I’ve been out to the desert twice daily ever since Scout came to live with me. And recently finding a Raven’s nest in the top of a mesquite tree, with a big-assed Raven sitting in it until we get too close and stay too long. But how does one get too close to something that’s practically unreachable, and after seeing them drag off pieces of red meat and other things for their meal, who would want to get that close?
These are afternoon shots with the first one on the ‘shade’ side and the second one on the ‘sunny side’ and the one following is a close-up of the nest, minus the Raven because he/she left just as I got there.
One recent morning Scout and I crossed the street to the desert to find a bunny that didn’t know how to hop fast enough to escape speeding tires. The Ravens had just found it too, they left as we approached, leaving a string of entrails on the road, and fresh red meat showing under pieces of fur. Scout went for one sniff but the bunny couldn’t run from her so she wasn’t interested. Later that day we went for our afternoon walk and the bunny fur was more or less just a patch of hide with fur on it and everything else was gone, and the fur looked like it could flap off in the wind. Nothing lasts long in the desert. It’s not just the Ravens that clean up the landscape, it’s everything, the day and night is filled with hunters.
Soon the mesquite will be filled out with greenery and the nest won’t be visible, perhaps the young Ravens will be out on their own wing before then, foraging for their own dead bunny and anything else that gets into trouble or in their sight plane. We found a pile/patch of dark feathers a few days ago, further out, couldn’t figure it if was the leftover of a Raven or not. Scout peed on it just to make sure everyone knew she’d been there.
On the subject of Scout, I learned a valuable lesson – protect your dog and your friends from each other – and yes, it was my job.
One of my female friends was in Vegas for a few days and came out to see me on Sunday. She likes dogs and knew I had a new friend and we were all going to walking in the afternoon desert air. My friend arrived, I met her off property with Scout on a leash, we visited a moment and hugged, and went into the house. No problem. Friend went to the bathroom, Scout laid down on her rug in the front room, Friend came out of the bathroom and stood in the kitchen – a breakfast bar divides the kitchen and front room – and I hit the bathroom.
No sooner did I get into an uncompromising position than I heard Scout snarl and growl and Friend yell, “She bit me!”
I came flying out, Scout was back on the rug looking very unhappy and Friend had a scraped forearm where Scout’s teeth slid as Friend yanked her arm back, no puncture wound thankfully. I put Scout behind the baby gate/hallway and washed up Friend’s arm as we talked. I figure what happened was Scout felt I was nowhere around, Friend stepped out from behind the breakfast bar and put her hand out as she was saying hi to Scout and Scout just figured Friend was an intruder.
We did take the walk with Scout on the leash and when we got back, Scout went back behind the baby gate so we could have a bowl of yogurt and visit for a bit longer. Friend was OK with all of it, thankfully, but I feel it was my fault. I didn’t stay long enough with Friend and Scout for the whole thing to ‘get comfortable’ nor did I take any precautions on either of their part. Scout has adapted very well to me and being with me, I’ve had no problems with her but she’d only been here 6 days so it was asking a lot of her IMHO. I don’t want anyone to get hurt unless it’s some loon that shouldn’t be here. Lesson learned. I will be much more cautious in the future.
On the poker front, I started leafing through photo albums the other day, which brought memories of poker games past, and starting Monday, 14th, I will seriously start forcing me to sit down and posting a bit on the Montana Days. I’ve decided to create a new category in Tango, called exactly that, The Montana Days (I could do Daze but what the hell). I’ve been trying to mentally sort through how to go about it so I don’t end up in a viscous cycle of repetitiveness and I can’t figure a way, because some stories relate to more than one character in my past, but the best solution I can find is to write about a character – perhaps create a parent of The Montana Days category and child category of each character, semi-group them that way. Maybe one of you whiz kids out there has an idea? Keep in mind that all of it happened a very long time ago and it’s almost impossible to go back and remember the order that most of it happened in.
I do need to get started though, I’ve kept putting it off and that is fucking retarded…just DO IT! So here’s hoping my new resolve will take hold and I’ll be blogging away about the days when poker was real and people never heard of Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, and Daniel Negreanu, and if you told them the Corporation was playing $100K/$200K with Andy Beal, they woulda said, “Yeah? When’s that next trip down the rabbit hole start kiddo?”