The Excavation

As you may know already, if you are a frequent reader of this blog, a year ago all of my goats died. Their deaths were tragic, horrid ordeals that left me overcome with guilt and sadness. Not really. They died, they were buried, end of story.

Or was it.

A few months ago I noticed a hole where I had buried the goat that I buried. It looked as if my dog had been digging in it. I went down to insect it and sure enough it was the exact spot where I had excavated a shallow grave months previous.

Well being of a curious mind I grabbed a nearby stick and started mixing the muddy pool. I began to feel hard bits moving around with the stick and I managed to pry some of them out.

Bones. Lots of em. Vertebrates, ribs, scapulas, trapeziums, tuberosities, humeri, on and on they came. I quickly decided that if I was going to do this, I would do it right.

I ran back to the house, changed into more work like clothes, grabbed a shovel and a bucket and returned to the dig site. My main goal was to find the skull because it's obviously the most recognizable and kick ass part of an animal (Pelvis is the second-most kick ass... get it, cause the pelvis is where the- oh nevermind). I dug and dug and removed countless bones both intact and fragmented but I could not find the skull. I opened new dig sites north and west of the original site to see if they proved to house the skull. I used sonic graphing to make a map of the area. I hired the guy from jurassic park to come and help me but even together we couldn't find the goat skull.

It became apparent to me at this time that the most logical conclusion was that my dog (the first digger) must have removed the skull for her own storage. I abandoned the site taking with me an assortment of some forty bones.

There were only a few places that my dog would have buried a goat skull based on it's size and her previous burial rituals. There was the front plot where we had found a dead cat buried beneath one of our flowers, and the planter box near the garage where she had buried a dead raccoon.

After investigating the the front plot I decided it must be the planter box. I went to it but was disappointed to find no obvious digging.

I was about to give up hope when I noticed that one part of the dirt caught my eye. it seemed to be a bit higher than the rest of the box. I brushed away some of the dirt and to my surprise found a horn!

This was of course a major archeological discovery. Upon more excavation I discovered the rest of the skull underneath the dirt.

As you can see it was very dirty and not very white. I wasn't about to mount a dirty skull on the hood of my car! So i attempted to bleach it. I filled a tub with water, put the skull in and added bleach. Now to those of you considering taxidermy I have one bit of advice. Don't leave skulls in bleach water for weeks on end. The skull will get brittle and won't whiten.

I found this out the hard way, when i finally removed the skull almost a month after inserting it into the bleach bath I found that it was falling part. So brittle you could break parts of the jaw with your hands. Not wanting to keep a brittle skull I threw it into the bushes. Where it remains.



If you have beloved pets you'd like excavated you can hire my services for a medial fee of $135 per hour. I take the upmost care in finding and removing your beloved former critter from it's dusty grave.

Contact Hampton Excavation and Taxidermy at (503) 555-5555, or go to www.hamptonexcavationandtaxidermy.va

Scholarship Competition

This last Friday and Saturday (2 - 10 and 2 - 11) I took part in a scholarship competition at George Fox. The First day was straightforward. An interview and a lecture. pretty basic. Pretty easy, noting to worry about. The trouble started on Saturday.

I was scheduled for a Communication Arts scholarship because that was my intended major. There were four others people in my group and we began with some get to know you questions and questions about why Communication Arts. At the beginning they had said that we would give a speech as part and figured it would be some prompt they'd give us and we'd speak as we went.

Well, it came to the speech, we moved the chairs and the first person (alphabetically) went up to the front. I noticed that he had some paper notes and also that the Professors had not given him a prompt. Needless to say I was nonplussed.

I began to realize to from in my mind that there was a prompt... but I had missed it. Some email or message had eluded me.

I pulled out my phone and nonchalantly shot out a text to my Mom, "Apparently I was supposed to prepare a speech" (my exact words). I couldn't even formulate my own thoughts into some kind of coherent message because I still didn't know the PROMPT!

the first speaker finished and we congratulated him with light applause. I started wondering which person would be next when, "Alright. Joseph." Well damn. Life sucks.

I pulled myself out of my chair and gave an awkward, "I think i missed a memo. Could I perchance have a look upon the question" (not necessarily my exact words). Thje first speaker, Caleb, ghave me the prmopt, it was something like how you wish to grow as a student and as a christian at Fox. A 3 - 5 minute speech. You may use notes. Well double damn. Life sucks more.

I approached the front table as easily as I could and tried to subdue some shakes which I find quite ironic because the Prof had told us not to get too nervous beforehand.

My speech was an incoherent mess. I'd guess it lasted no more than 2 minutes though i felt like I was standing there for half a age.

There was applause when i finished but I couldn't helping thinking how much relief the other contestants must have felt to know i was no longer a threat.

