Just for a moment everything in the house powered down, and back up.  Except for the one remaining Tivo and the coffee pot.  So the Tivo has got to go, we’ll probably replace it with the superior (not to mention cheaper) box from the cable company.

As for the coffee pot?  Sometimes life isn’t perfect and you just have to go on.

I gave up on trying to fix the previously mentioned problems, so I saved the one and only post I felt worthwhile, scrapped the data base, created a new one, installed a new copy of wordpress in a new directory, and have begun to post in run on sentences, I think it’s a worthy effort…

this is an old post from Striving For Average, I like it, and use it as the example that I could, maybe perhaps, almost make doing this worthwhile if I’d just bother to take the time to do it right. Since that ain’t gonna happen, I’m just going to settle for reposting the old stuff. -tommy

Want Some?

Dad worked for the highway department and one of the things that they would have to do periodically is remove road kill from the highway. Occasionally when we were on a trip somewhere he would stop and take something off to the side of the road since he was there, figuring it would keep someone else from being called out to do the job instead. As a result I have a somewhat sympathetic ear towards those sorts of things.

Driving back yesterday I ran across a rather large Javelina dead in the middle of the road and since I had been at a family function just having left my Dad’s presence I decided to be like him and move the thing to the side. Roadkill has a certain aromatic charm to begin with that is only enhanced by said roadkill being of the peccary(javelina) variety, and when it’s been hanging out in the Texas sun and heat for a bit it is even more so. Fortunately I had done some roofing lately and still had that whatever you call it thing you use to pull up the old shingles. I was willing to move the fellow off the road but I wasn’t really in the mood to touch him, so I took said piece of equipment out of the pickup, held my nose as best as I could and approached the rotting corpse. Oh yeah, this is going to be fun.

Did you know buzzards will attack?

Neither did I. But evidently this particular buzzard had been eying this pig for awhile and was waiting for the bacon to get to his liking before he settled in for dinner. So I did what any normal person would do when standing in the middle of the road using a shingle remover to push a dead javelina to the side. I ducked. Now it turns out the buzzard was a little disappointed in the result of his first attack and he turned around to make another pass. Clever bird this buzzard, he anticipated my ducking and dove a little lower, requiring me to drop to a knee (almost but not quite dropping said knee in the middle of the aromatic pig). He turned for a third pass but by now I’ve recognized the game and I’m ready, gripping my D Rolling Shingle Remover with both hands like a baseball bat. I made a rather pitiful swing at the buzzard as he went by, sort of reminiscent of that kid in little league we all yelled “you swing like a girl” at everytime he swung a bat. Give me a break, it’s been a few decades since little league and until that moment I had never, not even once swung a shingle remover at a buzzard (oh yeah, like you haven’t wanted to though…) I did manage to make contact and I was actually kind of proud of myself until I noticed the buzzard in the middle of the road twitching. I don’t have any particular sympathy for PETA but for some reason I decided not to leave a pile of twitching feathers in the road. Now for those of you not familiar with buzzards, they are one of those animals that are attracted to all of the dead decaying things that make you want to puke and vomit, probably even attracted by the puke and vomit I’m thinking.

So great, now I’ve got a dead, decaying, smelly javelina and an even more smelly twitching buzzard in the middle of the road. Maybe I can poke the buzzard or something and he’ll get up and fly away. So I carefully walk over(he has after all attacked three times) and attempt to nudge him back to life thinking maybe he’s only mostly dead, because there are still things you can do with only mostly dead. Well he was doing a little better than mostly dead, good enough to be able to jump the shovel thingy and insist on playing a small game of smelly king of the road, but now I feel bad since the bird is all kinds of messed up, he can’t stand right, holding his wing out at a funny angle, not to mention the twitching smelly effect he’s got going on.

