Nuts and Bolts

The last few weeks have been an animal fest around my house.  First my two cats now banished to the outdoors have decreased the rabbit population throughout the summer by bringing carcasses of rabbit, birds and moles to my door every morning. 
Our gray squirrel affectionately known as “Texas”
has returned once again ignoring the corn I put on the squirrel feeder choosing rather to eat the bird food from the kids playhouse.  Here he is in action.

I put out cat food on our front porch only to find it is empty every morning.  We seem to be feeding a raccoon.  Our cats themselves about became dinner the other night.  For several weeks in the evening I have heard the most eerie sounds coming from my neighbors flower garden.  One night recently I was out on my back patio in the dead of night, and I heard this scream near my yard.  Fortunately, I had a fence between me and the creature.  I saw it move into the streetlight, and my cats went scrambling.  It was a fox lurking about, and I have sense spotted four.  Here is an audio version of what I encountered.

So the glorious food chain.  Squirrels eat bird food, while birds are eaten by my cats probably because the raccoon eats their food, and a fox desires to have my cats for supper. 
In other animal news, I recently watched the movie Secretariat because I secretly aspire to be a cowboy, and my father was a tremendous horseman.  My dad loved Secretariat.  I always wanted to take my father to Secretariat’s grave.  My dad often told me about the year the greatest horse won the Triple Crown.  It was a year before I was born.  My dad, like most Americans, watched this race on television.  This Belmont Race was and still is the greatest race and record by any horse in the history of competition.  Having known this I watched the movie which was similar to “Seabiscut” so it was a bit of a disappointment.  While there were inspirational moments, the real downer for me was the movie’s coverage of the Belmont particularly the scene when Secretariat pulls away, the movie played this stupid “O Happy Day” with voice over of a poem of Job thus neglecting one of the greatest moments (besides the horse) of the race, the play by play.  You can listen to the announcer in real time here:

While the audio is horrible, you can get the feel of what of the greatest play by play in sport’s history (with the possible exception of Al Michael’s Miracle).  “Here comes Secretariat blazin’…” is epic.  Sadly the movie was virtually ruined because of inauthentic commentary and music.  I can only guess the producers did it because they felt the real audio was not quality.