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Mr. Black

Sep 8th, 2009
by WK.
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Mr. Black

Mr. Black

He’s gone now… it happened several weeks ago… I haven’t wanted to talk about it until now. 

 He came to the door of the ranch house several years ago, skinny and scruffy and VERY vocal.  I had seen him in the fields out from the porch that fall.  I watched him from the porch with great interest as he stalked mice in the field and snakes and frogs down near the pond.  He was obviously on his own and foraging for food. 

Why he came to the ranch I don’t know, your guess is as good as mine.  He was probably abandoned on the county road that runs along two sides of my place.  I don’t know what people are thinking when they load an unwanted pet in the car and travel out to the countryside, open the door and then drive off, leaving the poor little feller alongside a strange road never to be seen again.  What kind of person can have no conscience about an act such as that?  I’ve never understood it, but I know it happens all over the country.

Anyway, Boss cat, Leo, had been watching him too, and was none too happy when I invited him in that freezing winter evening.  I feed him and put him in the guest bath that evening, putting out a towel on the floor to sleep on and a small extra hand me down litter box.  I closed the door and left him there for the night, not wanting to aggravate Leo’s testosterone level any more than I had to.  I decided to call him Blackie for obvious reasons. 

The day after he arrived, Leo only attacked him twice, which proved to be his minimum for an initiation to the ranch household.

In the days that followed, Leo was relentless and seemed doggedly intent (excuse the cross species of my expression) on establishing his dominant position, as “Ranch Boss Cat” at the very pentacle of the ranch pecking order.  

As time went by, I changed our new friend’s name to… Mr. Black… out of respect for his courage, often holding his ground against these frequent onslaughts.  In time the two learned to live together without physical altercations, but they never became true friends.  Mr. Black became the head mouser and was far more adapted at that occupation than Leo.  He showed superior stalking skills and displayed the patience of Job.  I would often go to bed at night with him prone on the kitchen floor not moving a muscle for hours while waiting for an unaware and unsuspecting mouse to appear from under the cabinets or from behind the refrigerator. 

 Mr. Black is waiting in heaven for us up by the rainbow bridge now, he contracted feline leukemia last month and was put to sleep to avoid a long and painful illness.  I can see him there passing the time waiting for us, stalking those heavenly fields as he once did here at the ranch. 

We all miss his presence here, even Leo seems restless and I’ve seen him roam from room to room looking for his former adversary.  Goodbye Mr. Black, we really do miss you.

Posted in: At the Ranch, Critters and Wildlife.
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Hummingbird Races

Jul 26th, 2009
by WK.
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When I built the ranch some years back, I built a full length, deep, covered porch on the front of the house.   It provides wonderful shade and protection from the rain and hot sun, and the house is situated so that if there’s any wind at all, it blows the full length of the porch.  In the summer in Texas, wind is a good thing.

Now the whole point of having this wonderful porch is to take advantage of the outdoors and nature — so over the years I’ve added bird feeders and bird houses — and hummingbird feeders. 

The first year or two I was in the ranch, I’d see a hummingbird every now and then, so I bought a feeder and some food, and put it out.   And I started reading up on hummingbirds and their likes and dislikes, and their habitat and migratory patterns.  They’re fascinating little creatures who spend the winters in southern Mexico and return to the U.S. each spring  through Texas, heading as far north as Canada.  (Sounds like some people I know.)

Hummingbird at Ranch feederWell, I put out my hummingbird feeder, and the first year I’d see a hummingbird every now and then.  The next summer I saw a few more but still not a lot.  Then came the third summer, and it was unbelievable, there were hummingbirds everywhere!  And it’s been like that ever since.

Somehow those hummingbirds passed the word, and the ranch is now a regular stop on the hummingbird trail!  You see them in the mornings and late afternoon/early evening, right now I’m sitting on the porch and there must be around 30 to 40 hummers.  And of course I have more than one feeder now.

If you sit quietly and watch, the hummerbirds put on a grand show, they zip up and down and circle the ranch building and chase each other and buzz me and zzzzip this way and zipppp that way and have a ball.  And the babies are so little, and they come and eat and zzzzzip, to.  It’s impossible to describe and wonderful to watch.  And all for the price of a few feeders and some sugar water.

