More Stories From the Scorched Earth

What I learned from Bob, the HVAC guy:

...Wait, let me preface this a bit. Bob loves to talk. And he loves to fix things. In between talking. He loves to talk about talk radio. And my kids. And eating, and groceries. I don't know of anything Bob can't, or won't, talk about. And he tells a darned fine story. Why, just today - as he replaced the dud furnace motor that he used to replace the burned-out furnace motor on Friday - I learned that:

We almost didn't get a new motor because the parts house had the exact same motor as the dud, but it had a different sku number on it, by one digit. And that couldn't be swapped out for the dud motor, because it would confuse the computer. But the parts people figured it out, and retroactively changed the number on the old dud to the number on the new (WORKING! YAY! WORKING!) motor and WE HAVE HEAT! That we don't need, this week. But we could have it if we wanted it.

In the late 1950's, there was a major rabies outbreak and Bob and kin trapped foxes, which were a primary source of illness. If you took a fox tail to the Department of Wildlife, you got $2. (And the Department of Wildlife probably made the tails into capes, and sold them for a lot more than $2.)

Cows know when a fox is rabid, and will kick it and try to smother it. Other animals will try to avoid a rabid fox. Because they know, too.

Roosters will hide behind things and jump out at you to scare you. Just to be mean.

It would have been a lot smarter to convert your photo slides into regular photos 30 years ago, rather than converting them to digital images now; because slides fade and it is a major process to put the missing parts back in.

In Vietnam, some people bathe in the river.

Squirrel is delicious, but most people won't try it.

The buffet sushi restaurant on Anderson Road has reopened. It was closed because they had a fire - which only burned the insides - but new people own it. The food is still as good. But it's pricier than the (smaller) sushi buffet restaurant in-town. Of course, it has the crab legs, and the in-town restaurant doesn't. And it has more sashimi.

Chicken poop is bad for streams and lakes, because it has a high ammonia content.

You can put goat pellets in a bucket of water, and use it to water the vegetables. They will grow to epic proportion.

People pay a lot of money for good horse poop and cow poop.

If you shoot at a rabid fox hiding under the hay, the hay will catch on fire.

Which, since I just experienced a mini-fire, with no loss of life and just about no loss of property except the furnace motor; reminds me how fortunate I am. While I think about my good friends in Australia (many of whom are in fire-affected areas) and hope and pray for their safety in the face of these horrible natural and man-made disasters. There is nothing funny in their stories.