More of this, more of that. Mostly home.

--Having taken allergy medications, I just slept for 16 hours. No, really.


--Reviewing my kids' report cards, it appears that I need to go to the bank, because they've earned some cash. We shamelessly pay for results.  But they need to tone it down, or I'm going to need to get a second job. Maybe if I got them into World Of Warcraft, or something?


--My elder daughter got home just now. Healthy and trim, modestly-dressed, wearing the tooled belt that her granddad had bought her in her jeans and long-sleeved T shirt, with her hair pulled back, my senior in high school looked self-assured but friendly. I think that I would have wanted to be her friend, at her age. She asked me for rubber gloves, because she's helping her mother refinish some cabinets. While I found them, she looked through the mail that she had brought in, and laughed at the hoity-toity colleges sending invitations for her applications. She gets that we don't want her saddled with education debt. She's barely 17, and she gets it. I suppose that it's possible that I could be more proud of my daughter, but I can't really imagine how, realistically, just this second.


--One of my chickens is injured, badly. In just a minute, I'm going to dig a hole and do what needs doing. Yeah, I hate to waste the meat, but the injury probably ruined some, and the danged bird has a name. It will contribute to the garden. Rest in peace, Pocky. You ate a lot of bugs, and gave us a lot of eggs.


--I just found out that my middle-schooler has been taking a thermos of coffee to school with her for lunch, because she has been getting sleepy after lunch every day. That ends now. [Matt looks guiltily in the mirror as he considers what kind of bad influence he's been on his daughters.]


--My middle schooler over-dresses for school. She prefers dark silks, which she buys second-hand, and likes long skirts and full blouses. She has dyed her brown hair black, and wears it long and straight and brushed-out. She has a very different style, all her own. I don't fully understand it, but I respect that she is not falling into others' ideals of style.


--Wednesday, my wife and I go to the Great State Fair of Texas, in Dallas. We're deliberating on whether to pull the girls out of school to go, as well.


--The weather, man. It's beautiful. Guess I'll go dig a hole, shower, and go to work.

Another dog call.

I responded to two reports of a large pit bull acting aggressively. I arrived, and couldn't find it. I was informed that it had run off toward the highway. As I walked around the area, he showed up, and attacked the wheels of the complainant's Jeep. Literally, he bit the tires, snarling. He wheeled and ran at me, barking, ears down.


I drew my duty weapon, and had a few ounces of pressure on the Glock 31's trigger before he finally checked up about 4 feet from me, barking. He wheeled around, and I transitioned to Taser. I really didn't want to shoot the dog.


Taser still in hand, I phoned the animal control officer, and told him that I really needed a response. He was half an hour out. I set to calming the dog down.


My chief and I tossed him sticks, and talked nice to him, and generally wanted him to know that we thought he was great. He wouldn't kennel up in the back of my car, and periodically would get very aggressive again. My chief took my Taser, I kept my ASP out.


We called out the owner. She arrived right after Animal Control showed up. We asked for the dog's shots and registration, something that the owner had been warned about the last time that the dog was found running loose. She informed us that she HAD gotten he dog vaccinated, but that I just wouldn't believe her because it was a pit bull. It's funny-- I have long known that one of my tender spots is to be accused of being a racist. Here, I felt that same anger rise up. I swallowed it. Huh. Apparently my irritation at being called a racist translates into irritation at being called a "breedist." Or something. Good to know.


We got the dog put up. The owner got a ticket. She insisted that the dog was NOT aggressive. I pointed out that it had been to us, and that it had tried very hard to kill a cat in my presence (damn near managed it, too). "That's what dogs do," she said. "They get out, they kill cats, they kill chickens... big deal!" I pointed out that it was a big deal to the owners of the cats and chickens, and to the parents of the children in the area.


The dog had gotten out because she had it tied up in the back yard without a dog house this morning when she went to work, and he slipped his collar.  It was 30 degrees with a 25 mph wind outside this morning. I warned her of the Health And Safety Code: Unlawful Restraint Of Dog.


She shook her head ruefully and told the animal control officer that I just had it in for her and her poor dog.


I have very little enamel left on my teeth.

On Police Shooting Dogs.

Caleb posted about police shooting dogs. I responded there, but decided to bring it here as a post, as well.


This is an emotional topic.
I'm going to speak here as a cop, but also as an academic who has put 20 years into Criminal Justice studies. I ask that people not take this personally, and please don't take my words as those of all police.
_____________


1. Animals are property.
This one statement is going to get a lot of people riled up that I say it, but it's a fact. They are owned.  If someone takes your dog without your permission, and that person is caught, then they are charged with Theft, not Kidnapping.  Animals including dogs are bought and sold at a brisk rate.  
People know this to be a fact, but they cannot embrace it, when their dog is a family member to them. This is about emotion. Emotion, we know, is neither right nor wrong-- it simply is. But it can play merry hell with an equation built only on facts.


