The Bird Is The Word
We’ve inherited a new critter. A couple days ago, we noticed a fluffy white egret comfortably ensconced on top of a bush along our driveway. Next day, still there. Siobhan surmised the egret probably couldn’t fly and was maintaining a secure position. The following day, the bird was in the pasture with the mares and foals. Siobhan called the Bird Ladies of Reddick, which, I suppose, is some sort of ladies auxiliary for the Birdmen of Alcatraz, and they hatched a plan to capture the egret and carry it to the Small Animal Hospital at UF for repairs. I had a simpler plan.
“Let’s just leave it alone.”
“It can’t fly,” said Siobhan. “Predators will get it.”
“Predators? What predators?”
“Raccoons, maybe.” And with that she set out on a scouting mission to see how difficult it would be to catch the bird, making gradually decreasing circles around it. The egret merely hopped the fence into the forested field next door.
“Hey, Siobhan—I know you’re not too fast but I think you can beat a raccoon.”
“Maybe we should leave her alone,” Siobhan said.
“Is it a ‘she’?”
“It’s hard to tell the sex this far away. What are we going to name it?”
“Well, if we don’t know the sex, how about ‘Franc*s’? That works for either sex. Or, better yet, ‘Francis/Frances’.”
“I like that one,” Siobhan agreed.
“Francis/Frances it is then.”
We’re happy to report that Francis/Francis is getting along famously. He/She has joined the horse herd for security and follows one or another of them everywhere. When they go into the barn to eat, he/she hangs out nearby and waits for them to emerge from their stalls. When they traipse on off into the distance, Francis/Frances traipses also. If they are in their stalls and a perceived threat emerges, Francis/Frances scurries to the pond, where he/she is invulnerable. The pond is also a source of frogs and insects, so food is not a problem. It looks like Francis/Frances is here for the duration. We’ll keep you posted. We know you wait with bated breath.
You probably didn’t know this, but Frank Sinatra was a small-time egret-keeper. No kidding. He even devoted a lyric to his pets in his famous song, My Way. To wit:
“Egrets, I’ve had a few….but then again, too few to mention….”
What? Oh. Are you sure? Okay then. Never mind.
The Boys Are Back In Town
Like the sparrows making their annual return to Capistrano and the buzzards to Hinckley, Ohio, (wouldn’t it be fun if the birds threw them a curve just once and switched towns?), the CR 326 bums have returned to their I-75 interchange, none the worse for wear. We got a lot of responses to our bum story, by the way. Letters even, like this one from our pal, Marty Jourard in Kirkland, Washington:
There is a professional bum near where I live, working the stoplight nearest the freeway exit. He has a “limp” he exhibits by walking forward when the cars are stopped. He has a small Chihuahua he holds and pats for maximum effect. There is a Starbuck’s on the corner opposite him. One day, I saw him sipping a latte while talking on his cell phone. He buses in from Seattle. It’s absolutely hilarious. I grade them now: limp—10 points; sign mentioning God Bless—5 points; dog with bandana—10 points. I’m in the wrong biz.
I’ve also seen the ones working the Gas Can Scam. They hang around gas stations. “I’ve run out of gas….” I once saw a bum waiting for the bus with his red plastic gas can. My favorite “homeless” sign reads “Need Help.”
Who doesn’t?
And this from Irana, in Boca:
My favorite bum sign is: “Oh, who am I kidding? I need a beer.”
Training Report
Juno works five-eighths from the gate at Calder Saturday. If all goes well, we start looking for a race. Wilson, back home after exhibiting signs of ouchy—but not bucked—shins, is jogging and galloping lightly while we work on them. Elf should be back to a two-minute-lick by next Saturday.
Dropkick Me, Jesus (Bobby Bare)
Dropkick me, Jesus, through the goalposts of life,
End over end, neither left nor to right,
Straight through the heart of them righteous uprights.
Dropkick me, Jesus, through the goalposts of life.
Make me, oh make me, Lord, more than I am,
Make me a piece in your master game plan
Free from the earthly tempestion below,
I’ve got the will, Lord, if you’ve got the toe.
Take all the brothers who’ve gone on before
And all of the sisters who’ve knocked on your door,
All the departed dear loved ones of mine,
Stick ‘em up front in the offensive line.
Dropkick me, Jesus, through the goalposts of life,
End over end, neither left nor to right,
Straight through the heart of them righteous uprights.
Dropkick me, Jesus, through the goalposts of life….
Yeah, dropkick me Jesus, through the goalposts of life!
Scalpers—Part II
In our last exciting episode, we introduced you to the ins and outs of the ticket-scalping business, some of the benefits, some of the pitfalls, but we didn’t have space to discuss the biggest pitfall of all, the potential for getting stuck with counterfeit tickets.
