Free Speech

I was witness to a disturbing phenomena over the weekend and I don't believe I am the only person to have made this observation. Moreover, I am not surprised that it has come from the same small group of individuals who six months ago were getting-off on Face Book with vulgar, racist, sexual memes and hate speech focused towards Vice President Kamala Harris.

It took only about 24 hours for these same individuals to go over the top gleeful as Californians suffered the tragic misfortune of losing everything to wildfires.  

Homes, businesses and property lost. Families displaced. 

People still missing and unaccounted-for.  

Lives lost.

Thanks to an abundance of material supplied by Russian and Communist Chinese troll farms my recalcitrant acquaintances have somehow roped forestry policy, the LGBTQ community, pedophilia, diversity, equity and inclusion, a wild smelt, Hollywood personalities, Gavin Newsom, North Carolina and Ukraine all into one big wet dream of joyful, celebratory and triumphal mirth over the loss of life, destruction of neighborhoods and communities reduced to ash.

As a casual observer it is interesting to watch this social psychology at play in real time.

There's a great deal of unresolved grievance and hatred out there. Waiting only for the opportunity to be unleashed on social media from behind the warming glow of a device. Hard to know if it's a character flaw or a pathology. Strikingly, some of these individuals wear their 'Christianity' on their sleeve and remind me of it regularly.  

I wonder what Jesus would have to say about their flagrant expenditure of bandwidth to mock the dead and air their loathing and scorn for the people of Los Angeles?

I just don't get it. I'm grateful I'm not hardwired to be ecstatic and gratified over my fellow countryman's misfortunes.....

*Individual screenshots of Face Book posts, commentary and replies have not been reposted here for privacy reasons and because the content is just sick.

The Big Fibroma

On July 7 I scored some photos of a whitetail with a pendulous tumor.

Looks gross, eh?

I emailed the pics to a biologist I know who heads-up the UW School of Wildlife Biology in Madison to see if she might shed some light on the subject. She shared them with the DNR’s Chief Veterinarian.  Here’s the response back:

 

Hi all-

 

While I can’t make a diagnosis from a picture, the image would be most consistent with a fibroma. They can vary greatly in size and shape. Usually they’ll eventually regress. Sometimes that can be irritated by injury or insect bites but again that is self-limiting most of the time. These fibromas are just a lesion of the skin and caused by a deer specific papillomavirus. 

 

More info can be found here: https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/.../wildlif.../disease/Deerfibroma

 

Best

 

Lindsey

 

This showed-up on a trail camera last week.  Looks like it's improving all on its own... 

 

 

Free Speech

It should come as no surprise that Vice President Kamala Harris has long been the target of racist and misogynistic online attacks as a consequence of her Black and South Asian ethnicity.  

As a candidate for president the gendered, sexualized and racial attacks aren't going away.  In some respects they've become worse.  In the absence of any personal restraint on the part of internet users combined with lackadaisical oversight by tech companies, the close to this election cycle will likely set a new standard for tastelessness.

Interesting to me is that of my 348 Face Book friends virtually everybody (on both sides of the aisle) have refrained from posting or reposting crude and vulgar content related to any candidate on their FB pages.  If anybody is talking politics they're going about it correctly;  sticking with policy differences, tasteful humor and witty sarcasm.  Personally, I avoid it.  If I have anything to say on politics I do it here because reading the blog is voluntary.  There is no faceless algorithm to foist it upon you.  If you're bothered or troubled about anything I publish;  don't come here.  But you already knew that.  Getting back to the subject of Face Book there are four acquaintances of mine who cannot seem to help themselves.

Moreover, the curious thing is that all four of these acquaintances have a great deal in common with me.  We're all within a year of each other in age, grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same schools and for some the same church.  By all outward appearances they're upright citizens.  If you met them socially you'd find them personable and likeable.  Not a criminal amongst us.  But when it comes to the volatile mix of Face Book and political speech you might just think that from time-to-time they've lost their minds.

A couple of days following President Biden's abdication of the throne I spent a few moments  sampling of the Face Book pages for these four individuals and collected these screen shots.

Frankly, this sort of behavior is a turn-off.  And I don't think it's restricted to a conservative-leaning independent like me.  Many of my acquaintances who are Trump supporters likely share this sentiment.  Can you believe these are adults?

