This is Not Japan. Get Outside, Now.

Bought a new rifle yesterday. Kind of a kick-around .22, synthetic/stainless, virtually indestructible, just right for shooting at trash on my walks.

Took it down last evening, for cleaning and lubrication. Of course I couldn't reassemble it.

As I lie in bed this morning, much too long, I worked it out. Then put it back together. And, again, it didn't work.

Took it apart, consulted the parts list and diagram, and tried again.

Worked fine. What would take a normal person about twenty minutes only took me a half-day.

This model has had a long, successful run. I traded a quality high-powered rifle for one in the mid-60's, about 45 years ago. Traded the Remington because there was absolutely no use for it in Indiana. Like owning a Ferrari. You never get to wring it out.

My only complaint then was the 10- shot rotary magazine was an asspain to load. Especially when it was cold.

This wouldn't be a problem, except a semiauto can empty a magazine in less than a second.

So I bought four additional magazines. I could load a box of cartridges before I left the relative comfort of my little house on the edge of the prairie (just for you, Britt).

I took it out this afternoon. It's odd. My Abbe is scared by everything, from loud noise to her own shadow. She usually goes to the closet, or the bathtub, during thunderstorms. Nearby shooting will send her to the car, or to the nearest barn. And she even tries to get in any house she can find.

To my surprise, my shooting doesn't faze her.

I put the windows almost down and left the dogs in the truck after our walk, then went back to try the rifle. I heard my collie yelping, which meant one of two things: we had company, or Abbe was out of the truck.

She came over the hill while I was shooting, and stayed, and led me back, albeit with plenty of gap.

On the other hand, my collie is nonplussed by anything. Okay, that's not true. He goes apeshit at the sight of cats and squirrels. An oddity: he has the farthest sight of any of my dogs, and it's phenomenal compared with my collies. It is scary.

He doesn't seem bothered by shooting, yet, when I shoot, he is disturbed for days after.

Dogs. Too smart for us.

There is a theory we didn't really domesticate the dog. That the dog trained us to feed him, shelter him, love him.

Think you're smarter than your dog? He's standing in front of you, barking. What's he saying? You're so smart, you tell me.

So that's why I put the dogs in the truck after our walk, and went back to shoot my new rifle.

I'm there to check if the rifle functions correctly. Five magazines, ten rounds each, a 50-count box of .22 ammo.

I can't find the "round-seated-in-chamber" indicator, if there is one. And the cocking handle doesn't lock open after the last live round is ejected. So I missed count, and ejected a live round.

49 rounds fired. The rifle functioned effortlessly for the first 48. The 49th stovepiped. It didn't clear the ejector, and stuck out straight away, looking like Lincoln's hat.

Shit.

How can one assess this? 48 without a malfunction, yet the last one...?

Shit.

Saw a nuthatch today, one of my favorite (know you're tired of this adjective) birds. The posturing and movement is fascinating, and they are a wonderful blue-gray.

And I'm a certifiable nuthatch myself.

My guess is a white-breasted nuthatch, a guess because I am too dull to put quality glass on my leaving-home checklist. An unscrupulous waste of an expensive tool. Too, while I presume to post about birds, my knowledge is growing, but surely limited. You are welcome to help.

And birds were singing everywhere, singing and calling, celebrating our warmest day of the year.

Great time to get out. The birds aren't just singing for birds, or me. They're singing for you, too.

Rain changing to snow. The afternoon and early evening here in north central Indiana.

Paradise Found.

Was splitting some firewood when I heard a basketball being bounced on the playground behind my house.

It seemed odd to me. There was a snow cover from November through most of February, but the court was never shoveled.

Not even at Christmas. When I was a kid (a memory that, if it were a car, would be classified an antique by the BMV) Christmas was when you got a new football, a new basketball.

Now, I'm guessing it's sit on your ass and amuse yourself stuff, electronics and such.

Got my first baseball mitt (glove) in an Easter basket. It was a Rawlings 3-fingered model, a true anachronism. It was autographed by some Phillies turd.

The Phillies played at Cincinnati's Crosley Field in the first MLB game I attended. Of course, I took my mitt. Richie Ashburn hit a foul ball while I was engrossed in the box score card. It damn near hit me.

The Phillies have always been about class. Dick Allen, who played first base, used to write "trade me" in the dirt with the toe of his cleat. This was before Curt Flood, and players who signed signed on for life.

