{"id":1271,"date":"2016-10-14T06:01:52","date_gmt":"2016-10-14T13:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/?p=1271"},"modified":"2016-10-13T20:54:22","modified_gmt":"2016-10-14T03:54:22","slug":"you-were-right-and-i-was-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/2016\/10\/14\/you-were-right-and-i-was-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"You Were Right and I Was Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

While people back home in the Pacific Northwest are battening down the hatches for a storm blowing in off the Pacific, we\u2019re in Tucson wearing sun screen, hats, and bug spray doing some wintertime planting. Which is to say, the menfolk are doing the planting, and I\u2019m overseeing same from the shade of the back patio. In my experience having a third person out doing the plant placement is a recipe for marital dis-harmony. Where Bill wants plants to go and where I want them to go aren\u2019t necessarily the same places, but the real point is that they go somewhere, and I trust we\u2019ll both be happy with the final result.<\/span><\/p>\n

When we bought this place in 2001, the back backyard was a jungle of overgrown cholla and dead prickly pear. Last year a landscape crew spent six weeks clearing out the mess and creating rock-lined graveled walking paths. \u00a0It\u2019s beautiful. I have a standard 1500 step lap back there that gets the stepping job done in short order.<\/span><\/p>\n

But once the weeds and junk plants went away, our cactus garden was short on \u2026 well \u2026 cactus. \u00a0So today, we are in the process of rectifying that. In a manner not dissimilar to carrying coals to Newcastle, we are bringing cactus to our cactus garden. \u00a0Cactus from \u2026 well \u00a0\u2026 Home Depot. \u00a0A previous owner, left a jumble of clay pots out on the back forty. \u00a0Those are now being deployed to the back garden with baby cactus. \u00a0By the time I\u2019m doing the laps on Friday, things will be different back there. \u00a0I can hardly wait.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our neighborhood here in Tucson has a newsletter. \u00a0Last spring before we came down here, Bill read the newsletter and told me, \u201cNo walking out on the street with the doggies. Too many coyotes. \u00a0Too many javelina.\u201d \u00a0My mental response was as follows: \u00a0Sure there are\u2014right in the middle of Tucson? \u00a0No way!<\/span><\/p>\n

But still, in the name of marital harmony and muttering under my breath, I\u2019ve complied, not walking out on the street and leaving the puppies in the interior yard when I go walking in the back. \u00a0And then, a couple of days ago, while walking out there, I noticed something new\u2014some piles of animal poop that hadn\u2019t been there before. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If you are a dog owner, the relative size of poop becomes important to you. \u00a0For instance, I can tell you with the voice of experience that trying to flush frozen Irish Wolfhound poop is a sure fire way of needing an emergency visit from the local roto-rooter guy. \u00a0Cleaning up small poop is one of the real advantages of having small dogs. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So I noticed the poop in the yard. \u00a0Let\u2019s say it weighed in on the scale of a 80 pound golden retriever. There was some there earlier this week in another spot, and a new set in the original spot this morning. Yes, I know. When I\u2019m out walking, I\u2019m supposed to be thinking creative thoughts. So far that isn\u2019t really working for me. <\/span><\/p>\n

But back to the poop report. \u00a0This is larger by far than anything that might have been left behind by the feral tabby cat who was a regular nighttime visitor last year and who divested our yard of the covey of quail who had hung around for more than a decade.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then yesterday in broad daylight, when we were on our way to take some visitors back to the airport, we passed by a threesome of coyotes nonchalantly strolling through our neighborhood. \u00a0They were not the least bit concerned that we were driving past them with the windows open and taking photos with our phones. In fact, one of them was so completely unimpressed by our presence that he stopped to \u2026 well \u2026 take a dump. \u00a0Right there. \u00a0In public.<\/span><\/p>\n

On our way back from the airport, I made Bill stop so the resident animal poop expert could take a look at what was there. \u00a0I can tell you that fresh coyote poop is much smaller than the golden retriever-sized poop in our backyard.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what\u2019s hanging out in our backyard after the sun goes down, but whatever it is, I don\u2019t want to tangle with it. \u00a0I won\u2019t be prowling around out there in the dark, and neither will the puppies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yesterday evening, after seeing the coyotes out on the street, we came home and something entirely untoward happened. \u00a0I told Bill he was absolutely right when he said I shouldn\u2019t take the dogs walking out on the street. \u00a0Yes, I came right out and said those very difficult words: You were right and I was wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill opened his computer and marked it on his calendar as a red-letter day.<\/span><\/p>\n

Believe me, that\u2019s something that hardly ever happens!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While people back home in the Pacific Northwest are battening down the hatches for a storm blowing in off the Pacific, we\u2019re in Tucson wearing sun screen, hats, and bug spray doing some wintertime planting. Which is to say, the menfolk are doing the planting, and I\u2019m overseeing same from the shade of the back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[76,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pets","category-tucson"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-kv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1272,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271\/revisions\/1272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}