Are these four individual's under the impression that licentious posts are going to polish Donald Trump's brand?  Advance their cause?  Attract voters from the Big Fat Middle who are necessary to win an election?  It hasn't let-up either.

Thankfully it's a small number.  But Holy Cow, they've sure got a hard-on for sexualized hate speech. 

Meanwhile, last Wednesday, former President Trump questioned the racial identity of Vice President Kamala Harris during a tense appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago.  He asked, Is she Indian or is she Black?  He falsely claimed that Harris, who has long identified as Black, attended a historically Black university, used to identify as Indian and then, all of a sudden, she made a turn, and she became a Black person. 

This is all part of the Trump campaign play book.  Skip the policy and dominate the media cycle.  Like I said earlier; looks like this election is game-on.

Pro Tip - Watch the Vegas Line and the odds-makers......

MRE

 Meal Ready-to-Eat is raised to a new level.....

 

POWTS

PRO TIP

 

 

If you live in rural America there is high probability you have a POWTS (private onsite wastewater treatment system). 

Pull your filter out at six month intervals to flush it  clean of accumulated nastiness. 

It’s a stinky disgusting job but it will help your effluent move efficiently thru the system

 

Mopping-up The Murder Scene

 

With a couple of days of fair, spring-like weather, twas a perfect opportunity to wash and hose all of the deer hunting blood and gore from the Mule.

Watching the red-tinged water run-off the driveway is likely what mopping-up a murder scene is all about..... 

Living With Labs

If you visit this blog from time-to-time you already know that our patience has been tested with all of the rain we've had this fall.   

Silver Creek has repeatedly over-topped its banks.  The ponds are full to the brim.  Standing water in the trails.  Mosquitoes.  Records have been broken.  Water everywhere.  For gosh-sakes it is mud season and it isn't even spring.

One of the consequences of this is that the Girls get a rinse and under-body flush after each and every walk.  They're just too muddy to let back into the house otherwise.  In keeping with the scatological subject matter introduced yesterday there is this.

Blonde dog is illustrated for purposes of contrast

 

On occasion the walk will result in more than a rinse and under-body flush. 
There is the full shampoo and sometimes a rinse and repeat.  That is because of the poo-rolling.  I have no idea what the attraction is - nevertheless, the greasier the critter poop the more irresistible it is.  

Blech.......

 

 

 

 

 

POWTS

Which is the acronym for Private Onsite Waste Treatment System. 

The Turd Hearse cometh. 
 

 
This is how you handle your shit when you live in rural America and don't have a municipal sewer system.  Everything flows downhill in the plumbing to a 1000 gallon tank where the solids settle.  From there the filtered effluent spills into another tank before being pumped into a mound system.  Once in the mound it slowly filters back into the ground water.       

Our own miniature sewage treatment plant.      

Got the three year clean bill of health after having the tanks pumped and inspected.       

That would be right.  Every three years.      

The county sanitarian requires it due to the fractured dolomite limestone bedrock that makes-up the Door peninsula.        

No leaking or failing septic systems allowed.  

The fella pumping the effluent out of the tanks was chatty-enough.  With all the rain business has been excellent.  But the stink. 

All I gotta say is……Whew!

The Butcher of Bosnia

Radovan Karadzic was a former Bosnian Serb politician and convicted war criminal who served as the President of Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War.  Trained as a psychiatrist at Columbia University he co-founded the Serb Democratic Party in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Following his indictment for war crimes in 1996 he remained on the run for more than a dozen years before he was eventually arrested and indicted in 2008 in Belgrade, Serbia.  In 2016, he was convicted of war crimes and genocide for the Srebrenica massacre in which more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered by Bosnian-Serb forces in July 1995.

Just this past week a United Nations court increased his sentence from 40 years to life imprisonment.  Mr. Karadzic - 70 at the time of the original verdict - was unlikely to live long enough to serve out the original sentence of 40 years in prison.  Nevertheless – this symbolic move - reaffirmed having been found guilty of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.   

You’re probably thinking:  Geez, Swamp, why is any of this horrific old news  of any consequence today? 


It would be as a consequence of this. 

Correspondence I had with the Butcher of Bosnia dating from 1992.     

click on the images for a closer look

 

This was for crimes committed before those he was ultimately convicted-of.   How many of you can say you corresponded with a genuine war criminal.  

Hope you like the accommodations in hell you worthless scum.    

