The Revolution circa 2010

Whether you're a neighborhood secessionist masquerading as a home gardener---or the reverse---it's likely you've started this year's troop review.  Three cheers to the Revolution!

This year we have a new recruit, an eight-foot bed made this weekend that is slowly transforming the kids' playground to dual use.  This fall some pole beans will be growing up the trellis, but on advice for summer I've planted patio tomatoes and a few eggplant. 

On the other side of swing set, the pole beans planted in spring are up and producing well.

Across the yard: tomatoes, oregano, hot and sweet peppers and some basil.

And in the back with the compost bins and shade cloth, French sorrel, cilantro and parsley.

Revolutionary Manifesto: Try the new Wendell Berry essay collection, "Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food," with introduction by Micheal Pollan.

Random Doggage-- Our Pups and Lineage, in Part

I need a new pic of Irbis who has two more weeks to go as a house dog but is driving me nuts as he is in full active mode. Here, to scale, is the plate that saved his leg, now one of my myriad desk chotchkes. Hard to believe it was inside his leg, bolted to his broken bone, for most of last year. Also a fairly recent photo of him sitting up like a human, as he does.

Sergiy Kopylets, Lashyn's breeder in Ukraine, has been in touch with Vladimir Beregovoy. He has been getting new tazis out of the dangerous uplands of Tajikistan, and I'm sure has tales to tell. I thought I would put in a recent photo of Lash, plus a couple of her two pups we bred who live with John Burchard, for V to send to him (his Internet access is intermittent at best), and one of her others. Brindle Tigger's sire is Kazakh Kyran; pale Jingiz is by Daniela's old Arab boy Lahav (who is also a descendant in part of some of John's dogs). Jingiz is also Irbis' litter brother. Pix of pups at John's in Alpaugh California; Lashyn at home on our couch. Finally,Irbis and Jingiz's brother Shunkar, who lives with Daniela in Magdalena.

For Janet: Ataika with her mother at the Plakhov's in Almaty -- she is (still) the little black- faced one-- at a bit less than four months. Photo by us.

Dave Dixon's male pup from Ataika by Kyran, who his little daughters insisted on naming "Tazi". I think he looks amazingly like Dor, except that, living up north in a snowy part of Utah, he grows heavy "pantaloons" every winter, which he sheds in spring. Here he is visiting us in NM last spring and has almost shed out.

Ataika and her son, Tazi's brother Cisco, who belongs to Greg Rabourn, after a successful hare chase with Greg's Gyr- Saker hybrid falcon, and me. Photo by Daniela Imre. (And the hawk, same).

Just a few of our successful kids. We are proud, and grateful to Sergei, Andrey Kovalenko, and the Plakhovs, as well as to Daniela and John.

Sheep camp, week 4

It’s been another week of frequent rain and snow, but lambing is going gangbusters, and most lambs are doing really well. The vast majority of lambs do not need my assistance, but it is easier to warm up a cold lamb than it is to cool down a hot lamb, so I prefer this cool weather. Besides, my longjohns and Carhartt coveralls are so stylish that divas like me hate to put them away for the season.

The lambs run around in gangs, racing back and forth on hills, digging in loose dirt, bucking and leaping, and picking up more lambs as they run back and forth in waves, making the gangs bigger and bigger. Their mothers cry for them to come back and behave, but are ignored. If a ewe comes over to try and retrieve her lamb, she could end up with a gang of 20 hoodlums aimed at her udder, so the ewes pretty much stand back to do their complaining.


This week, I thought I’d share a few shots of my neighbors. The burrowing owl pair has picked their favorite burrow, and it’s the one in the two-track road to my camp. The size difference between the sexes is dramatic. Now that the female has a mate (last Sunday she suddenly wasn’t alone anymore) she is much more tolerant of my photography, but I’ll limit my visits.


The pronghorn buck has remained with the herd. Don’t know why, don’t care – he’s just part of our bunch now. It will be interesting to see if he follows when we move the herd in a few days.


