All Entries in the "Lifestyles at Risk" Category
Bear season upon us again
Please don’t feed the bear…or they might move in with you! The beasts are out on force this time of the year trying to get enough to eat before hibernation. It is best to avoid them since they are pissed off and hungry. Watch for an interview with pre-hibernative bruins in early November.
San Juan Horseshoe: In Defense of Flies
Since the beginning of the summer I have heard nothing but complaints about these bothersome insects that we call flies. Granted, they are rather obvious and painfully persistent. Maybe it’s because there seem to be so many of them and they all look the same (at least to humans).
Let’s get to the meat here.
Fly-related commerce satellites such as the fly swatter, fly paper, repellent, sprays, screens, and nets, not to mention an assortment of fly fishing equipment might not exist if not for these little balls of buzzing snot.
Do flies not deserve their place in the sun?
Let’s talk about deer flies. The kind that often bites off more than they can chew. They attack livestock, people, horses…ah yes, horses. Would these proud animals have such glorious tails without the presence of flies?
And what of cleanup operations?
Without becoming terribly graphic: Flies are great little janitors cleaning up everything from leftover picnic items to poop. Who else would ant this job? Not the bees or spiders that everyone is so quick to protect. Not mammals. Not most birds.
Flies are an important variable in population control, feces transportation and garbage management. They do not cause traffic jams, rob liquor stores, start bar fights or insist on holding on to destructive or trite opinions.
People do these things but it’s probably against some archaic law to smash humans with a fly swatter.
Flies are excellent athletes and dancers (quick and able to avert disaster). Their eyesight rivals that of the ostrich and the rhinoceros. They are not good arm wrestlers but make up for that shortcoming with adeptness and the speed of divine proportions. They can also walk on ceilings.
As a source of food flies maintain a strong influence on toads, wasps, dragonflies, damselflies, preying mantises, hummingbirds, ducks, domestic cats, sparrows, shrews, robins, bats, skunks and geckos as well as an assortment of carnivorous plants like the Venus Fly Trap. Also bears eat maggots and salamanders eat fly larva. Would we have these animals starve?
So the next time that familiar buzzing is about to drive you nuts try a little tolerance. Catch the fly and place it outside so that it can come back in at first opportunity. Clean any caught fly so it is free of disease. Welcome these creatures of God with a little sugar on the counter and when the flies land don’t wave at it like a moron. Instead encourage it with a sound slap on the back.
State to sell off dysfunctional citizens
(Montrose) The State of Colorado will begin a long awaited rummage sale focusing on citizens who do not participate or in any way contribute to society. Taking almost obsessive measures to safeguard the population as a whole gov’ment venders will follow strict guidelines in an attempt to move inventory and make room for new models coming out daily.
The Mega Clearance of “people who just stand around with their hands in their pockets, getting in the way of people who are trying to perform what they define as daily tasks” will begin tomorrow in an assortment of hastily erected tents all over the Centennial State.
In limited pre-sale exchanges dysfunctional people from the Front Range were selling better than projected while hicks from Eastern Colorado were moving at an expected pace. Western Slope bozos are expected to be auctioned off later, just before the apple pie competition, mud wrestling and gala fireworks show.
Persons possessing and verbalizing an excess of opinions, wanton fears, Xenophobia, and intolerance are expected to be on the block first followed by volunteers who are simply tired of their lives.
“The beauty of this arrangement is that if someone convinces our panel that he is functional he can just go home and continue doing what he wants,” said Alesiane Marmotbreath, executive director of rummage and folding chairs for Region Zen. “It is the person who admits he is lost who will be sold. These poor souls and a few others deemed seriously dysfunctional will be disposed of through a contentious practice called warehousing, that allows recycling concerns to bid on larger groups.
“We’re just peddlers trying to maintain in the face of overpopulation,” said one deputy director who was unwilling to say more.
While the entire program has been severely scrutinized by federal and county agencies the state has remained firm on plans to liquidate large swaths of inventory before annual budgetary meetings get underway in November. Treasury officials estimate the sale will gross over $2.4 million. The funds, along with tax revenues from the sale of legal marijuana, are earmarked for police and state militia grants and road repair.
To find out your immediate expendability status call someone in charge during regular business hours.
– Rex Monteleone
100 years ago today
Cyrus McDormatt, a hemp farmer from somewhere in Dixie invented the reefer which encouraged men to lie under trees all day while machines did all the work. Despite the fact that his product beat the hell out of cotton and wool he was arrested for illegal cultivation of a dangerous narcotic and sent up to the abolitionist north for horizontal indoctrination. When he returned he travelled the circuit and preached to the slaves about the evils of banjo music and that funny little weed that grows along the river.
100 years from today
New evidence was reported that Adam and Eve and Tarzan and Jane are in fact the same loving couple. The Cheetah Scrolls, dug up some 35 years ago, clearly reference the Garden of Eden, someone named Cain, someone named Boy and someone named Apple. The terms are intertwined and always end up in the same cosmic destination before spinning off into the universe. Although reluctant to release a full disclosure many major world religions have leaked information to the press and hinted at outside intervention in both tree swinging skills and the poisonous snake department. The common denominator here is a sneaky mahout named Lucifer who sells apples on the corner.
Melvin O’Toole is the only known National League player to have hit a regulation home run while occupying second base. This rare feat was accomplished on September 6, 1919. Six keystone sluggers have done it in the American League.
Many Plants Harbor Resentment Over Food Chain
(Banana Belt, CO) Many domesticated plants of the garden and household variety are angry over what they see as discrimination regarding their long held place in the food chain. Saying they would eat humans if given the chance, a more militant philosophy has taken hold especially among younger, more impressionable saplings and seedlings.
These plants see themselves as living, breathing entities not fodder (albeit healthy) here to advance the life expectancy and salubrious agenda of animals.
This growing sense of despair may show itself in such symptoms as yellowing, abnormal leaf loss and the all to common drooping or limping out.
“Plants have body language too and often exhibit displeasure and frustration much like other creatures,” said Averill Harbinger, a radical carnivore who has not eaten anything from the trees or the ground in over 40 years. “We know they can’t talk but they damn sure can communicate. Maybe they’re getting too much sun or their clay pot is crowding out their roots. Maybe they don’t like the plant on the table next to them. It goes on.”
Botanists know that there are several species of flesh eating plants on the earth, although most are confined to the tropics and a diet of insects and an occasional small mammal. These immobile living organisms absorb nutrients and water through roots but have a taste for meat, as defined above. On a mass scale they are about as rare as Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors.
“We have reached a point of no return,” said a communiqué translated by a local green house guru. “We have been pushed to the corner of the garden and are wilting on the vine.”
Although very few parties give credence to these developments people (especially the elderly) out in the gardens alone or pruning fruit trees in remote locales should take security precautions. Even such enjoyable practices like walking among wildflowers in the mountains and stopping to smell the proverbial roses could present unexpected risks.
“Under no circumstances should anyone wander in the vicinity of fruit canning enterprises, vegetable processing plants after dark,” said the guru, “or approach groups of young plants on the street in these neighborhoods any time of the day.”
Man and plants have had a long, nourishing relationship for centuries and it is hoped that traditional values stand victorious in the face of this very real peril. – Uncle Pahgre
