Blog #467                                         February 19, 2026

 

While driving around the other day, I saw a sign.  It was a green sign, which always indicates some official message like how far it is to the next town or which dead Highway Patrol officer the street is dedicated to.  This sign said “WILDLIFE VIEWING AREA” with an arrow and an image of binoculars.  It is a sad sign really.  Its obvious translation is: “A few miles down this road we actually found a place with a few animals left.  Bring your binoculars because there aren’t that many and they stay pretty much away from the road.  And hurry!  There’s a new Cracker Barrel coming next spring.”  Pretty soon the only animals left will be at the zoos and no-one will remember how they evolved or became extinct.

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  Thou callest me a dog before thou hast cause. But since I am a dog, beware my fangs (Merchant of Venice).      Why is he looking for other animals?  Am I not enough?  Is he going to bring another animal to live here?  He’d better have good health insurance.  Purr.

 

I’ve always loved animals, even fish.  For years, I had a tropical fish tank in my home office.  They were so pretty!  I used to leave the television on for them.  Their favorite shows were Dancing with the Starfish, Eel of Fortune and Orange Roughy is the New Black Roughy.  Or I would just put on a tape of South Pacific.  Their favorite song, of course, was Salmon Chanted Evening.  I had a cat named Misty at the time, and Misty loved to sit next to the tank and watch the fish.  One day, she inadvertently rubbed the heater control and the fish were cooked to death.  Sad.

 

And speaking of animals, when the St. Louis Zoo opened a new grizzly bear exhibit a couple of years ago, Huck and Fin, the grizzlies, tried to get out, digging under the glass that separates them from the tourists.  The exhibit was closed while the enclosure was reinforced.  Shame on those Terrible Teddies, those Silly Smokies, those Bad News Bears – trying to break out of a cage!  What were they thinking of?  Probably freedom.

 

Whole Foods cares about animals.  It has terrific presentation and a wonderful prepared-foods department and it is totally attractive and hip and “in”.  But come on!  Some of the hype that goes on in there is ridiculous.  There was a cooler case with a sign that read “Five-Star Animal Welfare Rating”.  Ok, the sign made me wander over to inspect just how well the animals had been treated.  They looked dead to me.  Not only dead, but dismembered and shrink-wrapped.  One package of shrink-wrapped body parts said “Fresh Young Chicken”.  Seriously? If that doesn’t bring up a scene of intense, bloody cruelty, nothing does.  Here’s a gaggle of fresh young chicks in the prime of youth with their whole lives to look forward to – snatched, butchered and pulled to pieces.  Do visions of Jeffrey Epstein come to mind?  But we were kind to these “Fresh Young Chicks”.  We played Mozart for them and old Foghorn Leghorn cartoons before we ripped their bodies to pieces.  How humane!  Pass the barbecue sauce.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well and enjoying all the special days of this special week.  Saturday was Valentine’s Day; Monday was Presidents Day; Tuesday was Fat Tuesday (in French, that’s Mardi Gras); Wednesday was Ash Wednesday and today is Limerick Oyster Day.  Aren’t you happy?  Let’s get to it.

 

Have I told you about my brother?  I’m sure I have.  He was one of the wackiest people I have ever known, lovable, but eccentric in the extreme.  For instance, he did not eat during the day, only at night.  Maybe he was a vampire.  I was throwing out the trash today when I saw a clump of lint Carol had taken from the dryer.  It made me think of my brother.  He never threw out lint.  Instead, he saved it and used it to stuff his chairs at home to make them softer.

 

Just tell me, to win all the money,

Who acts most peculiar and funny?

I’ll give you a hint

He recycles lint

And never eats food when it’s sunny.

 

I am not making any of this up.  I don’t have to make up weird stories about my brother.  Sometimes I think he may have been a Klingon.  He abnegated spending more money than necessary, so when he was suffering from the last throes of cancer, I would take him grocery shopping.  First, we had to go to a farmer’s market for grapes.  Then we had to go to Aldi’s.  Have you ever read Dante’s Inferno?  There’s a chapter about grocery shopping in Hell that was patterned after the Aldi experience.  No carts, no brand names, no bags, no personnel above the Cro-Magnon level, and a thousand crazed, impoverished souls fighting over the last carton of generic taco shells.  From there, we moved up the food-chain to Shop n Save.  They’re so cheap, they couldn’t even afford all the letters in their own name.  And then we were finished, three different stores to spend a total of $7.75.  How much could he have saved?  A quarter?  He wasn’t just from a different planet.  He was his own planet.  He died in 2001.

 

Weekly Word:  Abnegate means to renounce or reject something.

 

Recently, I was driving with two of our grandchildren and Carol in the back seat. They were loud and raucous, so she created a challenge.  “Let’s see if we can go for a whole minute without talking.”  I was appointed the official timer, but I knew we would never make it to the finish line, and I knew who would lose.  About 35 seconds in, Carol started talking.  You’ve heard of The Elf on the Shelf?  My wife is The Yak in the Back.  I think the 35 seconds was actually a new record for her.

In the 1850s, German physicist Rudolf Clausius proved the impossibility of Perpetual Motion.   But old Rudy never met my Whirling Dervish.

 

Oops, gotta go.  Carol is calling me.  I’m late, I’m late, no time to say “Goodbye-Hello”.  But time enough to say stay well and count your blessings.  See you in a week.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com