La Cucaracha

It was just another day in Albany City Court on Tuesday — until someone let loose the cockroaches.

According to the Times Union, this was in the middle of the arraignment of four people arrested on charges related to a protest at the Capitol. The courtroom was packed with their supporters — until one of them released hundreds of cockroaches — and what was already a already a heated scene descended into chaos.

So, where does one get all those cockroaches, you ask? My wife suggested that someone collected them from squalid apartments, since the court matter arose from a tenant’s rights demonstration. Interesting idea, but there’s a much easier way to wrangle roaches.

Just Google “cockroaches for sale” and you’ll find that it’s surprisingly easy to purchase live roaches. I checked at Chewy.com, and they sell 400 roaches for $57. You can really stretch your dollar with crickets, which for under $30 you can get 1000. Just release the crickets and yell, “Cockroaches!” and I think it will have the same effect.

Oh, they’ll just sell you live cockroaches online? Yes. Most people use live insects to feed pets like chickens lizards, and it’s perfectly legit. Look: If you buy a hammer at Home Depot and they just assume that you’re going to drive some nails, not walk around town breaking car windows.

Here’s what I think: Having some live roaches would be handy if you want to break up a meeting at work or get out of a party you don’t want to attend. Order them today and you can have them by the weekend. Just saying.

Mother’s Day Gift Guide

What do women want for Mother’s Day?

I’m here to tell you that they want a nice ass.

OK, I got that out of my system. When I say they want a nice ass, what I mean is that they want to to adopt a sweet little donkey in Ireland.

Roma, my wife’s donkey.

For a small donation you can go online right now to The Donkey Sanctuary in County Cork and pick an animal you’d like to adopt for a year. It takes about two minutes and 25 Euros (about $26 USD), and in a couple of weeks, Mom will get a lovely packet in the mail from Ireland containing an adoption certificate, a picture, and other goodies. They do a nice job.

Donkeys are wonderful creatures, but unfortunately many people get in over their head with them. Veterinary care and feed are expensive, and neglected donkeys have been a problem in Ireland, the way it is here sometimes for dogs, horses and other domesticated animals. The Sanctuary has cared for more than 5,600 donkeys since their inception, and currently they look after more than 1,800, some of which are housed at private residences, but most of then on their farms in County Cork.

So here’s what you do: get online and pick out a donkey to adopt for the Mom in your life. Fill out the paperwork, pay up, and download a picture of the donkey that you can slip inside her Mother’s Day card. I guarantee, you’ll be the only one to give your Mom a donkey, so get your ass moving and get it done!

Baby, It’s Ewe

If you enjoy visiting obscure corners of the Capital Region, you can’t do better than the Washington County Fiber Tour. It’s all backroads and small farms and goats and sheep – and a great excuse for a drive in the country to peek at places you wouldn’t ordinarily see.

On first stop on the tour there was a barn full of sheep and newborn lambs prancing around and some ladies spinning wool into yarn  — but when we walked outside to take in the view, things got real.

A brown sheep stood in the field with a large, bloody mass hanging from its hind quarters. We alerted the farmer. He found a dead lamb lying nearby in the grass. His wife went into action, like something out of The Incredible Dr. Pol, and found that what we saw was the sheep’s unattached placenta. But there was more. She reached half her forearm into the ewe and discovered  another lamb in breech position. Grabbing hold of its legs she gave a firm pull — and out came the second lamb, alive and well.

This picture was taken just minutes later.

Whoa.

I guess that’s the point of these events, to give city folk a look at what life is really like behind the fences and barns we drive by along the road. What’s business as usual to a farmer is like a miracle to us.

Rat Race

Sometimes it’s better to remain in the dark.

I’ve always enjoyed running in the pre-dawn hours, and though I always wear a headlamp, I seldom turn it on.

The darkness is where I’m most comfortable while running, and there’s great peace and beauty found at that time of day. There’s nothing like pounding the pavement on a clear, cool morning with no wind. Sometimes the moon is out, throwing a sharp shadow on the road as you trudge along. On days like that you can hear things more clearly and odors of wood smoke and pine linger in the air. It’s inspiring and fills you with energy.

And then you kick something on the road, and you’re like, “Oh, fuck.”

My years of experience have taught me that when you stumble across a soft object on a dark road, it’s never a bag full of money, no, it’s usually a dead critter.

This happened recently, and when I switched on the headlamp, a plump rat was revealed. It was a healthy looking creature who must have come from the fields that line the road. I’m guessing he was killed by another animal, rather than struck by a car, because he was in very good shape — very good shape for a dead rat, that is.

Your very first thought at this moment is to see if there’s anything on your shoe, such as blood or other rat residue. No? Thank God for that.

Oh, well, switch off the light and move along. With many miles ahead and behind, you’re bound to trip over a rat or two sooner or later

Hindsight is 20/20

It’s very satisfying to look back on the year and know that you successfully fulfilled your New Year’s resolution. Mine for 2019? Eat more beans.

Yes, beans. I can’t tell you how many cans of beans I’ve popped open over the past twelve months, but this was clearly the year of the legume. Black beans, kidney beans, cannellini, pinto beans. I didn’t eat them right out of the can, like a hobo, but the prep was always rather spartan. Mostly for lunch, always drained and rinsed, mixed with a little salsa, leftover chicken, or whatever I could throw in there.

Today, I bid farewell to the year with kidney beans with some rotisserie turkey breast from Hannaford.

What else about the year, besides the beans?

I’ve grown more grateful of how blessed I am to have a beautiful family who love me – and sometimes my feelings toward those I care about bubble up in surprising ways. I’ve had to assure more than one person on the receiving end that I’m not dying or in the midst of a crisis.

