Paying homage this Halloween I will howl one of nature’s prettiest and deadliest masked predators. If you and your children are out in suburbs or rural flat-lands costumed to the max trick-or-treating, leave your pet insect or little pet reptile safely at home! There is a little cute bird out that would cast nicely into even the most horrific Stephen King movie. I do not speak of your typical vampire bats or Edgar Allen Poe’s raven. The Aves Lanius, better known as the “butcher bird” or Shrike, impales and proudly displays its victims out in the open for all to see; well, sort of. But do not let the Shrike’s dainty behavior or harsh song fool you. When it is on the hunt, its killer instinct can rival many a Jurassic carnivore.
Beware! And don’t dress-up as an alien grasshopper or mousy-looking short-eared rabbit…or else!
These birds are remarkably conniving and sinister. They hunt insects of all sizes, mice, lizards; even small birds are not safe in their lethal beaks. Then, as if the gruesome scene had been meticulously planned, their crazed serial-killer DNA find the nearest meat-hook to impale their meal…or worse, merely for show to attract a mate!
Now I ask you, what better scarier freakier creature is more suited for Halloween?
Many Shrikes do not possess the strength in their talons like a true raptor. However, this little cold-blooded killer does possess a strong hooked bill to grip the flesh, and a notch or tooth at its tip in order to sever the spinal-cord of its captive. When it is ready to prepare the brutal feast, it will push the prey down a thorn or barbed-wire and as the video above shows, begin ripping into the victim’s flesh. I ask has this bird been watching any of the movie-series Saw and its sequels. Or perhaps those movies and others are inspired by this natural ornithological predator.
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I know this, my squeamish stomach has never liked Hollywood blood and gore during Halloween or anytime of the year. Hell, in the first Halloween movie I almost lost it when Michael hung that man on the kitchen wall with the large cooking knife! I can sort of handle the Shrike’s behavior; it is a matter of survival and continuation of the species. And isn’t that genetic-wiring in many species here on Earth…including humans? Ahhhhhhhh!
Care to share your homage to Halloween? Shrike or shriek…who or what is your scary Halloween tale?
This will be a news story told the next several days a thousand times, praised a hundred different ways, and likely gone viral on social media. This last Tuesday in Decatur, Georgia a simple office clerk at an elementary school, full of students, treated a psychologically unstable gunman as a human being and averted a potentially bloody all too familiar school massacre. The risks that Antoinette Tuff had put herself can only be described as temporarily super-human — the right person, with the right background, in the right place at the right time — possibly saving many more young innocent lives.
If you haven’t yet listened or watched the news footage on all major networks, then do it. It is well worth the time. Here’s the CNN link: click here.
This story and lady hits a very personal nerve and flashback with me. I have been in (and in some ways am still in today) practically the exact same situation Ms. Tuff found herself. My personal story with a mentally unstable gunman can be read here: What Was I Thinking?
I am also an elementary-middle school teacher. I am a brother to a psychiatric sister who often either gets off her psych-meds or is forced off her psych-meds due to clinical restrictions, bureaucratic tape or “economic policy.” Our local state hospital and nearby meds-clinic just recently had a woman refused her psych prescriptions (reasons unknown to me) then left the clinic emotionally distraught in her car and crashed it 3-blocks away, killing herself and injuring others at the four-way red-light intersection. I am also a former 3 1/2 year employee of a Psych-A&D hospital’s Intake Office or Crisis Center/Office. I do indeed have personal experience with many situations like Ms. Tuff experienced, including her own divorce — for me two divorces — and thoughts of suicide by her self and her gunman; although in my personal experience the suicide was accomplished.
So watching and listening to Ms. Tuff’s situation and 911 call, choked me up and touched a sensitive emotional nerve with me…to put it mildly.
I have three points or questions I want to present to my readers and followers:
Did Ms. Tuff’s demeanor and treatment of the gunman de-escalate his emotional and mental instability, or did the gunman eventually recognize his own insane behavior?
How far should individuals or society allow mental psych patients (on or off their meds) to throw tantrums of highly inappropriate behavior, even violence, to get what they want?
Given that the majority of mental psych patients (and often their families) cannot function perfectly in society or jobs/careers, WHO should foot their treatment bills? Who suffers most when people like this gunman snap?
With these questions I hope to draw attention to America’s increasingly social dysfunctional problem-solving systems and education, as well as how best to address them. Do we keep locking them up? They’ve done that hundreds of times with my sister with little improvement other than temporary band-aids.
Please let me hear your comments, thoughts and feelings. Because one day you may find yourself face-to-face with the same type of gunman. What would you do in Ms. Tuff’s situation?
