Year One

Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 33
7/26/09
20:15

Today marks the one-year anniversary of our move to Minnesota.

One friggin’ year.

One year since we packed my truck with everything left by the movers, stuffed the dogs into my tiny back seat, snug against a rusty propane tank, and headed towards the Mississippi. And brother, that vehicle was packed. We were strapped in so tight, I couldn’t fart without strumming a bungee cord. For 12 hours, we had a Dylan show tickling our ears. Only, y’know, stinkier.

One year ago, our main concern was surviving our first Minnesota winter. That was our Big Bad, and we got through it relatively unscathed. Now, a whole year later, here I am thinking about preparations for another Great White Tussle. In April of 2008, if you had told me that I’d actually find myself one day debating the merits of buying a chainsaw and chopping my own firewood vs. just buying precut wood, I’d have kicked you in the neck.

It’s been a quick year.

Other than the time zone and the weather prep, has anything really changed in the last 365? Uh, I own a canoe. And a 4WD vehicle – that I bought out of necessity. A pair of fishing poles. And a parka – that I bought out of necessity. And I’ve spent the last two Sunday evenings perched in my very own deer blind. So yeah, things have shifted. Just a touch.

I really expected to be settled in by now, bored with everything and reaching for flaws. The luster of a move usually shines a short time for me, and even though this was more than bumping over to a new place in Akron, I still expected the same Timeline of Hate for yours truly.

Surprisingly though, the sense of wonder hasn’t faded a whole helluva lot in the year since we left the Land That GM Hateraped. Sure, the outright crazy coolness of those first few weeks has subsided, but Christ, how could they not? From the ill advised drive out here – we’d spent an exhausting day cleaning and packing and were about 8 hours behind schedule, but said ‘fuggit’ and came anyway, bobbing and weaving down I-90 the entire night – to those first two weeks spent in a strange, cavernous house with no furniture, lotsa windows and plenty of way-too-close animal howls, there’s no way we’ll never top that adventure without losing a member of our party to an Amazon tribe.

But one year in, I still wake up and marvel at my surroundings. Every last bit of it baffles me, still doesn’t seem quite real. The herds – herds! – of deer hanging around every morning in the front yard, mingling with the wild turkeys.. The skunk who occasionally corners me on my morning run. The fact that people use my driveway for sightseeing jaunts. The shapes of the bluffs that poke at the sky on my drive to work, those shark teeth and humpbacks and skyboxes.

And tying it all together, there’s the river. On a clear Sunday afternoon, the way the sun bangs off the surface, backlighting hundreds of sailboats, lighting up the limestone hanging 500 feet above Wisconsin, it’s goddamn eye-popping. And while most of me wonders how the hell we ended up here, the good ol’ Ohio portion still hanging on wonders when it’s all gonna end. Because all good things, yeah?

I try not to think like that any more. Minnesota has a way of bringing out the positive in you, the friendly that’s been hibernating all this time. So rather than focus on the neggo, I’ll enjoy the adventure. There’s a ton of stuff we have left to do, places we haven’t been, rivers to chart, trails to hike and lakes to fish.

Heh. Trails to hike and lakes to fish. Naw, nothing’s changed.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go celebrate an anniversary by farting on a bungee cord.

I know why the caged Bantha sings

Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 32
7/28/09
20:10


Welcome back, my friends to the show that never ends. It’s been a while, so I have a long one for you. Hope you packed a lunch. By the way, there's a ton of new pics up on my Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vangoat

Finally got around to visiting the Minneapolis zoo this week, and it was pretty great. About the same size as the Cleveland Zoo, but with easier and/or closer access to the animals. Most of the animal areas are made of some sort of clear super plastic as opposed to the typical fence/giant safety pit/fence/dangerous hungry animal layout. This means that you can literally press your face right up against the bear as he sleeps behind a rock, instead of watching from 90 feet away as the lazy bastard sleeps behind a rock.

