The 2026-2027 Season Log
January 1, 2026: So It Begins
The New Year has begun. I continue to be amazed at the zany antics of people who go to Times Square to watch the New Year's Eve ball drop. Reliable reports are that something on the order of a million people do this, arriving up to 24 hours in advance to wait in line to enter the "secure" area. Once they're in there's no place to sit, no place to take a pee, no place to do anything but stand waiting for the 10-second "countdown." You have to be young for that. And wear a diaper. Interspersed with images of the freezing revelers are acts by entertainers I never heard of. There's an unlimited market for bad music sung at top volume by performers whose synthetic enthusiasm far exceeds their talent. But what do I know? Those entertainers likely make more in a week than I ever earned in a year.
Mrs Outdoorsman watched the goings-on. She chose, of all channels, CNN. The "hosts" Anderson Cooper and some guy called "Andy" (I never got the last name, nor would I have recognized it if I had) stood there in the cold getting drunker and drunker on camera. Well, it's one way to keep warm. Cooper is a native New Yorker and remarked that he'd never been there on New Year's Eve except when he was working. He noted with some truth that no native New Yorker is crazy enough to go. Andy What's-His-Name, after the ball had dropped, immediately launched into a drunken diatribe against the outgoing Mayor, Eric Adams. Cooper, who wasn't quite as blotto as his compadre, was clearly upset about this carrying-on. He tried to shut Andy up but he was so far in his cups that he paid no attention, just kept ranting. This is what passes for journalism in the modern age.
New York City has probably just committed suicide by inaugurating a "Democratic Socialist" Mayor, an event that I think will delight the hearts of everyone at CNN, and surely Andy and Anderson were celebrating the event. I found it amusing that the swearing-in took place in the City Hall Subway Station, which was abandoned 80 years ago. It seems appropriate that this should be the case, since New York City seems finally to have abandoned common sense. Hizzoner's clever ideas are a smorgasbord of left-wing "priorities", the wish dream of every Marxist Wannabe. If he really thinks that the things he says he'll provide will be "free" he's dreaming. Of course he's not; what he means by "free" is for someone else to pay for them besides the recipients of his largesse, because he's not stupid (he is, after all, a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science). One of his truly absurd ideas is "city run grocery stores." I think perhaps any former resident of the Soviet Union can tell him how well that will work out.
As an avowed enemy of "elitism," he wants to destroy the New York special schools including BHSS, arguably the best high school in the world, with nine—count 'em, nine—Nobel Laureates in its roster of alumni as well as seven Pulitzer prize winners and many other honorees and distinguished individuals. He intends to lower BHSS's admission standards to the point where they're meaningless. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Well, it's a classic political strategy: promise the hoi polloi that they can have whatever they want without cost: it works every time until the bill comes due and the inevitable economic collapse takes place. As Margaret Thatcher wisely noted, "The trouble with Socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money."
I have started the process of getting my beater 1999 F-150 ready for another season of service. The bed was full of mud and debris, including a lot of twigs and acorn shells from my neighbor's enormous $@#%@#@!!! oak tree which produces huge numbers of acorns: the local rodents find the bed a congenial spot to sit, dine, and avoid the prowling neighborhood feral cats. "Cleaning things up" meant I had to deal with about a quarter-inch of muck and debris not only from squirrels, but also mud from various ventures in the field, deer hair, a substantial amount of deer blood, plus other unidentifiable crap. I removed everything from the bed, swept out much of it, then used the leaf blower to deal with the rest. I took out the bed mat, then made a trip to a local do-it-yourself car wash that has a high-pressure hose. For $2, in three minutes' work I had that bed as clean as a 26-year-old truck bed can get. Then I wrestled the mat back in—it's pretty heavy—and started organizing the cab.
I carry a lot of what might be called "emergency gear" in the cab. A folding shovel, a collection of ropes and bungee cords, a tarp or two, a basic set of tools, jumper cables, that sort of thing. It's a "standard" cab without much room behind the seats so things get shoved in anywhere they'll fit. I took everything out, sorted it into piles of "into the truck" "not into the truck" and "what the hell do I do with this" then put it neatly away. By the end of the season I'll need to do it again. The next issue is re-mounting the winch. Last year's final kill put paid to the board across the bed on which the winch was mounted (see my last entry for the 2025-2026 season for details). That needs to be replaced; the winch itself need to be re-wired. Tomorrow's projects.
January 3, 2026: A Thief In The Night
We have bird feeders all around the house, which of course means we feed other critters as well. This includes raccoons. Coons are partial to the suet we put out in little cages that are supposed to protect it; in the past few weeks we've found that those cages are susceptible to being ripped open. Raccoons, which are essentially mini-bears, are surprisingly strong. A twisted wire is no protection, they just merrily pry open the cage—essentially destroying it in the process—to get at the suet cake.
Finally I found something that works. I have several of those clips that go on the end of a dog's leash, to clip to the collar. Reasoning that if a dog can't break one of those a raccoon certainly couldn't, I put a couple of them on the suet cage. This fellow, who has been stealing our suet, was caught on my game camera last night:
He was if nothing, determined to get at the suet. He worked hard at it, climbing all over the cage, doing his damndest to get inside:
In the end he was sort of defeated. He didn't manage to get the cage open but he did manage to eat most of the suet, through the wires. Left an unholy, greasy mess, slathered all over the cage, and the clips:
It took him nearly 45 minutes. Finally, no doubt exhausted by his heroic suet-stealing antics, he resigned himself to eating the birdseed. He worked for his supper, I'll give him that much.
Rehabbing The Winch
Yesterday I took the truck through a car wash, thence to Lowe's to get a new board for the winch mount. No more wimpy 5/4 boards for me! This time I installed a 2X10 treated board across the bed, holding it down not only with posts in the stake holes but with a couple of toggle bolts to anchor it to the bed rails. In the fullness of time I will add some sheet metal screws to anchor it to the box along its long edge even more firmly. The winch is repaired and remounted, and no deer is going to rip it loose next season.
The next step is to build a new ramp, but there is time and to spare for that to be done.
January 4, 2026: Screwed
No, not like that. Today I went to the hardware store, bought half a dozen 3" sheet metal screws, and anchored the back edge of the 2x10 to the truck box. No deer is going to dismount that winch now.
January 5, 2026: Ramped Up
Finished the truck job this morning: built a new ramp using a couple of treated 2x2's and a sheet of plywood I had in the garage. As the old saying has it, "With God and a lot of scrap lumber, all things are possible."