For the last four weeks I’ve been quite busy. During this time I have set to one side the task of blogging; it had to take a lower priority. And as is typical in life there are sometimes distractions or obstacles that get in the way of things we want to do, like blogging. I have had such a week; more like several weeks. Each time I wanted to continue and finish the humorous post I had started and planned for publishing days ago, life would throw a curve ball. Seven out of ten times I am able to easily manage the distractions or setbacks. But as many of you may know, life doesn’t always cooperate with our wishes and plans.
There are two significant factors that every single person alive must address and manage at some point in their life: family and aging elders, or death. The timing of both these factors is almost never convenient nor are they always pleasant when it is a family member. Family has the distinct uncomfortable privilege of reaching too often the deepest parts of our heart and soul. For the last 31-years I have had the “privilege” of witnessing my sister’s chemical-addictions, soon exacerbated with psychological issues, burden my mother and her usually huge warm energetic heart with every passing year – with every single perpetual relapse by my sister every month to three months – take off two, five years of my mom’s health and vitality each time. We have been a three-member family since my father’s suicide in 1990, and guess who is always counted on (by default) for strength, understanding, and eventually some comic relief?
I have to admit…it gets really fucking exhausting.
For the last thirty-plus years I have done a LOT of screaming; screaming at the sky, screaming at the walls, screaming at my dead father wherever he is, and screaming at my three different therapists who’ve had the “privilege” of helping me through the bad times.
But those screaming sessions cannot compare to the decibel levels I’ve screamed (mostly in my head) over and over when I listen to alcohol-drug support groups and leaders talk about “The Disease.”
I have no hesitation in confessing that I am apparently on the outside looking in. There are support groups for family members of chemical-addicts that not only offer emotional support, but also educate family members of addicts (often the issues of enabling and co-dependency) how to manage themselves around an addict’s pathology. What is taught and what is often embraced by these groups, sometimes makes me want to scream with my already strained exhausted vocal cords!
Is it right…is it best to give, to surrender so much power and control to the disease?
If I examine my sister’s 31-plus years of addiction and never-ending relapses, I would wonder. Fuck, who am I kidding? I do wonder…but from a very frustrating “disadvantaged” viewpoint. So I continue to scream, apparently until I have no vocal cords left to scream because apparently this fucking “disease” will never go away. Apparently it can never be cured, only managed until the day she dies.
Is that the way it will always be for the brothers and mothers of addicts? I have to accept it? I really have a serious fucking problem with that white flag! I have always had that problem, which for the last 15-20 years has sometimes caused my already aging, tired compassionate mother perhaps more stress than comfort and hope! And that makes me want to scream more!
When is passiveness or surrender unhealthy?
After three months in counseling soon after my father’s suicide, my therapist, with tears rolling down her cheeks said “You are one of the most remarkable Survivors I have ever counseled.” The four major life events I was forced to deal with in 1990 was blowing her away, let alone her clinical concern for my mental-emotional health. She confessed to me years later that she had considered diagnosing me with major depression with suicidal precautions. Apparently statistics show that immediate family members of suicide victims have an increased likelihood of suicide themselves. I understood all too well that concept play out on 9/11 when watching people jump from the top-floor windows of the World Trade Center towers to their death — sometimes it just seems to be too unbearable. I have felt their pain, but then I scream back at life with my best warrior face.
Laurel Land Cemetery where my Dad is buried & Mom has her plot. She & I have also discussed where to put my 49-yr old sister.
It seems with each passing month and each passing year a survivor-of-suicide has an exponentially greater chance of becoming a uniquely advantaged super-human, or so the clinical data shows. So what does it mean when one is also forced to support an aging 73-year old elderly mother – cut short of ten happier years by a pathological relapsing addict-daughter – who physically and emotionally has either reached or is damn close to her life-limit? How much are we supposed to endure? How much are we obligated to endure my sister’s 31-years of repeated insatiable relapses which are always around the corner ready to devour? How many more damaged exhausted victims have to fall in her wake?
I am one extremely pissed-off brother (again) as I watch my sister – who consciously chose to consume those chemicals as a teenager – inflict again on my undeserving mother, inflict again on her undeserving AA and NA support friends, and inflict again on society as a whole, who with their tax dollars or donations throw away give and give, and give to a disease that can only be partly managed with unpredictable results…always.
This is the way it has to be?
Signed angry, exhausted “Survivor” brother and son who doesn’t feel very super-human!
After many years of practice, there are certain types who have mastered the art of shit-pushing and some who have not. A quick menagerie of the art…
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One of my favorite caught-in-the-act corrections: “I wasn’t kissing your wife Sir. I was whispering in her mouth!” Then find the nearest exit.
