Category Archives: Paffooney

May 12, 2021 · 4:53 pm

The Rat War Rumbles On

We live in a residential area of a Dallas suburb that used to be a large cattle ranch with a couple of mills for grinding grain along a winding tributary of the Trinity River. Our house sits next to a greenbelt park that is the creek where the mill once sat to service the Josey Ranch. We are located on a small hill that would’ve been the bank of the mill pond back then. Hence the swamp fauna that live in our immediate environment.

We are visited yearly by mallard ducks, and sometimes Canadian geese on winter holiday. There are squadrons after squadrons of dragonflies, and the many small insects they search for and prey upon. We have the occasional coyote and families of raccoons residing under the Josey Lane bridge. Frogs and toads and seasonal mayflies… and more than our fair share of mosquitoes.

But by far, the biggest pain in the tuchus are the rats. Especially in the cold of the winter, the heat of the Texas summer, and whenever we get enough rain to wash them out of their nests in the storm drains when the rats move indoors to have sex parties in the attic, squaredances in the walls, and raids on the kitchen, especially the dog’s bowl, for extra snacking and pooping on the floor.

We are not talking about cute rats here. The mice in the Paffooney that leads off this essay are definitely not the ones that caused me to write this anti-rodentia-disgusticas rant. Those mice are actually me and my family portrayed in cartoon form. We are talking about more than fifteen roof rats and one big Norway rat, numbers that reflect only the ones we have slain so far in this pitched battle.

The fight started a couple of years ago when they first moved into the house through a hole in the roof and another one that opened when bricks fell out of the wall above the back patio door, allowing rat access to the insulation and the spaces behind the interior drywall panels. Once they were already inside, I tried to stop them first with rat poison. I had three confirmed kills that way, But then it began to seem that no matter how much poison I set out in poison traps in the attic, their numbers only increased, never diminished. In fact, I discovered they were eating the poison and enjoying it as much as they did the bait. We had created at least two generations of poison-resistant rats. They broke into a sack of poison I had on the patio and ate every morsel of it. Rats started sending me thank-you notes in the mail. (Wait a minute. That sentence may have been an exaggeration for comic effect. The thank-you turds were left in the kitchen, not the mailbox.)

picture from Pinterest

We really didn’t start making headway until we discovered the right kind of trap. Snap-traps didn’t work. Every rat seems to know how to eat the bait on a snap trap without setting off the snapper. Electrocution box traps didn’t work. They simply ignored the peanut butter bait. We never caught a single rat in those traps.

But sticky traps… like flypaper for rats,,, didn’t work either… until we started placing them in the escape routes the rats used to flee from the family dog. Suddenly the traps began to fill up as Jade, our half-corgi half-rat-terrier, learned to chase them towards the traps. In the last three months, twelve more roof rats, and today’s amazingly large, eighteen-inch-from-nose-to-tail Norway rat makes thirteen caught by sticky trap. Ha-ha, Mortimer! Your days are numbered now. Don’t look at me with those skeptical black rat-eyes. I am winning the Rat War. At least for now.

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May 11, 2021 · 2:26 pm

AeroQuest 4… Canto 139

Canto 139 – Battle of the Flowers

Thousands of thistle-like Throckpods came thundering over the hill with thorns brandished and wild looks in their very human-looking eyes.

From the other side, a large group of vegetable people with seed-like eyes came up behind Ged and his disciples, presumably to support them in the upcoming battle.

“What do we do, Sensei?” asked Junior.”

“I need the telepaths to all try to locate the Grainmaster.  He’s the key somehow.  If they have a hive mind going on here, he’s the connecting point.”

The Throckpods connected first with a phalanx of violet flower-people.  Violet petals were torn from the faces of the flower-men who barely made a scratch against their weedy attackers.  The poor flowers were overwhelmed.

