Category: In the neighborhood

Bear sign

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
A witty response to an unnecessary shooting.

Here on this mountain top, oh-oh-oh
I got some wild, wild life — “Wild Wild Life,” Talking Heads

“Wild wild life.” You ain’t alone, David old scout.

Herself recently took off for a few days of thrifting with a gal pal, leaving me and Miss Mia Sopaipilla to hold down the fort.

She didn’t get back in time to see the bear in our back yard.

Miss Mia and I were sound asleep when the bear dropped by to see if we had anything to eat. Which, of course, we did — two bird feeders and three hummingbird feeders.

The racket at the buffet woke me — but not Miss Mia, who’s as deaf as a stump — and as I tumbled out of bed I figured we were dealing with a raccoon, maybe a skunk.

Nope. Bear. Small to medium, and in the early stages of deciding that getting any breakfast out of those polycarbonate tubes would burn more calories than s/he could hope to consume.

“Did you get any pictures?” Herself asked when I texted her the news. Yeah, right, I’m stumbling outside at oh-dark-thirty to snap a selfie with a famished bear. I’ve seen how fast they can run, and how fast I can run. No, thank you, please.

Anyway, social media is full of snaps of hungry, thirsty bears staggering down from the Sandias to plop into water features, snack on unsecured garbage, and in at least one incident, get shot by a knucklehead. The bear survived, though one of her two cubs did not, and the shootist seems short of friends (see a neighbor’s protest sign up top).

Our little bear problem was on me. I’d seen bear scat on a section of trail we run once or twice a week, and we’ve been avoiding that stretch because, hey, that scat doesn’t get there without the bear, amirite?

But I didn’t think to start bringing the feeders in at night. Now I am.

Didn’t keep the skunk out, though.

I heard something cough at stupid-thirty yesterday morning. Wasn’t me. Wasn’t Herself. Miss Mia was sacked out in the half-bath sink on the other side of the house, and she wouldn’t have heard a cough if it was her doing the coughing.

So up I get, grab a light, and crack the vertical blinds. Holy hell. Big ol’ skunk, butt aimed at our bedroom window.

Nope, sorry, not going out for a pic of that, either.

“Bear? Where?” asks our furry little pig in a blanket.

Snakes abound. Definitely a snake year. A dog walker recently told us she’d seen three buzzworms just that morning. One of them was in her yard.

The deer are back too, rolling up and down the arroyos like streetcars working the hills in San Francisco. Bucks with harems, does with speckled fawns.

Quail. Herself and I quit counting after seeing 50 on one recent ride.

And the hummingbirds? Off the charts. It looks like the Battle of Britain out there. We’re burning through sugar faster than three kindergartens and a Dunkin’ next to a cop shop.

Hey … it just occurred to me. Do you think they’re visiting us the way we visit zoos?

“Just look at the poor hairless apes, kids. Nearly extinct. I’d like to say we’ll miss them when they’re gone, but I’d be lying. They’ve certainly had a wild, wild life.”

ICE, ICE, maybe?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
’Sup, SUV?

Paranoia strikes deep, as the fella says.

Coming home from a grocery run yesterday I turned into the cul-de-sac to see a nondescript white Chevy SUV parked in front of the new neighbors’ house.

Didn’t think anything of it at first — new neighbors mean strange vehicles full of inspectors, handymen, and new neighbors.

And then, as I rolled past, three largish individuals in light-blue shirts, dark-blue trousers, and thick black vests stepped out of the vehicle and stalked across the street to the Bulgarians’ place.

I call them Bulgarians because I think that’s their nationality. Can’t quite remember. It’s a multigenerational, multilingual household, and the owners have adult children in the area who are always popping round in a variety of top-shelf vehicles bearing dogs and grandchildren and whatnot.

They’re probably the neighbors we have the least amount of contact with, mostly because they seem a self-contained unit. Describing them to a reporter after a capital-E Event of some sort you’d say something like: “They were quiet. Kept to themselves. We never had any problems with them.”

Still, with one eye on the rear view as I punched the button to raise the garage door, I was thinking what I was going to say to the three largish individuals in light-blue shirts, dark-blue trousers, and thick black vests if they suddenly stopped talking to the Bulgarians, slapped the cuffs on their wrists and the hoods over their heads, and dragged them shrieking into the white SUV.

Time to earn that democratic-socialist street cred, bruh!

