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Super NOT Funny!!!!

So today I did the famous snake dance! This dance is listed under Exotic Interpretive Modern Dance, and the soundtrack goes something like, SHIT! SHIT, SHIT, SHIT! OH SHIT!

Here’s the background. 

Jesse and I were walking in our usual area. There are a lot of critters out & about, mostly lizards and a few very brave or very foolish ground squirrels. I call the squirrels brave or foolish because they’ve taken to darting across Jesse’s path sometimes only inches from his face.

All of this is perfectly routine and normal. Jesse though doesn’t hunt or try to hunt these critters like any dog I’ve ever had.

After all, why would he do anything “normal”?

Instead of just running after a lizard or squirrel, he leaps. It’s more like the pouncing of a cat. It looks like he’s trying to anticipate where the critter will be then come down on top of the animal.

If he misses then he leaps up again, and perhaps does some running after the animal then leaps again. This goes on for a while until Jesse decides that the animal isn’t where he thought it was, or should be. Then he does this very graceful bounding move, easily clearing pretty high brush, to return to the trail. 

While all of this insanity is going on, he’s got this goofy laughing look on his face. It’s actually a look of pure joy. 

Given that he was a street dog there are a couple of things I can’t break him of. One is anything edible along the trail is his. He will not give it up for love, money, or even another favorite treat. He will literally eat whatever he’s found, then look at me like, “I saw that other treat, now give it to me.”

The second thing is that he can hunt for himself. He’s killed lizards but apparently they’re not to his taste. Last week he terrified a bird and chased it into the house.

I was alerted to the situation because I heard Jesse slipping and sliding all over the floor. He fell a couple of times on the slick surface. 

The poor bird in its panic to escape, had slammed into the front window and stunned itself.  So now I’ve got Jesse trying to lay claim to his “not quite dead kill.” I’m having to defend this poor bird from Jesse and he’s very confused as to why I’m messing with his prey.

I really thought the bird was going to die from the stress. Its little heart was beating so fast it felt like a vibrator. The little thing’s breathing was very fast and labored.

I wrapped it in a towel and took it out front into some peace & quiet and warmish sunlight. I stood there holding the little thing wrapped loosely in the towel. I wasn’t sure if it was going to die or not, but I didn’t want it to die alone or become prey to something while it was trying to recover.

After a time, it seemed to get better and stronger, it didn’t fly away but did flutter to a convenient bush. Jesse was watching all of this from the rear deck and was not in the least amused.

I relate this to illustrate that Jesse is very fast, and agile, in addition to his strength.

Normally on our walks we’re making enough noise that critters get out of the way. Even deer will usually bolt before we’re close enough for Jesse to think he could catch them. 

Were it not for the highway being so close to the northern edge of where we walk I’d let Jesse run free after a deer sometime. My concern would be that he’d chase a deer out onto the road and while the deer could probably clear a car, Jesse can’t. 

Once he fixates on something, he becomes very single minded about it and there have been times when I’ve literally tied the leash to a tree. The leash is a 25ft long retractable. It’s very strong but if he’s pulling at its extreme length or worse leaping and running randomly trying to chase a deer it’s very hard to control him. 

Fortunately there are a lot of trees around. I’ve tied my end of the leash around a tree more than once and simply waited until Jesse gave up. Sometimes that can take as long as 10 minutes and I’d much rather the tree take the stress & strain than my knees, arms, & back. (Although it’s a really dynamic workout.)

Now that you’ve got all the background… Back to the snake dance!

Jesse saw a fairly large lizard run into a clump of bushes. He leapt, landed on the bush and started looking for the lizard. I’d seen the lizard escape and was in the process of swatting a hoard of small flying insects away from my eyes, nose, ears, & mouth. Yes, I was being swarmed, the annoying pests were flying under my sunglasses and into every orifice.

At this point I saw Jesse running directly toward me. He was in pursuit of something which as my eye focused, turned out to be a long slithering creature. I only had one eye working at the time because a helpful bug had flown into the other one. 

I began doing the snake dance thinking if this was a baby rattlesnake they’d find my bleached bones out on the trail and Jesse would probably get distracted on the way back to the house, get lost, and we’d both end up “Vanished”…

Then I pictured what the row of houses up on the ridge could see but not hear. “Hey Mabel you should see what that guy with the dog is doing today…“

At this point the litany of “SHIT” gave way to laughter. I was laughing in part because of the insanity of the situation and in part because I’d seen one of a pair of dull yellow stripes running the length of the snake. The snake went right between my legs, then disappeared.

Jesse stopped chasing it and instead was looking at me like I’d lost my mind. I don’t think he could figure out if I was mad at him, and if I was mad why I was mad. In his confusion he stopped with his head cocked with an expression of, “What’s your problem?”

