As I posted over at Martini's substack, I was immediately reminded of one of my Xmas faves (very non religious), and turns out it's a Fleischer Studios production too, with Seymour Kneitel and likely some other of the same folks involved:
Aug 22, 2023·edited Aug 23, 2023Liked by Martini Glambassador
Oblig
2 leprechauns walk into a small village church in Ireland.
They walk up to a priest and one of them asks "O Father, are there any leprechaun nuns in this village"?
"No, my son. There are no leprechaun nuns in this village."
The other one starts looking a little green.
"O Father, are there any leprechaun nuns in this village"?
"No, my son. There are no leprechaun nuns in this village."
The other one starts looking even more green.
"O Father, are there any leprechaun nuns in this county?"
"No, my son. There are no leprechaun nuns in this county."
The other one starts looking even worse.
"O Father, are there any leprechaun nuns in all of Ireland?"
"No, my son. There are no leprechaun nuns in all of Ireland."
The other one starts clutching his stonach.
"O Father, are there any leprechaun nuns in all the world?"
"No, my son. There are no leprechaun nuns in all the world."
The quiet leprechaun passes out. The leprechaun asking the questions starts dancing a jig and singing, "Paddy boffed a penguin! Paddy boffed a penguin!"
I'm still listening to HRC's book Hard Choices, and she's talking about Israel and the Palestinians. What I'm learning from hearing her stories is that national choices are often made by one or two people, not the population. And Bibi is a dick. As was Arafat.
As global temperatures rise, we’re getting more evaporation. Warm air holds more water vapor than cold air, so there’s less condensation. A lot of our extreme weather events are the result of too much water in the air and not enough on the ground.
Maybe what we need is some kind of moisture farming like on Tatooine.
I went on a road trip and listened to all of "Who Shat On The Floor At My Wedding?" It was definitely a rambling mess but it had a ton of gems. They were very lucky to have Hank as a centerpiece weirdo that was game for all their antics.
No need for alarm but here's latest info on the fall's new and fun Covid variant, along with uptick data. I highly recommend the Substack Your Local Epidemiologist:
"SARS-CoV-2 continues to mutate. This is expected, as this is what viruses do to survive. There was ~20% possibility of another “Omicron-like event” in 2023. Since Omicron arrived on the scene in November 2021, we’ve only seen incremental changes, which have created a ladder-like pattern (see panel A below). This is a good thing—we wanted Omicron to mutate because then we can predict where it’s going (for vaccines and our immunity, for example). [...] Mutations. The new variant has 35 mutations on the spike protein relative to what is currently circulating. (We pay attention to the spike protein because it’s the key to our cells.) This is an insane amount of change at once; it’s as big of an evolutionary jump as Wuhan → Omicron. Community-level transmission. 6 cases are without travel history (and 1 U.S. case was a traveler from Japan). There is vast geographical distribution of the cases identified (Israel, the U.S., Denmark, and the U.K.). And we are seeing BA.2.86 in country-level wastewater samples (without corresponding reported cases). All of these point to undetected community transmission—it’s spreading. "
Vax will be available next month. Get your vax on, even if you're not in a risk group - you will be protecting those who are.
Same, going to Mexico City, long flight and have to change planes in Texas, capital of fuckwads who won't wear masks. Trying to find Charlotte or Atlanta instead ...
Our entire house was struck by covid over the weekend- wife brought it home from work, where apparently half the jackasses there were sick or ended up getting sick too. No idea which strain we got, but fuck me it's awful. I'm loaded up on meds and recovering now but yesterday I felt most of the way to dead.
Another day, another crowd of tree service people and PG&E people marching into my woods. It's starting to look like they fucked up with that whole deferred maintenance thing last year. That, and with not letting us hook into the underground lines that were a lot closer when we built this house rather than insisting on us using the rickety-ass line strung through the woods.
I couldn’t open the FireTech VC vulture article, but I’m not going to let that stop my rant.
Billions being spend on larger, more frequent wildfires and these VC FUCKERS need to get their grubby hands on a piece of the action. The bulk of the workforce are ground workers doing some of the hardest non-combat work imaginable in some of the literally most hellish conditions, many/most of whom as seasonal workers who have to find other off-season work to survive… if they’re not literal prisoners working for a few dollars a day. GODDAMN we don’t tax the money class the 99% tax rate those worthless fuckers deserve.
