Noah's ark... really?

A friend of ours recently shared one of those Facebook posts you often see about Noah's Ark having been discovered.  I may have been a bit overzealous in my dismissal of such a thing (I believe my words were "a soaking-wet-when-put-in-drydock gopherwood cruise ship").  But here's why such things set me off.  I think it is wonderful to send and share inspirational messages and declarations of faith on FB- BUUUT.... we are told in Paul's letters to know what we are talking about so that we have a ready defense.  Too many atheists are out there waiting to jump on Christians, and too many people on the fence drift away when they dig into things like this and find ot the truth.

Step one: Let us use logic here.   As you can see in the "article", the date is June, 1987.  If a secular Muslim government was going to announce the discovery of Noah's Ark- 23 years ago- don't you think that by now it would be THE major tourist site of all time?  The Turkish government did declare a national park around it- as they do with most archaelogical sites- to protect it.  They attempted to do the same thing with UNESCO aproval around another "site" found in 2011. Plus, Turkey being a Muslim nation isn't likely to promote a Judeo-Christian version of the Ark when according to the Quran surah 54:13 it was just a "thing of wood and nails"- in other words, just a regular boat.

Step two: A little research here.  Ronald Wyatt was a nurse-anesthetist with no archaeological background when he saw a picture in Life magazine and a quick way to make a buck.  He was quickly dismissed by credible scientists as well as his own denomination (Seventh-Day Adventist), and his own partner in the discovery- and book that followed- called it the "biggest long-running hoax in history".  He has gone on to "discover" many other things, and write books on them as well.

Step three:  Logic again.  If you believe the literal account of the Bible, virtually everything on Earth was destroyed in the flood.  Ergo, building material, firewood, and rotting wood-type food for fungi had one source for the next fifty years or so.  Really think much of it survived?

Step four: The religious end of things.  Anything of a nature like the Ark, man would go overboard making idols of.  Maybe not idols like carvings of Marduk, but consider the following.  Around AD 328, the mother of Constantine the Great claimed to have discovered the True Cross that Christ hung on.  Even if the cross had been hidden for three hundred years- and the Romans hadn't just tore it down for campfires or used it on someone else- there began to be such a proliferation of fragments that John Calvin said:

"There is no abbey so poor as not to have a specimen. In some places there are large fragments, as at the Holy Chapel in Paris, at Poitiers, and at Rome, where a good-sized crucifix is said to have been made of it. In brief, if all the pieces that could be found were collected together, they would make a big ship-load. Yet the Gospel testifies that a single man was able to carry it."

Altogether, there are ten pieces extant that can be reasonable proved to have passed through the hands of the Byzantine throne (mind you, not in the Blood of Christ, just that they MIGHT be part of what Helen found), along with thousands of other churches that claim to have a bit, and a church in Ethiopia that claims to have the entire right wing of the cross buried beneath it.
The moral being, if it had existed, it would have likely long since been farmed out for parts.  Second moral- in the Bible, only one such man made object is claimed to have survived- The Ark of the Covenant (which Wyatt also claimed to find), which according to Revelations 11:19 is very clearly IN HEAVEN.  God's not a hoarder, and it's likely not His purpose to save things that only make His people lose focus on what's important.

Step five: simple science.  A few years back, archaeologists in our own back yard stumbled onto the old Gronauer Locks of the Wabash and Erie Canal, buried in the 1840s when it was rendered obsolete by the railroads.  To perserve them once unburied, they had to be immersed in water immediately, lest exposure to air cause them to rot and crumble.  As it's not likely the remains were immersed on the side of the mountain, show of hands of those who think Noah and Sons, Inc., spent the next decade or so, shovels in hand?

Step six: Comparative mythologies.  And here is where the atheists will nail you.  At least fourteen major cultures had versions of the flood myth.  How does it prove (unless you find"Noah and Sons, Inc., " carved into the bow) that it was Noah's ship and not that of Gilgamesh, Deucalion, or Quetzalcoatl?  Much like the recent Church for Jesus' tomb, or the discovery of "John the Baptist's ossuary".  You can prove a historical figure, not His divinity.  For that, there is no archaeological replacement for faith.

