Archive for the 'Varmint Center' Category

Spinster aunt has a cow

Published by Jill on October 20, 2011. 116 Comments

1/7Franny, Spinster HQ’s yella lab, started barking her face off the way she usually does whenever there is a 2500 pound mammal on the porch, and sure enough. When I sidled over to the front door, there was no denying it: there was definitely a black Angus cow studying the doorknob.

Let it be known that Spinster HQ, a wholly meat-free enterprise, does not keep beef cattle on purpose. Hence my momentary surprise at seeing one on the stoop. The black Angus cow to whom I allude, along with what I would eventually discover were 7 of her cohorts, had broken through a fence, having found inhospitable the conditions on the other side, and had naturally gravitated to the food-filled, furry woodland creature-infested vegetarian oasis of fun that is the barnyard at El Rancho Deluxe.

I poked my head out the door, determined that this porch-sitting cow was but e pluribus unum, and forced myself to accept that, although I’d had big plans to biff around photographing Bewick’s wrens all afternoon, the day was shot. No two ways about it, I would have to devote the rest of my waking hours, until the cows came home, to getting those cows to go home.

Sure, cows are cute with their floppy ears and their placid cud-chewing, but they are the size of Volkswagens, and they destroy. Already I could detect a massive dumpage of cow shit, which smells frakkin awful, around and about the bunkhouse. My horses were flipping the fuck out because they are the sort of delicate Arabians who think cattle are venomous saber-toothed T. rexes. What little grass I had left after this insane drought was rapidly disappearing into the cows’ four stomachs (multiplied by 8 cows, and that’s 32 flippin’ stomachs!). And omigod, you wouldn’t believe the flies with which these miserable creatures were plagued, or the alacrity with which the flies saw fit to transfer themselves to my equine population. And to top it off one of the cows was displaying a disconcerting interest in the cee-ment pond. I thought, shit, I have no crane. How the fuck do you get a cow out of a pool without a crane?

Fortunately for spinster aunts who don’t keep cowboys and cutting horses on staff, cattle who haven’t seen green grass in six months will trot to the ends of the earth for a bag of cattle cubes. I sent my ranch hand Chuck to the feed store for a bag of same. Then I jumped in the back of the pickup with the cubes, exhorted Chuck to aim at the front gate at a slow but steady pace, and rattled the feed bag like mad. The cows heeded the siren call and followed the truck. In this manner we lured’em a mile up the road and turned’em loose on the range whence they came.

I mention all this because cattle are amiable, forbearing creatures with pleasant demeanors, trusting and easily fooled. It is unfair and mean to butcher them.

Don’t eat beef.

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Although they will trample you if you get between them and a bag of cow cubes. Which are made from assorted chemicals. Franny ate a couple of’em and puked.

Posted in Heartwarming Nature Crap and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt beats dead horse

Published by Jill on June 17, 2010. 52 Comments

Stinkhorn
This lone stinkhorn mushroom is the only entity anywhere in Cottonmouth County that doesn’t have a katydid stuck to it.

Unsurprisingly, my award-nominated (I personally nominate all my work for awards, to compensate for the fact that, incomprehensibly, I am so often overlooked by committees) vid lampooning the anti-science lifestyle choice, has generated some jaundice.

It occurs to some of us here at Spinster HQ that the only way to avoid hurting anybody’s feelings ever is to shut down the entire obstreperal lobe and become a pillow.

Not that empillowment is without its own controversies, because what do you stuff the pillow with? Not feathers, surely, or wool, or silk, but aren’t synthetics their own special sort of politically incorrect scourge? Which leaves grass clippings, but what with all the katydid poop and raccoon dander lying around, questions of hygiene are raised.

Anyway, you’re all good sports, especially those of you who joked that I drive away my loyal “followers” with elitism. Unless — hey, wait, what? Were you serious? Because that hurts my feelings.

Mang, this science vs intuition “debate” has gotten completely ridic. Awesome! I will speak of nothing else for the foreseeable future!

I think we can all agree that when you define science as a method for acquiring knowledge, and intuition as the spark of intelligence that ignites inquiry (although maybe a better word would be genius), we’re all pretty much on the same page.

