How often have you ever heard people asking “Why did God create ticks”? Now a daring and bold writer has gone out into the world asking this retorical question to some of the country’s leading scientists. And she put it into an article, go to ‘The Life Story of a Tick’ by Constance Casey for the inside scoop. You will likely find out a lot of little tidbits of tick info.
Originally written in April 2006
The Lion, the witch, and the wardrobe is a marvelous book series for children. Written by C.S. Lewis it shows the majesty of righteousness and has a Christian type character which I think all Christians would recognize.
It has recently been released as a movie version which I think fully captured the books intent and meaning. I am well pleased with how Disney Pictures did the movie. The stunning computer work which created the full scope and ‘other worldliness’ of the books was so well done as to be mesmerizing.
While watching the movie, and the beauty of the ‘King of Narnia’, the Messianic Lion Aslan, Vickie and I had to discuss our own Mountain Lion. He comes through our area on occasion, eating deer and goats, scaring people, and giving us all a good reason to walk about armed to the teeth.
People sometimes report seeing a Mountain Lion here, but more often we just hear it screaming near the house. There have been times when I was in the orchard on the hillside, some ways from the house, and I hear it screaming near the house as I am walking home. It is unnerving to walk toward a scream like that, knowing you are walking toward something your entire being is screaming at you to walk away from. It is at times such as this that I will pick up a few stones to throw at it if I see it, to keep it from charging or stalking me. If I am still in the orchard I might pick up a pitchfork and ax from the shed and walk home with those in my hands. I feel like a peasant from a Frankenstein movie, marching on the castle toward the monster to do battle with archaic weapons.
There was another time that I had to walk to the well in the dark and cycle the pump on. The lion was screaming outside near the house. So I went out with a shotgun and flashlight. As I was waiting for the pump to fill the tank I walked along the road so I was away from the brush. A neighbor came driving by, parked some ways from me with his lights on me, and hollered cautiously out the window “are you OK John?” It was a touching moment, and I could hear the worry in his voice evaporate when he heard me explain the reason I was standing along the road with a shotgun.
But this all began with a talk of the Chronicles of Narnia, did it not? Well, Vickie and I had to remark during the showing of the Lion Aslan that our own Mountain Lion has been unheard by us for half a year now. Perhaps it is dead… and then the silence was deafening. You see we have a pond next to the house, it is full of frogs that chirrup all the night long on their orgy of excessive tadpole making. And when the frogs stop making noise it is like an alarm ringing because something is out there and scared them. Then, through the partially open window I heard it, the scream of the mountain lion, and it was close. We walked out onto the dark porch, proceeding cautiously, making sure the skunk was not out there. We stood on the dim porch, under the overhanging roof, deep in the shadows and listened to the close scream, then farther away we hard another scream, that was repeated twice. Then our own closer lion screamed again, and the other one repeated the scream twice. Over the next ten minutes we heard these two lions call to each other across the vastness of the open canyon. And our own lion which was behind our house, perhaps a few hundred yards and to the Northwest crossed the hillside behind us to the North, it then went along the spine of the hill to our East, and then followed that to the Southeast, and eventually the two screams became too faint to hear. In the span of ten minutes we’d heard this local cat cross two miles of densely wooded land without us ever hearing anything other than it’s screams.
I know that having a local Mountain Lion is a luxury most Americans will never know, and I relish the thought that I live in this wild area, that so befits my own philosophy and nature. I wish this area to remain remote and wild like this, and I understand the feelings of the people who were born in this canyon and regret the opening up of the land that has happened in the last thirty years. The telephone was the first to come in during the seventies. Then people started coming into the canyon settling on their widely spaced houses, mostly out of sight of one another. And we encroach on the Lions territory, causing it havoc in its normal course of business. But the lions and the other animals seem to have come to terms with the new inhabitants of this canyon, we provide food of sorts to these animals with our imported meals-on-the-hoof. Many are the chicken coops that have been broken into by bears here, or tunneled into by foxes. Few goats remain; the rest have been eaten by the lions. Owls take the occasional cat. And mice are attracted to some barns where large amounts of feedstuffs accumulate and give them food, they are seized upon by rattlesnakes as a nice food source.
Nature is full of bounty when there are not too many of any particular species, but the ‘balance of nature’ is not a balance at all. It is indeed a see-saw with the individual species rising and falling depending upon the vagaries of weather and disease. The fox population reached a saturation point here a few years ago, we had foxes coming up nightly to search for food near our house, and Whitey made sport of chasing them away from the house, while they in their cunning minds made sport of Whitey by running around bushes and coming up behind Whitey until he was the chased. The foxes got to a certain level, and then an epidemic of distemper caused their numbers to fall quickly. Now we do not see too many foxes. And now I have only a memory of standing at night in the canyon watching as the glowing eyes of foxes search left and right, criss crossing like soldiers on a search and destroy mission as they make their way toward me, not knowing I am standing there like a stature on a rock.
Yes, the foxes are gone, and a few months ago with the lions gone for some time I heard a pack of coyotes yipping near the house. This was a sure sign to me the lion was gone, and while I have no fear of coyotes, I’d rather have that dangerous lion around ‘cause he kept the deer population down, and they eat my cactus. The coyotes will eat our cats. When you have lions around the coyotes stay away (they are pretty smart critters).
Seasons come and go, the tides rise and fall, and populations and empires wax and wane. There is a time for everything, and we can only guess at and apply our learning to predict the future. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worse. As for me, I put a lot of trust in Mossburg, and Smith and Wesson.
Lil Rob… Summer Nights
Lil Rob has a nice old Motown or R and B influence. But he wraps it with Hip Hop currents.
He’s from San Diego, and this song really pulls you into a summer night in some parts of California.