So I snapped some quick pix of the SUV, ran the groceries inside, grabbed the binoculars, went back outside, jotted down the deets from the license plate — which was not easy, it being a typically sun-bleached New Mexico plate and barely readable — and just generally made myself real obvious standing there in my driveway three houses down, waiting to see whether I needed to go over there and get my ass kicked for some people I barely know.

And then the discussion ended without violence and the authorities ambled down the cul-de-sac to the next house over. It was then that I saw, stenciled on the back of one dude’s stout black vest, not “ICE,” but “PSA.”

“PSA?” I mumbled to myself. “Public Service Announcement? Prostate-Specific Antigen? Pi Sigma Alpha?”

And then it hit me. Police Service Aide. The unarmed crew that helps the Albuquerque Police Department with traffic control, writing reports on property crime, and other low-risk chores while sworn officers focus on scraping the stiffs off the streets.

And as that neighbor stepped out to speak with the PSA posse I recalled that he does have a problem with the Bulgarians, who have kept a broken-down rust-bucket with a right front flat and weeds growing through the engine compartment parked at the curb for the better part of quite some time, and whose functioning vehicles have been known to take up a fair amount of the limited parking in our little cul-de-sac, occasionally blocking his mailbox and/or making it tough to find a spot for the bins on trash-pickup day.

Well … at least he didn’t call the ICEholes on them. He is a Trumper, after all. And I’m not at Alligator Alcatraz, picking worms out of the chow I can’t eat with my jaw wired shut.

Boneheads

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Schwinning? Eh, not so much.

It was a light turnout for Halloween at El Rancho Pendejo. We handed out just half of the candy I bought, and not even the two neighbor girls showed up.

Thursday was our first truly chilly fall morning — Herself and I had to break out the pants, long sleeves, gloves, and caps to go running — and I finally caved and switched the HVAC from “cool” to “heat.”

Adios, October; buenos dias, November.

Across town, the Not-So-Great Pumpkin was said to be trick-or-treating a smallish crowd of boneheads in a hangar near the Sunport. Let’s just dial that back to “tricking,” shall we? What treats he has are not for such as we.

In any event, I wouldn’t take a fat envelope of Benjamins from his short, greasy meathooks with a set of fireplace tongs and welder’s gloves. The Secret Service used to take a deep professional interest in counterfeiting, but I expect they’re too busy making sure his fat ass only has the one hole in it to frisk him for funny money.

And like I said, treats? Fuhgedaboudit. We’re waiting to see how many suckers have fallen for his tricks again.

In a town this size

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

Clouds grace the September skies.

Shortly after we settled here back in September 2014 a handyman told me that The Duck! City was a much smaller town than one might think on short acquaintance.

On the surface, it seems a lot like Bibleburg or Tucson: All three are sprawling, medium-sized Western cities dependent upon military installations, universities, and tourism, with transient, ever-changing populations.

But dig a little deeper and The Duck! City feels more like Pueblo, where some folks really put down roots.

I don’t know that I ever met a native Tucsonan, and born-and-bred Bibleburgers were likewise rare. But in Pueblo, and The Duck! City, it’s easy to meet people whose attachment to location runs generations deep.

Longevity breeds networking, and this can work for you or against you. I took the handyman to be hinting that outlandish douchebaggery gets broadcast faster than a triple murder on local TV.

More often it’s a case of meeting some rando in the course of doing a bit of business and finding out that he or she knows everyone you know, and probably a whole lot better, too.

This was the case with the landscaper we engaged to tackle our back yard. North Valley guy, of an age with meself, and in one of our first chats it turned out that he knew more than a few of the guys I used to race bikes with when we lived in Fanta Se back in the late Eighties and early Nineties.

Then last night we’re chatting about the final touches to the project and learned that his mom saw the same doctor as Herself the Elder, lived in the same assisted-living home (albeit a few years earlier), and passed on there, just like HtE.

He knew the owner of the place, and the staff, and also was familiar with the operator of HtE’s previous digs, noting with discretion that he decided against housing his mom there.

A small town indeed. In a town this size, there’s no place to hide. Everywhere you go, you meet someone you know.

Bogey over ’Burque

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

Coloring between the lines.

This dude did not get shot down by the Pentagon, though his flight path took him dangerously close to the super-secret Mad Dog Media Institute for Gratuitous Bloggery.

• Saturday update: Jeebus. Now the Blue Zoomies have shot down another floater, this time over Canada. This is a slightly more expensive version of the old flaming bag of dogshit on the stoop. Whoever wants one is getting an up-close-and-personal look at a U.S. fighter aircraft that entered service about the same time as my Subaru.