The Field

July cleanup

So I cleaned up today -- it seemed pretty bad.  I filled two bags with trash, and I also cut back some re-sprouting Russian olives I cut last year and cut a few new ones as well.  I also identified a single tall tamarisk/salt cedar plant near the road, alone in a patch of dirt that is sometimes wet -- the perfect habitat for these things.  I cut it down, too.  I only wish I had some transline... or some telar... or some rodeo... or garlon would do.  It's pretty sad that you have to poison the stumps in order to really kill them off.  Otherwise, the tamarisks and Russian olives just keep coming back.  Still, I think cutting what I can is better than nothing.  Also, I can't believe I just said I wish I were doing chemical application... after trudging through miles of mostly dried creek bed last week in big, uncomfortable rubber boots, plastic pants, long sleeves, and rubber gloves -- in 95 degree heat, no less -- I'm not a big fan of herbicides.  But I have to admit their necessity in this age of rampant invasive species introduced all over the place from more vectors than I care to think about.  It was a nice day, not as cool as I hoped, but not too hot to work.  There were a lot of beer bottles and such, probably left over from revelry around the 4th.  It was mostly depressing in that way, except for one woman walking her dog who thanked me for picking up and said she often thinks of doing the same.  I think that, given the number of people who walk there, if everyone would just pick up one piece of trash during their walks, the field would be scoured clean in no time.

Fishing for cell phones

It feels a little post-apocalyptic, being surrounded by heavily altered nature, fishing a piece of broken and toxic technology out of a small body of polluted water. On my walk today, breaking in my new Garmont Kiowa Vegan hiking shoes, I weeded the sprouting Russian olives some and then noticed pieces of a cell phone in the pool under the little old bridge. As more important people have noted, computers, cell phones, tv's, and other modern conveniences contain an array of heavy metals and chemicals that are fine while contained in their technological form, but horrendous if released into the environment (to say nothing of the fact that they also contain small amounts of gold and other things worth recovering.) That's why responsible recycling of old technology is so important. It's unfortunate, then, that it's so darn fun to break stuff and throw it in bodies of water. I managed to fish out the face plate, and the circuit board with antenna attached, but unfortunately I didn't find the battery, whose acids are probably still leaking into the water. There was a medium sized crawdad dead in the middle of the pool. Not an encouraging sign. Other than that, it was a very nice day.

A hawk, goth kids, and plastic bags

So last Monday (January 28) I cleaned up in the field for the first time since September.  The necessary elements came together – mild weather, not too much snow on the ground, not having to work, and being able to muster the will to do it – so I hit the trails.  I couldn’t find my big heavy-duty trash bags, so I made due with our smaller, flimsy kitchen bags.  It was breezy, so I knew whatever trash I picked up would probably be replaced in short order, but it still needed to be done.  I made my usual circuit, starting on the hill and turning past the Countryside rec center park and down toward the baseball fields, which I’m now informed the hoa is adopting, so hopefully that area won’t be as trashy in the future.  It tends to be pretty bad, with drink cans and bottles, sunflower seed bags and the like.  I ended up spending some time in the copse of Russian Olive saplings behind one of the ball fields, where there was an annoying amount of cardboard boxes and plastic bags wrapped around the trees.  So many plastic shopping bags.  I lost count of how many I picked up and pulled out of trees and bushes – several dozen at least, this day.  If you still use these, you need to stop.  They are a scourge on the environment that must be wiped out at the source – don’t get them in the first place.  Refuse bags if you’re purchasing few enough items that you can carry everything with your hands, and otherwise purchase some of the cheap reusable canvas shopping bags that are now readily available at most retailers and grocery stores.  Otherwise, your bags will end up here, in the creek, or there, wrapped around a tree, or there, floating in the lake or the ocean.  They’re ugly, overly durable, and they kill animals that mistakenly try to eat them.  They need to be outlawed, but until then, refuse to use them.  And then there are the plastic bags that newspapers come in.  I get a lot of those, too.  As much as I enjoy reading the paper, I’ve recently decided to agree with my fiancé they’re just too wasteful.  A new plastic bag and a new tree every day of the year… maybe we should just get our news online and on TV.

