Sunday, April 21, 2019

ELECTION SECURITY -- EAGLETS -- REMINISCENCES


Election Security
The release of the redacted Mueller Report has left us needing more answers to questions about  a foreign nation, Russia, intervening in our election process.  I find it extremely troubling that our President, charged with defending our democracy and nation’s security, has not evidenced a similar concern.   Some issues are described in this NPR article.   Our government officials, U.S. Congress consisting of the House of Representatives and Senators should all, regardless of their political party affiliation, be focused on investigating Russia-related issues to prevent any further threat to our democratic process, especially considering our imminent 2020 elections.  

Efforts to undermine citizen trust in the viability of our elections, weakening the Legislative and Judicial branches of our government with power centralized in the Executive branch jeopardizes our democratic republic system.  The Fourth Estate -- journalism/press serves as a check on government and big business but constant efforts to malign their credibility further erodes our system.  Preserving our freedoms is of the essence.  



Eaglets -- Reminiscences
While awaiting the Bald Eagle eaglets emergence written about in my previous posts I’ve been reminded of my first introduction at preschool age to the mysteries of new life beginning with wild bird eggs hatching.    I recall a bird house my older brother had built for tiny little house wrens when we lived in a Great Lakes state.   We didn’t have such a close intimate view of that nest as with the live cams focused on a nest in a tree as now. 

Living in So Cal these many years later, outside my windows I’ve been treated to seeing finches and hummingbirds building nests, laying eggs, the eggs finally hatching, then the fledglings first flights to seek independence, some not always without peril.

I don’t remember when I first witnessed an actual birthing process of other creatures, but I had been well-prepared from the early house wren years by my mother.  She gradually introduced sex education via the birds and bees, plants and animals, progressing to human concepts.

My first two and one-half pre-teen to early teen years I became fascinated with waiting for foul eggs to hatch when as a youth we moved to the country.   We had Rhode Island Red chickens, allowed hens to hatch some eggs, but mostly sold the fresh eggs, also cream separated from the milk of our two pet Guernsey cows.   Further new life emerged when our golden-hair German Pomeranian dog pair bore a litter of puppies.   Then there was the several hundred pound black and white New Hampshire sow birthing a huge piglet litter one cold winter night in the barn.   

Far from being dangerous as sows are said to be at such times, this mother pig had absolute trust in Pop as he climbed into the barn pen with her.   She laid on her side in the straw, would give a grunt with each birth, then lift her head to see him pick up each piglet to wipe it dry, then place it at one of her teats.   I hung over the edge of the pen entranced with this whole procedure.    She had more piglets than she had teats so one little pig eventually became a runt, disadvantaged with constantly having to fight at nursing time for a place at the table in the weeks ahead.

We had some other animals including a black cocker spaniel that loved to chase wild rabbits.  She had a litter of puppies but indulged her rabbit-chasing obsession while still nursing her little ones.  One afternoon she returned home late dragging her hind quarters behind her, paralyzed.  We were quite alarmed, but the days ahead we kept her inside so her forced rest allowed her body to recover all her movement, just as a veterinarian friend of the family had counseled would likely occur.   

I was introduced to fishing, but with the requirement I learn to capture night crawlers and must  bait my own cane pole line hooks.   This former city girl’s progress was such that I was advanced to using a casting rod with other types of non-live bait.  When Pop and I went fishing we had separate creek bank locations, so I was pretty much left in nature’s silence with my own thoughts those afternoon hours.  I recall the delight of seeing a flock of ducklings, soon to be followed by their mother, riding the creeks current down the stream through some rapids, bouncing about.  

Following his high school graduation a family member who became like a brother to me came to live with us for a year.   He acquired a coon dog he named Zip.   We soon discovered to our incredulous laughter he was zipping all right --  we would observe him racing full speed on a hillside opposite where we were sitting for the sole purpose of observing his behavior.    Zip’s nose was to the ground for a scent and he was bellering as only a coon hound can.    Hot on the trail he would eventually lose the scent, but merely turned around and back-tracked the route he had run, bellowing loudly as though he was headed straight toward his prey.  