Jesse had scared up a Striped Racer (Whipsnake), that was probably looking for a quiet place to shed its skin.

The dull yellow stripe(s) I’d seen identified the snake species, It’s characteristic for a snakes coloration to get dull & sometimes they’ll take on a dusty appearance just prior to shedding. It’s also near mating season for this species so Jesse might have interrupted someone’s good time.

I’ve got a Striped Racer that lives somewhere near the house. This particular Racer & I cross paths several times during the summer months. I watch out for it so that I don’t injure it with yard tools. I’d prefer to have it living in the yard because it keeps insects and rodents under control.

The first snake picture above, is of the snake that lives near my place. If you look closely you can see a bright yellow stripe. This snake had just finished shedding its skin in my rosemary bush. We startled each other one morning a couple of years ago.

I’ve included a better picture of the species. Thanks to www.californiaherps.com

Yes, I know this snake looks nothing like a rattlesnake. However, being partially blind due to one eye fighting to drown a bug, and the other eye tearing in sympathy, trust me, the brain interprets any long slithering creature as a poisonous critter worthy of summoning Saint Patrick.

As we completed our loop and were once again on the trail where we’d seen the snake, Jesse put himself crosswise on the trail so that I had to stop. He was looking around very carefully to see if the snake was still around. I was patient with him and found it interesting that he wasn’t going to let me pass until he was sure the snake was gone. 

Oh before you think, “What a good dog…”

Don’t delude yourself. Jesse couldn’t give a rip about me… He just didn’t want to get bitten. He’s self-serving like that.

That’s not entirely true there have been a few situations where he’s pointedly put himself between me and a threat. He earns his kibble, most of the time.

Enjoy the mental image of my modern dance routine. Laugh all you want, I’m still chuckling about it.

Maybe I should get a GoPro and wear it anytime we’re walking. That could produce some funny video.

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Saw this Venn Diagram on Twitter

I don’t know who created this diagram but I’d like to tip my hat to them.

It accurately explains how I’ve been feeling lately.

I’ve been trying to write but have experienced severe writers block.

On the plus side I’ve been making progress cleaning out the house, so there’s that.

It seems lately that every time I turn around there is some fresh stupid hell created by humanity because collectively humans are bored.

I find that I’m looking forward to some extinction level event, for a change of pace.

I strongly suspect this sort of boredom happens all over the universe in every sentient species. It’s probably why we’ve not detected conclusive signs of other life.

I’m betting that all species get to a certain technological level, things get too easy, they get bored and start making shit up to terrorize each other. It’s not out of cruelty, it’s so they feel something, anything…

Species probably need a hit of adrenalin that they get from pursuing or being pursued in a forest. They need to have real danger, real life & death consequences, and real mysteries to confront.

Had we made it into space, we might have had a decent substitute. Death being less than an inch away in the cold vacuum of space, may have provided the stimulation to drive our creativity and invention forward. We all know we’re not going to make it into space in any realistic way.

The 1960s & 1970s was our window.

We had loads of men who were tough enough, for whom hardship and discomfort wasn’t a big deal. We had role models and heroes that every child wanted to emulate. Big men, doing big things, not for clicks, but because they believed in the potential and dreams of humanity.

The window has closed. 

All we have left is a long descent into barbarism. The herd will be thinned out due to disease, war, and stupidity. The surviving humans will forget, except in legends about all we accomplished. Maybe we’ll have another ice age and the glaciers will scour most of our cities and infrastructure from the land.

Ancient aliens meme.15 – 20 thousand years later when odd looking bits & pieces of our civilization and technology pop up they’ll be completely unknown and unremembered. So… those future humans will think of us as Ancient Aliens.

That’s more than we’ll deserve. The reality will be that we were a bunch of morons who contemplated our navels too much, demanded to be accepted while not accepting others with differing opinions, who lost the ability to think our way out of a wet paper bag, then turned our maintenance over to artificial intelligence, while eating bon bons on our overstuffed couches, waiting for our rudimentary service droid to come rub our feet or give us an orgasm that we were too lazy to work toward ourselves.

When the end came, most of us will have denied the obvious truth, instead of getting our fat asses off the couch and actually doing something useful.

This line of thinking has made me wonder how many times before this kind of thing has happened on this planet. Likewise, I wonder if it’s actually commonplace throughout the universe, and a function of technology. 

I’ve thought that perhaps there’s a very narrow window where a civilization reaches apogee. The only way a civilization survives is if they reach a point in technology & science that they realize their planet is about to undergo some cataclysmic change and this knowledge galvanizes the sentient species to focus on creating a solution to the problem.

If they fail, then they fall back into the muck, after some period of time they rise again with half remembered legends spurring them forward again.

