Mr. Black

He’s gone now… it happened several weeks ago… I haven’t wanted to talk about it until now. 

 He came to the door of the ranch house several years ago, skinny and scruffy and VERY vocal.  I had seen him in the fields out from the porch that fall.  I watched him from the porch with great interest as he stalked mice in the field and snakes and frogs down near the pond.  He was obviously on his own and foraging for food. 

Why he came to the ranch I don’t know, your guess is as good as mine.  He was probably abandoned on the county road that runs along two sides of my place.  I don’t know what people are thinking when they load an unwanted pet in the car and travel out to the countryside, open the door and then drive off, leaving the poor little feller alongside a strange road never to be seen again.  What kind of person can have no conscience about an act such as that?  I’ve never understood it, but I know it happens all over the country.

Anyway, Boss cat, Leo, had been watching him too, and was none too happy when I invited him in that freezing winter evening.  I feed him and put him in the guest bath that evening, putting out a towel on the floor to sleep on and a small extra hand me down litter box.  I closed the door and left him there for the night, not wanting to aggravate Leo’s testosterone level any more than I had to.  I decided to call him Blackie for obvious reasons. 

The day after he arrived, Leo only attacked him twice, which proved to be his minimum for an initiation to the ranch household.

In the days that followed, Leo was relentless and seemed doggedly intent (excuse the cross species of my expression) on establishing his dominant position, as “Ranch Boss Cat” at the very pentacle of the ranch pecking order.  

As time went by, I changed our new friend’s name to… Mr. Black… out of respect for his courage, often holding his ground against these frequent onslaughts.  In time the two learned to live together without physical altercations, but they never became true friends.  Mr. Black became the head mouser and was far more adapted at that occupation than Leo.  He showed superior stalking skills and displayed the patience of Job.  I would often go to bed at night with him prone on the kitchen floor not moving a muscle for hours while waiting for an unaware and unsuspecting mouse to appear from under the cabinets or from behind the refrigerator. 

 Mr. Black is waiting in heaven for us up by the rainbow bridge now, he contracted feline leukemia last month and was put to sleep to avoid a long and painful illness.  I can see him there passing the time waiting for us, stalking those heavenly fields as he once did here at the ranch. 

We all miss his presence here, even Leo seems restless and I’ve seen him roam from room to room looking for his former adversary.  Goodbye Mr. Black, we really do miss you.

©2009 Country Common Sense. All Rights Reserved.

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Post tags: Cats, feline leukemia, Mr. Black

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When I built the ranch some years back, I built a full length, deep, covered porch on the front of the house.   It provides wonderful shade and protection from the rain and hot sun, and the house is situated so that if there’s any wind at all, it blows the full length of the porch.  In the summer in Texas, wind is a good thing.

Now the whole point of having this wonderful porch is to take advantage of the outdoors and nature — so over the years I’ve added bird feeders and bird houses — and hummingbird feeders. 

The first year or two I was in the ranch, I’d see a hummingbird every now and then, so I bought a feeder and some food, and put it out.   And I started reading up on hummingbirds and their likes and dislikes, and their habitat and migratory patterns.  They’re fascinating little creatures who spend the winters in southern Mexico and return to the U.S. each spring  through Texas, heading as far north as Canada.  (Sounds like some people I know.)

Well, I put out my hummingbird feeder, and the first year I’d see a hummingbird every now and then.  The next summer I saw a few more but still not a lot.  Then came the third summer, and it was unbelievable, there were hummingbirds everywhere!  And it’s been like that ever since.

Somehow those hummingbirds passed the word, and the ranch is now a regular stop on the hummingbird trail!  You see them in the mornings and late afternoon/early evening, right now I’m sitting on the porch and there must be around 30 to 40 hummers.  And of course I have more than one feeder now.

If you sit quietly and watch, the hummerbirds put on a grand show, they zip up and down and circle the ranch building and chase each other and buzz me and zzzzip this way and zipppp that way and have a ball.  And the babies are so little, and they come and eat and zzzzzip, to.  It’s impossible to describe and wonderful to watch.  And all for the price of a few feeders and some sugar water.

©2009 Country Common Sense. All Rights Reserved.

