Tag Archives: Utah

We Come In Peace

Posted on by

ComeInPeace9999

I’m not saying we here at The Institute believe in this but when you have incontrovertible proof right in front of your face it’s pretty difficult to ignore. If you’re confused and I’m pretty sure you might be, we’re talking about extraterrestrial beings in the shape of bubble-headed flat people that arrived here about 8000 years ago to straighten this place out.

They arrived en masse with all their dogs, and cats, and some kind of sheep like thing and said “We’re from our Government and we’re here to help.” Why they landed in Utah instead of on the East coast is unknown but maybe they had a metabolism kind of like a lizard or something, and due to their flatness the sun gave them the energy they needed. Sort of walking solar collectors if you will. A lot of people think that they’re wearing space helmets but we believe that is simply the shape of their heads. If they came from a place that had low oxygen content in their atmosphere their heads would have all swelled up like that to better assist in their O² intake. Plus it would keep the rain out of their eyes. Not to mention providing 360° vision.

I wonder that if they had space travel and the ability to be locked up in a space ship for weeks at a time and not kill each other, why they took such lousy pictures. I mean they can navigate across great interstellar distances and land on different planets to square them away with things like terraforming and genetic manipulations and cable and sex and the best they could do was beat on a rock with another rock and leave these images. That’s pretty pathetic.

But I mean, there they are. You can’t dispute that. Who were they. Where did they come from. What were their names. There were faded places on what must be uniforms that looked like they might have been name tags but they were so weathered you couldn’t make out what they said. They could have also been sponsor badges like they wear in NASCAR too. That seems more reasonable, after all long space voyages don’t come cheap even for advanced civilizations and it would make sense to have it sponsored.

Not much else is known about these guys other than they came, they saw, they left their sheep-like things and they bailed. There’s no fossil records of them, or parts of their vessels, or even random reading material they may have left behind. Magazines perhaps, or something off their best seller list. Nothing. It’s one of the great mysteries of our time. Who were these space folk, will they ever be back, do we owe them anything for the sheep-like things. There’s a lot of unanswered questions here and the only thing we have to go on are these lame photos they left behind. I think you’ll agree it’s mystifying. But then so are a lot of things. If we worried about all of them it would probably make our brains explode, so let’s not. I’m going to go and watch TV, maybe there’s something about it on the Sci-Fi channel.

Along A Crooked Canyon

Posted on by

Escalante1105-1133

If you were to be in Capitol Reef National Park with the idea of visiting Bryce National Park you could do this several ways. But if you are the adventurous type I think you might decide to do it by taking Hwy 12 which is a Utah Scenic byway. Now when I say adventurous I’m talking about the mild kind of adventure where your greatest danger is what happens if you don’t stay between the white lines on the road.

As you can see by the image above, that’s a long way down there and unless you had a huge amount of steam built up and careened way out into space, kind of like Thelma and Louise did, the ride down there would be very bumpy. I’m not certain even if HD off-road shocks and a tight seat belt would make it any better.

Hwy 12 runs westerly from Torrey, Utah off of Utah State route 24 about 122 miles down to the town of Panguitch and Hwy 89. The adventure part comes from seeing the most incredible patch of scenery stuck along any highway you might have traveled. It’s like they built the road to take advantage of the most spectacular views they could find, Oh wait, they did build it to take advantage of the most spectacular views they could find. And it was hard work building it. The CCC did most of it back in the day and you should drive on it and look at everything just to make those guys feel good.

The picture above is a panorama of thirty separate images stitched together using a very fine digital thread with the stitches so close together you can’t even see them, to show a complete picture of this remarkable canyon. I threw in the colored trees at the bottom as an extra bonus, just because I like you.

One of the locals that I talked to said they called this spot in the road ‘the Neck’ and it is the place that most of the acrophobics tend to toss their cookies, as there are virtually no shoulders on either side of the road and there was just enough space for those highway builders to put the road down. This is the view from that stretch of the road and it’s the same on either side. I really like it but then I like things that are over the top, so to speak, and this is over the top.

