The beavers are hard at work out where I walk the dog. I wonder if they will cause back up flooding at the apartments where I don’t live. That outcome doesn’t concern them in the slightest. They will drive in upright poles and then fetch branches and sticks for the horizontal. Ponds form, and they use the waterways to float food and debris so as to build homes entered from below.

They are all of them skilled engineers, all of them graduates of Dam U. When the kids were small and we would camp at Allegheny State Park, visiting beaver dams was one of the attractions. You had to go early in the morning and be very quiet—alarm them and they will dive out of sight after slapping the water with their tails to alert their buddies.

“Now Jehovah God had been forming from the ground every wild animal of the field and every flying creature of the heavens, and he began bringing them to the man to see what he would call each one; and whatever the man would call each living creature, that became its name.” - Genesis 2:19

Bob Dylan has explained just how this worked:

He saw an animal that liked to growl, Big furry paws and he liked to howl, Great big furry back and furry hair. "Ah, think I'll call it a bear."

He saw an animal up on a hill, Chewing up so much grass until she was filled. He saw milk comin' out but he didn't know how. "Ah, think I'll call it a cow."

He saw an animal that liked to snort, Horns on his head and they weren't too short. It looked like there wasn't nothin' that he couldn't pull. "Ah, think I'll call it a bull."

He saw an animal leavin' a muddy trail, Real dirty face and a curly tail. He wasn't too small and he wasn't too big. "Ah, think I'll call it a pig."

Next animal that he did meet. Had wool on his back and hooves on his feet, Eating grass on a mountainside so steep. "Ah, think I'll call it a sheep."

So it was pretty much like that. The Watchtower—no doubt others have said it as well—has written that Adam would have taken his time, observed unique characteristics, before naming names.

Let me see if I can do one:

He saw an animal that was great and gray, Swimming about freely every day. Catching its food without a fuss, “Ah,—a hippopotamus.”

And God said to Himself, ’Oh, come on!’ but he went with it.

And just to bring this full circle:

He saw an animal building dams, flooding just like a jailbird on the lam, carving up waterways with a cleaver. ”Ah—looks like a beaver.”

Your first impression of Wolf Mountain is that it really is a mountain. This may not be obvious at first—my friend and I arrived 20 minutes before opening time, and the only thing that was obvious was that we were in the middle of nowhere, a few miles outside of Smyrna, NY. When opening time came, the keeper did not drive up from outside as I has supposed she would, but she descended from within, leaving one to suppose that she had slept with the wolves.

Follow her through the gate, up into the compound and notice the sign advising you to drive slowly up the dirt road. Unless you have 4-wheel drive (we did not), you cannot drive any other way.

After taking in that you are really up there, the second thing that you notice is that these people are truly serious about their wolves. Were a visitor to fall into an enclosure, it might not be as it was with Harambe, the Cincinnati gorilla—the sharpshooter might take you out instead, sparing the wolf. A sign at the entrance demands attention—if you annoy the wolves in any way, you will be asked to leave. If you refuse, staff will call the police.

Well, they wont get any trouble from my companion, who is pushing 90, and who—alas!—has declared that this is his last major excursion—he had to stop and rest a few times this time around. He is such a nut about wolves that his home congregation has named him “Wolfman.” His love of wolves extends to all canines. When making return visits, the way Jehovah’s Witnesses do, he forgets the names of the people but never their dog. “Let’s go pay a call on where Prince lives,” he will say—a partiality that generally gets him farther than if he had remembered the people.

It is on his account that I have made the trip. I came across the closed facility months ago and thought it was something that he might like. It turned out that he knew all about it, but had never been there. I thought that he might decimate the gift shop halfway through the tour, but he showed admirable restraint. So many people have given him stuffed wolf toys, wolf attire, and the like that he barely has room to move where he lives. He was mildly disappointed with the refuge, for he had watched many YouTube videos of snuggling with the wolves and had imagined himself doing the same.

Our guide was leading his first-time-ever group. He was a graduate of the nearby forestry school in Syracuse and his goal is to one day enter the National Park Service. For now, he is paying off some bills running a landscaping crew, and he volunteers here at Wolf Mountain. The wolves are getting acclimated to him—they notice right away anyone new, and they notice when anyone is on the grounds after hours, which are fairly limited.

(Guide is in maroon shirt and backpack. Wolfman in blue shirt and gray hair)

Staff regards each wolf as family. There are placards introducing each individual, and upon leaving, one encounters a group goodbye from them.