2. Emotions seem to trump logic.
If a cop serves a felony warrant, and uses a sledge hammer to break open a beautiful oaken door, people say, "Well, that's a shame about the door, but if the warrant was in order and the homeowner wasn't opening up, then it was time to open it however." If that same cop is met by a scared and aggressive dog that is doing what arguably is its job (protecting the household), but which is also endangering the cop with bloodshed, and the officer uses his weapon to stop what is the threat of what is, after all, property, from hurting him, the same logic often isn't used. It is short circuited by emotion.


3. Officers should not have to be bitten first.
I have been bitten on the job. I've gone to the ER and been treated and then bought new $70 uniform pants out of my own pocket, and never gotten recompensed for it. I've had dogs nip at me, and come charging into my taser and baton. I will die with clear scars left on my body that I have obtained from dogs attacking me while on the job. On a couple of occasions, I'll be honest with you: I should have shot the dog.

I have heard it said by people upset about a shooting that the dog hadn't bitten the officer yet. Given a large enough dog, a grown man can be permanently injured by a dog attack. Often it is shocking how small a dog can render lifelong injuries to a man. Without getting into breeds, we all know the breeds of dogs that are used the most for dog fighting, which are nowhere near the largest breeds. Sometimes a 40 lb dog is enough to permanently harm a man. Consider also the biological weapons in the dog's bite. Dogs left to roam and attack are often the same kind of dogs not getting their shots.


4. Officers should be trained better about dogs.
Jeff Cooper once said that a properly-trained police officer ought to be able to deal with a single dog attacking him. For the most part, I don't disagree, and that's frankly the main reason that I've never shot a dog that was attacking me while on the job. I have tazed them, and I have used my expandable baton, and I have used my steel-toed boots on them. A lot of the reason that I have not shot dogs when I would have been approved to do so by policy is because of #2, above: Emotions Trump Logic. I had a lieutenant get on to me about tazing my second dog attacking me in 2 months (both were pit bulls, and I promise you, both were in the immediate act of trying to get a mouthful of me. This wasn't a dog trotting up to check me out. One was airborne at me when the barbs hit.), because Taser cartridges are more expensive than pistol cartridges. He may have been speaking tongue in cheek, but I pointed out that I was able to resolve the problem without having our department featured in the news for "Another Cop Shoots Another Dog," and that's a win.  (Also, I was in a vey residential area, and I don't like skipping pistol bullets around if I can help it.)


I will say, though, that modern expandable batons were mostly built more as pain compliance devices than as bone-breaking weapons, and they are surprisingly ineffective at rendering incapacitating injuries. To this end, the old second-growth hickory batons were FAR superior. The main feature of an expandable baton is that it is always on the belt of an officer. Strangely, most cops seem to forget about it. That's a two-pound chunk that they carry on their belt every workday for years, but they literally forget to use it. This is frankly a training issue.


5. There are times to shoot the dog.
When there is more than one dog coming after the officer, all bets are off. It is my professional opinion that packed-up dogs attacking a person need to be met with deadly force, unless we're talking about Chihuahuas or Pekinese or teacup varieties of canines. (In which case, proper footwork is key.) 
During documented high-risk incidents, when the dog comes after an officer engaging in something that needs his undivided attention, shooting a dog may be the best option, keeping in mind #1. If the officer is swinging away with his baton to defend himself against a dog, he is not focusing on the other threats around him, be they a felon to arrest, or traffic. This last paragraph is not going to make me popular, because of #2.


6. We could bear rethinking the dog issue.
Because the dogs are such a hot topic, and so ubiquitous, we might re-think ways of dealing with them? How? I don't really know. Shin and forearm guards for warrant service where dogs are known to be come to mind, but I really question how effective they would be. I will tell you that tasers are of questionable use if you don't have a means of securing the animal while it's down. Catch poles might be a good piece of kit to bring. Dart guns are basically non-starters, because the amount of sedative that will put a dog down immediately is generally the amount of sedative that will kill the dog. Also, these things are time and resource-consuming. When you are going in to extract a felon, things need to move along rickety-tick.


For officers making a routine call upon a house for an administrative or non-emergency purpose, teaching them to survey the area before walking into the yard is worth doing. If a dog moves up aggressively, back off an call animal control.
We need to keep in mind Robert Peel's 2nd, 3rd, and 4th principles.


7. A lot of this problem could be fixed by talking to the dog owners.
I've already said that we need to do away with no-knock warrants except in hostage situations.
Knock on the door. Call them.  Tell them that you need them to put their dog up. Sometimes that's what it takes. It kills the element of surprise, but not the dog. This isn't always possible, but it's possible sometimes:
"Hello?"
"Hey, Mr. Smith? Bob Smith of 123 Any Street?"
"Yeah? Who's this?"
"This is the police. We're out front. And out back. We have a warrant for your arrest/ to search the house. We are in uniform, and in marked patrol units. We need you to put the dog away and come on out. If we have to come in, and the dog attacks us, we'll be forced to shoot the dog, and none of us ever wants that. Please comply immediately."
"Okay, I'll put the dog in the kennel/bathroom/closet. Don't shoot. I'm coming out."
This happens. Not all the time. Sometimes it's not feasible. But it does happen. Maybe it could happen a little more.