We took Zip to the woods one night as part of his hunting regimen in training to see if he could stalk deer.   I learned to recognize the sight of a doe’s nest where she likely birthed a fawn and the unique musty odor indicating possible recent occupancy.   Zip had already run ahead seeking what -- we weren’t sure.   Walking softly through the trees the night was becoming darker the further we went.  Zip was making no sound so we didn’t know where he was.  We finally sat down, remaining silent to listen for Zip as we leaned against a tree.   Eventually the silence was broken by Zip’s sudden bellowing with shortened but increasingly exciting-sounding bursts indicating he had found something! 

My “brother”, the outdoorsman, immediately left to pursue Zip’s location while I remained seated by the tree, alone.  My senses became increasingly alert to every sound the longer I sat there --  a feeling of unease began to creep through my body.    The night was quite black now and I literally couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.   Once Zip’s baying stopped, what seemed like interminable time passed, though it was likely only minutes until I was startled by the feeling of something cold and wet against my cheek.    Momentarily freezing, holding my breath, I realized it was Zip, to my great relief.   The outdoorsman soon appeared and I learned Zip had, indeed, found a critter – he had chased a raccoon up a tree, who likely had a harrowing or humorous tale of fooling a hound to tell his or her friends.    Our evening had ended and we returned home. 

Weeks later the outdoorsman brought home a young raccoon he had come upon and decided he would tame this animal to become a pet -- just like the adult pet we had visited at a local farm.  Sitting in that family’s yard with their friendly raccoon pet on a leash, we had been intrigued as he busily went through our pockets looking for a snack, or anything else he could find.   So, outside our house, raccoon living quarters had been built and the taming process began.   I was cautioned to not touch the caged wild raccoon since a severe bite would be the reward for my friendly gesture.  

Outdoorsman always wore heavy leather gloves and was the only one who handled his raccoon.   He brought him in the house one time, but that was the last as retrieving the raccoon from in and around the dining room furniture proved to require an acrobatic gymnastics effort well beyond any activity anticipated, arousing my mother’s increasing concern.   Outdoorsman eventually decided his work hours and other activities prevented him from devoting enough attention to handling the raccoon for taming purposes, so he released him back into the wild. 

I also experienced the then accepted practice of some hunters and trappers, as outdoorsman had learned them from generations before him, when some wildlife was viewed and treated differently than today.  Accompanying him once when he “ran his traps” set along creeks for muskrats and mink he captured for their pelts, I was repelled by that process, and yet people bought those furs. 

He also harvested squirrels.  When his father had been younger and more able to hunt, he included ducks, snapping turtles as prey along with most variety of fish.  No creature was ever taken for sport, only the matured and only those whose meat would be cooked and consumed as part of the family diet.   These decades over half a century later much has changed including attitudes toward wildlife treatment.


18 comments:

  1. You've had a lot of experience with animals. I have too, but not so intimately.

    Thank you, by the way, for the link to the Eagle Cam. We're enjoying such an up-close look at this majestic creature.

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    1. Had a few animals through the years, plus visiting an uncle’s dairy farm in northeastern Ohio.

      Glad you’re enjoying the Eagles and now the eaglets as am I.

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  2. Such a busy time for the animals. My woods are full of chirping and flying and mouths full of grasses.

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  3. Interesting story. But, I prefer being a city girl, myself.

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    1. I didn’t have much choice in the matter about where we lived or for the five years after that, so life is a matter of adapting — lots of interesting learning experiences.

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  4. I have no argument with how your family hunted and caught food. That was how it was supposed to be. You kill it, you ate it or found good use for it. Today, trophy outweighs use or food.
    Like you, for me fishing was often an excuse to sit quietly and become one with nature.

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    1. I must say those years and the five after gave me unique experiences with nature I would only have read about otherwise. Being somewhat isolated compared to city living I had known provided an opportunity to form some different perspectives.