Posted in: Critters and Wildlife.
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Happy 4th of July!!

Jul 4th, 2009
by WK.
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July 4th Fireworks

July 4th Fireworks

Summer is here with a vengeance, it’s been over 100 degrees almost every day for the last several weeks, and there’s no end in sight.  Mowing the ranch yard has gone from a pleasure to a chore because of the heat — early mornings the grass is covered with heavy dew, and by the time it evaporates, the heat has begun. 

And dry, it’s so dry in Texas in the summer, especially in July and August.  It’s against the law in most cities to set off fireworks because of the fire hazard caused by our dry summers, so for the 4th of July people go to friend’s homes in the country to set off their fireworks.  It’s fun, and the little kid in all of us loves it, but as a property owner it’s scary, it’s so easy for a drifting spark or runaway bottle rocket to set a roof or field on fire. 

So tonight I’ll enjoy my barbecue with friends, and I’ll enjoy the neighborhood fireworks, and I’ll have my long hose hooked up, ready for sparks.  And I’ll be thankful — for our country and our freedoms, for friends and family, for good hoses, and for the metal roof I had put on the ranch house a couple of years ago!!  Happy 4th of July to all, and God Bless you, your family, and America!!

Posted in: At the Ranch.
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My First Old Car

Jun 2nd, 2009
by WK.
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My first old car was a 1941 Willis Jeep, Army version.  We owned several hundred acres in East Texas, about an hour’s drive from Dallas, and Leo, my Pop, owned a plumbing business in town at the time.  He worked hard at his business and then loved to play cowboy at our country place on weekends, it was his way to get away from the stresses of a business in the city.  I was 12 or 13 then and learned to love our weekends and summers there.  I first learned to drive on old cattle tracks and dirt roads on and near our place. 

 

My first motorized vehicle was a Red Comet motor scooter Pop bought for me to get around the place on when I got tired of riding my horse.  It was so low to the ground the engine soon got clogged with the red, iron-rich dirt and dust from those old country roads.  We would clean out the dust and grime, oil it up again and off I’d go.  As our cleaning and maintenance sessions came closer and closer together, Pop realized the scooter was not designed for the kind of abuse I could inflict on a vehicle. 

 

This was in the early fifties, a short time after the war, and there was a glut of surplus items of all kinds, so Pop soon located what he thought was the perfect vehicle for a son with a bit of a wild side – a surplus Army jeep with 4-wheel drive.  My friends, Jerry Don and Domard, and I would pile in that old Jeep and spend some of the best days our lives whizzing up and down the East Texas countryside.

 

A man who worked for Pop on our place part time, doctoring cows and cutting cord wood, spotted a hornet’s nest in a clump of mesquite trees in the middle of one of the pastures one day.  It was a huge nest and he was concerned they would swarm and attack some of our newborn calves.  After hearing him and Pop talk about it, my friends and I decided we could take care of the problem for them and have a little fun at the same time. 

 

We went off down to the barn and found several old mops with broken handles.  Back then we kept a 55-gallon barrel of kerosene for lamps and cook stoves, and also used it for other things around the place, like cleaning up broken motor scooters.  Anyway, we got some kerosene in a bucket and soaked those mops good with it.  Off we went in the jeep (open cockpit and all).  The plan was to drive straight through the mesquite trees (mostly big bushes) and swat the hornet’s nest with those kerosene soaked mops, knocking it down and killing the hornets with the kerosene. 

 

Well, best laid plans don’t always work out just as you picture them.  Many years before, our land had been farm land, and a farmer had plowed his deep furrows for planting just on the other side of those mesquite trees.  Of course, we didn’t know they were there when we went flying through the trees, whacking and swatting at that hornet’s nest. 

 

Everything was going just as planned, we had successfully knocked down the nest, and then we exited the other side and hit those furrows running across the field.  First thing I knew, that jeep became a wild bucking horse, and it bucked all of us out and continued by itself across the field.  All those hornets we had just evicted were mad as blazes and looking for vengeance and we boys were running all directions, swatting and yelling and trying to get away from them. 