Is there a magical form of feminine insta-knowledge what spontaneously erupts on unicorn rays in the unseen 5th dimension of the human metaspirit? Why not? Just show me the data and we’ll be cool.

See? We’re getting along great now.

But oy, elitism. It’s always the way when knowledge becomes specialized. Subcultures bubble out of the general magma, standards and practices become codified, skills get required, expertise becomes venerated, a canon is established, as well as a hierarchy, practitioners become eccentric egomaniacs, gatekeepers show up to protect them from the rabble, and the subculture becomes more and more detached from the teeming throng from which it spranged even as its influence spreads like I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter on a frozen toaster waffle. And then someone from the throng says, “Hey, bite me you elitist asswipes, we don’t need you, we’re going back to the way we were before your delusions turned you into a megalomaniac, because those were the good old days.” And then some spinster aunt says, “Hey, yerself! As the world’s leading expert on expertise, I think you’re throwing the baby out with the other babies!”

What am I saying? Just this:

You don’t have to be Martina Navratilova to play a game of tennis.

And I should know, because I’m not Martina Navratilova.

There are other things you don’t have to be in order to do things. You don’t have to be a professional 70’s pop star-cum-tragic figure to crank up “Close To You” and go “wah-ah-ah-ah-ah, close to yew!” after the tacet interlude. You don’t have to have ironed Jean-Paul Sartre’s shirts to nod in vigorous agreement when you read in The Second Sex that all oppression creates a state of war. You don’t have to be the Weatherman to blow up the Pentagon. And you don’t have to be a tenured science knob to appreciate the process of scientific inquiry.

As VinaigretteGirl points out, you can (and should) do experiments in your closet for fun. I’m doing one right now where I’m testing the structural integrity of a typical household wicker laundry basket, primarily by never unloading it into the washing machine. What a gas! More complicated endeavors, like collecting soil samples from Pluto’s surface to analyze for Crystalline Entity droppings, can be admired from afar as a spectator sport.

The purpose of scientifical pursuit, in the pure form most admired by middle-aged spinster aunts, has less to do with being published in Nature, or using jargon on dude science blogs to shut up the people who didn’t go to college, or advancing the megatheocorporatocratic agenda, than it does with simply enbiggening human enlightenment. The enbiggenment of human enlightenment is always conducted on the individual level. Whenever a glob of comprehension supplants a glob of incomprehension in a human brain, the Dark Side (or the Tyranny of Ignorance, if you like, or the Black Thing) gets bent. Whenever that happens, the whole species is collectively that much better off. Consult any 6-year-old for further information; globs of knowledge supplant globs of ignorance in their brains on an hourly basis, and they really seem to dig it.

Anyway, am I saying “Yay Big Pharma! Keep inventing cancer drugs and charging $40,000 a year for’em!”? No. Am I saying, “Yay, the Women’s Oppression League has just endowed a foundation for the advancement of evolutionary psychology!”? No. Am I saying “When a thing does a thing and you don’t know why, would it kill you to find out?” Yes. And it doesn’t even matter if somebody has already answered the question you’re asking. Check out this inspirational personal anecdote:

The other day I realized that I’m 50 years old already and I still don’t know how katydids make that deafening racket like unto 876,932 small pulsating dentist drills that keeps me awake all night. So I hoisted my ass up out of the lime green recliner and nabbed a specimen for the lab.

Minuscule katydid

It wasn’t hard. All I had to do was stick my hand out the window, since there is no square inch of El Rancho Deluxe that is not populated by a katydid. Every tree, shrub, cactus, rock, tractor, and blade of grass is literally crawling with katydids. The bunkhouse itself appears to have been dipped in a vat of katydids. A lady from another planet, upon observing the tableau, would conclude that a large, fleshy pink entity is being held captive in a limestone nest by a race of screaming green rattly leaves.

But I digress.

Back in the lab, I inspected my katydid with a magnifying glass and poked it with the eraser of my Ticonderoga #2 pencil, whereupon I was able to determine that my specimen had no intention of making any noise of any kind whatsoever. Several katydids later, I finally figured out how they make the racket. It was pretty satisfying. Now I’m telling everyone I know about the katydids. Nobody cares, unfortunately.

