animals in your life

[Dark Lightning]

I think I know how you feel about this. I had a buddy in the Navy who grew up in Oklahoma. People would run over turtles in the road all the time, he told me. Also, while working at Cape Canaveral in '05, there was a turtle migration (not sure why). There was a turtle about 18" wide in the road that someone had run over one side of; it's head and neck protruded from the shell in a death rictus of agony. It was a gruesome sight, and I was pretty pissed; who the hell would do something like that? Stupid question, given what people do to other humans on this planet. 

[billy rubin]

in oklahoma they think its fun to catch them just on the rim and flip them.

generally they partially crush them instead. thats what you saw.

i am from oklahoma. dont get me started.

[MarcusA]

Sometimes doing nothing is the best policy.

[Dark Lightning]

in oklahoma they think its fun to catch them just on the rim and flip them.

generally they partially crush them instead. thats what you saw.

i am from oklahoma. dont get me started.

People from everywhere do nasty shit, that's just the nature of people, unfortunately.

[MarcusA]

in oklahoma they think its fun to catch them just on the rim and flip them.

generally they partially crush them instead. thats what you saw.

i am from oklahoma. dont get me started.

People from everywhere do nasty shit, that's just the nature of people, unfortunately.

But Americans are a special people.

[billy rubin]

dammit

cant live with it

cant live without it

[MarcusA]

Naree the Librarian is
an animal - she doesn't like
poetry.

[MarcusA]

Not much life happening here.

[billy rubin]

picked up a 30 yard box of garbage at a well pad, drove it 65 miles, opened it up at the transfer station and there was a juvenile raccoon huddled against the back door, inside. i got my plastic shovel and tried to get it out but it kept burrowing into the crumbled  cardboard and garbage. eventually i couldnt see it.

i  had trucks waiting behind me to i picked up the box about half way and gave it a little jerk to slide the stuff out slowly. but most all of came it out once.

dunno whether the coon made it. i told the frotn end load he was there and asked him to try breaking the pile up before he smashed it into the truck trailer.

i do not like killing things.

[MarcusA]

If you don't shit, billy, you die.

[billy rubin]

still dont like it .

[Tank]

picked up a 30 yard box of garbage at a well pad, drove it 65 miles, opened it up at the transfer station and there was a juvenile raccoon huddled against the back door, inside. i got my plastic shovel and tried to get it out but it kept burrowing into the crumbled  cardboard and garbage. eventually i couldnt see it.

i  had trucks waiting behind me to i picked up the box about half way and gave it a little jerk to slide the stuff out slowly. but most all of came it out once.

dunno whether the coon made it. i told the frotn end load he was there and asked him to try breaking the pile up before he smashed it into the truck trailer.

i do not like killing things.

I'm with you there.

[billy rubin]

laid back day.

im in a dispute with my out of town new manager. he wants me to work 13 hour days. i want to continue with the 10 hour days in effect when i started. yesterday i worked all my assigned loads, and came back at 14.4 hours -- illegal to drive. my pretty decent but powerless local manager said, okay then what time can you start tomorrow?

i said im not working tomorrow, at all, and went home.

so today their predatory schedule is shot to hell because instead of arguing with me over getting the last loads done, theyre not getting any loads done. bless my beating heart.

so it was time to look in on th ebees. theres a dearth right now, no honey flow in the midsummer here. the ground flora is over. not much teasel, little birdsfoot treefoil or sweet clover, no dandelions, no phlox, not much dutch clover or vetch, multiflora roae is long gone as are all the trees. theres daucus and chicory but the bees dont do much on those. so th e girls are just treading water until the goldenrod and asters kick in. if theyres enough fielders, theyll fill up the boxes, which is what im looking for.

anyway, i have em stacked up, mostly for show and so i dont have to worry





i top-supered everything about ten days ago in a spare moment, and so today i swapped the top box for the number three box. here in ohio i keep the brood nest in two 8 frame deeps. in california i kept em in a single  deep with an excluder under a shallow. not enough stores for the ohio winters here to do that, and they need two deeps for brood here anyway because the season is short. anyway, this puts the empty super between the brood nest and the full super on top, so they have to walk all over it and may draw it out as im still feeding.

i was about to do the last hive when i noticed something odd in front of the landing board



looked close and it was a dead virgin queen





this was the hive that contained the single good queen i overwintered who was the source for the other five divides. the virgin means either

-- they tried to supercede the original old queen and failed

--they tried to supercede the original old queen and succeeded but made too many queens and so they offed this one

-a supercedure queen from somewhere else tried to fly back into the wrong hive

not knowing which, i left this hive alone. inside there is either no queen, the laying old queen, a laying new queen, or a virgin queen that hasnt started laying. theres nothing i can do except bother them, so i let them bee, so to speak.

in th emeantime, im keeping the feeder cans on them all the time. theyll continue brood rearing into the fall if i keep them happy and fed. i cant do anything about the pollen for protein, but i can keep them stuffed with carbohydrates so their field force can concentrate on protein.

in the meantime im working on the race bike and listening to the most excellent in search of space, by hawkwind.

from long ago in a galaxy far away

[billy rubin]

i hate this place in the winter, becaue i imprinted in the tropics and the southwestern deserts. but i cannot deny that this place is extremely easy to live in during the summer and early fall. flowers, fair weather cumulus, warm fronts, occasional nimbus. sleeping with the doors open under the mosquito nets, the local wildlife wanders in and out while im asleep and i discover their nefarious activities only the next day.

pictures later maybe

[MarcusA]

A man is but an animal without a woman.