Educational Day at the Joo.

For strictly investigative research purposes, I ask Sof to join me at the San Francisco Zoo. I am eating beans and rice to save up for visiting polar bears in their native northern lands. In the meanwhile, I want to study the local area population first. You will see in the photo album the polar bears were only a sad footnote to an otherwise fun visit.

Opossum R.I.P.

Our front porch had a bit of Amityville gross fly action which prompted me to demand C conduct an investigation. Sadly another dead opossum crawled into our side yard to die. It must be my evil neighbor using rat bait again.

C complained mightily and put on latex gloves and his respirator mumbling "Always Clees, always Clees". It's true he had to remove the last dead opossum. With his 3 trashbags and shovel, he solved this problem just as handily. I reminded him of the "No dead animal inside the house" policy told him not to bring the offending bag through the house just in case he was too lazy to unlock the side yard and come through the house. One never knows. Anyway when I went back into the house, I saw him with a trashbag trying to look suspicious. Of course he just grabbed the trash from the kitchen to get a rise out of me.

I could have paid these other guys in Florida who do wild life removal. Dead animal duty I feel is husbandly duty.

Habitude

Spent an afternoon pruning the front rosemary bush. Underneath this fragrant creeper were hiding a few snails. This made me very sad to think of it. I use to get all excited when I found a snail- I usually peel away the shell and feed the poor exposed snail to Meatball. Now that I find a bounty of three sleeping snails and no turtle, my heart is hollow in bits.

Tito Schipa keeps me company while I wonder why certain repeated actions in tiny tiny motions bend and shape the heart, while others repeated thousands of times can leave almost no imprint. But now I've swallowed too much nostalgia and have become useless for anything else.

Yesterday I finally setup wi-fi in C's studio. C was so happy he gave me a big smooch. Even nerds get a little action now and then.

Theme and Variation

Meatball appears to be gone for good. I found him hiding under the passion flower vines the first time he escaped. I put him back in his pen and bribed him with a fat juicy snail. Wild creatures- they only have contempt for their captors regardless of the fine treatment they receive. And so he is gone again. J says if a dog bites his head and he bleeds to death, that is his fate and I shouldn't artificially deny him such an end. She is right of course.

Is life a switchback between 3 phases?
1. You don't know what you want, hence fill your time with interim activities.
2. You know what you want, and are in pursuit.
3. You know what you want, but can't get it, and hence must make do.

Like Hugo, I love triumvirates, triangles, threesomes, trios, and the curve of 3s. But it continues-

4 is the disappointingly extended 2. You thought you knew what you wanted, but it's not it at all so you are back to 1.
5. A weak fifth, variation on 3 - you think you know what you want but since you can't get it, you really can't know- could you.
6. The perversion of 2 & 3- because you can't have what you want, you convince yourself that you really want what you can have

Now for completion of the 3 cubed, I must drum up 3 more-
7. You know you only want the wanting of something hence purposely deny yourself the fulfillment of the want
8. Negation state. Advanced stages of 3 and 6, you reject the very thing you want because you know you can't have it or attempting it is dangerous.
9. Confusion state. You want it, you don't want it, you don't know any more.

Despite variation, 2 is ever the desired state- like being in love. Too much Erich Fromm is not good for you.

Fugitive

Meatball is escaped. C thinks a cat must have gotten him. I know better. He looked a little wild eyed last. If you see him poking along, trying to buy cigarettes, please turn him in.

Tale of 2 Chickens

Our ladies are plumping up nicely. Patrice is top of the pecking order, an distinguished Araucana. Charlene is a feather footed fancy- silver laced Cochin- a runty thing which looks more like a bald patched turkey vulture. C suspects our friend picked these particular breeds with purpose- one for C is a solid red head and one for me is a a skinny black feathered thing.

Who knew there could be such a wide degree of variation in chicken intelligence. Charlene I think must be a retarded chicken. I know this because her partner Patrice is brilliant- for a chicken that is. Always on the alert, always trying to hop on the highest solid platform to see what's going on- keeps an eye to the sky watching for falcons. Patrice chases cats out of the yard. One only has to look into those beady birdy eyes to know something is definitely going on behind Patrice's tiny bird brain.

Charlene-of a species bred only for the furriness of the feet- probably would have never survived without human intervention. She always tries to sit on an incline, and falls over. She has such tiny vestigial wings that when she tries to hop on anything, she always overshoots and falls over. And as expected, she is no production egg-layer. I'm dubious myself that she will produce at all. Charlene probably only has a minor neural cluster maybe just in the foot or something.

Meatball has gotten comfy in his minimum security facility.

He no longer attempts escape and has fallen into herp complacency. J is right- turtles do love bananas. Meatball hangs about various leaf piles, time to time sniffing out the digs. As far as prison goes, Meatball is getting A1 deluxe treatment. C served him salmon glazed in balsamic vinegar -of course Meatball was too full from the banana to make a dent in the salmon.

Chickens- or rather chicks have arrived thanks to Miss A. C christened them Patrice and Charlene. He wanted tough jailbird names with the added mix of fecundity. We want these ladies to produce! J came up with Charlene. C had been saving "Patrice" for his bulldog....

No doubt they are his ladies as C fusses over them. Takes 'em out for fresh air, cleans the cages. There is no guarantee they are not roosters which would be very sad. Roosters are illegal in Berkeley, so they can be arrested and sent behind bars until deportation to Marin or some such county more friendly to roosters.

Yesterday my cousin died in a gratuitous car accident. He was 26. He had a prior car accident at age 13.

C and I labored for a hexagonal turtle pen for Meatball today. C hammered his shin by accident. Meatball after being released from his old compost box got very excited and starting cooking along the edge of the fence. Poor fellow. No escape is possible of course.