Imagine bursting into song as you secure 50-yard-line seats, only to fall to your knees in despair moments later when your ticket is scanned and found unworthy. This doesn’t happen very often, but when it does it is usually at a very big event where tickets are sold for very big prices. It’s generally not worth the trouble for scalpers to resort to counterfeit tickets—expensive to print what with all the raised lettering and holograms on modern-day tickets—unless the game in question is a big-time matchup and a guaranteed sellout. The March Madness basketball games, for instance, the first rounds of which are usually held in arenas seating less than 20,000. Or football conference championship games, like the SEC goliath held in Atlanta every year.
In Atlanta, unlike most places, control of extra tickets is maintained by an expansive gang of African-Americans, who spread out and try to buy every spare ticket they can find, thus cornering the market on good tickets and forcing potential buyers to deal with them or nobody. This same gang also sells counterfeits and the phonies are very high-quality and difficult to detect. At the last Final Four in Atlanta, so many people were sucked in by counterfeit tickets I was reluctant to buy anything. I finally gave a guy $50 for the bracelet the Georgia Dome provides smokers when they go outside, but once off the wrist these things are difficult to patch back together. Next day, I bought a $600 ticket from a departing UCLA fan downtown, hours before the final game.
When buying tickets from scalpers, it helps to familiarize yourself with what the good tickets look like and also the layout of the stadium. I almost bought a beautiful phony one time at the Florida-FSU game before noticing that it had Section 8 on the East Side of the stadium when I knew it was on the West.
There are some stadiums like the Jaguars’ home field in Jacksonville, which also houses the annual Florida-Georgia game, where undercover cops diligently search out scam artists. There is no such effort made at the Georgia Dome, despite the scandalous level of duplicity, either due to a Caveat Emptor mentality on the part of the police or maybe a payoff mentality on the part of the police.
Again, not to scare everybody off scalpers. As we said, counterfeits are rare and the worst insult scalpers generally offer is a raft of lies as to where the tickets they are offering will get you seated—and that’s your responsibility to discover, which is easily done.
A final note. Because almost everybody attending these events goes with a friend, most buyers are looking for at least two tickets together and that’s what most scalpers offer. If you decide to go to a game yourself, as I often do, you can usually find a cheaper ticket because these things are harder to get rid of. The negative side of the picture is that sometimes desirable single seats are not available at all, in which case you might search out another single ticket customer, buy two tickets and sit together. That’s how I ran into my old pal, Torrey Johnson. We were both looking for single tickets at a Florida basketball game and couldn’t find anything acceptable. I found a guy with two beauties and enlisted Torrey as a partner. We started meeting out front after that and going to basketball—and, eventually–football games together.
Torrey’s favorite event was the Florida-Georgia football game in Jax. Despite the cost, he liked to buy the Club Seats, which allowed ticketholders to languish in the posh stadium lounge before the game and watch any of several games televised from around the nation. We got Club Seats for several years in a row and were rather spoiled by our success. One year, alas, we were unable to secure Clubs and had to resort to sitting in the proletariat section. We didn’t really care about that….the seats were still pretty good….but we hated to give up our pre-game lounging.
“Come on, Torrey, follow me,” I told him.
“What are you going to do?”
“We’re going to go through the Club Seat gate—just turn your ticket upside down and wait until there’s a real crush of people entering.”
“I don’t know, Bill….” feared Torrey, who has never gotten within arms length of a misdemeanor in his life.
“What are they going to do, Torrey—shoot us?”
I went through first. No problem. Torrey looked at the ticket taker and piped up, “I’m with him,” and scurried inside. He started giggling on the way up the escalator, his one smidgen of miscreant behavior in life. He was still giggling on the way home. Torrey probably still has his ticket stub mounted prominently on his den wall at home in tribute to the day he was a Very Bad Boy.
Wonder Woman Vs. The Evil Aussie
The other day, Siobhan went over to UF with her crew from the compounding lab to speak to a group of university veterinarians about her new drug, Oroquin-10. There to meet her and dispute her findings was her old adversary, Dr. Rob MacKay, who fancies himself and not Siobhan as the world’s leading EPM expert.
The poor little compounding people were shocked at such confrontation. They usually go somewhere, roll out their free lunch and talk to people about whatever drug they are trying to promote. The audience nods and falls asleep and twenty minutes later everybody goes home. Not this time. As MacKay (who has been known to raise his voice an octave or two at times) made his arguments, one of the excitable compounding crew avidly texted a running report back to her boss.
“They’re attacking her” she reported.
Her boss, who has known Siobhan for almost 30 years, texted back “I’m not worried.”
MacKay, possibly feeling he had to make a good impression on his students, aired his opinions. Siobhan, armed with a stack of paperwork demurred. “I disagree,” she said, “and I have the data to back up MY opinions.” The battle raged on for an hour and a half and nobody was leaving. The compounding crew said it was the most exciting thing they had ever seen in their obviously sheltered lives. Round Two will take place at the September 6 webinar, which MacKay has vowed to attend in person. We’re thinking of scalping some tickets.
That’s all, folks….
