The Squamidian Report – May 28 / 16
Issue #731
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Its funny what little kids understand and don't understand. They tend
to think they've got the world figured out but there are definitely
some gaps in their knowledge. Kyra is fascinated by volcanos and lava.
I don't know where she even heard of those kind of things but she is.
She's not afraid of them, just fascinated. Anyway, I got conscripted
into playing with here as she played with her pig family. The pigs are
little plastic toys that are the commercial spin-off from some kid's TV
program. At one point Kyra pulled a piece of red paper over the papa
pig and declared that he had been covered with lava. I had been
'instructed' to do the talking for the papa pig and so I, meaning the
papa gig, said “oink, oink, I smell bacon”. To which Kyra replied, “I
like bacon too”. She had not made the connection between a pig being
roasted by lava and bacon. I guess she's got a few more years of
innocence before the realities of the world set in.
And then there is the fact that the house reeks of perfume. 'The Wife'
had told her that the little spray bottle she had was monster spray and
a little bit of it would keep all the imaginary monsters away. Well,
like I said, the house now reeks of perfume. Kyra emptied half the
bottle in an endeavor to eradicate the world of monsters.
And then there are other family members who don't understand things. We
had some thunderstorms roll through the other evening and poor Willow
shivered with fear none stop for half an hour. She could hear the
thunder before we could and started to shake. As it grew louder and
more constant her shaking increased to the point she was blurry. For
some reason that kind of thing bothers her more now than it used to
bother her. Same with any loud noise, it seems to scare her much more
than in the past. Part of getting old I presume.
Of course there are lots of things I don't understand either. Like, why
when you change dentist do they insist on basically starting over? They
have access to all of your files yet they put you through all the
X-rays and digging and poking that shouldn't be needed if they would
just look at those old files. But then they couldn't bill for all that
poking and prodding so perhaps I do understand it. Our old dentist left
town. He was close to retirement age and has several practices in the
city and wanted to scale back a bit. Get it? 'scale back' ?? Ok, dumb
joke but we ended up needing to find a new dentist which turned out to
be easy because there are several new, young dental practices in town
and they are all up to date with methods and equipment as opposed to
the old kind who are 30 years behind the times.
And, I don't understand how birds know when you've just washed your
motorcycle. I hadn't bothered to wash the old Harley all spring. I've
ridden through enough rain and showers to make it dirty but it never
looked THAT dirty to gilt me into washing it until early this week when
I gave in and tackled the job. Its a big job. Anyway, with my bike all
shinny and clean I rode down to Horseshoe Bay for the usual Tuesday
evening get-together. I made sure to not park under any power lines or
poles because the local birds are notorious for targeting anything that
might be under the places they like to sit. But, somehow, one of them
successfully manage to do a fly-by pooping and achieved some pretty
good hits, all over my saddle bags and top bag. Bummer, so to speak. OH
well, now the bike is no longer so shinny and therefore won't likely be
so tempting a target.
doug
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THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
I’m writing this one a little late in the evening so if it seems I’m a tad off kilter this week, please forgive me!
When I was a kid about 10 years old or even a little less, my friends
from Floyd St and I took a Saturday afternoon hike down to Bridgeport
to what was then “The Casino” on Lancaster St. We used to trek through
their parking lot and climb down the bank behind the building to the
Grand River and play along the shore. There were loads of interesting
things to do on the Grand. One of the many fun things we did was to
catch huge Carp and then we’d take them up to the old house on the
opposite side of the street to the Casino and we’d sell them for a
quarter each to an old gentleman known as The General. He and his
mother would eat the carp and burry the remains in their garden for
fertilizer. Some of the other fun activities along the Grand were as
much fun but not quite as profitable. One of our favourite things to do
was to stand on top of the 4’ diameter culvert that exited from the
city sewer system into the river. In those days back in the 50’s,
Kitchener/Waterloo had no such thing as a sewage treatment plant and
the raw sewage just gushed out of that huge culvert directly into the
Grand River. We used to sit or stand on top of the culvert and see
which one of us could hit the most turds with the stones we picked up
along the riverbank. It was great fun until one of us fell in! It was
inevitable that someone would at least get a soaker every time we
visited the river. I remember the day when it hit close to home! My big
(and only) brother Brent went along one hot sunny summer day and was
showing off by jumping from the riverbank out over the water to a huge
rock that was mostly submerged in the yucky water about 20 feet
downstream of the sewage culvert. He succeeded in jumping and landing
on the rock once as well as made it back to shore. One of the
neighbourhood guys who happened to be the oldest of the gang dared him
to do it a second time! His name was Frank Shuttleworth and he was
indeed a tough guy! Not wanting to look like a sissy when dared by the
toughie of the gang, Brent lined up for a second try at the leap across
to “Turd River Rock”. Just as he leaped from shore, Frank give him a
bit of a nudge in the ribs and he went off course and landed smack dab
in the brown stinky fast flowing water between shore and “The Rock”! We
all laughed like crazy as he floundered in the guck and hollered for
someone to “Save Me! Save Me!….”. After we all realized he might just
be in trouble, Frank hollered, “Stand up you dummy!” and Brent finally
regained his footing and stood up in the waste deep stinky water!