To be clear I’m not even thinking about “Climate Change” as our moronic people think about it.

I’m talking a meteor impact like the one that may have snuffed the dinosaurs.

Consider this, the meteor needn’t actually hit Earth. Suppose something big came in at a fraction of the speed of light and hit the dark side of the moon? Say it splits the moon into pieces. Those pieces needn’t rain down on Earth. Just them spreading around in the moon’s orbit dissipating the gravitational effect on our tides and weather would be disastrous. There’s impressive climate change!

Or let’s say it was a large enough object that it changed the mass or orbit of the moon? What then? Destructive tides becoming the norm. Earthquakes and volcanoes restructuring continents over a thousand years instead of millions of years. Imagine that. What about the moon ending up in a decaying orbit?

Now imagine that scientists figure out the impact will happen in 300 years. Do people keep squabbling, or do they turn all their abilities, resources, and effort toward preparing and saving themselves? Ideally, if a civilization was at the right point in it’s development they’d figure out how to advance their technology to save their species.

The way we are today, we’d argue about what color the paint on a starship should be before we built the starship. We’d be arguing if there would be an appropriate amount of transgender representation on board the ark ship, completely ignoring that puberty blockers 10 years before rendered those folks incapable of reproducing.

Douglas Adams might have been more right than he ever imagined in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. We might really be the Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B.

Thinking along these lines is why I think we’ve missed the window.

We’re so caught up in irrational trivial matters that we’d squabble for 300 years and be squabbling / assigning blame right up to the impact.

Looking at our colleges today, it’s painfully obvious our youth don’t compare to the builders, dreamers, creators, and makers of just 40 years ago.

I suppose that’s why I’m not writing as much. It’s too easy to think, “People might be able to read the words that I write, but they’re not going to understand the meaning.”

Thinking like that makes walking the dog, & tossing stuff out of my life, far more productive activities. I need to get small, agile and light.

Then I’ll be ready for what comes next.

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If you ignore it, It keeps getting worse.

When you see those less fortunate than yourself, perhaps living rough, you think, “They’ve had a rough enough go of things I’ll leave them be.” 

Out of kindness you might make sure that these folks have water, or food. Or you choose not to call the police to have them move on. These days in California, calling the police is a useless exercise if these folks are on public land, or even in your home or vacation home. Turns out squatters have more rights than owners.

I could probably wax politically about this state of affairs. I’ll sum up by saying, Squatters have more rights than property owners because the State doesn’t want private ownership of houses or land. If ownership of houses or property confers no advantage, then people will forego the horrendous expense of home ownership and rent or squat because it’s the fiscally logical thing to do.

Remember Klaus Schwab famously said, “You will own nothing and be happy”

It looks like laws may have been enacted, which bit by bit are moving us toward that supposed utopian end point.

I always ask utopian for who? 

What Schwab is saying essentially is, “The underclasses, will own nothing and be happy with the largess of the Elites who allow them to live as long as their numbers are few and their usefulness is moderate.” In Schwab’s version of utopia the elites are wealthy and own everything, possibly even large swaths of people living as something akin to serfs. 

This has been explored in countless dystopian books and movies. Elysium and Altered Carbon for example. Altered Carbon is a bit more layered about it.

I choose these two works because the dystopian societies explored are not the result of nuclear war. Instead, the society is the result of technological innovation coupled with unbridled greed, and laws which failed to keep up with technological innovation. You might be able to include Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 in my list as well.

There are countless other books, short stories, and movies exploring ‘what if’ scenarios from a cultural standpoint, so my list above is by no means exhaustive.

I digress a bit. I was considering all of this over the past 2 weeks for a number of reasons. One reason has been that the squatter issue is increasingly in my face.

First, it was just a little trash left behind by snow players. A few brightly colored bits of plastic from broken sleds.

Had the snow players been sledding in a designated ares instead of the rocky areas where they were, their sled would have lasted longer.

The Winter always brings this kind of trash, and includes water bottles, dirty diapers, food containers and food waste which can endanger the neighborhoods by attracting large predators.

The Snowplayers have zero concern for any of that. They tend to treat the homeowners here in the mountains as though we’re employees at Disneyland, as if we exist to serve their needs.

They’re here to have fun and we, the residents are supposed to shut up, keep the roads and our driveways clear so they can park, provide bathrooms for them, and allow their children to play in our yards.

Second, was a sleeping bag, blanket and pillow. These items kept moving around indicating that they were being used by someone. Recently, the wind carried these items into the wash bed. At that point they were collected and put in a pile for trash pickup.

Third, was a campsite that lasted a couple of days which was built on an abandoned trailer that has been along my walking path for years. Under the trailer the person or persons stored mats and a few items presumably with the intent to come back for them. Oddly, there was also a rather expensive looking telescope mount left behind as well.