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Post tags: bird feeders, hummingbird trail, hummingbirds

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July 4th Fireworks

Summer is here with a vengeance, it’s been over 100 degrees almost every day for the last several weeks, and there’s no end in sight.  Mowing the ranch yard has gone from a pleasure to a chore because of the heat — early mornings the grass is covered with heavy dew, and by the time it evaporates, the heat has begun. 

And dry, it’s so dry in Texas in the summer, especially in July and August.  It’s against the law in most cities to set off fireworks because of the fire hazard caused by our dry summers, so for the 4th of July people go to friend’s homes in the country to set off their fireworks.  It’s fun, and the little kid in all of us loves it, but as a property owner it’s scary, it’s so easy for a drifting spark or runaway bottle rocket to set a roof or field on fire. 

So tonight I’ll enjoy my barbecue with friends, and I’ll enjoy the neighborhood fireworks, and I’ll have my long hose hooked up, ready for sparks.  And I’ll be thankful — for our country and our freedoms, for friends and family, for good hoses, and for the metal roof I had put on the ranch house a couple of years ago!!  Happy 4th of July to all, and God Bless you, your family, and America!!

©2009 Country Common Sense. All Rights Reserved.

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Post tags: fireworks, July 4th, ranch

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My first old car was a 1941 Willis Jeep, Army version.  We owned several hundred acres in East Texas, about an hour’s drive from Dallas, and Leo, my Pop, owned a plumbing business in town at the time.  He worked hard at his business and then loved to play cowboy at our country place on weekends, it was his way to get away from the stresses of a business in the city.  I was 12 or 13 then and learned to love our weekends and summers there.  I first learned to drive on old cattle tracks and dirt roads on and near our place. 

My first motorized vehicle was a Red Comet motor scooter Pop bought for me to get around the place on when I got tired of riding my horse.  It was so low to the ground the engine soon got clogged with the red, iron-rich dirt and dust from those old country roads.  We would clean out the dust and grime, oil it up again and off I’d go.  As our cleaning and maintenance sessions came closer and closer together, Pop realized the scooter was not designed for the kind of abuse I could inflict on a vehicle. 

This was in the early fifties, a short time after the war, and there was a glut of surplus items of all kinds, so Pop soon located what he thought was the perfect vehicle for a son with a bit of a wild side – a surplus Army jeep with 4-wheel drive.  My friends, Jerry Don and Domard, and I would pile in that old Jeep and spend some of the best days our lives whizzing up and down the East Texas countryside.

A man who worked for Pop on our place part time, doctoring cows and cutting cord wood, spotted a hornet’s nest in a clump of mesquite trees in the middle of one of the pastures one day.  It was a huge nest and he was concerned they would swarm and attack some of our newborn calves.  After hearing him and Pop talk about it, my friends and I decided we could take care of the problem for them and have a little fun at the same time. 

We went off down to the barn and found several old mops with broken handles.  Back then we kept a 55-gallon barrel of kerosene for lamps and cook stoves, and also used it for other things around the place, like cleaning up broken motor scooters.  Anyway, we got some kerosene in a bucket and soaked those mops good with it.  Off we went in the jeep (open cockpit and all).  The plan was to drive straight through the mesquite trees (mostly big bushes) and swat the hornet’s nest with those kerosene soaked mops, knocking it down and killing the hornets with the kerosene. 

Well, best laid plans don’t always work out just as you picture them.  Many years before, our land had been farm land, and a farmer had plowed his deep furrows for planting just on the other side of those mesquite trees.  Of course, we didn’t know they were there when we went flying through the trees, whacking and swatting at that hornet’s nest. 

Everything was going just as planned, we had successfully knocked down the nest, and then we exited the other side and hit those furrows running across the field.  First thing I knew, that jeep became a wild bucking horse, and it bucked all of us out and continued by itself across the field.  All those hornets we had just evicted were mad as blazes and looking for vengeance and we boys were running all directions, swatting and yelling and trying to get away from them. 

It took a while to get over those stings, but I’ll never forget that day with my friends and that Jeep, my very first car.

©2009 Country Common Sense. All Rights Reserved.