I know of one incident in which someone whom I know personally was actually held hostage by a family member of hers, who had put their pit bulls in different bedrooms around the house to prevent SWAT from entering. He was drunk, and actually fired random shots during the stand-off. He finally permitted his hostage to leave. After the hostage-taker finally gave himself up, the former hostage convinced the officers --who were going in to clear the house-- to permit her to secure the dogs. The dogs were upset and would have attacked the strangers when they entered the bedrooms unaccompanied by her. My congratulations to the flexibility and professionalism of the North Richland Hills Police Department for handling that situation the way that they did.


8. Finally, I will say that Generalizations Fail.
When we say "There is NEVER a reason to" do thus and so, we are almost always stating an error of fact.  When we say, "An officer should ALWAYS respond to X with Y" we will pretty much always be forgetting about an exception. But guidelines would be a good thing.


It would be really nice if people-- thoughtful people-- didn't have a basis to state that it looks like some cops basically just look like they wanted an excuse to fire their firearm. On the vast, vast majority of the time, it's not true. Let's be sure and make that point by finding ways to limit when we have to do so.

This and that

--And other duties, as assigned. A cop has probably made a hundred undercover busts in his career, but this one makes the national news wire. That's gotta suck. So to speak.

--In another story about Indiana cops, IMPD lost one with some grit, this week. When hearing the screams of a distressed citizen, there are cops who will wait for a cover unit, and there are those who will take the door. Officer Bradway made the tough call, and passed away falling toward the bad guy, shooting back. There are worse ways to go. EDIT: I just now found that Tam's words almost perfectly reflected my own sentiment.

--Phlegmmy's a little concerned about her puppies when large raptors are around. I thought it was a little unrealistic to worry about them, until I saw these pictures from Siberia, of a golden eagle taking down a deer. Awesome.

--I have some kind of extra duty every day for two weeks. (Court, grand jury, vehicle maintenance, mandatory off-duty job by direction, fire shift, cover another shift.) Meh.

--I really like the pewter stocks on the Blackhawk Oleg shows here. Truth be told, I like the whole setup.

--I need to pick up some ammo for a match this weekend.

--We just had three or four days where the temperature in the morning was under 65. One day, it was 52. That's a HUGE deal, here, in September. Nothing's better than a fall day.

Here's where I piss some of you off.

Beware: a dog dies violently in the following video. 

Keeping an open mind, here? I'm most angry at the possibility that the cops arrested a guy simply for video recording their actions in a public street. I suspect that there's more to it, but that's the given reason here.

Then, I'm angry that the dog owner would set things up so that his dog ran loose. That's on him.

Finally, I wish that someone had snapped an ASP before going toward the dog. Pressuring it into a charge wasn't a good idea.

I almost shot a large dog, the day before yesterday. Somehow, I kept my perfect record of never having to defensively put down a dog in the street. But this one didn't pay attention to the expandable baton that I had snapped out while I stood in a public street. I nearly had to get to deadly force, as I was backing toward my car, before the dog's owner appeared and called the dog off. And I would have gotten criticized. But I've got scars that I will carry for the rest of my life, because I've hesitated, before. When you get bitten, badly, you're not able to do your job. I'm sorry, but the dog's not worth it.

Still, I've tazed dogs which I was later told that I should have shot, to avoid having such issues. (On one occasion, the Taser didn't work, and I had to use my stick to keep me from getting bitten.)  I don't WANT to alienate my community from me. I not only work here, and try to serve these people, but I live here. I don't want members of my community worrying that I'm a person who would kill their family pet. It would do harm to my family relations to the community, and to the department's. I don't want to kill a dog. But if I must, I will.

It is not a human. It is an animal. I should not have to endure being bitten before taking action.

And whatever faults those cops may have, shooting a (sadly confused, loyal) animal to prevent getting bitten in the street isn't really one of them. What they did to lead up to that, though, may well be the subject of my scathing criticism, soon.

Bring me this dog!

When we were at the tricked up Klyde Warren Park over Woodall Rogers Freeway in Dallas on 1 March 2013, we saw this cute dog chasing random water squirts at the dog park portion of the park.

Monday. First Day of Spring Break.

--I wrote this yesterday, and then got up to have dinner with the family before watching movies. I apparently never hit Publish. So consider yourself on Monday, 3/11/2013, when reading what follows:

--I slept in this morning. It was glorious. I was awaken late in the morning in that bestest of ways: my co-worker called me to tell me that he had some money for me from an off-duty gig that we had worked together recently. (Yeah, the definition of "best way to be awaken" seems to change, with age.)

--The sun is brilliant, and the wind has died down. A long-sleeved shirt or a sweat shirt still feels good. This is the best part of the spring.

