Arizona’s monsoon is here at last and we have rain, rain, rain. Sections of the main east/west rail line between Tucson and Phoenix washed out Thursday – you could see tracks and ties suspended in the air where floodwater had literally shoved away the roadbed underneath – but just one day later crews had repaired the damage and freight was rolling again. Not so with many roads, although the interstate is still open – if that floods out, and if the railroad shuts down again, interstate commerce through much of the western part of the USA will stop.
Here in Tucson, dry washes are full of rushing water, some of it deeper than it looks, and fire and rescue crews are busy saving brain-dead motorists who drive past the “road closed” signs and try to ford their way across.
We probably won’t get enough rain to make up for the monsoons that didn’t come in 2004 and 2005, but we’ll have a green desert for a while. Then, of course, it’ll dry out again and we’ll have range fires. What’s that they say? Oh, yeah – the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.
Two good friends are getting married tomorrow up on a mountaintop accessible only by dirt road. I hope they have a backup plan! Oh, and I’m giving a reading at the wedding, so my interest is more than academic.
A woman is driving down from Phoenix today to see our blue and gold macaw Buckwheat. If they hit it off, Buckwheat’ll have a new home, and we’ll mark the end of our bird fever, which started in 1987 with Skipper, a cherry-head conure we bought for our daughter Polly, got even hotter 1992 with Buckwheat, and broke the thermometer in 2000 with Petey, an African Gray. Skipper lives with Polly now, Petey went to a new family almost a year ago, and we’re close to finding a new family for Buckwheat. Besides the woman from Phoenix (who is a veterinarian, a great point in her favor), we’ve also had a call from a woman in Flagstaff, who has a 3,500 square foot house in the country (a great point in her favor). We should be bird-free in a week or two.
Naturally, we’re ashamed of ourselves for giving up on Buckwheat, who’s been a member of our family for so long, but we can no longer give him the attention he needs (and he needs a lot). Ever since our children grew up and moved away, Buckwheat has spent his days alone, which isn’t much of a life. For a few years now we’ve been holding on to him so that we could give him to Polly once she gets her own house. But during Polly’s last visit it became clear that she no longer wants him – and there went our only real reason to keep him. We want him to be happy, and we’ll be very selective about his new home – a lot of people think macaws would be cool pets, until they live with one for a few weeks. Scream? Unless you’ve worked around jet engines, you have no idea.
Puppy problems. Schatzi, our dachshund, is crapping in the house again, after finally (so we thought) becoming housebroken. We don’t know what the problem is, but the doggy gates are up again and she’s confined to the family room, which has a doggy door to the back yard. The trouble with house-crappin’ dogs is that you have to catch them in the act before you can smack ’em, and we haven’t actually witnessed her doing it yet.
More soon, possums.