Coyotes and Vultures

There's a road I favor in the summer, wooded on either side, gravel, lightly travelled. It runs east-west, which is poor going in winter - too many cold Westerlies.

I have seen several, or maybe the same, does often, crossing in front of or behind me.

Another country heard from: a coyote walked into the road and stopped and watched, continuing only when my dogs started barking at air. They never saw The Trickster.

It baffles me these magnificent creatures are available for hunting.

Dogs and coyotes interbreed, which requires identical genes.

Shoot a coyote, shoot a dog.

Who would possibly sport hunt coyotes?

Alleged men with spider eggs for testicles, who must be critically challenged by roadmaps, toasters, and of course, condom instructions. Else, where do these cretins come from? As a "fellow" human, you would like to think from under a rock. Walt Kelley's "Pogo": "We have met the enemy, and he is us".

The "dove hunts" last weekend seemed to have been well-attended. The DNR plants sunflowers in dove management areas, then allow hunters to draw for entry on the official opener, to kill fifteen...

This is a "bag" limit. God knows how many are killed. Years and years ago, when I participated, shooters were much more interested in retrieving spent shells (for reloading) than downed birds.

Which might help explain the turkey vultures circling the road we were walking today, near the Bowman Dove Management Field. Although when I looked it seemed the field had been cut, and the corpse evidence gone with it, to prevent bleeding hearts like me from kicking through some brush and finding hordes of unfetched carcasses.

The vultures were circling low, about 40 feet. Maybe circling me. Be okay if they were a bit premature...

As mentioned here several times, these birds are amazing gliders, soaring and rising and swooping and traveling miles with the barest hint of wing movement.

They are largely ignored, disdained, and there must be many, like sport coyote killers, who would favor an open season.

Why? Because they are ugly? Everybody lose their mirrors?

They hurt nothing, no one, and please let me know if you are not familiar with the crucial role scavengers play, as nearly 7 billion people turn the planet into an orbiting shit pile.

Rhinos are cool. Not pretty. Sea turtles? Absolutely love 'em, ugly all. Same with our turtles. Toads? So neat, ugly as a wrinkled butt.

Since we've overfished the ocean, check out what you're eating. "Rough fish" in freshwater means carp, suckers, buffalo fish.

Even Orange Roughy have been all but fished out. You are eating the ultimate ocean rough fish now, stuff dredged off the bottom. None of it pretty. Look up monkfish, need some eye candy.

Want to see an ugly bird? How about that darling of us EarthLovers, the California Condor?

Could be kissing cousins with our turkey vultures.

Ugly stuff needs our help.

This idea originated with my most wonderful and beautiful friend Anne, who worries the media stars like whales, sea turtles, and wolves are getting the money while Montana fluvial Arctic grayling and the Ozark hellbender salamander slide unnoticed into oblivion.

But all of us have limited money to help (thanks to Bush, very limited).

And,again thanks in large part to the inane policies of the Boy Scion, about 4 billion of our brethren need help.

Spread your donations wisely. Check every charity with Charity Navigator (http://www.charitynavigator.com/). No exceptions. The groups who have maneuvered into the most appealing redistributors of your money are often the worst mismanagers of donations.

If I may...the Republicans in Congress are in love with continuing tax cuts for the wealthiest. This is Reaganomics, pure and simple, predicated on the Trickle Down Effect, an abysmal failure.

One of the architects of Reaganomics, David Stockman, wrote a book (Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed), in which he admitted the total failure of the economic strategy.

Republicans can't read, won't read, don't comprehend, or are fucking morons.

Trickle-Down didn't work, can't work, doesn't work, won't work. These people stay on the horse, long after it's dead.

I would love to stop bashing these poor idiots. Would that they let me...