I was an elite road cyclist and expert/elite mountain bike racer from Colorado where I competed throughout for almost twenty-five years while holding down a high-level engineering career. This is not an easy thing to do, particularly over such a lengthy period. After sixteen years in the foothills of the Front Range (about seventy five minutes from Denver) but working closer to home, in Golden, I made my home in Durango for the last fourteen years of my thirty years in Colorado. While living in such a hugely competitive state for mountain athletes, with Durango being considered the “Mountain Biking Capitol of the World” (it may still be), I was compelled to continue racing and did well enough into my mid- forties to win (or place top five) in the few events I entered during my years in that much less populated part of the state. Towards the end, I was racing in just one or two events per year.
Being an accomplished elk hunter, both rifle and archery, and learning how to shoot and be safe around firearms by the age of seven, I have always been a “pro-gun” individual, but I have also lived and spent much of my time in rural, if not remote places, so I never felt the urge to “carry” while out riding. But that all changed in 2011 when I was forced to leave my adopted home state and move to Houston, if I had any chance of remaining gainfully employed in the oil and gas industry. It was a rough deal because I had hoped to stay in Southwest Colorado to retire, spending my “Golden Years” hunting and fly-fishing to my heart’s content. My wife and I made the reluctant move to the Houston area where she had already secured a solid position with BP at their US headquarters in Westlake, thirty minutes west of Houston. I found enough consulting work to get by at a time when I had two major back surgeries to coincide with the horrible (for me) move. I had to give up all my mountain activities but, after I healed from the surgeries, I continued to run and ride and enter a road racing event every now and then here in Texas.
Before I could even wrap my head around such a move, I was riding through some pretty rough areas of Houston, still in significant pain, to get to some halfway decent roads without getting hit, and I was set upon twice by small bands of the “criminal element” in a car moving in quickly from my left and they’d push me to the side of the road (as if they were well practiced in their craft) under some bridge or another. But I never rode with anything of value except for thirty bucks and the bike I was on.
During each of the two instances, I was able to “talk my way out” by first handing them the thirty and then stepping off the bike, showing absolutely no fear while making it known that I wasn’t going to make things easy for them. Standing six-four and weighing (at the time) between 185 and 190, (I’m not your typically diminutive rider and know how to defend myself), I somehow wriggled my way out of some bad circumstances based mostly on the “luck of the draw”. I had a gun pointed my way each time but no one with the gumption to pull the trigger and, like I said, I had nothing of value except for that thirty bucks and expensive bike. Fortunately, none of these “would be muggers” had the need or desire to attempt to take that from me.
From then on, I simply racked my bike and drove the fifteen or twenty minutes to reach those country roads, where I could safely park (though I did have my truck broken into once) and take off riding from there. After a couple of years, we were able to move to a nicer part of Texas, well away from the Houston area (a city I’d spent time in and learned earlier in life to abhor). Fortune had smiled upon as my wife scored a very good job in San Antonio, not far from her hometown where many of her friends and relatives still lived. We found some property and a wonderful new home in a very rural area, roughly fifty-five minutes from her new job. But she continued her “lucky streak, and, when combined with a strong work ethic and commensurate capabilities, she was given the opportunity to work from home for the last six or seven years. I managed to find a few sporadic consulting opportunities working from home and formally retired just over a year later, several years earlier than I had planned. Let’s just say that retirement has been tighter than I’d ever thought it would be, but the upside was that I would now be riding in some of the best cycling country Central Texas and the Hill Country had to offer, and again the need for carrying while I was riding went away as quickly as it had come.
Had this story gone differently and I’d been forced to remain in Houston, I could picture myself happily walking into a gun store, of which there were many, so I could have easily found what I’d have been looking for. After doing a bit of research, with all the options available today, I’d likely go with a Walther PDP 9 mm, as pictured below, with its 4-inch barrel. There are several important reasons I’d choose this make and model above everything else available in the veritable smorgasbord of handguns on the market today:
-It has the muzzle energy (“stopping power”) of a 9 mm; -The four-inch barrel is a better choice for a 9 mm than anything shorter; -The gun is relatively lightweight, but not too much so; -It is Walther built and of Walther quality; -It has good capacity for a compact at 10 rounds +1 -It is uber-thin and very streamlined with no major protuberances to get snagged on polyester jersey material; -It’s a great looking gun and is well proportioned; -Great sights and plentiful accessory options.
Last, (IMO), it is priced very reasonably when comparing build, features, and deadly capability.
Of key importance is that it would serve two important purposes. Its primary function would be as a personal/home defense weapon that had “concealed carry” capabilities for my wife. I would simply borrow it if out riding and would knowingly be passing through the kinds of places I described. Again, had I been forced to remain in the Houston area, this is the compact handgun that I would choose. I have huge hands and would have difficulty fiddling with anything smaller. For me, subcompacts and miniguns are out of the question.
The Piercing Gaze of An African Wild Dog burrard-lucas.com
Among the many species of creatures that are in jeopardy of fading into extinction, there isn’t much information out there on the plight of the African Wild Dog (AWD). These incredible canids once roamed freely throughout much of Sub-saharan Africa but are now predominantly confined to small parts of Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania, Mozambique, and South Africa. But the countries where they are still found comprise a much larger area than the patchwork of comparatively small national parks and game reserves held within them. In looking at a map of protected AWD habitat relative to the geographic area in which they are found today, one can quickly see the small and disconnected patchwork of sanctuaries, wildlife parks and reserves where the species can go about its business without the perpetual threat of encountering humans and the associated dangers that have already brought the species to its knees. It’s like connecting the dots to form a blotchy and incomplete geographic space where they are safe, with a gauntlet of hundreds of miles of unprotected and hazardous African bush between protected areas. That would be fine and is what these incredible canids are built for if it didn’t mean that they’ll eventually have some sort of encounter with man or the many hazards that are associated with mankind. Worse yet, they have no way of knowing where these protected areas lie, so these places where they can seek sanctuary are largely ineffectual. If they did much good, the species wouldn’t continue to decline at such an alarming rate.
I used Copilot to provide a summary showing the historical versus current range of the AWD and provide an explanation of these maps along with relatively up-to-date information as to their continued decline over the past 100 years.
Click on any image or screenshot to view it in its entirety.