The aquarium-style format is awesome. You can watch the otters and sea lions (and yeah, even the bears, after they popped some Red Bull or were cow-prodded into action. Dance, puppet, dance!) play underwater UFC right in front of your face. It adds a whole new depth to the zoo experience.

Unfortunately, the prairie dog area was set up the same way, except with shorter walls. You could literally lean over and snatch a dog if you wanted. You could also easily throw shit into the cage or hand feed the little guys if you wanted, despite the goddamn signs that said PLEASE DON’T FEED THE PRAIRIE DOGS. Was there an entire redneck family feeding the prairie dogs? Of course there was. Led by the father, naturally. I’m paraphrasing here, but only a little:



Redneck Daddy (to failure-spawn): Hey Cletus, check this out! (Feeds helpless little P-dog handful of weeds pulled from a ditch.)
Cletus (in flipflops, natch): Uhuhuhuhuhuhuh. Hamster hungry!
Redneck Daddy (arm draped over the Do Not Feed sign, because, hey, it’s too F’n hot to stand up on his own gumption): Cletus, gowon over there and grab some moradem weeds!
Redneck Mommy (tubetop, way too much of her way too freckily failure-feeders showing, prison-tat on neck): Ain’t they the cutest? We should get one them ginny pigs! (feeds prairie dog a McDonalds Styrofoam coffee cup from the 80s. Earth just gives up and swallows all of us, shits us into space and starts over with nice friendly bacteria).

Anyway. Redneck family aside, an enjoyable time at the zoo. For five bucks you could slap a few crackers on a giraffe’s tongue, and maybe that giraffe would slap the tongue on your face:


Oh yeah, and I have no idea how they got it back here all the way from Tatooine, but they had a Bantha:
Apparently, it’s actually an Earthling called a Takin, but I swear to god I half expected to see some Sand People giving Obi-Wan the finger from the Bantha’s back.

Usually when I visit the zoo, I think about how much it’s gotta suck to be an animal trapped in one of the displays. How sad is a timberwolf with only a third-acre of timber to lope around in? Has to be terrible, right?

But what if it isn’t? I’ve spent the last 11 months watching wild animals cavort just outside my kitchen window. In these 11 months, I’ve learned to things:
-Blue Jays are dicks
-Being a wild animal is overrated.

Seriously. Deer, for instance. My yard is a safehaven for about 15 whitetails. They come here, they know that a)they’ll be fed a steady diet of corn, salt and other assorted deer goodies and b)the biggest danger they’ll face is a dipshit weimaraner with no chance of catching them. They KNOW this. They’re so comfortable with me that I can walk to within 15 feet of the Old Country Starch Buffet before they even raise their heads.

Despite all this security and a pretty gaping lack of predators (until hunting season, anyway) this far south, these guys are CONSTANTLY on edge. If I so much as fart in my own kitchen, even a slow-burn, one-cheek squeak, any deer in the yard bolt like I just launched the space shuttle out my ass. They’re never comfortable. I’m telling you, it’s no way to live.

An example of the typical deer dinnertime:

Two bucks, both at least 10 points, are munching whole corn with two younger bucks and the family matriarch. Having a good time. Two miles away, a farmer drops a chicken egg into a haystack.

Five heads, 26 points, five tails shoot straight up. Ten eyes strain in the general direction of the egg drop. Hold this pose for 17 seconds.

The two big bucks decide they aren’t taking any chances (which might explain why they got to be so big) and bolt like Witzy during a dinosaur attack. The other three go back to their fine corn dinner. Until, half a minute later, a eagle shits in the river four miles away. Repeat scene ad nauseum.

So maybe being cooped up in a cage where you’re fed three squares a day (or more if there’s an illiterate redneck family mouth breathing near your hut) ain’t all bad. There are those myths of poor urban folks who spend their lives trying to get INTO prison because they have no place to go and nothing to eat on the outside. I can see it.