I left a pen of five ewes at the house for some TLC when I left for sheep camp, afraid that for one reason or the other, these ewes would have a hard time out on the range. I’m pleased to report my favorite old ewe, which I raised on a bottle, had a beautiful single ewe lamb this year (she had triplets last year). Friendly is 14 years old, and has been my lead sheep for more than a decade. She’s a good old girl, and I’m pleased to continue her lineage. These ewes lay around eating alfalfa Jim feeds them twice a day. I suggested he start providing them some Vanilla Wafer treats (sheep love cookies), but he claimed he would feed them oats instead.

RIP Les Line

Les Line, the writer and editor who made the (old) Audubon into what might have been the best nature magazine in the world, has died.

Audubon has been very and appropriately kind in its obit. It doesn't mention that they fired him in '91 to change the magazine's direction.

My friend Matt Miller of The Nature Conservancy informed me of his death. I wrote back what I will let stand as my own memorial:

"I knew Les and thought he was some kind of editorial genius, maybe the most brilliant natural history editor ever, publishing everybody from Peter Matthiessen and Robert F. Jones on Africa to John Mitchell (a five- part and fiercely controversial series) on hunting. He, if I remember correctly, broke the Texas eagle shooting scandal with Don Scheuler's reporting (Scheuler may also be the first nature writer who wrote a gay memoir, though not for Audubon (;-)). Though it obviously still exists, Audubon magazine died as far as I was concerned when PC types pushed and business heads fired him, moving away from great nature writing to pure "enviro" (and both boring and routinely alarmist) stuff.

"He was also a delightfully strange man. He was ENORMOUSLY fat, had at that time-- mid- Eighties?-- hippie hair and a handlebar mustache, and wore things like turquoise bolo ties in his Manhattan office, where he also had a Weatherby cartridge board and a poster of a Smith & Wesson .44 mag! At Audubon!

"He took me to lunch and recommended a one- pound burger with CAVIAR and some kind of draft German beer. I ate one-- he might have had two.

"It's a cliché but they don't make them like him anymore. I could have seen my (and my genre's) own near-doom as popular coming when I invited him to speak about his experiences at Wildbranch Writing workshop post- Audubon and several young "writers" (none to my knowledge ever published before or since) stood up and dismissed-- denounced-- natural history as "irrelevant". This at a nature writing workshop!

"I missed him even before he was gone."

UPDATE: Miller on naturalists.

Revolvers 2

I had some interesting responses to my post on a two- revolver "set" of mine last month but it took me some time to get back blogging-- obviously.

Jonathan Hanson, editor of Overland journal and possibly the last Edwardian, proposed a perfect pair of antique English Webleys.

The big one is "a MKV ("star" or "double star"). It's was altered for WWI; the standard barrel for WWI was 6 inches. It was originally .455, but the back of the cylinder has been cut for .45ACP/AR -- .455 will still fit, but the rim is so thin the cartridge will slide back and forth.

"The little one is the famous British Bulldog [ think Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson--SB], chambered in the short little .450 Adams. It has a famous scene in the beginning of The Wind and the Lion.

"I think they used that cartridge (like 600 fps) because you could not only see where your bullet was going; reportedly if it was off-target you could actually run up beside it and tap it back in line with a finger."

Our mutual friend and J's fellow Arizonan Bruce Douglas took a more American angle.

"Around 1983, I drove up to Oregon with my college girlfriend to meet her parents. They had her very late in life; she was in her late 20s, her father was in his early 80s. His name was George Engleheart (related to, and named after, the English miniature portrait painter). His family had moved from England to Mexico at the turn of the century. He was a fascinating guy: English, but only saw England when he was sent to University in his late teens. He spent his time learning Latin, Ancient Greek, drinking, and pursuing English girls… when the final exam came, he decided it was a good time to go home to Mexico. He landed a job as a geologist in Chihuahua – spending months alone in the countryside. 50 to 60 years of life passed, and we were sitting in the cold, damp basement in a rundown neighborhood in Portland. Smoking and sipping cheap wine, keeping company with his aging, incontinent, Black Lab (smoking wasn’t allowed upstairs). And here’s where the story of the Pistola Carcajada came in:

"George had been out working in the mountains by himself; after a month or so he wandered into a village after dark. Seeing a cantina, he made his way straight for it. When he stepped through the door of the lamp-lit room he noticed everyone was lining the walls, and there were only two men at the bar – standing at either end. The bartender was trying to make himself part of the bar back. Young George walked up to the middle of the bar and asked for a drink… at which point the men at the ends of the bar pulled out their guns, a Luger and a Pistola Carcajada (better known as the Colt Single Action). Caught in between, George hit the floor as the men covered their heads with their left arms and emptied their guns, then rushed for the door – fighting to get out. The ceiling ended up the only casualty of this gunfight.

"George asked if I was familiar with the Colt Single Action… oh yes, nothing feels as right as drawing back the hammer of an old or well tuned (3rd Generation), Colt SA. It truly chuckles, or laughs, with its sharp, light clicks.

"Every time I shoot one of mine I can’t help but smile and think of George."

Urfa Guverchin

Which means "Urfa Pigeon". The ancient city of Urfa in Turkey may be the oldest- looking town I saw in that country, and the most pigeon- obsessed town in the most pigeon obsessed nation in the world-- see the "links" post below. What other country has town councils soliciting funds to preserve rare breeds? And what other town but Urfa would feature a larger than life photo of one of its "feathered warriors" in the lobby of its fanciest hotel?

This black dewlap-- photo taken across the border in Syria by Sir Terence Clark-- is one of the breeds used in "pigeon wars". (Turks and Kurds-- Urfa is primarily Kurdish with a large Arab minority-- use jewelry too).

The old court in Urfa, near the pool of the "sacred" carp. Urfa is a palimpsest of buildings and architecture from as long ago as Biblical times.

A cupboard loft in my favorite restaurant, with Ankut trumpeters (top and right) and Shirazi tumblers.

Evening from my hotel window, with the "war" flight still in progress over those hills, unfortunately not visible to my point and shoot's resolution.

I'd go back in a second if I could do it on my own terms.

A Car

Mary Anne Rose, who is responsible for my dictation software (and who is a doc and who has and loves deerhounds) also likes old cars. She sent me a photo of herself in a Morris Minor station wagon she is trying to get California legal-- bet that is no fun at all!

I was amazed because my first car was a Morris wagon or more properly "shooting brake". It looked like a '48 Ford woodie the size of a Volkswagen bug. (In Cambridge once, I returned to my car to find such a Ford parked by it. Its owner looked at me and said "I didn't know it was pregnant.")

So I had to find this and scan it for her. Me in the yellow and old friend Mike Conca (who now has a huge white beard) at a filling station in Connecticut, 1966 or 7, on our way to the Lime Rock sports car races. Another world.

Bek Nazar Dor

Ataika's father Dor, a great dog belonging to our friend Andrey Kovalenko, died in his native Almaty, Kazakhstan, last week. He was sixteen.

He had a good long life, and his genes live on in New Mexico, Kazakhstan, and even Scotland. But condolences to Andrey for his loss of such an old friend.

Rifles and Recipes

My old Montana friends John Barsness and Eileen Clarke, who run the site Rifles and Recipes, have two new projects worth your attention. John, who may be one of the best gun writers in the world-- what other former poet is also a world- class gunsmith?-- has started an online mag called "Rifle Loony." It comes out four times a year for $8, and stands to become the best gun mag out there, not to mention the cheapest.

And Eileen has a new and unique cookbook, Slice of the Wild, which may have more on practical meat processing than any book written, complete with useful pix. I have always bartered for butchery ( a quarter to the butcher for his work) but if my condition allows this book could change things. As Eileen says, "Buy this book and never pay a processor again." Even someone who already eats game as about 60- 70% of their meat, as we do, can learn a lot.

Slice also contains unique analyses of individual game animals to show how various factors influence taste, tenderness, and other meat characteristics, and a wealth of recipes for both game and side dishes that have me digging through our diminishing freezer stock. I should add that John and Eileen eat NO domestic meat and never have for the more than twenty years I have known them. She estimates they eat game 350 days a year-- a friend actually said "you treat it like real meat!"