--It's really green, out:

 

--The cattle and the verdant field make me think about this amazing talk given by an ecologist, about how to stop desertification, using more cattle.

--My elder daughter has been trying her hand at composing music for the French horn, this week. More impressively, she's writing duets. For a couple of days, I'd find pieces of paper like this lying around:

But she since has downloaded a composition program called MuseScore, which allows her to put it up much faster and neater, including multiple instruments. I haven't complimented the results, yet, because I've not heard anything that I much care for, yet. But I am impressed that she tries this stuff, and she's not even a week into it. I'm looking forward to hearing a piece that I'll love for its own merits.

--My 10-year-old daughter decided to bake blackberry muffins, this morning. I've had worse mornings than drinking coffee, listening to one daughter arrange a duet for herself and her friend, while my younger daughter pulls muffins out of the oven and serves them with hot butter, as the sun streams in the open doorway.

--We cleaned the house. When I pulled the rug out of the sun room to sweep and mop under it, I expressed with dismay that "we could just about grow tomatoes in here", while looking at the dirt on the tile where the run had been (for just a few weeks. Yeah. Should be pulled weekly. It's a big heavy rug, and a chore.). My younger daughter looked at me oddly, and pointed out that we are growing tomatoes in the sun room. We've got a flat of tomato puppies by the window.

--I have a big industrial strainer mop bucket. It's oddly comforting for me to use it and clean the tile throughout the house. When I used to work at an eatery 20 years ago, mopping was of course one of the many jobs around the place, and no one much cared for it. I never minded it. It was a necessary task, with immediate results. No one bothered you when you mopped. Now, on my big ceramic floors, I just try not to fall on my butt.

--Today's cleaning agent: Fabuloso Citrus Fruit. Now, with baking soda!

--My younger daughter employed a school project, this afternoon. She had made a solar oven out of a pizza box, some foil, and some black construction paper and plastic wrap. She put some wienies in it to heat up. Unfortunately, the Family Cat (Oliver, the fat one) was impressed at the hot meal of meat just laid out for him. He came in with his nice hot hot dog. My daughter went to spank him, but I stopped her. How could he be expected to do otherwise?

--A neighborhood border collie has been worrying my daughter's show rabbit in the hutch. It was bad enough when she was pacing back and forth in front of the hutch; now she has taken to chewing on the frame of hutch:

My younger daughter decided to deal with the matter by painting the lower frame member with a paste made with cayenne pepper. The bratty neighbor kid whose family owns the border collie protested that this would hurt her dog. When my younger daughter told me about this, I rolled my eyes, wondering what she would think of the fact that the last time I saw the dog doing her thing, I borrowed my kid's Red Ryder BB gun, and bounced a BB off the dog's butt. (Sadly, this bit of operant conditioning alone wasn't enough to convey to the dog what I'd hoped to convey.) But we don't mention that to the neighbors, because people aren't always rational about their pets. Put a cigarette out on their kids' faces, and it's no problem, but kick their biting dog away from you, and they lose their minds.

--Fresh Brussels sprouts with roast chicken and baked potatoes tonight. I used to only be able to get down Brussels sprouts by imagining them to be cabbages, and myself a giant. But now, I guess they're okay, with butter.

--Root beer floats for desert, which is funny, because I just wrote that I almost never buy sugar soft drinks, and then later today I bought a two litre bottle of root beer.
    

Kitty eco threat.

There's a fellow in New Zealand that wants to eradicate cats on the island nation. Sounds like a meanie, doesn't he?

But he's not proposing that people kill them. He just wants them all neutered, and no feral cats. His reasoning is that originally, New Zealand was teaming with birds that had no natural predators. Man's introduction of the friendly housecat caused kiwis and penguins and other ground birds to be endangered, but also the song birds, too.

My house regularly has feathers in it, from my rescued semi-feral cat, TC. He is lovable and friendly, and a stone cold bird assassin. I seriously consider having his front claws removed. I will not abide a cat box in my house. I am part of the problem.

Feral cat colonies are a HUGE problem. When we permit them to exist, we permit the devastation to the local ecology.  While the catch-neuter-release programs are good ideas, they cost a lot, and thus rarely get properly implemented. Their proponents put forth the silly assertion that straightforward extermination doesn't work in reducing the problem.

Food for thought, from a cat owner.

Somebody call the SPCA.

You all know that it's wrong to dress up your animals, right? Yes, if you have a shorthair that you're taking for a walk in Upper Cryogenica, you need to put a sweater on it. But beyond that, or maybe a bandanna around the neck, you've taken it too far. Pets don't need to be dressed.

If you start dressing your pets, where does it end? What about when you're feeling the need to get things a little saucy? Even naughty? You're going to go here, aren't you? * You pervert. You sick, sick, pervert.

Pet costumes.

Not even once.

_________________________________

*Safe for work, I guess. Just wrong.

Responsibility: A Hard Week At The G Household For Critters.

