MORE ANIMAL STUFF

We have previously discussed feral hogs and bee problems but we have by no means exhausted this subject. It has come to my attention that the batratia are also in trouble. We are told that the frog and toad population has declined precipitously and those that survive are likely to be deformed in variously horrid ways. I personally have not observed this. Indeed, we have numbers of chirping frogs in our own garden as well as an occasional toad and they seem perfectly healthy. ( One exception: one toad that I ran over with the lawn mower )
Now we are told that we are being overrun by deer. Someone took the time to count them and came up with 20,283,415 deer and that is only in Texas. Those Texas deer that I have seen are smallish but am told that they are edible. We Americans have become lazy. No more hunter gatherer types , we get our meat from the grocery store. How pathetic we all have become. Meanwhile, the deer population continues to grow and they are becomin ever more destructive.

II AM BACK

By now I have lost all of my erstwhile faithful readers and so I write mostly for my own amusement. As many of you know, I have been under the weather ( to put it mildly) for the last month or two and am still in a recovery mode. This is a painfully
slow process which leaves me bemused, bewildered, discouraged and a bit depressed
from time to time. But enough about me.

A horrid program last night on TV was on the subject of feral hogs. It turns out that they are spreading so rapidly that controlling the numbers is almost impossible. Not only are they very prolific, for some reason each generation is getting much larger and they are even meaner than before. These beasts are dangerous. I foresee the day when camping out will be impossible. Even hiking will be too dangerous. The pigs are destructive and apparently fearless. I wonder if they are good to eat. Probably too
tough to chew and perhaps have acquired a gamy flavor. This is almost as bad as the
dying out of our bee population.