Slice is $29.95-- details about it and Rifle Loony, and many more good books by both writers, at the site.

MANY Links

Two evocative essays, here and here, about the "pigeon warriors" of the ancient town of Urfa in southern Turkey near Syria. I have seen this, but too little, and would love to go back-- will post some of my photos taken there separately later. The writer gets the atmosphere perfectly, and is a Turkish American pigeon man who knows his subject. I want the black ones with the white wing bars and jewelry!

Sane takes on impossible issues: LabRat on immigration and Holly on lead shot and bans. Holly's commenters are unusually sane and civil too. LabRat also lays down the science on closed breed registries.They diminish genetic diversity, which is NEVER a good thing-- period.

Meanwhile Denmark may not just kill all dogs of "vicious" breeds-- it may kill off all mongrels as well. Way to go. Has western civilization lost its collective mind?

Natalie Solent-- who I have neglected-- on the hunt ban, and Helen-- back!-- on bird keepers. Healthy evidence that a real England still exists, as some of my sighthound friends assure me.

Matt on this NYT article on coyote coursing:

"Even if the writer wasn't ridiculously biased, the Times' readers would have no way of understanding a man like Hardzog. A few quotes about God and what people ought to be doing----and a few well placed references to chewing tobacco ---and the game is over. The game is substantially over, anyway. There is nothing good and real that can't be made scary."

Quantum navigation and corpse- search vultures.

Mick Jagger claims that one of the things that kept him sane midst the chaos of making Exile on Main Street was falconry!

Tom Russell, who may be my favorite singer- songwriter (and who is almost a local, based in El Paso) writes about Hemingway and Chandler. Russell is also a real blogger, worth checking often.

Catching Up

I have been more than busy-- PT, weight lifting, starting to walk again, keeping the little bird handled after some neglect, breeding and crossing pouter pigeons for our new "North American pouter" project (pix soon), trying to arrange getting "my" (not yet) Aplomado in. At least we are not having puppies!

Health is generally improving. Weights are making the most difference-- thanks again Mark!-- and perhaps meds. Did I mention Magdalena has a fully equipped gym? Now I have to find some minimal kit of bench and free weights so I can be independent if I ever have to, on the same principle as garden, apple trees, woodpile, elk, SKS, .22, cheap bulk "East Bloc Ammo" (scroll way down in James McMurty's Choctaw Bingo), but having a talented trainer to learn from has made a real difference.

I am learning from voice dictation software-- thanks Mary Anne!-- which sometimes is amazing, and sometimes just won't go at all. (I am not using it on the blog yet because even the manual warns cut & paste can be funky, and I am a little leery of trying to spell out HTML). At its best it is amazing but you never forget it has a computer "brain". I unthinkingly said "Annie Proulx" to it, winced at the idea of what it would make of that, and sat amazed as it SPELLED HER NAME RIGHT. Then went nuts as it repeatedly substituted "any" for "Annie" when I tried to use just her first name!

I haven't been on the web as much-- too much sitting is not good-- but have still accumulated an enormous backlog of links-- I'll start next post. I also have some amusing photos of guns and a car (!) and need to get some ofpigeons, dogs, and falcons. To work!

Sheep camp, week 3

Lambing is in full swing now, but here’s a short review, in pictures, of the week.
This pronghorn buck is our constant companion. We don’t know why, but he hangs out with the herd, and follows Rena and I around a lot.

The guardian dogs do not stay together, but greet each other a few times a day when they meet up. Here Rena approaches her mother, Luv’s Girl, below the Coyote Rocks.

I’ve always known the rainbow’s end would be in a sheep herd somewhere …

Here’s a ewe and lamb on Coyote Rocks just prior to sunset.

Rant has my unwavering praise this week. A lamb ended up getting stuck in a crack between the rocks on Coyote Rocks. Rant stayed with it all night, and wouldn’t move until I came and found the problem the next morning. He was so high up in the rocks I couldn’t see him, but could only hear him whining. When I took the lamb, Rant collapsed flat on his side, snoring away from exhaustion. Good, good guardian. I’m actually going to write up this story for a paper it was so wonderful.

