December 21, 2008
Last Mouse Standing
A Lesson From Nature
With Christmas Day just a few days away, I have to say there's no pleasure in the thought of writing another newsletter about food shortages, famine, plagues, starvation...none at all. So I won't.
I'd much rather be the bringer of happy news, hope, and lots of money in your stocking.
However, Nature and the current realities of the world have a way of reminding a person that blizzards are life threatening, animals need to eat,and when you're stuck in a barrel anything goes.
A week of serious snow, ice and blizzard conditions in the Pacific Northwest have seen tens of thousands of people house-bound, unable to venture out because the icy roads are nothing short of treacherous.
Fortunately snow ploughs (that's the correct spelling, but you can also see it as “plows” if you must) have been keeping most of the state and county roads open around here, spreading sand on the worst hills and corners and along the straights as the ice packs solid.
Some four-wheel drive jet jockeys venture out to play. A few rare snowmobiles are seen on the back of pickups. Local farmers, accustomed to this weather for generations, deliver hay to their horses and cattle on old pickups that can go where no man has gone before. Chains help a lot.
And then there are snow tires equipped with studs – a very wise investment that comes to mind if you've ever suddenly done a 360 on slick highway tires and experienced the pucker factor that your wife must have felt in the other family car as it hit black ice, careened through two lanes of oncoming traffic and wrote itself off against one of those roadside barriers.
Fortunately, she wasn't injured – but it was too late for snow tires on that piece of wreckage.
So...here we are, three miles from where our small flock of sheep is sheltering in a small shed on a friend's farm. You know they're surrounded by snow drifts that are almost waist deep. However, the road between here and there may (or may not) be passable – especially the last mile that runs up a steep hill.
The overnight blizzard has all but buried the ($500) '91 Buick Le Sabre Ltd and there's about two feet of wind-blown snow over the driveway out to the road. “This,” you think, “will be a test.”
In storm conditions animals on pasture and behind fences need serious attention. They can't forage for grass once the snow gets too deep. So you have put up hay in the summer, and you've also bought some “Barnyard Buffet” (corn and such mixed with molasses) that your veterinarian friend tells you helps them get 40% more benefit from the hay.
The horses in the homestead pasture get half a coffee can on their hay each day, and the sheep need about one or two cups each – also spread on their hay. (For them, a bucket of water will see them through the day, but in a storm you can guarantee they'll eat snow if the water is frozen; and if the storm is really really bad, and if they're wool sheep, they can actually survive underneath the snow by chewing on their own wool).
However, our small flock is a mixture of hair sheep (Dorpers) and wool sheep (bitsers). They need hay and grain, and it's time to go.
Till recently you've had a plastic barrel full of “Buffet” in the shed on the farm where the sheep are sheltering, but it's empty right now, so you fill half a bucket with what you have at home, pop it in the car, and start the trek.
Smart advertising people sell their fancy $30,000 SUVs with commercials that show them ploughing (plowing) through mud water and snow at high speed. Stupid people buy those vehicles and plough into the ditch at high speed – or spin out on the ice – or drown their engines and sometimes themselves in flood waters.
Smart people in front wheel drive Le Sabres equipped with studded tires virtually move at a snail's pace down the driveway, breaking trail without spinning the wheels – because if you do, you make instant ice out of the compacted snow and you're in spin city going nowhere.
Slow progress is much better than no progress. Then, if the snow gets too deep as you have to cross the ridge that the passing snow plough has left across your driveway entrance, well for that moment you just back up in your own wheel tracks, take a short quick run at the obstacle and voila, you're in the clear.
Your tires spin a couple of times before they clear the build-up of snow and ice from their treads, and then you feel them hook up as the studs bite into the slippery surface that is pockmarked with sand dropped by the plough as it went by.
The trick to this sort of driving as my friend Skip says is to treat it like driving on gravel. "Don't pull any fancy stunts (unless you 'really' know what you're doing) and you're fine." So 20 miles an hour is a sensible pace for the two miles you need to cover.
Soon you come to the bottom of that long hill. The snow plough hasn't been here yet, and there's a snow drift in front of you that would bury you up to your roof top.
Time to take up your bucket and walk.
The overnight blizzard has let up somewhat, but by the look of the low gray clouds in all directions and the feel of the wind and sleet biting your cheeks it won't be long before it picks up again. But the sheep need help.
It's quite a climb, but there's something gorgeous about the silence (despite the wind) of a snow covered world. There are still hundreds of small trees on the Christmas tree farm to your left. You wonder how many might..or might not...find their way to Los Angeles and elsewhere next year. What will Christmas be like in 2009 after the Great Bailout Circus has left town?
The thought reminds you that you have a newsletter to write – but you don't know what to write about this week.
To be honest, there's no way you want to write a Christmas-week newsletter that is just more of the same worry worry worry stuff. After all, this is supposed to be Christmas isn't it?
You toy with the idea of writing nothing at all until next year – or maybe just a short note to tell your thousands of subscribers around the world that they won't be hearing from you till January because you're going to focus on finishing the new ebook that will answer those dozens of questions they've sent in.
The noise of a diesel engine gets your attention and a big pickup with fat tires and front wheel chains busts through the snow that's clogging a driveway on your left. The driver waves as he passes.
You wonder – how long does the average SUV or car run on a full tank of fuel? Answer: Approximately four hours...and you could be a long way from home when the gas runs out.