Current Versus Historical Range animalia-life.clubafricanwildlifeconservationfund.orginspiredpencil.orgWallpapercave.comWanderlustimages.com
For African Wild Dogs that are fortunate enough to have been born into or ultimately find themselves living within sanctuary boundaries and tending to new generations, there is the still the neverending risk that they’ll eventually venture outside of these habitats of relative safety. When this occurs, more often than not they are killed before landing safely in another. Unfortunately, and not unlike any animal, they can’t read signs or comprehend borders. Worse yet, the areas between these “safe zones” comprise the bulk of where most AWD’s spend their lives. It is, for all African species, the majority of their overall living space. The risks include but are not nearly limited to being hit while crossing roads, dying at the hands of poachers, or being shot for straying too close to a native farmer’s goats or cattle. Put differently, these are far-ranging apex predators and whether they remain within a given national park or any other form of sanctuary set aside for the protection of African wildlife and their habitat, it is simply a roll of the dice. Most AWD’s spend their entire lives traveling and maintaining pack territories well outside the boundaries of the relatively small areas which provide the very habitat that have been set aside for their survival. The larger the protected area, the greater the likelihood that they’ll remain.
It is when you look at Africa as a whole that you see just how small these protected areas are relative to its overall landmass. In our conquest to populate the African continent, we made an attempt at creating a few wonderful spaces and they do fall into some of the best habitats for many African species, but for Africa’s wildlife and their predilection for widespread travel and vast migrations, they are far too small.
When I began following the plight of the African Wild Dog four or five years ago, the estimated population remaining at that time was a staggeringly low 17,000. As a lover of dogs and their wild counterparts, I had no idea that the AWD was already so close to extinction, and I was overwhelmed with a deep sense of both sadness and anger. The reason for the sadness is obvious, but the anger was more complicated. How could we, as the supposed caretakers of the planet, have allowed such a massive decline in a species which looks very much like its close cousin, our beloved domestic dog?! If the population data as reflected above provides us with a reasonably accurate estimate, then there are now just 6,000 AWD’s remaining in the wild, or roughly a third of the population which existed just a half-decade ago. It doesn’t take a genius to see that it has become the “Eleventh Hour” and saving them now would require a complete workover to catapult them into the forefront of public consciousness in the same way that mankind came together to save itself when faced with the COVID pandemic. This is the sense of urgency that I spent a year on Quora trying my damndest to advocate for threatened and bighly endangered species only to find that the overwhelming majority of people who are supposedly committed to this very thing are still lost in talking about wildlife conservation without so much as lifting a finger to get involved in a way that their time and purported compassion results in “moving the ball down the field”. While they’re discussing the issue of the demise of keystone species all over the world, the very creatures they’re hoping to save are, each day, moving inexorably closer to oblivion. In other words, many “Red Listed” species will reach the point of extinction while these “talking heads” are still talking about it.
As was the case with the American bison, historians today have no concrete number as to the pre-white settlement population of buffalo roaming all over what would become the United States, but best guess estimates range from between 40 and 60 million animals. For the AWD, the number a century ago is estimated to have been in the “hundreds of thousands” roaming all over Africa. That there are estimated to be just 6,000 remaining today is beyond heartbreaking. It means that we, as the most powerful species on earth, haven’t learned a damned thing. Please let that resonate for a moment before continuing to read any further.
Worldwildlifefund.org
The primary reason as to why so many species of both flora and fauna are in serious trouble the world over is related to loss of habitat due to human encroachment. In Africa, humans and their activities such as burning, logging, farming, and mining have quickly spread throughout this magnificent continent once teeming with hundreds of animal species, large and small, roaming freely over hundreds of millions of acres of wilderness. Many African creatures are larger than creatures found anywhere else on earth and these large animals require continent-sized areas in which to thrive. More and more creatures cease to exist in and around regions of development and the entire African continent has become fragmented and discontinuous in the span of just two-hundred years. The entire landscape changed, beginning with European colonialism and followed by the Industrial Period when railroads connected towns and towns became cities, while nations became nations, and boundaries began to exist everywhere in a place that had never known boundaries.
Among other things, loss of habitat coupled with poaching, meat hunting, and legalized trophy hunting of many of the large ungulate species (herbivores), results in a major loss in food resources while apex predators like the African Wild Dog, lion, leopard, cheetah, and hyena quickly decimate what’s left of the remaining herds and other prey species that are caught in their own struggle for ecological survival. Whether predator or prey, they share the same fate from accidental human interaction through legalized hunting, poaching (which continues to run rampant even today when measures are in place to help curb the animal parts and trophies trade). The anecdotal analogy of the “thumb in the dyke” in an ill-fated attempt to keep billions of gallons of water from slashing its way downstream and taking with it everything in its path, seems appropriate. There aren’t nearly enough resources to fight the poaching problem head-on. Worldwide bans on the “animal parts” trade have helped, but from what I know of the issue, it has been like placing a bandaid on an arterial bleed, or fixing a single dent on a car ravaged by hail.
We are living in a time when most people are aware that Mother Earth is gravely displeased with our goings-on and the collateral damage left in our wake on our way to drastically overpopulate the planet to a point that defies our own logic and reasoning. It would seem that Ted Kyzinsky’s manifesto on “Industrial Society and its Future” wasn’t far off the mark. I read his manifesto when it was first published by the New York Times in 1996, while he was still hard-at-it making bombs to be unleashed on those he viewed as the creators of technology and unimaginable future technologies which were having or would ultimately have a drastic impact on the relatively controlled world he had known. In a nutshell, his manifesto blames humanity for taking technology too far and well past the point of diminishing returns, to a level where it controls us and no longer does the converse exist. It is worth reading and is even more relevant today than it was then. I obviously don’t condone his means for getting his point across, but as a prognosticator of the future of mankind, he was spot-on. There was a part of him that was truly sociopathic, but it shows that even a madman with a high IQ may have seen the world more clearly than many of us. He knew what was coming, and what the world has been up to since his demise proves it.
I fail to understand how global society can continue on its social media-driven path while allowing for the wholesale extinction of some of the world’s most beautiful, intelligent, and fascinating animals. I am not a member of any of the social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram (“Instant Gratification”). You will never hear me “tweet” about anything. There’s simply too much at stake to get lost in such nonsense. It would be an altogether different matter if social media didn’t function as a perpetual diversion from things of greater importance and these same platforms were put to better use in disseminating important information such as that which could be used to save our dying planet.