Pregnant ewes grazing at sunset.

The guardian dogs never look directly at the ewe they are guarding while she is giving birth and getting her lamb up for the first time. Rant’s non-threatening posture is effective, and once the ewe moves off a little from the birthing place, he’ll clean up the afterbirth, reducing attractants for predators. All our guardian dogs do this, and it seems to be an important factor in reducing depredation on lambing grounds.

We’ve had several blizzards, and the result is that I have a small pen of orphan lambs. All the dogs stop in to see them during the day, as Luv’s Girl is doing here. The lambs love to follow the big dogs around in the sagebrush when I let them out for walks and exploring.

As for wild critters, the dogs have apparently displaced the local coyotes because they complain around us, but no fresh sign; a burrowing owl moved into a hole in the road to my camp and doesn’t like me trying to photograph it; and I was surprised to find a sage grouse lek still active this week, with both hens and cocks still attending.

Word count on the new manuscript: 30,000.
Number of vehicles I’ve seen in the distance in three weeks: 4.
Number of times I was alarmed at the idea of having to be social: 4.
Back to camp now – I’ll check in again in another week.

UPDATE: Hey everybody, thanks for the great name suggestions for the un-named rock, but Smartdogs wins with Blog Rock. The name stuck as soon as I read it.

Name me

This rock is the westernmost point of the “coyote rocks” on our lambing ground, and as you can see, is a very interesting character. Sadly, it does not have a name. Accepting suggestions now.

Sheep camp, week 2

This is what it’s all about for me: beautiful sage, happy sheep, and good guardians.

5000 Year-Old Scammer?

David Z (see below) sent us the latest on Hari Scam and and, amazingly, it is even more ridiculous than what has gone before.

"Among the mixed-bag films at Tribeca this year, Thorkell Hardarson and Örn Marino Arnason’s Feathered Cocaine was arguably the most mixed. Alan Howell Parrott, an American Sikh convert, introduced falconry to the Middle East, much to his eternal regret. Though falcon populations had held stable for centuries of falconry practice, Persian Gulf smuggling now threatens the noble birds with extinction, transplanting them to inhospitable climates and polluting their gene pool with designer hybrids."

This goes beyond everything being lies including and and the, though it all is. Does the film actually make these claims or are the reviewers crazier or lazier then the filmmakers? Where is the North American Falconers Association? Hell, where are the Wall Street Journal and New York Times?

As Matt says, re Hari's introducing falconry to the Middle East,"Parrot introduced falconry TO THE MIDDLE EAST???? Wow--I had no idea the man was 5,000 YEARS OLD!"

One more odd thought-- why is a guy whom most Salafist Islamists would consider a Hindu heretic, and a convert at that, getting invited to hunt with them? Why would he want to?

I'd really like to get some planned stuff on science, dogs, old guns, and more, with pix, up, but I still tire easily and this mole needs whacking. Besides, he'd be hilarious if he were less dangerous, and if seemingly sane people weren't taking him seriously.

The Parrot Bites Again

Matt Mullenix said of the line below: “Journalism: Dead.”

" Alan Parrot, one of the world’s foremost falconers.... "

Steve again: all this is in reaction to a link I couldn’t get but which I have seen plenty similar to the last few days, like this one. There has also been a lot of talk on some of my informal discussion boards. An interesting quote from one first-- I'll leave it anonymous as I don't have permission, but I believe it 100%:

" I’m just wondering when some of the people Hari Ha Ha [ he is a Sikh convert sometimes known as Hari Har Singh Khalsa--SB ] has named as ‘class A felons’ will sue him for libel. Surely some of the P-Funders could show damages caused by the online smear-campaign he launched via his website, savethefalcons.org. A good friend of mine spoke to him several years ago, and with Hari Khalsa Parrot’s consent, took notes of their discussion. During that discussion, Parrot asked my friend to broadcast to the U.S. falconry community that if any opposed him, he would personally see to it that falconry in North America is shut down. I have no doubt that the guy is a delusional moon-bat; the question is how much of a menace could he ultimately prove to be? "