The owner, like Wolfman, is essentially a wolf nut, who devotes all his energy to his wolf sanctuary. It is privately funded—that is, mostly not at all, other than admission fees and donations of road kill for food. He ventures out to buy 500 pounds of chicken legs per month for the animals. He welcomes donations of chicken, ground deer meat, deer hearts and liver, buffalo, elk, and pork hearts. He does not want woodchuck, birds, innards from slaughtered animals, or wild game not legally obtained. He is also a Native American, and a side theme of the place is preserving Native American culture.

Oddly, Wolfman, whose father died before he was born, believed and told one and all throughout his life that he was a Native American of the Mohawk tribe. His Inuit appearance easily gives that impression, so it was questioned by nobody. In his later years he took one of those ancestry DNA tests and discovered that he had not a drop of Indian blood in him!—he was mostly Swedish. The revelation came a little late to turn around a lifelong affinity for Native American ways, but even in his heyday he had not taken personally the atrocities done to “his” people—it was just one more example of man’s inhumanity to man, and there were hundreds of examples.

The American Zoo Association decrees that there should be a minimum of 5000 square feet for every two wild animals. Wolf Mountain easily exceeds that, said our guide. I didn’t know about such a rule, nor did the guide know when it had been implemented (which would not affect Wolf Mountain, anyway, since it is independent of that body) but it led to my remark, agreed to by all those of my age, that zoos used to be jails for animals and that now they are much less that way.

When the dog arrived at the house where it knows it can be shocked at any time for absolutely no reason at all, it rushed to see Jen, because it likes Jen. But then it decided it had seen Jen enough and went back into the car, atop it’s bed which had been brought along for the stay. I spilled it off the bed with difficulty when I pulled it from the car and it trotted down the driveway past the spot where it would have been shocked had its collar been on, thus indicating either it had learned nothing at all from the dog restraint system or that it was smarter than anybody might have figured, realizing that absent the collar, it is immune. It kept trotting down the road, as though it would trot all 30 miles home, but my sharp voice, made sharper at the approach of a car, made it pause, reconsider, and reluctantly return with tail shyly wagging.

This is not the usual dog restraint system, where you get too close to the buried wire and get zapped. This is one of the newer 'opposite' models, where you stray too far from the central transmitter and get zapped. Everyone feels bad that the dog is so scared of it and wonders how it happened. There is such as thing as properly acclimating a dog to the system, but it is very hard to believe that my friend would make any mistakes in that regard, because she never does. Maybe there is some quirk about the device itself.

At any rate, he acclimates. I am told he gets better and better. Picking up the dog, my wife and I always ask if it was any trouble. Our daughter’s friends invariably blow off the question as almost too stupid to ask. When I take the dog to the dog park, almost to the person people tell me how good natured he is.

 .....

Cross the center line rumble strip and the dog climbs from the back onto the passenger seat. If there is someone sitting there, it sits on his/her lap. If not, it triggers the seat-belt alert. It really shouldn’t climb into the passenger seat. I shouldn’t hit the rumble strip

I think it is very important for voters to realize that when Candidate Cat advocates food control for dogs, he is being disingenuous at best, and lying through his furry face at worst. Food rights for dogs has long established that optimal results in satisfaction and productivity are achieved at two meals per day per dog, but Candidate Cat uses the data of dogs who binge-eat to skew the overall data. It is important to note that such data must be placed into the category of statistical outlier with no practical application. If fact, recent research points to the likelihood that two meals a day are actually insufficient, and that three or even more meals per day per dog would result in happier returns.

Candidate Cat, on the campaign trail, tends to speak figuratively, in ways that his advisors would no doubt like to reign him in on. He floats an off the cuff remark that one meal per day per dog is the policy he would like to pursue and his advisors quickly reassure the public that he is still committed to a two meal per day per dog policy. In reality, this tactic serves to distract the voter from his true agenda, which is patterned after his true desire – I am assured by insiders who do not wish to be identified - that there be no meals for dogs at all – per day, per dog, or per anything. He purrs a good game, but the public is catching on to him and I predict he will not succeed.

'Cats only get fed once a day,' says Pop. He is recalling the barn cats back when he was a boy. They got unlimited cow's milk, but solid food just once a day. Let them get off their rear ends and catch some mice if they are yet hungry.

