 8:30PM last night it was still being flown flawlessly by the top branches of that tree. At least 7 hours- it was gone this morning.

A great lesson. We make so many simple things hard. We over think them, over analyze them, over complicate and manage them. The trick, sometimes, is to just let go.






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Word Association

Walgreen’s charges 75 cents per strip of negatives to turn them into digital images, plus another $6 or so for each CD needed to hold them. After spending $600 in the last few months turning our old family Super8 video’s into DVD I decided to take a less expensive route this time and scan them all into our home network while working.

The upside is obvious- it doesn’t cost me anything. The downside? It's costing me time and attention (continually loading new photos while I am trying to get work done), and the quality is not near as good.

During this process I have had many long-forgotten memories pop into my head- sort of like the old word-association game, but using images instead. I guess more like a Rorschach Inkblot Test but with old family photos. One of the pictures I loaded yesterday was of Michelle and me standing next to our first ‘family’ car. Gone was the 1974 Midnight Blue Nova 350 small block of my single years, and in was the Chevy Geo Spectrum for the married years (it was actually Michelle’s car, but I adopted it).

The instant I looked at that car one thing popped into my head. Turtle pee.

I wouldn’t say I am an animal person, though at times I am moved by the plight of ducklings without a mother, injured birds and the like. Something about their helplessness motivates me to help out. On one day, driving to work on a hilly and winding road, I saw a baby turtle, not more than 8 inches long, slowly making his way across the road while cars whizzed overhead at 50MPH. I barely missed him, and after seeing the little thing still alive in my rearview mirror, decided to pull over and move him off the road.

I was able to safely pull to the side, and walked the distance back to where the turtle was. Fortunately the road was very wide with a nice shoulder- good for me- not for the turtle.

The area was riddled with roads, so I decided to take him to a nearby lake that I knew was full of other turtles and various wildlife, and far away from high speed roads. I walked back to my car, placed him on the passenger side floor board and headed to Lake Whetstone in Montgomery Village MD to drop him off.

As I pulled onto the road, I noticed that the turtle was making a move on where the gas and brake pedals are, instinctively looking for a dark cave like area to hide. I picked him up, turned him around so I could look at his face and belly (while driving), and out poured a surprisingly yellow stream of turtle pee right into my face.

I turned him around quickly, almost ran off the road, and watched as he sprayed out a nice even flow of pee all over my dashboard, radio, glove compartment and windshield. I was so shocked and clueless what to do, and still trying to keep my eye on the road, that I kept pointing him in different directions allowing him to paint the entire front of the car. I wouldn’t be surprised if the pattern spelled out t-u-r-t-l-e in cursive.

I pulled over, yelled at him, rolled down the window and tossed him into the bushes on the side of the road.

When Michelle and I had our first child we needed to get a mini-van, so out with the Chevy Spectrum and in with the Plymouth Voyager (Baby vomit).






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Two Lost Daisies

I read a story online last night about a dog, well actually a “rat terrier,” that ran away from home in Colorado in April 2006 and showed up some 1300 miles away here in Tennessee Christmas night. It is an amazing story- whether it happened the way the owner suspects (Daisy was stolen in CO and escaped near Knoxville) or Daisy actually trekked the many miles Eastward.

Many (many) years ago our family (as in my mom, dad, sister and mini-me) was vacationing in North Carolina, staying in our grandparents cabin near the Pisgah National Forrest outside of Burnsville. It was a rustic cabin put together some years earlier by my grandfather James Moore on a couple acres he and my grandmother scrimped and saved for as a summer escape from Florida’s heat.

The weeks spent there while growing up provided a platform for some of my fondest memories: getting lost rafting with my cousin in the deepest part of the forest, river-walking, building massive rock dams, bonfires that lasted until dawn, and of course, losing and then finding my dog Daisy.

The land the cabin was on was adjacent to a dairy farm so an electric fence ran the length of the property. We suspect Daisy crossed through the fence, was shocked, and decided she wouldn’t make that mistake again and likely wandered off looking for another way to get back to the cabin. Days went by and we couldn’t find her despite endlessly searching the surrounding area screaming her name. I don’t remember all of the details of the search, but I do have vivid memories now of the despair the whole family felt.

About a week or so later, we took a trip to Pisgah National Forrest, with inner-tubes in tow, and hit the Toe River for some white water tubing. If you have been, you know the insane fun that can be had sitting inside a giant truck sized inner-tube rushing down the river, and dropping down 3-8 foot waterfalls into pools of deep and cold river water. It is quite an experience.

