Tort Report

I think I'm allergic to Spring

Our resident reptiles are up and at 'em.  Isaac & Chomper, as we tell our dog, are the good pets; Desert Tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) and blood brothers.

As the days shortened last October and the air began to chill a little bit, we scooped these guys out of their burrow beneath the backyard  peach tree and slid them under the secretary in our breakfast nook for their winter hibernation period.  A long winter's nap - though, truthfully, not much of a winter here this year.

Isaac, the larger and noisier of the two, was occasionally heard talking in his sleep, with sighs and grunts as we worked on the computer next to the secretary.  Isaac was also the first to rise this Spring, appearing in the middle of the kitchen on Washington's birthday.  He blinked his eyes, asked if I'd put the flag out?  And then enquired if there we had any cherry pie around here for the occasion.  With a "yes" and a "no", I ushered him out the back door for this year's first tortoise dandelion breakfast.

He was enjoying recharging in the warm sun and getting his greens, when following day's forecast called for cooler air and a chance of rain.  So, I brought him back inside.

But with the now awakened tortoise and the sufficiently warm climate controlled indoor environment, he was in no mood for another nap.  So Isaac went off padding around the house while all of us bipedal mammals were at work.  I came home that evening and began to search for him.  I found him in our bedroom.  Isaac had tried to climb out the window, which has a sill 8" off the floor.  This is also the window in front of which Strider's dog bed sits.  Apparently after chasing the dog away, he crawled onto the dog's bed and tried to get out the window, but ended up flipping helplessly on to his back on Strider's bed.  I righted him and then put him outside in the patio dog house (which, unlike the window bed, Strider never uses). 

In the mean time I noticed that there was lots of turtle doo-doo. That is both #1 and #2 on Strider's bed.  Yes, there were several turtle turds and Isaac, after waking up in the relatively warm house apparently had to open the flood gates that had been sphinctered-off for the entire winter.  Must have been kind of like when you stick a fellow camper's hand in a bucket of warm water while they are asleep.  This proverbial trick of getting a sleeping camper to pee in his sleeping bag may or may not work at Camp Wanagopoti, but this trick does appear to work for tortoises coming out of hibernation when exposed to warm air.  Only in this case, Isaac had wet and pooed on Strider's bed - not out in Isaac's own great out-a-doors outhouse. 

Did I hear him right; "I wet your bed! And now you have to sleep in it!"

Strider now has to break in a new bed, one that is way too fluffy for his liking.  And Chomper has now joined Isaac in the back tortoise pasture, diligently doing daily delightful dandelion dining.

Dandelion Daze

Lactose Lust

Last weekend, I was quietly padding around the house when I heard my wife talking to the computer.  I slipped up to the door and I could see her staring intently at the computer screen, and as she scrolled through the website I could hear her say in a throaty whisper, "Oh yeah! I like you."  A few clicks of the mouse later and she was overheard pleading to the screen, "Come on, show me how we do it."  "Yes! That is just what I like!"  "Ooh, that is very interesting."  Of course, I knew exactly what website was engaging her attention, it was her favorite cheese making link.  And this time she had found a link that listed Lucky Layla Dairy, located just a few miles north of our house, up Jupiter Road.

With a toss of her lovely wavy locks, she caught sight of me watching from the doorway.  "Hey fella! Wanna to go on an adventure?"  She displayed a naughty smile, and told me about her discovery of Lucky Layla's, a source of raw milk linked to her cheesy website.  The dairy, with its Jersey cows raised on green pastures, was on the north end of suburban Plano - just a few miles drive.  I said, "Sure, let put my shoes on and you just tell where we are going to go."  She was in high spirits.  Going to go see some cows in their natural habitat and look for their raw milk products.

Luck Layla had a small sales outpost flanked by two industrial refrigerators a couple of hundred feet up the gravel drive.  The rest of the dairy was zoned as a biological quarantined area - No Admittance without Permission.  We walked into the sales office, scanned their milk, cheeses and other dairy products while other customers were grabbing what they came for and marching up to the cash register.  Sue decided to grab the last gallon of raw milk and a piece of their Compesino Cheese.  The milk was $8/gal and the green cheese was $6/lb.  Sue had to sign her name on a sheet of paper acknowledging the hazards and risks of consuming non-pasteurized milk.

I find this world of all things "natural" at bit ironic.  My guess is that the set of people who write letters and protest trace amounts (i.e parts per billion) of lead in cosmetics, emission of small amounts of formaldehyde in manufacturing or the minimal risks in natural gas drilling are basically the same set that eagerly pays 4X going rate for non-pasteurized milk.  I figure e. coli, salmonella and listeria, though at times fatal, are "natural".  For my money, chlorinated drinking water, pasteurized milk and regulated pharmaceuticals are sources of a prosperous American 20th Century.  A public blessing.  But on this occasion, we acknowledged the hazards and risks of this raw milk, signed the waiver and returned home. 

Sue had the look of the naughty child, or the proverbial cat that ate the canary: "You know, I feel so naughty.  Buying raw milk, it like contraband in my family."  Her Mom was a public health pediatrician for the county and her Dad, as a veterinarian, worked for the Dept. of Agriculture inspecting dairy herds across western Washington to keep the public safe from contaminated milk.  Besides having a cow or two on the place for family consumption - of course only after it was properly processed.

The gallon of viscous and creamy "contraband" milk was soon turned into a second batch of Parmesan cheese.  The color of this contraband cheese is richer than the first batch made with the thin blue non-fat milk.  They need to age for 10 months, then it will be a taste test.  But, I have a feeling we will be signing more waivers and using Lucky Layla for future cheese batches.