_______________________
Katydid nymph photo [above] taken May 2009. Adult katydids (the ones around here, at least) look like leaves:

Katydid

Posted in Heartwarming Nature Crap, Number 1 Science Information, The megatheocorporatocracy and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.

The heartwarming zubiks of Obstreperon

Published by Jill on June 8, 2010. 52 Comments

Posted in El Rancho Deluxe, Heartwarming Nature Crap, Not Altogether Depressing, Pre-recorded Twisty and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.

Bubble-breakings of a entire fool

Published by Jill on June 4, 2010. 43 Comments

Tomato hornworm

Remember when you first got the Internet? I don’t, but maybe you do. Maybe you remember how kooky those first few spams were? Penis enlargement! Baldness! Impotence! Bwahaha! Nigerian princes with money trouble! Bwahaha! Etc.

Alas, those days are gone. Spam remains dude-centric, like all manifestations of patriarchal culture, but now it’s all banal lists of links to niche porn, or worse, the spammer just phones it in with a monotone “nice post, thnks. britni sex tape” or “how to fix my credit … I must put a bookmark on this website!…”

O the tedium.

Until today. I’m not sure what, precisely, is being expressed here, but whatever it is, it’s totally got a vigorous, sutra-esque, cosmic truthity thing going on.

Eating, loving, singing and digesting are, in actuality, the four acts of the mirthful opera known as freshness, and they pass like bubbles of a grit of champagne. Whoever lets them break without having enjoyed them is a entire fool. Sent from my iPad 4G

Meanwhile, today’s No. 1 Science Information takes the shape of the tomato hornworm, a moth larva belonging to the popular sphinx family of moths. In larval form, the tomato hornworm is known primarily as a pest of the first water. This fat caterpillar is precisely the color of tomato vines, which pigmentational situation we here at the lab attribute to a science-process known as freshness, or, as some folks like to think of it, natural selection.

The tomato hornworm can exceed lengths of 3-4 inches, and will make short work of your eggplant, bell pepper, and tomato plants, which insatiable pillaging you’re likely to take personally, but really, just let it go.

The spike, or “horn,” on its butt is intimidating, but doesn’t sting.

After the tomato hornworm spends the winter pupating deep in the cold, hard ground, it emerges in spring as a humongous — and I mean a 5-incher, bigger than some hummingbirds — bark-hued sphinx moth with orange spots on its sides. At dusk, the moth ransacks flowers, relieving them of nectar.

Observations by the Twistitute for Arthropodical Enstudiement, Lepidoptera Dept include:

The tomato hornworm poops out enormous (1 cm) capsules (or, as the entomologically-inclined like to call it, frass) shaped like radiatore pasta.

The tomato hornworm emits very disturbing clicks when you pry it off your tomato vine (which is difficult, because that fucking caterpillar does not want to go). This alarming sound may be interpreted by heartwarming nature crappists as the voice of a sentient being declaring “As a goddam tomato hornworm I assert my natural right to be here on this vine so piss off, you grotesque pink savage.”

It’s all part of the mirthful opera of freshness.

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No. 1 Tomato Hornworm Information Notes

Drees, Bastiaan M. and Jackman, John A. A Field Guide to Common Texas Insects. Houston: Gulf Publishing. 1998.

Dave’s Garden, “Definition of tobacco hornworm”. June 4, 2010 < http://davesgarden.com/guides/terms/go/3080/ >
_________________

Posted in Heartwarming Nature Crap, Not Altogether Depressing, Number 1 Science Information, Varmint Center and Ways in Which the Internet Is a Hoot. Bite me, Chad.

Rednecks vs hogs

Published by Jill on January 24, 2010. 44 Comments

Feral hog track

Do you often say to yourself, “I wonder, what does a feral hog track look like, anyway?” Look no further. Behold the goods. This track was huge enough that I have no wish to encounter the hog what made it. It probably has giant venomous fangs, spiked tail, and 6-inch claws.

Texas has more feral hogs than any other state. That’s because Texas has more rednecks than any other state. It is the fondest dream of certain of these rednecks to hunt wild hogs with pit bulls, so they make sure there are always plenty of’em roaming the countryside, terrorizing the citizenry.