Call me a wild-eyed idealist, but I think preventing and fighting wildfires, along with a host of other disasters, should be exclusively the province of government and the military, and not a bunch of creepy amoral billionaires.
Biden and the centrist Dems don't seem to have any clue how to run against Tr666p and his cult of tongue-talking, hate-KKKrazed, hair-pulling, lying lunatics.
As if ignoring them will make the Republinazis stop trying to carry out their national murder-suicide.
I think Biden is doing fine. Better every month. And now tfg is showing up at the courthouse on Thursday. If he's not jailed before than because of his mouth.
Jennifer Grey is a year or so older than me, so yes, I have a crush on her.
The Republican "debate," such as it, will be attacks on Biden and the elephant not in the room, the Glorious Leader, The funny part will come when he wins the nomination ANYWAY, despite the trials, and all these idiots dutifully line up behind him to maintain party discipline.
As for problems at a lesbian wedding...the average male heterosexual idiot hears "I'm a lesbian" and translates it as "I'm a bisexual nymphomaniac."
His reactions are as follows, in this order:
1. "That's disgusting!"
2. "Can I watch?"
3. Both of the above. In that order.
Notice that I said "average male heterosexual idiot." Reasonably smart heterosexual men get the point and move on.
On the other hand, for some reason, ever since I was 16, I have often developed crushes on actresses who turned out to be lesbians. The latest is CNN's fetching and highly professional Nia-Malika Henderson. I looked her up on Wikipedia. It told me that she had married her girlfriend. I was happy for them.
My first was a feisty girl in high school who responded to my request for a date by going with me to her lesbian rights rally. I thought it was the ultimate way to say "go to hell, fella."
However, next day she showed up in school wearing a button that read, "A Woman Needs A Man Like A Fish Needs A Bicycle." She meant it.
However, SpongeBob Squarepants had not appeared yet, and I think those fish rode bicycles.
I know this has been the hottest summer ever in a lot of places, perhaps even most places, but it has been stunningly gorgeous in Cleveland. Lots of sun but ample rain. 70s or low 80s by day, cooling off to the low 60s most nights. The house is well-insulated, so we haven’t even had to install our two window AC units. The future is here, but it is not evenly distributed.
Sounds very much like the current weather in the Boston area. It's been Camelot-like: rain at night, followed by sun during the days. Today's it's sunny with a few small, puffy clouds, and the temp is currently 79 degrees. Upper 50s/lower 60s at night. If it stays like this through Sept/Oct, I'll be a very happy camper.
We used to have 95 acres of land up there, near Parksville and Liberty, with a house that was built in one night, replacing a house that burned down. It also had a barn.
We built a new house up the hill, accessible by a driveway, with a great view of the mountainous terrain, and spent three-day weekends up there.
We planted hundreds of pine trees through a program with New York State, and had an instant forest. That attracted all kinds of animals, including a raccoon, who set up digs under a pile of branches near our parking pad. We provided her with food and a dog food bowl to wash it in. She came out at dusk to eat. One time she climbed the steps and stood on our deck, facing us while we avoided the rain, by watching TV inside. She looked like an unkempt cat, but our kempt cat was sitting with us.
The trees also attracted bald eagles, who would skim over them, hunting prey. We had to check our Roger Tory Peterson field guide to believe what we were seeing.
Tent caterpillars made progress walking our deck's fence, heading to or from their tents on trees.
We found a pond in a roadside ditch. Toads had dropped off eggs there, and we realized the pond would evaporate and leave the tadpoles and toadberts high and dry. We rounded up our Mason jars and gave them new homes on our stream. Two things resulted:
1. We had a lot of toads after that.
2. We had a lot fewer bugs.
We had a gigantic barn, and my father did repair work on it. Once we found a corn snake snoozing in it, and after looking up its type in the field guide, we took him home. The puzzled snake spent the winter in a terrarium in my grade school, entertaining kids by his mere presence, enjoying the warmth of a school building and its heat light, and chomping on mice once a week. Next June, with school closed, he went back into the barn with a great story for his buddies.
The barn's best animal was a yellow-bellied sapsucker, which is also a woodpecker. He banged on the barn's tin roof very loudly, which brought bugs up through the holes in the roof to find out what all the fuss was about. The bird promptly ate them.