This was when he was proposing to Mongolia that he run the entire Asian saker trade to the Arabs himself. When they refused (and eventually made him persona non grata and kicked him out of the country-- after someone-- hired by him?-- suspiciously beat him up) he then accused the P- Fund (specifically Tom Cade), Nick Fox, the Russian Mafia, the World Wildlife Fund, the US ambassador to Mongolia, the head of Mongolia’s wildlife department, the whole CITES organization, the USFWS, and I was told ME after I complained about it, of devising a conspiracy to make millions and drive the saker into extinction in the wild. Strange bedfellows to say the least...

He also keeps citing million dollar prices for birds. Journalism? This is their go- to falconry guy? Have they ever heard of Google? (Nick Fox at least had some good refutation up for a while, and there is a good overview here). But can’t they even look at falcon sales sites? $5000 is HIGH these days (except possibly-- the story goes--for at most four or five individual unusual--for reasons more superstitious than scientific-- smuggled birds a year that seem to go to certain Arabian families again and again). And six figures would be an unlikely high figure for even these.

He once tried to hire me for $50,000 a year, which I have never made, to manage some facility in Santa Fe. Turned him down without a lingering doubt.

As Mary McCarthy said of Lillian Hellman “every word that comes out of her mouth is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”

I even wonder if he didn't get his Bin Laden hawking fantasy from this enjoyable novel, where some old coots from the CIA find a nuclear terrorist by tracking the houbara migration-- and offering him one of those "special" sakers!

You can bet that I will blog this, Parkinson’s typing or not. But don't expect one this long every day yet--it took me an hour!

Update: David Zincavage is on the case. This should be good, and I hope there is more to come. Not the least funny thing is his comparison of Parrot ("Peh- RO"??) to Timothy Treadwell, though it may reflect badly on poor Treadwell, who only got himself and his girlfriend eaten by a grizzly, rather than first trying to own and then petulantly ban an entire cultural practice...

Update 2: I THOUGHT I had dealt with all this when it was fresh in my mind-- see here.

Sheep camp, week 1

The photo above is the view out my sheep camp door. I’m home for a few hours to take care of some paperwork and grab a shower, then back to sheep lambing camp in the Big Sandy country of western Wyoming. This is the first year I’ve gone to such a remote location for lambing. I sold most of my sheep to my friend Pete, and agreed to lamb them out amid the sagebrush steppe. I’ll end up with a small herd going into the winter, after we return from our hoped-for international trip this fall.

It’s been a great first week in camp, getting lots of writing and reading time in since the sheep haven’t started lambing yet. My three livestock protection dogs have been busy displacing the local coyote population, and arrive back in camp in the mornings battle-weary from the antics of the night. We’ve had wind storms, and a blizzard, but overall, it’s a beautiful spring. Husband Jim is beginning to worry less about me being out alone, and the isolation has been refreshing. For this first week, lambing camp was better than a writer’s retreat – I pounded out 9,000 words. I’ll check back in, in another week or so. Best to all.

How certain things are accomplished at sheep camp (a custom-made portable toilet):

Beautiful country, thriving domestic sheep:

The morning after a severe winter storm – the sun shines and all is well:

Back to Blogging

Slowly. Until I tame the voice dictation software graciously given me by a friend the two hardest things to do are typing (five typos a line!)and cramped arthritic handwriting. Small movements are affected more than big ones.

Though those lost ground too, I am gaining. A bike provided by another friend and a membership in the Magdalena gym (!-- thanks to Mark Churchill for the suggestion) are helping. Let's hope strength comes back-- I am one of those writers who seems to need to walk to write-- "solvitur ambulando" in Bruce Chatwin's elegant borrowing-- and I cannot without great effort or for long-- yet. But I have good specialist doc, the best in NM (female, usually more of a fit for me), a good PT instructor (a Mormon cowboy from Wyoming) and a gym guy with the personality of a drill instructor and all are optimistic.

