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Friday, February 3, 2012

37 Woodchucks Can't Be Wrong




Winter/Spring 2012 - Our Nation's Leading Woodchucks Reach A Decision

27 Woodchucks predict an early Spring (including Shubenacadie Sam of Novia Scotia).

10 Woodchucks (including Pencil Vannia's Punxsutawney Phil) predict 6 more weeks of Winter.

Technically Phil and the other 9 pessimistic woodchucks are correct. The first day of Spring this year is on March 20th. Which is over six weeks away, despite the temperature on the back porch. On the other hand, the other 27 rodents are also correct since Spring will arrive on the 20th of March this year (a day earlier) as opposed to the 21st of March as it sometimes decides to do in other years.

For the woodchucks, it's a heads we win tails you loose wager. You can't beat the woodchucks on this one. Even if you're buried in three feet of snow on March 25th.

Real woodchucks - the kind that don't live in fancy five star heated burrows who are woken up every February 2nd to entertain morons on behalf of the local Chamber of Commerce or some photographer working for a shitty Gannett newspaper - sleep right through the whole groundhog day bullshit until sometime in March or April when they wake up, take a pee, eat some grass, and run around trying to get laid. Because (despite the efforts of the local Chamber of Commerce and the Rick Perry GOP presidential nomination campaign) God hasn't come up with anything better for them to do in a very long time. We should all be so lucky.

Photo above: from my summer of 2010 documentary Woodchucks in the Midst - the summer i decided to go and live among the woodchucks (not the first or last time either) - a "real" woodchuck (aka: groundhog) sneaking around in the bush. Probably looking to score some zucchini blossoms. We should all be so lucky.

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22 comments:

jp said...

there's an analogy to the rethugs here , but it's way too early in the AM for me to puzzle it out. SHARED in the black hole time waster Land of Zuckyberger..who kinda looks like a..

pansypoo said...

there is NO way our saw a shadow today. it's so dim, she/he might not have seen squat.

the farmer said...

there is NO way our saw a shadow today.

Yup. And you have two - Jimmy and Wynter. They both predicted an early spring.

Thanks for the share jp. Although at this point i think posting here and expecting more than 3-4 people to notice is pretty much an exercise in futility.

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pansypoo said...

DAMN YOU FACEBOOK!!!

mike in pr said...

I'm all for six more weeks of the kind of winter we're having. Averaging 85 high in the afternoon, 75 low at night.

pansypoo said...

oh shut up mike. tho, we are upbove ave.

and MIKE! what kind of vermin does PR have?

mike in pr said...

cockroaches, mice, rats, mongoose

no poisonous snakes

no rabbits, no deer

lots of lizards

mike in pr said...

iguana and chupacabra

pansypoo said...

mongooses? what about bugs? no hibernation tho.

the farmer said...

mongoose eat the rats. what about bats? i found a dead bat under the chair in my woodstove room. he must have just died there and dried out like a sun dried tomato. but hes kind of perfectly preserved. i'll take a picture later today. the skunk and the possum were under the feeder last night which was a little weird because it was pretty cold. i guess they've had a hard time getting to sleep this winter. and the chipmunks have built a little prairie dog like tunnel colony in the front yard under the crabapple tree (because the ground hasn't frozen this year) which is something i've never seen before. And there is a story (with photos) at the accu-weather website about some people in PA who caught a purple squirrel. No explanation for why its purple. Looks like it tried to rob a bank and a dye pack exploded on it.

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pansypoo said...

a purple squirrel? any purple cows?

the tundra is not that frozen here either. found a dried baby mouse under the sink. have to replace the kitchen faucet.

did your possum have a fuzzy tail?

the farmer said...

Yup, a purple squirrel. Story is still up at accuweather.com.

did your possum have a fuzzy tail?

Of course not, don't be ridiculous. He was however playing a little banjo while the skunk juggled some walnuts. The things ya see under a birdfeeder after midnight!

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pjk said...

Hi Kids. I had to take a little computer virus vacation for a few weeks.

"System Check" with a fake-ass Microsoft flag; posted its icon to the desktop and the bing bar, uninstalled the Windows Defender, and slapped a pop-up smack dab in the middle of the screen.

Luckily, a friend's brother (with real, live, paid-for antivirus software) got infested with the same shit about 2 weeks earlier, and had plan B all ready to go.