Of course everything yearns to be free. You see this wolf lying there and you know he’s dreaming about running down a caribou on some frosty plain, not being chucked a plate of Kal Kan three times a day by a highschooler in khaki shorts.

I certainly understand his pain. I moved out of Ohio and into the almost-bush for similar reasons (‘Course, Captain Fangs here never tried to find a job in Ohio. Who has it tougher in the wild NOW, bitch?). On the other hand, if I had to worry about being mauled by a grizzly bear or stalked by a lion every time I speared a pancake at the Whistle Stop, maybe those four walls of climate-controlled wilderness wouldn’t seem so bad.

Then again, maybe not. Only the Bantha knows for sure.

It was a good day

Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 31
7/04/09
23:32


Red Wing puts on quite a nice Fourth of July show. The whole town turns out for a day of patriotic music at the brand new outdoor auditorium nestled in the middle of a gently sloping, shady park. After the music, the city displays a movie on an outdoor screen. Independence Day, no less, shown completely without irony. A good chunk of the town turns out for that, and after Jeff Golblum uploads his computer virus, the everyone strolls over to the river's edge to watch the fireworks shoot out over the water. It's all very Stars Hollow.

My office building is probably the nicest place in town. It looks like a tiny version of Wolfram and Hart, what with the perty oak trim and open staircase and no-expense-spared decor. And we have a pretty goddamn nice rooftop, which meant Airika and I had the best seat in town for fireworks today. Four stories up, overlooking the river. Totally the thing to do.

Hell with all that noise.

Our day:

Slept in. Drank some damn fine coffee with my Lucky Charms and the weekend edition of USA Today. Screw you. I like my news bite-sized and color-coded.

Cleaned the house. Because when I have nothing to do and no plans to make, this is what I do. Weirdly relaxing.

Spent two hours at a wedding reception. Only hiccup of the day. Although I did hoarf down three shredded chicken samiches, some tasty homeade pretzels and a pile of soft cookies. The food made it nearly worth getting dressed in my finest denim leg coverings.

After a quick exit, we hit Caribou Coffee and came home, where we sat on the porch. All night. Surrounded by tiki torches and Citronella candles, we watched the deer and the birds. The dogs failed (once again) to catch everything they chased. Airika read about chickens. I read the second volume of the Starman Omnibus. Random tunes wafted from the iPod dock out to the porch, mingling with the distant cracks and booms of rednecks gambling with fingers.

After dark, we strolled out to the prairie and watched home-job fireworks displays dot the sky from all directions. More impressive was the night, and how it was so bright you could read by moonlight alone.

It hasn't been very often when I experienced an Independence Day and really felt anything close to independence. Never, actually. The holiday's always been kind of a joke. Forced to run around, see people, have a picnic. A day off always turned into an agenda. But today. Today was different. Monday morning is careening back around again and I know that it will bring everything that shackles me in annoyance and worry. But today? Yeah, I feel free. And I don't need a goddamn fireworks display for that.

Dirty little birdy feet

Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No.30
6/14/09
19:25

A couple months ago, a fat little brown bird started buzzing me every time I went into our garage. Airika says it's a phoebe, and I just have to take her word for it. I just thought the bird was kinda mean. Turns out, she'd built a nest in the rafters. It's a beautiful nest, very solidly constructed out of moss, grass sticks and even some string that she likely liberated from a Tilly turd. And unlike the retarded robins, who build their nests where any one-legged pygmy sloth can get to 'em, she built it in a place inaccessible to anyone without feathers, and actually pretty hard to approach even with feathers. To get to it, you have to navigate up, down and around my broken garage door, which must be like the Death Star trench run for birds. This is a shrewd move on the phoebe's part, because we have a murderous sharp-shinned hawk who's been lunching at out various feeders. And the hawk ain't getting into the garage.


