Sorry for the absence, mea culpa

My apologies, my dears, I have been away from you too long. My deviotion has not lessened, only my time.

I know you all probably kept checking for my big Croc Hunter essay. I tried to write one but...well, are we really surprised by his death? Ironically by one of the most inocuous creatures of the deep. And given that Steve's baliwick was land not sea...well, there you go. I know that Steve and his wife fancied themselves conservationist. And they did a lot of good in many areas. But I have always had a quibble with the WAY they did it. The way they chose to garner the attention (sticking heads in croc mouths, wrestling anacondas, tossing one's self in with tiger sharks) through cheap, dangerous stunts. I works at the zoo for awhile. Here's the truth, a wild animal IS a wild animal. It can/will turn on you. Crocodiles are not housepets, they do not care about you. Boas do not have emotional attachments. The best I can illustrate this was one day when chatting with an elephant keeper as she was wheelbarrowing out about two hundred pounds of elephant shit and had told me she was quitting. "Won't they miss you," I asked. "No," she said. "They will be attached as much as they are to me as to the next person who shows up and feeds them, cleans them, cleans the stalls and scrapes the crap out of their yard. We are not thier friends or family. We don't chat or have coffee together. They're great animals, they're smart, they're resourceful, but they won't notice I'm gone and it's someone new taking this wheelbarrow out." Wild animals are wild. God made them that way for a reason. And God gave us common sense for a reason (although not in equal doses). And hovering around a ray with a six foot wing span and eighteen inch barb who is trying to get away from you during the part of the year where rays are all freaked out about tiger shark attacks anyway? Well, again...it was going to happen sooner than later. My heart goes out to his children, and no, I don't know if it was a doll or his daughter he was dangling there so I make no judgments.

So, it's 9/11. And the news channels and the not news channels and the channels that think they're news but are not are all busy making us relive it. I stood in an office and watched the second plane fly into the tower. I watched people throwing themselves out of the windows because they were so scared to be burned to death. I watched the towers collapse. I used to live in New York. Did you know that? I worked right across the street from the Trade Center. As a matter of fact it was my subway stop and usually before I went to work I sat out in the plaza in the shade of building one and had my coffee. I saw the people who went in and out. I bought the occasional newspaper or cigarettes from the newstand guy next to the subway tunnel. I don't need a movie or a replay of the news coverage to see those people in my mind crushed under a million pounds of rubble without any idea of why or who or how.