I continued on the main path, at the base of the hill, and filled the first bag and half of the second before coming to the trail junction.  A hawk flew over the field, over the prairie dog town, the place you’re most likely to see a raptor or other predator here.  I dropped off the first bag at my sign and continued around on the main trail.  School was out, and I passed a cute couple of goth kids.  There was a boy and a girl, possibly high school freshmen but more likely sixth graders (the clothes and the makeup made it kind of hard to tell).  They both wore mostly black, the boy had a dog collar and the girl wore some interesting black makeup designs and a fluffy, fox-like tail that hung down to her knees.  The boy was attempting to impress her by trying to climb a tree.  If it were any more precious, I would have had to stop and declare with rising intonation, “Ahhh!”

A utility/telecom crew of some sort did some work on the side of the hill above Mayfair park last year, and in addition to flattening all the vegetation there they also left behind a twenty foot long section of PVC pipe, along with a smaller six-foot section and another small enough to put in my bag.  Several years ago when they repaved 106 Avenue and installed one of those black plastic construction fences along the border of the field, they left it behind in a similar manner.  This is city owned Open Space… why are they allowed to do that?  I dragged the shorter section of pipe down to Mayfair park and then continued, and filled up the third bag from the creek near the little bridge, where I retrieved another section of plastic piping.  This one was, about six inches in diameter, four or five feet long and made of corrugated black plastic, was apparently intended as part of a storm drain into the creek, but it eroded out and was loose in the creek bed.  I found what appeared to be a still functional micro RC plane lost in the bushes.  I deposited it on the sign that tells you to clean up after your dog and dragged the pipe and the third bag up to the drop spot.

It started to cool off around 4 when the sun went behind the clouds and the hawk went hunting.  Perched in a sapling near the prairie dog town, it swooped down and hit the ground in the field.  I watched while it secured its prize, and then took off, mouse in talon, for a dead standing cottonwood in the center of the field that hawks favor.  I finished dragging the smaller PVC pipe over to the drop point and, surprised at how much I can get done when I get started at midday rather than near sundown, I hit the 106^th trail and sidewalk.  My strategy for cleaning the creek here is to walk all the way down to the end and then clean up as I walk back toward the drop point, rather than cleaning up on the way and having to haul a full bag all the way back (the entire pattern of my cleaning route is designed to minimize the amount of time I spend with heavy, full bags of trash slung over my shoulder).  But it didn’t avail me this time, since all the trash was waiting for me at the far end, at the mouth of the creek.  The combination of wind, flowing water, and cattails here has obviously been piling up the trash for some time.  It was apparent that there was too much to fit in my final bag (I only brought 4, since I usually only use 1-3).  Luckily an entire trash can was in the creek, so I stuffed some of the larger items in there and set it on the curb.  It probably belonged to one of the residents on the other side of the street and had blown away in recent winds.  I hoped they would claim it and not mind the new trash content.  There were still boxes with ripped Christmas wrapping paper lying about.  I had to pick only the most unsightly items because of the limited space in my bag, and that end of the creek still looked in a shambles when I left. 

Volunteer litter clean up is an interesting job in that it both combats and feeds cynicism.  It’s a rule that when you bend down to pick up one piece of trash, you’ll notice another nearby, and another and another.  You can break your back cleaning up a small area, and almost feel like you’ve accomplished something, only to look up and see a sea of litter stretching before you.  Is this a park or a public landfill?  It’s easy to lose hope for humanity when you see its detritus cluttering the landscape and when you realize that a large part of what you’re picking up – pop cans, Sunny D bottles, Capri Sun pouches, pop and water bottles, candy wrappers, and so on – are being dropped on the ground by kids, kids who don’t care and whose parents don’t care enough to teach them any ethics on the subject.  I grumble and think misanthropic thoughts as I shift a heavy bag from one tired arm to the other.  There’s always more.  I’ll never win this battle. 