So if you’re a careful driver and can control your instinct to jump out and look at scenery around every corner you’ll like this road. And you’ll probably like looking down into the canyon. I heard one person say when asked if he was afraid of heights, that he didn’t even like being this tall, but he crawled over to the edge to look down anyway. You should too. See you at the Dramamine counter. Happy traveling.

The Beagle Eater

Posted on by

BeagleEater1392

Warning: This report may not be suitable for all readers. Readers discretion advised.

The desert is a dangerous place. There are mysteries here and stories to send a chill down your spine even on the hottest day. Creatures that haven’t seen the light of day for thousands, if not hundreds of years, suddenly appear out of the darkness to scare the living crap out of you, then slink back into whatever hellish crevice they live in to wait for another opportunity to come forth and get you.

Some are slimy, but not many, this is the desert after all. The slimy ones are usually found way back in caves near a stream and lurk there, pulsating slowly, their tongues flickering out searching the air for the scent of humans. The know that sooner or later some individual who has ignored all the warning signs that say things like “Warning! Slimy monsters in here. Enter at your own Risk”. will come sneaking down the long stone corridors, exploring for the reason the warning signs were there in the first place. They usually find out much to their dismay when the dark slimy creature sends its long mucous covered tongue to wrap around their exposed throat. The only sign that someone was ever there is their muffled screams as they head slowly down the beasts throat.

But since they are so rare, numbering in the mere thousands we will move on to the really dangerous creatures that lurk in plain sight in the noon day sun. We had been exploring John’s canyon which is between Jack’s canyon and Diane’s canyon near Goosenecks state park and not too far from Canyonlands. We discovered what at first appeared to be an innocent pile of rocks when in reality they are actually deadly killers. Looking like any other lizard shaped rock formation they allow you to approach, then with dazzling speed they transform into a lizard-like creature and eat your beagle.

We have captured one of these devious, but cunning devils after it had recently fed and had returned to its dormant state in the photo above. Hearing the pitiful sobbing of a distraught hiker coming down the trail, we noticed that she was dragging a leash behind her, its little empty collar with the name tag “Tuffy” softly glinting in the sun. As she stopped to untangle it from the thorny bush it had snagged on we asked her what had happened.

“It was horrible” she sobbed. We saw this lizard like rock and stopped to take its picture when Tuffy suddenly pulled loose and ran up to it.” She broke down here and it took several bottles of gin to get her speaking again. “It was so horrible. This beast, this demon-spawn, this death-dealing creature from the pits of hell, ( this is where we took the gin away from her) suddenly came alive and snatched Tuffy in its cavernous maw. And ate him. One bite. One little yelp, that’s all I have to remember him. That and this stupid leash that keeps getting tangled up in everything.”

We did our best to console her but she was, like, inconsolable, so we left her there with our last bottle of gin and crept forward to observe this creature. It had already resumed its dormant state and simply lay there full of Beagle and looked like a pile of rocks again. We don’t know if its diet consists primarily of Beagles or it will take other types of canines too. In fact, we don’t know much about it at all, other than the story our hapless but drunken and beagleless victim related to us. We did notice a complete absence of coyotes in the area where they should have been knee-deep, but that doesn’t prove anything. Thinking that this whole episode requires more thinking we intended to think more about that tomorrow. Our plan was we would return in the near future with a malamute, as soon as we can get one from the pound, to see just how varied this creatures’ appetite is.

So the moral of this story is, if indeed it needs a moral, is “Keep a tight grip on your Beagle. Don’t go running up to something that resembles a lizard just because it looks cool. And pay attention to warning signs near abandoned caves. And oh yes, if you must hike in uncharted desert regions with your Beagle make sure he has attended a qualified dog training course and understands the risks of desert hiking. Get one of those bumper stickers that say “My Dog was an honor student at the Biteless Beagle Academy”, or wherever you take him so that others know that you two are qualified to be in the desert. Remember, Be Safe, and if it looks like a Beagle Eating Stone Lizard it probably is.” And also keep in mind, you’re in Utah. A lot of strange stuff happens there.

