Those Hav-a-Hart animal traps?\u00a0 Not\u00a0half as clever as the vermin they’re meant to imprison.\u00a0 Our score to date:<\/p>\n
The hell of it is, the animal I trapped was a mere kangaroo mouse, not the pack rat or ground squirrel I was going for.\u00a0 But we persist, and the traps are going out again this morning, as soon as I drink my coffee.<\/p>\n
On a more somber note, my father has untreatable liver cancer and is receiving hospice care at home in Missouri.\u00a0 I was able to visit a few weeks ago and will fly out again later this month, this time with Donna.\u00a0 Considering dad’s condition,\u00a0and all the medication he’s on,\u00a0he’s doing remarkably well,\u00a0facing the end with dignity, calm, and even humor.\u00a0 Damn, dad, now I have another example to live up to, and won’t be able to go out kicking and screaming, as I’d planned.<\/p>\n
Naturally this has brought me closer to my sisters, step-sisters, and their families, and that’s a precious thing.\u00a0 Since dad’s diagnosis, both our children have visited him too, and both are now more a part of their clan.\u00a0 As sad as these occasions are, they can also be restorative, healthy,\u00a0even good.<\/p>\n
My father did an interesting thing a few years back.\u00a0 He had assumed, like most Missourians, that the mule was the state animal.\u00a0 Not so, it turned out – Rebuplicans in the state government had resisted repeated attempts to enshrine the mule as state animal, fearing that people would confuse the mule with the jackass, symbol of the Democratic Party.\u00a0 My dad took it on as a project, mobilizing his American Legion Post, crisscrossing the state to speak at public meetings and press the flesh with politicians, and in 1995, then-Governor Mel Carnahan signed the bill naming the Missouri Mule state animal.\u00a0 My dad did that.\u00a0 How about that?<\/p>\n
We’re heading out in a few minutes for a morning bicycle ride.\u00a0 Today’s agenda: Freeman hill.\u00a0 Without dismounting.\u00a0 Wish us luck, okay?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Those Hav-a-Hart animal traps?\u00a0 Not\u00a0half as clever as the vermin they’re meant to imprison.\u00a0 Our score to date: Animals trapped: 1 Trap set, bait missing, no animal inside: 3 Trap tripped, bait missing, no animal inside: 6 Trap tipped\u00a0on side, bait still there, no animal inside: 1 Faint sound of rodent laughter in background while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bicycling","category-personal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}