Tiger Attack!

I rolled over in bed yesterday morning, replete with happy Christmas memories and heard the bizarre news that a man had been mauled and killed by a tiger on the loose in San Francisco. I stared at the TV, not quite certain I'd heard it right. But I had. A man HAD been killed by a tiger. In San Francisco. On Christmas Day. Why is it that the Truth is always stranger than anything you can imagine? I consult psychics quite regularly but if they were to tell me that a man would be consumed by a tiger on Christmas Day in San Francisco, I think I'd change psychics. This is just too weird. And why is it, that anything that actually happens is so much more loony than anything we can imagine?

I'd like to know why that young man had to die at the mouth of a tiger. What in the world was going on? In some of Sylvia Browne's books, where she tells of life on the Other Side, she says we are all pre-destined to know what day we will pass long before we come back to make this human life on this side. It is all carefully recorded and arranged long before we are born. She says you spend years arranging your human life and how it will spin out and who you will know and meet in this life while you're in spirit form on the Other Side. But what in the world... I mean, what would possess somebody from wanting to be mauled and eaten by a tiger as his means of exiting this world? It's not one of those Ten Most Popular Ways To Die, is it?

I'm envisioning a line of spirits on the Other Side, arranging the lives they will live when they are born. It must be sort of like the lines we used to have to stand in when we were registering for classes in college, before they had the online registrations they have now. Folks standing there with long lists of paper, trying to get the courses they need to complete their majors. Only these Spirit Folks are trying to arrange the right set of happenstances for living their lives to the fullest and fulfilling their destiny.

There's this line marked "Passing on the 25th of December, 2007" and a lady is standing behind a man. The lady looks over at the man's paper and asks, "So how are you planning on passing?"

He flourishes his paper in front of him importantly. "I'm going to get slashed by a tiger at the zoo."

"No way!" Open mouthed she gawps at him. "In this day and age? You can do that?"

"Yup!" he grins triumphantly. "Not many go that way, but I've got permission."

"Oh, so unfair!" she gripes. "I want to go that way too!"

"You can't," he flashed his papers in her face again. "We're passing on the same day. In the same state too. You're California, aren't you?"

"Yes, but... Gee... what a great way to go! I wish I'd thought of that! I didn't know in the Twenty First century you could choose that passing, especially in an industrialized country. Especially California!"

"Yeah, well, I've been working on this quite a while. It wasn't easy, believe me!"

"Well, shoot! Congratulations, Buddy. You've one-upped me! But see here.... I put down mauled by pit bulls on mine."

"Yeah, that's not bad. It sure beats passing in your sleep. Good luck to you!"

So that's the conversation I think they had in that line on the Other Side. For the rest of the news yesterday morning mentioned that a woman in Yermo in Southern California got mauled to death by pit bulls too. On Christmas Day. Hey, I'm not making this up. I'm only trying to imagine how it got to this in the first place.

Countdown

The healthy little 'pad' of days before Christmas has eroded away and with a measly seven left, time is running out. I checked my lists and found an order that hadn't arrived. I've checked another list and found out I still need to bake about six more Christmas breads or batches of cookies to fulfill my always-too-long gift list. The days until The Big Day remain full: dinner with friends, Christmas parties, outings with the children, get-togethers with family and friends, last minute appointments to primp or get that end-of-the-year doctor or dentist appointment in, you name it, there's something going on almost every day.

It's not just the adults who are awash in heavily laden To Do Lists. Charley, the eight year old, found himself shopping in the school Christmas Bazaar last Friday, then rushing off on a bus with second and third graders for an exhibition of the Nutcracker Suite (he liked it) and when they arrived home, was gussied up by his mom and dad for the company Christmas party we held at the Town Hall. He didn't get to bed until after midnight, and only then after his dad showed him the Geminid meteor shower. But he proclaimed his day, "The Best!"

Charley's all worried that Santa will fail to bring him the game system he's been asking for. A week ago, he got to talk to Santa at the Harley shop and told him what he wanted for Christmas. Santa didn't agree, he only grunted and murmured, "We'll see."

Charley was maddened by that answer. "Does that mean he'll bring it, Mackey?" he asked, worriedly when we made our way back to the car. "What does 'We'll see...' mean, anyway?"