It’s the Humane thing to do

I’m thinking I need to put the bird out of his misery as he’s never going to survive in the wild and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him in my truck to haul off to some animal rescue place (So what happened to him? I ummm, hit him with a shingle remover…). So I take a couple of swings at him with the shingle remover. Evidently that whole making contact thing was a fluke because there was no way I was going to hit him again (yeah I swing a shingle remover like a girl, so shut up). I’ve seen my grandfather wring the neck of many a chicken and the size difference wasn’t all that great so that seemed like maybe a better option to the whole kill the buzzard thing. I took a couple of steps toward the truck to get my gloves(like I’m going to touch the thing with my bare hands) when I remembered I’d given them to my cousin. He’s in a wheelchair and had lost his gloves somewhere in the cemetery and nice guy that I am, I gave him mine (but now I was wishing I had just volunteered to push the chair instead…)

After a couple of minutes of running around the highway and lots of wing flapping and flailing I did manage to catch the damn buzzard (yes with my bare hands, and yes it was much worse than I ever imagined, but it’s ok, as far as you know I didn’t get any puke or vomit on me, the precise placement of buzzard shit is beyond the scope of this blog.) Did I mention they smell? I flicked my hand just like grandpa used to do but the buzzard was not impressed so I tried again. and again. and again. Of all the things I should have learned from my grandfather I never thought the wringing the neck of a chicken was going to be one I regretted not knowing. How hard can it be? I decided what I lacked in skill and knowledge I could make up in effort so I grabbed the bird around the neck with both hands and just started swinging it over my head in a big circle. It was a lot of work and the bird wasn’t helping what with all the flapping of the wings but I began to think I was making progress since it stopped squawking and finally let the thing go in a huge toss off to the side of the road.

I was walking back to get my shingle remover wondering if I still had enough energy to deal with the pig problem when the bird walked back out into the highway looking rather like an ill tempered unkempt dark feathered version of the AFLAC duck. I picked up the shingle remover and tossed it into the bed of the truck, getting a little angry at my lack of success at putting this buzzard out of my misery. The buzzard on the other hand just looked at me with one of those smug superior looks that only buzzards have. So I got back in the truck and decided to leave well enough alone and started driving back home, still seething over being bested by a damn birdbrained long necked turkey buzzard.

Now I don’t like thinking of myself as a quitter so I pulled over to the side of the road and decided that my mistake was a lack of planning. So I planned. I got out a pad of paper and a pen and started writing down everything I could think of that might work. After a few minutes I looked down to see what I had. Nothing. A damn blank piece of paper, yeah all that college education is paying off. 10 years in the Air Force learning how to kill large groups of people at one time and here I am bested by a damn buzzard on highway 385. Great.

Speed Kills. Speed is Life.

I have a pickup, not exactly the most perfect vehicle for speed but it does have a good size V-8 engine and it was probably adequate to my current task considering I don’t think the buzzard was going to fly again. So I got a good 2 mile run at the pig bird thing and was doing about 90 mph when I decided I did not want to hit the decaying javelina if I could help it and I needed to pick a side. The bird too chose a side and I’m certain he made some sort of derogatory gesture in my direction as we passed within a couple of feet of each other. Oh yeah, Mom would be pleased to watch her eldest son jousting with a buzzard over a damn pig. Well now the buzzard is between me and home and I have to pass him again or spend the rest of my life living in the bed of my pickup knowing I’ve been bested and destroyed by a buzzard. This time however, it’s going to be final, do or die. No way in hell was I going to choose a side preferring to just plow right over the bloated pig letting it do whatever it wanted. It’s now personal between me and this turkey buzzard (what with all his trash talking and obscene gestures, not to mention the smell). I kept the pedal floored and the last time I checked I was just over 95 mph when I felt a pleasing thump of an impact with the buzzard and pig.

Sweet Victory

Oh yes, nothing really compares with the glorious view of the red mist of a decaying javelina splattered all over the road and the poof of black feathers of what used to be the worlds only long necked Texas turkey buzzard.

Have I mentioned the smell? Let’s just say it doesn’t improve when you atomize the cause into a fine red mist along the underside of your pickup and mix it in with a nice warm engine for added effect. It doesn’t get any better after washing it either. At least I have a clean if somewhat smelly truck.

I did call Dad this morning and I now have the number to the highway department to call if you see a small pile of roadkill that needs to be removed.

Yes I called. If you pass by today it should be gone before you get there.