Apparently that's what sapsuckers do...they riddle trees with holes, which attract insects. to eat the sap. Then the sapsuckers return to eat both the bugs and the sap. No saps, these suckers.
We named this bird "The Barn Banger," and we saw him often.
We would hear gnawing at night, and came out to find "Porky the Porcupine" chomping on the wooden house. One time we found him busily eating a plastic trowel. I found out later that porcupines eat plastic for the sugar and sweat generated by human users.
Lastly, our orange cat Nomad (official name Harry A. Smith) loved it. He didn't like going there through the Lincoln Tunnel, but once at "The Farm," he'd trot up the stairs ahead of us. He spend a great deal of time snoozing on the deck, using the cat door. My brother and I would explore the acreage, and he'd follow along, an sometimes lead us back.
When we'd leave, he'd get in the car, and offer piteous meows. He didn't want to leave. Neither did we.
That sounds delightful, except for the raccoon. They're very aggressive and frequently carry the rabies virus. They're perfectly happy to live in the suburbs and are hard to get rid of. I would never feed a raccoon or encourage one to hang around my property even if I had a fantastic weekend retreat like yours.
Well, we didn't let Raquel Coen in the house. We were surprised she walked up on the deck.
But this was up in the Catskills, not the suburbs, so we were the intrusive species, not the other way around.
Back in Hoboken, our family had a brownstone -- my father's dream -- and one evening, my parents sat watching a documentary on raccoons. They enjoyed it.
When it was over, Dad went upstairs to use the bathroom. He came back down moments later, and said to Mom, "There's a raccoon in our bed."
Mom responded, "No, the raccoons are on TV."
And Dad answered, "No, there's a raccoon sleeping in our bed."
Mom went upstairs, and there was a raccoon, fast asleep, in their bed. I'm not sure how they got the raccoon out of the house -- probably just made noise and it ran out through the cat door in the back -- and promptly threw all the bedsheets and blankets into the washer.
Here in Newark, we have raccoons in Branch Brook Park, along with deer, turtles, tortoises, toads, frogs, groundhogs, skunks, and possums. Generations of them living there have made them unafraid of human beings, and they walk up very close to humans and their dogs. Raccoons stay on trees...they don't run in fear.
One of the funniest things I used to see was when I'd walk our handsome Doberman Pinscher Addie -- who flunked out of guard dog school -- in the park, and she'd meet up with a deer. They would stare at each other in total incomprehension.
Addie was wonder what this brown dog with antlers was supposed to be, and the deer was wondering what this black deer WITH NO antlers was supposed to be. They didn't fight with each other...they were just puzzled.
My favorite animal in the world is the one in my Avatar...the Capybara. It's the world's largest rodent, at 150 lbs. It has very few predators, at that size. It eats a diet of vegetables, so few animals are afraid of it. It sits around South American rivers, surrounded by birds (to pick out nits for lunch) and turtles (to stay warm).
The result is that Capybaras make excellent pets. You need a pond -- they're fairly aquatic, and require a decent-sized backyard. They are extremely tame, playing well with dogs, cats, kids, and adults. You feed them fruit and vegetable salad.
They're just great animals. Here's more about them.
95 acres is a hell of a spread! We have 8acres on a mountain in the town of Stamford that abuts wild forest, lots of watershed land and a state forest within walking distance. We are very fortunate.
We had hilly terrain, a trail that went over two streams by bridge and through a forest to the top, where an abandoned plow sat. the stone bridges were wiped out in a 1970 flood that affected the whole county.
Two friends of ours -- they ultimately bought the place -- the Zaninis from Austria, drove up with a long apple-picker, and pulled down apples. They turned the apples into applesauce for their family, and gave it to us as well. I never tasted such good applesauce.
There's a lot more I could say about The Farm, but it would go on forever. We owned it while the resorts were still there, and going out of business. All over Sullivan County stood brick elevator shafts in empty fields, which had been the only surviving portion of a wooden hotel that had burned to the ground -- usually at 4 a.m., so that the bankrupt owner could collect insurance money and flee to Fort Lauderdale. The rest just closed down and were left abandoned, even Grossinger's.
We sold the place in 1983, to cover the mortgage on the brownstone in Hoboken. I was upset. Eventually I recovered.
The barn did not. Last year my brother was driving up that road, and to his astonishment, he saw that the barn Dad had worked on had collapsed on itself. He sent me a photograph. I compared it with one my mother took. Yup, same barn, only crushed in. It had not burned -- it must have been heavy snow.