Step seven: Geography.  Man has tried to find things for centuries based on the Bible stories, but discounting two big things.  First, that a big flood of Biblical size rearranges EVERYTHING.  People have been trying for ages to find the Garden of Eden (Also in heaven per Revelations) based on the Tigris and Euphrates being two of the four rivers of the Garden.  But how in the world could they be the SAME rivers we have now? (Not to mention, if you did find it, there'd be a rather large Angel with a flaming sword to keep you out!)  The second- and the part that everyone misses- is in Genesis ch. 10 and 11.  Six generations from Noah you find Peleg, so named because "in his day the earth was divided."  Some people pass this off as a reference to the dispersion after the Tower of Babel incident (Oh, and Wyatt claimed to find that, too).  But the word is translated Earth and not "people"; I think that the division of the continents we call "continental drift" is what the Bible is referring to, and that would create even more geological chaos.  You can research that on your own if you care to, and make your own conclusions.  Suffice it to say, "Ararat" then might not be Ararat now.

Finally, let's look at the big picture.  The big picture is salvation, and it doesn't come from any pile of wood.  It comes from Christ, what He did and what He does.  And Noah's ark is a nativity scene is a Chick-fil-A sandwich.  It might make you feel good, or make you think about something, but in the end only distracts you from what's important- your soul, and the soul of the guy next to you.  If My FB comments offended, I am sorry.  But I feel my job is to say, "Keep your focus, people".

After the sermon...

I entered into God's Cathedral.

Not a church built with man's hands, but by the merest thought of God.

Here, I could see the mightiest- and how small they were.

I could see the smallest- and how great they were.

And I could see the greatness and smallness in myself.

In the silence, I could diligently seek Him.

And find Him in every step.

In the singing I could hear His Glory;

in the air, smell His censor.

My, but there are a lot of pews!

But they are scattered in every direction!

That's because, in this cathedral,

God is everywhere.

What do you come seeking?

Hope.

And do you find it?

If I am patient...

...Because she is often well-hidden.

This, then, is unlike any other church!

Well, except in one respect.

You see, here there is only one other congregant;

and even here...

...Sometimes I'd like to boot him right in the butt!

Sometimes they do go away...

Hang in there if you find the first story boring, they'll be nuggets of other stuff towards the end.

A while back, I wrote a post about what they were doing to an old friend- a local radio station.  New developments have happened, so I'm going to tell the story chronologically for you out-o-towners.

It all began when the station hired a new general manager.  Like most radio constituencies, nobody cared much, and probably never would have had change been subtle and without rudeness.  However, the person hired a) was not given a mandate to subtlety, and b) came with a record from one end of the midwest to the other of doing what he was about to do.

The station had one live weekday program, a drive home 3-hr segment.  It was currently hosted by a full-time insurance advisor who was conservative- even Tea Party-, evangelical, and entertaining.  He had a good sized, loyal audience, and even though I was more moderate than he (which is saying something), the only ones who didn't feel at home on his shows were far-left types whose idea of public debate was "talk fast and loud, and hang up in disgust when the host tries to disagree".

Our GM would fill in at times when the host had personal or business issues call him away, and this is how I first heard of him.  I found him obnoxious and demeaning, and would switch to music when he was on, long before I knew he was the GM.  I told the host that, but the host would never say anything bad against him, not in all the time then or since.

One day, they got the bright idea of simulcasting the AM station on one of their FM channels.  Never mind that talk on FM is much like talk on your iPod.  And never mind that they would be putting a long running, reasonably successful classic rock station down the drain, offending that "niche group" and leaving a popular DJ (and employee) with nothing better to do that host a weekend-kickoff party at a local sports bar and castigate policemen for not knowing who he was when he got pulled over.

They forged ahead, and somebody in the higher reaches of ownership got a second bright idea- that the host wasn't exactly the "hip" voice needed for "hip" talk radio on FM.  About this time, the host's popular producer gets canned.  It is only after everything fell out yesterday that she told us that she was fired based on a lie that the GM told, and was told "Don't even try to defend yourself", when she tried.  Now, it was time to train the guns on our host.