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  5. It was a different world back when we both younger and every knew someone who lived closer to nature than in today's world. No wonder you love the eagle cams.

    I have no words to express my disgust for what the president is doing to our country.

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    1. Lots of changes in our lifetimes. Can’t begin to imagine what the next fifty years or so will bring us.

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  6. Wow you woke up some memories in me Joared, trapping wild rabbits with my grandda. Every bit of that rabbit would be used, the bones for soup, the meat for eating, the pelts for a wrap on an old chair, stitched together. I loved going off in the morning with him, crack of dawn to check the traps.

    In a lodge in northern Ontario, the owners had, among other animals, two tame raccoons. They were incredibly intelligent.

    XO
    WWW

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    1. You reminded me of visiting a great aunt and her husband on their farm one long Thanksgiving weekend, I went with the men hunting wild rabbits we tracked in the snow, cleaned on site, then brought home with similar preparation for cooking and eating — the first time I had ever eaten rabbit.

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  7. About Trump, from the New York Times:

    "In the months before Kirstjen Nielsen was forced to resign, she tried to focus the White House on one of her highest priorities as homeland security secretary: preparing for new and different Russian forms of interference in the 2020 election.

    President Trump’s chief of staff told her not to bring it up in front of the president."

    Apparently Trump thinks talk like that makes his presidency seem illegitimate and doesn't want to hear it.

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    1. Maybe, but not addressing the integrity of our election system also serves a purpose to claim system integrity flaws if he loses the 2020 election — a result which he has already stated he will not accept. Claiming a flawed system is his argument to his supporters who seem inclined to believe whatever he says — fact or fiction.

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    2. There are similar concerns about the integrity of elections in the UK. Pro-Brexit organisations are accused of posting loads of Brexit propaganda to carefully selected voters on Facebook before the referendum. Other shadowy organisations are suspected of trying to influence the result.

      What a disgrace that the Mueller Report has been so heavily redacted (censored) for dubious reasons. But unfortunately very predictable.

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    3. Had read that efforts were made to influence elections in other countries to undermine their democracies.

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  8. I so enjoyed your tales. I've never had a pet raccoon, but there was a mama I fed regularly, and for three years she'd bring her babies for me to see before taking them back to the woods behind my place. There was no questioning her intent. I lived in a second floor apartment, and she had to bring each baby up a nearby tree, one at a time, and carry them down the same way. Once she had the first one at the balcony door, she'd scratch to get my attention, show them off, and then leave. It was a magical experience.

    The hunters and fishermen I know today are conservationists in the best sense: the venison lands in the family freezer, or is donated to various agencies, and catch-and-release is catching on among the fisherfolk. When it comes to the feral hogs that are wreaking havoc, we could use a few more (hundred) hunters. When it comes to those creatures, nature's seriously unbalanced.

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    1. That's a fascinating raccoon story. Mentioning a raccoon coming to the patio door reminds me of a now-deceased member of a writing group I enjoyed that disbanded a year or so ago. He was middle-aged, much younger than the rest of us -- full of p--- and vinegar that distressed some, but with writing skills that could not be denied. He had a quirky sense of humor that especially meshed with my own.

      He wrote a wide variety of stories including some that were quite unusual. we all appreciated. A favorite of mine he noted was motivated by a visit to friends one evening where a large persistent, probably male raccoon he thought, came out of the dark and kept scratching on their patio door. His story centered on a gradual revelation of the raccoon's intelligence and the fact of this one being a forward patrol for a large group of raccoons, part of a larger operation everywhere, that were, in fact, organized to begin taking over our civilization as his story revealed at the end.

      He was also writing a fictional book based on his family, convinced there were African Americans among the ancestors, that his southern relatives did not appreciate being revealed in any form, he said. Excerpts he brought to our group were quite good we thought. He actually had finished the book to a point of being ready for submission to a publisher when a serious heart ailment emerged and he soon died. Initially he declined having a heart transplant, though we were told changed his mind later, but it was too late. The book never saw the light of day as family chose not to proceed further with his book.

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