.

The Maiden Voyage of The Bokeh Maru – Days 11 & 12

Posted on by

Phototrip7793New headquarters of the Oregon chapter of The Institute

Day 11 Rest & Rehabilitation

Today was spent in cleaning out and burning the few personal effects left from our missing crew members.  Old ginseng wrappers and cans of open beverages with unreadable labels. Remains of old unidentifiable meals that looked organic in nature but frankly could have been anything. Even a few pitifully constructed weapons in the form of sharpened sticks and socks filled with gravel that had been hastily constructed for the ill-fated mutiny that was put down by my trusted but now missing head of security, Big Lemon Kowalski. Remembering the carnage brought about by that big toothed but lovable lug, brought a warm glow of remembrance.

I found a few poems written by our Candace Flavours, known to us as ExcuseMeMs for most of the trip, that she had written to Big Lemon. They were so warm and caring they nearly brought a tear to my eye. Thinking her cold and callous and well, just plain mean, I would never thought her capable of harboring such tender feelings. Here is a partial excerpt from one.

My dearest BLK I love you mostly for your big yellow tooth

And not because you won’t wear your shooths

and tho I love your tattooed feet

they are less fragrant, but you know that, my sweet

I want you always to be mine

Or I will kill you

Love, your candy buttons

There was more, running on page after page ad nauseam, but they are personal and I shan’t share any more of them with you even if you were to pay me money in the form of cash, check, or money order, as I have too much respect for her now that she is gone. They were tender and moving and in some cases extremely explicit in nature, with many of the acts so detailed and graphic that they could only have been Chinese because of all the perverted stuff that comes out of that godless mis-begotten country, but no matter how much you beg, cajole or send me large amounts of money in the form of cash check or money order, I won’t budge. I mean it, so don’t ask.

Now that I seem to be bonding with my new site manager and his lovely wife I am beginning to feel the loss of my last two crew members, less and less each moment . In fact our new Mrs. Assistant Site Manager made us an extraordinary home-cooked meal tonight in which I may have over-indulged somewhat, and being in the throes of calorie saturation found myself unable to remember what, old what’s her name looked like. Or that monkey-faced big toothed baboon she had been mooning over.

Perhaps I’ll think about that tomorrow.

Day 12 New Digs

Today was a new day and a fresh start. After convincing our newest major employee to give up that tissue sample and DNA material, I assured him that we would cover all his legal expenses if any thing were to come of our future business dealings. Fortunately he didn’t ask me to sign any documents attesting to that fact so we headed off to look for a suitable site to create our new headquarters. It wasn’t long before we noticed this incredible find. It was remote, had a single power-line coming in, and seemed mostly abandoned so we proceeded to acquire it under the Oregon law of Finders Keepers.

Giddy with our initial success we immediately began to make plans to get started with the remodeling needed to keep wild animals out until winter made it too difficult for them to brave the storms and attempt to gain entrance.

First on the agenda, besides breaking down the front door to gain entrance, was to begin making notes for the materials needed to secure the premises from, like, the afore-mentioned wild animals and possible old owners who may be testy due to their poor planning and could be lurking around to cause mischief in one way or another. So it was lots of fast scribbling and quick note taking as the ideas poured forth in a flood of enthusiasm. Luckily our new assistant site manager knew how to write, so much progress was made this morning. Soon trucks bearing loads of flattened cardboard boxes to replace missing window glass and magic markers to write warning messages on the cardboard saying “Don’t Even Think of Coming In Here” and “Stay out! We mean it” and other cryptic messages such as

“The State of Oregon allows the use of deadly force in the protection of private property if the new owners, hereafter called the squatters, deem it necessary to keep out previous owners, hereafter known as previous owners, who didn’t think it was a good idea to leave someone home to protect the property they have now lost.”

would be arriving if they could ford the creek and climb over the snow fence. Of course the drivers would have to be blindfolded to protect the location of our newest headquarters but that was a surmountable problem.

