Socialism in the desert

June 8, 2024June 8, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

Hot times in the old town, as the fella says. Yesterday’s high of 100° set a record for June 7. Normal is 89°.

But what’s normal these days?

The mule deer are slow-walking their rounds from rose bush to birdbath, lingering at feeders provided by some well-intentioned animal lovers up the road a ways. Wandering from this handout to that, the deer startle motorists in blind corners and make high-speed descents on the old two-wheeler a little more thrilling.

Seven of them were working our cul-de-sac last night, no doubt with designs on the neighbors’ new peach tree, which is enclosed in the sort of stout wire cage that should be restricting the movements of Alex Jones and Rudy the Mook, preferably in some public place so passersby can poke them with sharp sticks. Jones and the Mook, not the peach tree or deer.

Over at Desert Oracle Radio Ken Layne has his own musings on heat and wildlife as he settles in for another sweaty shift dishing up his Joshua Tree jive.

The days are long and hot and hazy. Another summer to endure. … It just eats at your nerves, this kind of weather, and what’s worse is you know that the hot weather is another month or two away. What’s bearable when you’re alone under a cottonwood in the breeze is absolute torment when you’re trying to get yourself from point A to point B and see ugliness all around. Dead eyes behind the cracked windshields of erratically piloted vehicles; the never-ending trash piles; empty strip malls of crumbling stucco and blank plastic signs. Long stretches of highway with nothing but human-built desolation. The ragweed’s coming up too. Best to stay on the property in the company of the creatures who survive this aesthetic apocalypse.

Layne provides a bit of heat relief for his neighbors. Young rock squirrels have taken to hanging around the water bowl he leaves out for the birds, one of them trying and failing to surf the ice cubes he includes from time to time. A cottontail dozes on the doormat. The bobcat, coyotes, and mountain lions he leaves to fend for themselves.

He has mule deer, too, hugging whatever shade they can find, under a willow or juniper. Doesn’t mention any peach trees or rose bushes.

Should we be feeding and watering these critters? Well … what we call “our” property was theirs first, after all. Is it unreasonable to ask that we contribute a little something to the common good?

This seems to be Layne’s thinking. And ours, too. We maintain two bird feeders and three hummingbird feeders, and don’t holler copper on the deer ambling through the yard. Noblesse oblige? Share and share alike? From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs? Here’s the Desert Oracle again:

Now these rock squirrels are desert squirrels, squirrels of the Southwest. They don’t even need water, beyond what they get from the various seeds, grasses, fruits and bugs that they eat. But these young squirrels, they are fools for cold water. They just hang around that bowl for half the day. And now I cannot replace that bowl with a proper birdbath even if I wanted to, because what will the squirrels and the bunnies do?

Spring training

May 8, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

It was a good week on the bike.

Actually, make that “bikes.”

The red Steelman Eurocross, Jones, and Sam Hillborne all enjoyed some quality springtime during the week, and the New Albion Privateer got the nod on Sunday.

Nothing outlandish, mind you. I’m not training for anything; just trying to avoid collapsing into a smelly heap of bone splinters and bad ideas. We’re talking 90 minutes per outing, or thereabouts, with a thousand or so feet of vertical gain, and an average speed that wouldn’t impress anyone, especially me.

I’ve never been what you would call fast, but I’ve been faster.

“Listen up, you kids, don’t make me stop this tree and come back there.”

Still, who cares? The idea is to be above ground and moving around, amirite? You know what my dad was doing when he was my age? Nothing! Because he had been dead for seven years.

So when Herself and I rolled out for our Sunday ride we were focused not on heart rate, average speed, or mileage, but on how many Gambel’s quail we might see (that would be a half-dozen, plus a couple deer).

Back at the ranch we have hummingbirds re-enacting the Battle of Midway around our three feeders, finches of various types bellied up to two tubes of birdseed while the doves prowl the ground for dropped morsels, and a northern flicker feeding babies bunkered up in a dead limb on our backyard maple.