On the other hand, uncovering a pretty spot feels good, and lots of passersby openly admire your effort, and that feels good, and the work itself is good, and there’s plants and raptors and cute goth kids, and you know that most of the trash isn’t being maliciously littered, but rather collects here passively, in the low point of the neighborhood, by the action of wind and water on an imperfect system of resource use and waste collection – too many trash cans left outside without lids, not enough recycling.  These things, and even people’s level of consciousness about their own actions, can be changed and improved, and I hope they will be.  Maybe I can’t win, but I think some battles are only lost if you stop fighting.  It was still light when I headed for home, which is a better way to end it than in the dark.  I’ll have to try to get more early starts in the future.

So last Monday (January 28) I cleaned up in the field for the first time since September.  The necessary elements came together – mild weather, not too much snow on the ground, not having to work, and being able to muster the will to do it – so I hit the trails.  I couldn’t find my big heavy-duty trash bags, so I made due with our smaller, flimsy kitchen bags.  It was breezy, so I knew whatever trash I picked up would probably be replaced in short order, but it still needed to be done.  I made my usual circuit, starting on the hill and turning past the Countryside rec center park and down toward the baseball fields, which I’m now informed the hoa is adopting, so hopefully that area won’t be as trashy in the future.  It tends to be pretty bad, with drink cans and bottles, sunflower seed bags and the like.  I ended up spending some time in the copse of Russian Olive saplings behind one of the ball fields, where there was an annoying amount of cardboard boxes and plastic bags wrapped around the trees.  So many plastic shopping bags.  I lost count of how many I picked up and pulled out of trees and bushes – several dozen at least, this day.  If you still use these, you need to stop.  They are a scourge on the environment that must be wiped out at the source – don’t get them in the first place.  Refuse bags if you’re purchasing few enough items that you can carry everything with your hands, and otherwise purchase some of the cheap reusable canvas shopping bags that are now readily available at most retailers and grocery stores.  Otherwise, your bags will end up here, in the creek, or there, wrapped around a tree, or there, floating in the lake or the ocean.  They’re ugly, overly durable, and they kill animals that mistakenly try to eat them.  They need to be outlawed, but until then, refuse to use them.  And then there are the plastic bags that newspapers come in.  I get a lot of those, too.  As much as I enjoy reading the paper, I’ve recently decided to agree with my fiancé they’re just too wasteful.  A new plastic bag and a new tree every day of the year… maybe we should just get our news online and on TV.

I continued on the main path, at the base of the hill, and filled the first bag and half of the second before coming to the trail junction.  A hawk flew over the field, over the prairie dog town, the place you’re most likely to see a raptor or other predator here.  I dropped off the first bag at my sign and continued around on the main trail.  School was out, and I passed a cute couple of goth kids.  There was a boy and a girl, possibly high school freshmen but more likely sixth graders (the clothes and the makeup made it kind of hard to tell).  They both wore mostly black, the boy had a dog collar and the girl wore some interesting black makeup designs and a fluffy, fox-like tail that hung down to her knees.  The boy was attempting to impress her by trying to climb a tree.  If it were any more precious, I would have had to stop and declare with rising intonation, “Ahhh!”

A utility/telecom crew of some sort did some work on the side of the hill above Mayfair park last year, and in addition to flattening all the vegetation there they also left behind a twenty foot long section of PVC pipe, along with a smaller six-foot section and another small enough to put in my bag.  Several years ago when they repaved 106 Avenue and installed one of those black plastic construction fences along the border of the field, they left it behind in a similar manner.  This is city owned Open Space… why are they allowed to do that?  I dragged the shorter section of pipe down to Mayfair park and then continued, and filled up the third bag from the creek near the little bridge, where I retrieved another section of plastic piping.  This one was, about six inches in diameter, four or five feet long and made of corrugated black plastic, was apparently intended as part of a storm drain into the creek, but it eroded out and was loose in the creek bed.  I found what appeared to be a still functional micro RC plane lost in the bushes.  I deposited it on the sign that tells you to clean up after your dog and dragged the pipe and the third bag up to the drop spot.