I got home this morning, and checked on the chickens. Hm. Their water pan was bone dry. NOT good, when the temps get up to over 100. I had told my younger daughter yesterday to feed and water the chickens. There was some feed scattered on the floor of the chicken yard, that I certainly hadn't put there. I pour their lay pellets into the heavy flexible bowl made of recycled tire, so that I can move them, when I move the portable pen. Two chickens were in the small yard. The other two were in the hen house. I pulled the water pan and the feed bowl out, and moved the portable pen. Immediately, I saw the corpses of two dead hens left behind. Lulu, the big red, and Yolky, the Araucana, had succumbed to the heat and lack of water. They were our two biggest and oldest chickens. The other two hens ran out of the pen, but jumped right back in again when I put water in the pan. I should have checked on them before I went to work, but I had told the 10 year-old to check on them.

I went to the recently re-filled unused cat grave, and scooped it back out again. I put the chickens into it, and I covered them with the dirt, and tamped it down. The shallow grave gave with the compression of the bodies. I was wistful about the wasted protein, but without knowing when the chickens died, it would be a questionable practice to harvest the meat, even without the issue of them being named critters.

I went back to the chicken coop, giving up a muttered prayer that the pan would be empty. It had some rust all over the bottom of it, and it was faintly possible that there was a rusted-out leak that had emptied the pan last night. That would excuse the lack of water. Maybe the pan had been filled. I found it quite full, with two younger chickens still greedily filling their beaks and tipping their heads back. No. The pan still held.

I thought about fibbing to the girls. It's a hard thing, discovering that your negligence caused a death. I remember crying as a boy when I'd killed a goldfish that way.

Oh yeah-- goldfish. Alice, our 7 year-old goldfish, passed away this week. But she was pretty old.
The cat is still on the mend. Not where he needs to be. I probably could have done more to keep him healthy. I need to be more often checking his litter box to see that he isn't going to up and die from kidney problems. Stupid cat.

I went in the house, woke up the girls, and told them. It turns out that my wife had told the near-14-year-old to feed and water the chickens, too. Both girls said that they had fed the chickens, but forget to check the water. The hose doesn't quite stretch, so it's a chore to fill the pan, where the chicken coop is now. They both gathered the truth: they had each neglected the poultry, causing us to lose our two best layers.

This time, the younger daughter took it better. The elder daughter cried a bit. I almost regret telling them. But responsibility isn't just a word. It's a reality that means that if you don't do the job, it doesn't get done. There are consequences for failing in your responsibilities. In this case, neither are being punished, except with the knowledge of their failure to complete their duties. I'm disappointed, but not distraught. This is the opportunity for an incredibly valuable lesson in both their lives. I had just last night congratulated the elder daughter on her commendation from the school district for her scores on the state math exam. But I should be more proud of her if she uses this experience to better herself.

Emotionally draining, that.

I didn't want a cat. Really, with kids already, and a house to take care of and grad school and a full time gig as a cop, I didn't want any pets. The thing about pets is that they are a responsibility. They are a monetary drain. They are a time drain. They are an emotional drain, eventually, when they die or get sick.. And they add an extra mess to my cluttered life.

I didn't want one, but my wife did. She took the kids, and they picked out a kitten from a litter of barn cats, and brought him home. He was too small even to step down into the living room. I tried to hate him. My theory wasn't working.

Cat & Mouse Games.

Even when he interfered with my laundry chores, I couldn't really hate the stand-offish cat that seemed to get along with me better than anyone.


He got fat. We made names about it. FatWad, Butterball, etc. But his given name was Oliver.

I cut a door to the garage, and from the garage to the outside world, because I will not put up with a box of crap in my house.

And he lived with us, getting fatter and only affectionate when he wanted things, for about 3.5 years.

And one day, he got sick. Urinating blood. Having trouble passing water. I dutifully took him to the vet, and spent a LOT more money than I would think possible for me to spend on a cat. A month later, I did it again.

He got sick again this week. He went missing. When we found him 2 days later, he was stove up, off his feed, not drinking. I locked him in the bathroom, and tried to bring him back to health. No good. My wife and I talked. We made a decision. His kidney problems had gotten too far. He was clearly suffering.

I explained to my almost-14 year-old and 10-year-old daughters that we were putting him down. The elder daughter held it together. The younger one lost it, bad. She sprinted out of the room, tripped, fell, sobbed hysterically. She plans  to be a vet. I think that she'll make a good one. She loves animals. She asked me some hard questions about killing a family member. These are not happy questions, but they were fair ones for her to ask, even if the answers were unfair. I somehow held it together. Mostly.

I called the vet to see when I could bring him in. Yes, I could do it myself, but I wanted to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he simply went to sleep. I may have broken down just a bit on the phone.  It was 11:00 AM.  The vet could see me at 2:30PM.

We watched a movie. Rubber, about a sociopathic serial killer tire. I thought that a humorous flick would be good. Look, it wasn't my best decision. When they got to where people died in a lengthy scene by poisoning, I realized my incredible error. My conversation with my 10 year-old resumed.