The phoebe eventually dumped a few eggs, and two weeks ago I noticed a breathing gray mass of feathers. It was hard to tell how many chicks were in there, because they were piled on top of one another so tightly, I half expected to find a dead one at the bottom.


Not so. Last week five of them were scrambling along the rafters. Not yet flying, but too fat to fit in the nest. By Friday, they had taken flight, ping-ponging around the garage. They don't seem incredibly afraid of people, so we can get pretty close when the mother isn't around. By Sunday morning, they'd figured out how to get outside, and I was actually a little sad to not see their freaky bug-eyed faces staring at me from behind a beam or door. They did return that night, but I know it ain't gonna last. This shouldn't depress me, but it kinda does.


And while we're talking birds, meet Stick Bird. I built a chicken wire fence around a rock path I'd laid, and Stick Bird claimed one of the posts. When it came time to take the fence down, Stick Bird's stick remained. He spends all day either on his stick, serenading anyone who'll listen. At least when he's not harassing the bluebirds.


Plenty more photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/vangoat

Rednecks, fat people and power over nature...just another Saturday in Minnesota

Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No.29
6/10/09
19:25

Sometimes, things just work out.

As I seethed, sitting still in a traffic jam on a rural Minnesota backroad, MFing anything on wheels, I never woulda guessed that maybe there was a reason for all this shit. Maybe this inexplicable bout of dumb-assery that Airika and I were experiencing was going to put us in the right place at the right time. Maybe…this was going to save a life?

How’s that for a teaser? Clearly, I’m setting you up for a letdown.

In which we plan to knock out Minnesota landmarks, ho.
I spent most of last Saturday pissed off. Our plan for the day wasn’t the best one ever concocted, but it was certainly doable. The idea was to drive southwestish for an hour or so, check out the Minnesota Cabela’s (Hunt! Camp! Fish! Kill Zebras!), shoot north up I-35 and check out the Mall of America (I mean, people take entire vacations here. It’s worth at least seeing, right?) and then head home for an early night in.

Anytime we decide to take a roadie, we have an eight or nine hour drop-dead round trip time because anything longer means we’ll arrive home to find that one of the K9s has expressed her displeasure by turding up the joint. Our plan this Saturday was solid. Three, maybe three-and-a-half-hours of drive time, maybe. That left four or five hours for us to dork around Redneck Central and The Greatest Freak Show on Earth.

Of course it was cold and raining. A Minnesota June consists of five days a week of beautiful weather – while you’re at work, staring out the window and contemplating triple-pane suicide- and two days of shit. And it changes like clockwork. Awesome all week, then just in time for Friday evening, everything gets all Ohio on us. Which is why we were planning to spend Saturday at the Great Indoors.

In which we are traffic jammin’
Cabela’s is maybe 40 miles away as the crow flies, but this being Minnesota, there ain’t a good way to get there from anywhere. So it’s 60 miles of back roads- a really nice drive when it’s not monsooning- just to get to the highway. ‘Course, once we actually make it to I-35, signifying that our destination is a mere ten minutes away, we find the road to be closed. There’s no warning signs or anything. Nadda. Just a closed onramp, a detour and a horrible friggin’ backup, because I-35 is the one direct route from the Twin Cities to everywhere else in the South Central.

So there we sat. Rain smacking down. The wipers, which weren’t able to keep up even though we sat still, somehow managed to squeak with every pass as if the windshield was dry. Mocking me. Cows ambling past were covering more ground at cow-speed than we were in the goddamn car. I steamed, which irritated Airika, which in turn irritated me. Half an hour of this shit. It was like being back in Akron.

The great outdoors, except with more dead animals
Eventually, we made it to Cabela’s, which is like Gander Mountain on crack cut with Skoal. I can totally see why every Willie Nelson fan for five states makes a bimonthly pilgrimage here. This place would make Woody Allen grow a mullet and carry a spit cup. Just walking in, I wanted to like, buy knives and kill shit. Instead, we bought fishing poles, which I knew was ten kinds of wrong even as I plunked down the duckets. Because now I own a canoe AND a tackle box. Clearly, something is amiss.