I do not think humankind has proven itself to be responsible enough to be the world’s top apex predator while also charged with being the planet’s caretaker. There’s a fundamental conflict of interest associated with such a responsibility. I suppose that many of you reading this will find that to be a harsh blanket statement, but someone needs to be an oracle for creatures who, while incredibly intelligent, simply don’t speak our language (though some of their languages have proven to be far more intricate, elegant, and complex than our own). I just don’t meet enough people who would risk the relative ease of their lives to do whatever it takes to save some of these creatures, including the African Wild Dog. If we refuse to do what it takes to save the AWD from almost certain demise, what does that say about our relationship with the most historically significant and beloved creature we’ve so carefully cultivated over a thousand centuries – the domestic dog?! Will we eventually turn our backs to “man’s best friend”, as well?!
There are, of course, certain wildlife conservation groups that have been charged with the monstrously huge task of saving these animals from the rest of us, but these groups are vastly understaffed and underfunded and are just not militant enough to address the very significant issue of poaching. I don’t care if a poacher is some person from a native tribe trying to make ends meet. Whatever his reasons, his actions border on evil. Get some funding out there so he can be given a job protecting these species in lieu of annihilating them.
Thoughtco.com
There are now close to eight billion people populating the globe and fewer than 6,000 African Wild Dogs (650 breeding pairs). This statement should serve as a “shock and awe tactic” to compel people to do something as opposed to just sitting around and talking about it. But my plea will likely die along with the creatures it is intended to protect. When a population of any animal gets too small to be viable (no longer sustainable because there aren’t enough individuals remaining to formulate a healthy gene pool), there is no going back. When the number of animals for a given species has reached this point, there is little that can be done, particularly if that species has proven itself unfit for captive breeding. Some animals are simply too wild and require continent-sized areas in which to thrive. Perhaps they don’t breed in captivity as a way of saying, “We are simply too good to submit to your machinations and would rather die than live out our once free-ranging lives in captivity!”.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. If you feel as guilty as I do for being a human being and, however unwittingly, taking part in the destruction of our planet, perhaps you’ll do some research of your own and find a wildlife and wild places organization you feel good about supporting. It may just be the most important thing you’ve ever done.
Here is a list of places to start. To expand it, just click.
African Wild Dog Conservation Organizations Photos.willbe.com (Burrard-Lucas Photography)Will Burrard-Lucas at willbl.comVisit photos.willbe.com for more extraordinary photographs of African Wildlife
Originally Written for Medium – Edited and Expanded for this Post
I didn’t start playing guitar until I retired twelve years ago. I had just moved from my long time home in Southwest Colorado to my last job as regional director for a large engineering company in Pennsylvania. I’d been having back trouble for years, but it was during that move that things got serious. I was more than a little concerned about starting a new, high profile job while my back had begun to spiral out of control. I had seen enough specialists over many years, including a recent visit with a spine surgeon in Durango, to know that I would now be in need of a major corrective surgery.
Some of my Favorite Acoustic Guitars
I began my new post and could immediately tell that it was going to be hell. Loads of responsibility and pressure trying to turn water into wine. By now, I was in serious need of seeing a pain specialist and getting some help with the quickly deteriorating circumstances. Soon my situation became untenable. I’d come from Colorado a well conditioned athlete and mountain bike racer but now it was all I could do to sit through my fourteen hour days. The company had located a wonderful home for our two-person, two dog family and we moved in. But I was immediately in need of finding a place closer to work to mitigate the fairly long commute, which meant more sitting. By far, the most uncomfortable thing I could do to my body was to sit for long periods. The walls containing my life were collapsing all around me. I finally found a pain management clinic that would squeeze me in. Unbeknownst to me, there was a war going on and it was called the “Opioid Crisis”. At least in Pennsylvania, with some of the harshest laws covering the transfer and sale of oral opioids, it was like playing musical chairs and when the music stopped, I would be left standing without a chair. Clinics were booked solid and doctors were being forced to discern how much pain a given patient might be in while interrogating them to see if their pain was real or whether they were exhibiting “drug seeking behavior”, which closely mimicks being in severe pain. I was refused by three clinics before a doctor agreed to take me on as a genuine pain patient. At this point, I’d only been in Pennsylvania for three months and was already fighting to be able to perform well enough to keep my job and all that I had gambled when I left Colorado. The country was deep in the throes of a major recession, largely due the “House Mortgaging Crisis” which had been two decades in the making, and virtually every industry, including mine in oil and gas, was hurting and solid engineers in my particular field (natural gas development) were being laid-off left and right, which is why I was forced to make such a faraway move at such a bad time for me and my rapidly declining spine. I had lived and worked hard making my way in Colorado for thirty years. To me, it was the end of an entire way of life. Just a few months prior to the move, I had simply gone in to see our local family doctor in Colorado and was, with no trouble at all, given a prescription for the very same medication that I was now fighting for my life to renew. I was fortunate that I’d found a pain clinician who, after seeing X-rays, an MRI, and a CT-scan could see how badly I needed surgery, as my lower lumbar spine was completely decimated from years of concussive sports. He wrote a script for just enough medicine to just take the edge off so that I could at least get a few hours of sleep at night and continue working while attempting to locate a reputable spine surgeon. But, make no mistake, the pain was still bad enough that I could barely sit at my desk, let alone travel to and from Houston, something required for my new position as the company was headquartered there, and I reported to the CEO.
It was at this time that I was compelled to find something pleasing to concentrate on to keep my mind off the pain. Since I’d always looked to numerous mountain sports and activities for stress relief and to maintain a semblance of work/life balance, but was now having serious difficulty with short runs and was forced to exchange my runs for short walks, what I was looking for was something immersive enough to help me relax and fend-off the profound associated stress and vastly debilitating anxiety. I had been saving two time-intensive passions to dive into after retirement as I’d done just enough of each over my working life to have a burning desire to take them up when I finally had the necessary time to commit. One was to learn to play and become an accomplished guitarist, and the other was creative writing. As a function of my career in engineering, I had become a highly proficient technical writer, but since taking some literature and writing courses in college, which I had enjoyed immensely, I had had an overwhelming desire to one day pursue creative writing as an avocation. This, too, would have to wait until retirement as becoming an accomplished creative writer doesn’t happen overnight. I decided to continue to put the writing on hold as I wasn’t yet ready to retire in earnest and had hoped to get my back under control and continue working for another four or five years, but I thought that learning to play guitar would help get me through this very difficult period and would be something that I would continue pursuing while finishing up my working life.
