Thank goodness Michael Vick is back in the NFL.
When was the last time you heard about the suffering and cruelty that is dog fighting?
Maybe on Animal Planet TV, some big city nasty Animal Cops episode, where they rescue a hideously mangled dog that survived a fight, or was the "dummy" used to train dogs to fight.
Because that is a sad irony. Vick wasn't convicted and imprisoned for dog fighting. His felony animal cruelty charges were for the methods he chose to dispose of the 95%, 19 out of 20, fighting dogs that won't fight.
And I'm glad he's back, because dog fighting never missed a beat when he went to prison, and it hasn't been news since.
If you so love the NFL that you don't want the negative attention Vick will receive, everywhere he goes, sorry. But don't blame only the Philadelphia Eagles, because the Cincinnati Bengals, once the home for nearly all of the NFL's felons, was in the bidding.
Yesterday a farmer was raking hay, turning it to dry through, in a pretty meadow with some trees along the road and a creek neatly bisecting it. He liked what he saw, for this evening the hay had been put up. I was admiring his handiwork when a red tail flew towards a stand of trees a quarter mile north, shelter for a home and several outbuildings. I stopped and killed the engine, and another red tail took flight, this one calling. I will not be made to believe the calls were in celebration of being dislodged from a chosen hunting perch.
I turned north on the next road, gravel, and not just for that singular Indiana pleasure of raising enough dust to choke a mastodon. But the property was occupied.
Just before this road teed, just west of Amboy, I noticed more and more ugly dogs staked out on chains in a large rural front yard. Eight or ten or twelve.
When I worked a survey crew in Mississippi, 30 years ago, we carried a handy tool called an "Alabama Passkey".
Boltcutters, perhaps legal, and useful for going where you needed to go, irrespective of the safeguards of others. Such as padlocks.
I intend to get my own "passkey", and name it, and give all those ugly dogs a taste of life without a chain.
I will post my efforts, if overwhelmed by popular demand. Like, if one of you wants to know.
I saw a bluejay today - hooray! These beautiful birds, of dubious character, have been absent from my observations all year.
This one came thrashing out of the woods onto the grass of the right-of-way at Miami SRA, gathered, and flew back in the woods, making that irritating call, so I doubt he got what he was after.
Even with that large beak, bluejays can't crack seeds, and must use a tool, such as a stone.
Thus, things get done.