He was told to do more "pop culture" and less politics, which was the strength of his program.  He regularly had local pols, senators, congressmen, and the like on his "newsmaker line."  He refused, and one day we were told that for health reasons, he'd be cut down to the Saturday morning show, and our wonderful GM was now the host.  And this is where it hit the fan.

As I said, our host had a strong loyal fan-base, and one of these was a local popular political blogger. (Not me, I said "popular"!)  He had a lot of connections, and swiftly found out that while the host did have health issues, that they were the cause of his ouster was a lie.  He was aided in the battle when a newspaperman who regularly traded tidbits with him exposed it in the evening paper.  At this point, I had thought, "Oh well, give the dude a chance."  What I heard was two days of Lady GaGa and Octomom, and anyone not wishing to talk about this was rudely dismissed.  One lady said she wanted to go back the way it was, and GM/host sangsonged, "BO-rinnnnng," and hung up on her.  (He later angrilly told me that, "She lied to my screener to get on."  I doubt that because I had remarked to Laurie less than a minute before her call that "With all the tinfoil brigade and other headcases calling in today, either he doesn't have a screener or he's been told "weirdoes only" ".)

That's when a huge bunch of us lit into him on Facebook.  He defended himself snarkily and rudely for a while, with the help of a lackey whose FB id was "I'm Jesus Christ I Am" and turned out to be his buddy/assistant GM.  These two upped the stakes when they started a libellously "funny" discussion about both the former producer and the head of our local Right To Life Chapter.  That's when our blogger friend and five others- known to our GM as the "Gang of Six"- began to go to station advertisers and say, "Do you really want your spots on this show?"  A LOT of them didn't, and soon the station's advertising was strewn with PSAs and station promos.

At this point, one sunny Friday, the GM/host went on a rant ON-AIR against the "Gang of Six", making threats at them and saying the famous line: "This is MY station.  Daddy gave me the keys.  I have a lifetime contract." This also made the evening paper, and shortly thereafter GM/host was back to just being GM.  At this point also, the former host was canned from the Saturday show. 

The slot was filled with replays of other syndicated shows for a while, but soon, it was decided that this was not "hip" either.  GM tried out a cavalcade of contestants for the live slot, including a talk-show host from a small down-state station (who had ingratiated himself in town for standing up for GM on his show), and a former mayoral candidate/partner in an architectural firm whose stint consisted of playing six degrees of buildings we built.  With no candidate really catching fire, and advertising slipping to the point where our blogger heard yesterday on-air, "The 11 o'clock news report is sponsored by....  no one", GM and little buddy/ass't. GM got the golden toe at last yesterday.  And the congregation said, "AMEN!"

Whether the damage can/will be repaired is for time to tell, but at least GM is now available to wreak havok in some other unsuspecting town as he did in Ft. Wayne, Dallas, Detroit, and a host of other towns between.  Maybe he'll learn that it's best not to insult your audience BEFORE you get your changes accepted, or that some audiences, despite the sweet corn growing out back, are too sophisticated to be lied to.  But, having seen his prior record, and what he did here, I kinda doubt it.  The sad thing is, had he been a little more sensitive and a lot less arrogant, none of it needed to happen.

______________________________________________________

Funny the things that happen when the camera isn't right there.  For example, two nights ago, I went to the back door to watch Mr. Woodpecker at the seed bell (He's getting about half possessive!), and saw one of the fawns in the woods.  Haven't seen them out back for a while, and I'm wondering if the group might be ready to move on for a while.  (They picked a good weekend for it, if so- more on that later.)  Last night, I took our boy out on the porch for a last pee-trip when I saw a pair of eyes looking at me from the woods.  Scrappy smelled it, too, and went nuts.  But the eyes disappeared into the dark without being identified.

I think I got that ID about 2 AM this morning.  Scrappy started whining growling, and yipping looking out the bedroom window (AKA Scrappy TV).  I could see... something... moving around in the half-light (back yard gets some light from the parking lot lights).  I grabbed my binoculars, and saw it was Mr. Fox.  I could tell it was the Mr. because he has that messed-up tail.  He had been going back and forth at the edge of the wood hunting some poor mouse or something.  He apparently got it, then came out into the yard so Scrappy could watch him eat.