No sooner than I had made the decision, my wife and I went to the nearest Guitar Center while I spent an entire Saturday working closely with the store’s assistant manager who, himself, was a gifted and regularly gigging guitarist. We had found a surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh whom I believed could do the work but my surgery wasn’t scheduled for another two months. I needed this change in my life in the same way the desert requires an occasional rain to sustain its own extremely beautiful life force. Years ago, I’d played a bit of acoustic in college and decided that I would initially pursue electric guitar. By the end of the day, I had settled on a very limited edition “Old Growth” redwood Fender Telecaster, the very first guitar to have caught my eye on that momentous day, a good quality tube amp, and everything I would need to get started. Even with the severe pain, I felt an overwhelming sense of elation! We got home and, though it took me two hours to get everything setup in the manner I was instructed by the uniquely helpful and super-knowledgable Guitar Center employee, I got everything set up to be able to play the next day. I went to bed completely exhausted from what had been a long day considering the horrible condition I was in. Exhausted, but full of hope and desire.
As worn to a nub as I was, I couldn’t wait to wake up the next morning and try my hand at playing. That day turned out to be epic as I played until my fingers bled (I’m being completely honest about that!) and played went on to play some more. It was nightfall before I quit for the day. I remembered more than I’d have thought from my bits of playing acoustic guitar in college and found something I’d never known about myself. I could play by ear. I never knew what that meant until I played to a bunch of old favorites and turned Pandora to a blues-rock station where I attempted to play lead along to each song and found myself putting together many of the notes and fitting them in nicely to match the lead guitar on the song. As with all things, there is a spectrum when it comes to playing by ear. Let’s just say that I could do it well enough to thoroughly enjoy what I was doing. Most people spend months, or even years, working on music theory and learning basic chords before enjoyment takes the place of frustration. For me, frustration would come much later when I’d gotten to be a reasonably good player but I was now attempting more complicated things, so the learning curve slowed and got steeper. Time was coming up on my surgery date and the surgeon had instructed me to prepare myself for a long and painful recovery. I was thankful for getting into guitar when I did because I would need it for what would end up as years of chasing pain and having other surgeries, six in the course of the following twelve years. I was forced to retire during the height of my career with just a few more years to go before I could retire “comfortably “. Times got pretty rough and I’ve all but completely lost myself at times, occasionally falling into deep despair from the pain and associated depression, but as bad as things got, I continued to play and began expanding my newfound avocation into buying, selling, and collecting guitars to an extent that my fascination with the guitar would become an obsession. I would read about the history of guitars and learn all about the market for vintage acoustic guitars by Martin and Gibson. I became an “enthusiast” and an expert on vintage acoustic guitars all while my playing continued to get better. I’ve been playing for almost fifteen years now and have developed an equal love of playing acoustically. Today, I’m roughly 50/50 with equal time playing both electrically and acoustically.
The 2011 Fender “Old Growth” Redwood Telecaster I purchased that one fine day at Guitar Center
Aside from problems with my back, I would have a half-dozen major health issues to contend with, three playing out as near-death experiences. Several of the presiding doctors over the gruelling period have made wonderfully compassionate observations as to my inner strength, resilience, and unique ability to endure under the most demanding of conditions. I have spent long periods of time where it was only by the grace of God, support from my family and a very small circle of friends, and my love for making music that I made it through. I had three major surgeries in 2023 alone. One, another spine related surgery and two that had to do with other long-term life threatening illnesses. In the aftermath, I had to relearn how to walk and, on most days I still use a cane to get around. But through it all, there were my guitars standing at the ready to help me through the worst of things. Then, there is my wonderful wife and three fine dogs. I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to live mindfully and being thankful for the things that matter most.
But nothing has gotten me through these difficult times like remaining positive and playing the guitar like there’s no tomorrow. It wouldn’t be a stretch for me to say that my love of guitar and making music have saved my life several times over. When I occasionally reflect on all that has transpired, I can only hope and attempt to draw strength from what I have already accomplished as I am currently battling bladder cancer, the one remaining illness that I have yet to conquer. I was diagnosed in mid-2024 and had two surgeries and a failed form of frontline treatment, yet I still had a seven month period of remission only to have it reappear. Over the last six months, I have had two more surgeries to remove two more tumors, the most recent was just a month ago. This time, it was the smallest tumor yet, caught early. I have a follow-up “scraping” surgery in a month (to make sure my surgeon gets all of it), and have just begun a second, less efficacious form of treatment called systemic immunotherapy. It is given through an IV for two-to-three hours at my oncologist’s clinic in Austin, every third Friday for a period of twelve months. I do not know if I have enough gas in my tank to beat this last, most pernicious illness, but I’m going to give it everything I’ve got left. I still have “places to go, and people to meet” and am not nearly done with the things I hope to accomplish in my lifetime.
As always, good thoughts and prayers are more than welcome and are always deeply appreciated…from the bottom of my heart!
Some of the guitars from a collection that has taken me fifteen years to build. The most important pic to me is the last one. It’s a shot that my wife, Genie, took of me and our pure-golden-hearted little girl, Sage. RIP 2021 Age: 15
Originally Written for Medium – Edited and Expanded for this Post
A Five-and-a-Half-Foot Western Diamondback at the Bottom of Our Front Porch Steps
I’ve lived in Western Diamondback country for much of my life, but not until a move to rural Central Texas in 2014 was it that I saw them regularly. In almost thirty years of mountain biking, trail running, hunting, and fishing in my adopted home state of Colorado, I had seen fewer than a dozen and had just three close encounters. Since then, I’ve had many more over a much shorter period and have been compelled to learn more about these reptiles than I ever wanted to know.