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Post tags: 1941 Willis Jeep, Army surplus jeep, East Texas, first car, first old car

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    Last spring I noticed some unusual activity on the porch at the ranch.  I had mounted an old rusty iron hook to hold a round or two of roping rope next to the door. Then I decorated it by attaching an old stirrup to the bottom.  The whole thing, rope and all, was more decorative than functional.

In April I think it was, every time I would step out the door, I would catch the blur of movement and sound of wings flapping to my left.  On closer examination I saw that a bird had been busy setting up residence in the old stirrup.  It obviously was not a finished product at that point.  There were the usual strings and threads and collected weeds all wound together to form a nest, and there was also the beginnings of a roof being carefully shaped by using the inside of the foot hole in the wooden form on the old saddle stirrup.  After that, I tried to give a warning noise of some kind to announce my impending departure from the ranch house door.  I wanted to keep from startling the poor young mother and give her time to escape before I opened the door.  I wasn’t able to see what kind of bird it was because it always made a hasty retreat before I stepped out.  Once I saw that the nest was completed with roof and all, I began to use the other ranch house door out of respect for a mother in waiting. 

Delinquent feline is probably too harsh a term to use describing Mr. Black, but at the time it seemed appropriate.  Yes, you guessed it, I wasn’t the only one who took note of the unusual movement next to the ranch house door.  I won’t dwell on the details of the encounter, and neither should you, it wasn’t pretty.  It should suffice to say that that mother bird was swiftly dispatched to the great atrium in the sky, you know, that’s near the rainbow bridge where your departed pets wait for you.  Although I do understand it was only instinctive behavior on Mr. Black’s part, I just didn’t feel right giving those coveted scratches and head bumps he loves for several weeks afterwards.

When I looked into the nest a day or two later there were three small speckled eggs.  It took another day and some consultation with a friend before I decided what to do about it.  I think I’ve mentioned before that I’ve installed Bluebird houses all around the ranch and I had one out back of the ranch house.  The houses have a latch and a door so they can be cleaned out on occasion.  I had checked and found a nest in the bottom of that one, but no eggs yet.  I put on rubber gloves (to avoid getting my scent on the eggs) and moved them to the Bluebird nest.  I hoped the bird that had nested there would adopt the eggs as her own and hatch them.  To make a long story short, it did, and they hatched.  They turned out to be beautiful Black Capped Chickadees.  To borrow the phrase from a loved but departed radio friend, and now, the rest of the story 

There was one life lost that summer, but three saved, and now when I see a little Black Capped Chickadee on the bird feeder just off the porch, I wonder if it is one of those three baby birds that were spared and lovingly hatched by another mother that year.  It’s a wonderful world we live in, full of surprises, isn’t it?

©2009 Country Common Sense. All Rights Reserved.

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 We had a big light show in the sky last night up towards the Red River, but it was too far away to hear the rumbling thunder that usually goes with it.  I was sitting on the porch enjoying the night sounds when I looked off to the north and I could see the huge billowing clouds as they were backlit by one lightening strike after another.  It was a little like watching an old silent movie, all that power and majesty lighting up an otherwise black sky, flickering and flickering as the lightening danced around behind the clouds. I must have watched an hour or so, until I started to nod off and decided to go to bed.

Around three this morning  I heard the wind pick up outside and got up to let Daisy, my neighbor’s dog in.  She was waiting at the door, tail a-wagging.  As I stepped out into the morning air I could hear a gentle rain had started and was playing it’s soft song cross the metal roof.  I could smell the ozone blown in on the wind from those spectacular lightening displays up north last night.  The big thunderstorms up north, the cool cleansing rain, are all signs that spring is not far off.  It won’t arrive too soon for me, it’s been a dark winter this year for many and I think brighter days are ahead for all of us as spring arrives.  I can see the Indian paint of wildflowers waving in the wind on the meadow out from the porch already in my mind. Can’t wait.

©2009 Country Common Sense. All Rights Reserved.

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Post tags: spring, thunder, thunderstorms

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Ha-Ha-Ha-HA-Ha, I could often hear him off in the woods near the ranch house.  Now and then I would spot a bit of red moving up and down the side of a dead tree that was still standing.  In the spring and summer I could only hear him — Ha-Ha-Ha- HA-Ha – because the green foliage kept him well hidden. 