(Now you can see what I'm talking about.  The home pin is pretty much over my head as I type.  The space behind the building between the two sets of trees is out porch, with the window directly over it.  Mr. Fox was in between the left had tree and the woods.)



At times, he seemed to be eating.  Then he'd look around as if something was hidden in the grass and getting away.  In either event, he definitely knew Scrappy was watching,  and was content to play to the audience.  After about 10 minutes or so he either ate the meal or got tired of messing with Scrappy, and moved on.

None of which made camera- but these did:

They are having their annual "Soccerpalooza" down in our usual haunts this weekend.  Scrappy met the U of Louisville team.

Everything blocked off and fenced past this point.  Now you know why I said the deer picked a nice weekend to move.

And just when I was checking out these odd little fungi...

...Scrappy found this!  Not sitting there, of course.

Looked like a small fox to me.

And as I typed this, I heard the CHEEP CHEEP of Mr. Cardinal.

Time Machine week 29

One of the nice things about running your own show is the ability to pull important items slightly out of order at times.  As such, we start off today wishing a happy birthday to the greatest song of all time:





That's right, the song that made me a believer in music even as a baby debuted 13 weeks into my life, and fifty years ago this week.  Happy birthday, my oldest friend!

Leap ahead 8 years to August 17th, 1970.  Two very important- and very different- things launched today, 6,100 miles apart.  The Soviet ship Venera 7 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, and would become the first man made object to land and send back info from the surface of Venus 2 days shy of 4 months later.  It fell on its side, which left the antenna in a bad position; thus we got 35 minutes of really good data right off the bat... and 23 minutes of pretty weak recordings a few weeks later when the planet moved the antenna back into position.  The second was SOOOOOOOOUUUL Train, which had its debut as a local show on Chicago's WCIU-TV 42 years ago today.  It wouldn't be until October of the next year that the "data stream" would go from the "weak" local stream to the "strong" stream of syndication, but it would then send out "good data" till the end of the 2005-6 season.

Yes, this is that bowl of useless trivia and musical noobobs known as Time Machine, and today's teaser nets you Dr. Kildare, the Riddler, the Battle of Britain, a double dip of Neil Diamond, a six degrees that leads us from Karen Carpenter to Connie Francis, and the return of the Duke of Earl!  Let's go shopping, shall we?

Neil Diamond- don't share an order of salsa with him!
He's a double-dipper!

We had a whopping 19 hot 100 debuts this week, and I'm going to share 6 of 'em.  Squeezing in at 99 is everyone's favorite cross-dresser, Lola by the Kinks.  Hotlegs, who in a few years would morph into 10cc, debut at 88 with their novelty hit Neanderthal Man.  Neil makes his first appearance this week at 85 with Cracklin' Rosie.  (Deep breath, Chris...) Charles Wright and his 103rd Street Rythm Band (Okay, draw a normal one now...) come in again with their original version of a song I first heard on Bruce Willis' cover (yes, that Bruce Willis), Express Yourself.  That one comes in at 83.  At 73 is one of my favorites- former Monkee Mike Nesmith and his First National Band with Joanne.  Finally, way up at 57 is Tom Jones' version of the oft-covered I (Who Have Nothing).

Those songs all turn 42 today.  The rest of the birthday songs include:  turning 30, the Gap Band's You Dropped A Bomb On Me; at 35 today, Brownsville Station's Martian Boogie and Marshall Tucker's Can't You See; at 40 today, Elvis' Burning Love, Rod Stewart's You Wear It Well (might be my fave of his), Curtis Mayfield's Freddie's Dead from Superfly, Bill Withers' great Use Me, and the very underrated Leon Russell's Tightrope; and turning 45, Brenton Woods' Gimme Little Sign ("Just gimme some kinda sign love, oh my baby/ to show me that you're mine girl, all right").  Blow out the candles...

The big mover is in the top 25 this week; the big dropper is Teach Your Children, tumbling 37 notches to 54.