Also. If you’ve ever wanted to know what a particular animal looks like dead, check out a Cabela’s. Because if it once breathed, they’ve got one stuffed and mounted. They even had a Snuffleupagus. I think he was killt with a crossbow.

In which Crocs run rampant
Anyway. The power of spending brightened my mood a little, but by the time we got to the Mall, we were way behind my schedule and I wasn’t in the mood for people watching. Suddenly, the roiling sea of curd-chuggers in sweatpants and Crocs that is the Mall of America on a Saturday night wasn’t funny so much as annoying. We covered maybe half of the beast before calling it a night. To truly experience the Mall of America, you need a whole day. You need to take your time. Really slurp up the experience, because that place is chock FULL of giant ugly blonde girls and people too fat to live. There will be more on MoA in a future Disptach.

The ride home was long. I was antsy because I was expecting to find that Tilly the Dog had turned the hosue into her own private urinal crystal. And of course it rained. Airika’s car is like a hovercraft when the roads are even slightly moist, so I spent most of the drive just trying to not wakeboard into a guardrail. By the time we turned onto our road, the sun was down and the deer were out.

In which I play God
And that’s when we saw the baby deer. Like every night at dusk, deer were skedaddling off the road and into the cover of the woods like our car was one of those Terminator tanks.
But there was one doe who stuck around close to the drive as we rolled past, which is totally undeerlike. Bravery is not a trait that deer know well. Turns out, she had her reasons. On the other side of the road, stuck in a fence, was a tiny white-speckled baby. (Not the one pictured, by the way. That's just an example, because like a moron, I once again neglected to take our camera on a road trip)

The other property on our road is enclosed by an ancient fence, one of those home jobs made of galvanized wire mesh and hand-cut posts. Trees and bushes have grown up around and through the fence, but there are gaps in the vegetation that the critters have carved. The fence is maybe 5-feet tall, and the deer generally treat this obstacle like it ain’t even there, barely skimming the rusty barb-wire topper as they glide over.

But deer ain’t too bright, and in their haste to run away from whatever threat they were running from at the time, they forgot that the young ‘un, who stood maybe two-feet tall, wasn’t getting over the fence. However, jumping is pretty much all the deer have, and the baby leapt as high as he could and ended up parking his spotted ass in the middle of the fence, dangling by his tangled back legs.

So I get out of the car. No idea what to do. Reasonably sure that deer aren’t one of those species who abandon their young after any physical human contact, but not entirely sure. Not that it mattered anyway, because from my vantage point, illuminated in the driving rain by our headlights, this little guy wasn’t going anywhere without assistance. Which meant he was coyote-grub unless we got involved. I figured he already had two busted back legs. I just hoped that his crazed flailing would bust his neck and end it, so I didn’t have to do it myself.

So I get closer to further inspect the damage. This is when I notice the mother deer just on the other side of the fence, stomping her foot and hissing. Now I’m worried about getting charged and hoof-bludgeoned. The good news is that the baby’s legs don’t actually appear messed up. The bad news is that when I get too close, the damn baby bleats like a stabbed goat. An air-horn in my ear, accompanied by insane, Exorcist-style flailing. And more stomping and hissing from momma.

I back off and regroup, if only so baby deer doesn’t kill himself. No idea how I’m gonna free the little bastard, because I don't have any tools on me. I could run to the house and get some bolt cutters, but I’m pretty convinced that this guy will be David Carradine dead by the time I get back. Screw it. With Airika more or less smothering the deer with her body so he’ll stay still enough for me to work on his legs, we attempt to untangle him by hand. It’s pouring, deer are hissing and screaming, and I’m working with wet barbed wire in the dark in what is likely a lost cause.