I can get rid of my feral hog by calling one of these rednecks. They offer free hog removal in return for the thrill of the hunt. But then, of course, I’d have rednecks on the farm. I don’t know which is worse. It is, as Stingray said, a question for the ages.

Posted in Bloodsport, El Rancho Deluxe, Heartwarming Nature Crap and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.

Austin inhabitant eschews Twitter; employs extremely inefficient low-tech communication device

Published by Jill on September 6, 2009. 46 Comments

Still life with blue plastic army man, deflated balloons, ribbon, and instruction sheet

You know how sometimes something sort of funny happens? Something sort of funny happened to me this morning.

The canids and I were out traipsing over hill and dale, like we do every morning. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the fish were flapping, the snakes were snaking, etc. I’d found a funky fungus and taken a few photographs for my new, eagerly anticipated series “Mutant Prickly Pear Paddles of the Texas Hill Country.” All in all a delightful pastoral tableau.

But, uh-oh! Out of coffee. Time to wrap up this heartwarming nature crap and get my under-caffeinated ass back to the bunkhouse. Naturally, at this juncture, Bert took off after a deer and was miles away within seconds. Thus were Fran and I obliged to track him over rough terrain with the handy GPS device we had implanted in his brain stem for just such occasions.

We were stumbling through a section of El Rancho Deluxe known as the Oaky Knoll — which knoll, if accuracy had been considered at all when determining the nomenclature, really ought to have been called the Spider Webby and Ankle-Destroying Fatal-Rocky Knoll — when Fran espied a foreign object which oozed forth garish hues and improbability. She ate it immediately.

I pried the thing out of Fran’s throat in the nick of time. It was a blue plastic army man tangled up in ribbon, grass, popped balloons, and a muddy slip of paper upon which some slogan appeared to have been printed. My dog nearly choked to death on a plastic infantryman with a machine gun. The war, I thought, comes home.

But what of this slip of paper?

“! ! ! YOU FOUND ME ! ! !” it announced, helpfully. “Help me continue my adventure.”

There was a Flickr URL, too, but it had been partially digested by Fran. Eventually, however, I was able to determine the identity of the party responsible for showering the Psmith country seat with non-biodegradable trash and nearly killing my dog. This person.

A couple of months ago, balloon releaser/photographer Atxrobledo bid adieu Fran’s nemesis, the blue plastic army man, from trendy downtown Austin. I wondered why. Surely, if s/he was suffering from a surfeit of plastic army men, there are more efficient methods of disposing of them than sending them into the Austin horizon dangling from balloons. I mean, dude. Don’t Mess With Texas.

So I scanned Atxrobledo’s Flickr page, hoping for some insight into this maniac’s brain. And so I found it.

S/he apparently makes no effort to control a compulsion to “release” plastic figurines into the wild by attaching them to balloons and letting the wind take them wherever it may.

The dream goal is to get a map of where balloons have been released and see how far the chain of connections can go.

Jeepers. It’s a message-in-a-bottle-cum-chain-letter type deal. Quaint. But ultimately, I can’t get behind it. Why? Two reasons.

One, this Atxrobledo is just a little too bossy for someone who communicates via balloon with perfect strangers upon whom s/he relies for the fulfillment of her/his dream goal.

[W]henever you can, if you’re awesome, get your own set of a bunch of balloons and figures and let them go from your apartment or wherever. Be sure to take pictures beforehand and geotag where you’re releasing them from (basically try and just replicate what i did with when you released them and from where…) [...] Make sure and make my day by responding.

Look, I’m awesome as hell, but I’m too sure I’ve got time to tie blue plastic army men to balloons, photograph’em, and let’em go “from my apartment or wherever.” Such an enterprise would seriously interfere with my reclining schedule.

And two: whereas the chance of an Earthling with Internet access finding one of these things and chuckling quietly to herself even as she mindlessly obeys cryptic instructions on the slip of paper is exceedingly remote, the chances of birds getting tangled up in’em, or some furry woodland creature ingesting’em and so forth, are quite a bit higher. Who knows how many raccoons or kangaroos are even now suffering debilitating balloon impactions as a result of this project? Do you know that, as we speak, floating in the Pacific Ocean there is a thing known as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and that it is twice the size of Texas? According to the Sierra Club, fur seals in New Zealand “poop shards of yellow and blue” plastic. Is that what we want for the Texas Hill Country? Seals pooping shards?