Our Where are they now feature has at #50 Ike and Tina and the Ikettes with their cover of Sly Stone's (I Want To Take You) Higher.  I must say that the story of Ike and Tina is one of the more disgusting that you'll run across, with such highlights as:  former Ikettes and Tina herself having to be on the run from the man; low pay, bad treatment; an affair (Ike and Tina's while Ike was married) that Tina felt forced into and Ike described as "it felt like I was strewin' (sic) my sister (sick)"; and knock down drag out brawls that cullimnated in Tina leaving potential millions behind in the divorce just to get away from him.  Luckily, its where they are now we're concerned with.   Tina held a final "50th anniversay in show business" tour in 2008, although her record company keeps repackaging old stuff- and a 1989 single The Best (which hit 15 in the US of A) became an internet hit once again after being drafted as the theme for the Glasgow Rangers soccer team, peaking at #9 in April 2011 in the UK.

Ike died in 2007.  After finally figuring out that you might have a cocaine problem if you have a one-chamber nose, and a little help from an 18-month prison sentence in 1990-1, he was straight for most of the nineties.  He allegedly relapsed after trying to rescue a friend from a crack house and "smelling the fumes".  He died of cocaine toxicity, aged 76.

As for the Ikettes, they were a big name in the early sixties, but Ike's controlling and pittance for pay eventually drove them away. Jo "Joshie" Armstead left first, trying to record under the name of Dina Johnson so Ike couldn't track her down, and eventually hooking up with Ray Charles' writers Ashford and Simpson to write some of Ray's 60s hits.  Clydie King and Vanetta Fields would leave for Ray's Raelettes in 1965- after they had a big hit with a song called Peaches And Cream, Ike kept them in the studio, and recruited a new "Ikettes" to tour with him and Tina.  This didn't go over well, as one might imagine.  King and Fields did some solo stuff, formed the Mirettes (since Ike wouldn't let them keep the Ikette name), and ended up doing session work, including for Humble Pie , joining Delaney and Bonnie and Friends for Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour, and doing background vocals to Mick Jagger and Merry Clayton on the Stones' Gimme Shelter.  Later incarnations of the Ikettes had lesser success, and some of them toured with Tina when she went solo, although not surprisingly she changed their name to "my little flowers".

That gets us to the top 40 debuts, and we have a whopping seven of 'em.  The Duke of Earl himself, Gene Chandler, breaks into the 40 at at 40, up 9, with Groovy Situation.  At 39 is the second attempt of Neil Diamond with the song Solitary Man.  Back in '66, this was his first charting single, but only made it to 55.  This week, the second attempt climbs from 51 to 39.  Up 15 to 38 is Aretha Franklin and the Dixie Flyers with Don't Play That Song, which I didn't know (but surprisingly, since I generally can't stand Aretha, I kinda liked).  Rare Earth's (I Know I'm) Losing You is up 16 to 36.  Elvis Presley, another notorious double dipper, is at 33 (up 10) with I've Lost You.  If you recall, the flip side The Next Step Is Love was our Where Are They Now song last week, and is at 46 this week.

Listen Neil, now you keep your double-dippin' chips outta my dip!  Hmmm... think you can write a song with that line?  That's burnt, man. Now I'm hungry!

CCR move up to 29, a 13-spot jump, with Looking Out My Back Door.  (Probably watching out for Ike Turner!)  And finally, Diana Ross' Ain't No Mountain High Enough is the big jumper, going 32 places from its debut at 55 to 23.

Our look back in the past feature brings us to a lady named Marion Harris, widely known as the first white singer to have success singing jazz and blues.  Marion was born "probably in Indiana" in 1896.  She kicked off a 15-year chart career in 1916  when her second hit- I Ain't Got Nobody- made her a name.  Yes, that is the same one that became joined to Just A Gigolo for the first time by Louis Prima in 1956, and became a big hit for Van Halen's David Lee Roth.  She racked up 39 top tens and 4 #1s, including Tea For Two in January 1925 and St. Louis Blues in August 1920.  The latter was the song that started her on her blues career, and Victor refused to let her record it.  So she left them for Columbia, and the tune hit #1.  She would move on to Brunswick  two years later, and eventually do an 8 minute long "promotional movie"- a video to you kids.

She retired in the early 30s to marry an English theatre manager and moved to the UK.  Their home was destroyed in the Blitz in 1941, and it was the start of a run of bad fortune.  She returned to the US for treatment of a neurological disorder in very early 1944; though she was soon released, she died in a hotel fire in April.