Three more speeches before the end. One girl used notes, the last two memorized speeches and spoke with such confidence and gusto that I couldn't keep eye contact.

The Profs didn't speak to me about my predicament. The other competitors didn't. I wasn't sure if they were avoiding an awkward confrontation or if they had forgotten me. Either way I was left alone.

I don't think i'll major in communication Arts.

BI - Mart

There is nothing in this world filled with such an undeserved sense of authority like a Bi-Mart greeter. The great North-West's pharmacy/ Walgreen's entrance greeter card checkers are the most self righteous wanna be arbiters on earth.
It had seemed that Newberg's own store had lost it's obsessive member checkers since the days of that-one-old-lady-that-always-asked-for-the-card-before-buzzing-you-in-even-if-you-came-every-day finally got a life and decided that methodically checker every persons' Bimart membership was a poor use of life.
Unfortunately the dark days are upon us again. For another has tken the pace of the old one. And this times it is a young bearded chap.
To the story:
I've been in bimart many times with my parents and I never thought much of actually having a Bimart card.
Since I've been able to transport myself via automobile I have gone into Bimart unaccompanied by my parents and had no problem entering through the swinging door and hearing that cheerful "Ding - Dong" as the checker hits the useless unlock button (and I say useless because 9 times out of 10 the door is unlatched and open). Anyway... I go in and I see this new guy at the front. Well, I'm an optimist so i think, meh, he won't care. I'll just walk in. So, I enter and he rings the door and I walk through and moments before being free and clear I hear a "Excuse me."
I turn to see him referring to me.
"Sorry. Do you have a Bimart Card."
I go out on a whim and quickly choose a response. "No, my parents do though," I say throwing my elbows up onto the counter. "Why are you going to throw me out?"
I can see the surprise crash on his face, he probably wasn't expecting this reaction.
After a moment of "thought gathering" he says, "No... but you do need one, in the future."
Haha! Victory, my bluntness and lack of basic human social standards have finally paid off. I turn and proceed to buy cheap Bimart candy.

Cats... Dead Cats

You might have realized from October 19th's "Dead Goats" story that animals at my house don't have the best of luck. The funny thing is there were actually two other goats that died before the massacre. we don't know how they died either, but hey they're goats, whatcha gonna do?

Anyway it turns out that cats, although having more lives than goats, still die. A lot. We've had four cats that I can remember and they've all (by now) met the same fate. We'll start with Pickles. Pickles was a cat. A black cat. We had him and Socks to start with. Socks was also a cat. A gray cat. Pickles was the first to go. Although we never found the body, it was assumed short after his disappearance that he had met a gruesome fate at the hands of some animal or disease. Either way he's very very dead now because that was 12 years ago.

Pickles death wasn't all bad though, because after the departed for that big ball of yarn in the sky we got Nuggy (noog ee). Nuggy didn't seem to last long, but time went faster back then. I distinctly remember finding his body beneath the porch, his mouth agape, his heart stopped and his eyes in that squinty dead cat look that all Advanced Human Bio kids get used to after a while. Nuggy passing was... well, I honestly don't remember really. Nuggy wasn't especially memorable. Though I don't really like cats either.

Hey remember Socks? We don't, cause she's been dead 10 years! She was resourceful though, she survived Pickles and Nuggy. She even survived my sister and mine experiment to see if cats can really land on their feet when dropped- I mean falling upside down. We dropped her from about three feet up and, what do you know, they can. And apparently there's a "run away" reflex that causes them to bolt after hitting the ground, go figure. We wanted to retest from a higher drop point but we couldn't catch her again. And Kelsey (other sister, Socks "owner") got mad. Anyway, Socks was hit by a car.

Billybob, like Pickles, was never actually found. He came to us one day and we fed him and he stayed. Then, when our dog got bigger he left. Without a trace. He's likely dead now but if he's not then he's old. Billybob, if you're reading this, we miss you.

Those four were the only ones we owned (however briefly) but there was that one dead cat we found. it was buried in the garden. Dad thought it was a rabbit at first. He had us all come out to see. And then it was a cat. Yeah. Ooh. And one time I thought I found another one but it turned out just to be a raccoon.

Other than that there's Eloise. but she was dead when we met. She was very wet, smelly and tough. Very hard to open, and even harder to expose vital organs. But my was she beautiful. In a rigor-mortis-ified squitny, dead, formaldehyde way.

The Dead Goats

We used to own 4 goats and "used to" is the optimal part of that phrase. About a year ago, last winter I realized that one of the goats was lying on the ground. Finding this unbecoming of goats I went to investigate.

It was on its side on the ground. I grabbed a stick and poked it. There was a hollow thud as the body was completely frozen from being dead in the cold so long. Well great, the goat died. Now we have to figure out a way to bury it without digging in frozen clay earth or building a coffin. I think maybe my dad piled some rocks on it, there was no eulogy because, well, Red sweater wearing Star Trek extras have longer life expectancies than animals at our house.