There were many other tasks to be taken care of such as finding out why there were so many bleached bones lying about the well, and what was that black crust around the edge, and why there was that persistent scratching sound coming from behind that locked door leading to the basement. We decided that it was nothing as the low guttural moaning that accompanied the scratching was receding, and it appeared that what ever it was seemed to be going to sleep for the night.  We decided to leave the new Assistant Mrs. Site Manager there overnight to guard the place as we needed to get back into town and round-up some of these supplies and to make sure we had a hot meal in preparation of the next days activities. We left her with a flashlight, the .22 with the few shells we had left, a power bar and the warning not to open the door to the basement.

I had few qualms about leaving them in the morning as I had to continue my journey homeward the next day. They seemed more than capable and I was sure if Mrs. Assistant Site Manage was ok in the morning all would go well and the newest site would be up and producing useful data soon.

The journey was soon coming to an end and I was already waxing nostalgic about it but there were at least two more days to get home yet so anything could happen. Tomorrow I would enter Utah and head South. Stay tuned.

Huge Problem

Posted on by
HugeProblem2660Setting Sun – Coral Sands State Park – Utah

Well, our intrepid field researchers have found another huge problem in the Southwest corner of our country. What looks like a pretty, calendar-worthy shot of the desert hides the fact that there is a huge freaking problem developing that could have a major impact on many aspects of our lives. The Institute, being in the forefront of identifying non-threatening, minor situations and blowing them completely out of proportion for our own personal gain has found yet one more problem. Just in time too, because the coffers here at the Institute have nearly run dry and we had nothing in the works that we could use to base a grant on, to get some of those tax dollars we work so hard to obtain.

In a nutshell what is happening is that sand, which are tiny particles of gritty stuff, have begun gathering in areas that are hot and hard to get to, and begun to pile on top of each other, over and over, until they make great big piles. That in itself wouldn’t be  a problem if they were quiet and kept to themselves but they don’t. They feel some inexplicable need to go forth and multiply and get in your face. Much like Moonies.

Yes they’re the Hari Krishna of the mineral world. Their agenda, besides world domination, is as yet unclear, but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous. In fact the insidious nature of their plan is their secret weapon. You might look out and see a small bunch of sand, as they like to call themselves, way off in the distance and when you look back at it several hundred years later, they’re right on your doorstep ready to cover up everything you own in layer upon layer of themselves. Soon you can’t find anything you own. When you look around for it you come to realize its all under there. Where’s the Lexus? you might ask. Under the sand, that’s where, and that’s where it’s going to stay because you can’t shovel fast enough to get it out before more of those little sand things, particles as it were, pile up and slide into where you’ve been digging. You can’t even stop to go in and get a refreshing cold beverage and some lunch and maybe watch the ‘Young and The Restless’, without the sand slithering in and erasing all your hard-won efforts. So soon you give it up for the hopeless task it is, but you’re still going to have to make the payments on that Lexus.

Yes sir, the bank doesn’t care if the sand covered it up. The don’t even care about global warming or the healthcare debacle. They don’t even care about puppies. They’re soul-less. They just want your money. So you can see how this could develop into a monumental problem, what with everybody throwing sand in their neighbors yards, as they try to dig out their own Lexus’s because where else are you going to put it. It’s everywhere, like dry hot snow. Soon there would be anarchy, social unrest, grit between your teeth, insane spending on eye drops. And eventually the breakdown of our social structure. Who wants that, besides certain radical, mean, religious orders that already live in conditions like that and are used to it already.

OK, so you’re getting the picture here of how this problem can cause you personally, a certain amount of inconvenience. But what can we do about it, you ask. The first thing you can do and the most important is to write a huge check made out to The Institute, please include your driver’s license number and home phone on the check, so that we can continue to carry on our important work.

The second thing is to NOT try the method being used by certain governmental agencies to try and contain the encroaching sand. As you can see in the image above, constructing an incredibly expensive buck and rail fence has done absolutely nothing to contain the sand. The sand has found a way to leak out from under the bottom of the fence and is already on its way to your home. Sand is notoriously tricky and can weasel its way around and into and over all kinds of stuff. It has been a colossal waste of the taxpayers money. That money could have been put to much better use by funding our organization, The Institute, so that we can feed and shelter the homeless and displaced people that have been the victims of desertification, help some of our indigent citizens with their Lexus payments, and fund a research study to stem this attack on our American way of life. And also to create a puppy shelter.