After eons of evolution and a less than fifty years of scientific study, much of their behavior remains a mystery to us. I’ve read that certain environmentally-driven changes in reptiles don’t take thousands of years to occur, but significant change can come in as little as a few generations. No one knows all the reasons why, but I’ve witnessed marked evolutionary changes that have occurred over a period of just twelve years. Take rattling and the purported reasons for it as an example. As children, many of us are taught that rattlesnakes rattle primarily to keep close encounters from happening. That before we even spot the source of a rattle, it is a way for rattlesnakes to communicate their presence to virtually anything or anyone, whether the animal (including humans) is approaching with purpose or the would-be encounter is a function of happenstance. It is designed to help prevent those other creatures from continuing on a path which will force a confrontation. It is a wholly defensive mechanism and, believe me. when you hear your first adult-sized rattlesnake rattle, it is a sound you will never forget and will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand at full attention. As humans, this is a response that is well written into our genetic code. The sound will make a person freeze in their tracks to have a tentative look around in an attempt to see the source of this primordial sound. In my fifty-plus encounters right here on our rural Central Texas property, I’ve heard that telltale rattle on just a few occasions before coming dangerously close to bumping into one. I’ve talked to longtime residents of this part of Texas, including a number of multigenerational ranchers, and other outdoorsman and there have been some theories derived surrounding this radical departure in behavior.
The most widely held belief is because just ten years ago, in the extremely rural areas surrounding the town of Lockhart (population: just over 14,000) there was an entire landscape which made for absolutely perfect habitat for growing snakes of all kinds which are indigenous to Central Texas. Between the large expanses of unmaintained ranch lands which have, over the course of numerous decades, gone from being open prairie interspersed with high-quality native grasslands and hayfields, with just islands of brushy species of trees to a landscape overrun with high-density walls of brush consisting of many species of thorny trees and thick stands of red oak, juniper, and mesquite. The area hasn’t had a significant fire (nature’s gardener) in decades to bring the unmitigated brushy growth back under control, restoring the prairie to its true form. This is partially due to the fact that wildfires have had the tendency to be squelched by ranch owners and area fire departments for over a hundred years. This kind of ecological transformation hasn’t happened in our area alone, but has become a serious problem throughout most states. Additionally, and in more recent history, many people have been fleeing the high cost of living in Austin, roughly an hour’s drive to the north, and relocating to Lockhart (the closest small town to where we live) and the surrounding areas. Large tracts of land here in Caldwell county could be had for a tenth the price and land speculators and developers were busy buying-up land for near-term subdivision and longer-term investment. Soon, county planners were inundated with proposed communities and homes began springing up across the predominantly rural landscape. Wildlife was pressured into relocating to areas not yet touched by heavy equipment and land clearing machinery. Also happening during this same period was the steady influx and proliferation of feral hogs, which will eat just about anything, including choice morsels of rattlesnake. The third environmental change to affect the region was the tremendous rise in the Mexican eagle (caracara) population flying overhead. Their historic northernmost range had, up to just ten or fifteen years ago, been two counties to the south. Rattlesnakes weren’t the only snake species impacted by all of these changes and copperhead densities were also on the rise along with a dozen species of nonvenomous snakes. This part of Texas happens also to be the westernmost boundary of the copperhead, which is surprisingly abundant. And, of course, the nearby San Marcos River just so happens to be the westernmost boundary for the cottonmouth, aka, water moccasin. If you’re a lover of North American venomous snakes and nonvenomous snakes of all manner, this is a great part of the country to find them in unusually high densities.
When combined, these environmental changes to historical rattlesnake habitat have seemingly created a shift in the rattling instincts where, with so much newfound pressure, the rattlesnakes began a decline in the times they chose to rattle because, when doing so, they were giving away their positions which could mean being shot on sight, getting gobbled up by hogs, or attract attention from above and find themselves on today’s menu for several caracaras flying overhead. Like all birds of prey, red-tailed hawks have incredible eyesight and will also dive-bomb an unwitting rattlesnake . This change in rattlesnake behavior, rattling far less often, took less than twenty years to genetically take hold. Again, this is the primary theory related to the change held by people who have lived in this area for several generations.
In our time here, we have had as many as four dogs at a given time and two have felt the sting of an envenomation to the face. One bite to our young (less than a year old at the time) black lab-mix, Josie, proved to be non-life-threatening, though we still had to endure not only the fear of losing a beloved friend, but veterinary treatment for rattlesnake envenomation is extremely expensive. Another involved our prized Australian kelpie dog, named Kelpy by my then six year old daughter, who took the worst hit possible and spent three or four touch-and-go days in professional care. That dog meant as much to my wife and I as many people’s children do to them. It was an extremely scary and anxiety-filled experience, one that I would not wish upon anyone.