Late in the afternoon, a couple walked up to our picnic table asking if the van with the Maryland tags was ours. They asked if we had lost a dog by chance. Turns out Daisy showed up at their house, miles and miles away from our cabin, through dense forests and ranges of hills almost earning mountain status, and walked right up to their front door. Daisy had a collar with a vaccination tag on her that didn’t have her name- only the city and state of the vet clinic that had vaccinated her near Fort Meade Maryland.






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We Hurt The Ones We Love

In a previous post, I briefly mentioned a duck that I killed. I thought it would be interesting to explore that a bit more. By nature I am not a hunter/killer, and in fact have only been hunting once in my life. I don’t imagine I’ll ever do it again.

A friend of mine, Troy, invited me to join a group of gents I know to go dove hunting. They had received permission to hunt on Gary and Amy Grant’s Franklin farm northwest of Franklin, TN. I remember being extremely envious of the vast tract of land they owned, 1/3 of which was surrounded by the wide and gently flowing Harpeth River.

After we got to the farm, Greg, another friend, drove his truck around dropping off hunters in 1s and 2s at various spots around the property. I had borrowed his shotgun for the day since I didn’t own one. Greg picked out a nice spot for me along a line of soaring trees and a stones throw from the river. I was given a quick tour of the gun, a refresher on how not to get killed by myself or another hunter, and a briefing on what a dove looked like. Yikes.

I jumped out of the truck, took my spot, and watched them drive a short distance away to drop off Grant, another friend. I got comfortable, loaded my gun, and wondered why the heck I was out there. If I did bag a dove, I wasn’t about to clean it, and I can tell you for darn sure, Michelle certainly wasn’t going to cook it.

On several occasions I spotted what might be a dove, and half-heartedly took a few shots, but didn’t hit anything other than tree tops. After a few hours, the group decided the dove count was too low in this area and we decided to head to another farm that Greg had lined up as a back-up just in case this happened.

We got to the new farm, and stood in the middle of the field in small groups of 3s and 4s. The doves were flying. Over the next couple of hours the group bagged dozens and dozens of birds. I got a few too. I remember one in particular.

Dove’s are small and delicate birds. If hit with a chunk of buckshot they almost always succumb to it instantly, and fall to the ground with a slight thud. Once in a while, the job is not done. That happened to me. The dove fell to the ground and started fluttering, and wouldn’t stop. I asked Troy what to do, and he told me to pick it up and twist it’s little head off like a 2-litre bottle top. Nope. Wasn’t gonna do it.

Instead, I decided to put it out of its misery with the gun. I don’t think I truly understood the power of a shotgun at close range until after I pulled the trigger. I did put it out of its misery- all that was left was feather vapor and a six inch hole in the ground, eliciting much laughter from the group. That was it for me- I was done. I handed over my six doves to Troy for him and his family to enjoy, and spent the next hour or so just watching the others.

Oops. I forgot this was supposed to be about the duck I killed. Well, I can get that one out much more quickly. I was about 2 years-old and my mother brought home a baby duck she had rescued from a local farm. As my mother tells it, the baby duck was rescued from being bitten, pecked and harangued by its siblings.

The previous Christmas I had been given a little duck shaped tricycle, kind of like a big-wheel, but it was white and in the shape of a duck. When ridden it would make quacking sounds. Evidently I was a big duck fan, what with my duck-mobile and Donald Duck toys.

My mother thought I would be thrilled to have a real live duck as a pet, and so was presented with the little guy that I appropriately named “Duck.” As I would travel to and fro in my duck-mobile, Duck would be right behind me, waddling as quickly as he could to keep up. My mother thinks Duck became attached to the toy and though of it as his mother.

One day, while I was out in front of the house with Duck, my mother noticed the familiar sound of my duck (the riding one) had ceased. She was used to hearing it constantly, and the silence was an alarm of sorts that I was up to no good. When she went outside to check my status (was I eating a poison berry? Eating ants? Eating dirt?) she saw me squatting down next to Duck, who was laying lifeless on the sidewalk.

“C’mon duck. Go duck. C’mon duck.” Were the words she heard me saying as I poked at Duck to get him moving again. I had run over Duck and ended his short little life. What really pains me now thinking about it is not that I was the one that killed Duck, whom I loved dearly, it's that Duck must have been horrified to think his mom took him out.






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