“Sensei, I detect the Grainmaster over there amongst the Throckpods!” Hassan shouted.  “You can’t actually see him from here.  He’s surrounded by at least a dozen of those nine-foot-tall purple-headed thistles.”

Ged could see the thistle-Throckpods he was talking about.  Somehow they had to get to the Grainmaster himself.

“Shu?  This may be a suicidal attack, but if I turn myself into the armored ape form, can you and Taffy throw me by telekinesis into the center of the Grainmaster’s party?”

“Sensei, what will we do if they tear you to pieces or thorn you to death?”

“I may well be harder to kill than they think.  But if I am gone, Shu-kun, you will be in charge.  You will flee back to Gaijin and prepare defenses there.”

Shu and Taffy looked at each other, nodded yes to each other, and then picked Ged up with their combined mind powers.  As he rose through the air, Ged transformed himself into the green armored ape he had used to eat Throckpods before and save Sara from having her sap sucked out.

The two young telepaths did an excellent job of transporting Ged safely to the very spot he needed to reach.  Then, when directly over the Grainmaster’s “head,” they dropped him straight down.

Ged had a moment to assess his enemy as he was dropping down through the air.  The Grainmaster was shaped like a giant ear of corn with arms and legs and two black kernels of corn for eyes.  He carried a giant wheat stalk as a scepter.

Ged landed on the corn-thing directly.  Two Throckpods tried to stop him from attacking the Grainmaster, so he ripped them apart first before he began eating the Grainmaster whole. A rain of poisoned thorns bounced harmlessly off of Ged’s metallic hide.  The corn-thing was terrified as he was munched up by metal gorilla jaws.

A shudder went through all the surrounding plants.  Ged could see all the flower-warriors wilting to the ground.   All the flower forces were apparently rendered completely powerless by the demise of the Grainmaster.  Ged knew instantly that he had erred in the most serious manner possible, even before he realized that it was far worse because, even though the Throckpods were affected by the Grainmaster’s death too, they were not nearly so devastated as the rest of the plant people.

Ged’s students all easily used their Psion powers to part the sea of wilting Throckpods.  They came to Ged’s aid.

As Ged returned to his normal face and form, he suddenly became aware of someone else he knew from before.

“I should’ve realized it was you behind everything,” Ged said.

“Of course.  I came back in time specifically for this moment,” said Bres the Black Spider formerly of Gaijin.

“You are the reason these weeds have human-like eyes.”

“Yes, they are made from my DNA as well as the Grainmaster’s.  I control them with my own willpower.  The Grainmaster was my prisoner.  Now that you have killed the him, all the regular plant people will die, leaving my Throckpods in charge of the entire world.”

“Why don’t you tell him who you really are,” challenged Hassan Parker.  “He needs to know that you are not who you pretend to be.”

“My word, White Spider.  You have an exceptionally powerful telepath there.  I can’t seem to force him out of my mind.”

“You might as well tell him yourself.  If you don’t, I will.”  Hassan was livid with anger.

“Oh, no!  It can’t be true!” sobbed Sara as she, too, managed to read the Black Spider’s mind.

“Yes, Ged.  What they are going to tell you anyway is entirely true.  I am you from the future.  That’s how I know exactly how this turns out.”

“He’s not telling you the whole truth,” warned Hassan.

“Yes, he’s not the only future you there is.  And he doesn’t know how it turns out for him, only that he tried to defeat you here.  What happens to him next he doesn’t know,” said Billy Iowa.  “But my clairvoyance tells me he is not going to get any of the things he wants because…”

But before Billy could finish, Bres changed into a bird-form and leaped into the air, flapping madly to get away from the scene.

The Throckpods were returning to full and mobile life.

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May 9, 2021 · 4:26 pm

Time in the Rabbit Hole

Pursuing the muse that makes you a slave to the difficulties of a creative life leads you to places and experiences you never intended to visit.

Such is the tale of following Cissy Moonskipper down the White Rabbit’s hole.