My first order of business during our numerous moves has traditionally been to build a nice dog kennel. When we moved here, we had two medium sized dogs so the kennel was a roomy 24′ x 32′. Later, when our two dogs had grown older, we took in two larger dogs and I expanded the kennel to a whopping 48′ x 82′. We referred to it as the “Taj Majal”. But long before the new dogs, it would become abundantly clear that I had to do something to keep my dogs and wife as safe as possible. The learning experience in terms of our dogs came the hard way when Kelpy took a big hit on a cold and blustery Christmas night (when virtually any other snake would have been tucked inside of its den) inside the relatively “safe” confines of the kennel. I was in our loft playing guitar with her by my side when Sage, our wonderful chow-mix called out with her five-alarm bark and Kelpy flew down the stairs and out the dog door, crying out with a single yelp before flying back in. Sage was still out there barking but, wisely, not getting too close. After quickly examining Kelpy, I immediately saw the telltale fang marks and blood beginning to trickle just below her left eye, missing the eye orbit itself by less than half an inch. I grabbed my handgun and, after having Sage revealed the location for me, I shuttled her indoors for my wife to examine while I went right back out and unloaded an entire clip from my 9 mm into the snake. My sense of defending my family had taken over, so it was certainly a case of overkill. It was a thick-bodied, five-and-a- half-foot female searching for her denning site which at that time (before I had sealed-up access to the crawlspace and the latticework under the front porch), the area beneath the porch provided access to the crawlspace which had served as a major denning site (unbeknownst to us) before we ever bought the place. The house, barn, and four acre property sat idle and surrounded by hundreds of acres of undeveloped ranchland, between completion of the home in early 2013 and when we moved in during February of 2014. I left the snake there as we feverishly made our way into town to meet our vet at her facility. Bless her heart for putting herself on call for the most sacred of holidays. I carried Kelpy in and stayed with her for as long as our vet would allow and came back first thing the following morning. I arrived at 6:30 AM and she opened the door for me. By then, Kelpy was in sorry shape with her head and neck swollen to virtually twice their normal size. She had been treated with three vials of anti-venin and horse plasma (horses have evolved to have a substantial resistance to rattlesnake venom, but they are not nearly immune). Though I would have had no way of knowing that a rattlesnake, or a snake of any kind would be roaming around on a chill Christmas night with a cold rain mixed in, I felt responsible for the incident, and the sight of seeing my cherished dog in such utter distress made me sick to my stomach. I couldn’t get the thought that I was somehow responsible out of my head. In any other place I’d lived up to that point, a well-built kennel was all that was necessary to keep my dogs out of harm’s way. She would spend three more days in the hospital recovering. Immediately after the ordeal, I went down to the local farm and ranch supply house and purchased a few rolls of 24″ x 1/4″ mesh to surround Kelpy and Sage’s kennel and used the material to secure the open latticework under the front porch. Later, when we adopted Josie and Jett, our sibling male and female pair of black lab-mixes and I built the large kennel addition, I wrapped the same bottom two-feet with 1/4″ mesh. Since then, we’ve had one incident where a young (less than two-feet) but still dangerous copperhead found its way through a slit in the mesh that I must have unknowingly hit with the edge of our large field field mower which is designed to be pulled behind an ATV or small tractor. I couldn’t believe it! The young snake must have wandered along the kennel fencing until it happened upon a slight tear. The chances…geez! Josie, who is now “snake-wise”, came across it one evening last summer and barked her own “five alarm” bark and literally came in to get me to see what the fuss was about. I took care of the snake and that’s the only time in the ten years since I started using the mesh when a snake slipped its way through our defenses.
It has taken me twelve years of steadfast work to carve our property out from the surrounding wild and overgrown lands which have proven to be absolutely perfect Western Diamondback habitat with a vastly inordinate snake density rarely encountered elsewhere. Where there was nothing but brush and enveloping weeds with little quality native grass, there is now restored Central Texas prairie which gets mowed regularly to keep the snakes from once again getting a toehold and overrunning the place just as they had when we bought the place, named Lonesome Dove by the builder. There is now a well-worn trail that follows the boundaries of our property on all four sides and this trail gets used many times a day to walk the dogs and allow them to mark their territory. I keep the trail mowed such that there’s at least ten feet on either side where the grass is kept short, along with keeping the remaining parts of our property mowed regularly. Snakes don’t like crossing open ground, so the trail helps serve as a barrier to keep more snakes from finding the property’s inner-sanctum. I’ll do whatever is necessary to protect my family and have spent far more time on this one very imminent threat than I care to remember. I’ve spent time in grizzly country and would choose potential run-ins with them to being forever on guard searching for a threat that is virtually impossible to see. That is, before it’s too late!
As for me, it seems that I am out and about working on our property all too often and exposure to a potential bite is much higher than I would prefer, but when I’m using things like our push mower to mow under the limbs of the trees, or the brush cutter, chainsaw, ATV and utility trailer, I can’t help but from looking out for my personal safety and, where applicable, I put on a very good pair of snake boots or below the knee gaiters and thick leather hiking boots. I also take this precaution when I take the dogs for a hike on the trails of the nearby state park where I’ve had several encounters. Nonetheless, I’ve still had more close encounters that I can remember and remain alert at all times. These are not the immersive, relaxing hikes and trail runs I had in Colorado where the chances of an encounter with a creature of the venomous kind were far more remote, particularly during the winter months. These animals are incredibly well camouflaged and difficult to differentiate from the surrounding fallen leaves, rocks, and forest floor, but I’ve engaged in the serious game of finding them before I walk right over one (which I’ve done) for many years now. Paradoxically, it is their evolutionarily perfect patterns that my eyes have been trained to pickup on. The only way I can explain it is to say that my eyes must now find their markings to be “too perfect”. During the times of year when they’re most prevalent, I’ve learned to take a proactive approach and regularly go out “snake hunting” when it gets just warm enough in the morning for them to find a hidden place in the sun to warm themselves after the cool of the night. Better to find them before they unwittingly find us.
About six months ago, I had my closest call to date. I was out in the barn’s carport working on the ATV. There were several maintenance issues that I was performing at the same time and I had the machine pretty well stripped down, creating a couple of piles of fairing and parts. I was having particular trouble removing the CVT belt (the drive belt) without a couple of tools designed expressly for the task, using only my hands and fingers to turn the assembly and have the belt slide off. It just so happened that I’d enlisted ten minutes of help from our A/C tech who was finishing up with the annual spring checkup on our system. He was kind enough to offer his “second set of hands” and we pulled the belt in no time. Just as we were patting ourselves on the back for making short order of the job, the guy spoke softly while informing me of the very particular predicament I was in. I had donned a pair of cushioned knee pads to do the work and directly under my left knee I had a small, coiled rattlesnake pinned between my knee and the ground. He must have crept into the area where we were working while I had gone from standing to kneeling. It was the knee pad that not only provided enough cushion that I never felt the snake attempting to move beneath me but also kept me bite free. I stood up slowly and took two quick steps back. The snake didn’t appear to be all that “rattled” and that must have meant that he wasn’t in much discomfort. The floor of the carport consists of a layer of fine cedar chips which are pretty soft to walk on and work from. His tail had been free but he never rattled in the ten, or so, minutes he must have been pinned. Our A/C tech had a look of complete disbelief that such an uber-close encounter could have happened as I reached for the short sledgehammer I happened to have nearby and put a humane end to the snake. Not a second later, I was consumed with guilt over what I had just done. While having ample opportunity to bite, he chose to remain still as his best defense. Over the years and due to our rare set of circumstances with the sheer density of snakes with whom we have shared our property, I’d had no choice but to kill them on-sight lest they eventually have a future run-in with a member of our little family (perhaps after they’d grown much larger and were all the more dangerous). I simply couldn’t take that risk. Plus, the naturalist in me knew that the population was way out of control and needed some serious tough love. It would have been highly dangerous and impractical to have tried to capture and relocate each of them someplace nearby (fifty-plus times and counting). I’d have only been increasing the snake density on some neighboring ranch owner’s property.