Fourth, Jesse noticed a crack pipe off the access road to the wash, When I called him away from it two stoned out people jumped out of the bushes to protect their pipe.

Neither Jesse or I appreciated being surprised like this and to his credit he remained between me and what he perceived as a threat.

When we returned from our walk the pipe and the people were gone. The next day we found more detritus where we had encountered the druggies.

Fifth, it appears that someone decided to use the wash access road as a dumping spot for difficult to dispose of items. At this point I think it was a single person emptying the bed of their truck.

In this case they left a can of paint. It’s been reported to the flood control folks since they’re supposed to police the lands they’re responsible for. They have a camera on a pole to watch the wash during storms. Perhaps they need to improve the camera so that license plates or photos of perpetrators can be turned over to police.

Sixth, we get to the full encampment. Which popped up and was then abandoned.

This left behind a ton of trash all of which will have to be packed out of the area if the locals clean up the mess. Although again, this is adjacent to the flood control access road and the flood control folks could pull right up with a pickup truck (since they have the keys to the gates,) and easily load the trash.

Seeing the images of colleges & universities across the nation after the pro-terrorism encampments, and the aftermath when the encampments were removed. Then recalling the CHAZ bullshit in Seattle during the “Sumer of mostly peaceful protests,” while encountering the trash left behind by people, on my daily walks.

I noticed a lot of similarity between the two.

I’ve been annoyed more than once in the Winters when people pile out of their Tesla exuding an air of smug self righteousness, claiming their “RIGHT” (which they don’t have,) to play in the snow on private property.

I’ve heard stupid things like “You can’t own the land”, and “We’re just going to be here a few minutes…” as they set up a hibachi grill and light charcoal.

These people have no limits, no shame, and no courtesy. Some of them upon seeing how their batteries have discharged in the 20° F temps get upset to find the nearest charging station is 30 miles away. Then you’re told somehow you’ve failed them because you don’t have a compatible socket for their car and that you should because you have solar panels on the roof. Apparently they think you’re  supposed to give them power for free.

All of that is annoying enough. Then there’s all that they leave behind. The detritus of humanity, the 21st century petroglyphs on any available rock, the cartons, wrappers, boxes, and plastic containers.

Somehow these folks have rationalized their entitled-ness and justify it with virtue signaling, instead of real actions. Their entitled behavior continues even when they’ve been forced into the “lower rungs of society”. 

We’ve had the occasional squatter here in town. But never to this extent and certainly not the numbers along the 1.5 mile stretch of access road next to the wash. The squatters/campers of the past at least did a decent job of cleaning up after themselves. They might have been living rough but they didn’t live like animals who shit in their own nests. 

In years past you’d see a trash bag suddenly appear next to your trash cans on trash pickup day. It was the trash from a squatter/homeless person’s campsite. Back then, we’d look the other way because at least the person or persons had respect for the forest. 

These people today have no clue how to camp. They definitely don’t know they’re supposed to pack out the trash they generate, and they’re filthy. Not necessarily in their person but they camp, trash their campsite, and move to the next clean place, repeating the process.

As I walk and encounter these things I ask myself, “Is this where we’re heading?” 

We all know that the economy is bad, regardless of the LIES being told from podiums in Washington D.C. or elsewhere along the reelection trail.

Will the economy being this bad result in more squatters and camps such as I’ve seen in the past 2 or 3 weeks?

What I’ve seen is only on one side of the wash. Jesse likes to walk the other side of the wash and when there’s no water flowing we’ll make a loop crossing at a high point in the national forest then walking down and back up. Right now we’d have to walk a “U” because I don’t want him to play in the muddy water flowing in the wash.

On the other side of the wash after about 1/4 of a mile, there’s National Forest land. There’s also plenty of flat ground that would be good for camping. My concern is that folks might start cooking over open fires. The evening winds coming up the canyon could spread a campfires’ embers quickly into dry brush.

Since I recently saw a video of a young man testing the fire retardant qualities of his clothing while he was wearing said garments in his bedroom.

I have real concerns that some dumb ass will burn the forest down and perhaps the town with it.

In all honesty, I think that perhaps fire is a technology that is beyond some people these days.

All of this contemplation has led me to this inescapable conclusion. I cannot look the other way. I’ve got to report all that I see to proper authorities for the safety and security of the town and my neighbors.

I feel bad that there are people who are having a rough time. But folks trashing the forest, or squatting wherever they can, if tolerated will become the “Norm”. 

That seems to be a universal truth. If you ignore unacceptable behavior, not only does the first unacceptable behavior become normal, but additional worse behaviors will occur. 

God Help me! I’m going to have become a “Karen”