A few days ago I told you how I found an old pen and ink drawing, scanned it, colored it, and then scanned it again. It became the day’s blog post, a short, ironic short story about a character stranded alone on a space ship in deep uncharted space.

The punch line was that she found a copy of Dafoe’s Robinson Crusoe in the bridge storage bin.

The picture got photoshopped into a potential cover for a book. And I began obsessing about how to write a story that parallels that really old book about a shipwrecked lonely man.

I couldn’t resist following that White Rabbit of Sudden Inspiration down into the maze of writing a new science fiction… novella? It needs to be short and sweet. But it has the feeling already of something that I have never ever done before in story-telling.

This, of course, is Friday. She’s a Lupin girl left aboard the spaceship by the invading pirate who killed Cissy’s older half-brother before getting himself disintegrated. She is the second character needed to carry out the parody of the Robinson Crusoe story.

And while I was creating this character, I decided to create an illustration of the starship too. The story is set aboard the free-trader named Dark Moon’s Dreaded Luck.

So, I am now in uncharted territory. Which bottle do I drink from? Which cookie do I chew? I already know how the story ends, but getting there will be a magical adventure. And it seems like other things are totally on hold because of it. I am trapped in that rabbit hole. And God only knows how long it will take.

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May 8, 2021 · 3:18 pm

Hidden Kingdom… Chapter 2 Complete

Here is the link to the complete Chapter 1https://catchafallingstarbook.net/2018/11/24/hidden-kingdom-chapter-1-complete/

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May 7, 2021 · 7:30 pm

Time Flies

The old joke goes something like this;

“Slow Joe was anxious about meeting his online girlfriend whom he met in a chat room in 1993. They had been talking back and forth for 28 years. Then, she finally suggested they needed to meet in person. It turned out that she only lived a short way away, on the other side of town. So, they agreed that they would both walk to Fast Charlie’s Fast-food Restaurant. Slow Joe wanted to meet Rosemary so badly that he went to his mother’s bedroom and pulled the wall-clock off the wall. Then as he walked towards Fast Charlie’s place, he kept flinging the wall clock ahead of him like a frisbee, walking to pick it up, and flinging it yet again as he slowly ambled up the street.”

“Joe? Why do you keep flinging that broken clock?” I asked.

“I needed to make time fly,” he answered.

“Ironically, he arrived too late for the date.”

What? I didn’t promise it would be a good joke.

This, then, is the irony on the ironing board of my life. I am stuck waiting for things to happen as things take forever to mature and pull themselves together for whatever the future holds. It is another Friday already. I think I must’ve blinked twice, and doing so, missed the previous Saturday, Sunday , Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,, and Thursday. Where did the time go? It must’ve been in that clock that Slow Joe kept flinging.

Time is passing faster than it ever has in my life. And yet, it seems to crawl along at a snail’s pace. Well, maybe Slow Joe’s pace. I have seen snails pass him like relative speed demons on the racetrack of everyday life.

Maybe I don’t have enough to do. And yet, I am working on three books at once, finishing a short story for Ten Bun’s Holiday in a Nudist Park story collection (proceeds going to charity) just yesterday. I have the AeroQuest 4 book that I work on every Tuesday, the Valerie Clarke sequel called He Rose on a Golden Wing, and the sudden science fiction inspiration, Cissy Moonskipper.

I am three books ahead of schedule too on my quest to read and review 45 books this year for Goodreads (most of those also for Pubby.)

There is danger in that. I read mostly fiction books. And we all know that two many lies in one place can warp reality. That would be a tragedy if Mickey reads too much and opens a black hole somewhere inside his stupid old head.

Anyway, that is probably enough musing for now. I probably lost all my readers at the toxic Dad joke at the beginning of this misbegotten blog post. But that gives me the opportunity to say anything at all, even secret things, Nobody is still reading at this point, so no one will read this secret; I actually don’t have any secrets left to tell.