An almost but not quite shoutout to Mark Lindsay's Silver Bird, which peaked last week at 20 and falls to thirty this time.  Can anyone admit to being old enough to remember when this song was the basis of a motorcycle commercial- "Yamaha, won't you drive me away/Yamaha, today is the day!"?

One song joins the top ten this week, one falls out.  The Five Stairsteps step down 5 to #12 with O-oh Child.

Up 6 spots to lead off the top ten, Ronnie Dyson's If You Let Me Make Love To You (Why Can't I Touch You?).

Dropping 4 to #9, last week's six degrees victim, Freda Payne and Band Of Gold.

Robin McNamara holds at 8 with Lay A Little Loving On Me.

Mungo Jerry moves up 3 to #7 with In The Summertime.

Edwin Starr rolls up to #6, up 3, with War.

Alive And Kicking is just that, moving up one spot to #5 with Tighter, Tighter.

Eric Burden and War hold at 4 with Spill The Wine.

Which brings us to our six degrees feature.

The Carpenters slide from the top to #3 with the Burt Bacharach/Hal David tune (They Want To Be) Close To You.  Far from the original of this song, it was a hot 100 hit for actor Richard Chamberlain- or almost was.  It was the a-side of the 45, but DJs played the b-side Blue Guitar- which peaked at #42 but was top 20 on the Adult Contemporary chart.  It was Chamberlain's second attempt at a music career, having hit #10 with the theme to the TV show he starred in - Dr. Kildare- called Three Stars Will Shine Tonight.  Co-writer on that tune was one Pete Rugulo, who got face time on screen when he joined his cool-jazz group in a movie where they were led by future Riddler Frank Gorshin.  They were called a dialectic jazz band back then, but were second fiddle to the star of the movie.  The movie? Where The Boys Are; the star, Connie Francis.

Moving up one notch to #2, Stevie Wonder and his cast of thousands with Signed Sealed Delivered (I'm Yours).

And that means the new top dogs is, ur, are:

Bread, with.. HEY!!! Wrong picture!

AHEM... Bread, with Make It With You!

No more countdowns!  Sorry Bob, I'm NOT doing the nineties- 100 hours of digging to find the fifty songs I actually like from that decade!  Be back here next week for the start of a three week out of five span where the number one on Cashbox does NOT hit #1 on Billboard.  Who are the rogues?  Find out starting next week!

Busy Morning at the bell

Not Taco Bell, silly, at the brand new, big-fat-chipmunk-proof seed bell I got yesterday!

Played hide and go peek for about 5 minutes.

Ate for 20.

Wearing his crest down today.  Must be the humidity.

How's that for timing?

Yeah, whatever.  Call me when the ground hog climbs up there!

Anybody sick of deer yet?

Well, before I make you sicker, let me tell a brief object story.  To the ladies who sat behind us at IHOP yesterday (an older lady and her even-older mother):  You came in halfway through our meal.  You made the waitress comeback twice before ordering.  You asked questions like, "Do you have waffles?" instead of reading the menu.  Deliberated over what was in the drinks you were ordering.  As we were finishing up, you asked your waitress (God bless her), "Is our food about ready?"  She told you, "It's almost up."  Waiting till she turned her back- but not until she left earshot- you said, "Well, I hope so!  I'm glad we're not punching a clock! We want to eat!"  Seconds later, as we got up to leave, your waitress came through.  Do you realize how much I wanted to trip her just so you could wait longer for a new set of your orders?  I controlled myself- but I did tell Laurie as we were leaving, "Maybe if you weren't in so much of a hurry to STICK MAMA BACK IN THE HOME, you might not be so impatient!"

Oh, and I had this shared with me on FB last night and about fell off my chair.  What a PERFECT description of my week!  I shared it too, and now, here for you...

Okay, on to last night's walk.  It was a typical trip- through our "hidden side entrance", down the new trail, across the bridge to the ravine trail to the hidden entrance on California Rd.  But I was in no mood to go past the thousands (well, dozens) of screaming socceristas along our usual route back, so we bopped over to the main trail's southern terminus and retraced our steps. 

