Sleepless in Midland

Fox Friday 10-1-21

What a beautiful little critter.

Fox Friday 9-24-21 -- Foxes fight, make up, share food

Fox fight!

Submission.

Then they share food.

What a scene!

Fox Friday 9-10-21

Fox and Lil Gray try to stare each other away. The cat didn't budge, and the fox left.

Fox Friday 9-3-21

The skinny youngster.

Moma keeps an eye out while youngster eats.

At daybreak the birds peck up any leftovers.

Fox Friday 8-27-21

Fox smiling.

Nice profile.

Yum! Licking his lips.

Fox tolerates human voyeur.

Fox Friday 8-20-21 -- The youngster discovered the food bowl!

For some reason the new young one seems frightened of the food bowl -- perhaps there are bugs crawling on the mat.

Sneaking up on the food. Something frightened him, and off he went.

He's not afraid of the water bowl. Here he is standing on the edge of it.

Fox Friday 8-13-21 -- Fox on a hot tin roof

This brassy fox is scanning the neighborhood -- sniffing out a better food source, perhaps.

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9:44 AM 8/12/2021

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Fox Friday 8-6-21

Yum! Licking her lips as she eyes the food.

Hopefully that pesky human won't be coming out tonight.

Fox Friday 7-23-21 -- I come in peace, brother fox

"I mean you no harm."

This fox is not especially brave, he just knows my limitations. He tolerates my presence as long as I keep my distance.

Happy 4th of July!

The news readers on TV are currently touting a recent Gallop poll claiming In U.S., Record-Low 47% Extremely Proud to Be Americans. In the unlikely event that I would even answer a phone call from a pollster I would probably say I was proud. But in reality, what I feel is a sense of good fortune to be an American. And we owe it to our founding fathers.

The Declaration of Independence said this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Actually, those were radical words back in the day. History up until then is full of autocratic governments that didn't recognize those rights at all.

Hannah Cox has an interesting piece online titled Weren’t We Always Extremists? Here's an excerpt:

When we said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” the reality is that this principle had been self-evident to practically no one throughout thousands of years of history. When we said that all men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” it got people’s attention, and suddenly others began to agree. When we said humans are entitled to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” it became a violation to impede such things. But make no mistake. These notions were not mainstream when our founders threw down the gauntlet with the Declaration of Independence. [Bold added.]

Citizens of the U.S. are the luckiest people on the planet. Happy 4th of July!

Fox Friday 7-2-21

Growling. Showing his teeth. Threatening.

Keeping a wary eye on the back door.

Fox Friday 6-25-21 A halfway friendly fox

Two minutes earlier the fox was sitting where the food dishes are in this photo. He watched me walk up to the food station, then sauntered off as I got closer. Two minutes after I put the food down he returned to eat.

If this fox reproduces maybe the gene that made him almost friendly will get passed on. After a few generations there could be a friendly fox down the family tree.

Happy Magna Carta Day 6-15-2021

It was only 800 years ago (roughly) that the Magna Carta was agreed upon and implemented. That British document gave life to the principle of due process, and our own Bill of Rights owes it some parental respect.

Here's the relevant passage, according to Britannica:

No free man shall be arrested or imprisoned or disseised or outlawed or exiled or in any way victimised, neither will we attack him or send anyone to attack him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

Meanwhile, be sure to check out this excellent piece at Ammo.com titled Magna Carta Day: The Forgotten History of Magna Carta Day and What It Commemorates.

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3:09 PM 6/14/2021

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Fox Friday 6-4-21

The fox's situational awareness is always on high.

Alert and looking.

These two alternated between eating and watching out.

As it happened, one afternoon this week I ventured into the zone unaware that there was a fox there. I tried to look as nonthreatening as possible and avoided eye contact. The fox didn't leave the yard, but he watched my every move. Great situational awareness on his behalf.

Fox Friday 5-28-21

Red breasted fox. Actually, the dim light of the setting sun has distorted the color, and the reds look redder than they really are.

Here he is a few minutes later -- the colors are more realistic.

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3:19 PM 5/30/2021

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Fox Friday 5-21-21

Calling his pals.

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4:46 PM 5/21/2021

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Newly rebuilt Fire Station #5 on the verge of opening -- Midland, Texas

The new station looks to be ready for opening within days.

It was two years ago that a few city government emissaries held a dog and pony show for the proposed station. This PDF  is a scan of the brochure they handed out to the citizens who attended. There are seven bed rooms, including one which is ADA appropriate, and there are four bath rooms, including one which is ADA appropriate -- all on the second floor. There's a stair well but no elevator.