This winter is different somehow, it was along toward the end of January I noticed when I would go to the door leading to the porch several large birds would take flight from the yard in front.  I’m used to the Bluebirds, the Cardinals and the Black-Capped Chickadees, but these were larger.  No, they weren’t the occasional Dove or Quail that visit the yard, they were even larger than that.  It happened several more times and I finally got a longer glance at them flying away and saw a prominent white spot in the middle of their backs as they flew off. 

It was not until later one day that I drove up the long shaded drive to the ranch house, and I knew what they were.  As I slowly drove in, the gravel crunching under my tires, I saw them before they heard me.  Five Red-Headed Woodpeckers were waltzing around the yard pecking the ground.  It was like some strange ritual dance — 1, 2, peck, peck … circle, circle, 1, 2, peck, peck … then again.  Those five red heads bobbing up and down in the grass were quite a sight.  I’ve never seen a Woodpecker do that, I take that back, I’ve never seen five woodpeckers together, much less doing anything like that.

They came and went over the next week and slowly their numbers dwindled until there was only one solitary Woodpecker circling the yard pecking away.  Well, that’s the story and I still don’t know what they were pecking at.  I just assume the lawn in front of the ranch house has some insect delicacies those Woodpeckers could not resist.  If you know what was going on, please tell me, I’d sure love to know what they were up to.

©2009 Country Common Sense. All Rights Reserved.

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Post tags: Birds, woodpecker

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I love living in the country and will probably never move back to the city.  There are things you can see here that you never will in the city, like what happened one morning this fall while I was on the porch drinking coffee.   I witnessed an explosion of Blue Popcorn!  

Several years ago I read some articles about attracting more songbirds to the area around the house.  There have always been a lot of Cardinals pecking around, in the winter you can see little red dots all through the brown and gray woods.  That got started with me collecting the pumpkins from a close friend and my neighbor’s post-fall and Halloween decorations, splitting them open and scattering them around the yard.  As the seeds dried, the Cardinals convened in mass and had a major convention on the fading green of the yard and in the meadow beyond.  I also found some great recipes for attracting all types of wild birds on the internet like the Wild Bird Seed Recipes you’ll find here.

Well, anyway I read an article about creating a Bluebird trail (not those pesky Blue Jays who like to dive bomb you and your pet in spring when you set out to cross the yard, these are a very different bird).  Bluebirds are especially pretty, with wings of a pastel powder blue contrasting with a chest full of rusty reds like a Robin’s breast.  I set out on my new project by cutting a number of cedar posts from the old hardwood forest on the west end of my place.  Then I bid on and won some Bluebird houses on eBay.  (You can also find good ones at Home Depot and Wal-Mart.)  After they arrived on our trusty Big Brown delivery van, I put up 5 houses at the prescribed height and distance from each other – okay, I did crowd them a little – well, I wanted to be able to see them, didn’t I?!

Since then I’ve been watching Mom and Pop Bluebirds setting up residence each spring and summer.  And best of all, this particular morning all the little ones sprung from two of the little cedar houses in an Explosion of Blue!  Now you might think that’s the end of the story, but you’d be wrong.

Mr. Black enters the story here – yes, Mr. Black, the same feral ebony cat I took in, in the freezing cold of winter year before last.  The same Mr. Black  I have fed and raised as if one of my own, also witnessed the sea of Blue fluttering down from the nest, bobbing up and down, up and down, desperately trying to gain altitude on their first flight, bouncing across the brown grass lawn like Blue popcorn.  I could just see him from the corner of my eye — startled by his motion, Blackie and I simultaneously leaped from the porch.  I was in my winter long-john underwear and knocked over the table getting up and over went my fresh brewed cup of Sam Choy’s volcano roast Kona, scratch that, “ROYAL KONA from the Big Island” coffee.  There I was, racing around the yard trying to prevent Mr. Black from having a Bluebird muffin feast right before my eyes.  I was able to grab Blackie and place him inside the ranch house screen door so he could watch but not participate in the lawn activities.  

Momma and Poppa and  all the little ones finally achieved their goal of flight that morning, I’m happy to say, and even though Mr. Black wasn’t happy, he did get to witness a once in a lifetime event.   I guess you won’t be seeing a commotion like that  at the crack of dawn in the city, will you!

