Padre Island National Seashore

The wind can’t lift
Above a nodding fold
A flag for the world
To see who owns
Beached jellyfish and dunes.

They come by night,
Like locusts, Mexican dreamers
Who crossed the Rio Grande
Into the Promise Land:
Women give birth to Americanos;
Men risk their lives

For milk and honey they can earn
By the same peon sweat they shed
On their homesand.
Padre Island without a moon,
With its black flag and ocean waves
Speaking Spanish all night long.

When Red Flags Fail

I have done intensive research on humanity thoughout my life, and I've discovered that for some folks red flags mean nothing when one's sensory input is supersaturated. For many of the weaker gender (weaker in the common‑sense arena), it takes more than flags to get their attention—nothing short of a baseball bat. And yet, it is uncertain whether that does anything besides getting the bat bloody. This can apply to either gender, depending on the circumstances. In this case we’ll pretend the idiot is male.

"I gotta tell ya," one man says to another. “That woman will bring you nothing but sorry times. Count the times she's left other men on the heap of agony and despair." The one giving counsel is not feeling the hormonal rush his friend is experiencing at the time, hormones that cloak the fact that the woman in mind has gone through five husbands. This brand of love and attachments to messianic leaders have an affinity here.

"With me, it'll be different," the listener responds, assuming he's got a handle on the workings of the atom. Such arrogance!

"Remember Bubba? She took him down the road of destruction."
"Yeah, but I ain't Bubba," Grasshopper replies.

"You know how together Bubba was before she came along," the speaker of wisdom says. The only reason that this person is so wise is because he’s not being trifled with. The degree of one’s irrationality is proportional to the flirtation input directed at the recipient, such as the promise of eternal amorous bliss or the acquisition of spread-around wealth--whatever it is that the manipulated is being allured by.

"But I KNOW it's real this time." One finally reaches the bottom of the lust‑encrusted vessel of stupidity when he's babbling like that. "She has proved to me a billion times over (yeah, and I cry buckets of tears) that she LOVES me alone, and I, I, I LOVE her. Our love will last till the mountains become prairies, till I drink the oceans dry, till . . . When the sun stops shining, when crickets stop cricking, when forever becomes never (Give me a break!), then is when, (sigh) our love will start to wane. Yes, we can," says our duped dope.

Today is Ignoration Day, one filled with festivity and glee, a time of jubilation because finally Lincoln is apparently resurrected . . . or is it JFK?

I was in Walgreens the other night and noticed all the Obama paraphernalia for sale: plates, hats, baseball cards, and a book that pictured the "president"-to-be today with hand caressing his heart next to a shiny flag pen attached to his thousand-dollar lapel. Never before in history has a phenomenon like this occurred: An obscure, insignificant, first-term senator from one of the most corrupt states in the union--having done nothing worthy of a news report next to the obituaries but to mesmerize a nation with babblings of “yes, we can,” and a two-word summarized promise of hope and change--having been elected by the people to act as the President of the United States. Before today there have been four coins struck to commemorate this groundbreaking achievement--I guess his election. WOW! All he's done is breathe, and that has made him a hero even before Michelle has packed up her silverware. What a time in history to live. Could it be that we are actually watching the decline of the Great Experiment. God help us in our stupidity.

Oh, yes, the book about the inauguration of Obama: On the front cover he wears a smile as big as Chicago (Why the back cover has a picture of the back of his head is beyond explanation). What a change from the photo of The Man with limp shoulders looking off towards the Middle East while the rest of the big shots were clutching their hearts--at least a show of civil American protocol--during the National Anthem. The pictures tell it as it is. This country has a changeling in the White House.

I believe I’ll root out a few rocks in the back yard today and watch a few episodes of “Monk.” There’s no sense in wasting time watching the biggest joke of a ceremony in the history of man.

Feeding your grandparents' dogs--
From a letter to daughter Liz dated a few years ago

Speaking of your grandparents' dogs. I really don’t like the flea-bagged bloated packages of hyperactivity. Get this, while your grandparents are off in Los Vegas, I’m taking care of their dogs. Well, I don’t have a problem with that; I’ve done it before.

Part of the routine is to check their water level and give them a skillet full of dog food, and every two or three days drop-kick Muscle Mouth over the plum tree. That’s the only way to keep the idiot in line (I’m kidding about the drop-kicking, but I am tempted to act out my emotional disfavor with that canine). Oddly, when I take care of them, they behave very well.

Back to the point I started on. This time Grandpa wants me to feed each a half-package of hotdogs each day. Oh boy! Can you believe that? Next year it’ll probably be prime rib. Again, I don’t mind taking care of those mutts, but to feed ‘em high-classed grub is rather wasteful. Think of all the starving people who would rather eat those dogs rather than their dog food. It is a senseless waste of good meat. Have you ever seen those two go after steak and gravy? Now, I don’t mean leftover steak and gravy. I’m talking about the right-off-Granny’s-stove steak and gravy--she has to prepare meals for four, for her, Grandpa, Toby, and Chuck.

They look like slow-motion jack hammers. Maybe you haven’t seen jack hammers in action; if not, you’re not getting the full impact of this image. If the dogs could swallow whole those franks--Great Scott!--they would have.

I have eighteen packages of hotdogs to feed them, one each day. Sadly, I was unable to feed them Saturday. I just didn’t have the time or energy to slither over to your grandparents' house to feed their dog fat. Sunday afternoon I gave each of them a package of weeners to make up for the half package they were deprived on Saturday. After I had thrown the hotdogs into the grass, they looked like a cord of wood strewed on the lawn. The dogs started scarfing and snorting, sounding as if they hadn’t eaten in a week or two, even though they have a number 3 washtub full of dog food in the garage to tie them over between meals.

