Behold the mighty tiger

Prejudice

All of us have prejudices, I think. Some we inherited from our parents, and some of those we diligently rejected over time. Some are our own, based on personal experience.

Even though I know it's wrong to judge an entire category of people based on my observation of a few of them, I still do it. Young black men wearing hoodies don't offend me. I am prejudiced against young white men who drink and drive 4 wheelers, often with a gun rack over the window.

There were a lot of these in Elk Grove years ago, before the dairy farmers were bought out by developers and the little town succumbed to suburban blight. Half the pickups in Elk Grove used to be raised off the ground like this.

This photo is a recent one that I plucked from the internet to illustrate, I have no idea who this fellow is and would be happy to say he's probably not the kind of guy I'm talking about. Most of the trucks in Elk Grove weren't this fancy, but they were just as absurd. In the winter many of them were dirty because the guys would take them offroad, through the mud. If you were a stud, you had a really dirty truck.

So what do I find offensive about that? Mainly the mindset of the driver. People who are really interested in 4 wheeling do it responsibly. They belong to clubs, volunteer their time maintaining roads, and it's often a family activity. They're into preservation, not destruction.

The guys I'm talking about are sociopaths. It's an extension of that whole sicko male thing, you know... whatever he drives is a public display of what he'd like his penis to be? Add the rifle hanging in the window and the empty beer cans in the back, and you have the textbook, brainless Butthead. They don't go 4 wheeling for fun, they have mayhem in mind.

In rural areas, we still have mailboxes. Buttheads like this used to get tanked and then drive down the rural roads in the wee hours, one BH driving and the others in the back of the truck, smashing mailboxes. A little redneck fun, you know? This doesn't happen much out here these days because there's too much traffic.

But there are still a few BHs left, I can tell by their recent tracks on my levee.

Oh boy, wasn't that a fun thing to do, rape a levee?

Sooner or later I'll find out who did this. It's not anyone local. All the guys around here have been on sandbag duty, they understand about taking good care of something that keeps your house from floating to Lodi in flood season.

He's probably not far from here, though. One Butthead trait is to brag, and news travels.

In the meantime, if you're loitering in my area in a 4 wheeler, beware of old, prejudiced ladies. You're being profiled and you will be followed. I don't have a gun, I won't need one.

Still trying to catch up

I got my grow out pens finished. I did a great job, if I say so myself. I also did a great job on my back.

For a week I had sciatica. It was uncomfortable during the day. I could sit, but not walk very well. It was worse at night. I could only sleep sitting up, which was easier to do on the couch than in my bed. I can truly sleep anywhere. The worst part was knowing I was getting behind on my work outside.

I would take a pain pill at 6 a.m., then go out and get the animals fed and watered and the sprinklers set for the day, and be back in the house by 9 a.m. where I'd sit on the couch. I read 2-2/3 books of a trilogy.

As suddenly as the back pain came, it left. Now I'm trying to catch up without overdoing it and setting it off again.

The flower garden has suffered the most. The sunflowers all finally fell over and are covering the other plants. It looks like someone ran a car over the garden. I think I can start cleaning up about next Monday. I'm so thankful for the wood shed cats. Because of them I know I won't find a bunch of gophers partying in the lily patch like I did last year.

The kitten is growing, of course. I know this seems like it's become a cat blog. As I type he's trying to climb up my leg. Ouch. He likes to be on the desk, running across my keyboard or playing with the mouse. And chewing the cord. I just put him back on the floor and he's not happy there.

Aside from learning computer skills, he's also been studying to be a cat. He carefully observes Velcro when she's eating.

She doesn't mind because so far he still prefers a bottle to a bowl, and will only eat canned food from a spoon. I'm sure this will all come together soon.

The kitten has turned everything in the house into a toy, but his favorite is this little monkey from Uncle Bernard that normally sits by my computer.

It's just the right size.

When my back is being naughty, it's really hard to walk through the house with kitten toys and the stuff from Bob's bedroom still strung about. He's been working really long hours, a lot of them out of town, and hasn't finished his painting project. The house deteriorates quickly. If one thing falls on the floor and doesn't get picked up immediately, within the hour there are 3 more things rolling around.

It's been a challenge not to get bitchy(er), about the mess, but it helps when the feline half of the destruction crew looks like this and loves to sit on my lap and purr while I read.

I will be accepting adoption applications soon.

Too Hot to be Busy

First we had an unseasonal rain. It was nice, it cleaned the dust off all the trees and perked them up. I didn't have to water the lawn for a couple of days afterward. The sunflowers grew even more.

What good is a flower that's 20 feet tall? Conveniently, the rain knocked most of them down. Before I could pull them out and put them on the compost pile though, a funny thing happened. Flowers popped up along the stems.

This is much better, except it looks like a mess. The stems are just right for a bouquet.

After 3 very cool, rainy days, the weather turned. We have already had a week of temperatures over 100° and will have a week more before it comes back down to 98° or so.

When you have a yard and animals, very hot weather makes a lot of work. I've been up and outside every morning to spend an hour with the hoses, setting sprinklers, sprinkling the pens and refreshing everyone's water. In the afternoon I take a bucket of water around and dunk any birds that appear to be stressed. I come back in a couple of times a day to spend some time with the kitten, then go back outside to work on my grow out pens.

I feel guilty about not spending more time with the baby, but he's still mostly sleeping. He'll fall asleep anywhere. Even in my dirty old shoes.

Grow out pens are for the young birds. When they're still young, you can group quite a few of them together. As they mature you can pull out the ones you need to sell. By the time the cockerels are old enough to squabble, you can separate them into smaller pens. I only had two pens that I could use as grow out pens. They have been full for a month. So I am building two more.

I did not want to make them permanent, because it's unusual for me to raise this many chicks and I don't plan to do it again. But even a temporary pen has to be very secure or the raccoons will feast.

There's not much that's more fun on a scalding hot day than messing around with 1/2 inch mesh chicken wire and tiny little zip ties. The wire ends prick your fingers. My fingers are just a tad too big to effectively reach through the small mesh and catch the end of an elusive zip tie. It's too hot to even get bothered, though.

I have one pen finished and have moved all the white Old English out of the house. I have another day on the other pen, then I can move out the Dominique bantams and will only have 4 tiny babies left in the house. Oh, and the grandma OE, I didn't want to leave her out in the heat.

Then I can start cleaning house. What a mess this place is, with kitten toys and chick brooders, along with the usual dust and debris. In the middle of all this, Bob decided to clean and paint his room. So all his furniture is in the hall and everything he doesn't want to keep is in boxes in the living room, waiting for a trip to Goodwill.

If you've tried to call -- and someone has because I see there are messages on the phone -- I've been outside from dawn to dark. I'll catch up with you sooner or later.