Something? Nothing? Who knows!
I hope everyone had a super weekend. I got the aforementioned haircut, which is great. I also singlehandedly fixed a (albeit minor) plumbing issue in my house with only (minimal) puddles. #proud
Let’s see what we’ve got going on for Monday:
‘Living in two realities’: Indian diaspora reckons with crisis abroad
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/05/01/india-diaspora-covid-response/?itid=mr_health_1
I mean these guys should be booed wherever they go, but this is kinda funny. It’s UTAH for chrissakes.
Mitt Romney booed and called ‘traitor’ at Utah Republican convention
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/02/mitt-romney-booed-and-called-traitor-at-utah-republican-convention
Filing under “What the fuck is wrong with people?”
How did a wildlife lover become one of the bloodiest poachers in California history?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/02/california-poaching-birds
Wut?
Caitlyn Jenner opposes transgender girls competing in girls’ school sports
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/may/02/caitlyn-jenner-opposes-transgender-girls-in-girls-school-sports
Sprots! (ish)
Mambacita apparel line honoring Kobe Bryant’s late daughter sells out in less than a day
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/01/business/mambacita-clothing-vanessa-bryant/index.html
Stonks!
Stock futures rise ahead of first trading day of May
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/02/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html
For my bird peeps
We’ve lived in our current house for 5.5 years. Until yesterday I hadn’t seen one of the local ospreys dive into the water and catch a fish. The force with which it hit the water was incredible. Very cool.
Our area has seen a slight bump in hawk population, and we randomly see them swooping down to catch a squirrel or mouse. We had to make flyers to tell folks with small dogs and cats not to let them run free during active hours.
I am squarely in the ‘cats should not be allowed outdoors’ category. Serves the murderous little thugs right if they get eaten by a hawk, they are the #1 threat to wild birds.
…it might depend on the cat?
…I remember seeing a documentary about domestic cats & there was one that used to take down foxes…but I have friends with a cat that seems to defy gravity just jumping into the top of the washing machine…I think the birds might be safe from that one?
We’ve had foxes seen running off with cats in my neighborhood, although one book I read said the most likely scenario is they’re picking up roadkill.
I was woken up last night by a fox screaming, but somehow my dog slept through it.
There are two or three cats that roam our neighborhood in the warmer months and they regularly take down birds. However, if our dog ever manages to get one of those cats it will be all over. She hates them with a seething passion.
While i agree they shouldn’t be outside because they’re little serial killers, I’m not going to root for cats’ demise either. Ultimately it’s up to humans to do right by them.
Now a person being carried off by a hawk? That i can get on board with.
It is the law of the jungle, but I agree, the human needs to protect the cat, protecting wild birds as well is a bonus.
I got to watch a bald eagle dive and snatch a fish out of our lake and carry it off in to a tree last summer. It was the most spellbinding thing I’ve ever seen.
That video of the Oregon insurrectionists is interesting. At least they didn’t get far. I suppose we should be grateful that our insurrectionists lack planning skills.
All this talk of birds and blini has me reminiscing about my best birding buddy, Don [RIP]. I met him at Parker River Wildlife Refuge the day after a big storm, when there was a life bird around every corner. We spent hours birding together after that. We always used to hang out on July 4, and that is the one and only time so far that I made blini, on a griddle over a bbq grill. Good times!
If they can charge Mike Nearman, then they can charge half of the R’s for their involvement. Fucking TRAITORS.
PSA – not sure where to post it. In Simply Ming season 18 he will do a recipe and then a vegan version of the same recipe.
We had a Broad-Winged hawk flying around near the Pre-K playground on Friday. I’m kinda wondering if it’s going to stick around or not, because it WAS out there all day….
https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/birds/broadwingedhawk.html
Had to look it up to figure out which one it was, because it came by fairly low and looking like a RedTail, but it *didn’t* have a reddish tail like they do, it was a distinctly dark brown/blackish & cream banded tail…
The bands looked a bit too broad, and the tail a squidge too short for a Cooper’s hawk… and the body had looked like a Red tail’s, not the grey-blue of a Cooper’s… which was what led me to the MN DNR’s Broadwing page😉
Eta, the reason I’m wondering if it’ll stay around, is that we are DEFINITELY within the territory of a mated pair of Bald Eagles, annnnd it’s nesting season… I know that the DNR page says their predators are Raccoons & Great Horned Owls, and that sometimes Crows will take eggs/babies…. but Baldies CAN be very territorial sometimes, and with the frequency that we see that pair, their nest HAS to be somewhere within a mile or so of the school (we’re basically across the street from Big Muddy😉)
*correction, apparently the Missouri is the one referred to as Big Muddy… I grew up hearing the Mississippi called that, too😖
We live on the edge of a protected gulch that is loaded with hawks, owls, crows and an eagle pair. Somehow the hawks seem to do okay breeding and not losing too many young so your chances are good that they might hang around if they have a good food supply. Right now we have a bunny explosion that the raptors are not keeping up with! In the last week I have heard a great horned owl (we have mostly barred owls) so I am hoping he might take out more bunnies before my wife goes full feral on the little plant eaters.
That sounds… ominous.