"I guess it means Santa has a lot of requests for that item, Charley," I said. "He might not be able to bring it."

So this week, Charley penned his daddy down and asked him outright if Mommy was going to get the video game for him. Daddy shook his head. "No, she couldn't find one when she went shopping." Now Charley was worried. When his second opportunity to see Santa came up at the company Christmas party, Charley was the first in line. I saw him standing in front of Santa, imploring him at great length about something. I could guess what it was. I asked Charley later what he had said so urgently to Santa.

"I told him I really wanted that video game, Mackey," Charley reported. "But Santa didn't say he would bring it. He didn't say anything at all."

"Well, you know, Charley," I was trying to find something to say that would make him feel better. "Sometimes we ask Santa for something that he can't bring us. I remember when I was eight, I asked for a Betsy-Wetsy Doll. I really wanted this doll that you could feed a bottle to and then she wet her pants. But as much as I wanted that doll that year, I didn't get it. So sometimes, we just have to accept that Santa can't bring us everything we want."

Charley looked at me aghast. "A doll that wet its pants?" he repeated. "Why would you want that?"

"It was back in the Fifties, Charley, and that was pretty special then. That's what I wanted."

Charley shook his head. "Gee, Mackey, back in Those Days, you must have been in a desperate situation."

Before any of you head to that desperate situation, check off some items on your To Do Lists and then settle back and enjoy these next two weeks of fun and joy and Love. That's what I'm going to do!

Playin' Games

In addition to Christmas being a special time for children, it's also when we take a little more time to have fun and play some games with those children. Charley likes to play word games, guessing games and any other sort of game that stimulates his mind when we're driving. He loves to have Mackey join in, and it does beat listening to the radio.

We were on our way home from an evening of Christmas shopping last night and near the dump, Charley shouted out from the back seat, "Let's play 'Read My Mind', Mackey. What number am I thinking of between one and ten?"

"Six!" I shouted back at him.

"No, eight," he yelled.

"That was my second choice," I told him. "Do it again."

"I'm ready. Guess," Charley said.

"Three!"

"You're right, Mackey! It was three. That's what I was thinking of!" (I'm only right about a third of the time. I don't want you readers thinking I'm good at this, mind you.)

"I want to play!" Sage announced, not wanting to be left out.

"Okay, Sage," I instructed. "Think of a number between one and ten and Charley and I will guess what it is."

"Okay!" He was excited to be included. "I'm weady. Three!"

"No, no, Sage!" Charley groaned. "You can't say it. You have to think it and Mackey and I will read your mind."

"Okay." Mr Agreeable.

"Now, think of a number between one and ten," Charley patiently instructed again. "And now Mackey and I will think what it is."

"Okay." There was silence from the back seat.

"Have you thought of the number yet, Sage?" I asked. I couldn't feel what number he was thinking of. All I could read from him was blankness.

"No!" he announced. "I'm thinking. Oh, okay, I got one."

"Okay," Charley and I chimed in together. We started to concentrate.

"It seven!" Sage announced proudly.

Charley groaned and I laughed. Sometimes it was hard to play with five year olds. Once again, Charley patiently explained the particular 'rules' of this game.

"Now, Sage," he repeated. "You gotta think of a number between one and ten. AND DON'T SAY IT OUT LOUD! Mackey and I will guess what it is. Now... think of a number. Okay, now don't say it out loud. We will guess."

"All wight," Sage sounded subdued.

"Now, my turn," Charley announced. "I'm thinking of six."

"Okay, Sage," I concentrated, well as hard as you can while you're driving a dark country road with two mind readers in the back seat. "I think you're thinking of one."

"Wong!" Sage chortled. "You both wong! It eleven!"

May you enjoy this season of children and games and maybe even win a few!

Tattoos

I'm going to get a new tattoo in a couple of weeks and I am feeling conflicted as to where to put it. The design has not been a problem. I know what it is I want to have, but the where on my body is still under consideration. At the time I made my appointment, nearly four months ago, I figured I had plenty of time to come up with the 'where' but now that there are only days left before The Deed is Done I'm starting to worry I will find the right place.