It started to cool off around 4 when the sun went behind the clouds and the hawk went hunting.  Perched in a sapling near the prairie dog town, it swooped down and hit the ground in the field.  I watched while it secured its prize, and then took off, mouse in talon, for a dead standing cottonwood in the center of the field that hawks favor.  I finished dragging the smaller PVC pipe over to the drop point and, surprised at how much I can get done when I get started at midday rather than near sundown, I hit the 106^th trail and sidewalk.  My strategy for cleaning the creek here is to walk all the way down to the end and then clean up as I walk back toward the drop point, rather than cleaning up on the way and having to haul a full bag all the way back (the entire pattern of my cleaning route is designed to minimize the amount of time I spend with heavy, full bags of trash slung over my shoulder).  But it didn’t avail me this time, since all the trash was waiting for me at the far end, at the mouth of the creek.  The combination of wind, flowing water, and cattails here has obviously been piling up the trash for some time.  It was apparent that there was too much to fit in my final bag (I only brought 4, since I usually only use 1-3).  Luckily an entire trash can was in the creek, so I stuffed some of the larger items in there and set it on the curb.  It probably belonged to one of the residents on the other side of the street and had blown away in recent winds.  I hoped they would claim it and not mind the new trash content.  There were still boxes with ripped Christmas wrapping paper lying about.  I had to pick only the most unsightly items because of the limited space in my bag, and that end of the creek still looked in a shambles when I left. 

Volunteer litter clean up is an interesting job in that it both combats and feeds cynicism.  It’s a rule that when you bend down to pick up one piece of trash, you’ll notice another nearby, and another and another.  You can break your back cleaning up a small area, and almost feel like you’ve accomplished something, only to look up and see a sea of litter stretching before you.  Is this a park or a public landfill?  It’s easy to lose hope for humanity when you see its detritus cluttering the landscape and when you realize that a large part of what you’re picking up – pop cans, Sunny D bottles, Capri Sun pouches, pop and water bottles, candy wrappers, and so on – are being dropped on the ground by kids, kids who don’t care and whose parents don’t care enough to teach them any ethics on the subject.  I grumble and think misanthropic thoughts as I shift a heavy bag from one tired arm to the other.  There’s always more.  I’ll never win this battle. 

On the other hand, uncovering a pretty spot feels good, and lots of passersby openly admire your effort, and that feels good, and the work itself is good, and there’s plants and raptors and cute goth kids, and you know that most of the trash isn’t being maliciously littered, but rather collects here passively, in the low point of the neighborhood, by the action of wind and water on an imperfect system of resource use and waste collection – too many trash cans left outside without lids, not enough recycling.  These things, and even people’s level of consciousness about their own actions, can be changed and improved, and I hope they will be.  Maybe I can’t win, but I think some battles are only lost if you stop fighting.  It was still light when I headed for home, which is a better way to end it than in the dark.  I’ll have to try to get more early starts in the future.

Changes?

My love has gone home again, but this time she will return soon, and permanently.  We've found an apartment (probably) and are preparing to leave our old lives behind in order to be together.  Hers is the bigger transition, since she's moving 800 miles while I'm going about one and a half, but still I'm feeling contemplative about the enormity of us finally striking out on our own.  So I went for a walk today around sunset.  Earlier I spied a couple of teenage boys taking potshots, probably at the prairie dogs, with a bb gun.  As it happens, there was an article in the Denver Post today about increasing poaching of urban wildlife.  Otherwise it was peaceful -- it rained earlier today but then warmed up and dried out.  The work crew is finished repaving the path near Mayfair park and has gone (the old bridge remains, incidentally).  Their biggest contribution in my mind is all the Russian olives they removed from around the creek there, opening up the landscape and giving the cottonwood stand some breathing room.  But those Russian olives, weeds that they are, are already sprouting little bushes of new shoots from the roots, so I raced nightfall to weed them.  Clearing some from around a cottonwood sapling, I felt I was giving it a better chance.  I also provided a blood meal to a few needy mosquitoes (I'm such a saint).  Hopefully they were promptly eaten by one of the many bats I saw wheeling about the darkening sky on my way home.