So, that is where I am at now in life. Time is flying by at an alarming pace, yet each day crawls along as slowly as Slow Joe flings clocks.

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May 6, 2021 · 7:26 pm

Mickey the Decider

Yes, I know, you expect this title to be a joke. When Mickey says “decider,” he must mean he takes cider out of things. As in, “Mickey will decider those bottles of apple cider.” Well, hey, that is a pretty good joke in terms of what Mickey finds humorous in his crazy little super-corny brain. But this essay is about being decisive. You know, that quality about being able to make a decision. Preferably not a horrible decision. But a decision never-the-less.

I have made some pretty firm decisions recently. Hopefully good ones.

For one thing, I have decided I am going to make the trip to Iowa this summer… even if I have to drive the whole seven hundred miles myself… by myself. The rest of the family has jobs to worry about, car-insurance mandates to follow, and other plans. But I haven’t been home in over two years. The pandemic has taken its toll on me, and I have decided not to yield anything more to it. I wasn’t there for Dad’s funeral. I will be there to visit his gravestone and talk to him again.

Another recent good decision was to get fully vaccinated so that I could contemplate doing that very thing. Two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, and protection for my diabetic heart and lungs. I can’t take regular flu vaccine due to complications, but I am not an anti-vaxer. Mickey has beaten Covid.

I have also decided that I will become a member of the AANR (American Association for Nude Recreation,) Yes, Mickey has decided 64 years of trying to resist becoming a nudist is at an end. I have been in the closet about having a naturist’s heart for too long. It’s time to come out of the closet. Of course it may never again mean getting my old carcass out to a nudist park or a nude bike ride. Those things are too far away for the most part, and I am not in good health. But Mickey has decided to admit what other people have known all along. Mickey is a nudist. And it will lend some credibility to my novels about being a nudist.

It is good to be decisive, even if it makes Mickey sound a bit unsound of mind. Make up your mind, follow your plan, and be a decider. But, remember, those bottles of apple cider are not good for your diabetes. The doctor said, “No fruit juice ever again,” didn’t he? You better decide to listen, Mickey.

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May 6, 2021 · 4:39 pm

The Wolf in My Dreams

wolfgirl

Rosemary Hood was a bright, blond seventh grader who entered my seventh-grade Gifted English class in September of 1998.  She introduced herself to me before the first bell of her first day.

“I am definitely on your class list because my Mom says I belong in gifted classes.”

“Your name is Rosemary, right?”

“Definitely.  Rosemary Bell Hood, related to the Civil War general John Bell Hood.”

“Um, I don’t see your name on my list.”

“Well, I’m supposed to be there, so check with the attendance secretary.  And I will be making A’s all year because I’m a werewolf and I could eat you during the full moon if you make me mad at you.”

I laughed, thinking that she had a bizarre sense of humor.  I let her enter my class and issued her copies of the books we were reading.  Later I called the office to ask about her enrollment.

“Well, Mr. Beyer,” said the secretary nervously, “the principal is out right now with an animal bite that got infected.  But I can assure you that we must change her schedule and put her in your gifted class.  The principal would really like you to give her A’s too.”

So, I had a good chuckle about that.  I never gave students A’s.  Grades had to be earned.  And one of the first rules of being a good teacher is, “Ignore what the principal says you should do in every situation.”

But I did give her A’s because she was a very bright and creative student (also very blond, but that has nothing to do with being a good student).  She had a good work ethic and a marvelous sense of humor.

She developed a crush on Jose Tannenbaum who sat in the seat across from her in the next row.  He was a football player, as well as an A student.  And by October she was telling him daily, “You need to take to me to the Harvest Festival Dance because I am a werewolf, and if you don’t, I will eat you at the next full moon.”

All the members of the class got a good chuckle out of it.  And it was assumed that he would. of course, take her to the dance because she was the prettiest blond girl in class and he obviously kinda liked her.  But the week of the dance we did find out, to our surprise, that he asked Natasha Garcia to the dance instead.