@blue dogcollar, that is exactly what I thought. I had visions of Emmer chasing a very large bird which had a screaming toddler clutched within its’ talons.
Does anyone remember the fake video of the toddler getting picked up by the eagle?
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/12/19/167610327/eagle-snatches-kid-video-the-debunking-begins
Lolol!!
Nope! Our kiddos are 3’s & 4’s, and the Hawk was gliding & tree-hopping around the field & trees outside the actual play-space😉💖
Naaah, I guess I just didn’t word it well😉😄🤣
The kids play in a fenced play area (ESCE, and we *do* have some runners!), there is a LARGE open field next to the playground–like baseball diamond-sized, and the hawk flew over that part, then was flying & perching from tree to tree, in the oaks & boxelders which are around the edges of the school’s property.
We also have a small flock of turkeys who’ve decided to claim the field this spring, and a handful of Canadian honkers, too😉
Plumbing. Sigh. My house is older and frankly, run-down. It was a rental before we bought it and the landlords basically jerry-rigged everything with the help of some handyman. We’ve got two plumbing systems — original and Pex plumbing that was grafted over the original setup. Good news is Pex is easy for me to work with. Bad news is there’s no real way to go back and do a proper plumbing job unless the house is stripped to the studs and completely rebuilt. I hate looking under my kitchen sink (or any of the sinks), but at least it works.
We put a lot of money into it when we moved in 17 years ago, but the stuff we fixed then needs fixing again. We’ve resigned ourselves to selling the place to a flipper and letting them renovate it while we go elsewhere. Sad, because I love our neighbors, but necessary. In the meantime I ignore all home improvements that aren’t essential to our well-being. We’re not going to get our money back on anything we do.
Plumbing fixes and upgrades are definitely not very glamorous or add value to your home but waiting until shit fails can be even worst. What is left of our original house has 1960s copper plumbing on the inside that was done really well so that part is okay but our outside sewer pipe is ceramic and failing. My wife planted things right over the pipe that have now grown into the pipe. It is on my long “honey do” list but involves digging up a stone patio, concrete work and is a real shitty job! (Pun definitely intended) My friend that I have been working construction jobs with has an idea to replace the pipe without digging up most of the patio but if it doesn’t work, I am committed to fixing this. I guess I need to move it up the list now that you have reminded me.
Our 1927 home has had various and random plumbing and electrical upgrades. When I had the 3rd floor (really half a floor, more of a garret?) made into an en-suite for my then teenage son, the plumber ended up having to box out a pipe cover all the way to the basement, as new pipe simply couldn’t be fished through the walls. When had the kitchen done last summer, we were replacing knob and tube wiring.
There are two big scary monsters of repair looming on the horizon, I count every day without going there as a win. One is the replacement of the original slate roof; so far patching with slate shingles is working…And the other is replacing the pipe from our house to the street sewer hook-up. Other homeowners on our street put this at around $30K, involving ripping up the basement, front yard, sidewalk, city permit negotiation, re-digging steep grades, etc. Right now it is just about flat, and is kept working via RotoRooter every year or so with a long, long snake and by the use of thin, awful, tp.
Plumbing! Home repair! Argh!!!
Our first house was built in 1927. I still have nightmares about fuses and cloth-covered wiring and rats. We didn’t buy another house until the one we’re in. We suck at houses. I spent summers working construction with my uncle in middle/high school, so I can do a LOT of stuff, but that’s NOT how I want to spend my time.
ooh…
slate shingles is fancy…
Plumbing fixes, no matter how small, are huge victories. I have to replace a toilet handle today, which I’m not worried about, but there’s always a good chance something will go sideways.
Always. Standing rule at my house: Assume any repair will take the entire day, no matter how small or if I’ve done it before and upgraded the infrastructure. I’ve had minor issues that required an entire weekend simply because parts hadn’t been replaced in 30 years and they fused into an indistinguishable mass. Invariably, any repair will trigger a cascade effect of ancillary issues that will have to be dealt with.
We lived in apartments for most of our married life, and there are MANY days I long for that again. I’ve never made money on a house, so forget that equity bullshit. It’s so nice to leave maintenance to somebody else, and if you don’t like it, just move when your lease is up.
I say this having spent 2-1/2 hours Saturday working on our lawn sprinklers.
My house was built in 1912. I’ve got the plumber coming over tomorrow because fancy Buderus boiler is a cranky mofo. I have the thermostat set to 45 degrees F, it is 73 degrees F inside the house and random radiators are hot to the touch. WHY? My old gravity fed boiler worked like a charm for 60 years at least until the jets literally disintegrated and now the plumber is calling a 12 year old Buderus ‘old’ and needing replacement. I miss my gravity fed boiler, if the power went out you still had heat.
I couldn’t finish that bird article. I wish there was a way to just give all those anti gubmint idiots a big plot of land (Idaho?) and say “ok, you stay in and we’ll stay out.” They can be a modern day West Berlin. Don’t pay taxes but no infrastructure, internet, supplies, etc. I’m sure they think they’ll be fine and if it weren’t for each other, they just might.
HEY. NOT IDAHO.
Give them both Dakotas and call it good.