Two industries that most everyone would agree shovel out “pretty” bullshit on a regular basis have to be financial investment companies and sales personnel. Hello Ma’am, you will be amazed by this latest iPhone…a must have! Just $299 or $39 for 48 months for FAST 4G speeds and a ba-jillion apps you’ll probably never use! Or Sir, you are going to be blown away by our new-fangled Hedge-that-Risk-Away fund with a simple monthly direct-debit from your checking account, plus initiation fees, handling, commission, and risk-management fees!
Sound familiar?
I could never be an aggressive sales rep and survive unless I was selling donated organs to terminally ill patients and their families. But there are some who can make the stinkiest bullshit smell like a rose garden. And then there are those whose art is necessary, beneficial yet tragic.
The Clean-up Crew
Imagine living in a community that has no trash pickup and disposal, running indoor water/plumbing, no dishwashers, and no washing machines. Would you cleanup after yourself, in every manner? Would you cleanup after others, in every way?
Clean-up crew hard at work
Next time you are served a meal you cringe over, think twice about it because there are insects that would have a feast on your waste. Actually, they do feast…and not just after humans. Wherever there is fecal waste, there are most likely dung beetles. They are life’s natural cleanup crew and they are remarkably resourceful. They are tumblers, they are spelunkers, and they are dwellers. They make the most of human or animal waste.
Dung beetles are a critical part of nature’s biocycle. By eating and burying feces, dung beetles recycle vital nutrients into the soil and bury waste that otherwise attracts disease-carrying pests such as flies. They also help new trees grow. For example, in the rain forest, monkeys eat fruit where seeds are sometimes undigested. When the dung beetle arrives at the aftermath, it packs up the feces into a ball, seeds and all, rolls it away and buries it. Soon after up sprouts a new tree! On a given night, one dung beetle can roll and bury up to 250 times its own weight in shit! Imagine that workout.
But these hardworking necessary beetles don’t have it easy.
Shit-pushing Is No Walk in the Park
Every morning as part of my workout, I briskly walk 2-miles; one mile down, one mile up. The hilltop I live on has about a 23-degree steep grade up or down for about 70-80 yards. As I’m heading down the hill one morning, I notice in the middle of the drive a dung beetle perilously rolling his dung-ball across the cement. Every so often he struggled to keep his dung-ball from turning down the steep hill. Watching this beetle toil for his hard-earned shit, I couldn’t help but sympathize with his adversity. I watched in amazement and suspense. What would come of this beetle’s precarious effort? Would he succeed and beat the odds? Or would I be witness to horrific shit and beetle carnage? The cliff-hanger moment was building with every revolution of his dung-ball.
The hill of dung carnage; blood & beetle parts edited out to protect the weak-stomachs.
He crossed the midway point of the drive still pumping those hind-legs over his neatly packed shit. Five more feet to go. Can he do it? Four feet. I find myself cheering him on. Three and a half. Then he and his shit-ball hit a bump. Should I intervene like the hand-of-God, showing mercy and compassion for the shit this beetle has put up with? NO FRICKING WAY! And then as my questions of shit-miracle-ing lingered, everything went south….literally. I began laughing my ass off. Everything was out of control. The “wheels came off” but the rolling kept going, and going, and going! If Herbert Morrison of the Hindenburg disaster had been there he would have screamed “Oh the Bee-manity!“
Sorry. I should be more compassionate. I should pay homage to this epic dung-beetle’s demise. Let us bow our heads.
He was a brave shit artist. The bravest I had ever seen. He hung on to his shit-ball for five, maybe six revolutions down that hill-of-no-return! Finally, the cruel speed and momentum….perhaps a killer dizzying headache too separated this warrior from his meal. He tumbled two or three times behind that ball before coming to a most abrupt end. In his never-say-die attitude, he scrambled to gain his senses, and immediately went searching for his runaway shit-ball. But it was too late. I watched that ball roll down the hill…way down the hill about 50 yards – two state lines in beetle distance – before bouncing off the drive into the ditch and disappearing in the grass. It was gone. Done. This dung-expert had lost his shit.
* * * * * * * * * *
As utterly hilarious as I found this dung-beetle carnage to be, I had to find the teaching moment: what is the moral of this story?
No matter how good or pretty smelling it is…don’t push your shit up hill. You might lose it and it will come rolling back on you.
What moral of the story can you apply? Let me hear them all.
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Footnote – on a cool etymology note, it has been recently discovered that these dung-beetles navigate their dung-balls by the stars in the Milky Way galaxy; their GPS if you will. Click here.
Be glad your nose is on your face, not pasted on some other place, for if it were where it is not, you might dislike your nose a lot.
Imagine if your precious nose were sandwiched in between your toes, that clearly would not be a treat, for you’d be forced to smell your feet.
Your nose would be a source of dread were it attached atop your head, it soon would drive you to despair, forever tickled by your hair.