I didn’t think anything more about it until, the day after the next full moon, Jose didn’t show up for class.  I called the attendance secretary and asked about it.

“Jose is missing, Mr. Beyer,” the attendance secretary said.  “The Sherrif’s office has search parties out looking for him.”  That concerned me because he had a writing project due that day, and I thought he might’ve skipped school because he somehow failed to finish it.  When I saw Rosemary in class, though, I asked her if, by any chance, she knew why Jose wasn’t in class.

“Of course I do,” she said simply.  “I ate him last night.”

“Oh.  Bones and all?”

“Bone marrow is the best-tasting part.”

So, that turned out to be one rough school year.  Silver bullets are extremely expensive for a teacher’s salary.  And I did lose a part of my left ear before the year ended.  But it also taught me valuable lessons about being a teacher.  Truthfully, you can’t be a good teacher if you can’t accept and teach anyone who comes through your door, no matter what kind of unique qualities they bring with them into your classroom.

 

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May 5, 2021 · 4:05 pm

I Believe in Sunshine More Than Night

This picture was originally supposed to be combined with another picture of a charging grizzly bear. The boy in the picture could definitely be characterized as a “brave.” After all, he stands almost entirely unprotected and undefended in the face of danger. One small, determined arrow stands between him and endless night.

It is the story of my entire life summarized in a picture.

Only my skill and determination helped me overcome my boyhood trauma, a life plagued with ill health, the ravages of depression, and fear.

As a child you live with the notion your mind creates that there are monsters out there in the darkness just beyond the edges of the lantern’s illumination.

But there is an important principle you learn from the night terrors that plague you at age eleven. The monsters under the bed slink away when you turn on the light. Even if your nightmares are caused by being sexually assaulted before anybody had tried to explain to you what sex was and the other facts of life, when you shed light on the matter and learn the truth the darkness was hiding, the nightmare becomes unraveled.

Sunshine is the medicine that cures the darkness. Any problem you have is best solved by careful study and illuminating it with the sunshine of truth.

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May 4, 2021 · 4:03 pm

AeroQuest 4… Canto 138

Canto 138 – The Throckpod Speaks

The designated Throckpod lumbered into Ged Aero-sensei’s camp with a sort of thorny swagger that made the students of the White Spider rather uneasy.  A flower-creature like that should’ve been more humbly worried about entering an enemy’s camp than this one was.

The Throckpod that Mai Ling introduced to Ged was a daisy-headed being with disturbingly human-looking eyes.  Its petals were yellow.  The center of the blossom where the eyes peered out was green.

“So, I understand that you are the spokesman for the Throckpods,” Ged said.

“No.  I am all Throckpods.  We are all linked by our glorious leader.  We are all one.”

“I see.”

“You do have eyes, yes.  You may have noticed that I have eyes too.  Not photon-sensitive seed pods, but real eyes.  A gift from our glorious master who unites us all.”

“You serve the Grainmaster, then?”

“Our glorious master gave us our true sight and our ability to know what all Throckpods know, shared knowledge throughout the hive mind.”

“But do you serve the Grainmaster?”

“We serve all of the planet.  Through the Grainmaster we serve, yes.”

“We have come to ask you about the treatment of the other plant people.  We have come to understand that the common plant people are bullied by the Throckpods and forced to give everything they have to the Grainmaster.  We wish to discuss other, more-equitable forms of governing with the Grainmaster.”

“Listen, King Monkey, we of the Throckpod legions come specifically to destroy you.  We intend to eliminate all such inferior creatures from the ecospheres of all nearby planets.”

The vicious Throckpod detached three thorns from it’s arm-branches glistening with rather obvious poisons.

Shu, Mai Ling, and Taffy King each intercepted one of the thorns as it was thrown and buried the projectiles deeply into the Throckpod’s stem, near the walking-roots, thus shriveling up the flower-warrior’s only means of getting away.