Somehow I manage to make some slack and free his feet without cutting myself or getting Airika hamster-bit or bum rushed. There’s a moment where everything freezes. I’m breathing heavy. My hand throbs from the deep wire indents. Airika’s practically hyperventilating. The tiny deer is still. Even momma has stopped her stomping.

Then the baby bleats once, wriggles free and shoots off into the park. Momma, being a retarded deer, runs off in the opposite direction, but I know she’ll find her kid without a problem because the little bastard is wailing like a fire truck.

I gotta give the deer some credit. They take care of their own. The mother stuck around, even though I could have capped her ass at any moment. Pretty nutsy.

Anyway, we’re soaked and kind of exhausted. Airika’s still on the verge of having a stroke. We slump back into the car and just sit for a second. Then Airika looks up, a Joker-grin on her face. “I got to hold a baby deer!” she squeals.

Broads.

Just another Saturday in Minnesota.

Brain Dump

Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No.28
6/01/09
17:30
More photos at www.flickr.com/photos/vangoat


The only good thing about the long Minnesota winter is that when it's over, it's over. One day you're hunkering around in your goose-down parka and the next some ninny in jorts cuts you off on his rented bicycle. Around here there's none of this sloppy grey area in March and April when winter and spring bicker about the handoff. No, like a Chris Brown backhand, spring just hits suddenly.

It's like everything- people, animals and greenery- is just so ready for the end of winter that it all appears at once. Dogs and bicycles are everywhere that tulips and motorcycles aren't. In our yard, newly-nubbed deer and turkeys rule the daytime while skunks, coyotes and raccoons take over at night.

We've turned the yard into a sort of bird-nirvana. Finches, orioles, bluebirds and woodpeckers fight over feeder facetime with cardinals, grossbeaks and bluejays (the white trash of the bird world!). A gang of turkeys spends most mornings pecking away at whatever corn the deer left the night before.

Airika's named the turkey gang 'The Parliment', which makes this guy 'El Presidente' almost by default.

Also, I caved to the pressure and bought a boat. And by 'boat', I mean a vaguely canoe-shaped fiberglass husk. I never intended to get a boat, mostly because I'm of the strong belief that if I was meant to be surrounded by water, I'da come with gills. But living this close to the Mississippi, staring at it all day every day at work...it does something to you. Makes you want to float away.

So I found a drunken Wisconsonite who, in his Milwaukee's Best-soaked stupor, accidentally cut his price in half and now we have the World's Worst Canoe, which is great because it perfectly matches the World's Worst 4X4. It's not much, but at least we can tool around the buttload of ponds and lakes in the 'hood, taking pictures of beavers and muskrats and pissed-off geese. Also, I have a method of escape when the Mighty 'Miss inevitably floods.

The surest sign of spring is when a robin farts out an egg or two. We have a nest built just beneath our deck, so we've been able to track two birdlings from their gummy origins to the noisy, flappity, constantly needy mouths they are today.

Hey...that's robin-egg blue! Look closely and you can see a dirty little birdy feet.


The tubby mother robin has an issue with her babies being photographed. Or maybe her issue is with Tulip the Dog trying her damndest to dig through the wood and gum some tiny bird beaks.


This cat lives in our garage. Only sometimes he spends a significant portion of his day hanging from a poorly-posted telephone pole thanks to Tulip and Tilly. Yeah, you go ahead and look pissed off, cat. I'm hoping an eagle snatches him.


Just a note for all you recent graduates: This is what happens when you roll in coyote shit.


And finally, your obligatory deer and eagle pictures.

Some snaps

Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 27
5/09/09
17:52

Just some pics from the weekend. Plenty more can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vangoat

Airika's been on a 6-year mission to lure Orioles to the yard. Finally, she sniffs success.



We checked out our eagle only to discover he had a baby. The snap sucks because the baby's head is elusive and I had to take what I could get. He's yellow like a Muppet.