Author: NewMexiKen

Sneaky snake

Dad, official father of NewMexiKen, reports on wildlife happenings in the Tucson foothills.

We are plagued with pack rats or more properly know as wood rats. Now pack rats are pretty low on the food chain and one can expect Good old Mother Nature will send in her method of control.

Steve, our professional yard man, and I have been trying to destroy a pack rat nest in the compound. A large male had tunneled down under a large prickly pear cactus. We had filled the holes and tamped the dirt with the rat in them. A week had gone by and Steve discovered the rat had dug back out. While the rat was looking at Steve the diamond back was looking at the rat and got him.

Steve came over to tell me and I went to see the snake. Now I don’t like pack rats and was happy the snake got him, but I am not crazy about full grown or for that matter any rattlesnakes.

We do have a number of pets, children and some old folks living here, some over 80. Answer: 9-1-1. Within minutes the firemen arrived and captured the snake. They will release it somewhere, unharmed.

Roberto Clemente …

should have been 70 today. The Puerto Rican born Baseball Hall of Fame inductee won four National League batting titles, was MVP in 1966 and finished his shortened career with exactly 3,000 hits. Clemente died at age 38 in a plane crash while delivering supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua on New Year Year’s Eve 1972.

Meriwether Lewis …

was born on this date in 1774. Lewis had this to say on his 31st birthday in 1805, camped just east of Lemhi Pass near the present-day Montana-Idaho border. (From the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Online at the University of Nebraska.)

This day I completed my thirty first year, and conceived that I had in all human probability now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this Sublunary world. I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little indeed, to further the hapiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended. but since they are past and cannot be recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought and resolved in future, to redouble my exertions and at least indeavour to promote those two primary objects of human existence, by giving them the aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have bestoed on me; or in future, to live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself.—

His birthday doubts are made all the more poignant, of course, with the knowledge that just more than four years later Lewis took his own life at age 35.

Shelley Winters …

is 84 today. Ms. Winters has won two Oscars, both for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She won in 1960 for The Diary of Anne Frank and again in 1966 for A Patch of Blue. She was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar in 1952 for A Place in the Sun and nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 1973 for The Poseidon Adventure. Shelley Winters was so effective in The Poseidon Adventure that NewMexiKen actually thought she (the actress) had died (as she does in the film).

Robert Redford …

is 67 today. Redford won the Best Director Oscar for Ordinary People (1981), and was nominated for that award again for Quiz Show (1995). He was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for The Sting (1974).

Gold medal quotes

From Dwight Perry’s Sideline Chatter in The Seattle Times:

Andrew Marchand of the New York Post, to Fox Sports Net, on NBC’s Olympic telecasts: “It’s more of a TV show than an athletics sporting event. They might as well call it ‘Will and Greece.’ ”

Jeff Gordon of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, sounding like a man with an Olympic-dependency habit: “Was anybody else up at 5:50 a.m. Tuesday to watch Korea play China in mixed-doubles badminton on MSNBC?”

Ken of newmexiken.com, on the vagaries of trying to surf among NBC’s six Olympic channels: “NewMexiKen thought he’d tuned in to Cinemax by mistake, but it was just coverage of women’s Olympic beach volleyball.”

Hot foot

From Dwight Perry at Sideline Chatter:

A rabbit that picked the wrong pile of dead branches as a hiding place last week exacted its revenge on the Devizes Cricket Club in Wiltshire, England.

Minutes after a club cleanup crew lit the pile ablaze, the rabbit came scurrying out and high-tailed it for alternate shelter — in this case, the club’s storage shed.

Just one problem: The critter had been set afire, too. As a result, the flames spread rabbitly into the outbuilding, destroying it as well as lawnmowers and other tools worth $100,000 by the time two fire engines arrived.

“The firemen were certainly concerned about the rabbit,” club chairman John Bedbrook told Reuters. “They felt sorry for it.”

Fire officials, saying the remains were too badly charred, nonetheless suspect this rabbit had four unlucky feet.

We are getting older

From CNN Money:

Warehouse retailer Costco Wholesale, bulk seller of products to help save you money in life, is offering a way to save money in death, too.

The Issaquah, Wash.-based No. 1 wholesale club operator is testing six models of steel caskets at two of its locations in the Chicago area. …

The suggested retail price for each casket is $799.99 …

But you have to buy them in packs of four.

Bob Somerby explains the Iraq vote

Here’s what Kerry saPOSTID:

KERRY (8/9/04): Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a president to have, but I would have used that authority, as I have said throughout this campaign, effectively. I would have done this very differently from the way President Bush has.

Shorter version:

KERRY’S POSITION: I voted to give President Bush the authority. Then President Bush f*cked it up.

The Daily Howler

They crash quickly and often unexpectedly

Article from Christopher Reynolds in the Los Angeles Times on the dangers of dehydration —

It’s nearly noon, and the morning’s hikers scramble out of the baking inner canyon, wheezing and dripping. In a room a few hundred yards from the South Rim, supervising ranger Marc Yeston touches a green pen to a wall map and traces a long, wriggling path. Then he makes a triangle.

Here, he says, is the spot where they found Margaret Bradley, a 24-year-old University of Chicago medical student and marathoner.

Just three months before, the 115-pound Bradley had finished the Boston Marathon in a few ticks over three hours, a solid performance in temperatures well over 80.

“I focused on keeping myself hydrated,” she told the magazine Chicago Athlete afterward, “and not letting the adrenaline from the crowd make me do something stupid.”

But last month, when she and a companion decided to try a 27-mile trail run in a single day, that caution was missing. A cascading series of miscalculations, say rangers, turned this scholar-athlete into the Grand Canyon’s first dehydration fatality in four years.

The article details what happened.

Bush on tribal sovereignty

In case you haven’t heard the audio file or seen the video, here’s the President on tribal sovereignty:

Tribal sovereignty means that, it’s sovereign. I mean, you’re a — you’re a — you’ve been given sovereignty and you’re viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities.

Update: Democracy Now! has the full Bush response in audio and video, including Jesse Jackson’s hilarious, but also well-informed, follow-up response. (Thanks to Ralph.)

Cape Hatteras National Seashore …

was established on this date in 1937. The National Park Service tells us:

Hatteras.jpgStretched over 70 miles of barrier islands, Cape Hatteras National Seashore is a fascinating combination of natural and cultural resources, and provides a wide variety of recreational opportunities. Once dubbed the “Graveyard of the Atlantic” for its treacherous currents, shoals, and storms, Cape Hatteras has a wealth of history relating to shipwrecks, lighthouses, and the U.S. Lifesaving Service. These dynamic islands provide a variety of habitats and are a valuable wintering area for migrating waterfowl. The park’s fishing and surfing are considered the best on the east coast.

Speaking of Starbucks

Joel Achenbach wrote this terrific little piece about Starbucks last August. He begins:

Going to Starbucks is one of the most challenging and worrisome things an urban person can do. It is not for the faint of heart or the indecisive of mind. It is an exact science, like human space flight. The slightest misstep can mean disaster.

There is, for starters, the important question of which Starbucks to patronize. In many modern American cities, people have a bewildering number of Starbuckses to choose from. (You may recall that the Starbucks pandemic inspired a story in the Onion about a Starbucks opening in the bathroom of an existing Starbucks.)

If you’ve ever been, you will probably enjoy Joel’s essay. Unless, that is, caffeine withdrawal is making you cranky.