“Now you have declared war on all of the plants of the sacred master.  We all see through my eyes.  All Throckpods now know of your treachery.  I do all I can now to slay all your little monkey-kind.  You will regret your treachery.  The Throckpods now descend upon you!”

Of course, the Throckpod by himself had very little power to make good on his threats himself.  He flung a flurry of thorns at Ged’s students and Shu, Mai Ling, and Taffy threw them all right back.

Soon the Throckpod was mostly shredded, limp and swiftly turning brown on the ground.

Luigi the Onion Guy was apparently beside himself with upset and anger.  “YoU iS no knOwing hoW bad YoU haS made thiNgs now!”

“We are doing our best,” Ged answered impatiently.  “You don’t expect me to just stand by and let these Throckpod monsters slay my students, do you?”

“He is only warning you that the Throckpods will now seek vengeance on us all and we may all be doomed,” explained the more reasonable Carrot-man.

At that moment Gyro and Billy came crashing down from the sky on a dragonfly-looking grav bike,  the two boys tumbling and losing their cowboy hats into the center of the camp.

“Are you two all right?” gasped Sara the healer.

“Nothing that you can’t fix,” said Billy, rubbing his raw, scraped knee.

“We do have a problem, though.  Thousands of Throckpods are headed this way to kill us.”  Gyro’s little blue face was completely serious for once.

“Yes, we will definitely have to deal with that problem now… somehow,” said Ged Aero-sensei.

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May 2, 2021 · 7:32 pm

The Philosopher King’s Quest

Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor, one of the good ones, not like Caligula, Nero, or even Commodus, his son who was emperor after him.

But what made him good? Obviously the fact that he was beloved by the Roman people, even the senators and the very people who would’ve benefitted personally by his failure and demise.

He was a good administrator that benefitted the people with public works. He was a good military leader who maintained the Pax Romana until his death in 180 A.D.

Of course, his son, Commodus, blew that all up by being such an incompetent dictator that his own Praetorian Guard assassinated him (as portrayed in the movie Gladiator, though that movie also made him out to be his father’s murderer, of which there is no real evidence.)

But my friend Emperor Marcus was so much more than just a good ruler. He was a good man. And this is due almost entirely to the fact that he was a well-known Stoic Philosopher.

He embraced the philosophy of Greek philosopher and Roman slave Epictetus. Stoicism is the belief that you, as an individual do not control anything in the outside world to the degree you can control yourself. It is not the things, people, and events around you that matter, since you can’t control those. It is your own set of principles that you have to put in place and adhere to that affect the outcomes in life. In fact, you should view the setbacks and roadblocks to your accomplishments not as a negative thing, but as a learning opportunity. Learn all you can while you may, and at every opportunity. The Stoic welcomes hardship, because the overcoming of hardships shapes the man or woman you will become.

I found this philosophy to be the only way forward some days during the course of my teaching career. I was always more successful in meeting challenges head-on as they arose in front of me. Delaying, making excuses, or running away are all easier to do than that. But those other wimpy tactics never yield the success you can have by defeating your opposition and hardships face-to-face. Of course, you have to remember too that overcoming opposition does not have a selfish quality if you are a Stoic. In fact, you must respect all men, even your enemies. Marcus Aurelius, in response to victory in battle won by having thirsty troops offer a Christian prayer and then have their problem solved by a fortuitous rain storm, told the Senate they must no longer persecute Christians. They started to be considered good Roman citizens no matter what their religion.

Marcus Aurelius made it clear in his writings, the Meditations written in Greek, that, “In order to win the day, you must first win the morning.” To him this meant you had to be an early riser, tackling each problem of the day as it came up in the order they happened, morning to night.

So, the Philosopher King’s Quest, by this Stoic philosophy, is managed by first putting yourself right. You must examine your beliefs, test your hypotheses, and prove yourself to yourself before trying to tackle the world.

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