Thoughts for Tuesday

I just read all the comments from 

yesterday's Mouse Post. 

I laughed out loud at some of them... 

Yes, Stella Rose Long... I would GLADLY 

take Kevin's 951 cats, I miss having a kitty... but

Lilly. 

She won't tolerate a cat.  She tolerated Nicky and 

Gwen, and ALMOST tolerated Josie and Jenny. 

When we lost Jenny, she ran Josie off when she 

got outside one day, and never let her come back. 

I found two dead half-grown kittens in the yard at the old place... 

not Josie... but my point is, she won't stand it. 

As she is ten this year, I am not going to bedevil her. 

Keith has found these: 

We tried them last night. 

Yes, I had to kill them, or facing driving out in the country 

daily to dump mice from the humane traps. 

It was finding "mouse pills" in the dressers that did it. 

So... we tried these, and they WORK!  They are a 

snap trap, the mouse dies pretty much instantly, 

and you pull back the lever and drop it out into 

your trash bag.  

We got three last night, and I have two 

baited traps up here right now, and 

Keith got me two more today. 

So... we are trying. 

Someone (Jaz?) mentioned the poison... we are 

scared the dogs will get the mice as they die. Three months 

ago I used the poison in the pantry behind everything, and two mice came out and 

died in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. 

I'm hesitant to use it again. 

I also used expanding foam insulation to seal off one wall 

where we had to strip the drywall two months ago.  

I know some were coming through that way.  

We will get nephew Brandon here in a couple of weeks 

to re-drywall that wall for us. 

I can't put that (flammable) foam near the furnace, so I am 

putting chore boys around the pipe run there. 

We are not going to have many new pictures over the next few weeks... tomorrow we are going to have a little snow/rain mix... though we may get to go walking around noon. 

Rain the next 3 days... and then Saturday COLD and rain, and single digits at night. 

I won't walk the dogs in the extreme cold. 

I say this is a Cooper's Hawk, seen on a pole on Leavenworth Road.  What say you, 

Friend Jill? 

Here he is in flight, gorgeous! 

You know my favorite pond, and little herd of Angus cattle... 

I noticed today that 2015's calves are gone. 

However, I drove past all the cows, noted the pond was skimmed over with ice... and then saw Big Daddy in the far corner of the pasture by the road. 

You don't wanna mess with these guys. 

He almost seems to be saying that! 

Now I have a comment to make about our wide world, and 

how fantastic the internet is that has brought us together. 

Saturday night, I was sitting in front of the tv, but 

actually just reading.  

My phone pinged with a message on Facebook Messenger. 

It was my friend Nell, from New Zealand! 

8 years or so ago, Nell and I became friends through 

our love of theater, she is an actress, and I house-managed 

a theater in downtown KCMO.  We have stayed in touch all 

through the years, though on opposite sides of the world.  We 

don't "talk" regularly, but we do stay in touch. 

She knew I used to scrapbook (and am starting again), and 

had questions, so she shot me a message.  I was able to answer

her questions and send her examples. 

My point is.... this would never have happened without the internet, which can 

bring so much happiness into our lives if we use it wisely. 

Another case in point... 

I just read Dean Jensen's "Queen of the Air", about 

Lietzel, the top performer on Ringling Brothers Circus in 

the twenties and thirties.  

She married Alfredo Codona, who himself was a top star, 

and was the first to perform the triple somersault regularly. 

She died in a fall from her apparatus in Copenhagen at a music hall;  back 

then, when the show went into winter quarters, many of the performers went to 

Europe to perform.  One of her swivels crystallized, and came apart. 

She was famous for one armed planges, where she threw her body up and over itself, over and over, 

I think her record was 250 times at one performance. 

Her shoulder would dislocate, and then go back in.  She had NO fear of heights... 

and was an amazing acrobat.  I especially love how she descended on the web, got to the ground, styled... and wripped her wrist wrap off and threw it before she bowed.. Such a performer! 

(Alfredo Codona married again after her death, to Vera Bruce, 

who was in his act with his brother and he... and he 

shot and killed her in an attorney's office when their marriage broke up, and 

committed suicide the same time) 

I am going to TRY to embed a short video featuring her from You Tube... 

because here is my point again... 

I sat down at the computer after reading the biography... just out of curiosity looked to 

see if I could find a video of both the Flying Codonas, and Lietzel. 

Lietzel died in 1931. 

THERE WERE TWO OF LIETZEL.  

Here was this woman who died 88 years ago... and we can watch her, albeit on a scratchy tape... 

but we can SEE her.  

https://youtu.be/kermOBHeGUA

Lietzel tape

If you click on Lietzel tape, it will give you the option to go to the short video clip. Remember, there is another taken during a Ringling performance.  

Incredible. 

There are also several of the Flying Codonas.  The Codonas were in the Wintergarten in Berlin when Lietzel fell in Copenhagen. 

So... a third point, and 

sorry that this is getting to be so long. 

MDH Keith just walked upstairs to tell me he has 

just spent 30 minutes on the phone with a man with whom he served almost 30 years ago in the Army.  They got re-acquainted on the web about 2 weeks ago... and the man, a CEO of a huge major international corporation, just called Keith to yak about old times. 

It turns out the man grew up in KCK, where I did... belonged to a parish where I went to church for a while... so you see, folks, the world is a very small place.  Keith might never again have spoken to his friend , were it not for the web. 

Yes, it can be a wonderful agent for good.