Last night's little drama.

There I was, out in the geeeerage, workin' on my next project. Mindin' my own business and all, when Denise comes rushin' out, breathless. "You need to come in now," she said to me, eyes clinched. "You need to come in and take care of something."



Yep, projects (I digress). The Damascus, dirkish lookin' dude, er, dagger there at the bottom of the picture.



I think it's gonna look cool as hell when I get it done. My buddy Waters provided the antler. He says it's the only one he's ever found out there on his 20 acres. Once I get the spacers ready (there will be bands of black, white and maybe red between the layers), I'll glue it all together and begin grinding it down to where I want it.



I'm in the midst of getting the hole drilled correctly in the deer antler, and getting the wood (Osage Orange, aka Bois de ark) and Oosik layers spaced in there correctly, when one of my cats, Tiger, brought us home a present. Denise found it, alerted by another cat that was sniffing Tiger and growling at him. I went into the guest bedroom, where the cat door is located, and sure enough...



There was a little present waitin' for me. I went back to the garage and got my little shovel, picked him up, made a slight move like I was gonna go after Denise with it (that'll never stop bein' funny), and took it out to the work bench.



Poor little dude. I tell ya, life is HARD for the critters who live within' range of my little killers.



It warms my heart to know that my babies can still fend for themselves, if the have to. Like a proud daddy. Oh, yea, I tossed the unfortunate rodent in the field across the road from the house. It'll marinade out there in it's own juices, until a local Fox, or one of my little killers sniffs it out and has a snack.



By the way you can see the next project sittin' at the top of that picture up there. Again, Damascus. I have a thing for that stuff. This time a coffin handles bowie, with sheep horn handles.

Keepin' busy. Cheers!

The look on this critters face tells the story.

Too damn many indignities in a long life behind bars, me thinks. That's the last look you see before you get eaten. It says "I'm not a pet, mother fucker!" I love it! You can see the anger in his face. "Point that thing somewhere else or I'm gonna rip your face off!"

You can feel the primal fear, mixed with excitement in the man's voice. Here's REAL danger dude. Primal, from the DNA. Critters like these used to eat our kind every friggin' day, till we figured out how to form groups and sharpen sticks. Now we put them behind glass and shake our fists at them, not realizing we're sending out the obvious signals that the critters can't miss! Here's another example.



That kid is just inches of glass from being a chew toy. Too funny. But then I'm just a big softy. I always root for these critters, unless I want to eat one myself. But that's a whole 'notha story.

Over the space of hundreds of millions of years nature sorted out things beautifully and simply, putting everything in balance. Some critters are here on the planet to eat stuff and others exist simply so that the first group will have something to eat. We've evolved from one of the lowest forms of lunch meat into the highest form of predator, just so long as we've got a gun and/or magnificent beasts like these are behind very thick glass. These folks are getting a reality check. Again, I love it!