Finally, after twelve years of living here in a place we love just as it were a living, breathing member of our family, we are enjoying our time in a way we were never able to before. All I can figure is that, at least on our property, rattlesnake densities are much closer to what would be considered normal. In those twelve years, a number of other homes have sprung up nearby and the building activity would have pressured a lot of the rattlesnakes in close proximity to us to move on. There’s still plenty of undeveloped wildlife habitat near us, so I don’t think it’s caused the rattlesnakes and copperheads much difficulty. But in a year like 2016, the time of Kelpy’s envenomatiom, when I killed as many as four or five per month for several months, I was never afforded the opportunity to simply relax while being out on the property. I was responsible for the health and safety of my family, a job that I took very seriously, and I was always out of balance with my feelings about having chosen this place as our next home. I had always lived in rural country and knew there would be a fair share of “creepy -crawlies” here, but never in my wildest nightmares did I think this kind of venomous snake density was even possible.
Kelpy Out Exploring and Being Her Awesome Self!She Grew Up in Colorado, Well Away From Snakes and Tucked Safely Inside My -20 deg F Bag!Kelpy and Sage, RIP and Together, as Always Our Beloved Litter Mates, Josie and JettAnd, 13 Y/O Ginger Makes Three! Sun on Her Face Always Makes Her Happy!Kelpy Archery Elk Hunting With Dad, in Colorado!There’s Nothing That Speaks More Loudly About The Hazards of a Full-on Envenomation From a Large Western Diamondback. We Were on Pins and Needles, Praying for Four Sleepless Nights. Our Prayers Were Answered and She Came Home! Never in My Life Have I Been So Overwhelmed by The Wonderful Feeling of Pure Thankfulness Kelpy and Sage Were Inseparable in Life and When They Passed Over “The Rainbow Bridge” Within a Year of One Another. I have no doubt that they will be together for all of eternity, held in the palm of God’s hand.Post Script: I do not know how I would have gotten through this world of ours without surrounding myself with dogs. They are truly better beings than we are. It has been an honor.
First, some context. Just a few months back, I began seeing a prolific number of posts in my daily feed from a “Space” (Quora-speak for what it uses to describe the thousands of individually run sites on the platform) titled “Suzie’s Space”. Most of these posts either use a heavily “Photoshopped” photograph or an AI-generated rendering, and an uplifting message for each day. Ten or fifteen of these posts, which also include uplifting quotes and well-meaning messages, were being generated every day and I began to watch the number of followers grow seemingly overnight to around 2,500, with some 15 million content views. Larger figures can be found on Quora, but when you factor-in the relatively short period that she’s been at it, 15 million views essentially means that her Space has “gone viral”. The common thread running through these posts is that they are intended to “inspire” and help people have a better day than they may have otherwise had. The author and owner of the Space rarely said more than a few words of her own, like “Have a great day everyone❤️☺️🙏😘👍🥰! Ostensibly, this was a caring individual trying in earnest to make the world a better place, one post at a time.
But this is not what came to mind at first blush. I generally steer clear of this type of post, but I decided to poke around the Space, read her very short bio in which one line stood out, which read “I tend to know things without reason”. I scrolled down through several dozen posts and, with the exception of using a different AI generated rendering or “Quote of the Day”, they were virtually identical in nature.
My problem was with the undisclosed but substantial use of AI and lack of photo or quotation credits. Many people on Quora don’t realize that anytime you grab a photo, quote, or anything written that doesn’t belong to them as the original author, they are likely using intellectual or artistic property which has more than likely been copyrighted. By law, this requires a person to credit (somewhere within their posts) the actual author or photographer, or, if that information isn’t readily available, at a minimum, offer-up the internet site where that content was found. The same holds true for an AI rendering which probably used a genuine photograph as the basis for its creation.
The second thing I found to be disconcerting (as is the case with millions of others who share the same sentiment) is the rampant use of AI generated fakery which can now be encountered virtually everywhere on the internet, not unlike some new, highly contagious and dangerous worldwide disease. Something like fakery in the context of AI generated photo renderings may seem harmless except for the fact that a large portion of the population has already shown that it can no longer discern a fake animal or real landscape from a fake one. The problem is more closely associated with younger Americans who haven’t been exposed enough to the natural world to have an honest and deep appreciation for the planet outside of interactions with other human beings and manmade things. This lack of awareness doesn’t bode well for an already highly, and nearly irreversibly damaged (at the hands of man) natural world. If these kids can’t tell the difference between a comically obvious fake baby platypus (like the plastic one used in a YouTube short that went viral last year) and a real one, how are they going to develop a sense for the importance of seeing the few remaining, truly wild, places and their inhabitants into the next century?
For me, the question had morphed into something like: Is “Suzie’s Space” doing more good than being unwittingly harmful? Her content is not malicious, nor does it have the slightest feel of wrongdoing, and further, is downright beautiful in the eyes of her many followers. I began to wrestle with the question. I even conferred with my wife who is well aware of my values and steadfast advocacy for nature and nature’s progeny but, while she is both highly intelligent and highly educated, she is also much less likely to further educate herself on environmental conservation issues and take action or even view such matters nearly as seriously as I do. You might say that she is a kinder, gentler person with a much higher tolerance for ignorance.
After thinking about it for a day or two, I decided that, since I was already heavily engaged in fighting for environmental conservation on several levels, including tons of writing targeted at motivating people to go from just talking about the issues to taking action by any means available to them. Making targeted donations to any one of of hundreds of organizations like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) or the Nature Conservancy (though not perfect, these large advocacy oriented websites are as good as it gets in terms of impacting any level of real change) or volunteering their time by joining a group of conservation lobbyists. Anything is better than nothing. But the question remained, lingering in my thoughts for several days. “More good than bad?”.
Ultimately, I couldn’t help myself and made a comment using just two words to a post using an AI rendering similar to the ones shown above: “It’s fake!”, I said. The post was just one of hundreds based on the same simple, but hugely popular model. Pretty “picture” with an uplifting one-line narrative. I had no particular reason for choosing that post to provide commentary.
