Jeanne has an armadillo friend who has been visiting lately. She’s seen it a couple of times (I haven’t yet), and its digging is obvious. Last night it dug a big hole by the tomato eunuch at our back door, throwing dirt all over the back porch. I’m going to trap the bugger and take it to Armadillo Camp out in the wilds of the county.

We are also experiencing a squirrel blossom.  The black squirrel living under the old cabin has turned into a rodent squadron. I want to dust off the .410, but Jeanne wants me to trap and relocate. I’m mindful of my father’s efforts in that regard. He kept trapping and relocating, but the problem never diminished. So the next time he trapped one, he spray-painted its tail blue and hauled it twenty miles away. It took three or four days to get back home.

So Mom started killing them with a pellet gun. She was about seventy at the time. (Which is not so far off, now that I think about it.) She would freeze them and give them to Clarence, our long-time family helper. Clarence would make squirrel perlou.

Clarence also favored a pot of possum. Sometimes he would spot one while walking from the bus stop to his house.  He’d spook it, and it would play dead. Then (he claimed), he would lay a stick across its tail, and it would reflexively wrap its tail around the stick. Clarence would put the stick over his shoulder and walk home. As long as he didn’t touch the possum, it would continue to play dead until Clarence heped art become reality.  I think I’ll try it on the next possum I see.

We invited some friends over for a quiet dinner last night. Jeanne set the patio table with a tablecloth, plates, glasses, etc.  Ten minutes later it rained for the first time in a couple of months. Not much, but enough to soak the table and make the air humid. We moved inside. As it turned out, the quiet dinner involved a certain amount of throwing people in the pool around 1:00 a.m. So today we had some towels and lost clothing drying on the patio. It rained again. Not much, but a little more this time.

I think we’re getting the hang of this. I’m going to throw a tuxedo outside tomorrow.

I want to put Wesley Clark in the photo rotator at the top of the page, but it takes time, and I'm so damn busy. With what? Texas Non-Fiction Writers. Just closed the Bad Writing Contest. Gruesome. I need to post the results on the site. Tomorrow. Then I have to do the taxes (April? They were due in April?), then start revising the book that Texas A&M has agreed to publish. And I need a couple more membership pushes for TNFW, and more preparation for the October writers' retreat. Jeez, it's only ninety days away.

Gotta run.