The third thing is send this message out to everyone you know. Resend this post in its entirety to your whole contact list. Have them send it to their contact list and so on. The more people who become aware of this problem the quicker we can find a solution to it and the greater chance we have of actually getting some additional funding by our crass but necessary panhandling tactics. We need the funds to carry on. Our efforts have saved the day for many folks who had no where else to turn, but we need your help. Besides money we have other needs you might fill. We’ve listed just a few below so if you can, give and give generously. Send these items or the plane fare so we can come and pick them up, and know that your generosity will be put to good use. Thank you and Bless you.

Items we are in Urgent Need of:

A Lear jet

A small island in the Azores, need not be uninhabited

Canned goods

A lifetime membership to Atlantis

A yacht, anything over 100′ with global positioning navigation and a security contingency for when we do our work in the South China sea

A large vacuum

As many Lexus as you can spare

Personal Hygiene products, toothbrushes, hair removal aids, chapstick, Sunblock

Water

A Eurail pass, The global one not the Regional one or the One Country pass

Any old gold you have that you’re not using, wedding rings, plates, Rolexes,

A Left rear Tail light to fit a 2002 dodge 1500 ram 4-wheel drive pickup

Unsigned Bearer’ bonds or stock certificates

These are just a few of the items we need desperately, there are many, many more. Please help. Give what you can.

High Drama Low Desert

Posted on by
HighDramaLowDesert4386Hovenweep Spring Storm                   click to enlarge

Spring is when we get some of the most dramatic weather of the year. All that meteorological stuff starts working with highs and lows and pressure cells and barometric irresponsibility, and things like low pressure instability coupled with really scary-bad advisories from people like NOAA and other folks who sole aim is to scare the bejesus out of you when all you’re trying to do is have a nice day.

Add being in place so far removed from what we’ve come to think of as normal, like you know, McDonald’s, Wally’s World, the mall and you get what we call in the photo business “High Drama”.  There is barely a road to this place and if hadn’t been for four-wheel drive you wouldn’t have gotten here at all. Passing burnt out hulks of automobiles with the desiccated remains of their occupants lying nearby has an off-putting effect, and begins to make it seem reasonable that your companion begins rubbing ashes on her face and chanting her death song and she’s not even Native American and you’ve got the makings of an interesting day.

There is a very physical presence to these storms. As the front moves in everything goes quiet. The insects cease making their small sounds, birds stop flying and immediately begin seeking shelter under the nearest rock, you can feel the pressure change on your skin, sometimes your eardrums feel like you’re cresting a mountain pass and then pop suddenly adding to the thoughts of your impending demise. It’s a total rush actually.

This image is of a storm that blew up in moments while we were visiting a really cool place called Hovenweep National Monument. It’s located on land in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah, between Cortez, Colorado and Blanding, Utah on the Cajon Mesa of the Great Sage Plain. Romantic but desolate. Bring your own lunch and plenty of water, there isn’t even a vending machine out here and be prepared to experience nature in its rawest form. It is hard to imagine that folks made their living out here at one time. It is a forbidding place filled with hardships and one doesn’t have to ponder too long on why they would suddenly decide to split and seek a gentler more productive place to live.

However if drama is your thing and I guess by now you know it is mine, this is a place you want to visit. If you crave new experiences, or at least different ones than the gym and your favorite watering hole you’ll find it here. The range of phenomenon runs the gamut of blistering sun, wind-driven sand caressing your face, and the occasional intensely torrential rainstorms then silence so loud it makes your ears hurt. And that’s when things are calm. However underneath all the drama there is the undeniable, unrelenting beauty of a far away place that isn’t home. There aren’t that many places left where you can experience the exotic but you can here, especially if you’re lucky enough to be there in the middle of one of their spring storms. What more could you ask for?