I see you’re looking to find new horizons
But there are footsteps everywhere you go
And somebody else has been asunder
The sunshine has wilted and crawls
I’ll get it second hand, I’m dazed and confused
Turn back the second hand, I pay all my dues
I got rid of my dues and I’m all fixed up
Watch me talk about it
Second hand, yeah used, second hand
I got it second hand, all used up
Second hand
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Beautiful…haunting….etherial
Originally posted in 2005 at www.rivenrock.com
Local lore has it that when we see tarantulas in the summertime, the fall rains are within six weeks from falling. This has proven true by my reckoning before, but this is the earliest I’ve ever seen the tarantulas. And I am sure it will not be raining in the middle of August. I’ve never seen it rain in August here; in fact we usually go without rain from April to November. August is just not a month we can hope for rain without getting our hopes dashed. Don’t hope for any unlikely event.
But why are the tarantulas running around already?
The Male tarantulas are the ones we are likely to see, they are off searching for a nice girl spider to raise a family with. The girl spiders stay in their home saving their energy waiting for a nice boy spider to ‘come a’callin”. When he does they have a short courtship ritual during which she will see if he possesses the proper skills and attributes she would want passed on to her own progeny. If he passes the test, she will submit to his advances, then after mating if he is not quick enough she will jump onto him (she is much larger) and she will bite him and kill and eat him. This will give her enough food reserves to sustain her growing eggs.
Now, this explains why the tarantulas roam six weeks before the Fall rains, they wish to have the eggs developing before the rains come, the young will be hatching in the first rains, and will roam off into the greening lush chaparral to start their own lives in the cooler moister time of easy living on the Central Coast.
There are many things the old-tyme country folk use to reckon time and when to perform things, and how the weather will be. Some of these are dismissed as ‘old wives tales’. But some seem to work well, and of those that do, there is a natural explanation if we could just unlock the secrets to nature.
Another legend here regarding the tarantulas concerns how high above the creeks they build their nests in the hillsides. It is said they can tell how wet the winter will be, so if it will rain a lot and the creeks will rise high, they want their nests high above the creeks, if it will be a short-rain winter, they will be placed lower to the creek, so they will be nearer their food prey coming to get moisture.
Another legend here has to do with cattle, when the cattle lay on the ground a lot, it will rain soon as they will not want to lay on the cold wet ground, so they rest their legs up now, so when it rains they will be able to stay on their legs for days and weeks, ready prey for reckless teenagers off for an evening fun of beer drinkin’ and cow-tippin’.
Vickie’s favorite way to tell the weather is whether a cat will sleep with it’s head upside down, this will often presage wet conditions she says. But I’ve found this to not always hold water. Perhaps it is tied to humidity and not actual rainfall, but I’ve often seen her mention a cat sleeping in that position, and then within hours it has rained.
Nature is full of wonders, and they were all made for us by God to enjoy in this world. Don’t mess up what God made, hold it tight and well, and revere all that is given to you by the Almighty.
Tao-Teh-Ching; Chapter 51
The Tao is the mother of all beings,
The virtue of Tao nurtures them in nature,
The material world gives them form,
Environment and circumstance complete their abilities.
Therefore all things honor the Way, and venerate virtue.
This honoring of the Tao, and the veneration of virtue are not commanded,
They occur spontaneously and for this reason the Way continues to create beings
While virtue continues to nurture and develop them.
The Tao gives birth to all, yet it lays no claim of ownership,
It nourishes all, but it does not control,
This is the mystic virtue.
Originally posted on April 1, 2005
Painted Ladies, the small butterflies that resemble the large monarchs have made a huge pilgrimage to the Central Coast the last couple days. Huge volleys of them roam the countryside, I see thousands crossing the highways before me. On my travels along the coast I have had my windshield splattered with yellow spots from their fragile bodies as I drive heedless and full of wonder through these little colorful denizens of the fields and vales.
They make their yearly pilgrimage from Old Mexico to the hills of the American West at this time. And this year with the huge amount of rain and the recent warm weather their numbers that have survived the trek this far are beyond any I recall ever seeing.
At this moment the world waits as a Pope lies dying in a dark room in the Vatican. This Pope, a deeply committed man, the idol of my deceased grandmother is soon to pass from this world. He will come into the arms of a loving Creator and will sit at the feast tables of the New Jerusalem. My thoughts and prayers go out to him, and to all who regard him with the high level of respect he has accrued throughout his papacy. He is a refined man, yet a common man, one of the men of the earth. Born into a common family in Poland, he worked with his hands as a young man, and never lost his touch and connection with the common man. On the wall in my grandmothers room to this day is a photo of the Pope. A photo of a strong man, firm of face and rugged in body and spirit. His connection to the peasants of Eastern Europe is perhaps what drew my grandmother to him. She was also of common peasant people of Eastern Europe, and the Nazi and Communist invasion of her homeland was the same as what the Pope encountered. Yet from both families, triumph from the ashes and smoking ruins of a devastated Europe was the end result. True, none of our family made it to the height of power and influence of the Pope, but when you come from starvation and nothing, to get to the point of even a warm house and plentiful food is a high achievement.
And now, with butterflies stuck in my grill, and the sad news on the radio, I travel these lonely roads; alone, but not lonely. I am surrounded by the awesome beauty of these coastal hills, the verdant green, rolling on in wave after wave of velvet-lining over geologic formations squeezed and folded by seismic forces. The Pope came as a seismic force into our lives through Poland from God, and the butterflies come with the soft flutter of wings through Mexico from God. And my tires roll on, through the day, a continual succession of miles eaten up by rubber as my life continues, and the butterflies and the Pope die.
God bless them all.