Springtime

It is spring. Res is talking about gardens. The lakes are opening up. That means the ice is melting for you urban types. Winter is over and that is a reason to feel pretty good. The robins are returning. I just bought two packs of .22 shells for the spring varmint blasting. The gophers are out.

And that brings us to the scourge of springtime. The gopher you can't shoot but does so much damage. The pocket gopher. If you live in an area that doesn't have them, count your blessings, but be prepared, they are coming. We have been seeing them in the higher elevations of the Black Hills now.

I used to trap them when I was young. There was a local farmer that would pay me 5 bucks apiece for them. This was in the 80's. I caught as many as I could, but I only managed to stay even with them. I only had a few traps and pocket gophers are difficult to trap.

A few years back I bought my own place. Fifteen acres of a former homestead. A lot of it has trees, but the old cattle pens are home to pocket gophers. I have not been able to get rid of them. One spring I caught seven of them. Last year I only caught a couple. It rained heavily, turning everything to mud. If you don't catch them the first time, they plug the hole, and when it is muddy you can't find it again. I have tried poison, and putting small amounts of gasoline down the hole with some effect. But I still have them. If I could get rid of them, I would be free of them for a while since they plowed up the alfalfa field across the road. That was an endless supply, always moving in.

I am resolved to get rid of them this spring before the mosquitoes get bad.

I don't get it

I see a lot of young boys nowadays, who are wearing earrings in their ears. I am talking about 10 year olds. Are their parents out to lunch? Am I just getting curmudgeonly in my old age? Now, I am not even old; I don't even have any kids yet. But when I do, if I have boys, they will not be wearing jewelry under threat of the pliers. Till they are 60. I even don't see why girls need to wear jewelry at that age. And the place I see all these metal headed kids? In church.

I must be tragically unhip.

See how smart I am?

Your IQ Is 130

Your Logical Intelligence is Below Average Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Genius Your General Knowledge is Above Average

A Quick and Dirty IQ Test

How did I do so bad on logical intelligence?

Dreams

I usually don't remember dreams. But I really had a weird one last night. I was at a grocery store. All of my extended family was there, because my grandma died. In the store. So we were all sitting down to eat. In the store. Then I found out that my cousin had died. Also in the store. So while we were sitting down to eat, a girl I knew from college shows up. She is wearing roller skates. She is wondering what is up because it is time for roller skating. Somehow our tables had been set up in the part of the store usually set aside at this particular time for roller skating.

That was some grocery store. I did have a mild case of indigestion. Would that cause this? Too bad we don't have a prophet around to interpret this one.