The perils of rural New Mexico living

I just got back from taking our big dog, Babe, to the vet. This is his second trip due to a corneal laceration from having his head down in the grass and brush snooping around. Having spent his whole life on St. Augustine manicured to 3", I guess he just doesn't know how to avoid grass injuries. Hopefully, he will learn before he puts an eye out.

While I was there, I queried the vet, a lifelong citizen of Capitan, NM, and ranch raised, on what kinds of things we need to watch out for here regarding our dogs. Her answers were a little disturbing. When the deer start fawning, they will attack a dog with little provocation. She said she sees lots of dogs, particularly small ones, that have been badly stomped by deer and a screaming, yelling, arm-waving human apparently won't phase them (the deer) much. Deer are about like rabbits (or some people consider them to be more like rats) around here and not too afraid of people. They graze all around our house every day and we see them grazing in yards all over town. 

The mountain lions and bear have gotten so tame and accustomed to people that they will come right up on your porch to look for food. Food includes fat wiener dogs or cats that aren't fast enough to get away. She said we should put flood lights in the area where we let our dogs out at night--the bright light usually keeps the bears and mountain lions away. (Thankfully, the bears just come down in summer.) Right now, there is a mountain lion in the area that is coming right up on people's porches and snatching their cats. Local authorities are trying to hunt him down before he decides to snatch a kid. 

We also have skunks and porcupines, which our dogs won't know anything about. My old dog, Bashful, has congestive heart failure and apparently the change in altitude means a change in medication. He has been a little droopy, so he will be the next one to the vet. On the flip side, the local ticks aren't the kind that carry Lyme disease and we don't have to dose for heartworm in the winter months. Mountain life is going to take some adjusting for both quadrupeds and bipeds, I think. Now I really do have something to fear in the dark.

Idea for local phone books

This is what I think we need. A website entitled "mylocalphonebook.com". For each city, you would have "mylocalphonebook.com/richmond-tx/". Everything for that city would then fall under that heading. You could have commercial listings, personal listings, community areas for clubs and organizations, city and government offices--everything in one spot and maintained so it is always up-to-date, keyword searchable, linked to mapping sites like Google Maps or Google Earth. People could write reviews or recommendations for local businesses, rate services--this needs more thought to flesh it out, but I think this is what we should do to get completely away from paper phone books that are usually out of date and never seem to have exactly what you are looking for.

My two cents worth for the day.

Phone Book Rant

Seven phone books in six months. (Make that TEN-I just opened my front door and found three more on the step--what a waste!)??? We have lived in this house six months and so far have received seven (now ten) phone books--greater Houston area, Yellowbook, YPOne, the Real Yellow Pages, etc. Every time I turn around, I see another phone book wrapped in plastic out in the drive way. The reality is that I rarely ever use a phone book anymore. I look online for everything. I think we should have an option, when we have our phones installed, that we can request NOT to receive phone books. 

Think about how much is wasted on phone books...paper and ink to print them, plastic to wrap them, gas to deliver them. Granted, somebody has a paid job dropping them off and I wouldn't want to take anyone's job away, but perhaps that job could instead be a position for a person to update an online phone book...one that is always current and easily searchable, lets me comment on and rate local businesses, gives me a list of the most highly rated local businesses for different categories, etc. Instead of web sites that are just electronic versions of paper books, let's reverse that. Make the electronic versions the best and most recent and nix the paper versions altogether unless a person specifically requests one when they get their phones. If anyone knows of such a service, please share!!

I have found one good use for the big Houston phone books, however. They are great for pressing flowers.