"If You Build it, They Will Come"

My statement about keeping the poor people poor was intended to be advice for your ilk. I don't expect that my ilk will have to deal with the poor people because we won't have any in our group. The poor will flock to your group for the benefits but, as soon as they have anything, they will flock to our group because we will allow them to keep what they have. That's why I said that you should maintain your poor people in their poverty if you want to keep them in your group. Isn't that what you guys try to do now, reduce everybody to the lowest common denominator?

Traverse City built a homeless shelter some years ago, and the developer later came to Cheboygan to try to sell our city council on the idea. One of our councilors informed him that we don't have any homeless people in Cheboygan. His response was, "If you build it, they will come." (I'm not making this up!) Well, we didn't build it, and they didn't come. Meanwhile, Traverse City has expanded their shelter a couple of times and, last I heard, they were planning to build a whole new one.

The more I think about it, there is no way to keep someone out of this country if they want to get in badly enough. It might be better to work on some kind of forge proof national ID, something like the implanted chips that they already use for pets and farm animals. It's not a big deal, the animals don't seem to notice it, but you can scan them with a wand and painlessly access the information. Who could possibly object to something like that?

You know, that "earth, air, fire and water" theory wasn't that far off the beam. Oh, and you forgot about "ether" or, as the Greeks used to spell it, "Aether", which is anything that doesn't fit into any of the other four categories, including all the supernatural stuff that your ilk doesn't believe in. They do, however, believe in other invisible stuff like quarks and alternate universes. For most of us, knowledge of quarks and stuff like that is totally useless, we could live our whole lives without it and never miss it, but we deal with earth, air, fire, and water every day. As for the ether, that comes into play whenever a child asks you a question that you can't answer.

We have bobcats here, but they are seldom seen, being shy and reclusive creatures. I saw one once in my life while hunting rabbits in the thick swamp with my dogs. By the time I figured out what it was, it was gone. Somebody got a photo of a cougar once with a trail cam, and some researchers from the university spent all summer looking for it and only found a pile of its poop. (Your tax dollars at work!) There have been a few wolf sightings over the years, but they are believed to be transients just passing though. We used to have lots of black bears until they closed all the township dumps back in the 80s. There are still a few of them around but, like the bobcats, they are seldom seen. We also have muskrats, weasels, badgers, skunks, porcupines, raccoons, possums, woodchucks, foxes (both red and gray), and lots of different birds.

There are lots of causes of deer mortality around here, but I'm not sure which one is the most important. Newborn fawns are very vulnerable to almost any kind of predator. First time mothers don't always know how to care for and protect them, and it's not unusual for them to lose their fawns. Winter is a hard time for all deer, but especially the young ones less than a year old. Deep snow makes it hard for them to move around and they may expend more calories finding food than they get from eating it. Thawing and refreezing can form a crust on the snow, just strong enough to support dogs and coyotes, but not strong enough for the deer to stay on top. If you've ever walked through snow like that, you know how exhausting it can be. Herbivores have to eat more often than carnivores, and even a small dog can run a deer to exhaustion in a matter of hours. Of course, we hunters take our share, but I honestly don't know if more deer succumb to us or to natural causes.