I got a pick and a shovel. and ran water to break up the hard pan, and dug a grave in the back yard. I put the cat into a carrier, and got a box and put a towel in it. And then it was time to go to the vet. The girls said goodbye to the cat. Goodbye to Oliver.

Mom drove me there, because my car was in the shop. What with construction delays, we arrived late. About 2:40PM. I went in, and the receptionist greeted me cheerfully, until he saw what I was there for. He showed me to an exam room, and asked me if I needed some time with the cat. I started to reassure him that, no-- I was already late, and had held them up enough, and... and.. and I broke down into a sobbing, blubbering fit, the likes of which I haven't committed in years and years. He left me alone for a bit.

The doc came in. She looked at me, and immediately began examining the cat. "Look," she said, "he's got an abscess on his heel, here." I had seen it (he must have gotten into some kind of a fight with another cat or some critter), but mentioned that it was only the latest in his problems, but his recurring kidney problems were what made me come to this decision. She quickly took his temperature. "106. (They run about 101 or so anyway, but that's still a bad fever.) That abscess was infected. Not eating or drinking? Consistent with fever. Dehydrated? Consistent with not eating or drinking. Shaky, weak? Consistent with infection. "I think I can fix this guy. I know you're on a budget, but let me X-ray him on my  bill, to see if that leg is broken." She took him and did so, and returned. "It's not broken. I gave him a heavy duty shot of antibiotic, on me. Let me put in some sub-cutaneous fluids, pushed." She and her assistant did so. She gave me some instructions for care. She gave me some additional oral antibiotics. She accepted my hug.

The bill was just $53. I think it's $35 or something for putting one down. Maybe more; I  didn't check. She had given me about $250 worth of service for free, to save the cat's life.

I took him home and put him into my bathroom. The kids were deliriously happy.

He's sick. Very sick. Even after we fix this, he's got issues. So I still have to worry about a damned cat that I didn't want in the first place. But I'm glad we refilled that summer garden grave with dirt and nothing else. 

The kids are making the thank-you cards. I'll sign 'em, too.

__________________________________________
*EDIT (07/14/2012): Oliver was up and around this afternoon. He sneaked out of the bathroom and was roaming the house. We put him back up, because the doc wants me to monitor his ins and outs. We bathed him last night, and he looks good. The vet had given him a shot of something like Tylenol for the fever, too. He's going to be okay, I think. Stupid cat.


**EDIT (02/25/2014): Oliver is a very healthy, fat cat. I tell everyone how much I hate him. Nobody believes me.

***EDIT (04/05/2016): The damned cat will outlive us all. He is healthy, and insistent that we feed him more.

****EDIT (07/11/2017): Oliver is still healthy, happy, fat, and self-serving. It is still acknowledged that he likes me best.

Flying squid

Are fascinating.

Even when they're terrifying in their sexual assault of humans.

That is all.

Some this and some that.

--Mad Max: Beyond PaintBall.

--I read Hunger Games  on my Kindle, and it's actually a pretty good story. A quick read, I got the second one. You can buy the electronic "Boxed Set" of three, but it's pointless to do, because it saves you nothing.

--I sent Tam some pics and questions about a recent .32 that I handled on a recent call. I'm eager to see what she comes up with.

--We got rain tonight in one of our usual May thunderstorms. "Usual," but surprisingly absent this May, until now.

--Also absent is my usual May funk. As I mentioned, I got an A this semester in grad school. One at a time. I should go sit for practicals or something.

--Neither of my girls are doing anything productive in school. They did all the last of their testing in early May, and the teachers are calling it in from here. I do not approve, despite the high showing that both my kids (4th and 8th graders, respectively) gave.

--Remember when, as a young person making videos in the back yard, you ended up with a shaky, completely amateurish, virtually-unwatchable thing? Comes now the future, when two girls with a decent hand-held camera and some knowledge of digital editing can put together a homemade video that is far better than 99% of the dreck that I have seen presented as professional music videos. Like the best music videos, this one tells a little story, about a narcissist and her friend. Most amusing.

--I first heard that song (AWOLNation's "Sail") presented behind Jeb Corliss's amazing BASE-jumping video, which is also worth watching. But I'm sure that you'd already seen that.

--I seem to have missed this verse in the bible during Sunday school as a kid.


--‎"Tardigrades are able to survive in extreme environments that would kill almost any other animal. Some can survive temperatures of close to absolute zero, or 0 Kelvin (−273 °C (−459 °F)),[7] temperatures as high as 151 °C (304 °F), 1,000 times more radiation than other animals,[8] and almost a decade without water.[9] Since 2007, tardigrades have also returned alive from studies in which they have been exposed to the vacuum of outer space for a few days in low earth orbit." I read aloud to my wife.
"So that's what's going to take over the world, some day," she said.

Aww. Water Bears.