About those woodpeckers… there is a striking new contemporary house across the street that was faced with rough-surface vertical wood boards. The Northern Fluckers I n our neighborhood LIVE that stuff. After thousands of dollars of damage our neighbors now have Mylar streamers crackling in the wind all over their house.
Today’s hed gif is a clip from “Somewhere in Dreamland.” I’ve got the deets here: https://open.substack.com/pub/martiniambassador/p/somewhere-in-dreamland
I’m off to Ireland for a week so I might be a scootch late on the morning source attribution posts for a bit.
If you make it to Dingle, O'Sullivan's Courthouse Pub for some real (as opposed to tilted toward tourists) music.
As I posted over at Martini's substack, I was immediately reminded of one of my Xmas faves (very non religious), and turns out it's a Fleischer Studios production too, with Seymour Kneitel and likely some other of the same folks involved:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p17kBv8F5I&ab_channel=CCCartoons
I love the Fleishers so much.
That’s such a cute one! Was also another gif source a few holidays ago.
Oblig
2 leprechauns walk into a small village church in Ireland.
They walk up to a priest and one of them asks "O Father, are there any leprechaun nuns in this village"?
"No, my son. There are no leprechaun nuns in this village."
The other one starts looking a little green.
"O Father, are there any leprechaun nuns in this village"?
"No, my son. There are no leprechaun nuns in this village."
The other one starts looking even more green.
"O Father, are there any leprechaun nuns in this county?"
"No, my son. There are no leprechaun nuns in this county."
The other one starts looking even worse.
"O Father, are there any leprechaun nuns in all of Ireland?"
"No, my son. There are no leprechaun nuns in all of Ireland."
The other one starts clutching his stonach.
"O Father, are there any leprechaun nuns in all the world?"
"No, my son. There are no leprechaun nuns in all the world."
The quiet leprechaun passes out. The leprechaun asking the questions starts dancing a jig and singing, "Paddy boffed a penguin! Paddy boffed a penguin!"
Enjoy your morning coffees!
I do believe I've seen this cartoon before. Anyway, have fun in Ireland!
hope you enjoy the greenest civilized place on earth
Good choice! The parallax 3-D effect is used to good effect in this film as well.
Nice shout out to animators Seymore Kneitel and Roland Crandall.
I love how the teacher inside you always comes out. I know I've learned a lot from you.
Thanks. I always look forward to your comments, myself.
Safe travels, Martini
Enjoy your trip! I'm jealous.
Enjoy your trip!
Oooh, mehbe an Irish Spring Tabs 🤔
I like it (also) too!
or Pogues
I *know* I did them already. I remember writing a bit on how Shane MacGowan got over his fear and finally got his teeth fixed 😁
I’m pretty sure I did one of those a long time ago and now I have to go through my inventory to check. Because if I haven’t yet, I need to!
Sounds like you make it work.
I'm still listening to HRC's book Hard Choices, and she's talking about Israel and the Palestinians. What I'm learning from hearing her stories is that national choices are often made by one or two people, not the population. And Bibi is a dick. As was Arafat.
As global temperatures rise, we’re getting more evaporation. Warm air holds more water vapor than cold air, so there’s less condensation. A lot of our extreme weather events are the result of too much water in the air and not enough on the ground.
Maybe what we need is some kind of moisture farming like on Tatooine.
I went on a road trip and listened to all of "Who Shat On The Floor At My Wedding?" It was definitely a rambling mess but it had a ton of gems. They were very lucky to have Hank as a centerpiece weirdo that was game for all their antics.
i have been debating listening to it. I love Killer Queens and Redhanded
I'd say it's worth it overall, it's a compelling mystery even if it's completely mundane.
Zelenskyy gets a warm welcome in Denmark this week, along with 42 F-16s.
https://packaged-media.redd.it/g931cyls8mjb1/pb/m2-res_600p.mp4?m=DASHPlaylist.mpd&v=1&e=1692734400&s=9cba4d52fa511f9a7ebf849795194833e102d39c#t=0
It's not just SoCar. The sun has felt extra scorchy* this summer. Makes normal temps feel super hot, and super hot temps even moreso.