The Case of The Limping Ibis Pt. 2

Posted on by
LimpingIbisPt2_8077
White-faced Ibis  Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge       click to enlarge

June 26 7:37PM. I had been unable to pursue my runaway Ibis due to another case that sprang up and monopolized my time keeping me a virtual captive to a vicious but terrible client. Tired of the strident but shrill nature of that case I was desperate to get back to the case at hand. The Case of The Limping Ibis. It took a few of my Private Dick tricks straight out of the Private eye’s manual, plus the deliberate use of an “I don’t give a large rat’s posterior” attitude to be able to put the case of the Shrill but Strident Nightmare with its unreasonable client behind me and resume working on something important again, the original case I was hired for.

I knew where my quarry was going as I watched those three fleeing White-faced Ibis head north along the foothills looking for that break in the mountain range up near Laramie that would let them easily go from the East side of the mountains to the West side and then North again up into Utah without having to make the nosebleed flight over the divide. There have always been stories of sanctuary for outlaws and others not quite on the up and up in the canyon riddled badlands of central Utah. Butch and Sundance hid there. So did dozens of other bank robbers, train robbers, robber robbers, unscrupulous gamblers, ladies of the evening, ladies of the early afternoon, defrocked contortionists, truants, scofflaws, unpaid parking ticket avoiders, laudanum smokers, whiskey traders, whiskey drinkers, unsophisticated politicians and just about anyone or anything that needed a no questions asked, safe haven to hide out in.

I was worried that the trail had gone cold even though it was summer and the temperature was a balmy 72°. But I wasn’t that worried, I knew where they were going and in the weeks after losing them back in Colorado and finally getting back on their trail I had plenty of time to think about this case. I had questions, plenty of questions. My ex-cop, gumshoe instincts were going off like the alarm at a Chinese fire drill. Things weren’t adding up. What was really going on here I asked myself. Why was Ratzo, the mis-shapen but odorous director of the Florida bird sanctuary willing to pay so much money to get these Ibis’s back. Why had he deliberately fed them so much high-priced grain and seaweed and tender little soft-sided crustaceans until they could barely fly. Why did he have Ibis feathers stuck in his teeth. Why did he insist on that stupid comb-over and most importantly why wouldn’t the bastard pay me my 40 bucks like he said he would. Who were the Plaid men and what was their game. And why would they drive a Hyundai. The questions kept piling up like the dirty laundry in an Algerian cathouse. And I was beginning to see that the answers were beginning to smell the same way.

Back when I was a rookie detective on the job in LA, before some poor choices left me out of a job and out on the street with nothing but my dented fedora and my last paycheck, I was assigned to the Pershing Square area, that seedy underbelly of perversion and corruption that was the epicenter of everything evil in the City of Angels. After several long sweaty hours I couldn’t take it anymore, and to wash my overloaded and saturated mind of the ugliness I had seen, I got myself assigned to Vice where I was able to spend time counseling the working girls out on Sunset, trying to convince them that working the candy counter at Woolworth’s for twenty bucks a week was preferable to the life they had on the street even if they raked in the big bucks. That and getting the bait and switch cross-dressers to see that it would be a better business plan if they got on the bus to San Diego where the sailors down there weren’t that particular after a 6 month Westpac cruise and besides they wouldn’t have me to deal with. Letting them see the wisdom of that plan and showing them my gat that I kept in a well-worn shoulder holster under my cheap suit coat convinced most of them to take my advice. Since my arrests had gone straight down the crapper after arriving in Vice, the suits downtown sent me to Missing Persons as a last chance hope of saving a failing career. It’s funny though because there is just as much vice in missing persons cases as missing persons. I handled cases where someone was missing, or doing vice, or missing as they were doing vice, or the vice wasn’t there so they went missing. LA is a crazy town, you’ve got to keep your perspective. All of that experience made me see that this case wasn’t a simple missing Ibis case anymore, and there was certainly weirdness enough to go around. I felt like I was back in the old days of pinching hookers and laughing at the moon.