My concern with tattoos probably started in childhood when tattooed bikers would come to our resort and be turned away by my grandfather. "Those Types" of people weren't welcomed in our family-style resort. Tattoos weren't a big problem in my childhood: fact is, there just weren't a lot of people who had them. Sometimes an uncle might sport a Marine emblem on a forearm and that was tacitly accepted. Anything else was mightily suspect.

So I guess I carried this Taboo Tattoo feature into adulthood. It never really bothered me too much. I didn't know that many folks who were tattooed and that was fine with me. My husband got his first ones around age forty when we began scuba diving. He got an angel fish on one arm and a dolphin on the other. They were smallish and didn't bother me too much. They only showed when he wore a tank top or swim trunks and that was usually when we were on a dive trip. It appeared that most divers had some sort of tattoos and sometimes at the end of a successful trip, the divers would show them off to each other.

Things changed when we got into Harleys. There, it seemed, everybody had a tattoo. We got to be close friends with Tom in the winter when he wore long sleeves and by spring it became apparent that his arms were gradually becoming full of tattoos. At first, I pretended not to notice his colorful pictures beginning to wind up his arms, but soon I was fascinated by each new picture he added each month. On a ride, complete strangers would walk up to him and admire his arms. It was a conversation opener and never failed to impress. Occasionally, we'd find somebody whose eyes would slide away from us as soon as they spied the tattoos. Yes, judgement was still out there. There was still some sort of 'stigma' attached to tattoos.

A couple of years after we met Tom, Bill decided he was going to get a tattoo, a big one, on his back. He searched out pictures for the perfect one and settled on a serene mermaid, her face averted as she floated poised over a good third of Bill's back. I thought it was awful big. I kept looking at the perfect smooth tanned expanse of his back and couldn't imagine how it would look with the turquoise and green mermaid superimposed over it. What if I didn't like it? Didn't matter, did it? She'd be there to stay for hell or high water! The day of his appointment came and I went along to the tattoo parlor. The artist, Dana, is a real bona fide artist, she just likes to work with skin rather than canvas. I think she could paint anything, she's that good. And let me tell you, she made that mermaid practically spring to life. But I couldn't stay there and watch it emerge. When the tattoo gun fired up, I bolted out of the shop and spent the next hour and a half walking around the mall, my stomach churning with worry over what was going on on Bill's back. I even (briefly) started to call Tom and read him the Riot Act for being an instigator of this tattoo business but I stopped myself before I did. I figured that made me look sort of like a crazy person. Which is what I felt like.

Well, like I said, the mermaid turned out perfectly. Bill was thrilled. He made another appointment and went back in a few months for a huge sea monster that appeared to be sneaking up on the unaware mermaid. Over the next year, he added fish, a terrific sea turtle, jelly fish and a sunken ship. His back is a true underwater scene.

So we became friends with the tattoo artist and I found myself making an appointment for a tattoo myself. She's a big fairy, covering a third of my upper back. She took two sessions to complete and I have to say the outlining of her wasn't near as painful as the coloring in. When I finished the last of her, I swore to myself that this would be it, my one and only.

Only now, three years later, I want another. It's not as large as the fairy and I'm sure (I hope) won't be as painful. But I'm conflicted where it should be put. Since it's not as large, it could go on my upper arm. And I've thought real hard about that. But... (and this BUT seems to be growing larger) it seems to me that women who sport upper arm tattoos appear to be Hard. And why that should be, I'm not entirely sure. In that regard, I feel like I'm six years old again and watching my grandpa turn the bikers away. And really, if I'm an old lady of nearly sixty, why shouldn't I get a tattoo on my upper arm? I know I'm not Hard. I am what I am at this age and if I have a tattoo there, why not? But... Okay, so there's the lower leg. That seems less Hard to me than the upper arm. But... I'm not sure I want a tattoo on my lower leg. I'm just not sure how it would look with a suit and heels, IF I should decide to wear a suit and heels, which I usually do not, BUT I might. What does it say about an old woman in her sixties and seventies going to church in a suit and heels and wearing a big tattoo on her lower leg? I don't know. I haven't decided. Now what I'll probably do is hide it. Hide it sort of the same way I hid the fairy on my back. It's not visible most of the time. I wear a halter top or backless top at a Harley function to get it noticed, usually. Oh, I think the last time some stranger called attention to it was when I was getting a Cat Scan and the two (men) attendants running the machine commented on it since I was wearing one of those open backed hospital gowns. No, where I'll probably put it is on my stomach. Then I can show it off with summer clothes or a swimsuit. I won't have to worry if I go sleeveless to a grocery store or wear that suit and heels to church what a stranger will think about a tattooed sixty year old woman.