*: official term
No need for alarm but here's latest info on the fall's new and fun Covid variant, along with uptick data. I highly recommend the Substack Your Local Epidemiologist:
"SARS-CoV-2 continues to mutate. This is expected, as this is what viruses do to survive. There was ~20% possibility of another “Omicron-like event” in 2023. Since Omicron arrived on the scene in November 2021, we’ve only seen incremental changes, which have created a ladder-like pattern (see panel A below). This is a good thing—we wanted Omicron to mutate because then we can predict where it’s going (for vaccines and our immunity, for example). [...] Mutations. The new variant has 35 mutations on the spike protein relative to what is currently circulating. (We pay attention to the spike protein because it’s the key to our cells.) This is an insane amount of change at once; it’s as big of an evolutionary jump as Wuhan → Omicron. Community-level transmission. 6 cases are without travel history (and 1 U.S. case was a traveler from Japan). There is vast geographical distribution of the cases identified (Israel, the U.S., Denmark, and the U.K.). And we are seeing BA.2.86 in country-level wastewater samples (without corresponding reported cases). All of these point to undetected community transmission—it’s spreading. "
Vax will be available next month. Get your vax on, even if you're not in a risk group - you will be protecting those who are.
https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/
am getting a little concerned about our trip to the UK in November. Time to buy more good masks
Same, going to Mexico City, long flight and have to change planes in Texas, capital of fuckwads who won't wear masks. Trying to find Charlotte or Atlanta instead ...
Our entire house was struck by covid over the weekend- wife brought it home from work, where apparently half the jackasses there were sick or ended up getting sick too. No idea which strain we got, but fuck me it's awful. I'm loaded up on meds and recovering now but yesterday I felt most of the way to dead.
Feel better fast. Yes, anecdotally I'm seeing that uptick happening. Mask up!
What? You're saying the Leopards are eating Tucker Carlson's face?
*Phoebe Buffay oh no gif*
Another day, another crowd of tree service people and PG&E people marching into my woods. It's starting to look like they fucked up with that whole deferred maintenance thing last year. That, and with not letting us hook into the underground lines that were a lot closer when we built this house rather than insisting on us using the rickety-ass line strung through the woods.
From all the fire stories I've read, I didn't think PG&E did any tree trimming.
They hire outside companies. But last year, decided to save some money and skip it. It did not turn out well. Just got my power back, BTW.
I couldn’t open the FireTech VC vulture article, but I’m not going to let that stop my rant.
Billions being spend on larger, more frequent wildfires and these VC FUCKERS need to get their grubby hands on a piece of the action. The bulk of the workforce are ground workers doing some of the hardest non-combat work imaginable in some of the literally most hellish conditions, many/most of whom as seasonal workers who have to find other off-season work to survive… if they’re not literal prisoners working for a few dollars a day. GODDAMN we don’t tax the money class the 99% tax rate those worthless fuckers deserve.
Ok. Now I’ll read the second tab.
Call me a wild-eyed idealist, but I think preventing and fighting wildfires, along with a host of other disasters, should be exclusively the province of government and the military, and not a bunch of creepy amoral billionaires.
… who strip the line workers of every last benefit and dime of pay that keeps the from starving at that particular moment …
Is their contribution to fire control stacking their VC bodies in front of the fire as a fire block? If so, I don't see what the problem is.
“Imagine a Superman movie where all Superman does is fly around Metropolis and never fights anybody,”
I see you've played Superman for the N64 before.
Biden and the centrist Dems don't seem to have any clue how to run against Tr666p and his cult of tongue-talking, hate-KKKrazed, hair-pulling, lying lunatics.
As if ignoring them will make the Republinazis stop trying to carry out their national murder-suicide.
I think Biden is doing fine. Better every month. And now tfg is showing up at the courthouse on Thursday. If he's not jailed before than because of his mouth.
Jennifer Grey is a year or so older than me, so yes, I have a crush on her.
The Republican "debate," such as it, will be attacks on Biden and the elephant not in the room, the Glorious Leader, The funny part will come when he wins the nomination ANYWAY, despite the trials, and all these idiots dutifully line up behind him to maintain party discipline.
As for problems at a lesbian wedding...the average male heterosexual idiot hears "I'm a lesbian" and translates it as "I'm a bisexual nymphomaniac."
His reactions are as follows, in this order:
1. "That's disgusting!"
2. "Can I watch?"
