With the Army at Camp Speicher, Iraq 2004
By
Chucky
The birds showed up along with the snakes shortly after winter solstice. The sun is low in the sky now, casting its long shadow. Even the ants are feeling brave. We’ve been busy. Put in a wood floor in the tent in anticipation of the coming rains. It has a pallet foundation with plywood decking. I salted the pallet foundation with mothballs to discourage the critters, and I think it is working with the lone exception of our resident kangaroo rat which has moved in. I think he’s nibbling the moth balls like candy. Some of them eat anything. It must be like living in a warehouse for him under there. His own air-conditioned space to hop around in. He doesn’t seem to be afraid of us at all. Acts like a member of the family. We will have to murder him in short order though. Don’t want a tent full of droppings to breathe in with the dust. I’ll bring back some large mouse traps with me from vacation.
The birds are eating well. Bread and cookies from the messhall each morning. They have taken to spending the majority of their time grab-assin. Birds should be grab-assin. Like kids on summer vacation. It’s a bummer working looking for food all the time. They should be flittin and fartn around. I’m their sugar daddy. They can do that. Just like my kids at home. I sure did when I was a kid and its good to be able to pass it on to everybody/bird I can. I usually drop their nuts and crackers, bread crumbs and all out by the back hoe ditch where the lizard lives. Last week I was out there reading, (my Raytheon ethics manual(yeah, right) when I heard them flitn and chirpin ‘n jumpin up and down. I never put any food over there. I looked over my left shoulder to see what all the commotion was about. Oh. They were raisin’ a fuss for no apparent reason, just a' hoppin and 'chirpin, about 10 of them. Grab-assin birds, I said to myself. Something at the bottom of my vision caught my attention. It was silver with black spots and slithering toward the porch. I jumped up, looking for something to hit it with. He skedaddled under the porch and the birds flitted back to their bread crums. Mission accomplished. They like me because I’m their friend or they were rescuing their golden goose. I prefer the former but suspect the latter.
We’ve enlarged the porch. I did a dope-deal for a brand new tarp that’s twice the size of our old one. With the cooler temps below 100 degrees F it’s nice to sit out and watch the birds flap and watermelons grow. We made a fly trap. Simplest of simple: tub of water. Its like the Roach Motel. They check in for a dip, but they don’t check out. Buzzing around harassing people, lost souls that they are, their little horrible selves gets thirsty. There is their tub of fresh water just for them. They get caught in the surface tension and can’t escape. They eventually drown or die of exhaustion, whatever. The last thing some of them see on their road back to Hell is my big happy face.
Our watermelons are grown from scavenged seeds from the chow hall. We germinate them in an empty water bottle. Wrap the seeds in a bit of tissue one layer thick and place them in a capped water bottle with a few drops of water, put the bottle in the shade and after a week cut the bottle in two and add a little dirt and water if necessary. If you like boiled watermelon seeds then leave the bottle in the sun. Chirp Chirp. There they go again; jumping around trying to steal one anothers chip of cracker. Peck peck. “Yo! Lookit what Herbie’s got. I’m going to chase after Herbie and get his piece. OH. Herrrbiee..” They are hopping around in a horn of plenty, gobbling more food in a day than they have ever seen in their life and they want what Herbie’s got. I thought that was just in my neighborhood, but it looks like animal nature rather than just the human kind from my view from the porch.
We got energetic and re-inventoried our conex. We decided to build shelves to organize our parts. Turns out we were finding parts that weren’t on the inventory. We re-inventoried and organized it all on our new shelves. From now on I’ll do my own inventory when I arrive at a job. We found most of anything we never thought we had and a lot we will probably never need. Whilst we installed the shelves we got the idea to build a door to the tent. Now we’re legit. Got our own door. A door is like your face to the world. It’s what everyone looks at when they pass your abode. No longer do we need to be ashamed of our entry. No more peeking out the tent window and crawling out under the rear flap if we see someone who lives behind a better door passing. Now we have a door to be proud of. We have a fancy door knob and some Hajji carpet trim around our door. Those Yahoo System Operators in the next tent over will be hard pressed to beat that. They’ll try though. I caught one of them sneaking over some materials today.
“Hey. Whatcha got there”
“You’ll see”. Uh huh. Dead giveaway.
Maybe they are up to a coat of paint, maybe hang a light or something. We are going to decorate our walk-up with lights. Lets see em top that. That’s on my list to bring back from vacation. A string of Christmas Lights. Maybe a snowman and some egg nog. If they are satisfactorily submissive I may share some with them. With some nutmeg sprinkled on top. No mistletoe this year though. Most of us been out here too long and I’m way too good looking to risk that.
