Aloha, My Friend,
To tell this story I will first digress back to November of 1983. Let me tell you, I can’t help but to look back to that date and become totally amazed at the lightning speed at which 25 years zip right by.
Like the Rock & Roller, Robbie Robinson, once sang, “Why do we grow up so slowly and grow old so fast?”
In ’83 I was a graduate student at FSU when I went aboard a U.S. Navy ship to teach the sailors American History and Poli-Sci for 6 weeks. The assignment began just days before a terrorist bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut killed 241 American servicemen. We left Charleston and made a slight detour to Grenada in the Caribbean, did a little invasion and government toppling and then we made a due haste run to the Mediterranean, more specifically, just off the coast of downtown West Beirut. Smoke was still wafting from the Holiday Inn when we arrived. In the evenings we could see the rotating lights from the Ferris wheel in Luna Park and the tracers arching across the mountainside.
For reasons of political gamesmanship, every day my ship, the USS Moosbrugger, would steam in to about ½ a mile from the shore and we would just sit there.”Bait” is a word that I would use to describe our purpose. Early each day I would go up to the bridge and try to play invisible for that hour or 2. One morning after a couple of days of heavy rains, we were moving into our “box” when the lookout called that there was a very large floating object in the water. It was immediately identified as a dead cow.
Well now, on the bridge of every Navy ship, the Quartermaster of the Watch is assigned to maintain the log. Every command given is entered as well as the ship’s position and all things of navigational interest and certainly a dead cow floating off the starboard bow was of interest, morbid though it was. So, for the next week, with naval policy precision a log entry was made for each daily sighting of “Bob-the-Cow” as she affectionately became known all the way back to the Pentagon. Bad jokes and old movies go a long way toward uplifting a sailor’s morale.
I know that it is an incredible stretch between November of ’83 and a couple of weeks back to May 12th of 2008 but I will use the cheap and awkward segue of Bob-the Cow to bobcat.
As most of you know by now, a few Monday’s back Sweet Laine was attacked by a bobcat just off of Thomasville Road and Bradford. If it had happened any closer to the heart of town that rabid little rascal would have been wearing a suit and tie but kinda disheveled, of course, like Robert Downey, jr. in the sleeper movie, Fur.
Elaine was walking our two rescue dogs along a wonderful, secluded trail between McCord Park and Whithrop Park. I have always been a tad unsettled by the announcement to be aware of possibilities of an alligator in the pond at McCord but we had never considered a bobcat just appearing in the middle of the path. A fine howdy-do that was. One of our dogs, Kona, was the first to tangle with Bob. Elaine says that it was like the cartoon of a cat fight with the whirling balls of fur and sparks flying out in every direction. After it slapped our puppy around for a while the bobcat made a turn at her.
A serious mistake that cat’s thinking.
You’ve surely heard that, “Hell has no fury like a woman scorned.” Let me tell you, sink your fangs into Laine and you have ratcheted that up to an all new height of wrath.
A long time ago, for an interesting sort of mythos, I picked up the cliché, “When you start a fight with a tiger you don’t quit when you are tired, you quit when the tiger is tired.” Well, we all learned on that Monday that a bobcat had better be ready to quit when he bites Laine’s chest. She grabbed the 25 pound beast by its throat and pinned him to the ground as she screamed for help, all this while our other dog was tethered to her left wrist and was desperately making it known that 4 feet just wasn’t the proper leash length under the circumstances. Elaine took a couple of box shaped bites to her right shoulder and upper chest but is doing well now, thank you.
The cat turned out to be rabid so she immediately began a regimen of evil-go-away shots and the rabies shot series. Thank goodness that that has changed from one shot in the belly every day for two weeks with a needle the size of an old car antenna. She is just about through with her six shots in the arm over a month period.
Sort of ironic that from this Second Sunday Fair at the Square will be a Pet Pool Party, don’t you think, eh? From Noon – 5pm bring all of your four legged buddies and your two legged friends to play in our various wading pool and to run through the sprinklers. All I ask is that your pets are on a leash and have their shots up to date.
As for your friends, well it is simple enough, if they like you, we like them so bring then on down. The weather report for Sunday is hot enough to get silly and generally splash around with childish abandon. “It is never too late to have a happy childhood” – and get 15% off your Second Sunday purchases if you can tell me who I stole that quote from.
This month we will feature the Watercolors of Penny L. Anderson beginning with an opening artist reception on 1st Friday, June 6th, from 6-10 PM. Penny is a lifelong artist with a home studio next to a river and the Gulf of Mexico. Her art reflects her love of the outdoors and many of her pieces are done plein air. She features art from the Gulf Coast to Tallahassee. She is a member of Plein Air Tallahassee (PAT) and the Tallahassee Watercolor Society. Her work is in numerous private collections from California to Maine and New York to Florida. We are proud to feature her work this month at Bali-HI and feel she well represents our “Island Lifestyle” theme. We still have glass works available by Cheryl Sattler and jewelry by Rene Barrett of Just Bead It.