There’s an old Harry Truman joke. (What other kind would there be!?) The press had followed Pres. Truman to his home in Independence, Missouri, where he was holding court in his rose garden. He was telling the mob of reporters the secret to growing his prize roses: plenty of manure! They couldn’t get enough of Truman’s down-home outspokenness; they were encouraging him, and this inspired him further, and so it went. Listening nervously, a young press aide to the president sidled up to the first lady, Bess Truman, and suggested, “Mrs. Truman, don’t you think it would sound better for the newspapers if we encouraged the president to use the word ‘compost’ instead of ‘manure’?” Bess looked at the young man and replied, “Do you know how long it took me to get him to say ‘manure’?” Of course, everyone here has heard that one.
Warning: Manure Subject Matter
By Jimmy Johnson
Recent Posts
Ghost of Christmas Past
This holiday Arlo & Janis comic strip from 2022 is similar in concept to the new strip that ran yesterday. I thought the latter ...
Spearhead
I have produced a number of comic strips related to Veteran’s Day. Especially in latter years, I have tried to emphasize the universal experience ...
Dark Passage
Remember: it’s that weekend. The return to standard time can be a bit of a shock in the late afternoon, but I rather enjoy ...
What’s old is old, again
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to build a web site, but there are similarities. Everything needs to be just right, or ...
Back to the ol’ drawing board
I don’t have a lot of time this morning. I wasn’t going to post anything, but I’m tired of looking at that old photograph ...
Thursday’s Child
On Sunday, I teased you with the suggestion there are more changes coming here. There are. They will appear soon, and I think you’ll ...
162 responses to “Warning: Manure Subject Matter”
Today’s 9CL is a hoot. emb
Mindy, thank you for the links!
That’s a heck of a lot of rain, John! Does it percolate through your soil or run off?
Old Bear, that Franklin quote is going in my commonplace book. I wish Franklin had his own Boswell…we would have even more surviving wisdom than we do.
Debbe, my vet told me that birds are biologically engineered to not show signs of illness until they are extremely ill, often near death. At that point, the prognosis is usually very poor. That is why so many vets prefer not to treat birds. This makes your ability to nurse them successfully all the more amazing. (Birds also do not respond well to anasthesics, since their response to it is difficult to monitor and judge; hence anasthetic often kills them. As she put it, it’s often unfortunately a case of “A little more anasthetic…a little more..uh-oh.”)
Saw a great bird show on the way home from grocery shopping just now – two mockingbirds harassing a small hawk (probably red-shouldered) who did not let them deter him/her from snagging a squirrel from the road where it had been hit by a car. Glad the traffic was light or the hawk might have been a victim too.
OF due 1232-1252 CST. emb
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/health/parsing-ronald-reagans-words-for-early-signs-of-alzheimers.html?_r=1
Sorry: URL I’d sent to 2 blind copy groups.
OF due 1232-1252 CST. emb
http://www.nps.gov/features/yell/webcam/oldFaithfulStreaming.html
What happens to dead birds and “critters” … I have left them out in the yard and in the morning they are gone. I believe that nocturnal animals scarf them up: possums, skunks, possibly raccoons. Insects will “take care” of them, but it would take longer than overnight!
Ruth Anne, your story is a good one and very dramatic!
Denise, that’s interesting about sick birds … I did not know that. Will try to keep it in my memory.
Fossils are appearing to show that some dinosaurs, including t-rex, were covered with feathers. Possibly someone got their days mixed up. 🙂
My car, which is a 1972, was made with a 1971 trunk lid and I have found that this is not uncommon with that model. They fit so they used up the leftovers. Maybe some dinosaurs were made early on Friday with some parts left over from Thursday.
OF due 1719-1739 CST. emb
http://www.nps.gov/features/yell/webcam/oldFaithfulStreaming.html
Ruth Anne: Will email your sighting to blind-copy biology group. Thanks.
Jerry: Nice twists on Genesis 1. Some believe one could roast eternally for that. I fear neither for your salvation nor mine.