But it might be nice to be edgey and push the envelope and watch people's eyes slide away from my face and make them wonder what kind of person I really am. Hmmmmm.... well, I still have a couple of weeks to make up my mind where that new tattoo will be put.

The Legend of Larry

A month ago, Boppy returned from Arizona with an interesting tidbit to share with Charley and Sage. As he'd been packing up the house to leave, he saw a giant Sonora centipede crawling out from under the cowboy table in the sun room.

Thinking it would be of great interest to the grandsons, he emptied out a coffee container, stuck it in front of the six inch feller who promptly strode into the accommodating dark room. Boppy closed it up and drove home with the find. He figured if it survived the ride or not, he could show the boys what it looked like, then dispose of it.

The boys were captivated. Charley took one look and crowed with delight at its many legs and its size. "Why this must be the biggest bug in the world, Boppy!" he exclaimed, peering over the lid at the critter who reared its head upon the sight of sunlight in its otherwise dark home.

Its body was yellow with a brown head and tail. Two pinchers grew on its head and a nasty hooky spine, not unlike a scorpion, appeared on its tail. This critter could hold its own.

"Ohh, that's gwoss, Boppy!" Sage proclaimed, taking his turn to peer into the container. "That just gwoss!" He turned away and proceeded to spin circles in the room.

Charley, though, appeared to be transfixed by the appearance of the centipede. He ran to get Daddy to look up some facts on the centipede on the Internet. Then he found a clear Tootsie Roll container from the storeroom in the boathouse and persuaded Boppy to slide the hapless centipede into it so he could be viewed without having to open the coffee can lid. An hour later, while I was engrossed at the computer in the office, I heard Charley obligingly showing two customers "the world's largest centipede. Don't touch it, though,for its bite can kill you!" The men grinned and nodded their heads, marvelling at the thing and departed. Charley had a new idea.

"Daddy said this is the biggest centipede in the Northern Hemisphere, Mackey." (Charley would make a great school teacher at eight years old, with his pronouncements.) "Its bite will kill a frog or mouse. But it could sure hurt us. No, we can't touch it! He said it is found in only remote areas of the Sonoran Desert." (My cowboy table in the sunroom in Arizona appears to be a very remote area from where I sit at the computer in Northern California.) "And he says, it is very hard to capture."

"Agreed, Charley. I'm sure your Boppy had a hard time persuading the critter to walk into the coffee container."

Charley picked up the container in one arm, holding it behind his back and walked out to the busy Sunday afternoon tourists coming to the Landing to walk the beach or catch a crab. I got up and peered around the door to see what he was up to. He walked up to a group of folks and spoke earnestly for a new minutes. I saw a lady reach into her purse and take out a coin which she offered to Charley. He took the container out from under his arm, pried back the lid and let the lady peer down upon his find. She backed away after a few moments, a smile on her face. Charley nodded his head importantly, placed the lid securely back on the Tootsie Roll jar and pocketed the coin in his pants. Then he walked up to the next group of people and started his pitch.

Charley made $1.50 that day and before the day was over named the critter Larry. Why Larry? Larry is leggy, he said. Yes, he was and extremely lethal it appeared to me.

Over the course of the next week, Charley and Sage collected garden beetles and dead flies and fed Larry, who happily, it appeared, ate them up. They talked Boppy into helping them transfer Larry temporarily to another container so they could decorate the Tootsie Roll jar with a handful of beach sand, some sand crab carcasses, various twigs and a handful of grasses. Larry seemed content in his new domicile and spent a great deal of time absolutely supine. How do I know this? For Larry was now living on my kitchen counter. Mommy had come down and seen Larry and decided that he wasn't going to be inhabiting her home. Mackey agreed to provide a room over Larry's head only until Boppy returned to Arizona where he would be released into his own environment. She kept quizzing Boppy on when that trip would be.