Here's a map so you can kinda follow what I'm talking about.  Google World isn't current, and the patch to the right of the "Big Tree" is the meadow they tore out to make the two new soccer fields that they haven't finished yet.  The greenway road we usually would take home runs to the right of all the parking lots.

Anyhow, we hadn't seen anything on the way up, and thus I wasn't expecting much on the way back.  But right before the new trail turns onto the left side of the woods...

The younger doe, and one of the bucks, were going south towards the creek.  A large pile of debris was between us, and they split as soon as we got in the clear.  So we went on down, and about twenty feet onto the side trail...

Yup, Mama deer.  She stood there and posed, and we sat and took pics until she was done servicing her admiring fans.

So she went into the woods, and we started down the trail.  About ten feet later...

...here comes the female fawn.  The boy was hiding in the ditch on the left.  He bolted, taking sis with him, seconds later.


Scrappy determined that they followed the old ravine trail ( the "deer road") straight north along the side of the woods.  A while later, we proved he was right.

  After that, we took a turn into the woods so's I could sit down and catch some wind.  And where I was sitting..

...we found the teenyest, tinyest little berries I ever saw.

Amazing the dumb things the camera will focus on instead of what you want, LOL!

It's a jungle out there.

When Scrappy and I woke up this morning, I looked out the window, as I always do, to see if anybody is availing themselves of the bird feeder.  Well, this morning the bell was swinging back and forth, and with no breeze, I knew somebody had just been by.  What followed convinced me from now on, we go to bed with the camera.

Mrs. Cardinal lands on the shed roof.  Landing on the far end, she hops her way towards the food, looking around suspiciously with every step.  Apparently secure, she flits down onto the bell.   Picks three or four seeds, pausing after each to chew and then spit out unwanted shells.  Taking only what she wanted for the moment , she flew across the back yard into the woods.

She no more landed than Mr. Cardinal soared over to the tree above the shed.  He was chirping like a radar- CHEEP...CHEEP...CHEEP...- and continued to do so as he lighted onto the shed about midway.  Even more suspicious in his looking around, his chirps took on the character of, "Yep.  It's me. I'm here. Right here.  I'm going to step towards the seed now.  Yep, still me."  Reminded me of an Abbot and Costello or Laurel and Hardy movie with ghosts.  Finally making his move, he hangs from the wire frame, rather than standing on his food like the missus, and has at it.

He stayed much longer than she did- I'm guessing he was trying to recover some of the manhood he lost on approach.  Just then, two things happened simultaneously.  One was Mrs. Cardinal got tired of waiting around and flew over, intending to land on the fence gate.  The other was Mr. Chipmunk came running down the top bar of the fence, between the pickets.  I am not exaggerating when I say that she came three or four inches from landing ON the chipmunk!

I assumed that these brave souls would no doubt scare each other off, but thought I'd run down and get the camera for their return.  Sure enough...

It seems Mr. Chipmunk didn't retreat to the neighbors as per usual, but only to the ground near the shed, because he came flying out of nowhere from the shed roof to the bell.  Unlike the Cardinals, he was content to sit there and eat until his head popped, so I openned the window and let Scrappy run him off.

Then we waited to see if the birds would return.  And waited.  After about twenty minutes, I decided to go take care of the 3 Ss (shower, shave and.. well, you know).  When I came back, Mrs. C had returned, but didn't stay long enough to get a picture.  But good ol' chip sure came back...

So I quietly mused to myself about perhaps getting a munk-proof set-up as I sat down to put my shoes on, take Scrappy for his walk, and come back to see how many liberals on FB were calling me a skinhead bigot today.  Shortly, I looked over to see the bell had disappeared- and I wasn't long in identifying the culprit-

Figuring the bird didn't really need (or use) the water, I dumped it out and put the remainder of the bell in the tray.  I had at one point gotten the bell back on its stick, but I didn't figure that it'd take much more than a jenny wren or a fat butterfly to knock it back off.  Gotta consider liability and all- I'm not paying for Chip or Mr. Cardinal's whiplash claim.  Here in a bit, I'll do some more musing about what to do about the situation, but for now I'll just wait to see if that greedy little shithead figures out where the bell went.