Peace, emb
Charlotte, I’ve had a number of canaries since childhood, and they’ve seemed to be a remarkably healthy lot. But one did develop a tumor which would have caused her suffering, so I chose to seek surgery for her. That’s how I learned how difficult it can be to anesthetise birds. That’s also when I learned that unless one of the birds had been extremely ill, I probably wouldn’t have known by behavior alone.
OF due 1853-1913 CST. emb
http://www.nps.gov/features/yell/webcam/oldFaithfulStreaming.html
OF due 1958-2018 CST. Bleak out there. emb
http://www.nps.gov/features/yell/webcam/oldFaithfulStreaming.html
It has been such a beautiful day! Birds are busy making nests and warning others to stay out of their territory… Leaves are coming out on trees and bushes… Flowers starting to bloom… I love spring!
Spring has sprung. The flowers have riz. The heck I know where the sunshine is.
Galliglo, glad it was such nice weather there. Ohio must be somewhat ahead of NH — no leaves here, but they soon will sprout. My especial feeling is that the house is warmer and I can walk out the door without putting on jacket, hat, and gloves — it’s so liberating! I am happy to see birds and hear their songs. My daughter saw and heard Cedar Waxwings yesterday, in trees like ornamental crabapples, eating the fruit left on the branches. This near her workplace in NH’s largest city! I don’t see Waxwings often, but Marge knows that I am very fond of them and the distinctive chirping the flock makes in the tree.
Denise in Michigan, how nice that you have Canaries! I am very fond of them, too, tho haven’t had one for years. We had one when I was a little girl, Mickey was her name, and we grew up together, for my parents were given the bird about the time I was born. She had been “raised by hand” they always told me, and was as tame as could be. She would hop around the breakfast table, picking up crumbs and grains of sugar. She lived to be about ten years old, the dear little thing. How many do you have, and how old are they?
and a little more rain today, it runs off in the ditches to a creek but the yard is soppy for days. I just turned 57 on income tax day and still I swear I heard the loudest thunder (oh wait, didn’t Arlo say we hear the lightning or something?) in my life, it had to have been next door, I have a huge hunk of hackberry that waterlogged and rotted itself off the tree. … I’m going with barred owl, because there was nothing left and I haven’t seen a raccoon lately.
man, what’s the matter with me? when I had that cute little hospice gal for the day to drive me to my cornea appointments and errands, I should have had her bathe me.
Barred owls scavenge? I don’t know. Many mammals would have carried a dove off to consume elsewhere.
There’s a logic to that, which works even without logic or plan. Some other might have noticed the dove and be headed back to get. If you move it some distance, you maybe can eat it. Natural selection selects for habits that work.
There are lots of mostly nocturnal mammals we rarely see. I’ve never seen a bobcat, but expect many have seen me.
Peace, emb
BigOrangeBoyCat, that’s Elvis.
Jerry in FL, that was also Bama. In his prime, he weighed around 16 pounds and none was fat. I miss him a lot.
And yes, spring has sprung, the flowers riz, and my sunshine must be where yours is! We must be going to have one heck of a crop of May flowers with all these April showers.
Elvis is about 18 or 19 lbs and, if he wants to be dead weight, he must weigh about 40. He can easily reach all of the door handles and has been known to get himself into and out of rooms. I’ve been thinking about doing a post on where to bury pets. Hopefully I (and they) have a few years to decide. Some may think it ridiculous to spend time thinking about this, but pet lovers will understand. We have previously discussed the coon dog cemetery which is a real, amazing place. Think about this and maybe we will discuss it tomorrow.
I believe I will amuse my MBH tomorrow by casually mentioning that her date or birth is rather closer to the Civil War than it is to the current date!
Won’t she be pleased?!
There are some of us in this group who fall into the same category, I’m aware.
Rain, wind, tornado warnings. Pulling the covers over my head. zzzzz
As I was reading this month’s Reader’s Digest, I came across the Pulitzer winning photograph of a POW coming home. However, the POW’s wife had just filed for divorce. Very bittersweet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burst_of_Joy