And our young Chinese pistache tree is coming along, too.

It’s starting to get warm, so I expect we’ll start seeing buzzworms soon. But it’s OK. Every garden has its snake. Just steer clear of the fruit stand.

1:09

March 29, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

Good thing I stopped to snap this pic of the Cateye showing 69 minutes (1:09). I’da kept on keepin’ on, I’da run headlong into a herd of deer.

Huzzah! Our long national nightmare is over.

Lousy shot, but I didn’t want to startle the deer. A couple good bounds and they’re in auto traffic on Camino de la Sierra, which is much more dangerous than a trail with one 69-year-old dude on a bicycle.

I finally managed to squeeze in that birthday ride.

You will be astounded to learn that I managed my age in … minutes.

In keeping with the house motto, “Picturae vel id numquam evenit” (“Pix or It Never Happened”), I took a snap of the Cateye for documentation.

Now, as Feats of Strength go, this is … well, a tad feeble.

In my defense, however, I will note that I was riding a rigid steel drop-bar 29er on spiky desert singletrack — didn’t even bother to check the tire pressure before heading out! — and at one point nearly shot into a couple dozen deer browsing lazily along a narrow singletrack descent bordered with sharp rocks and cacti.

And still! 69, amirite? Winning!

Ruminating

April 14, 2022 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

“We’d like some port and cigars, if you don’t mind.”

We have visitors again. At least I don’t have to cook for this lot. Our back yard is their commissary. Also, their latrine.

They finally got on the neighbors’ last nerve the other day, waltzing in through an open gate and noshing on some choice bits of this and that, so we’re beefing up perimeter security here in the cul-de-sac.

This will require blood, toil, tears, and sweat. Also, probably, money. A mule deer can sail over an 8-foot barrier if there’s something to eat on the other side. We don’t have any 9-foot barriers handy, so in hopes of avoiding a pricey trip to Lowe’s we’re trying to dazzle ’em with bullshit. What the hell, it works on people.

Meanwhile, the deer had a high old time, strolling around the neighbors’ terraced gardens, leaping back and forth across our shared wall, and chasing each other around and about like very large hooved puppies. We should’ve shot some video — video cameras we got in spades — but we were having too much fun watching.

Deer me

February 16, 2022 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

They’re baaaaaaaaaaack. …

They’ve always been here, of course. They leave evidence all over the yard. But it’s rare to catch them eating our foliage in broad daylight.

With aridification at a level not seen since mule deer and Native A’s had the run of the ranch around here, plus a mountain lion said to be working the Elena Gallegos Open Space, it’s no surprise a deer or two or three decides to take five here in the Compound, munch a bit of lawn with a side of birdseed.

I was exploring a bit myself yesterday. There’s an arroyo slicing through Bobcat Boulevard NE that I’ve been meaning to check out, and since I was aboard the Co-Motion Divide Rohloff with its 50mm tires and 19-inch low I dove into it on a whim.

It started out as your typical sandy wash, then quickly narrowed to some nice twisty hardpack. A friend had told me it was possible to ride it to Foothills Trail 365, but with fauxdobe haciendas on either side I was wondering if I might wind up on someone’s patio, having a pointed property-rights debate with their Rottweiler.

Nope. My friend was right. After negotiating a few rocky bits and some old snow and ice, I found myself on 365, near Trail 230, an part of EG’s open space that I know well. So I cut over to the ranger station, dove down Simms, and retraced my route to the arroyo to ride it in the other direction, toward Tramway.

This section of the wash stays broad and loose until reaching a concrete apron that leads past Little Cloud Park and under Tramway. Hang a right just before the dropoff and you can ride another diversion channel back under Tramway and pick up the north-south bike path near Paseo del Norte.

It goes without saying that if you like riding diversion channels you want to indulge your whim in dry weather, unless you also enjoy flume rides to the Rio Grande. It seems we have plenty of dry in the long-range forecast.