Other plans: short range waiting- on hawking with the Barb-teita (GS gone to a friend-- two mile chases a problem). Acquiring an Aplo for car hawking-- more when I know more. More hawking with dogs than long courses. More doves at waterholes than quail at 8000 feet. Deer at waterholes as well, and more organic lamb and barren ewe from my friend Pieter's local Dunhill ranch (posted about before-- search if you want pix-- too hard for HTML right now). Free elk from guides and wardens. Maybe a more efficient wood stove than our eighty- plus year old cookstove with its breadbox size log chamber!

Cutting down pigeon numbers but specializing in ones I can breed and sell, especially our "new" North American ("thief") Pouter. More on this as they evolve.

I WILL get by. Oh and-- all fly rods and a little hardy Perfect reel for sale at Jim Adams' in Berkeley CA. Two are unused spey rods- read about speys in the Spring 2010 Fly Rod and Reel. I'm continuing to fish bait for carp & catfish-- much easier.

Posts will be short for a while--pix (birds, guns) and a book and website review for John and Eileen Barsness's excellent new stuff-- but I am back.

Dragon Taming

Two recent movies feature updated versions of a very old fantasy meme: taming dragons.  In both James Cameron's AVATAR and the more recent DreamWorks picture, How To Train Your Dragon, the protagonists befriend what amount to winged reptiles (or their "Pandoran" equivalents) after intense and well-rendered sequences of the wild animals' capture and taming.

I imagine most falconers will watch these movies with a critical eye.  I found both films enjoyable and their depictions of this particular, hands-on wildlife interaction surprisingly palatable.  I have no idea what sort of research in real-world domestication the filmmakers might have drawn from (one sees glimpses of horses, cats, dogs, seals, birds, dolphins and lizards in the movements of the movie dragons), but the sequence of emotion and behavior in the animated creatures---and of their tamers---mirrors closely the experience of manning a bird of prey.

Maybe I am too big a movie fan.  But despite my worst expectations of modern Hollywood, these two entertainments manage to show very positive and (in context) plausible examples of close contact and cooperation between people and wild animals.  That alone, beside the amazing artistry and story-telling, is noteworthy in a time when one would expect little popular tolerance for this idea.

I left both movies wondering if it's possible that only falconers (or equestrians, or experienced dog trainers, etc.) could appreciate the complex human/animal working relationship these movies present.  But the more obvious answer, given the films' huge box office, is that millions of viewers must have recognized and approved it as well.

What could this mean?  Have we not drifted so far away from these elemental thoughts and ancient forms as our "humane" high priests would prefer?  If so, I am glad.  And I would say to others who enjoyed these films but have never considered pursuing falconry or coursing or riding horses: Give it some thought.

Not all the dragons are fantasy.

                    

Hurricane Us: a Hasty Screed

No stranger to disaster, Louisiana faces what may be its worst-ever coastal impact in the next 24 hours. By tomorrow, the first of millions of gallons of floating crude oil will wash ashore in Louisiana, with all five Gulf states potentially endangered in the days and weeks ahead.  At immediate risk: hundreds of miles of hard-working coastline and hundreds of years of cultural dependence on coastal resources.  

As oily waves roll in, rookeries will foul, fisheries smother and oysters beds be buried in a toxic emulsion. Miles of green marsh will turn black and perhaps remain so for years.  This Fall, when a thousand thousand migrant birds pass through en route to South America, they'll risk their lives just by landing. How much worse for those animals and people who live here year round?  This oil may be with us, like a bad gene, for generations. 

The blame and the retribution for this spill will be epic.  Unlike the damage left by our 2005 hurricanes, no one disputes the man-made nature of this nightmare.  Even as a nation we continue to sort out and remedy damages from Katrina and Rita; even as we pay the mortgage on the housing bust, buy up car companies and banks and fight wars on several fronts, we will begin to pay the cost of this probably inevitable mishap.

Although BP has accepted full responsibility for this spill and its unknowable after effects, don't feel your burden lifted.  If like me you drive a car or truck or tractor, enjoy your lights at night and heat in the winter; if you're not living off the grid somewhere on well water and deer meat, be prepared to carry your share of the blame for this latest gust in a much larger storm called Hurricane Us.