Larry was fed twice a week but his appetite for flies was voracious. Charley was having a hard time swatting enough on the days he spent with Larry, but he finally hit upon a solution. He organized two of the most hyper-active boys in his class to catch flies for Larry during lunch recess. They sealed them up in their Zip-Lock sandwich bags. One lunch day, Charley emptied out forty-two of them. Larry was in hog-heaven. That night, I saw Larry climb the twig after one fly who had survived and was buzzing around the container for dear life, while Larry hooked the lower third of his body around the twig and dangled out into space to connect with the hapless fly. It was too much Wild Kingdom for me. I turned out the kitchen light without watching the outcome.

During the swap meet, Charley and Sage sold cookies and Looks at Larry for a quarter apiece and made thirty eight dollars in two days. Charley was ecstatic. When it appeared on Saturday that business was sagging in the middle of the day, he set Sage digging out beetles in the garden and commandeered a Sharpie from Mackey and wrote on a large poster: "LOOKS AT LARRY 25 cents. FEED LARRY FOR A DIME!" Business improved.

Charley didn't have a chance to tell Larry good-bye before Bopppy departed for the desert. I was sure he'd feel cheated since Boppy had removed his money making scheme. But Larry was loaded in back of the truck, still in his Tootsie Roll container. I snagged a garden snail and threw it in the container as a travelling Happy Meal for the big fella. Next morning, when Boppy unloaded the car, he thought Larry looked fairly lifeless. It would be a shame to remove the critter that far north for three weeks, then bring a lifeless Larry home. But as he took the container out and shook it, Larry sprang to life, his many legs clutching at the air as though voicing his complaint at all the interruptions in his otherwise ordered life.

I had visions of Boppy driving out to the desert wilderness someplace far from civilization and letting Larry go free. But Boppy had many chores on his mind and couldn't take the time. He walked across the street, into a gully that runs down from Apache Leap mountain. At the top of the gully, far enough away from any gullywashers that might come up, Boppy let Larry go. Larry crawled out of the Tootsie Roll container, the same way he'd gone in so obediently three weeks before, spied a hole just ahead of him and snuggled in. I don't know what kind of critter Larry ate to regain his home, but I do know he's back in his rightful environment. Boppy claims there was a big smile on his face as he slithered into his hole.

Charley has found a cache of old sea shells from Mexico that he is now actively selling. He had to give up on Larry as his source of income but he hasn't given up being an entrepreneur.

Betrayed!

The pervasive feeling of dis-satisfaction most of us felt last week-end over the ineptitude of the various government agencies in handling the oil spill in San Francisco Bay has now been replaced with a downright sense of betrayal. Birds lie dying on the beaches. Volunteers who came to help were turned away or warned of arrest if they ventured onto oil covered beaches to clean up the goo. Authorities warned of toxic issues if one handled the oil or of dire consequences if you took matters into your own hands.

That left plenty of beachfront uncleaned and soiled with oil blogs. It has left piles of birds dead. And each day brings more birds up on the beaches. It has also left a lot of folks with a sense of outrage that such a thing could be happening here. Here, in the Bay Area, with a population that pays their taxes and expects the government to do their work. Here, where the environment enjoys a very high ranking in how things 'should be'. Here, where (until this week, at any rate) we thought that if The Worst should happen, then 'somebody' must be going to take care of it. But... they didn't. They haven't. And it appears, they aren't going to do it now.

Tonight, on local news, they showed a state assemblywoman who is screaming for hearings on who messed up and didn't handle the oil spill properly. She was hopping mad at the Coast Guard since they had primary jurisdiction in the clean up effort. She said they hadn't co-ordinated the efforts on down through the counties and cities and that's why nobody knew who was in charge and things were going into disarray. The Coast Guard handed the finger pointing off to another Federal agency, the National Transportation Safety Board, to decide who is at fault. They said it didn't matter to them if the State of California was going to have hearings on how poorly they did, they didn't have to answer to anybody in the state only the Feds, and they wouldn't bother to show up, thank you. One little city was screaming angry that nobody from the federal or state level had showed up to clean their beaches or look for oiled birds until six days after the tanker spilled its load. Counties are hiding behind their admissions of waiting for the feds or state to tell them what to do. Indeed, it doesn't appear that Anybody is really in charge.