You make a mental note to top up the Buick just in case the power goes out when this blizzard switches over to being the ice storm they're forecasting for later today.
Better get a few gallons for the generator too, just in case....(but of course 'never' fire it up inside the house, and if you must run it in the garage, make damn sure the door is open and the fumes can't come inside your home. Seems some unfortunate people kill themselves every year with those things).
The last few yards of your walk are not exactly a struggle, but they're certainly a crunchy trudge as you break through the icy snowdrift that has half buried the fence where the sheep are.
Like all animals that recognize a bucket as a food source, they come running – but slowly – because the snow is up to their shoulders and more.
Inside the shed, you set down the bucket, grab several flakes of hay, take it outside, and drop them at random. They'll be the beds for the “buffet” you will pour on top.
But you don't intend to give them everything you have in the bucket – there's enough here for three days, so you'll put the bucket in that empty barrel...the one that has the coffee can in the bottom at the moment...the coffee can you'll use today to dole out their immediate ration.
It's dark in the shed, but you've opened this barrel hundreds of times before and it's no problem to pull the plastic lid off, reach in, grab the coffee can, quickly dip it into the bucket, fill it, walk outside and pour a little on each flake of hay.
On the last pour, you notice a fat little mouse, somewhat dazed after his recent burial in a coffee can of grain, trying to gather his wits.
Obviously he had somehow found a gap in the lid of the barrel and fallen in – and then he'd been in the coffee can that you pulled out and dipped into the bucket – and now, he is totally confused and disoriented.
Mice are not considered high priority livestock by anyone (except cats and hawks and such) but rather than kill them for no good reason, I usually pick them up (if I'm wearing gloves) and take them to some sort of shelter.
My plan was to just pop him down alongside the shed so he could find his way underneath it and perhaps back to the hay where he'd be warm enough.
But then I noticed a second and a third tail sticking out of the two cups of buffet grain atop the hay. (Brace yourself...it gets a bit gruesome here).
I took one of the tails between thumb and forefinger and lifted...and there before my eyes was the skeletal remains of a mouse – the flesh eaten back to the bone. Same for the other one.
And the third one – the live one - the dazed one – the one that was now preening its whiskers and trying to figure out what to do next...well, it was facing an entirely different future than the one I'd had in mind less than a second ago.
Much as I love Nature, much as I had enjoyed my walk in the blizzard, proud as I was of myself for looking after the sheep, I found myself mentally flashing back and forth between a barrel of mice and a future city..somewhere...anywhere.
It might even have been the small town down the road with its one and only grocery store that was out of milk and sporting rows of depleted shelves when I went there yesterday. Just a few days of bad weather and they were running low on lots of items.
Odd that such a vision would come to mind because of three blind mice. Blind to their future that is.
One way or another they had found themselves in the barrel. There was no way out. The few grains of food that had been left in there were soon consumed.
Under normal circumstances (as far as I'm aware) mice do not eat each other.
Cannibalism was the result.
I killed the cannibal.
And that's how I came up with this newsletter, and the title for this essay: “Last Mouse Standing – A Lesson From Nature.”
....
The moral of the story is very simple, and some of you would have grasped it immediately.
But for others..well...it goes like this. If you do not take action 'before' the blizzard of earth changes we're facing really gets into full swing, then you are likely to find yourself in dire circumstances.
To avoid any possibility of finding it's your turn in the barrel, I'd suggest you take a very serious look at the future.
You can do that with the in-depth ebooks, “Earth Changes – Mind Matters,” (it's an ebook that can be instantly downloaded, and it includes a huge amount of information about what's happening, what's coming, and how you can help yourself through it all).
and then there's “How To Survive Earth Changes, Economic Depression and Martial Law.” a three-in-one ebook that answers many questions from subscribers. Questions about sea level rise for example...and safe places to live.
PLUS....to find ALL the Basic Preparedness information you need PLUS the right things to store for the future, invest in the “Basic Preparedness” book or Home Study Course. It will save you heaps of time and money, and you can rest assured that it was prepared by feet-on-the-ground people for feet-on-the-ground people.
As well as that, there's the DVD (which I say with some humility I was fortunate enough to write and direct) called “Contact Has Begun.”
It'll give you lots of clues about earth changes, and it really is a message of spiritual hope as well....not to mention opening your mind to potential contact with extremely advanced beings (much more advanced than our current pseudo controllers on this planet that's for sure).
....
Meanwhile, Christmas goes on, and I naturally hope that for you it'll be a good one.
(Judith mentioned when I got home that I should suggest to any of you who are "alone at home” at this time...well, if you wanna talk, “we're just a phone call away...” I wasn't sure whether I wanted to invite such calls...but why not? You'd just have to understand that when we say 'there's a call on the other line...' that's it... 360 983 3277 – Pacific Standard Time...).
.........
As Christmas approaches most of the United States and Canada is blanketed under snow and ice.
Over 100 people escaped from a crashed and burning plane at Denver airport overnight (while many thousands of other passengers are spending their days and nights in airports where hundreds of flights have been canceled).
For myself, I'm going to focus on a new ebook. So much more has come to my attention about earth changes, what's coming between now and 2012, and the many many questions subscribers want answers to...it's time to get down to work and deal with all that.
Or if you just want to be a reader of these occasional newsletters - which just might make a HUGE difference to your future...you can subscribe to Earth Change Report for FREE (how about that!).
PS - Merry and Happy Christmas to you all.