I think not. I say, stop the madness now!

This wanton littering of the countryside with blue plastic army men via balloon must cease, I tell you! Not for me, not for you, but for the spinster aunts of tomorrow. I hate to imagine that theirs is a future bereft of raccoons and aardvarks merely because some thoughtless urbanite killed’em all off with blue plastic army man balloons in pursuit of some fatuous whim. You want random strangers to do your bidding? Try Facebook.

Posted in Art is my LIFE, Austin, El Rancho Deluxe, Heartwarming Nature Crap, Not Altogether Depressing and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.

Bunting bonanza

Published by Twisty on April 27, 2009. 39 Comments

No time to post. Bunting hunting in progress. An effing mural of buntings, both painted and indigo, are hopping around the Spinster Ornithology Compound as we speak.

A group of buntings is also known, for some reason, as a “sacrifice.”

Indigo bunting, female. Cottonmouth County, TX. April 2009

Indigo bunting, female. Cottonmouth County, TX. April 2009

Indigo bunting, male, Cottonmouth County TX, April 2009

Indigo bunting, male, Cottonmouth County TX, April 2009

This painted bunting looks like he's balancing on his tail, but is in fact jumping to get at some grass seed. Cottonmouth County TX, April 2009.

This painted bunting looks like he's balancing on his tail, but is in fact jumping to get at some grass seed. Cottonmouth County TX, April 2009.

Posted in El Rancho Deluxe and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.

Nyerk/Tsuck: small brown birds of Cottonmouth County

Published by Twisty on April 25, 2009. 54 Comments
This poor thing was getting buffetted pretty severely before the winds carried it off, tail over beak, into the wild blue. Female summer tanager (?), Cottonmouth County TX, April 2009

This poor thing was getting buffetted pretty severely before the winds carried it off, tail over beak, into the wild blue. Female summer tanager (?), Cottonmouth County TX, April 2009

There are some pretty flashy birds flitting around the Spinster Ornithology Compound, but few of them ever seem inclined pose for our cameras. My Gaudy Bird Perching Reticence theory is that, because the air is solid live oak pollen at the moment and it’s blasting nonstop at 30 MPH, the branches they perch on are not guaranteed, in weather like this, to stay attached to the trees. So they biff off lest they find themselves riding a twig of death on a downdraft to hell.

Alternatively, there are those who would aver that the weather has nothing to do with it. I might, they observe, get more exotic shots if I weren’t too lazy to lug the giant bird lens around instead of just keeping it pointed out the lab window on a tripod and setting it to go off every 15 seconds, just in case a cormorant or a blue booby or a Peking duck happens to fly in and perch on the ledge. Admittedly, this method has been producing a somewhat unremarkable result. I may have to rethink it.

Meanwhile, I give you the plain brown Eastern Phoebe. The Eastern Phoebe just laughs at our ceaseless tornadoes. It cleverly nests in an I-beam down at the Spinster motor pool garage, and hangs around on solid objects like this rusty steel pipe fence. It’s no Painted Bunting, but it does something no other bird does. It says “fee-bee, fee-bee.”

The stalwart Eastern Phoebe. Cottonmouth County, TX. April 2009.

The stalwart Eastern Phoebe. Cottonmouth County, TX. April 2009.

That’s right. This post is nothing but an excuse to put up pictures of the only birds I’ve been able to snap recently. Small brown birds.

Maybe you could give a rat’s ass about small brown birds. I was once like you.

Before founding the world-famous Spinster Ornithology Compound, I was a dolt and an ignoramus. I lived in the city and had no time for small brown birds. I had places to go and straight girls to convert. When I gave any thought to birds at all, it was to be annoyed that their poop was always all over the last empty table at Jo’s. Furthermore, I believed that every bird that wasn’t an ostrich — that is, all small brown birds — were sparrows. One dismisses sparrows on accounta their ubiquity (this is a grave mistake, perhaps because sparrows are in fact an invading alien cyborg species and perhaps not; it remains to be seen, but in any event that’s another story).