For the population, this is scary and horrible. This is only an oil spill of fifty thousand gallons, mind you. This isn't a massive seven or eight Richter earthquake. Or something as terrible as a big bomb. If the government is handling this Oil Spill so badly, do you honestly think they would be able to handle a big disaster that much better? Maybe that's why we feel so betrayed and uneasy over the handling of this. We know, in our hearts, if Doomsday struck, we aren't going to be able to count on Uncle Sam or Arnold to lead us to safety. We're going to have to count on ourselves and band together, good and bad, to see to it that we survive.

The Bay Area folks shouldn't be that surprised. We have only to look back two years ago at Katrina to see how New Orleans fared to see what we've got going on in our front yard now. The people in New Orleans have been trying to get us to see what they've been forced to deal with since then and maybe we weren't watching. But, I betcha, we're watching now!

Who's In Charge?

The oil spill finally came to our beach today. An oiled sea bird was found on the beach and a concerned beachgoer brought him into our boathouse this afternoon. He had a smear on his chest and his feet were covered with oil (the bird, not the beachgoer) so my friend Kerry and I found a saltwater taffy box and put the bird inside and closed the lid. I heard last night that just picking them up could make the wild critters go into shock and die. Then, I did what any concerned citizen would do: I picked up the phone to call someone to help the stricken bird.

On Friday, I had gotten a list of phone numbers from Marin County Hazardous Waste in case we had any incidents of the oil spill reaching our beach. Knowing we were going into a three day week-end, it would be hard to get in touch with authorities. They had given me three phone numbers to use. One was for "Reporting Oiled Wildlife". It rang and was answered by a number of different languages (press this number for that language, etc.). Finally, a young man answered and said he was in the San Francisco Information Office (whatever that is!). I told him I was sorry but I'd been given that number to report oiled wildlife. He said, yes! (quite cheerfully), indeed, he could take a report. I gave him the details and he thanked me. I stopped him and asked him if he was going to send somebody to pick up the bird to care for it. He said, Oh! I only take reports. Let me ask my supervisor. In a few minutes, he returned to say, No, we only take reports. My supervisor thinks you should put it back in the water.

That sounded sort of counter productive to me. Wouldn't that be like adding to the oil spill rather than cleaning it up? So I thanked him and called a number for Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue. I figured they could help. Their number was answered by a machine which helpfully gave me the number of the Sonoma County Injured Bird hotline. A real person answered! Now I was onto something! I carefully explained my predicament. The lady listened but said she couldn't help me because I was in Marin County, not Sonoma County. I would have to call Marin Wildlife Care. So I did. This lady was quite sympathetic but said they had no volunteers who would drive forty five miles out to pick up the bird, and besides, she wasn't real sure where Dillon Beach was in the first place. But she would give me a phone number of somebody who would help. I dialed it. And voila! It was the San Francisco Information Office again! A complete loop!

Over the course of the next hour, I called the Point Reyes National Seashore Bear Valley station which was accepting oiled birds but (sorry!) they would not pick up and I replied, well, sorry!, at $3.60 a gallon for gas I'm not driving it thirty miles down Highway One in the rain. And I called the local fire house who helpfully told me to scrub it down with DAWN dishwashing detergent, but no, they didn't want it either.

Finally a woman from some San Francisco Wildlife organization called me back. She sounded like she'd just had it! It'd been a Too Long Day for her already. She said this oil spill was bigger than Prince William Sound when the Exxon Valdez spilled its load. She said San Francisco Bay would be empty of boats for the next six months. She said I needed to let every beachgoer know NOT to handle any oil globs or oiled birds for it was extremely toxic and likely to cause problems for anybody with weakened immune systems. She recommended I put the bird back in the water and not let anybody pick up any more.

So, at five o'clock, I took the saltwater taffy box with the oiled bird in it and walked down under the dock. I opened the box and he stuck his head out. His little black shoe button eyes slitted at me in disgust. "Sorry, Buddy," I told him, tipping him out of the box onto the sand. "You're on your own. Good luck to you." He took a wobbly step back into the water and then sat down to rest.

He probably won't be the only dead oiled sea bird on our beach tomorrow. But I'm all out of ideas for how to help them. So much for relying on 'Authorities' to help you when there's a problem.