If we do move to the Walnut creek area, I may be compelled to adopt a new "the field" -- the Walnut Creek open space area.  We'll see!

Late July cleanup/Russian olive kill

So I hastily cleaned up on Tuesday, trying to beat the setting sun, which hung over the mountains as a big orange disk that you could almost look at directly for some reason.  I've seen the sun in that muted orange "wow, so that's what the sun looks like when it's not blinding as long as you just glance at it for a second" color when rising, and when setting over the ocean, but I don't recall seeing it that way over the mountains before.  I picked up a bag of trash and cut down a few Russian olive saplings.  Today (the 2nd) I went out to finish the job, hauling the Russian olives I didn't haul before to the drop point because I was too tired/it was too dark.  It took quite a while, since they were over at the far end of the hill near the baseball fields, and I had to make about four trips.  I have decided not to cut any more Russian olives until winter, when they are not heavy with seed and leaves, and will be easier to cut and carry without the leaves in my face.  I've also been having the disturbing thought that the seeds might be dropping off as I carry the trees I've cut, which could result in multiple new RO's popping up to replace the one cut down in an ironic twist of my good intentions.  Best to remove them during times of year when they don't have seeds.

The big news from down in the Mayfair park area is that a crew is down there repaving the paved portion of the trail, and it looks like they may replace the bridge over the creek as well.  I actually like the old, ugly bridge and will be sad to see it go.  However, they've also removed the whole stand of Russian olives from the bridge area!  Those trees were bigger than I probably could have handled, and there were probably several dozen in all.  It's really opened up the landscape there, making it more airy and giving a better view of the little cottonwood stand that was buried in them.  I hope they remove many more of them while they're at it.  It would be even better if they'd replant with natives, like cottonwood trees.

Last month saw two more expeditions to Mt. Audubon, the last of which was finally successful despite rather dreadful weather, and an educational wildflower hike.  I haven't posted anything, probably because I need to upload appropriate photos to go along with those entries, and who has the time, really?

Yet another aluminum artifact, and a new toy

Cleaned up 2 bags of trash, 1 large item, and removed 5 Russian olive saplings today.  The field didn't seem too dirty, unless the tall grass and weeds are just covering it all.  I found a 23 year old coke can, dated by the writing "Treasure Tops '84" it had in a few places, apparently referring to some such contest.  It hardly surprises me anymore to find trash that's been lying on the ground for greater than 20 years -- the stuff just doesn't go away on its own. 

I also serendipitously found a nearly new 10" folding saw, which proved to be deadly effective against Russian olive saplings.  I cut down one that would have been too big to take by my trusty bend-and-snap method, and it was so much easier that I cut down two more little saplings while I was at it, and it was tempting to stay out and cut the darn things down all night.  But one's arms get tired, hauling trash and cutting tree-weeds, and it was getting dark. 

But I now have the weapon I've been looking for.  So don't fear the reaper, Russian olives.  Just fear me.  Bwa ha ha!

Yucca flowers and beetle sex part 2

Small correction to my previous post... the yucca flowers aren't entirely the same yellow-white cream color -- the stigma is green and the sepals have a faded red color. 

Some of them are horribly infested with aphids, but they're also covered in ladybugs, doing their best to eat them up.  They're also doing their best to make some more troops for the cause!

Along with the adults are (for reasons made obvious by the above pictures) many larval ladybugs, who are also hungry for aphids.