But you’d be amazed how many small brown birds aren’t sparrows at all. For example, the Carolina wren.

Small, check. Brown, check. Sparrow, nope. Carolina Wren, Cottonmouth County TX, April 2009.

Small, check. Brown, check. Sparrow, nope. Carolina Wren, Cottonmouth County TX, April 2009.

This wren usually implements a cloaking device, so feel free to congratulate me on having spotted one. It creeps up tree trunks eatin’ bugs, which is a behavior I wouldn’t mind being able emulate in these tough times. Hordes of them invisibly infest the real estate directly outside my bedroom every morning. They go “chirt-chirt-chirt-chirt-chirt-chirt-chirt-chirt” really loud. It’s the kind of noise that, if you hit the sack early the night before, compels you spring from your TempurPedic singing “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” but if you have a hangover, it turns you into a wrenicidal maniac.

“Chirt” is the official designation, by the way. I did not make it up. Birds of North America, the bird-nerd website of record, also lists the following interesting phrases in connection with the Carolina wren: cheer, ti-dink, dit, chatter, rasp, chirt, pi-zeet, scee, pee, growl, nyerk, and tsuck.

Posted in El Rancho Deluxe and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt resorts to posting Onion link

Published by Twisty on April 23, 2009. 22 Comments
Turkey vulture perceives that I have found the right lens and changed the dead battery, so naturally it biffs off before I can focus. Note dead duck toy in lower right.

Turkey vulture perceives that I have found the right lens and changed the dead battery, so naturally it biffs off before I can focus. Note dead duck toy in lower right.

This is all I got, goddamit. I might have had a hilarious picture of the giant turkey vulture that just landed in the dog run and tried to scavenge offa Bert’s stuffed toy dead duck, but you know how when giant turkey vultures land in your yard to peck at dog toys you never have the right lens on the camera, or if you do, the battery’s dead, and by the time you pull it all together the giant turkey vulture has buzzard off?

Yeah, well join the fuckin club.

Posted in Art is my LIFE, Mass Media and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.

Wingnut on liberal media payroll redefines bigotry as justice

Published by Twisty on April 21, 2009. 45 Comments
The rough green snake is over 2 feet long and drops from tree boughs onto your head without so much as a hey-ho-how's-your-toe.

The rough green snake is over 2 feet long and drops from tree boughs onto your head without so much as a hey-ho-how's-your-toe.

If only there were enough hours in the day. But there aren’t, so this here snake is all I got. And this here link.

Salon. Yeah, I’ve stopped reading it, too, but once in a while a blamer sends a link, and the next thing you know, there I am, writhing in pain over another liberaldudelational paean to liberaldudeliness. Today’s article, written by a self-proclaimed “wingnut” (as part of an implausible feature called “Ask a Wingnut”), purports to explain to dullwitted Salon readers the whole anti-gay-marriage point of view.

Essentially, the essay is an argument for the preservation of heterosexual marriage as the megatheocorporatocracy’s primary self-replicatory unit.

According to Salon’s “wingnut,” the conservative objection to gay marriage is not based, “in large part or small,” on bigotry. Rather, it is the uncouth manner in which homos seem to inflict their repellent selves on regular Americans that chaps the conservative hide. Conservatives apparently draw a distinction between homophobia and conserving “social traditions that, over time, have demonstrated that they exist for everyone’s benefit.”

Also, gay marriage would spoil religion — that bastion of socially sanctioned hate and ignorance — for the religious. Regular Americans love religion just the way it is! Their right to hate people based on the whimsy of ancient barbarian mystics is ordained by God. Homos must not interfere in the special relationship regular Americans have with the Supreme Being. I guess it might piss him off.

To sum up: marginalizing an entire class of people to preserve the social traditions of the dominant culture isn’t bigotry. The right to hate, it turns out, is essential for the greater good.

Because “everyone” benefits from patriarchy!

[Thanks, Glass Cleaner]

Posted in Godbagism, Keep your bias off my gender, Knobjectivism, Mass Media and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.