Incidentally, there's a handicap parking spot in the parking lot. One has to wonder if the firefighter training class has to accommodate disabled students and how many disabled firefighters are on the staff. Not that we have any problem with it. But hopefully the handicapped firefighter can ascend the stairs without assistance. Getting down should be no problem -- read on.

Now, two years later, the new station appears at the location where the old station once was.

The photo on the right shows the most exiting feature of the station -- a slide for firefighters to easily descend from the second floor. It looks like loads of fun!

Although there are only two floors, the building is as tall as a three story office building. And the windows on the top floor look out over the neighborhood and down into the neighbors' yards, perhaps as a fire lookout post so the firefighters can watch for smoke.

Anyway, the entire cost was in the low seven figures. But the project came about when the city government had money to burn due to the booming economy. The city burned through it. But now the local economy is struggling, inflation is rising, and the city government wants to raise taxes.

Ironic isn't it? When times are good, they spend like there's no tomorrow. When time are bad, they raise taxes because, gosh darn it, the tax revenue just isn't high enough to keep living like there's no tomorrow.

Maybe they can raise money by charging a fee for citizens who want to slide down that slide.

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4:03 PM 5/19/2021

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Fox Friday 5-14-21

Sneaking up on his food.

White beard.

Looking our way.

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6:35 AM 5/16/2021

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Fox Friday 5-7-21

When the foxes come around before dark we get photos in living color.

What a gorgeous animal.

Same fox, different pose.

I'm amazed at the way the foxes are so well camouflaged - the colors blend into the environment so flawlessly. I guess evolution has allowed the one who hide well to survive and multiply.

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3:27 PM 5/7/2021

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Fox Friday 4-30-2021

Whoa! What's that?

Winking?

Two foxes eating from the same dish.

Fox Friday 4-23-21

Two looking our way.

Good neck rotation.

Fox Friday 4-16-21

Cat and fox coexist.

Same day, several hours later -- cat and fox square off again. This time the fox didn't come any closer until the cat left.

Fox Friday 4-9-21

Typically the foxes give way to the cats. However, this young fox must not have gotten the memo.

Cat tries to scare fox, fox ignores cat. Eats.

Three foxes. It's seldom that we see three in one frame these days.

A while back there were four -- two adults and two youngsters. One of the youngsters may have struck out on his own. We don't know what became of that one.

Meanwhile, Spring is here, which should be the mating season. So maybe the adults will produce another litter.

Fox Good Friday 4-2-21

The cats don't like sharing the space with foxes.

An early A.M. meeting.

Then that night, same thing happened.

And now for something completely different.

A beautiful Blue Jay.

Eight Perfect Murders -- a crime novel by Peter Swanson

For anyone who enjoys good mystery fiction, Eight Perfect Murders is a good one.

It opens when the narrator, Malcolm Kershaw, gets a visit from an FBI agent making an impromptu visit to Mr. Kershaws' book store to discuss a blog post he wrote years earlier listing eight books which involved what he called perfect murders -- crimes with so few clues that they were virtually unsolvable. It seems that a serial killer might be using the creative techniques in those books to commit his/her own unsolvable crimes.

Here's a reproduction of said blog post:

EIGHT PERFECT MURDERS
by Malcolm Kershaw

In the immortal words of Teddy Lewis in Body Heat, Lawrence Kasdan's underrated neo-noir from 1981: "Any time you try a decent crime, you got fifty ways you're gonna fuck up. If you think of twenty-five of them, then you're a genius . . . and you ain't no genius." True words, yet the history of crime fiction is littered with criminals, mostly dead or incarcerated, who all attempted the near impossible: the perfect crime. And many of them attempted the ultimate perfect crime, that being murder.

The following are my choices for the cleverest, the most ingenious, the most foolproof (if there is such a thing) murders in crime fiction history. These are not my favorite books in the genre, nor do I claim these are the best. They are simply the ones in which the murderer comes closest to realizing that platonjc ideal of a perfect murder.

So here it is, a personal list of "perfect murders." I'll warn you in advance that while I try to avoid major spoilers, I wasn't one hundred percent successful. If you haven,t read one of these books, and want to go in cold, I suggest reading the book first, and my list second.

The Red House Mystery (1922) by A. A. Milne
Long before Alan Alexander Milne created his lasting legacy -- Winnie- the-Pooh, in case you hadn't heard -- he wrote one perfect crime novel. It's a country house mystery; a long-lost brother suddenly appears to ask Mark Ablett for money. A gun goes off in a locked room, and the brother is killed. Mark Ablett disappears. There is some preposterous trickery in this book-including characters in disguise, and a secret passage-but the basic fundamentals behind the murderer's plan are extremely shrewd.

