Letters From the Bathroom Being of an age by which time has provided me with a whole lot to say, but with so little time left to get it said, I have gone the way of one of my heroes: the Great Gabriel Garcia Marquez: When he was intent upon the mountainous task of writing his hundred year family chronicle, One Hundred Years of Soliitiude, but without anything like a hundred years to write it, his wife locked him in the bathroom to get it done. And so shje did and he did his business. So he said. We know he wrote the book in good time, and I know he has also said that the actual events of life are so bazare that there is no need to make anything up, but that doesn’t rule out a certain amount of EXAGGERATION in that book, or in his locked- in-the-bathroom story, and I no longer even have Georgia to lock me in the bathroom, but in the spirit of the thing. I can certaonly lock myself in, and I will so do, and so while I am here in the bathroom I will surely drop some chapters.

Three Lawyers Walk into the Fargo

Hickory provideth and Hickory Taketh Away

As all food is political, and Hickory is the tyrantacat of the Dogs Plot Cats, even though he has food always on his plate here inside, he goes out with me to feed the others, and head bumps them in a family way, and joinst them for a bite, unless he first needs to chase Tramp away, whom he doesn't tolerate for some reason, catilitical. Lately, because it has been cold, I feed them both dry food and soup of my left- over food. Hickory was already outside somewhere this evening when I put the soup and crunchies. Out hunting, as it turns out and because he wants to be an independent provider, he didn't just eat his mouse where he caught it, but brought it up to the feeding place , lay down with the mouse, growled at everybody, and ate the whole thing himself. I once had a little hawk, a kestrel, that I fed on mice the cats brought in. But he would always leave the gall bladder. I mean...wouldn't YOU? Is it because of domestication that Cats sometimes lack god-old animal sense?

Cat fishing flycast

Hickory, cat number one, knows the fly is not reeal and has learned to suspend disbelief, like any nineteenth century poet, but the outdoor Cats, Roody and Ocean here, just think I'm being weird. Later, out back in the weeds, I will try some long-casting instead of just dapping like you see here ... and then we'll see who's a fool and a pussy. Probably have to wait till Spring, but I can take the time to tie up some new flies. I can make a mouse from Deer hair .... i have a couple I did right here, then try one out some night soon when it's still and not a creature is stirring. You know the kind of night I mean.

Possums For Dindin

You can eat anythibg we got at the Dogs Plot Resturant; you just don't get to choose your dinner companions.

No Bird thou wert

The Cat Turned Back

Hickory skedadled because Malcomb the plumber came to stop a flaming gas leak, and Hickory doesn't give a crap about flaming or bloody gas leaks, but he is cautious about all strangers and deeply afraid of HOOMAN strangers, as well as clinking metal sounds, and when Malcomb had come and gone, I invited HJickory in, but he no sooner got in the door, than he changed his mind .... some kind of superstitous sign reading and he bopped right back out ... though a few minutes later, he agreed to come in the other door because, as anybody who knows, knows, or according to Hickory anyway: if you go in or out the other door, you enter a WHO)LE OTHER WORLD, Be careful Hoomans, and be sure to come back in the same door you went out.

Cats on the Fly

Beauty Wasp

Coon Butts in for Dinner

I used to have a colony of chickens and have been colonized by cats that were not invited, but their occupation of Dogs Plot has been unstable :particularly since the awful waif I call Roody arrived: a little bully who had obviously been much abused and..worse than that, was not discouraged by a mother from shitting in bed or biting when excited by newly learned, affectionate head-bumping, and generally taking over the deck area. But now comes one of the coon twins, Trudy and Teddy, whom I can't tell apart and who usually don't appear before dusk... shows up this afternoon during a pause between courses. She does not much like the smell of me sitting there minding my own business, but manages to get past me; then that brat Roody gives her some serious crap. And Trudy knows exactly how to deal with it. You and I have seen the very same thing happen in offices, on boats, and aboard trains. Hickory, whom you see there at the rail and mostly unconcerned about the Coon who came to dinner, is more concerned with Tramp, the cat whom, for some reason, he hates and doesn't just drive away, but attacks viciously, face on. It's a full time thing when he is not asleep, and he no longer sleeps in the loft with me, doesn't even come inside. I need to get a cat. When I had chickens I had to shoot a Coon that was attacking a hen and a chick then roosting in the dog house. And I once watched another Coon carry a screaming juvenile Possum in its teeth through the crown of the Cottonwood tree over the deck, and I had to step on the head of a coon that had a hold of our cat Stormy. I had a pet coon for a while when I was a kid. It never learned the difference between my ear and a peanut butter sandwich. It had to go. Coons are related to Bears, but are weirder than Weasels. They are said to be dainty because they often "wash" their food; but they wet it only because they lack saliva enough. for swallowing..it maybe just evaporates because they chew with their mouths open. Maybe you think that's cute.

Dog Bee

Trudy is Here

I first noticed Trudy was here when she sniffed my leg, which i did not object to, but when she sniffed Roody's but, he got all bothered about it.

Flora

The Flowering shrubs in the foregound descend from the Brstly locust sedlings provided by the DEC to help colonize the Dog's Plot homesite after we did a lot of heavy sitework to establish a septic system.

Beeing and Nothing Much

Back in the Fox Hole , Red Neck Mother

For dogs these days, we have Coyotes and Foxes.

Starling Check

It's not clear whether Hickorsy iw going to let Starlings nest in the hollows of the Dog's plot Horse Chestnut Tree this year, but they will survive,

: Hickory and Roody:: First Contact

Lion in Spring

DSogs Plot Cats

Tramp and Roody

Bllue Bridge Watercress Brook

Turned the old drainage ditrch into a ponded brook, stocked it with Watercress and it thrived; coming into high season just now.. I even found a fish in there once, regular orgies of frogs, a Mink or two, and a lot of these here nympal Mermaids. Bird food. And birds. Listrn here Buddy:

Birds are ideational

The guy is a few feathers short for a bird.

Aprill Flies

Stop Winter Now

Cat Fishing

Doing the Hanky Panky

Yard dear

HAF phone call SD 480p

A few days before she suddenly died of a hyperventilation attack brought on by her extreme anxietyy about our chickens who had been dying, one, two, or three a day for a week er two, all in the middle of the day, in atacsks by animals not seen, but seem ,,,rather than the usual dogs l.... o have been Fishers....viccious cat sized weasel which have been moving into this part of the country now. So Georgia had been siting out in front of the house for much if ot most of each day to watch over ouer dear chickens; kept busy by cleaning up the collection of my long-gone Grandfather Failing's old tool s. Herbert Augustus Failing: HAF, as he carved it on his tool handles. And then one day the man himself came walking down the driveway and they had a long enough talk for him to tell her some things that she wouldn't have known otherwise....and especially the main message he came to deliver, which was that he thoroulghly approves of the vintage goods store that his Greatgrandaughter Mnetha and we helpers, have made of the old hardware store in Aurora.. So Georgia had to call Mnetha about it, and aftee a bit, I started, oh so very slyly, to record it. And now, when I sit here in the same place and stream this on my computer....it's pretty damn SPOOKY!

It's Time

Bear of a Winter

There he Goes

There's a Bear Out There

Moth in the Family