Mike called me from work around 5 pm to say, “I am probably going to regret this, but… do you want to rescue an injured duck?” Well duh. I got directions to the location of said duck, threw on some duck-catching clothes, and off I went.

(In case you didn’t know this about me: I have a St. Francis of Assisi thing going on. Lost and injured animals are attracted to me. They find me so I can help them, I swear. It runs in the family - the same thing has always happened to my mom, and her dad before that. Apparently this has now spilled over to Mike. Ooooh, poor Mike. It only gets worse.)

Anyway, ten minutes later, Mike and I were mucking around beneath a bridge, trying to catch a young female mallard who quite obviously had a problem with her left leg/foot. She didn’t do well on land, but managed to flap into a creepy puddle with unidentifiable swimming things (I’m 99.9% sure I saw leeches), which I was not about to go wading into. Fortunately, we were able to herd her out and catch her. 

Turns out the duck had a nasty open fracture above her left ankle. There was about 1/3 of an inch of bone protruding - it wasn’t bleeding and looked pretty dirty, so I couldn’t really tell how old the wound was. Other than that, she was quite lively and not very pleased to be in captivity. Driving home one-handed while delicately holding a pissed off mallard under my arm was interesting. 

Once home, I put her in a box with a towel over the top and set about finding somebody within a two-state radius who actually cares about a wounded wild duck. There’s a vet in town who does wildlife rescue - the office was already closed, but I called the number anyway. I got the answering service. I started to explain that “I found a wild duck with…” and was interrupted with a shrieking ”IS THIS AN EMERGENCY!?” Cheese and crackers, lady, I was unaware I called Animal 911. I explained the duck has a broken leg and cannot live in my bathtub so yeah, it kinda is, but she didn’t seem to understand the practice flipping does wildlife rescue and instead referred me to Washington State University’s teaching hospital. Okay, fine. 

I called over to WSU and after a little phone tag with the receptionist and a vet student and the doctor, they said to bring her on in. Now, Artemis (the lab) had been in her kennel this whole time, and you better believe she thought this was just the icing on her woe-is-me cake. There was a bird in her house and it was hot today, did I mention that and why am I not letting her catch the duck!? Poor pup. 

Anyway, off ducky and I went to WSU. They had a form for me to fill out, and that was pretty much that. I actually feel better leaving her at a teaching hospital than I would with a vet who does wildlife rescue on the side… Hopefully, they’ll be less concerned about the bottom line and more interested in the educational value of the experience. 

I took pictures, for posterity. The first one is my “Here I go again, rescuing things” face: 

And, DUCK! 

I tried to get one of her injury but it didn’t really turn out well with the camera phone.

During the course of this whole thing, somebody mentioned that WSU will accept wild animals from across the state line, with the exception of deer. I wonder what the deal with that is? And if you have an injured deer, what in the hell are you supposed to do with it?

As I explained to Mike, my philosophy on wildlife rescue is that the sporting thing to do is help injured animals so they can live to breed, exist, and maybe be fairly hunted another day. I’d like to think we’re a little more evolved as predators than those that just prey on the weakest members of the herd. This is why I like organizations like Ducks Unlimited, which value both conservation and hunting. 

Ha - put that in your pipe and smoke it, hippies!

Our black lab is having an extremely difficult summer, or so she’d have us believe. She has perfected her “WOE AND DOOM!” routine where she’ll flop on her side with a big heavy sigh, stretched out head-to-toe as far as she can. She wants us all to know that it is very hot, thank you, and perhaps we could get her some ice chips? She can only sleep when we have the air conditioner on. I told her she better get a job so she can help pay the electricity bill. 

—

Speaking of black labs, get this. My sister has been looking for one lately for herself. Saturday, she gets a call from a friend of hers, who is on vacation in Weiser, Idaho for a family reunion. He asks if she still wants a lab, because he has one if she does. He goes on to say that he was doing the family reunion thing at a public park in town, when he notices a lady driving by the park, slowing down. He thought she was acting kind of weird, so he kept watching - only to see her toss a puppy out the car window and speed off. 

W. T. F.

He goes over and retrieves the puppy, who appears to be in perfect health, is quite cute, and probably about 6 weeks old. He got the little bugger some puppy chow, and it’s eating fine. He told my sister he thinks it’s a black lab cross, because it looks very lab-like but has a little white spot on its chest and a couple little white spots on its foot. I got to thinking about it, and I wonder if it might actually be pure lab, as the only color variation “acceptable” for black labs is a white chest spot. If the lady in the car was a psycho breed snob, she may have dumped the little guy for having non-breed-standard markings on his foot. It would also possibly explain why there was only one puppy to dump - the rest of the litter might be “up to standard.”

This led me to think, okay, but what kind of lab breeder would throw a purebred puppy out the window of a car instead of just selling/giving it away as a pet? Which in turn led me to think, scratch that, what kind of HUMAN BEING throws ANY KIND of puppy out the window of a car instead of just selling/giving it away as a pet!?

Seriously - I want to know how that lady sleeps at night. Also, if anybody can reconcile “People who abuse animals are to be shot on sight” with libertarian philosophy, please tell me how. Because I’d so love for that to be a rule in Laureltopia.