At first I didn’t think much about what went down. I figured they were dog enough to handle a package, after all they were able to consume a half-package in ten seconds or less. But as they were "eating," it appeared they were slowing down. I estimate it was at the tenth dog when I realized what I did wasn’t the wisest thing to do. Each dog looked at his remaining weenies; I knew they were tempted to eat them, though they didn’t have the capacity to contain them. Have you ever eaten twelve weenies at once? I know you wouldn’t try. But they, being dogs, hadn’t either, but they did. They began chewing their food. The novelty of those stinking dogs chewing their food was . . .well, revolutionary. However, it is what happened next that carries a foregone conclusion to this story. I shall quote you a passage of scripture that alludes to the situation and rings true to the nature of dog and man: "As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly" (Proverbs 26:11). I think you get the point.

Amadillo Kill

Some of the strands in a food web are hard to live with. The inconvenience of a species depends on its intrusive factor in our lives. For gardeners a multitude of grasshoppers is a disaster, but for the exotic diners a plague is a feast. Years ago in the city where we lived, possums were a scourge. I can’t count the number of possums I killed. In fact I ran out of room in the back yard from burying their carcasses. Instead, I’d catch them in a trap and dispatch them in the country. At least the buzzards were fed the following day.

The other evening near sundown, I was out back inspecting my potted plants on the stairs that go nowhere, when I heard something rustling in the leaves. I knew it wasn't my cat wandering around since he was nearby, sitting, and looking in the direction of the leaf disturbance as well. By and by I caught sight of an armadillo wandering around, digging the ground and munching on bug morsels. Anger flushed away any bowels of compassion I may have had. Usually I am not a killer of lower creatures simply because they are breathing, but this critter aggravated me. For several days armadillos had been turning over my potted plants in search of bugs. I also heard complaints from neighbor Joe down the hill that armadillos had been plowing up his lawn.

Any armadillo caught crossing Joe’s lawn is dead meat. Snakes are deader meat. One evening back in July, I heard three shotgun blasts (I was told later there were five in all.) from the direction of Joe’s house. I envisioned there were several armadillos feeding in his yard, all being bushwhacked by Joe’s Mossburg. I went down to his house to snoop things out. When I arrived Joe was trying to remove with a shovel a very long snake from one of his cedar trees he had mangled at close range with his shootin’ iron (both snake and tree). The snake was headless; a portion of its center was missing, resembling a big bite; and the coiled tail section that held the dangling carcass in the fork of a limb was attached by a thin shred of skin. When asked why he needed to shoot the snake so many times, he told me that it kept moving. I guess he wanted to get it out of its misery. Compassionate soul.

Being the impressionable person that I am, I decided to join Joe in his campaign to thin the armadillo population, at least on Hidden Bluff. In order to fully appreciate the passion the members of the NRA have to bear arms, I figured I needed to experience the thrill of the kill. I went into the house, got my .22 pistol, and returned with the view of dispatching the armadillo. I wasn’t entirely cold natured about it; there was a twinge of second thoughts about shooting him, but as with all excuses resulting from emotionally based reasoning, I pressed forward with a killer intent based on the distructo premise—the armadillo had no right destroying property. He deserves to die! I was about ten feet from the poor creature before squeezing off a shot. I expected him to writhe and kick in agony, lie gasping for air, and bleed all over my rocks. He simply perked up his head and resumed munching on another grub he had found. I knew I had hit him. I was too close to miss. However, I didn’t realize how tough an armadillo’s hide is. I also understand why God gave those creatures body armor to protect them. They seem to have the mentality of the gnat; and they look funny, too--a head fit for “The Far Side.” And their senses are severely challenged. They are so blind and deaf that if you carefully, slowly creep upon one, you can kick him across the road like a football. Wouldn’t hurt him though. He’d just get up from the bouncing roll and start digging for some more worms.

I fired again. I assume that bullet hurt him a little because this time he began moving briskly down the hill. I followed him. When he would stop to scratch at the dirt, I’d fire again. During the course of his stopping to scratch and my following and shooting him five times, I ended up in the middle of the lot south of our property, where the armadillo decided to hightail it away with vigor. I watched the little fellow scamper away, showing no evidence that the long-rifle bullets had any effect on his hide. That harmless experience cauterized my conscience. I had a challenge: Somehow I had to kill an armadillo.

A few nights later the occasion arose. Another armadillo came calling. This time it was much later and the bluff was pitch black; so with flashlight and pistol I headed through the brush toward the leaf-scratching just beyond the stairs that go nowhere with my cat following me. The flashlight caught his beady eyes glistening in the dark. I fired. Whoa ho ho ho! I must have hit this one's nerve. He began scurrying around in circles. I fired again, and again, and finally after the fourth shot, he ended up spinning his front feet with his head butted against a tree. Reminded me of one of those wind-up toys that keeps moving after it runs into a wall. At that point, I decided to use a shovel instead of shooting him again. More importantly I became concerned that my neighbors up the hill were overly disturbed. I discovered that the shovel is not the best thing to use to kill an armadillo. Bonk! It rang like a bell when I missed his head and struck his bony hide. Another interesting thing occurred. When I finally was able to hit his head, he began randomly hopping high off the ground, similar to the behavior of a decapitated chicken or a bucking bronco.

I lost count of the times I hit that armadillo, but with each thump, compassion slowly seeped back into my soul, then came sadness, and finally regret. His head looked adequately mangled for death, but he kept kicking and hopping around. I finally stopped beating up on him and went into the house, leaving him flopping in the leaves, hoping all that bouncing around was due to involuntary muscles as it was with Joe’s wiggling snake.