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Echoes from the

Loafers’ Club Meeting

You should come over tomorrow. We’re having Himalayan rabbit stew.

What’s a Himalayan rabbit?

I found him a layin’ on the road.

Driving by Bruce’s drive

I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his drive, thoughts occur to me. I have volunteered to help with tornado cleanups. A fellow helper said he’d seen where a tornado had embedded an oat straw into a telephone pole. I said I’d seen a chicken blown into a pop bottle without losing its life or even bending a feather. My story might have been a slight exaggeration.

If time passes quickly when you’re having fun, we must have had fun. I applied to Texas A&M. I was accepted at a Texas A&W. I went to a different institution of higher learning. In a monumental lapse of judgment, a high school classmate agreed to be my college roommate. We covered things in ketchup until I learned he could cook. He died while watching a high school hockey game on TV. If he had survived that, I’m sure he’d have cracked wise about that’s what happens when someone born in Hartland, Minnesota, watches hockey. I wish I could laugh about that.

I’ve learned

No one has ever been in an empty room.

Roy Rogers had a quick Trigger.

Only three things are certain: death, taxes and that politicians blame everyone except themselves.

A  good sledgehammer may be the last tool you’ll ever need.

I like to read a newspaper when I’m eating alone. It’s my newsfeed.

I remember getting my first pine tree air freshener for a car. There was no longer a need to hang an unwashed sweat sock from the mirror to make my Ford smell better.

I saw a beached whale on the shore of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We were warned by an official “Leave that whale alone” guy not to move the body. Who could get that close to the dead beast without being overwhelmed by the smell?

Bad jokes department

The doctor said, “Don’t worry, Michael. Everything is going to be OK.”  I said, “I’m not Michael.” The doctor replied, “I know. I am.”

I know someone who is possessed by an owl. Who?

If I use my trusty binoculars and read their lips correctly, my neighbors think I’m nosey.

What goes up the hill, down the hill, and yet stands still? A road.

Do you want a box for your leftovers? No, but I’ll arm wrestle you for it.

What did the turkey say to the turkey hunter? Quack, quack, quack.

Why aren’t the Colgate University athletic teams nicknamed The Toothpastes?

Nature notes

A robin sang, “cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up.” It was a good morning. The rain had fallen. It rarely ascends. I wondered what a wet squirrel smelled like as I watched one move dexterously through the wet trees like a mini-Tarzan without a vine to swing on.

The trumpeter swan was a widespread and common breeder throughout Minnesota until the mid-1800s, when it became over-hunted. The last record of a wild breeding population in Minnesota was from  1885, and the trumpeter was declared extirpated in the state by the mid-1900s. Its reintroduction efforts began in 1966 and continued through 2012. It’s grand to have the big white birds back. A Breeding Trumpeter Swan Survey conducted in 2022 estimated the statewide population at 51,860 swans. Trumpeter swans are named for their loud, resonant call, often described as sounding like a trumpet, bugle or French horn. Tundra swans, once called whistling swans, nest in the Arctic of northern Canada and Alaska. Lewis and Clark provided the first written description of tundra swans. The birds’ whistle-like calls prompted Meriwether Lewis to dub them “whistling swans.” Adult male swans are called cobs, adult females are pens, and the young swans are cygnets. I hear the collective nouns flock or bevy used most often. A herd of swans seems to fit.

Starlings develop yellow bills during the breeding season, with the base of the lower mandible is blue in males and pink in females. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “A birdie with a yellow bill Hopped upon my window sill, Cocked his shining eye and said: ‘Ain’t you ‘shamed, you sleepy-head!’” Clellan Card played Axel on “Axel and His Dog,” a popular children’s show and said, “A birdie with a yellow bill Hopped upon my window sill, Cocked his shining eye and said, ‘What’s that in the road…ahead?’” 

Meeting adjourned

Anthony D’Angelo wrote, “Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.”