Morbid Talk of Pepsi and Wildlife
3/29/1

I was going to write about my Diet Mountain Dew and Pepsi One loyalty, but suffice it to say that I buy them on a regular basis and do feel loyalty to the company after being a Coca-Cola man for 32 years. I have always been anti-Pepsi and pro-Coke my whole life, even when I�d drink nothing but Dr. Pepper. However, to keep from looking like Jabba the Hutt and still get to treat myself to a canned carbonated water product, I went diet. Pepsi may be a second rate cola, but they have dominated in the diet department. Diet Mountain Dew is the best non-cola diet to my prole pallet. Pepsi One does Diet Coke better than Diet Coke does. And Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi is my third favorite. I�m not anti-caffeine or anything, but it tastes a little different to me.

Well, match-light heckfire. I fully intended to say that I was going to write about it but it was such a lame topic, and the topic just blossomed forth from my fingertips into the keyboard. That�s a rather odd description. Perhaps it poured like crystal clear methanol from my digits�or not.

In any case, other topics I need to discuss is Car Theory and what kind of stuff I eat for lunch. But let�s talk wildlife.

In the past, around this time of year, the turtles will come out and start crossing the streets. It�s cold this year, so perhaps they are waiting until April or May. I will stop my car and go pick up the turtles and take them to the other side of the street. Generally, I�ll write about this and if you look on my main website back when I wrote organized stories rather than just rattling off stuff on a daily basis, you�ll see the stories.

But I�m not linking to the stories from here. I�ve taken a no-link stand, in my mind, about how things are going to be run here. And if I don�t like the way I do it, well, I�ll think about it.

One of the turtle stories that I didn�t tell in story form was the one where I was working in the lab and looked out the window and saw a turtle crossing from the north side of the non-road pavement in front of the building to the south side. He wasn�t really headed south, he was more east-east-southeast.

I hop out of the lab and walk over to him. I pick him up, carefully holding him far from me since I don�t want to soak my leg in turtle urine, and take him outside the complex. I know he was going southward, but that side of the road just has a fence with undergrowth overgrown on it. So I put him on the north side of the road.

An hour later, as I leave work, there he is, dead, in the road. He was trying to get from the north side to the south side.

Not the best story, but I figured I wouldn�t get nominated for any Pulitzers for this entry anyway.

Now, hawks. I don�t know if everywhere in the US is having this happen, but here in north Alabama, we have hawks all over the place now. Last fall, I started noticing that there wasn�t a single day that I drove that I couldn�t see a hawk or three. I mentioned this to my wife. She, too, agreed that we were having a few more hawks than normal. I asked my boss. He said that he was seeing lots more hawks and that one would come into his backyard to kill and eat the lesser birds which he enjoys feeding. So far, he had only seen a hawk nab a blue jay, which he loses no love over.

I can only think that there are either more food critters for the hawks or that someone who was also a predator has slacked off recently. I�d have to vote more food critters, as I�m also seeing more foxes, etc. It�s a pure shame when you see foxes and coyotes dead on the side of the road.

The wolf breed which used to live down here was killed to either extinction or close enough that I think it is. So, the government in it�s wisdom had Canadian wolves brought down and dropped off in Moulton, Alabama, where my wife�s grandmother lives. Moulton was having a problem with wild dogs already and now they bring the equivalent of seasoned warriors down to lead them.

Aisai�s aunt lost two Jack Russell terriers and a golden retriever. The terriers were ripped apart and the retriever either ran off or something.

Hmm, I need to lively up. I�ll try to get a real topic and not one that involves death for tomorrow.