©2009 Country Common Sense. All Rights Reserved.

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Post tags: bird feeders, bird houses, Birds, Bluebirds

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No, there’s not a pack of wild Indians circling the ranch house whooping and hollering, killing the men and raping the women.  I said a “flock”, that’s birds, and there’s not really any Comanche Indians either, just birds acting like them.  I haven’t written much about the birds round here lately, but now some interesting things have been happening that I want to tell you about. 

 The weather’s still cold here and we’re hoping spring is just round the corner.  There isn’t a lot of food available with the insects thinned out and grain eaten up, so the birds are having a hard time this time of year trying to find substance.  I guess the shortage of food has caused this large flock of birds to descend on the ranch’s small bird feeders.  A neighbor calls them Grackles, I wasn’t sure, they were just large black birds to me.  Anyway, one day no black birds, the next day THOUSANDS appeared.  I’m not kidding, it was like the grasshopper plague of the twenties and thirties. They not only were like wild Indians, they are big bullies and crowded out all the other birds from all my feeders.  I quickly got on the internet and looked for ideas.  Birder’s World gave these seven suggestions.

 1.  Don’t use tray feeders or feeders with platforms that allow grackles to land.

2.  Make your feeders unappealing by shortening or removing perches.

3.  Use dedicated finch feeders that dispense thistle (nyjer) seed.

4.  Reduce the amount of seed that birds throw out by offering black-oil sunflower or hulled  sunflower seed.

5.   Give safflower a try.

6.   Protect your suet.

7.   When all else fails, adjust your attitude.   After all, Common Grackles are native to North America, their plumage is iridescent and, as you can see at left, often beautiful, and they’re actually pretty interesting. For starters, they have dramatic communicative displays. Also, remember that they eat a wide variety of foods. About 30 percent of their diet is insects, including grubs that are troublesome for your lawn, and beetles and caterpillars that destroy your plants.

And if that doesn’t make you feel better, take comfort in the fact that time is on your side: If your yard is a grackle-migration stopover, just wait. The big bullies will be gone in a few weeks.

 I tried some of these suggestions and some have worked a little but no great success yet.  If you have any ideas please let me know and I’ll pass the information along to all our friends in the neighborhood. Thanks for listening.

©2009 Country Common Sense. All Rights Reserved.

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Post tags: Birds, Texas, Texas Living

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The Ranch Porch

Daisy, my ranching neighbor’s dog, is a cute little black stray.  She is always welcome here at the ranch house, and truth be known, spends more time as our porch guard than at my neighbor’s house.  In the winter as it is now, she sleeps beside my bed and is rewarded as a night watchman/person/femaledoggie (its hard being politically correct these days) with a milk bone each morning. Sometime a homemade doggie treat is appreciated even more.  (To get some great homemade dog treat recipes Click Here!)  I keep fresh water for Daisy and the two cats, Mr. Black and Leo in the kitchen and out on the porch.

This morning someone left Daisy a surprise.  As I looked out the kitchen window, Daisy was standing near the water bowl giving out little growleywolfflebarks and scratching the porch in front of the bowl with her front paws.  When I went outside to see what all the commotion was about I saw the BIGGEST BULLFROG I ever saw.  How he was transported from down by the pond to Daisy’s water bowl I can’t say for sure, but there he was staring at Daisy as she barked, growled and pawed the porch boards.  Then without any warning he leaped up and over Daisy’s head and disappeared into the tall grass, which had to be farther than Mark Twain’s famous Calaveras County’s Notorious Jumping frog ever jumped.  

I would have suspected Mr. Black, our mouser extraordinaire, right off except for one thing — the frog was alive!!  Mr. Black often will leave a mouse or a snake or some other unfortunate creature laid out on our “Wipe Your Paws” door mat, their lifeless bodies looking for all the world like the friendly undertaker “Digger O’Dell” had prepared them for presentation to their immediate family.  I guess we should all be thankful we escaped this encounter without warts   Have a great day and God bless.

©2009 Country Common Sense. All Rights Reserved.

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Post tags: Bullfrog, Country Living, ranch life, Texas Living, Texas Wildlife

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