 

It took a while to get over those stings, but I’ll never forget that day with my friends and that Jeep, my very first car.

Posted in: At the Ranch.
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The Great Chickadee Rescue

Apr 11th, 2009
by WK.
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baby-chickadees-ready-to-flys    Last spring I noticed some unusual activity on the porch at the ranch.  I had mounted an old rusty iron hook to hold a round or two of roping rope next to the door. Then I decorated it by attaching an old stirrup to the bottom.  The whole thing, rope and all, was more decorative than functional.

In April I think it was, every time I would step out the door, I would catch the blur of movement and sound of wings flapping to my left.  On closer examination I saw that a bird had been busy setting up residence in the old stirrup.  It obviously was not a finished product at that point.  There were the usual strings and threads and collected weeds all wound together to form a nest, and there was also the beginnings of a roof being carefully shaped by using the inside of the foot hole in the wooden form on the old saddle stirrup.  After that, I tried to give a warning noise of some kind to announce my impending departure from the ranch house door.  I wanted to keep from startling the poor young mother and give her time to escape before I opened the door.  I wasn’t able to see what kind of bird it was because it always made a hasty retreat before I stepped out.  Once I saw that the nest was completed with roof and all, I began to use the other ranch house door out of respect for a mother in waiting. 

Delinquent feline is probably too harsh a term to use describing Mr. Black, but at the time it seemed appropriate.  Yes, you guessed it, I wasn’t the only one who took note of the unusual movement next to the ranch house door.  I won’t dwell on the details of the encounter, and neither should you, it wasn’t pretty.  It should suffice to say that that mother bird was swiftly dispatched to the great atrium in the sky, you know, that’s near the rainbow bridge where your departed pets wait for you.  Although I do understand it was only instinctive behavior on Mr. Black’s part, I just didn’t feel right giving those coveted scratches and head bumps he loves for several weeks afterwards.

When I looked into the nest a day or two later there were three small speckled eggs.  It took another day and some consultation with a friend before I decided what to do about it.  I think I’ve mentioned before that I’ve installed Bluebird houses all around the ranch and I had one out back of the ranch house.  The houses have a latch and a door so they can be cleaned out on occasion.  I had checked and found a nest in the bottom of that one, but no eggs yet.  I put on rubber gloves (to avoid getting my scent on the eggs) and moved them to the Bluebird nest.  I hoped the bird that had nested there would adopt the eggs as her own and hatch them.  To make a long story short, it did, and they hatched.  They turned out to be beautiful Black Capped Chickadees.  To borrow the phrase from a loved but departed radio friend, and now, the rest of the story 

There was one life lost that summer, but three saved, and now when I see a little Black Capped Chickadee on the bird feeder just off the porch, I wonder if it is one of those three baby birds that were spared and lovingly hatched by another mother that year.  It’s a wonderful world we live in, full of surprises, isn’t it?

Posted in: Critters and Wildlife.
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Spring Is Coming

Mar 25th, 2009
by WK.
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 We had a big light show in the sky last night up towards the Red River, but it was too far away to hear the rumbling thunder that usually goes with it.  I was sitting on the porch enjoying the night sounds when I looked off to the north and I could see the huge billowing clouds as they were backlit by one lightening strike after another.  It was a little like watching an old silent movie, all that power and majesty lighting up an otherwise black sky, flickering and flickering as the lightening danced around behind the clouds. I must have watched an hour or so, until I started to nod off and decided to go to bed.

Around three this morning  I heard the wind pick up outside and got up to let Daisy, my neighbor’s dog in.  She was waiting at the door, tail a-wagging.  As I stepped out into the morning air I could hear a gentle rain had started and was playing it’s soft song cross the metal roof.  I could smell the ozone blown in on the wind from those spectacular lightening displays up north last night.  The big thunderstorms up north, the cool cleansing rain, are all signs that spring is not far off.  It won’t arrive too soon for me, it’s been a dark winter this year for many and I think brighter days are ahead for all of us as spring arrives.  I can see the Indian paint of wildflowers waving in the wind on the meadow out from the porch already in my mind. Can’t wait.

Posted in: At the Ranch.
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