As I headed north towards Laramie I came across the burned out hulk that was the Plaid men’s car. That Hyundai had only made it about 30 miles with that slashed tire and it had been gone over pretty good, just about anything useable had been taken and it lay there with its axles pointed towards the sun like a gutted loaf of day old bread. There was no sign of the two phantom photographers but the plates were still on the back of the car so I ran them through a friend down at DMV and they came back listed to a couple of low-life, wannabe bounty hunters out of Key West. The Azwhype brothers, Solenoid and Nodule. This was bigger than I thought if these two mental midgets thought they could make a buck off this caper.

I turned the nose of my apple green 1951 Packard Custom Clipper westward and hauled bacon towards Utah. I didn’t know if Solenoid and Nodule, those two miserable excuses for human beings, had caught a ride or were still walking towards Utah and I was worried because they had a seven week head start on me. You could walk to Utah backwards in that time. I knew that if they got there before I did that Ibis family wouldn’t have a prayer. Those two would have them back to Ratzo before I could say “Put those Ibis down you no good Ibis stealing son of a bitch” and it would be all over.

I had finally figured it all out. All of the answers started falling in place when I realized what Ratzo’s real plans were. He didn’t care about the unpaid feed bill. Hell, he tipped that much at Big Leg Kathy’s every Friday night. No he wanted the Ibis. He’d fattened them up with all that expensive Ibis food because he was an Ibis Eater. He ate the Ibis that he was supposed to be taking care of. That’s why he had Ibis feathers stuck in his teeth. He hired me as a patsy, a dumb private dick, to find the Ibis first so that I could lead those two bounty hunting Ibis grabbers straight to them, giving them a jumpstart on the chase so he’d be dining on Ibis by the time I was still trying to get the 40 smackers he owed me. My brain burned like hell’s night-light with all the answers falling into place. All this figuring things out had me feeling like a sweat stained Orangutan but my work wasn’t done yet. I had to get to the Bear River Migratory Bird Sanctuary and deal with Solenoid and Nodule, those lousy Azwhype brothers, before they got to the Ibis.

I pulled into the Sanctuary early in the afternoon and began a frantic search for the Limping Ibis and her two wayward children. I began checking the various flocks of White-faced Ibis and there were hundreds of flocks, with thousands of birds in each, trying to spot one limping Ibis. It was slow going. I didn’t think that much more of them than I did when I first took this job, but they didn’t deserve to wind up like slightly roasted purple turkeys. We all try and make it the best way we can and sometimes you’ve just got to cut somebody a little slack. I was going to warn them and tell them to get out of the country, go to Canada, they don’t eat Ibis up there, not even around Whitehorse where it’s been said they’ll eat anything. Ham, Ram, Billy Goat, Baboon or Bear, but not Ibis. They’d be safe. Whether they straightened themselves out morally or not wasn’t my problem and I sure as hell can’t judge them.

Their strategy of hiding in the great flocks of White-faced Ibis’s at the  Bear River Migratory Bird Sanctuary worked because search as I would I couldn’t spot them again amongst the thousands and thousands of identical but looking exactly alike Ibis. If you look closely at the picture above you’ll see one or two of the Ibis with what may be tattoos, but then all the kids are getting them so you just can’t tell. As for those two losers, Solenoid and Nodule, one short phone call to one of the leading Mormon bishops about two southern Baptist looking clowns in plaid clothes making fun of plural marriages got them an extended stay at (USP) or Utah State Prison, the one that was built to replace Sugar House prison back in ’51, near Draper. They’ll be there until they see the error of their ways. That left only Ratzo and his refusal to pay me my 40 bucks. He should a paid me. It was strange how Florida’s fish and game department had enough information about his operation that there was a pre-dawn raid catching him plucking what was once a White-faced Ibis and now he plucks chickens at the Florida State Corrections Facility at Apalachee (West) Correctional Institution. They say he is a model inmate. My reward from the grateful state of Florida was enough to buy me a new truck with a better gas gauge and the satisfaction of knowing we won’t be running out of White-faced Ibis soon. Sometimes it wasn’t bad being a private dick.