Weekend Wrapup
Category: Firearms... Nature... Travel...
Posted Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 10:09 PM [GMT-6]

We made a quick trip to Fort Stockton this weekend for my brother's birthday, and we seemed to pack a lot into a relatively short period of time.

On Saturday morning, MLB and I rode the longbike down the I-10 service road west of town, out to the Firestone Test Track and back, which is about a 23 mile round trip. We invariably see interesting things on this route, and this day was no exception, as we spotted some dots on either side of the road close to the overpass marking the highway that leads to Alpine in one direction and Coyonosa in the other.

As we drew closer, I determined that the dots were a group of five javelinas foraging on both sides of the service road. My wife pulled out her little Canon digicam and I tried to steer and pedal us as unobtrusively as possible in their midst, recognizing the risks to doing so. After, these animals have been known to overturn pickup trucks to dispose of the occupants, and their razor sharps tusks will peel sheet metal like a paring knife on an apple. OK, just kidding. Javelinas pose little to no threat at all, unless you happen to startle them in high brush or get between a momma and her piglet or come across a big male with a bad attitude or...well, anyway, we were in no danger. They do look mean, though:

As soon as they spotted us, they headed under the fence and disappeared into the adjoining pasture. We didn't see them on the return trip, but we did spot a red fox the size of a coyote running at full speed from the pasture on the north side of the interstate, across all four lanes of the highway, and into the pasture on the south side, without breaking stride but coming that close to a nasty encounter with an 18-wheeler. It was cool to see him from a distance, but at least one Fort Stockton resident has been bitten by a rapid (Ed. OK, he was fast, as well as being rabid!) fox this year already, and my brother shot another one a couple of weeks ago at their place. I'd just as soon keep them at a distance.

Later that afternoon, we gathered up the family arsenal and did some target shooting. We also took turns on my brother's new/old dirt bike, which he acquired for the princely sum of $300. It's a 250cc Yamaha of indeterminate vintage, cobbled together with mismatching parts, but by someone who knew what they were doing because it gets up and goes.

It had been a couple of decades since my wife had ridden a motorcycle, but, as they say, it's just like riding a bike...sort of.

Nothing but pride was harmed in the process, and she was having too much fun for even that to be an issue.

That evening, we witnessed another somewhat unusual occurrence, as a large flock of buzzards arrived to roost in the topmost part of a neighbor's pine tree. They've apparently been doing this each evening for a few days, having arrived from Mexico as a part of their seasonal migration. It's a bit rare to spot a whole group of buzzards nesting like this (and it's a bit eerie to be around them, because they're so quiet...unlike those ridiculous grackles).

Ranchers claim that you'll never see buzzards north of I-10 until after the last freeze of the spring (giving us yet another harbinger of warm weather to go along with scissortail flycatchers and leafy mesquites). We had a discussion this weekend about what the buzzards did before the interstate was built.

It was a good weekend, and a good reminder why we'd really prefer to live nowhere else than west Texas.

Oh, and if you're wondering what happens when a thousand dollar wheelgun meets up with a can of Big Red, here's a clue:

I'll be the first to admit that my scowl needs work.