A laser-like focus on what’s really important in my life caused me to set some things aside that were not a productive use of my time. Fewer tweets. Not much blogging. Hardly any local talk radio. Less and less TV. And I don’t feel that I’m missing anything.

I’ve remained relatively healthy for a man my age. I attribute this to a heightened awareness that the grim reaper is lurking behind every tree. I still run, but I’ve also added weight lifting to the mix, something I’ve never done in all my years. It’s humbling to discover how weak you are, but the slow and steady progress is rewarding.

Also of note, this year did not seem to zip by like so many others. Is it possible that time is slowing down? Let’s hope so.

Owly McBeal

Finally, a word about the ailing barred owl I rescued off the street in Albany. We originally called her Hoota, but I later decided that Owly McBeal is a better name. She spent two months in rehab at a local vet’s office, but they never exactly figured out what was wrong with her. They think Owly may have hit the side of a building, but maybe she was just weary. Perhaps owls get worn down by the day-to-day humdrum of owlhood, the way life grinds away at us sometimes. It could be she just needed a new perspective, a shot in the arm (wing?) to help her see her life and the world with a fresh eye.

Either way, she’s off somewhere in the wild now. When I stand on my back porch at night, I can hear barred owls calling from the woods. Maybe Owly McBeal is there, peering out into the darkness, ready to fly into another year.

Owl In a Box

In Albany, it’s not unusual to see a scraggly figure huddled against a downtown office building. But a downtrodden soul I encountered early one recent morning wasn’t clutching a cardboard sign. It was an owl.

A barred owl to be exact, common in these parts, but not commonly found sitting on a city sidewalk in broad daylight. You don’t need to know much about owls to know that this was a problem.

WTF, now?

As it happens, I went on an owl prowl in March at the Huyck Preserve in Rensselaerville. Before we headed out to roam the woods, a wildlife rehabilitator gave a short lecture and showed live owls in her care.

Owls, she said, are commonly hit by cars or hurt by flying into things. What should we do if we find one injured? Carefully put it in a box and find someone who can help. So I went upstairs to the office for a box.

I folded her in a blanket and lifted her into the box. She was compliant, I was nervous. It was probably the first time for us both.

Amazingly, it only took a few calls and less than 10 minutes before I had a plan. The wildlife rehabilitator I contacted sent me to a local vet’s office that would take in the owl and manage its care.

I should probably mention that I taped the box shut before departing. Having an owl get loose in your car on the Thruway would not be good, though it would make for an interesting news story.

The owl — a Facebook friend dubbed her Hoota — is doing fine. She was not about to die, as I feared, nor did she have any serious trauma. The vet’s office thinks she may have flown into the side of the building and been stunned. Today, a week later, she’s under observation before they decide on releasing her.

Owls mostly move through the night unnoticed. If your lucky, you’ll hear one or see it fly past silently in the dark. They want or need nothing from us, but on occasion, we are the only option.

House Bird

Someone’s going to die.

That was my first thought when a bird fluttered past my head and into the house at 4:30 a few morings ago. It had spent the night nestled in a wreath on our front door, and woke with a start when I stepped out for my run.

I thought other things of course, namely, “Holy crap, there’s a bird in my house” — but the sense of dread fell over me like a shroud.

There are many superstitions involving birds. Good luck, bad luck, strokes of fortune in every direction. Most involve the type of bird and their behavior, and sometimes, a certain number of birds is significant. A bird in the house can have many different meanings, but the one we hear most is about death.

My ancestors believed in fairies and the evil eye, but we are more modern people who are not troubled by such nonsese.

Aren’t we?

Oh, and the bird. It flew back and forth across the house a few times and was almost nabbed by the cat when it landed on the floor. After a few minutes, I managed to steer it out the side door. Luck was with the bird.

Tickaphobe

There are a special pair of pants I pull on when working around the yard. They’re made of a quick-drying fabric and have lots of pockets for all my crap, but that’s not what makes them special. The great attribute these pants have is something I added: a heavy coating of permethrin spray that literally stops ticks in their tracks.

Yes, ticks freak me out.

This time of year, I try to avoid areas likely to be infested and obsessively check myself after working outdoors. Even after all that, it may not matter: I’m convinced that the tick who gets me will leap off one of the dogs and onto me as I sleep.

Now there’s another risk, one that in some ways is worse than Lyme disease: a tick-born sugar molecule called alpha-gal that may cause you to become allergic to red meat.

Right. Not a virus, not a bacteria, but a sugar molecule. And it makes your body revolt against itself.

The carrier is the lone star tick, a variety that’s been working its way north and in recent years started showing up in New York. I’d heard of the tick and this alarming condition before, but it was  this episode of Radiolab on public radio really got me worried.

Someday they’ll figure out a way to get this tick thing under control.

Won’t they?

Until then just spray and pray and hope the ticks don’t get you. How ironic that in a world of big risks, something so tiny may be our undoing.

Cat Tale

A reader asks:

Hi Rob,

I was thinking about starting up a cat rental business. How did that go for you? Did you run into problems?

Thanks,
Tim

Yes, more than nine years later, people are still inquiring about my fictitious cat rental business.

It all started with a goofy blog post in 2010 about offering my cats up for rent to control mice. It was just a joke: why go through the trouble of owning a cat when you can rent one to de-mouse your house? We had three cats at the time, which if you ask me, is two cats too many — but it would be great if they could bring in some income. Suddenly the litter boxes, vet visits, and pricey food seem more tolerable. OK, maybe not ha-ha funny.

All this time later, people still leave comments on the blog post and send emails about cat rental. Another comment came in today:

Maybe I’m just being played here, but if you search “cat rental mice,” the post does turn up high in the results.

Who knows. By the way, Mia — the last remaining cat of the three — has been a bit of a disappointment in the mousing department. She’s certainly not worth $100 per week.