fierce little thangs

Pound for pound, what is the fiercest animal on the planet? I don't know about the planet, but the fiercest thing in our back yard is a hummingbird. We live in a typical subdivision with retention ponds so we have some pretty mean ducks and geese that wander through the yard from time to time but they're wimps compared to the hummingbirds. We had a huge snapping turtle mosey through the yard as it was going from one pond to another and all it did was bite at a hoe handle that I waved in front of its mouth. Ho hum.

The hummingbirds, on the other hand, are putting on quite a show. I have read that hummingbirds are so fierce that they will attack a hawk that infringes on their territory. I believe it because our backyard has turned into a war zone.

We had a bee balm plant with red flowers that a hummingbird liked to visit in the evening. Well the blooming time for the bee balm was nearing an end and since I enjoyed seeing the hummingbird I thought I'd get a feeder. Well, MKH decided if one hummingbird feeder was good then two would be better. So we got a feeder to put in the garden and one to attach to the kitchen window.

All of a sudden, instead of one peaceful little hummingbird visiting the flowers, we have five hummingbirds that are constantly fighting for their territory. One hummingbird will sit in the top of our happy willow tree (this was supposed to be weeping willow but it refuses to weep, so we call it the happy willow). As soon as another hummingbird gets close to the feeder, the one that is perched in the tree will swoop down at top speed and dive bomb the other. This starts a big fight so they will fly furiously through the yard, in and out, up and down, through the branches of trees, around the house, up over the roof, all over the place.

Sometimes there will be two pairs of hummingbirds fighting at a time and you think they are going to collide with each other. Then all of a sudden another hummingbird will show up and start dive bombing both of the other sets. They also make an angry muffled chirping sound when they fight. It reminds me of the puny noises you make when you're having a horrible nightmare and you try to yell but for some reason all that comes out is something like a squeak.

My favorite times are when MKH and I are sitting on the back patio and they'll go zooming by about two feet from our heads. Once in a while they'll stop and fly in place and look at us as if to say, "You ain't seen nothing yet....watch this!" And then off they go again.

If I ever get a picture I'll put it on the blog. All I have now are pictures of where a hummingbird used to be just a second ago.

sissy tattoos

...so I'm playing catcher for the church softball team because I'm old and when you're old you don't have enough arm left to play anything but catcher. I'm a heckler. I have always heckled, long before the existence of trash talking (whatever that is). I just talk to the batter about the pitches that he ought to swing at, his clothes, his wheels, his physical appearance and whether or not he's going to be the next out.

So a young tough comes up and he has some sort of a cloth band around the calf of his leg. I ask him, "What's that thing for?" He plays on a Christian softball team, so he answers me. "That's to protect my tattoo in case I have to slide." Excuse me while I turn aside to snicker. I've always thought that tattoos were worn by manly men, burly rough and tumble warrior type men who would ignore bayonette or schrapnel wounds that might damage their tattoo. I guess not.

It was such a pretty tattoo, all multicolored. The cloth band wasn't staying up very well. Maybe he should get a pretty scarf to tie around his leg to keep the cloth band over his pretty tatoo. Or maybe he ought to just forget about a game where he might have to slide, and go to a tanning parlor instead, or go see a dentist about whitening his teeth.

I'm not really against tattoos. However, the only tattoos I find interesting are the ones that have been on a sailor's arm for 50 years and they are so old they just look like a massive ink smudge. I'm especially uncomfortable with eyecatching tattoos worn by young girls in places on their body at which you're already trying to avoid staring.

Maybe I'll get a tattoo on my 70th birthday if I live that long. I'll probably stop playing softball by then and I won't have to worry about ruining it.

is there a translator in the house?

"Step 6. Carefully prise the rubber bung from position between the main jet housings and unscrew the pilot jet, which is located below the bung. The needle jet and main nozzle, which lie in the main jet housings, can be removed by pushing them out from the venturi side of the carburettor, using a finger or a suitable piece of wood which will not damage the brass."

I understand that I can use my finger or a suitable piece of wood but what and where is the "bung?"

I don't know anything, I never did know anything...

When Scrooge came to his senses, at one point he started dancing and he sang, "I don't know anything, I never did know anything..." That's pretty much true for all of us when it comes to the world scene.

Often I read or hear someone saying that they don't agree with President Bush. How do we know? How does anyone know? We don't know what is really happening in the world. In some cases we know what hapened in the past but even then we misinterpet so much. How do we know what to do to cause a positive future if we don't know enough?

The President, U.S. Senators and other government leaders don't know what's happening in closed and deceptive societies. They try to know but they only know what intelligence sources can tell them.

Intelligence sources only know what their sources tell them and what they can determine on their own. They can and do misunderstand, misinterpret and misrepresent those perceptions.

The Israeli army doesn't know that Palestinians who live in poverty would rather spend all their time for years digging tunnels and bunkers in the ground so that they can spring up and kill and kidnap a few Israeli soldiers.

The people spending their life tunneling in the ground and stockpiling weapons don't know what their life could be like if they would try to do something else beside hate and kill Israelis.

The people living in countries that are filthy rich with oil, for the most part, don't know what their life could be like if their government would start helping the people of their country instead of buying and building more weapons to kill Americans and Israelis.

Israelis and Americans don't know what life would be like if we could do something more productive with our resources than making weapons and building armies to protect what we have.

Do I agree with President Bush? I think the question is more, "Do I trust President Bush?" Am I a good enough judge of character to determine who can be trusted? We are so easily fooled. The very people who are untrustworthy are often so adept at deceit. Read "The Prince As Lion and Fox" by Machiavelli. I voted for Governor Ryan in Illinois and he ended up being a crook.
Bottom line, since I'm never going to know enough about what's happening in the world to call the shots, and someone is going to run our government, and to vote is to trust:

I have a qualified trust in:
George W. Bush
Joe Lieberman

I totally don't trust:
Hillary Clinton
Ted Kennedy

public service announcement from T & Z

With all the extreme heat I wonder how many people are thinking about the birds and plants which, unless they live inside of Lowe's, have to be out in the heat all the time. It would be great if someone could give them a drink.

This is "little Z" just after he, as he put it, "helped the birds" by putting water in their bird bath. He is now in the process of "helping the plants" while T keeps the bumblebees away.

T and little Z say, "Help the birds" "help the plants" they're all God's little creatures.