Needless to say, he was very embarrassed and very stinky for the walk
home. The poor guy suffered the barbs poked at him for the rest of the
summer over that incident. Needless to say, he was the talk of the
neighbourhood for months to come.
One of the other cool things we did down at
the Grand was to catch huge prehistoric looking Snapping Turtles in
home made nets we made from potato sacks and binder twine. One summer
we caught the biggest damned turtle I’ve ever seen and it took all 5 of
us to haul him up on shore. We used to tie twine to the four corners of
our “net” that was about 4’x4’ in size and then we’d weigh it down with
a rock on each corner in the shallowest part we could wade into near
shore. One of us would keep chicken scraps from the supper of the
previous night. The scraps would be tied with string to the center of
the “net” and we’d wait for a turtle to come for the scraps. Four kids
hanging onto the twine of each corner would all yank the “net” ashore
when we spotted a turtle approaching the scraps. This particular time,
we captured what must have been the grand daddy of all Snappers. Man
was it huge! It was all we could do to climb back up the 30-foot high
bank behind the Casino and not let go of the twine holding the “net”
securing the Snapper! Once we arrived at the parking lot up top, we
heaved the monster turtle net and all onto our wagon! He was so large
his feet were hanging over the sides of the wagon and when he stretched
out his legs he could almost touch the ground. He of course was
struggling to get out of the burlap “net” but we had it tied pretty
tightly.
We were a good half hour or more from Floyd St so it was quite a trek!
Once we got home, and word spread, every kid brought his brothers and
sisters as well as their parents out to our place at 37 Floyd to view
and take pictures of our “Monster”! We even managed to get a picture of
the Huge Snapper and most of the neighbourhood kids into The Record
news paper that came out on the following Monday. Once the excitement
had died down, a couple of the fathers suggested “Strongly” that a
Washtub in our back yard was no place for a wild and very large monster
from The Grand River. So my dad and another neighbourhood dad
volunteered to take “Snappy” back to one of the local ponds for
release. I guess they didn’t want to climb down the bank behind the
Casino so the pond was the next best place! At the time, there was a
large pond and swampy area just off Bridgeport Rd where the Expressway
Interchange exists over Bridgeport Rd today. We used to hang around
that pond a lot too so we figured we could visit “Snappy” there if we
helped Dad release him there! We all piled into a couple of the dad’s
cars along with “Snappy” in a washtub in the trunk of my dad’s ’56
Buick and headed for the pond! We all said goodbye to the huge snapping
turtle and dad tilted up the washtub. We watched and cheered as
“Snappy” swam away and as huge as he was, we never did see him again on
our visits to the pond that summer. I guess he might have hid when he
heard us coming! LOL!
I don’t remember the measurements that my dad took across “Snappy’s”
shell or the thickness of him from back to belly but at a guess, I’d
say he was at least 24” across from side to side and likely around 10”
thick! Like I said, he was HUGE!
Funny but what brought this to mind this evening is the trip that
Carole and I made to Elora to have dinner at the Cansio and play a few
slots while there! On the drive home, we were crossing a bridge in the
road as we entered Winterbourne and something caught my eye as our
headlights lit up the bridge. I stopped and turned around to see what I
thought might be a turtle laying on the side of the road, about half
way across the bridge. Carole thought it was just a road kill skunk or
something similar. I turned around to shine my headlights on what
turned out to be another monster snapping turtle! It wasn’t nearly as
large as “Snappy” but it was a big one, about the size of the steering
wheel in the Jeep. He had been struck by a vehicle across the back edge
of his shell. His hind legs looked a little damaged but his shell
wasn’t broken. I had a cardboard box about the size of a large pizza
box but about 4 times as thick in the back of the Jeep. I figured I
might be able to scoop him into it and return him to the pond that
passed under the bridge. Just as I got out the box, two good Samaritans
came walking down to the car to see if we were having car trouble. They
said they were having a BBQ up the street and thought we were having
car problems. One of the two gentlemen took the box as I set it in
front of the large turtle and he pulled it under the head and front end
of the turtle. He managed to get the whole turtle into the box. He then
lifted it over the guardrail at the side of the road and slid the
turtle down the embankment and back towards the small river below! He
said that the turtle scurried fairly well as he released it so with
that in mind, he figured it might just be ok after all!
I thanked the gentlemen for their kind assistance and we
drove on our way happy in the thought that we helped save the life of
one of Mother Nature’s precious and quite rare creatures!
It’s funny when you think of it, tonight’s happening contained a Casino
and a Snapping Turtle and so did the 57 year old story I related to you
all in today’s Ontarion!
That’s it for this week folks!
Thanks for tuning in and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!
Bye for now … Greg
PS: Something To Think About>
Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance!
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Have a good one..
the doug
The Fine Print!
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