Free beef at the dump

Let's see . . . household trash goes over here. Metal goes in the metal pile. Bloated dead cows? Uhmmm . . . just drop them by the bulldozer I guess.

I hear this is a precautionary wolf measure. Don't want to leave free beef laying around woof country.

(pssst, wolves . . . there's free cows up at the dump.)

Some bird with a crooked neck

I think this is a plumber bird. It's got a P-trap neck. It can get clogged with little fish or crawdads if you're not careful. And DO NOT put cleaning products down the beak. That causes all sorts of trouble.

This heron flapped in on a foggy morn and stopped to survey the little irrigation streams from the cottonwood snags over on the neighbor's patch.

For being so unlikely looking these thangs sure is graceful.

Stinging thing on sulu

Winter in the writing shack involves firing the woodstove in the mornings, which heats up the flying things apparently nesting in the walls. Then I get winged ouchy bugs zooming around the office, which offers a nice diversion from working on things to take a break and clear the area with a rolled up magazine. Any tendencies toward Buddhist practice goes away when there's a wasp in my air space.

The backdrop there is a sulu from Fiji, hanging over my window. It took some googling around and asking my friend Sara to even remember the word 'sulu,' which is a clear sign I need to stop wintering in a climate that requires a woodstove, which heats up the bees.

Get thee back to the tropics, Rombach.