By
Chucky
The birds showed up along with the snakes shortly after winter solstice. The sun is low in the sky now, casting its long shadow. Even the ants are feeling brave. We’ve been busy. Put in a wood floor in the tent in anticipation of the coming rains. It has a pallet foundation with plywood decking. I salted the pallet foundation with mothballs to discourage the critters, and I think it is working with the lone exception of our resident kangaroo rat which has moved in. I think he’s nibbling the moth balls like candy. Some of them eat anything. It must be like living in a warehouse for him under there. His own air-conditioned space to hop around in. He doesn’t seem to be afraid of us at all. Acts like a member of the family. We will have to murder him in short order though. Don’t want a tent full of droppings to breathe in with the dust. I’ll bring back some large mouse traps with me from vacation.
The birds are eating well. Bread and cookies from the messhall each morning. They have taken to spending the majority of their time grab-assin. Birds should be grab-assin. Like kids on summer vacation. It’s a bummer working looking for food all the time. They should be flittin and fartn around. I’m their sugar daddy. They can do that. Just like my kids at home. I sure did when I was a kid and its good to be able to pass it on to everybody/bird I can. I usually drop their nuts and crackers, bread crumbs and all out by the back hoe ditch where the lizard lives. Last week I was out there reading, (my Raytheon ethics manual(yeah, right) when I heard them flitn and chirpin ‘n jumpin up and down. I never put any food over there. I looked over my left shoulder to see what all the commotion was about. Oh. They were raisin’ a fuss for no apparent reason, just a' hoppin and 'chirpin, about 10 of them. Grab-assin birds, I said to myself. Something at the bottom of my vision caught my attention. It was silver with black spots and slithering toward the porch. I jumped up, looking for something to hit it with. He skedaddled under the porch and the birds flitted back to their bread crums. Mission accomplished. They like me because I’m their friend or they were rescuing their golden goose. I prefer the former but suspect the latter.
We’ve enlarged the porch. I did a dope-deal for a brand new tarp that’s twice the size of our old one. With the cooler temps below 100 degrees F it’s nice to sit out and watch the birds flap and watermelons grow. We made a fly trap. Simplest of simple: tub of water. Its like the Roach Motel. They check in for a dip, but they don’t check out. Buzzing around harassing people, lost souls that they are, their little horrible selves gets thirsty. There is their tub of fresh water just for them. They get caught in the surface tension and can’t escape. They eventually drown or die of exhaustion, whatever. The last thing some of them see on their road back to Hell is my big happy face.
Our watermelons are grown from scavenged seeds from the chow hall. We germinate them in an empty water bottle. Wrap the seeds in a bit of tissue one layer thick and place them in a capped water bottle with a few drops of water, put the bottle in the shade and after a week cut the bottle in two and add a little dirt and water if necessary. If you like boiled watermelon seeds then leave the bottle in the sun. Chirp Chirp. There they go again; jumping around trying to steal one anothers chip of cracker. Peck peck. “Yo! Lookit what Herbie’s got. I’m going to chase after Herbie and get his piece. OH. Herrrbiee..” They are hopping around in a horn of plenty, gobbling more food in a day than they have ever seen in their life and they want what Herbie’s got. I thought that was just in my neighborhood, but it looks like animal nature rather than just the human kind from my view from the porch.
We got energetic and re-inventoried our conex. We decided to build shelves to organize our parts. Turns out we were finding parts that weren’t on the inventory. We re-inventoried and organized it all on our new shelves. From now on I’ll do my own inventory when I arrive at a job. We found most of anything we never thought we had and a lot we will probably never need. Whilst we installed the shelves we got the idea to build a door to the tent. Now we’re legit. Got our own door. A door is like your face to the world. It’s what everyone looks at when they pass your abode. No longer do we need to be ashamed of our entry. No more peeking out the tent window and crawling out under the rear flap if we see someone who lives behind a better door passing. Now we have a door to be proud of. We have a fancy door knob and some Hajji carpet trim around our door. Those Yahoo System Operators in the next tent over will be hard pressed to beat that. They’ll try though. I caught one of them sneaking over some materials today.
“Hey. Whatcha got there”
“You’ll see”. Uh huh. Dead giveaway.
Maybe they are up to a coat of paint, maybe hang a light or something. We are going to decorate our walk-up with lights. Lets see em top that. That’s on my list to bring back from vacation. A string of Christmas Lights. Maybe a snowman and some egg nog. If they are satisfactorily submissive I may share some with them. With some nutmeg sprinkled on top. No mistletoe this year though. Most of us been out here too long and I’m way too good looking to risk that.
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