This is what
a typical Central Texas winter storm
looks like.
Ice and sleet, very little actual snow - though that has happened a few times in the 50+ years we've been here.
Speaking on years, I had a brand new experiance when out hiking this morning, but it all happened so fast I couldn't get through my winter clothes (it was 24°, wet, and windy this morning and it's still 24° this afternoon) fast enough to grab any photos.
While out near the back fence I heard a crack overhead and jumped back because there were a lot of ice-heavy branches overhead and I wasn't particularly keen on having one come down on my own overhead!
Except it wasn't a branch that came down.
Just a few feet from where I had been standing a turkey-sized vulture thudded to the ground and bounced once from the force of the fall.
I stood there in shock thinking 'what the hell!'.
It lay there on its back in shock thinking 'what the hell!'.
Eventually rolling awkwardly to its feet and hopping/limping away.
Birds don't have a lot of nerves in thier feet, which in cold weather drop down to just above freezing to conserve energy. I figure she was hunkered down up there in that tree minding her own business when I came along and startled her. Then a combination of not knowing where her cold feet were and being top-heavy from an accumulation of ice on her feathers conspired to bring her down in the most ungraceful way possible.
After flapping and slapping her way upright she hopped through the underbrush for a bit trying to get as far from that bastard that knocked her out of the tree as she could while trying to shake off enough ice to get airborn.
I figured I'd caused her enough distress already so left her be and quitely continued on my way, finishing my hike/workout.
Hopefull she got back up in her tree by the time I was sitting down to the breakfast of champions - or maybe that's fools.
It's frigin' cold out here!
Damn you Johnson, you put me to shame! It's 39 here & I wussed out of going on a walk.
ReplyDeleteYer an animal!!!
Great story about the bird! Must be wonderful to have such wildlife!
I prefer feral!
DeleteWe do have a variety of native creatures here, and enough of them that we occasionally interact
50+ years, eh? Back then youse wuz still usin' a slide rule, weren't yuh?
ReplyDeleteHow'd you happen tuh find it?
Was minding my own business up in Michigan with The Daughter incubating in The First Wife when a job offer from Texas came by. They offered twice what I was earning so in 1981 I ended up here.
DeleteNow that I think about it, it wasn't too many years later (I started college in the early '80s) that I had a programmable Texas Instruments jobbie that helped me get a B in trigonometry.
ReplyDeleteBy that time I had bread-boarded my own +-/* calculator from then brand new intigrated circuit chips. Something that would have cost me 100's of dollars to buy. It was bulky but did the job.
DeleteG'yad dang! You just think yer so great!!
DeleteYeah, it's called wishful thinking!
DeleteAs AM Hinkman wrote just a couple days ago
Delete"The “could” is a torturous thing. It may even be fair to say that for the man who prides himself in always staying one step ahead of misfortune — the “could” is quite often his end."
I read Hickman and was disappointed.
DeleteMy fav therapist, Dr. Teufel (means devil in German), ssid the measure of maturity is the ability to tolerate ambivalence. Mr. Hickman strikes me like most complainers: he has a ready excuse for not doing anything that "could" improve his circumstances.
He also holds rather delusional views about ruralites.
Friendly Americans are more often well--educated, grew up in integrated, diverse, communities (cities) and often experienced different cultures at some point in their life.
This is frequently the opposite of ruralites, most of whom have traveled no more than 10 miles to the next town, are under-educated (public education has been declining since frontier days when people WANTED to learn) xenophobic and suspicious of anything "new."
Given the above, Mr. Hickman is now sleeping in the bedof his own making and has no room for complaint.
WheN, WHEN! I ask, will people take responsibility for themselves? (I was advised not to move to Syracuse as people there pay more attention to the brand of your shoes than your depth of reasoning.)
Geeze! When you describe ruralities you're describing my brother! And he grew up and lives in what I call city. He calls it country but the traffic on the paved road out front is pretty much constant, it takes 20 minutes to go 5 miles because of congestion and all the traffic lights, and he has every store and fast-food place imaginable within a 7 mile radius. To me that's city.
DeleteYou're right, we all sleep in a bed of our own making, and even if we don't like it most of us do nothing about it, but isn't questioning and shouting into the wind as much an action as packing boxes and moving? If there's no voices raised then there's nothing keeping us from sinking into the primordial goo of the communal comonality sludge.
For that reason I disagree with your fav therapist. The overwhelming tolerance of ambivalence has gotten us into this current mess, and from the betterment of societal structures position, that doesn't seem like maturity, just a blind acceptance of decline.
But hey! What do I know? I'm content to isolate myself out here and let the world burn down around me!