Yucca flowers, cottonwood seeds

The yuccas are blooming.  A little past their prime by now, maybe, but still in bloom.  They normally blend in with all the grassy plants and weeds, but now each individual yucca plant is clearly visible.  In the field they only grow in any numbers on the hill, and in the area of the prairie dog town, which is a little higher than the rest of the field.  Maybe it has something to do with the soil -- could it be too moist in the center of the field? -- or maybe the rest of the field is too weed dominated for them to grow.  They're interesting plants pretty common in this region.  They appear as a rosette of long, stiff leaves with very pointy ends that grow upward and outward, forming a protective hemisphere surrounding a central, woody stalk.  Right now that stalk is covered in flowers, which, like the rest of the plant, are a little unusual.  They're large, succulent flowers that tend to hang downward from the stalk and whose every feature -- petals, pistil, and stamens -- shares a creamy, off-white color.  And a close look reveals that they're ecosystems.  Many are covered in aphids (or some kind of little sap sucking bug anyway) and with these primary consumers I also saw secondary consumers in the form of lady bugs, some of whom were mating.  Come to think of it, I saw a little moth escape from one of the flowers when I held it up for a look -- I wonder if it was one of those moths mentioned in the article!  Later in the summer they'll harden in to brown seed pods, which will split open in the fall, spilling little dark disk-shaped seeds on the ground.

The cottonwoods are already releasing their seeds, and have been for a week or two.  Cottony tufts carry their tiny seeds through the air, and when the wind blows the air is filled with them.  I drove under a tree the other day that was dropping so many sees that it almost looked like it was snowing.  This has always been a whimsical feature of early summer to me. 

What to do after graduation? Kill some Russian olives, perhaps?

The intensity of the last month is over.  I'm a college graduate, with a bachelor's degree in Environmental, Population and Organismic Biology from CU.  It hasn't really sunk in yet.  After the whirlwind of activity last week (including a fantastic visit from my lovely girlfriend, finals, and graduation) I found myself feeling a little restless today, not knowing what to do with myself, as if I should be frantically working on a term project and worrying about an exam or two.  When you've gotten used to it, it can be hard to stop being stressed out and just enjoy a little free time.  I need to find a real job now, hopefully something related to biology/ecology/conservation, but maybe it can wait a day or two.

Today I looked at the male cones on our pines that are currently coating my car in a fine layer of yellowish pollen.  I took a walk and did some amateur forestry.  The cottonwoods are fully leafed out with beautiful fresh, shiny, broad, bright green leaves.  They're heavy with developing seeds, which will soon be released to the wind on cottony sails.  The prairie dogs are doing their thing, burrowing, foraging, and barking at passersby.  I'm concerned about them now that, as I've worried for years, some have spread over the feeble boundary that was the stream bed, and they may begin to spread through the rest of the field.  If they grow too numerous, someone will probably complain, and the city may have the lot of them exterminated. 

The Russian olive trees are still proliferating.  I removed one small sapling today.  It isn't like me to kill a tree, but these are noxious weeds, endangering the native ecosystem.  It's alarming, but at the rate they're popping up, all too easy to envision the little grassland/cattail marsh of the field being replaced with a Russian olive woodland.  I fear the invaders may out-compete the beautiful cottonwoods, and for that, I despise them. As I was tearing out the sapling, it occurred to me that while I may not be able to remove larger trees altogether, I might be able to girdle them.  This is something I learned about last summer in the mammal class, where I saw that the foresters in Boulder county had cut off a strip of bark all the way around the trunk of some trees in order to create standing dead trees for use by owls and so forth.  While most of the tree's wood is composed of water-conducting xylem, sugar-conducting phloem exists only in a thin ring inside of the bark.  Removing the bark all the way around a tree removes the phloem, which leaves the tree unable to transport sugars generated in the leaves down to the roots, and the tree dies.  Surely cutting off a ring of bark would be easier than trying to cut down and remove a whole tree, and some more dead, standing trees might actually be a habitat improvement for birds in the field.  I went home and grabbed a little saw.

However, Russian olives tend to branch in an almost bush like way very near the ground, and the limbs are covered in pointy 1-2 inch spines, which are probably designed to prevent just this sort of thing, so even reaching the main stem is difficult.  Its nearness to the ground also makes the angle difficult for sawing.  And the buggers are apt to send out new shoots from stumps anyway, so I'm not sure if this method can even kill them off.  But I decided to try anyway, for science, to see if it would work.  I wrestled with them and managed to cut a ring around several small trees.  They fought back, scratching up my arms with their spines.  One drew a nice line of blood on my elbow.  Maybe it's fitting, since I drew theirs, but I survived the encounter; hopefully, they will not.