There are no sure things in science. Which is why virtually everything is called a theory. This concept seems to confuse Creationists, who refer to "Darwin's Theory" as a theory. Never mind it is proven by everything from the fossil record to the thousands and thousands of mutations occurring every second.

What else explains the 14 or 15 different finch beaks found on isolated Galapagos Islands(largely ignored by Chuck himself)?

Or how about the development of resistance of various viruses to antibiotics?

There are eight classes of antibiotics known. Eight. Resistance is widespread, and multiplying.

A reason is overmedication. Doctors routinely prescribe antibiotics after a cursory examination.

But, far and away, the major threat is animal husbandry, particularly, feed lots. Confined animals cannot survive without an antibiotic regimen. The antibodies are passed up the foodchain to the macroconsumers. You know who. Which makes trillions more opportunities for resistant mutations. There is every reason to suspect that some, maybe all, antibiotics will become ineffective in your lifetime.

The most exact of the sciences is rocket science, a bit of a misnomer. It's mostly math. It's been briefly explained here previously.

It requires needle-point accuracy. Yet, unaccountable influences, sunspots, improper estimates of a target's gravitational field, inaccurate determination of a target's mass, can mean a crash. Or a miss. And the miss might mean millions of dollars, lost to space.

Geology is so packed with speculation and theory, it is more philosophy than science.

When I visited Mt. St. Helen's in 2000, I purchased "the bible", a documentation of the science conducted before, during, and after the eruption. A goodly chunk concerned prediction by analyzing the gases escaping the various vents in the caldera. Despite all the data and analyses, later eruptions at other sites, particularly in Mexico and the Andes, proved these hypotheses useless.

Last Sunday, a new pastor at St Francis at Ball State scared the shit out of all the children by talking about an impending eruption from the huge caldera at Yellowstone. This has been characterized by television as a supervolcano, capable of cleansing life from the planet. Not such a bad idea.

Faith-based functionaries should leave science to realists.

TV science is a show, like a movie. The data used on the show are dated. They present a fast-growing "bubble" on the caldera. In fact, the growth has slowed dramatically in the last few years. The caldera lies about 100 miles below the surface, and the growth in the first several years of the new millennium has been attributed to an influx of magma into the chamber, not an incipient push towards the surface.

Supervolcano? Not anytime soon. Not in your lifetime. Not in your children's children's children's.

Father, stick with the New Testament. This ain't about to happen, but most of that stuff didn't, either.

Heard a cardinal with that distinctive call going most of yesterday morning. Also, the last couple of days, honking Canada geese overhead. Now, the thermometer is plunging and it's snowing.

Shit.

Spring. Please. Now.

There is a road...no, wait, that's "Ripple".

Danny Burns plays and sings "Ripple" so well, Jerry Garcia sleeps easy.

513 runs north from Converse to the Slocum Trail, where it angles west. East from the curve is a short road that deadends near the lake. It's deep-cut, providing shelter from most wind. A nice, shaded, albeit short, walk.

I saw a big fox, just a glimpse, crossing the the old road. Maybe my perspective, looking uphill, enlarged it a bit, but not a lot. Thought it might be a coyote, but it was way too red.

I slowed a bit, quieted my steps, hoping for a better look. My collie caught the scent, and was off like a rocket.

Sunshine is a joy to watch. He looks faster than he is, and he leaps, and pounces like a coyote on a field mouse, even when there is no prey. There was no way he could see the fox, since my sightline is about three feet higher, and I was looking. Had to be scent. He started barking, a few hundred yards off in the woods, and I trusted that was all.

It was. I worried could he find his way back, but he came along in a couple of minutes.

Saw a small flock of Eastern Bluebirds in the same area a week back. That electric blue always amazes me, and brings a joy bonus.

Today, the dogs disturbed a female cardinal. They are a bit disparaged, the boys getting the attention. For good reason. That red is the brightest we see here. And, in the snow, breathtaking.

But this girl was a show. The colors, while muted, were in sharp contrast. Beautiful.

Tuesday, in an area of a square mile, I saw a Turkey Vulture, a vanguard, the first in months, and four redtails. Banner bit of driving. Through the winter, I have noted a few kestrels, and lately, the Cemetery redtail in and around town, but not a lot. Brutal winter. Not way cold, but cold a lot.

The robin is the king herald of spring, but the more widely acknowledged harbinger is the Redwinged Blackbird. Seen neither. But that lone vulture was an omen.

Good thing. We all need the break.