In the end, everything worked out as planned and hoped. In my first viewing of a total solar eclipse, the food was great the the weather perfect! Huzzah!
It was also surprisingly scary. I know the event isn’t actually a harbinger of doom, but I didn’t expect it to look quite that creepy, with the moon just appearing next to the sun and turning black. An existential moment of personal insignificance.
Anyway, here’s some pics:
You can sort of see a missing bite
Binocular projection
I thought this was a neat screenshot of an augmented reality overlay
Another shot through the filter
Unfiltered and bad auto focus
Party in progress with some apparently needed booty dancing
Last year at this time Canada was on fire and the ashes rained down as a blight upon the land. I like this year better!
I have a fondness for crocuses (…croci?). They are the first of the perennials to bloom in the spring, and they were always out in the yard at the Lubbock house, so childhood nostalgia there. They represent the first marker of seasonal change with a dramatic splash of color – a much appreciated change from the brown and grey winter, and they do so at the most needed moment: the heart of suicide month (or at least they do now anyway, what with climate change and all).
They also indicate a phenologic marker! Time to plant radishes. We don’t really eat many radishes, but as the first cold-weather crop that can be grown, I plant them for the sake of planting them.
Also, the crocus bulbs are planted on the whippet graves, so there’s a bit of an “awwww” factor as the blooms remind me of dogs past. Rest in peace, you naughty dogs.
Liz succumbed to maternal guilt and we spent Thanksgiving at her folks’. I won’t call out my irritations with specific individuals on a public blog (Thanksgiving – right?), but I will point out my seasonal #4 kill when I snuck out to escape. Huzzah!
Another red squirrel. Not much to eat but they sure are easy to clean.
In related news, I fell back to Big Iron’s original bead sight. When I got the shotgun, I was excited and went a little silly on some modifications, most of which turned out okay. But the choke needed to stay at full mod, and the rifle sights proved to take too long for target acquisition. So, tired of missed shots and slow aiming, I resorted back to what worked for me for 20 years. And shortly thereafter, I landed a perfect instant-kill shot on this little guy’s head and upper torso. I’m once again a killing machine.
I’ve often joked that hunting is a hobby with a tough selling point to those who weren’t exposed to it in their youth. The pitch starts to sound a little psychotic not far in, for how would one try to convince an associate to join them in uncomfortable environmental conditions with the end goal of killing wildlife? But I’ve also argued that a lack of violent release is part of the problem behind mass shootings. Human physiology hasn’t changed much since the time that we needed to be ruthless for survival, and it won’t just go away simply because we don’t need it. Were that the case, I would have disabled my libido in high school, too. But we can’t so we need to cope.
And it’s also important that anyone who eats meat understands its source and the cost in terms of animal suffering. Life’s a bitch and nature doesn’t favor us any more than the rest of Earth’s creatures. But we should feel a little guilty.
Guilt and violence. Ailments of the human condition.
So I took the kid hunting for these lessons. To my surprise, she didn’t have too big a problem with it. She isn’t old enough herself to kill, so that’s part of it, but she also wasn’t under any delusions and was genuinely curious about the process. Go figure. Dad was right (as in, me-the dad).
The unusual hunting party now consisted of Joe, my dad, and the Kid.
Joe and the kid trying to flush out rabbits without success
An old man contemplating something
Squirrel 1
Squirrel 2
Alas I was the only killer that day.
I can’t find the exact quote, but my overwhelming success reminded me of A River Runs Through It, when the dad compliments his sons’ fish catches and mentions that God had truly blessed them…before laying down his own much bigger fish and commenting that God blesses some more than others.
I win.
Pan-seared. Still the best way I’ve found to cook squirrel.
And the kid wants to go hunting again. Double win.