3. Both of the above. In that order.
Notice that I said "average male heterosexual idiot." Reasonably smart heterosexual men get the point and move on.
On the other hand, for some reason, ever since I was 16, I have often developed crushes on actresses who turned out to be lesbians. The latest is CNN's fetching and highly professional Nia-Malika Henderson. I looked her up on Wikipedia. It told me that she had married her girlfriend. I was happy for them.
My first was a feisty girl in high school who responded to my request for a date by going with me to her lesbian rights rally. I thought it was the ultimate way to say "go to hell, fella."
However, next day she showed up in school wearing a button that read, "A Woman Needs A Man Like A Fish Needs A Bicycle." She meant it.
However, SpongeBob Squarepants had not appeared yet, and I think those fish rode bicycles.
I know this has been the hottest summer ever in a lot of places, perhaps even most places, but it has been stunningly gorgeous in Cleveland. Lots of sun but ample rain. 70s or low 80s by day, cooling off to the low 60s most nights. The house is well-insulated, so we haven’t even had to install our two window AC units. The future is here, but it is not evenly distributed.
Sounds very much like the current weather in the Boston area. It's been Camelot-like: rain at night, followed by sun during the days. Today's it's sunny with a few small, puffy clouds, and the temp is currently 79 degrees. Upper 50s/lower 60s at night. If it stays like this through Sept/Oct, I'll be a very happy camper.
It's not the hottest summer ever, it's the hottest summer SO FAR. Last year was the hottest summer til then, and now it's hotter.
Great- the only tolerable climate on the continent, and it's Cleveland.
Or as optimists like to say, it’s the coolest summer of the rest of your life.
Why I love the Catskills.
We used to have 95 acres of land up there, near Parksville and Liberty, with a house that was built in one night, replacing a house that burned down. It also had a barn.
We built a new house up the hill, accessible by a driveway, with a great view of the mountainous terrain, and spent three-day weekends up there.
We planted hundreds of pine trees through a program with New York State, and had an instant forest. That attracted all kinds of animals, including a raccoon, who set up digs under a pile of branches near our parking pad. We provided her with food and a dog food bowl to wash it in. She came out at dusk to eat. One time she climbed the steps and stood on our deck, facing us while we avoided the rain, by watching TV inside. She looked like an unkempt cat, but our kempt cat was sitting with us.
The trees also attracted bald eagles, who would skim over them, hunting prey. We had to check our Roger Tory Peterson field guide to believe what we were seeing.
Tent caterpillars made progress walking our deck's fence, heading to or from their tents on trees.
We found a pond in a roadside ditch. Toads had dropped off eggs there, and we realized the pond would evaporate and leave the tadpoles and toadberts high and dry. We rounded up our Mason jars and gave them new homes on our stream. Two things resulted:
1. We had a lot of toads after that.
2. We had a lot fewer bugs.
We had a gigantic barn, and my father did repair work on it. Once we found a corn snake snoozing in it, and after looking up its type in the field guide, we took him home. The puzzled snake spent the winter in a terrarium in my grade school, entertaining kids by his mere presence, enjoying the warmth of a school building and its heat light, and chomping on mice once a week. Next June, with school closed, he went back into the barn with a great story for his buddies.
The barn's best animal was a yellow-bellied sapsucker, which is also a woodpecker. He banged on the barn's tin roof very loudly, which brought bugs up through the holes in the roof to find out what all the fuss was about. The bird promptly ate them.
Apparently that's what sapsuckers do...they riddle trees with holes, which attract insects. to eat the sap. Then the sapsuckers return to eat both the bugs and the sap. No saps, these suckers.
We named this bird "The Barn Banger," and we saw him often.
We would hear gnawing at night, and came out to find "Porky the Porcupine" chomping on the wooden house. One time we found him busily eating a plastic trowel. I found out later that porcupines eat plastic for the sugar and sweat generated by human users.
Lastly, our orange cat Nomad (official name Harry A. Smith) loved it. He didn't like going there through the Lincoln Tunnel, but once at "The Farm," he'd trot up the stairs ahead of us. He spend a great deal of time snoozing on the deck, using the cat door. My brother and I would explore the acreage, and he'd follow along, an sometimes lead us back.
When we'd leave, he'd get in the car, and offer piteous meows. He didn't want to leave. Neither did we.