Bitten! or, The pre-spring cleaning: mean dogs and air guns

Finally, a warm day with little snow on the ground that happens to be on a weekend when I'm also not feeling too lazy.  It was sunny and beautiful today, so I got out and cleaned up -- two bags and one large item -- for the first time since September, I think.  Now that the snow's melted off, you can see tunnels that mice made under the snow all over the place, on the hill, in the field, and near the stream.  Bits of vegetation that presumably lined the tunnels and shallow depressions in the ground mark the tunnels, which sometimes branch out this way and that or run straight into their owner's hole.  I wonder what species it is.  I'm tempted to say deer mice (Peromyscus  maniculatus) just because I know they're common as dirt and live everywhere. 

Tomorrow, some kid will go to his fort after school and find that it isn't there anymore.  I wouldn't mind some kids using the sheltered area under a copse of trees in the middle of a field as their fort so much, except that they trashed the place.  All sorts of food related garbage, including a bag of chips and jar of salsa sheltered under their sleds.  Were you really going to eat something you'd left out in the field?  I even found their secret stash -- an air pistol, complete with a carton of bb's.  Oh, how very naughty.  Hopefully they weren't shooting at birds or anything.  I scribbled a note on a scrap of their own trash and left it where the stash was, asking if this was their own fort, why did they trash it?  And firearms (including air guns) are illegal out here, as is harassing, harming, or removing animals and plants.  I left my number.  If they want the gun back, we'll talk.

After dropping off the gun and bb's, which were annoying extra weight, at home, I returned to keep cleaning, and was greeted by the most aggressive dog I've ever met outdoors.  It's common practice around here, even though it's against the rules, for people to let their dogs off-leash while they're out walking them.  But it should have been obvious to the girl (perhaps in her late teens) walking him that this dog, who was perhaps annoyed about the ridiculous silver dog jacket he was being forced to wear, was extremely aggressive and should have been on a leash.  He was a medium sized dog, large enough to give me pause when he ran up barking at me.  The girl called him, but to no avail; if your dog is going to be off-leash you should at least have good voice command of him!  He seemed to be trying to hold me at bay, becoming more aggressive whenever I started walking.  When I tried to walk away, he bit me!  Lunged from behind and nipped me on the thigh!  I told the girl that he bit me and he needs to be on a leash.  When she finally chased him down, I saw her put it on him.  A less tolerant person would have called animal control and had the dog impounded and possibly killed.  The owner could be fined, at least, for so recklessly turning a highly aggressive dog loose on the public.  I guess I let her off easy.  But that dog gave me a good welt, and a very minor breakage of the skin, so now I might have to get a tetanus shot.  Either that, or be forced to stalk the night as a weredog, which admittedly would be pretty cool.

I made my circuit, I cleaned up.  It got a little hard on the last leg, when I was dragging a long, thin strip of metal in one hand and hauling a full bag in the other.  And I stopped when I reached the prairie dog colony, because I noticed a large number of holes that had been maliciously plugged up by someone.  I spent a good twenty minutes at least, until it was getting dark and chilly and I felt a need to get that bag and metal thing to the drop off already, pulling out big rocks and digging out those holes.  Next to one was a dead prairie dog, which appeared to be pretty freshly killed.  I couldn't tell by what, obviously not a coyote or bird of prey, because there wouldn't be anything left.  If it was some kid... I hope it wasn't.  I put the trash in its spot and walked home. 

It really was a beautiful afternoon and evening, scarcely a cloud in the sky, and even in the dark on the way home I was in a t-shirt.  It was kind of an adventuresome afternoon -- I've never been bitten by a mean dog in the course of cleaning before!  Nor have I found a gun before.  And I'm troubled at just how many of the prairie dog homes had big rocks stuffed in them.   As I pried the rocks out, I directed a thought to whomever did it: I love them more than you hate them; that's why you, and people like you, have already lost.  Really, don't you have to believe that love conquers hate in the end?  It's easy to believe that on a beautiful day, at least.