Awwww... Predator behavior.

It's not that the kid's in zebra stripes that's getting this lion worked up. It's that the kid is a baby, and looks like what prey should look like to an alpha predator. 

Some might be upset that mom and dad left their kid to clearly be a lure for such a shot. I submit, though, that if we stipulate that thick safety glass is beyond an African lion's ability to defeat (and so far that's been the case), the kid is far safer here than being dressed up for a child beauty pageant, or sent to cheer-leading camp, or stood near a mountain stream for a nature shot. It's all the same. "Look at my kid!" 

Like a favorite tiresome old great aunt.

I am of course finding that Letters Of Note is becoming a daily read. (and time-sink, damn it all)

I am tickled to see that the late children's author E.B. White had quite the sense of humor, in denying his local government the information that they demanded. Good for him.

Random ThanksWednesday Thoughts.

• --I'm halfway through my second six pack of Left Hand Brewery Milk Stout beer in as many weeks. Not only does it not suck, but it is my favorite stout, now. Yeah, it's that good. And they live up their tag line: "Dark and delicious, America's great milk stout will change your perception about what a stout can be."  I like many bitter beers, but most stouts out there can taste too sour for my preference. Not this stuff.
• --I stayed up until past 2:00PM after a 12 hour shift last night that ended (ostensibly) at 06:00AM. Why do I do that to myself?
• --Well, part of the reason was that I just realized that Having A Kindle Means Never Having To Delay Gratification, so when I saw yet another reference to The Guns Of The South and yet again realized that while I knew the story, I hadn't yet read it, I clicked Download, and started reading it 30 seconds later.
• --My sergeant called me at 4:30PM to borrow a .22 LR rifle to put down a sick cat. How the hell is it that: A: Our P.D. doesn't have one, and B: A sergeant in a Texas Police Department doesn't have one? 20 minutes later he brought it back with only one round left in the 7 round magazine. I didn't ask.
• --My brother dropped by shortly thereafter, and started digging through my refrigerator for a soft drink. All I had to offer was Topo Chico. He was unfamiliar, which was odd to me. What Texas boy, who grew up eating in taquerias, doesn't know the greenish-glassed goodness of that mineral water? I mixed him up an orange Italian soda with it.
• --Looking at the link to Topo Chico, above, I was surprised to notice that they were advertising it in a twist-off cap plastic bottle, which admittedly was the traditionally greenish clear color.  I've only ever gotten it in the returnable lift-cap bottles that feel so cold in the hand when you're hot.
• --The tag line that they say in their little video on the Topo Chico site is "¡Siempre cae bien!" This means something like "Always falls well," which I suppose means that it's a good pour. But I thought that I heard them say, "Simply dive in!" I've always heard that the tiny bubbles created by waterfalls create an aerated water that will not sustain buoyancy, and people have been known to drown when diving into waterfall pools. I looked it up once, curious of the myth, and found out that there's something to it. But what of carbonated beverages? They actually can lift things to the surface that don't normally float. Example? Toss a grape into a glass of champagne or fresh club soda. Bubbles form on the grape, lifting it up to the surface. At that point, the bubbles pop on the surface, and the now-unsupported grape sinks, and the cycle continues until the drink goes flat. So which is it? Would I float or sink in a vat of Topo Chico, were I to Simply Dive In? What if I dived into the pool at the bottom of a free-fall waterfall of Topo Chico?
• --How much would that experiment cost me?
• --I'll bet it'd really tickle to do that if you did it while skinny-dipping.
• --Having thought that thought, I'm afraid that I can't drink anymore TC until I've verified the source of it isn't a bottling plant at the base of a heavily-used waterfall.
• --I recently found out that a mentally-ill guy that I put in jail for an illegal weapon, just so that he could get some social services, got 37 days. A gang-banger that I arrested for Agg Assault Deadly Weapon plead it down to Deadly Conduct and got two days. That's not fair.
• --My daughter just got a "Show Rabbit" for Ag this week. That means that, while she's out of town with her sister and my wife, I've got a rabbit. If you're keeping count, the menagerie is now: 1 gold fish, 2 cats, 3 chickens, and a black (pedigreed) rabbit.

Might want to check those stats....

According to the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, there are no cougars in the state anymore.

 

 

They have admitted that there have in the past few years been some sightings of bears in the eastern end of the state, but they're still not considered to be reintroduced.

 

 

My research, however, has found ZERO evidence that the O.D.N.R. is willing to admit the presence of Face-Eating Monkeys in their midst.

 

 

As our constant friend Phlegmmy reminds us, there are deeper traumas that can be inflicted to a person by a monkey.

I've always wanted to know that.

Falling under the "science that we're not real sure we can use, but darned if it isn't interesting" category, some Harvard boffins with good high-speed video and X-ray motion cameras have answered the question of how a dog's drinking mechanics works.

This footage shows that as the tongue touches the surface of the water, the liquid adheres to it, creating a water column as the tongue is drawn back towards the mouth. The dog then snaps its mouth closed just as the water begins to fall backwards towards the bowl.