The author responded with the question I used as the title for this piece. I offer my response here but never launched it on Quora. I never posted the below comment because I had a significant change of heart and did an “about face”. I have since had some enjoyable conversations with “Suzie” through Quora’s personal messaging function and she went so far as to invite me to be a contributor to “Suzie’s Space”, something I found to be both flattering and ironic. But how could I say no to all that positive energy? Could I somehow harness and encourage it on parallel paths? Something I thought might work for both of us is if I aligned with her but by posting real photos from my own collection, taken during my thirty years of adventuring in Colorado and other beautiful places in the Rocky Mountain states, and other incredible area to visit, like Big Bend National Park in West Texas, in my current state of residence. This is precisely what I chose to do. First, I thanked her and said yes to her offer to become a contributor, and then provided several posts making references to where the photos were taken (examples of a “real” places of natural beauty) while providing brief narratives on the true state of affairs for rapidly diminishing wild places and wild things all over the world. Since I began a couple of months ago, she and her followers have given my posts nothing short of high praise. This was the answer I’d been looking for and in balancing the equation, we, together have created a win-win situation.
Taken on my 50 acre compound in Southwest Colorado
One of my own photographs posted to “Suzie’s Space, on Quota. I added a few sentences on the importance of ecological conservation and received numerous positive comments on the post. Suzie, herself, expressed her great appreciation and thanked me for my contribution. We’ve come far from our initial perceptions of one another through our collective capacity to remain “open-minded” in the face of “opposition”.
Refresh your memory by rereading the title of this post, which was Suzie’s response to my “It’s fake!” comment, at the top of the page.
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My Initial (Un-posted) Response to Suzie’s Response to my “It’s fake” Comment
I decided to post it here on my blog so others can read about the dangers of using fake imagery and not crediting sources for quotes, photographs, and even AI renderings (which many people today view as a form of modern art) in contemporary writing.
Me: I didn’t take your response as being disparaging. You make a good point. However, AI technology has been proving itself to be both “good” and “bad”. I won’t get into the “good” because it’s not relevant to our exchange here.
I’ll just touch on the “bad” as it applies to this type of use. There are a few fundamental problems with the use of AI in the areas of photography, art, and writing. This is why it’s important to provide credit to the author or if that information isn’t already attached, then go to the next opportunity which is crediting the site where you found the “rendering”, photograph, or quote . This acknowledgement keeps you free from the consequences of whatever it is that you’ve “borrowed” because it may well be copyrighted by the actual “author” of that bit of photographic art, real, or authentic, or quotation. It has to do with plagiarism (I know that’s not your MO..but it applies, nonetheless, just as it would if you were using a written example that doesn’t belong to you for, say, a term paper or thesis. It is widely accepted that a given “source” must be credited and is a rule of copyright law intended to discourage plagiarism. It is clear that you’re not purposefully “stealing” someone else’s work, but the ethic and potential consequences remain the same.
The other thing with using such renderings but passing them off as “real” has a particular impact on a younger audience which has already shown that, as a large segment of the population, they have much difficulty in discerning what is real and what is a figment of someone else’s imagination. To many, this may seem like a trivial matter but I can assure you that it is not.
Taken further, at some point over the coming years, our most recent generations will be tasked with knowing such things about human society as opposed to completely “reinventing the wheel” when the wheel has already been a technological advancement for millions of years. By not understanding the who, what, when, and where which came before, there is bound to be a completely unnecessary and hugely inefficient “do-over” pertaining to thousands of subjects which have already been taken as far as they can go, given the limits of a given period of time within a given prior generation. The idea is for future generations to “pick up and run with the ball” which was handed to them. Not doing so results in the use of precious time and resources the world cannot afford. The world as we’ve known it is in dire need of effective and productive current generations to lead humanity and the entire world, with ALL of its constituents, into the future (including our responsibility to our own future generations and the continuation of the natural world, which is already deep into the process of dying a slow and painful death).
I know this seems “off-topic” but humor me, if you will. The “art of storytelling” is all but gone as the primary means of older, experienced generations passing on valuable information acquired from the many generations which came before, to younger generations who will invariably need such information not only to survive, but to continue being productive at the highest possible level, given new and emerging technologies. The underlying premise is that the generations from which current generations have sprung are right here (for a little while longer) to tap in helping to ensure that our offspring (generations ‘Y’, “millennials” and “Z”, the children born to millennials, have a better life than their parents may have had to struggle through. This tenet is the same one that mankind has relied upon for millions of years. This potential for such important storytelling has had its legs cut off at the knee in large part because parents are no longer teaching their offspring anything because they, themselves, don’t know anything beyond the scope of what they do for a living, and such important matters have been left at the foot of a vastly dysfunctional educational system, which is already completely overwhelmed with just being whatever it has become.
I ask that you think on all of this for a spell. How will you and your generation handle the load that is being handed to you now and throughout your lifetime if your “thinking through the power of reason and logic” has been impaired simply because your parents themselves weren’t adequately taught things that the internet cannot provide. These things are highly important to the very survival of the humankind. Human characteristics such as a strong sense of community, a strong set of ideals, values, a wholesome belief-structure, ethics, an operational moral compass, and on, and on. A younger person can pickup their phone and lookup information on just about anything, but, try as it may, it will not find these uber-important teachings anywhere on the internet.
So, why is it that the younger generations of today have turned a model which has been in place (because it worked) for millions of years, shaken it and turned it upside down in being so incredibly careless with the knowledge acquired through the lifetimes of “their elders”?! Me, for instance. I find it to be utterly foolish and offensive given the vast amounts of knowledge I have so carefully and steadfastly taken the time to learn and acquire, but when I attempt to initiate a conversation with a younger individual, they could hardly care about what I might have to say…on hundreds of subjects they know little or nothing about.
My comments on the ill-effects of AI are spot-on. And those are just a few. This is why “fakery” is running rampant. The results are revealed every time a younger person, with little experience around wild things and wild places is so easily fooled by a fake animal or a fake place. Promoting fake stuff simply exacerbates the problem, which has at its core, a complete unawareness of the terrible plight of “real” animals and “real” wild places everywhere wherein many species and many “wild” places (places where mankind hasn’t yet irreversibly altered by its very presence) are rapidly going away on their long journey to “Neverland”.
“Does that answer your question?!”
I still occasionally craft a post and submit it to “Suzie’s Space” and she continues to follow-through with a short-but-sweet comment offering her appreciation. It works for the both of us and her many followers and large volume of viewers.
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