Within your ear, your nose would be an absolute catastrophe, for when you were obliged to sneeze, your brain would rattle from the breeze.
Your nose, instead, through thick and thin, remains between your eyes and chin, not pasted on some other place– be glad your nose is on your face!
“Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face” by Jack Prelutsky
Reflection. Today is a day not so ordinary for me. Today I find myself in silent reflection over a collage of memories spanning five decades. Ugh, I said it. A jagged horse-pill in some ways, but in others a medal of honor. A question I sometimes ask myself is this, “Would you change anything?” Before marriage, having children, and then going through a painful divorce, my youthful perfectionist side would answer abso-frickin-lutely!
Yet, as I reminisce there are so many things I would not change. And upon this realization, I sit….quietly and peacefully, and honestly a wee-bit uncomfortably. It is such a strange bag of life I’ve collected filled with (but not full) a plethora of emotions. I am finding on this familiar date that as I reach inside to pick what I want to keep, I honestly do not want to discard anything, no matter how painful the memory might be. Why is that? Does that make me masochistic? Why would I want to make my bag “heavier”? And then it hits me.
My father, as much as he was a mentally tough ex-marine perfectionist, one day taught me in his own imperfect way a painfully invaluable life lesson. I believe I was eleven or twelve years old. I was mowing, trimming hedges, and edging our neighbor’s yard while they were away. I was using their lawn equipment because if I had used our lawn equipment, Dad was going to charge me a rental-fee. The edger my neighbors owned was the single-cylinder side-mounted blade on two wheels you would carefully guide between the concrete and the edge of the grass. I had never used one of these machines. When I finished edging the entire yard, I looked around the machine for the power-switch. Nothing. Not any sort of button or lever that even resembled a power-switch. Placing the still running machine in a safe position, I went to get Dad for help.
When we returned to the running edger, he pointed to and explained that the L-shaped metal lever next to the exposed spark-plug cut the electrical circuit running through the engine. He told me push and hold the lever onto the spark-plug and the engine will simply die. Wow! Easy enough, so I reached down put my finger on the metal lever, pushed it onto the spark-plug….and WHAM! The most violent electrical shock I had ever experienced in my life! My arms were shaking and trying to seize up. In utter astonishment I looked up at my Dad wondering…what did I do wrong? He told me again, push the metal lever onto the spark-plug and hold it there until the engine dies. I think to myself I haven’t corrected anything I did before. But out of total trust and obedience for my father, I pushed it down again….longer this time to try and kill that engine! WHAM but now for 3-4 more violent seconds! In tears I look up again at my Dad, shocked that his instructions were not working and more shocked that he was repeating the same instructions….”Turn it off” he said. Again, I tried and again the same result but for a second or two longer. I am now bawling. My hands and arms are quivering on the verge of seizure. I am scared shitless and I want the pain to just go away.
Calmly and compassionately my father finally changed his instruction and pointed to my other hand, “Do you see where your other hand is? See what it is holding?” Through my tear-drenched eyes I looked over and noticed I was holding the metal part of the handle bars. I was completing the circuit from my hand, to the lever, through the spark-plug, through the mounted engine, through those handle bars, into my other hand and into my body. “Move your hand onto the plastic” he said “and then cut the engine off.” It stopped almost immediately.
For the next hour or so I hated my father. I wanted to pound on him in anger. But with each passing year and each passing decade, I understand more and more how unimaginably valuable that very painful lesson was for me. It was painful not only in respecting the lethal power of electricity, but perhaps more importantly for making me realize that painful lessons have their merit too. As I reflect back on this familiar day all the beautiful memories I’ve been gifted to experience, I can be equally grateful for the painful lessons and memories — in their weird strange ways they make my cup half full, never half empty. After everything I’ve experienced and everywhere I’ve been these last five decades, I am quite certain that my life could be so much worse. I am grateful for what it has brought me and what is still to come.
I have zero expectation that anything I ever say will end someone’s belief in their God. Not my goal or purpose. That alone belongs to the individual. ~ Zoe
'Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it' - Terry Pratchett
Paying homage this Halloween I will howl one of nature’s prettiest and deadliest masked predators. If you and your children are out in suburbs or rural flat-lands costumed to the max trick-or-treating, leave your pet insect or little pet reptile safely at home! There is a little cute bird out that would cast nicely into even the most horrific Stephen King movie. I do not speak of your typical vampire bats or Edgar Allen Poe’s raven. The Aves Lanius, better known as the “butcher bird” or Shrike, impales and proudly displays its victims out in the open for all to see; well, sort of. But do not let the Shrike’s dainty behavior or harsh song fool you. When it is on the hunt, its killer instinct can rival many a Jurassic carnivore.
The Professor's Convatorium 