Malice Aforethought (1931) by Anthony Berkeley Cox
Famous for being the first "inverted" crime novel (we know who the murderer and victim are on the very first page), this is essentially a case study in how to poison your wife and get away with it. It helps, of course, that the murderer is a country physician with access to lethal drugs. His insufferable wife is merely his first victim, because once you commit a perfect murder the temptation is to try another one.

The A.B.C. Murders (1936) by Agatha Christie
Poirot is investigating a "madman" who, it appears, is alphabetically obsessed, killing off Alice Ascher in Andover followed by Betty Barnard in Bexhill. Etcetera. This is the textbook example of hiding one specific premeditated murder among a host of others, hoping that the detective will suspect the work of a lunatic.

Double Indemnity (1943) by James M. Cain
This is my favorite Cain, mostly because of the grim fatalistic ending. But the murder at the center of the book -- an insurance agent plots with femme fatale Phyllis Nirdlinger to off her husband-is brilliantly executed. It's a classic staged murder; the husband ls killed in a car then placed on the train tracks to make it look as though he fell off thee smoking car at the rear of the train. Walter Huff, her insurance agent lover, impersonates the husband on the train, ensuring that witnesses will attest to the murdered man's presence.

Strangers on a Train (1950) by Patricia Highsmith
My pick for the most ingenious of them all. Two men, each with some one they want dead, plan to swap murders, ensuring that the other has an alibi at the time of the murder. Because there is zero connection between the two men -- they briefly talk on a train - the murders become unsolvable. in theory, of course. And Hlghsmith, despite the brilliance of the plot, was more interested in the ideas of coercion and guilt, of one man exerting his will on the other. The finished novel is both fascinating and rotten to the core, like most of Highsmith's oeuvre.

The Drowner (1963) by John D. MacDonald
MacDonald, my choice for underrated master of midcentury crime fiction, rarely dabbled in whodunits. He was far too interested in the criminal mind to keep his villains hidden until the end. The Drowner is an outlier, then, and a good one. The killer devises a way to drown his or her victims so that it looks exactly Ike an accident.

Deathtrap (1978) by Ira Levin
Not a novel, of course, but a play, although I highly recommend reading it, along with seeking out the excellent 1982 film. you,ll never look at Christopher Reeve in the same way again. It's a brilliant, funny stage thriller that manages to be both the genuine article, and a satirical one, at the same time. The first murder -- a wife with a weak heart -- is clever in its construction, but also foolproof. Heart attacks are a natural death, even when they aren't.

The Secret History (1992) by Donna Tartt
Like Malice Aforethought, another "inverted" murder mystery, in which a small cadre of classics students at a New England university kill one of their own. We know the who long before we know the why. The murder itself is simple in its execution; Bunny Corcoran is pushed into a ravine during his traditional Sunday hike. What makes it stand out is ringleader Henry Winter,s explanation of the crime -- that they are "allowing Bunny to choose the circumstances of his own death." They are not even sure of his planned route for that day but wait at a likely spot, wanting to make the death seem random instead of designed. What follows is a chilling exploration of remorse and guilt.

Eight Perfect Murders is relatively short, and at the end I was left wishing it would go on. The book selling websites call this the 1st "Malcolm Kershaw" book which hints that there may more in this series by Peter Swanson. Let's hope.

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4:15 PM 3/27/2021

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Fox Friday 3-26-21 In living color

Here are some rare shots of a fox before darkness set in -- the camera captured the images in living color instead of grayscale. He's wonderfully camouflaged with his earth tone coat.

More of the same.

Cats invade the fox food buffet from time to time. Here's one trying to claw the tell-tale.

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2:44 PM 3/26/2021

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Fox Friday 3-19-21 itching and stretching

Scratching that itch.

Stretching it out.

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5:41 PM 3/19/2021

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Fox Friday 3-12-21 Don't mess with the tail!

Canines don't like other animals messing with their tails.

      Playing with the tail gets a reaction.

      Cat coddles happy homeowner.

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9:59 AM 3/11/2021

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Fox Friday 3-6-21 New camera!

This little one comes in low and stealthy.

One watches while the other eats. Get a load of that tail.

Stretching it out.

The old Bushnell trail cam conked out. The new one is a Gardepro A3. It takes a much wider picture, and it doesn't have its own brand name emblazoned in the photo like the Bushnell did.

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5:21 AM 3/5/2021

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Fox Friday 2-26-21

Just a nice shot.

Majestic stance.

Three at a time.

The Fox Cam went kaput on Monday. Maybe it was a delayed reaction to the deep freeze of the previous week. In any event, the foxes are still getting fed, and they get to eat without prying eyes.

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3:24 PM 2/25/2021

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