Dismissing the Goat's death as a random act of God I continued with everyday life only to find a second goat dead a day later. Now isn't this interesting, but lacking Holmes investigative spirit I again dismissed this tragedy as another will of the creator.
When we found the third goat dead I knew something was amiss. We began to search for the cause of the death praying it wasn't El Chupacabra. What we did find was a dead rat in their water supply... This may or may not have been the root cause of death.

At this point I excepted the fact that the 4th goat would die soon and said my goodbyes, by which I mean I left the paddock without even glancing at the goat.

A week went by and miraculously the goat had survived. I felt hopeful, happy and glad, and then i heart this strange ghastly braying from the goats large pen. It wasn't the usual, "I'M A GOAT!" bray, it was more of a "I've fallen and i can't get up... and I'm dieing!" bray.

I found the animal halfway down the hill, lying there, immobile but alive. I decided the best thing to do would be to put it out of it's misery but being unable to even kill mice I figured I wouldn't be best for the job. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some tree hugging, vegan, animals-are-people-too people, I just can't kill things myself.

So I got my dad, the hardcore, raised on a farm man that i knew could kill goat 4. Well, it was Oregon, so it had rained in the last six or seven hours and was muddy. My father was wearing nice clothes and shoes and didn't want to walk down the muddy hill to get a point-blank shot at the goat (with the .22 rifle). So he walked down our driveway parallel to the paddock and took aim a the goat which was 50 feet away.

I was standing above, inside the paddock but outside the bullet zone because, let's face it I wasn't going to miss this! It was awesome!

The first shot hit it in the thigh so it just started flailing which can be difficult when your body weight is being supported by your neck. The next three shots brought the goat to a slowish fast death full of brays and flailing limbs. The sixth shot was just to make sure.

Afterward we went back inside to forget about the whole event. But after a day or maybe an hour (whatever) I decided that a dead goat with it's eyes glazed over and tongue sticking out blood slowly dripping from it's gaping mouth slowly rotting isn't the best picture coming up the driveway to a friend or relatives house. So "I'll bury it!" I thought.

Luckily the dirt/mud near the goat was soft and easy to dig (besides the freaking boulders). I dug a grave I thought looked deep enough and dragged the limp creature into it. it was at the moment that the wet floppy body hit the bottom of the pit that I realized it wasn't deep enough. Most of the body fit except the head was sticking out resting on the ground level dirt. I didn't want to have to drag it out and continue digging so I just flopped it's head back on itself. It was really easy because apparently its neck had broken in the fall so the neck twisted easily back to rest on its own side.

I still faced a dilemma though. The body was about 6 inches out of the pit. So, shovel in hand i began piling mud back on top of it. Unfortunately there wasn't enough mud to completely cover it. But, I did get enough to cover everything but one horn, sticking up through the dirt. I thought that was okay though because the horn just looked like a root or branch or something, especially from far away.

So, I left the grave sweaty and dirty contemplating a job well done.

Banksy: A Small Selection

Some of famous world graffiti Artist "Banksy's" Work. Checkout http://banksy.co.uk/ for more.

Cookie Recipes, from the Queen Herself

Recipes by Paula

Number 1 -- Coconut, Oat, Cranberry Cookies

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup sugar

1 cup shortening

2 eggs

1 teas. almond extract

2 ½ cups flour

2 teas. baking powder

2 teas. soda

1 teas. salt

2 cups oatmeal

2 cups coconut

1 cup dried cranberries

Cream sugars and shortening. Beat in eggs and extract. Stir in dry ingredients, oatmeal, coconut, and cranberries. Scoop onto greased cookie sheet.

Bake at 350° for 8-10 minutes.

Number 2 -- Gingerbread Cut-outs

Cream together:

1 cup shortening

1 cup sugar

Add:

1 egg

1 cup molasses

2 T. vinegar

Sift and stir in:

5 cups flour

½ teas. salt

1 ½ teas. soda

2 teas. ginger

1 teas. cinnamon

1 teas. cloves

Chill dough. Roll out on lightly floured board and cut with favorite cookie cutters. Bake at 350° for 5-8 minutes, being careful not to over bake. Frost with favorite icing and decorate!

Number 3 -- Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup shortening

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 teas. vanilla

2 eggs

2 & 3/4 cups flour

2 teas. soda

dash salt

1 pkg chocolate chips

Cream shortening, peanut butter, and sugars. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in sifted dry ingredients. Add chocolate chips. Scoop out onto ungreased cookie sheets.

Bake at 350° for 8-10 minutes. Don't overbake! Eat warm. That's when they're the best!