Trend Micro came to the rescue. Free.

New puppy in da house. The daughter got an urge to spend her mostly disposable new-found income and bought a chocolate lab.

It's gone from a round-bellied 8 week old puppy to a miniature version of the 110# beast it will become in about 3 weeks.

Likes to chew. Can now hop onto the couch and lower beds by itself.

It may live longer if it figures out goats don't like to play (maybe if we make her watch the first "Babe" movie).

And- Super Bowl-wise? I'm more happy that the swarming local PD didn't see fit to choose me as a contestant for the roadside circus while I drove back from the software suppliers house at halftime, than I am about Kelso losing and his trophy wife blaming his teammates.

Liked the Eastwood Chrysler spot.

pansypoo said...

meh on the chrysler ad. THAT is what the right got their undies in a bunch for?
if only that possum would come back. i need a pic of its HALF fluzzy tail.

the farmer said...

bought a chocolate lab.

chocolate lab! my favorite dog was a chocolate lab. she was about 120lbs. she was a great dog. have two more in the family now - yellow and black - and they are both great dogs too. one thing about labs is that they remain in the puppy stage for about 3 years before their brains begin catching up with the rest of them. so if you like having a 100 pound puppy running around the house for 3 years you are set. the goats are in for a long babysitting shift. we used to cut up four foot lengths of pine trees for them to chew on and they'd run around the yard with a pine tree in their mouth. hockey pucks work good too.
Otherwise they eat your brand new $150 dollar work boots for breakfast. Or your $1600 mahoghany and elephant hide office chair signed by Mitt Romney. Also good to get them one of those plastic kiddie pools for the summer. They love that. And they'll pretty much never leave you alone until they get older and discover the benefits of laying on the porch snoring all day long.

pjk said...

Mild Winter = less floofy tails on the elusive Northern Ring-tailed No'possum.

Re: Clint- those same people wouldn't have a dry orifice in the room if that was a Boeing, McD/Grumman/Northrup, even, say, GE?

Yeah Baby! The roar of our engines over the Strait of Hormuz! Now THAT'S what I'm talkin' bout!

Help us all, dashboard Jesus. Let true believers gas tanks last as long as that damn oil, flour, and that friggin' lamp wick. Amen.

pjk said...

We consume at least one kiddy pool every 2 years for such purposes at present. I'd like to think the large rectangular pond will replace the smaller oval version, and then that could be the heavy duty dog wash.

Would involve digging. Might be a Spring thing.

Mitt wouldn't sell a hide-n-hardwood doorknob for less than that. Especially if it's signed like a baseball.

Hey guys, have you seen my autographed limited edition platinum series collector knob?

the farmer said...

when ron paul is elected president - and after we go back to the gold standard - the free market will revive the nantucket whaling fleet and we'll have plenty of oil. can train the labrador retrievers to turn the flour mills.

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pansypoo said...

ahh, the 1950's.

pjk said...

They sure have the time machine set for way back. So, if we go thru a few wars, a depression, then the roaring teens (this time), another war, and we'll be back to the Gilded Age!

You know Mitt's scrawny neck would fit into one of those high-collar outfits. He'd blend right in with the 1800s robber barons like Jack Nicholson in the picture from The Shining.

the farmer said...

But if we set the time machine back we could go back and stop daddy mittens and granddaddy mittens at the Rio Grande in 1912 and hand them back to Jose Salazar in exchange for some guns. And then we could have Mussolini strangled by British MI-5 agents in 1917 and Ricky Santatorium's commie grandfather would never have come the US to be a coal miner. We could see to it that young Newty got the academic tenure he always craved and spends the rest of his days writing pulp historical fiction and screwing graduate students at some hick community college in Georgia. Or we could have him drowned in a vat of fondant by a couple of Belgian prostitutes at a chocoalate factory in Brussels in 1969. Ron Paul: it wouldn't surprise me if he spends his free time in his basement hunched over his own "principles" like some kind of antediluvian alchemist trying to turn lead bell sinkers into golden beads. a trail of rascist screeds in some newsletters with his name on them and some photos of him hamming it up with ku kluxers and neo nazi militia goobers and other lost causers and that should take car of him.

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pansypoo said...

does ron paul have a throne or a star chamber?