That sounds delightful, except for the raccoon. They're very aggressive and frequently carry the rabies virus. They're perfectly happy to live in the suburbs and are hard to get rid of. I would never feed a raccoon or encourage one to hang around my property even if I had a fantastic weekend retreat like yours.
Well, we didn't let Raquel Coen in the house. We were surprised she walked up on the deck.
But this was up in the Catskills, not the suburbs, so we were the intrusive species, not the other way around.
Back in Hoboken, our family had a brownstone -- my father's dream -- and one evening, my parents sat watching a documentary on raccoons. They enjoyed it.
When it was over, Dad went upstairs to use the bathroom. He came back down moments later, and said to Mom, "There's a raccoon in our bed."
Mom responded, "No, the raccoons are on TV."
And Dad answered, "No, there's a raccoon sleeping in our bed."
Mom went upstairs, and there was a raccoon, fast asleep, in their bed. I'm not sure how they got the raccoon out of the house -- probably just made noise and it ran out through the cat door in the back -- and promptly threw all the bedsheets and blankets into the washer.
Here in Newark, we have raccoons in Branch Brook Park, along with deer, turtles, tortoises, toads, frogs, groundhogs, skunks, and possums. Generations of them living there have made them unafraid of human beings, and they walk up very close to humans and their dogs. Raccoons stay on trees...they don't run in fear.
One of the funniest things I used to see was when I'd walk our handsome Doberman Pinscher Addie -- who flunked out of guard dog school -- in the park, and she'd meet up with a deer. They would stare at each other in total incomprehension.
Addie was wonder what this brown dog with antlers was supposed to be, and the deer was wondering what this black deer WITH NO antlers was supposed to be. They didn't fight with each other...they were just puzzled.
My favorite animal in the world is the one in my Avatar...the Capybara. It's the world's largest rodent, at 150 lbs. It has very few predators, at that size. It eats a diet of vegetables, so few animals are afraid of it. It sits around South American rivers, surrounded by birds (to pick out nits for lunch) and turtles (to stay warm).
The result is that Capybaras make excellent pets. You need a pond -- they're fairly aquatic, and require a decent-sized backyard. They are extremely tame, playing well with dogs, cats, kids, and adults. You feed them fruit and vegetable salad.
They're just great animals. Here's more about them.
https://factanimal.com/capybara/
https://www.thesprucepets.com/capybara-pet-4101211
https://capybaralovers.com/guides/capybara-as-pets/
95 acres is a hell of a spread! We have 8acres on a mountain in the town of Stamford that abuts wild forest, lots of watershed land and a state forest within walking distance. We are very fortunate.
We had hilly terrain, a trail that went over two streams by bridge and through a forest to the top, where an abandoned plow sat. the stone bridges were wiped out in a 1970 flood that affected the whole county.
Two friends of ours -- they ultimately bought the place -- the Zaninis from Austria, drove up with a long apple-picker, and pulled down apples. They turned the apples into applesauce for their family, and gave it to us as well. I never tasted such good applesauce.
I'm going to make apple brandy some year.
That sounds beautiful. Thanks for sharing.
You're very welcome.
There's a lot more I could say about The Farm, but it would go on forever. We owned it while the resorts were still there, and going out of business. All over Sullivan County stood brick elevator shafts in empty fields, which had been the only surviving portion of a wooden hotel that had burned to the ground -- usually at 4 a.m., so that the bankrupt owner could collect insurance money and flee to Fort Lauderdale. The rest just closed down and were left abandoned, even Grossinger's.
We sold the place in 1983, to cover the mortgage on the brownstone in Hoboken. I was upset. Eventually I recovered.
The barn did not. Last year my brother was driving up that road, and to his astonishment, he saw that the barn Dad had worked on had collapsed on itself. He sent me a photograph. I compared it with one my mother took. Yup, same barn, only crushed in. It had not burned -- it must have been heavy snow.
It was very upsetting, too.
About those woodpeckers… there is a striking new contemporary house across the street that was faced with rough-surface vertical wood boards. The Northern Fluckers I n our neighborhood LIVE that stuff. After thousands of dollars of damage our neighbors now have Mylar streamers crackling in the wind all over their house.
The Barn Banger was the only one we were aware of, because you could hear him banging on the barn roof a mile away. He never attacked our house.
Other woodpeckers didn't bother us, either....but we did see the holes of sapsucke work in trees.
So. Many. Paywalls. In. Tabs. Today.