The saga of Stumpy
Apr. 2nd, 2003 09:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ebonlockHave I told the story about Stumpy the three footed lizard? I don't believe so, but if I have, forgive the repeat. Stumpy lives on our patio behind the potted plants and is about 5 inches in length from snout to tip of tail. Or it was anyway. You see Kage, mighty huntress that she is, decided that Stumpy was her prey. Stumpy seemed blissfully ignorant of this fact, even after ending up in her mouth on at least one previous occasion.
It got away pretty cleanly the first time, but this last time luck was not with Stumpy.
I was puttering around the kitchen when I noticed Kage crouching in the backroom. Not sure if she was about to yak up a hairball I went out to investigate and noticed something squirming in her mouth. Being a cat owning veteran I figured out what was going on and grabbed her before she could take off with her catch and plunked her outside. Alas, Stumpy's tail remained in the living room. I pried open her jaws and out plopped the poor confused lizard sans tail and one foot. I winced, tossed the cat back in the house and coaxed the little lizard into movement. It didn't seem too inconvenienced by the loss of two extremities, and darted along the wall to it's hiding place in a hole in the corner. I put a nice heavy potted plant near it to give the poor bastard some cover and with any luck, an easy to catch meal of ants.
Kage spent the evening sulking and is still not on the best of terms with me I'm afraid, but I don't believe a "No prey items in the house" rule is too harsh.
On the snail front, the garden snails seem to have rallied and are brazenly oozing their way around my yard. I'm afraid to use any poisons for fear of harming the Killer Snails, so I'll probably go back to copper strips again. *grumble*
I'm of two minds about the article "Let's all take a deep breath, stop arguing about the war", I would agree with:
"More polite conversation. Less political confrontation.
More amity. Less animosity."
And yeah it's been my experience that:
"Supporters of the war dismiss opponents as francophiles, appeasers and international weenies. Opponents of the war denounce supporters as knuckle-dragging, Bush-loving rednecks."
But I don't personally believe that it has to be this way. Sure it's easier to just shout the rhetoric of whichever side you happen to be on at the top of your lungs than to carry on a civilized conversation...but does that mean we shouldn't even try? Is the only real option here to just give up on rational discourse and play charades instead?
I like to think that if you treat those around you with respect and good manners you'll get that in return. You don't always have to agree with them, and indeed you may strongly oppose their position and opinions, but that doesn't mean that there are only two options possible, refusal to talk to them at all on any "touchy subjects" or an ugly confrontation. The third position is to act with maturity and respect, and it's the course I prefer to take.
These days I try to take a few minutes in the morning to visit the following sites:
Details of British Casualties
The IRAQ BODY COUNT Database
Forces: U.S. & Coalition/Casualties
Forces: POW/MIA
It gives me a little perspective on the whole discussion.
It got away pretty cleanly the first time, but this last time luck was not with Stumpy.
I was puttering around the kitchen when I noticed Kage crouching in the backroom. Not sure if she was about to yak up a hairball I went out to investigate and noticed something squirming in her mouth. Being a cat owning veteran I figured out what was going on and grabbed her before she could take off with her catch and plunked her outside. Alas, Stumpy's tail remained in the living room. I pried open her jaws and out plopped the poor confused lizard sans tail and one foot. I winced, tossed the cat back in the house and coaxed the little lizard into movement. It didn't seem too inconvenienced by the loss of two extremities, and darted along the wall to it's hiding place in a hole in the corner. I put a nice heavy potted plant near it to give the poor bastard some cover and with any luck, an easy to catch meal of ants.
Kage spent the evening sulking and is still not on the best of terms with me I'm afraid, but I don't believe a "No prey items in the house" rule is too harsh.
On the snail front, the garden snails seem to have rallied and are brazenly oozing their way around my yard. I'm afraid to use any poisons for fear of harming the Killer Snails, so I'll probably go back to copper strips again. *grumble*
I'm of two minds about the article "Let's all take a deep breath, stop arguing about the war", I would agree with:
"More polite conversation. Less political confrontation.
More amity. Less animosity."
And yeah it's been my experience that:
"Supporters of the war dismiss opponents as francophiles, appeasers and international weenies. Opponents of the war denounce supporters as knuckle-dragging, Bush-loving rednecks."
But I don't personally believe that it has to be this way. Sure it's easier to just shout the rhetoric of whichever side you happen to be on at the top of your lungs than to carry on a civilized conversation...but does that mean we shouldn't even try? Is the only real option here to just give up on rational discourse and play charades instead?
I like to think that if you treat those around you with respect and good manners you'll get that in return. You don't always have to agree with them, and indeed you may strongly oppose their position and opinions, but that doesn't mean that there are only two options possible, refusal to talk to them at all on any "touchy subjects" or an ugly confrontation. The third position is to act with maturity and respect, and it's the course I prefer to take.
These days I try to take a few minutes in the morning to visit the following sites:
Details of British Casualties
The IRAQ BODY COUNT Database
Forces: U.S. & Coalition/Casualties
Forces: POW/MIA
It gives me a little perspective on the whole discussion.
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no subject
Date: 2003-04-02 11:58 am (UTC)The IBC builds on the work of UNH professor Marc Herold, who got his fifteen minutes of fame by asserting that the U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan produced more civilian casualties than the 9/11 attacks. Herold's methodology, though, is deeply flawed: see a comprehensive debunking here (http://www.snappingturtle.net/jmc/flit/2002_11_01_archive.html#84514683), here (http://www.snappingturtle.net/jmc/flit/2002_11_01_archive.html#84547049), here (http://www.snappingturtle.net/jmc/flit/2002_11_01_archive.html#84590541), here (http://www.snappingturtle.net/jmc/flit/2002_11_01_archive.html#84593575), here (http://www.snappingturtle.net/jmc/flit/2002_11_01_archive.html#84598445), and here (http://www.snappingturtle.net/jmc/flit/2002_11_01_archive.html#84676904).
The IBC project recycles Herold's methodology, and so it has the same problems. For example, IBC counts between 34 and 62 civilian casualties from the Al-Nasser marketplace bombing on the 28th (just to pick one of the incidents that was fairly big news). Only trouble? All of the news agencies listed report unverified casualty figures given by the Iraqis themselves. There's no independent verification of the numbers; there were certainly civilian deaths in that marketplace, but there's just no way of knowing whether the actual number is between 34 and 62, or whether it's higher or lower. Indeed, IBC states that the proximate cause of the casualties was "air raids" (note, also, the scare quotes used around each instance of "precision-guided weapons") -- but that's very much in dispute, as the U.S. has stated that nothing in the area was targeted and that the damage pattern is inconsistent with what would be left by U.S. munitions.
So, as I said: take it with a big grain of salt.
Re:
Date: 2003-04-02 01:07 pm (UTC)Understood and completely agreed, but even if the numbers are, say, halved in actuality it's still a pretty sobering amount. And a pretty sad one too, on both sides.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-02 04:08 pm (UTC)On the other hand, some perspective is also valuable.
In the first 12 days of the war we launched more than 17,000 sorties over Iraq. Using the high end of the IDC estimates, there have been fewer than 800 civilian casualties.
By way of comparison, the Dresden firebombing involved around 2,000 sorties in an 18 hour period, and killed tens of thousands of people, most of them civilian -- estimates are anywhere from 25,000 to 135,000.
Using the low end of the Dresden casualty estimates: we've flown 8 1/2 times more sorties and generated just 3.2% of the number of casualties. War is hell, but I think we're doing a pretty amazing job of comporting ourselves humanely and avoiding civilian deaths, under the circumstances.