—

On a final pet-related note, I’m about to go spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $120 for a three-month supply of Frontline for two dogs and a cat. The ticks are OUT. OF. CONTROL. this year. I hadn’t so much as seen a tick since moving to Idaho in ‘03, yet this year we’re finding them everywhere. To make matters worse, Mike has to traipse around in tall grass for his job, so he keeps finding them crawling on himself. Unfortunately they don’t appear to make Man Frontline (though I have threatened to get the “large breed” kind for him), so I’m hoping tackling it at the pet level will curb most of the problem. Gross.

The good news: There’s apparently little to no Lyme disease in Idaho, and I think the ticks we’ve been finding are American dog ticks as opposed to deer ticks, which don’t carry it anyway. So, assuming we can avoid Rocky Mountain spotted fever, we’re probably alright. Other than being totally squicked out.

Since we’ve been without a beer post for a while, I thought I’d regale you all with tonight’s selection:

Yeah yeah, I know… Close enough.

At least I’m having this along with it:

Organic, grass-fed beef tri-tip. Peppercorn marinated. Charcoal BBQed to medium perfection. I can almost cut it with the fork. SO GOOD.

Gipper would like me to know he’s interested in some sort of food-sharing arrangement. But not too interested.

And here’s what happens when I don’t share quickly enough:

He’s so nonchalant about his thievery - he won’t even get up to steal. Further proof the cat is king of the household. 

We ended up making an impromptu trip to the range this evening with a few friends, hellerbrating today’s decision with a bit of rifle and pistol shooting. (I watched, since I’m limiting my shooting activities while pregnant.) 

My mom gifted me with her Nikon D50 last time I was in California visiting… I’m still trying to figure out how to use it. I was a point-and-shoot devotee for many many years, so the switch to the DSLR brings a somewhat steep learning curve. When my sister was visiting, she helped me make the leap to manual focus, so that’s my big accomplishment of the month.

Anyway, last time we were at the range, I shot everything in NEF format (Nikon’s RAW) because I thought I was going to be a good little snob about it and avoid lossy JPEGs. Then I realized I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get my NEFs onto the MacBook and converted to TIFF. (Note: I’m cheap and have tried several different free/open source solutions, to no avail.) So, today I shot in JPEG Fine - we’ll see how that turns out. I’ll post pictures soon.

Speaking of incorporation:

CHICAGO - Pro-gun groups filed a federal lawsuit Thursday challenging a long-standing Chicago handgun ban only hours after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a similar ban in the District of Columbia. - LINK

Oooooh Maaayor Daaaaley… YOUR TURN! Kisses!

Does the narrow margin of victory (5-4, in case you’ve been hiding under a rock) in the Heller decision change your outlook on this November’s presidential election? 

In other words, are those of you previously uninterested in participating in a hold-your-nose vote for McCain reconsidering, in the interest of hopefully preserving or increasing the “pro-gun” majority on the court? 

Frankly, I have a feeling Kennedy’s vote was such a “barely” that I don’t know how well an incorporation case will go over in front of the current court. And if, God forbid, one of “our” justices were to retire or kick off, we’d definitely need another pro-gun nominee just to avoid getting spanked. If one of “their” justices were to retire or kick off (oh, boo hoo, won’t that be a tragedy), a pro-gun nominee could mean a solid fifth vote if Kennedy swings the other way, or even a sixth vote if he sticks around. (This is, of course, assuming Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito are all willing to go all the way with this issue.)

This is not me endorsing McCain. But, it definitely has me thinking more about strategy. How about you?

Best part so far: 

In any event, the meaning of “bear arms” that petitioners and JUSTICE STEVENS propose is not even the (sometimes) idiomatic meaning. Rather, they manufacture a hybrid definition, whereby “bear arms” connotes the actual carrying of arms (and therefore is not really an idiom) but only in the service of an organized militia. No dictionary has ever adopted that definition, and we have been apprised of no source that indicates that it carried that meaning at the time of the founding. But it is easy to see why petitioners and the dissent are driven to the hybrid definition. Giving “bear Arms” its idiomatic meaning would cause the protected right to consist of the right to be a soldier or to wage war—an absurdity that nocommentator has ever endorsed. See L. Levy, Origins of the Bill of Rights 135 (1999). Worse still, the phrase “keep and bear Arms” would be incoherent. The word “Arms” would have two different meanings at once: “weapons” (as the object of “keep”) and (as the object of “bear”) one-half of an idiom. It would be rather like saying “He filled and kicked the bucket” to mean “He filled the bucket and died.” Grotesque. 

I actually LOL’ed.

I’m loving the footnotes. Things like:

And JUSTICE STEVENS is dead wrong to think that the right to petition is “primarily collective in nature.”

I’m kind of expecting to see one that says:

Dear Stevens,
Die in a fire.
No love,
Scalia

“Because Heller conceded at oral argument that the D. C. licensing law is permissible if it is not enforced arbitrarily and capriciously, the Court assumes that a license will satisfy his prayer for relief and does not address the licensing requirement.”

WOW, WAY TO GO TO BAT, HOMESLICE.

Back to reading…

For some reason, I have to reformat every time I edit an entry, which gets REALLY annoying. So, I’m just going to write new ones. EDIT: I lied, this link is to the the full decision, as a PDF.