August Miscellany

The Travers Stakes, also known as the Mid-Summer Derby, will be run on Saturday, the 27th.  Preakness winner Shackleford will be running in it, after his loss (by a head) in the Whitney Invitational to Coil.  ....  Horses are gearing up for the Breeders Cup races, which will be run on November 4 and 5 at Churchill Downs.  Next year, the Breeders Cup races will take place at Santa Anita.  ....  My kits are enjoying the fact that I'm home for 5 hours each day with them.  We'll all be glad when I start sleeping at home again, though.  ....  I really do have to visit the library - I've read all of my new books, and yesterday evening, I read half of the original printing (1855) of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.  Of course, Alexy does have quite a few old tomes available for perusal - including first editions of all of Frances Hodgson Burnett's books, and her father's travel books for each country in South America.  This morning, I ate my breakfast while paging through the Guide to Britain's Birds - I had a blast seeing what a chough looked like!  ....  The Chandlers' lost one of the older Rhode Island Red hens yesterday - I'm afraid that Nancy got squashed by Sunbeam, and that's what caused her death.  The goats and adult chickens share the same fenced enclosure, and sometimes Sunbeam runs and leaps like a rocket through the pen - and if anything is in her way, too bad - she lands where she lands, and a 35-pound goat leaping down from the top of a shed can do serious injury.  (MeyToch does play and leap, but his legs are nowhere near as long as Sunbeam's and he doesn't jump up onto things the way she can. - He's short and compact, like me.) Nancy was fine yesterday morning, but when the Chandlers returned from Texas, she was lying inside the coop, in one of the nest boxes, and was dead within the hour.  So sad.  ....  And I surprised Victor on Tuesday.  He and Xena had caught a squirrel and killed it.  I heard them squabbling, and stepped out see what was happening, and Xena had the squirrel in her mouth while Victor was giving her some pretty sharp nips, trying to steal it back.  When Xena saw me, she dropped the body and came for love and petting.  Victor immediately grabbed the squirrel, and started growling and slinging his head.  I stepped over and told him, "Drop it, Victor!"  He continued to growl, but stopped his head shakes.  I told him again to drop it, and he reluctantly did.  When I reached over to grab the squirrel by the tail, he started to jerk towards me - as if he were going to fight over who had the right to the body. I continued my reach in, while keeping eye contact with Victor.  His lips were writhing over his teeth, but he wasn't moving otherwise.  So, as I grasped the tail, and my face was at his eye-level, I growled and bared my teeth and said, "Mine!"  Victor sat back on his haunches and looked extremely surprised.  He and Xena then watched as I put the squirrel into a plastic bag and then placed him in the trash can (on the other side of the fence).  They searched the back yard for that squirrel for another 45 minutes.....   Well, Aiden's team lost their fourth game at the Southwest Regional Little League playoffs, but they made it further than any other Colorado team in the history of the Little League, and that's something to be proud of.  Ty still had paint on his face this morning, from having a full-face and chest and back painted for his brother's game on Tuesday.  Those Chandler boys are super kids.  .....  Today is the first Denver Broncos football game (pre-season), and we play at the Dallas Cowboys.  All the talk is about the quarterback position - Kyle Orton has demonstrated his knowledge of the current system, and has won the starting position.  I like Kyle.  He is a very good player, has experience, and makes good calls - but he stalls in the red zone.  He can move a team up and down the field with ease, but get him inside the 20 yard line, and he stops cold.  The current talk is that the coaches will use Tim Tebow as the "red zone guy."  I like Tim, too.  There are all sorts of pros and cons regarding the Orton-Tebow situation  -  I just want to be able to win some games!  Kick-off is at 6:30 (MDT) this evening, or 8:30 on the east coast.....  Go, Orange and Blue!