Another pack rat caper.

Okay... let's get silly.

When most folks think "rat", they recoil in horror, disgust, or perhaps even fear. That came about because of city rats. City rats live in sewers, garbage dumps and other unsavory places.

Country rats are entirely different. I live on the Chihuahuan desert, a high desert in America's Southwest. Elevation in the valleys is around 4,300 feet. It soars a mile higher on mountain tops. Our average annual rainfall is about seven inches. You'd think no plants could live on that little water, but our desert supports a surprisingly large number of plants... and animals!

We have the usual lizards and snakes. And, larger mammals like elk and deer, plus coyotes, foxes, skunks, jack rabbits, cottontails, and little mammals like kangaroo mice, pack rats and many more.

Pack rats are clean little creatures who live on seeds, cactus fruit, roots, and other reasonable things. They love grain, grown and harvested by humans. Putting bird seed on the ground to attract quail is a dinner bell for pack rats.

If they invade your yard, you will rarely see them. What you will see is little piles of dirt where they have dug a tunnel entrance. Pack rats are tunnel experts. They dig a deep tunnel, then dig vertical shafts with pockets to provide a dry spot if it rains and water runs into the tunnel. If you see a burrow entrance on one side of the yard and another on the other side, it does not always mean two groups. It more than likely means two entrances to one extensive network of tunnels.

I have no particular animosity for pack rats, but I buy bird seed to attract quail, and I consider the rats thieves. So, I keep a live trap and when I catch a rat, I transport him to the edge of town, where he belongs, and set him free.

The other day I trapped a beautiful adult rat. I lured him into my live trap with pieces of apple. If he had been smart he would have realized there are no apple trees around and could have known something was amiss. But he was curious about the apple and got himself caught.

I asked my wife if she would like to ride along when I took him on his freedom ride and she agreed. I placed the caged rat in the back of my Jeep Cherokee and called to my wife to go. Before letting her in the Jeep, I first took a long look at the trap and told her I wanted to make certain the rat was still secure in the trap before I let her enter. Thus, I set her up to be wary.

As I started the drive, she kept glancing back at the trap to be sure it was still occupied. After a few blocks she regained confidence in the steel cage and relaxed. Even at 80 years of age, I still have a little country boy somewhere inside me. So, when she turned her eyes to the side window, I grabbed her by the shoulder.

It was beautiful. She jumped nearly out of her seat and let out a scream, but instantly knew what was up. Her scream turned to unaccustomed profanity and she began to pound me on the arm. I haven't laughed so hard in years.

We continued to the edge of town where our prisoner was pardoned and released.

This evening as she was cooking dinner I wandered through the kitchen. She said, "I will get you for the rat. Don't know when or where, but I will get you."

On a day when you have seen so much bad news in the media, when you realize you have lost half of your retirement in the so-called financial crisis, when everything looks so dark, nature cheers you up with a furry little critter called a pack rat.

I love it!

If you watched Fox News Channel today (and were not completely numbed by stiumlus package talk) you heard a lot about Mexico. I am mad as hell about that news. I live about 45 miles from Ciudad Juarez - the Mexican city named for the nation's first "Indian" (not Spanish, not French) president, Benito Pablo Juarez.

We used to visit Ciudad Juarez at least once a month. Lots of poverty in Juarez, but I loved the people there. Friendly, talented. Always welcoming. I used to buy all of my medicine in Juarez (the same stuff I could buy at my local Walgreens for two or three times the price.) And my Tequila! We went to Juarez to dine - all kinds of great food, really low prices. I have bought a lot of merchandise in Juarez. Very nice leather goods.

Ciudad Jaurez, Chihuahua, Mexico and El Paso, Texas, U.S.A., are essentially one city. Geographically, of course, but socially as well. Many families have members living on both sides. Merchants on both sides depend on shoppers from the other side.

Suddenly Juarez is off limits to us. The problem is a murdering rampage by drug cartels - 207 people have been murdered in Jaurez so far in 2009! That's just five weeks, friends.

Also on Fox News today we heard a lot of people talking about Michael Phelps. Charles Krauthammer and Juan Williams, among others, talked about the published photos of Michael using marijuana. Those two opined that he was just a kid and should be punished no more.

Let me tell you something, people. A little dry cannabis wasn't the only thing fueled by that contraption Michael was sucking. All those deaths in Juarez - Mexicans and Americans - are the direct result of America's insatiable appetite for illegal drugs.

Using drugs is not funny! It is damned serious. It is the root cause of thousands of killings - brutal, bloody killings.

Today I learned that marijuana is not the only substance being trafficked by the Mexican drug cartels. Today, officials reported confiscating vials of a drug used in breeding horses. It is being sold on U.S. streets as a date-rape drug. How would you like your daughter to accept a coke from a date, only to end up completely helpless as some creep helps himself to her body. The drug cartels can afford to peddle this stuff because their operations are supported by the sale of marijuana.

Don't ever smile at me and say "You didn't inhale." If you spent 10¢ on marijuiana, you directly participated in the deaths of people - many of them innocent of any participation in the drug trade.

And you may well be to blame for the coming invasion of U.S. soil by thousands of frightened Mexicans, running for their lives.

Tell me you smoke a little marijuana and you may well think you have walked into an 80-year-old buzz saw with a serious chip on his shoulder.

Professional Help For Cheaters!

The couple in the commercial smiles at the camera as the woman croons, "We owed the IRS $150,000 and settled for $17,000."

The matronly woman in the expensive electric propelled chair folds her laundry as she brags "I got my power chair and it didn't cost me a penny out of pocket."

The on-camera spokesman advises, "If you owe $10,000, $20,000 or more in credit card debt, we'll show you how to settle for a fraction of what you owe."

Or words to that effect. Am I the only one who gets mad at these things?

We pay a very competent CPA to compute our taxes. Often he advises of some provision in the law that can save us money. But always we pay what he says we owe... in full and on time. A couple of times we have gotten ourselve in a bind. We asked the IRS for the opportunity to pay in installments. They granted that request and we paid the total amount due on the agreed timetable... plus interest.

We use credit cards. Sure beats carrying around a pocketful of cash and is a great way to account for your purchases. When our credit card bills come in the mail, we pay them. If we feel we can get a better deal from a different bank, we may negotiate. But when we get the bills, we pay them.

We drive old cars. We use old technology. But we pay our own way. It is what we have been taught is the right thing to do.

When we see someone bragging that they got out of paying taxes or that they screwed the credit card companies, or they got Medicare to buy goodies for them, it seems that maybe we carried some of their tax burden for them, or that we, along with the banks and Medicare, are the ones getting screwed.

When we see someone making their living helping those cheats, we just get mad.

How about you?