…sometimes you have to do something drastic.
Yesterday morning, after the news about that amazing donation that will keep my eyes working was relayed to me, I was in a mood to celebrate. So I performed the Secret Lair’s answer to slaughtering the fatted calf: I opened my one and only can of Spam to fry up with my eggs and fresh bread. This isn’t a hairshirt thing, I’ve always enjoyed fried Spam. But it is very expensive, $2.50 at the dollar store. So it’s hardly an every-day thing.
The boys also enjoy fried Spam. Especially Ghost, who thinks it’s just about the best thing ever…
…and will sit right there for twenty minutes without making a sound, if that’s what it takes to get his cut. Because he knows he’s getting his cut, he just has to be patient while it cools.
Speaking of getting a dog’s attention, there was a bit of synchronicity a couple of days ago that led to a gruesome discovery. Just at sundown after the boys had come in for their long nap, I saw a cottontail hippity-hopping around right outside the front window. Like it owned the place. Just as if that wasn’t the pounded earth right outside the entrance of the very lair of the biggest, meanest rabbit-eater in the valley. Seriously, forget chickens: Rabbits Is Stoopid.
So anyway, we’ve had a couple of really frigid nights and they’ve taken a toll on the Jeep’s battery. The Jeep never goes very far, or very fast, and so the alternator can never top the battery off and it typically draws my attention to this right after a really cold night. So in the evening I loaded the boys in the Jeep and drove it over to Ian’s place. Ian has a much larger solar power system than I do, and it isn’t being used for anything except keeping HIS batteries topped off. And there I connected the Jeep’s battery to my battery minder (very useful tool. Donated by Friend-of-the-gulch S some years ago, and put to much good use since) and then the boys and I walked home.
The path from Ian’s Dome to the Lair comes down a steep grade and emerges on my little yard at one of the Lair’s rear corners. It’s well outside Little Bear’s cable range. But no sooner had we gotten into the yard than LB veered left toward the chicken yard, extremely intent on retrieving something in the dry grass there. And when he raised his head, it was clutching a dead, stiff rabbit. A rabbit that, on closer examination, seemed to be missing its entire rear end south of the thighs.
Best guess of how this gruesomely-dead rabbit ended up in my yard? Little Hippity-Hopper met Little Bear. And cable or no cable, there is no creature in the desert who loves him some rabbit more than Little Bear. LB got a taste, the rest got away because of LB’s cable, but it didn’t get far.
My dad had a dog that lived on a cable and it would kill pheasants and magpies. I always wondered how.
My parents had a little rat terrier for 16 years. 19 lbs of pure muscle, teeth and hate for all things furry.
That little bugger could cover the 60 yards from the back door to the tree (including stairs), faster than the majority of squirrels could cover the 20 yards from the bird feeder back to that tree. He’d grab their tail and throw the back, catch them again and whack them with both front paws together like a two handed punch, pick it up, shake it, toss it and immediately lose interest in it as it died from its broken neck/back/internal injuries.
He got probably 90+% of the squirrels on the first try this way, and on the rare occasion that one got away, it usually lost some tail, and made it easy to mark the next time. I don’t think any made it twice.
Always impressed me, he even got his last one three days before he succumbed to liver cancer… That little dog had more fight in him than any three people I’ve ever met. He was appropriately named “Spike”.
Joel. have you eaten freshly murdered wabbit? It’s rather tasty.
Oh, and I tried Spam once as practice for if SHTF. I’d rather the zombies eat me than have to eat the (to me) vile gluck; you’re welcome to have my share of it.
I have indeed eaten freshly murdered wabbit. In fact I did the murdering myself. Personally I find it tasteless and not worth the bother.
Also I’d have to be starving to eat Spam right out of the can. Talk about vile gluck. But fried and eaten with eggs, it’s delicious.
Well, I was hungry when I ate wabbit and it needs a lot of herbs ‘n spices. It helps if someone does the labor, too.
I’ll have to retry the Spam with eggs this time. Thanks for the clarification- reading fail on my part previously as I was pre-coffee.
Fine business on the eye fund donation. Your minimal-money lifestyle has been on my mind as of late as I’m nearing the end of month three in a five-month recovery from eye surgery. I figger if Unca Joel can adopt a successful frugal lifestyle, so can I.