Our food plot is doing a fine job of feeding the overabundance of deer and turkeys on our farm/mountain. Now that I've typed it, I'm having a George Carlin moment on the word "overabundance". This is a liberal's word and really means that we've got too danged many around here for them to get by and be healthy on what the land provides naturally. It's another way of saying people have screwed things up and killed off the puma and red wolves because they were cowards to face the world as it should be. So we make food plots so they won't be so starved that thet eat the underforest bare of the very plantlife needed to sustain them. When the predators are gone, Nature uses disease, food shortages and population crashes by starvation to restore balance. My family hunts selectively and plants extra food in some places while we keep the vast majority of our land wild as we can.

We have a new food plot about 500 yards above the house. So far it has been a great source of entertainment and food for the table. No, we haven't shot anything yet, we are eating our fair share of the greens, kale, mustard, etc. that we planted for the forest beasties. I love to walk through the field and pinch off a few young tender leaves and eat them right there as I watch the woods and admire the stories told by the footprints and scat. The deer and turkey signs are obvious, but the dogs seem more than a little but interested in something else that leaves its scent around the edges of the field. We assume its coyotes but who knows. I have been looking at one of those game cameras that sits in the woods and takes pictures when something moves by, but so far I have resisted. Until I know for sure what it is, it could be anything my imagination can conjure.

There is one animal that several of us have seen but can't identify. We see it several times over a couple of weeks and then it's gone or invisible for a long time. Seasons go by before anybody in the valley mentions it. Dark, rough furred, and fast, disappearing off the side of the road in a jump and shuffle gait. We'll see it near the places where the streams flow close to the road and it seems to always run away uphill. It looks to be larger than a big cat, like a big mink but not as weasel like. The closest thing I can come up with is a Fisher, but those are supposed to be extinct here. All I know is that when the sightings start coming in, you'ld better pen up the chickens. A free range chicken doesn't stand amuch chance around here anyway. I suspect the people who are advertising freerange chickens are lying or at least stretching the definition of "Free".

The food plot has a water hole we call "Lake Thomas". Right now it has an impressive layer of bright green scum coating its surface. I suspect this is due to too much fertilizer running into the water from the field that drains into it. The water starts off a little muddy and slightly green, then, as we get days of sunshine, the water turns deeper and deeper green until the coating of slime appears on the surface. Just when the green is the deepest it all dies suddenly, leaving a muddy brown aftermath. I have witnessed this twice this year in the weeks following fertilizer applications. When you put too much fertilizer into an environment, you almost always get scum of some sort. I see this, as I do most things, as metaphor. Anybody that has ever driven around Washington, D.C. has to know there is too much fertilizer around the halls of Congress, for instance.

Tom Delay is a piece of scum. He is also the Republican House Majority leader and will be indicted soon. His indictment was delayed so that what is about to happen today in the Republican rules committee could take place after the election but before the indictment. This is a most heinous display of why the Republican Party is now in the hands of the immoral and the criminal. Delay is both! He is also a ruthless tyrant who visciously attacks anyone who gets in his way. His popularity in his home state of Texas has dropped considerably. It remains to be seen if Nature will use a population crash to eliminate the excess scum in our Nation. For now, it thrives:


House Republicans plan to change their rules in order to allow members indicted by state prosecutors to remain in a leadership post, a move designed to benefit Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) in case he is charged by a Texas grand jury that has indicted three of his political associates, GOP leaders said today.
The rules change, which leaders said is likely to be adopted Wednesday, comes as House Republicans return to Washington indebted to DeLay for the enhanced majority they won in this month's elections. DeLay led an aggressive redistricting effort in Texas last year that resulted in five Democratic House members retiring or losing reelection. It also triggered the grand jury inquiry into fundraising efforts related to the state legislature's redistricting actions.


Kos has it

Peace,

Steve