This statement thoroughly alarmed the cat, which immediately tried to mitigate the damage. 'Objection, your Honor,' it said. 'I demand that remark be stricken from the record! It is irrelevant, biased, and prejudicial! Cat lives matter!'

But his Honor was fed up with his own cat, which harasses him 24/7 for more food from the moment he walks in the door. He takes off his robe, hollers 'Honey, I'm home!' takes a step forward and falls headlong over his cat, which has positioned itself to call attention to its own hungry plight.

 
 Whoa! I get a cool undercover police car!

Here comes my new partner.

Meet Officer Bittem 

  Suspect identified. He's a nasty looking one!

I've got him trapped, Officer Bittem! I'll cover the escape route. You go down there and cuff him!

Tom Irregardless and Me    No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash 

From the book: No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash

They had a barn fire in Russia in the dead of winter – isn’t it always winter over there? – and firefighters saved 150 pigs.  Find it online. Watch the firefighers joyously tossing piglets to each other in a bucket pig brigade. See? They rescue piglets over there just like we would rescue them here. Focus on the people, not the governments.

All the government wants is to maintain public order, and there are different ideas about how to do that. While they’re at it they preserve their own interest.  But people do that everywhere. The Bible used the metaphor of the heavens to represent ancient governments. The heavens would drench you with rain, scorch you will sun, freeze you will sleet, and there wasn’t a thing you could do about. It is not so different today.

e - x - c - u - r -

YEAH! Let's go!

Tom Irregardless and Me.       No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash 

Just north of San Diego, they built a children's beach. It was for the children. The kids needed a beach, don't you see. They didn't get one, though. They were evicted. By sea lions!

 
Now, I can think of scores of examples where animals are displaced by people, but how often is it the other way around? It's sort of refreshing, isn't it? The children and seals competed for a time, but the cove's protected nature....rocky cliffs on one side of the beach, manmade seawall on the other....well, word just spread among sea lions...you know how they are....and they came in such numbers so as to drive the children away.  When they started to mate and give birth on the beach, practicing unprotected seal sex, it was time to clear the children out once and for all! There must have been 120 seals lounging about the day we visited.  See how happy this guy is?

Odd birds keep gliding by as you're strolling the sea wall. Line after line of pelicans on patrol, single file, more or less, each line   undulating up and down with the waves. Graceful from a distance, but as they pass close by, you're struck with their appearance. Heads eerily too big for their body, no neck, extended beak....flying gnomes, seeming to eye you closely, though not turning their heads, as if relaying your position to headquarters.

  
Now, you mustn't feel too sorry for the displaced children, here. Or, at least, if you do, don't feel it from the standpoint of physical well-being. This is LaJolla (Spanish for “the Jewel), California. It's among the wealthiest locales in the US. It's beautifully hilly terrain. It's picture perfect weather. Relaxed, seemingly stress-free people. The PGA just finished up the Farmers Insurance Open at the community's Torrey Pines golf course, and Bubba Watson walked off with a million dollar check. Witnessing is a challenge here, I'm told, since folks have their own bit of paradise right here and now, living in their multi-million dollar homes clinging to the hillsides.  I was glad I was visiting with my wife, Mrs Sheepandgoats, and not Tom Pearlsandswine, who would doubtless glower over the scene, just like he did at the Ithaca Earth Museum dinosaur exhibit, grumbling about the “wiles of Satan.”  Here, his brow would darken...I've seen it before....he'd mutter to himself awhile, and finally blurt out something like: “I don't know how it happened! The have pigs escaped from the barn, and they're in the farmer's house!” 
 

Trouble is, I'm not sure I don't agree with him, except for perhaps that unkind remark about 'pigs.' Is it really appropriate to dwell in untouchable luxury when much of the world lives in unspeakable squalor? Isn't one at risk of losing touch that way, not only with less luminary humans, but even with God? From the freewheeling Message translation:

Give me enough food to live on, neither too much nor too little.
If I'm too full, I might get independent, saying, 'God? Who needs him?'  (Prov 30:7-9)

Ah well, that's kind of heady and philosophical, isn't it? It's just too warm and pleasant here to care much. Maybe if I had the dough, I'd be right here with them. Besides, one can always dash off a check for how-many thousands to whatever charitable cause strikes one's fancy.