You can learn more about this here…..

Gross and Disgusting

Blaze hunting bibs and parka - over-garments that comprise the last layer, barrier and line of defense against the elements during the gun deer hunting season.  The bright orange a safety consideration plus they keep the mud, the blood and the gore off of the hunter.

These duds have been hanging-around in the garage since the last gun hunt in December.

They haven't seen the inside of a washing machine in a couple of years and as a consequence are laying here on the laundry floor in all of their gory glory.  They've reached the tipping-point.  That point were the level of gross and disgusting cries-out for action.

Laundered and hung to dry.

click on the parka for a closer look at the transformation



Raising a toast to a clean slate......

Who Else Eats Milkweed?

Just in case you were operating under the assumption that the only thing that eats milkweed is the monarch butterfly last week you read that the milkweed tussock caterpillar or milkweed tiger moth dines on this plant too.  There is also this: 

click on image to enlarge

 

Meet - Aphis nerii - an aphid of the family Aphididae.  The common name is oleander aphid or milkweed aphid.  Gross, eh?    

When I spied this my first impression was that this was pollen.  But that didn't make any sense.  Milkweed doesn't have yellow pollen on its leaves.  Upon close examination this suspected 'pollen' was moving.  It was an infestation of tiny yellow aphids feasting on the milkweed and sucking its vital force from it like a horde of little vampires. 

A large colony like this will eventually lead to death of the milkweed plant.  And get this - the colony grows by means of parthenogenesis.  The young are produced asexually as the females give birth to live nymphs without the participation of males. 

This is too gross for words.  Jill chopped-off the infested portion of the milkweed plant and properly sealed it in a plastic bag to roast in the sun. 

Death to the nasty, sticky, sap-sucking, vampires.

Too Much Dietary Fiber

In keeping with the theme of my Labrador retrievers getting into whatever mischief they can I offer this...

This happens to be a turd that the black Lab relieved herself-of following a dining splurge on fresh grass.

Too much roughage I've concluded.

Incidentally, this can occasionally result in what we refer to as 'a hanger'.  A dog turd that the dog cannot completely evacuate from the bowel.  A matter of singular frustration to the dog who only wishes to go about her business efficiently and completely.  At which point you have to personally assist by grabbing 'the hanger' and delivering it from the canine's hind-end.

Blech.

Poo Rolling

click on image to enlarge

Blonde dog is a fright.  

Her Highness had an opportunity to roll in some critter's poop while running around in the woods. 

If you are a Labrador retriever it doesn't get much better than that.

Yes, Your Lovable Lab Might Eat You

Folklore tells us that a cat will gladly dine upon its deceased owner - but a dog would sooner starve.  Not so, your dog may be perfectly willing to consume a human corpse and there is ample evidence to support this.

Just ask the 78-year-old Austrian woman who was found without a face with her German shepherd in 2002, or the 66-year-old man from Moscow whose German shepherd ate most of him over the course of two weeks in 2008, or the octogenarian German shepherd owners whose gruesome remains were discovered in 2006. You could also ask the Canadian couple eaten in 2011 by their five Shetland sheepdogs and two mutts.

In 2009, a small pair of pugs in Nebraska survived for two weeks on the corpse of their owner after he shot himself.  After being found, the dogs were subsequently put up for adoption. A Humane Society spokesman said the animals were unlikely to suffer any lasting psychological damage because:  they don't have memories like people.   

I dunno.  I asked my dogs about this and they returned my questions with a quizzical look of their own.  Sort of:  Would you dine on us if you were starving?   

Good question.  I guess is cuts both ways and depends upon who dies first and who’s hungry enough.  National Geographic has an excellent piece on this topic which might make you sleep from now on with one eye open.

Mothra

When I serviced the trail cameras last weekend I discovered another infestation of gypsy moth caterpillars hiding behind and underneath a couple of cameras.  It was an excellent opportunity to squish them to death with my gloved hands and them stomp them with my boot for extra measure.

This one took a selfie before it died.

 

Mothra

This has got to be the singularly most gross and disgusting thing I have seen in a while.   

Gypsy moth caterpillars clustered on a trail camera.  Blech!  Gross!  

I squashed the disgusting and nasty invaders with my gloved hands and flicked their squirmy guts into the mud and turf and squashed them again for good measure with my boot.   

I hate gypsy moth season.