Things

I saw a coupla things over the last few days that leave me feeling a bit distressed.  No, it wasn’t a poker player hitchhiking down the road.  Although I have ran into a few of them in the strangest places. For example, I went to court on a thing with momparental vs. dadparental – as it turned out the hearing was postponed after I got up early and drove into Henderson for it.

But right after going through the security checkpoint, I headed for the restroom and who did I see milling in the hallway?  Mr. Buh-w-a-a-a-a-h-a-a himself, a player I first met at the Las Vegas Hilton $3/$6 Hold’em table about 20 years ago — Justin.

I didn’t see Justin for years and somewhere around 2000 or so, he started playing the higher limit Hold’em at Bellagio.  Obviously he was playing poker somewhere, I just didn’t see him.

Not to worry, some eight or nine years after last seeing him, there he was at the courthouse, alone, and looking a bit stressed.  I didn’t interrupt his stress, I went on about my business.

Hitting reverse for the things I saw that bother me…

It was evening, hot, two boys from up the street (about 12ish) were sitting on the pavement in front of sis’s house when I went out to do some yard work.  They always wave and say “Hi” when they go by and they had a cardboard box in front of them.

Hell, I thought they had boyscout goodies or something they were trying to sell and I asked what they were doing and what was in the box.  Wish I hadn’t now.

One of them brought the box over, it had two kittens in it that looked to be about 5 to 6 weeks old.  He wanted to know if I wanted to buy one.

“Nope, my dog would kill it!”

I asked where he got them, and he said something about in the back of someplace but I didn’t know what/where he was talking about.  I spent 10 minutes trying to convince him they should go to the animal control shelter and they would die if they didn’t eat frequently and he needed to put some holes in the side of the box down closer to them so the air would circulate a bit.

He was adamant that he was going to sell them.  UGH!  He said he knocked on my sis’s door and asked her if she wanted to buy them – he doesn’t know she’s my sis, but I knew before he told me what her answer would be.

I went back to my yard work since it was almost dark and about 20 minutes later saw him walking with the box back down the road.  I do not know the fate of the kittens, I’m probably better off not knowing.

Then a few days ago as I was driving on a street that is all open field on one side and houses on the other, I could see something in the road ahead in the distance.  As I got closer, it was a very skinny coyote standing right on the white line in the middle of the road eating fresh road kill.

I slowed down and honked loudly trying to get it to move off the road but it barely looked up as it continued eating.  There were cars coming towards me a far distance down the road and one coming up behind me and since I can’t field rescue a wild animal that would probably bite the hell out of me, I drove on.

On my return home I made it a point not to go that way because I didn’t want to see it splattered all over the road.

It was so thin, I felt bad, I believe the coyotes out here have pretty skinny pickings for the most part. You can always tell their poop over a dog’s poop on the streets and desert hiking, it’s thin, stringy looking, and filled with mesquite pods when the trees are shedding after blooming.

I don’t know where they get water from.  That’s another thing that bothers me.

Birds flock to my place because of my foliage and watering.  One small finch sat less than 4 feet from me while I was hand watering, it managed to drink from small drops of water before it was absorbed by the ground.

I have a shallow bowl out but it rarely has water for any length of time and during the day it mostly evaporates. I won’t use a deep bowl because baby quail fall in and drown – hasn’t happened to me but my neighbor did have it happen.

See ya, I have work to do and nowhere to go.  🙂