We drive along Torrey Pines Rd, gawking at the sights, just as out-of-towners do, water on seemingly all sides,  towering hills to the left, mounted by a huge gleaming white cross, and continue to......wait...a huge gleaming white cross? Here in LaJolla? Here?! Where you substitute shopping for church, and Consumer Reports for the Bible? Rio de Janeiro, okay, you'd expect to find a cross there....but La Jolla? How come the atheists haven't pulled it down? Better go up and check. So we turn up one of the side roads, snaking up the mountain, half-expecting to be ordered off by million dollar residents. Not that they're not nice and all. But like all outsiders on unfamiliar winding roads full of splendid vistas, we creep along slowly. You don't want to run over anyone's child. The guidebook says “some of the most expensive real estate in the world”....yeah, it sort of looked that way. Residents familiar with every turn and hairpin twist keep roaring up behind us in Mercedes or Lexus automobiles, obliging us to pull over and let them pass. But we finally reach our destination.

Aha! It's a war memorial. Try as you might, you can't mess with a cross at a war memorial. 2400 black granite plaques surround the cross, each with photos and stories of American servicemen and women. And my Lord! What a view of the surrounding area.

Plus, here's the sign from those frustrated atheists that I figured had to be here. They did try to take that cross down, I mean, they must have, knowing them and knowing the times we live in, but the task looks impossible for now, so they had to content themselves with a disclaimer. It only remains to put up some stupid counter display of their own, like they did at that Illinois nativity scene.  

Back to real people the next day. We breakfasted in downtown San Diego, on Fifth Street. Cafe 21, a restaurant you must visit should you find yourself in the area. Normally, an omelet is an omelet.  Any orangutang can make one, and it makes no different where you have yours. But here, breakfast had personality. Everything's unique. The owners hail from Azerbaijan, a map thereof appears on the menu, and the husband stopped by to chat. The waitress stewed over some scheme of the local politician's to extend parking rates into the evenings, plus weekends. What's a working person to do? Already, she parks afar and scateboards the distance to work. She was just that right combination of friendliness, wit, and loopiness. Surely, a native San Diegan! Nope, she says, she comes from Ohio. Ohio! Right next door! We could be cousins. She and everyone else. I can't tell you how many people we met who've transplanted themselves from the northeast.

What am I doing in freezing my rear end off in upstate New York? Taking solace when March 1rst comes, imagining on that day that one can almost begin to perhaps see the foreglimmerings of the light at the end of the weather tunnel? When we returned on March 26, it was colder than when we left!

I know, I know, it's my theocratic assignment. That's how we come to think of it when we're stuck in some armpit of a location.  It will continue to be my assignment until I jump ship and go somewhere else. “Don't worry, Jehovah will provide. Besides, I'm outta here,” I'll say as I roar off. But I probably won't leave. Family is here, extended family, and friends, so that we're all locked here in a conspiracy of inertia. Not to mention that.....it's my assignment.

 
 There were other things we did in San Diego. Other beaches we visited, for example, like in Ocean City, where rows of pelicans cruised by to update our  position, oblivious to the changed socio-economic surroundings, And the zoo, which would take several days, I think, to take it all in. Now, I'm used to zoos in which the animals bunch up as far away from the visitors as possible, and just sit there like sullen union members, not doing squat. But San Diego is a Paul Simon type of  zoo...and the animals will love it if ya do, now.....these creatures interact. They're not shy at all.

 
 
It was a nice vacation. We don't travel much, nor do we usually go far. I'd never been west of the Mississippi. A short stay in the Poconos is more our speed. But the kids are out of the house, now. Some bills are paid off. Maybe we'll do it again someday. Starting with this post, I believe I'll start a “Travelogue” category.

We even visited friends who had one of those GPS devices. And to think I've been pulling over in traffic like an old fogey, unwrinkling gigantic maps, painstakingly finding my place, plotting a course, and then driving a half mile and doing it all over again! Just like Pop. He's even older than I am! My first run-in, years ago, with a GPS device made me suspicious of them, but no more. Maybe Mrs. Sheepandgoats will buy me one as a present, and since we don't do Christmas, maybe I won't have to wait nine months.

They do make you an idiot, however. Like the person we met at the hotel swimming pool who told us of some sight to see in San Diego. Wow, we said, how do you get there? No idea, she said breezily. You know....GPS. It's sort of like the calculator wars playing out all over again. Thus, I once knew a CPA who would not use a calculator, and generally not even an adding machine. He was strictly pencil and paper! What a nutjob! Face it, we're all destined to become stupider and stupider for the duration of this system of things. Resistance is futile.

************  The bookstore