Smartie's Bar & Grill #74

Cats are the best anti-depressant known

 

Except when they run to get on the carpet before they throw up.

 

I tried the no-till well sort of we used a middle buster lowered just enough to break the soil to plant the seeds. The soil is going to get turned and tilled this coming season.

 

A gift deserves your attention.

 

Appropriately enough - Bloody Mary shrimp:

 

Otocinclus:

 

The best I could do with the Blue Rili shrimp. It's pretty active.

 

I've spent most of this week prepping up for school coming back next week - it's kinda telling that I was so involved in planning out the next semester - our district starts back next Monday - that I had no idea what was even happening in the news. Quickly scanning it, it was probably for the best anyway. I must have spent most of the day just going over setting up Zoom meetings alone much less plotting out the next few months. The more I do now, the less I haveta do later. Tomorrow I'm gonna call a couple students up and ask them to test out the settings and let me know if I pulled it off or not.

I've been binge-watching Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares on Hulu. I just saw an episode where Ramsey is dealing with the owner of one particular restaurant and while Ramsey is usually the star at that point, the people who stole the show were the employees of the boss, who was pretty abusive and a bully. While Gordon is raking the guy over the coals and deservedly too, his employees in a nearby room heard the whole thing and were enjoying the heck out of it, with one guy saying "Looks like Christmas came early!" Man, I was laughing the whole time. Anyone who's ever had The Boss From Hell could appreciate that episode - and I've been unfortunate enough to have two in my life!

 

Today I got something in the mail misdelivered. Now usually I can at least guess why it was misdelivered. This time, nope. Was sent out of state to somebody in another state than mine whose name is completely different than mine, house number different, street names not even close, and not a single digit in the zip code lined up. I am at a loss for how the automated mail sorter decided it needed to come to me but it kindly printed my address on the bar code and sent it right on along to my box.

 

My Angelfish, now about silver dollar size. The eyes should turn red soon.

 

So every day I have to go water this herd of cows that are foraging a field of cornstalks.
Here they are drinking a few evenings ago.


To fill their tank I have to attach a 10ft piece of 8 inch diameter aluminum pipe to the irrigation well to get the water from the well to the tank. Today I hooked up the pipe, turned on the well, filled the tank, and shut the well off when the tank was full. I then sat on the well to wait for the cows to drink so I could re-fill the tank.

For some reason the cows seemed nervous about drinking so I walked over and looked in the tank. There was a rabbit swimming desperately in circles around the edge of the tank. Nothing but the top of its back, it’s nostrils, and it’s ears above water. It took me several seconds to get ahold of it. Those little buggers can swim FAST. Much faster than I would have thought possible.

Anyway, I dumped him/her??? out on the ground and it ran under a fertilizer tank by the well I use for applying fertilizer through the center pivot irrigation system. I got a couple pictures of it. It looked so sad and pathetic I regretted not putting it in the pickup to dry out under the heater. Then I realized it would have just crawled under the seat and I’d have spent a long time trying to get it out. LOL

It’s above freezing so hopefully it will be fine. I guess I’ll have to start checking in the pipe before I turn on the well. I’m sure it was sleeping in the pipe because it wasn’t in the tank when I got there to water.

 

You big softie.^^

 

Just dropped by the bar to tell everyone bye, bye. I am not going to be posting anymore. It has been fun.

 

Nuts. Who will I talk BC’s with? I wish you well.

 

Yes, I suppose so. When I used to work summers for my uncle we did a lot of field work in the summers, tilling fallow fields to control weeds. It was common to find rabbit “nests” or killdeer nests. The killdeer were easy to spot because the mothers used the broken wing ploy to lead you away from the nest. Rabbits were harder to spot. But I got in the habit of stopping the tractor and moving the nests over out if the way if the babies were nearly grown or just driving driving around them if younger.

Moving juvenile rabbits can startle you. They make the most awful screech like you are ripping their beating heart out.

 

Whaaaat?

 

Sometimes walking away is a healthy choice. I am on twitter detox right now. Don't do politics at all there, but I deleted my account last night. I just don't want to participate in a platform that ignores all the many radical things I have seen democratic verified posters post and ban Trump for things he didn't even say or do. I don't especially care they banned Trump per se as it was inevitable once he left office anyway. I see it as going too far down the slippery slope facebook started down that caused me to delete my account there 4 years ago.

 

You'll be missed

 

You can always change your mind. I wouldn't hold it against you.

 

Oh that's sad. I've only been here 5 minutes but i will miss you.

 

Aren't you framers supposed to shoot rabbits?
Your story reminds me of when I first took my 8 year old son camping in the woods.
We settled down to sleep and there was a lot of rustling outside which worried him, but I reassured him it was just mice and voles going about their business. Then just after he fell asleep a vixen nearby started calling for a mate, its a horrible noise like someone being tortured. It really frightened him and I was struggling to convince him it was OK. Then as I turned over I fxxted loudly. "And That I said is a Moon Beaver" which made him laugh and broke the tension.
Happy days. He's 30 now.

 

LOL. I love your stories. Having spent a lot of time in a small pup tent with my dad and brother as a kid it’s very easy to picture in my mind exactly how that transpired.

When I was maybe 15 yrs old I was out traipsing through the hills as I did every day after school (my school never gave homework) I happened to see a big rabbit sitting under a Juniper tree. I don’t know to this day why, but I shot it. Then I “got” to watch something die that had never wronged me in any way. I had shot skunks killing chickens and things like that before, but never anything for no good reason. That was the first and last time I ever did something like that.

The only things that get shot on my farm are euthanasia cases and animals that harm other animals or severely damage irreplaceable crops/infrastructure. Oh, I do lease out some hunting rights, but that falls under the crop damage umbrella and the hunters are hunting for food.

 

Good for you, we share the land with the critters.
When I got my first air rifle I shot a black bird. Put me off killing things for life. Mind you I remember my mate had a rat in his grandads wood shed (I was about 14) he told me to go inside and rattle the logs while he pointed a gun at its bolt hole.
I was knocking the logs together when there was an almighty explosion and dust everywhere. I went out to find he'd only gone and got his grandads shotgun and given the rat both barrels from about 3 feet away. There was a hole in the back of the shed a foot across.
"Yes, I said, your grandad will be well pleased you got that rat."

 

Geez. I’m pleased the hole wasn’t in you!

 

Not as pleased as I am