Go click on the short video-- it's pretty cool.

...And other duties as assigned.

(Minor gore warning: a dead snake is pictured in this post.)

Another snake call.

I was taking a fraud report at the PD when I was notified of an Animal Complaint. I clarified that that it was a snake in the back yard. Big deal. Probably a rat snake or something. I finished taking my report.

My partner came in. I briefed him on the day's events, and mentioned that we had a snake call holding. He handed me the catch pole, and we drove to the house. The call was now half an hour old, so I didn't expect to find anything.

We were ushered through the house by the residents, who mentioned that their dog had been barking at a snake on the back porch. They sensibly brought the dog in, and called us. When we looked, the snake was gone from the back porch. We checked under and around shrubs, bushes, barbecues, a lawn mower, and pretty much everything in the back yard. The yard was surprisingly big, considering the suburban housing development that it was in; call it a third of an acre for the back yard alone. There was tall thick brush growing along the fence line, which I walked through, poking with my four-foot snake pole. The residents were in the back yard, with my partner with them, and the dog came out with them.

"Uh, Matt! The dog seems to be alerting on this lawn mower!" my partner told me. Unpossible. I had rolled it back and forth about a foot, and nothing had come out. I was sure that there was nothing under it. But it sometimes pays to check again. The mower was pushed up under some brush, almost to the chain link fence that separated their yard from the neighbors' back yard, in which another dog was very excitedly barking.

I pulled the mower back, and found a coiled cottonmouth water moccasin. He let me see his white mouth, while I tried to grab behind the head with the catch pole. Problem: The catch pole was about four feet long. The snake was a bit longer. The snake struck, turned, and fled through the bracken toward the fence, with the now very excited dog dog behind it. Just before the head probably got to the fence, I made a blind grab at the snake, and caught it on the tail. I caught it.


Note the orange paint on the pole. Through the magic of foreshortening, it really doesn't look like it, but trust me when I say that the snake was able to reach that painted portion. This view nicely shows the pits behind the eyes. Click to embiggen.

The snake was unhappy at these events, as I pulled it out of the brush line. Hissing and striking, it made clear that it was impressively strong (it could strike up the length of the pole straight at my hand, with only the last few inches of tail being held), and that it was very urgent in its desire to bite me. The head stopped just a few inches from where my hand held the pistol grip of the catch pole.

Now what? No garden utensils around. I pulled my ASP expandable baton, but didn't feel like I had a reliable method of killing the snake without risking my precious skin being pierced by fangs, as the baton only extended to 26".

My partner went to get his 870 and some bird shot from his car.

So I took a couple of pictures.

When he got back, we reenacted a scene from Cool Hand Luke, and only THEN did I find out that they had a sharp shooter shovel. I buried the head, and put the snake body in a grocery bag.*

That hole in the turf on the right side of the picture shows where the load of 7.5 shot from a Winchester Super Speed dove load went into the grass that my partner was using as a backstop as he fired at a downward angle. He did a good job; just a bit of skin holds the head on.

I tell you, no cuppa coffee ever got my nerves strumming as tightly as having that snake repeatedly strike at me did.
_________________________
*Note: I don't hate snakes. I regularly move them to safer places. But there wasn't a way to do that here, and there were dogs all around. Dogs get curious and sniff at snakes, and get bitten near the airway, causing swelling that kills them. We have no shortage of cottonmouths in Texas. If I could have moved it safely, I would have.

A happy ending.

Yesterday, I did some checking. I came across a phone number for the landlord of the now-empty rent house across the way where the little dog used to live. I called but couldn't reach the landlord. I left a message with several contact numbers for me, and why I wanted to speak with him or the previous tenants. No call.

I have of course already left a letter on the door of the house, with my number and address. No call.

Today, my wife took off of work. I woke up to find her sleeping beside me late this morning after she had taken the kids to school. (I had gotten off late last night.) Later I woke to hear her puttering about the house. The little dog yipped. I hoped that my wife had let her out to pee. (We've been slowly training her to be housebroken, and she really does prefer to go outside. ) I went back to sleep.

A few minutes later, my wife walked into the bedroom to announce, "I just made a puppy deposit!"

As my last thoughts on the dog were concerning its need of house training, I of course immediately thought that she was referring to a deposit, from the puppy. Look, I was sleepy.

"Huh?" I asked.

"The girl who owned the puppy just knocked on our door. She asked for her puppy. I gave the perrita to her, and she said 'thanks' which seems to be about the only English that she knows. The puppy is gone!" my wife gushed.

I sat up quickly. "She's gone? And we didn't have to let those vile thieving children have her? The communists and terrorists don't win? Huzzah!"

To celebrate, we walked to the diner, and ordered the specials. I had meatloaf. She had chicken-fried steak. Hers was better. The tea was strong, the coffee was fresh, and the terrorists hadn't won.

A good day.