My Uncle Mel told me this bear story…
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Category Archives: Animals
My Uncle Mel never trusted chimps. He had many stories about trainers and others killed and injured by these apes. When I met Cheetah, the original Tarzan chimp, he was in his sixties, living with his trainer in the Simi foothills. He was so powerful, when he patted me on the head, I thought he cracked some of my neck vertebrae (Cheetah is still alive in an ape rescue in San Diego. He’s eighty.) My Uncle Mel told me of a chimp that a railroad roustabout had given a bottle of beer to while their circus train was on a siding between cities. This chimp was a well known performer, kept on a tiny leash for appearance sake. Another man gives the chimp a bottle of beer full or urine for a joke. The chimp killed the man by breaking his back, backwards, then, destroyed two more workers. When the yard men came to shoot him, he stood with an odd look on his face and took the shots.
On a repair job off Hollywood Blvd., I put a tag on the chain link gate saying I tried to do the repair, but, the dog had the gate covered. Now, this was the part of the Blvd. near Laurel cyn. Where all the old stars estates begin…As I turn to jump in my Pac Bell truck, this long haired mafia looking dude, shouts at me to come back. He’s also letting the dog out of said gate as he keeps talking to me. I shit my pants. TWICE, when that dog came at me. Oh, it was friendly, HOW WOULD I KNOW. He had growled like crazy as I shook the gate and yelled towards the house. I end up stooping down and petting the big lug. He was at least two hundred pounds. Half Rottweiler, half St. Bernard. Real sloppy mouth, but a neat dog. I feel some odd bumps as I pet him. The owner filled me in. His dog carried around THREE 45. cal slugs. From the five that hit him. AND HE LIVED!!! Neighbor shot him through their common back fence while drugged out…
I’m helping my pal, Phil Townsend, on a telephone install for a jewelry store on Sunset Blvd., just before the border of Beverly Hills. I usually don’t do installation, but, repair was slow, so, dispatch sent me to help Phil knock out this phone system swap. All the wire was in place, it was to be a piece of cake…Phil meets me at the security buzz in. Its a glass anti room to hold back robbers. Right. These jewelry guys also had a big German Shepherd in the rear of the store you accessed through a secondary buzzer. This dog was supposed to be locked in a storage room while we did the install. It got out, just after I arrived. It went right for Phil, sitting on a plastic milk crate, wiring jacks behind the main glass counter. It bit him right in the crotch. Phil smacked the dog on its head with a ten button call director, making it let loose and run down a hallway behind us…Phil kept his jewels, and, picked up a nice check for ten grand later…
Not far from our new ranch is, ‘The Monolith’. Quite a structure. Across the train tracks are rolling meadows of green grass. Lots of cows and horses graze. Leo wondered why no one rode the horses. I say, “Because they’re out to pasture, sort of retired!” He thought it was a waste of money. I told him my Napoleon story…After Waterloo, the General abandoned his army. Even to this day, frozen remnants are found in mass graves, piled where they fell, trying to escape the Russians. Look it up. Anyhow, all the horses and mules were also abandoned by the retreating army. No feed. No water in the freezing wind. On the other hand, not so the English horses. The English are quite different then any other people when it comes to animals. A friend of mine once moved to a town near London to work for a foreign phone company. He had a boxer with cropped ears. When he went to walk it, he was spit on for mutilating it…back to the horses…With so many abandoned animals, a Belgiun man started buying them up all over Europe for dog food. When he ran out, he took a ship to the British Isles after hearing about all their pastured war horses on vast estates. In Scotland, at one such place, he informs an old one legged caretaker that, “I’ll take all these worthless beasts off your hands for a fair price!” The old cavalryman calls for another caretaker named Mc Laughlin, “Hey, be so kind as to get you bugle!” At this, Mc Laughlin smiled and nodded while tapping out his pipe. Now at the edge of a broad lawn stretching for hundreds of acres, he looked out upon dottings of horses at graze, as far as you could see. He looked at his companion. The old one legged caretaker said quietly, “Blow assembly!” At the sound of the call, every horse perked its ears, then, trotted to a flat meadow, tossing their heads as they formed a long line. Not a man near them…The old caretaker then at almost a whisper, “Call the advance!” At the sound of the bugle, every horse snapped to attention and came forward. All as one. Hundreds stepped as if of one mind. “Now sweep ’em left”, the bugle brought them left. “Now, sweep them right!” As they came right, just in front of the old man, he said a louder, “Give ’em the charge lad!! At the sound of the charge, every horse leaped as if hit by lightening. The sound of their hoofs shook the very ground. “Now sound recall!” As the horses slowed, then broke up, the old one legged man spat tobacco on the Belgians shirt, then said, “Worthless? Get your ass off my land!”
The War Against the Ants
Holy shit, all true. My pal, Dave Sequera, brings some huge old growth cedar logs down from Northern California. Wants to store them at my Acton place. Big bastards. four foot high, twelve foot lengths. Carved looking bark. Smelled wonderful. It was also winter. In the spring, I’m looking at my new barn and something catches my eye. A black line going up one side of it. On closer inspection, I see that its a conga line of large, ebony black ants. Big ones I’d never seen on my property before. I hit the plywood siding with the butt of my steel framing hammer to shake them up. About twenty resonated off the siding, right onto me. Every bite and sting was worse then the last. I slap at myself and run for the mules trough. Welts the size of quarters welled up. The war had begun…Later, I track some or their scouts back to one of the huge log rounds. I pop off some of the thick bark to get a better look underneath. Out of hundreds of perfectly round apertures pop hundreds of warrior ants. Not panicky. Ready to kick some ass. They stood stock still in little units, waving their antennae and making their mandibles open and close in a sort of cadence. I was transfixed at how brash and brazen they were. Didn’t these pricks know the giant could crush them at any moment? Some blow torch stings on my ankles brings me back to reality. Their pals had come out of the hay covered corral and come inside my pants while I was busy inspecting the other guys. Once again, I run. Right for the hardware store and some ant poison. I sprayed those logs with one of those pump spray deals from one end to the other. Adios little ass holes. I then moved the logs down below, away from the barn…War has just been won…Saturday morning. The night before, my freshly installed power on and off switch mounted by my water bed by Pixley, straighten out a little problem I had been having with Townsend, King of all Morons. He lived in the Viking house for 18 years. He rode a loud Harley and did lots of drugs. At night, on speed, he would start doing his vacuuming at four am. With the new shut off to his house next to my pillow, I just rolled over, hit the switch. Instant quiet. Well, for a minute, then, the crying and begging started. “I’ll be quiet dude. Come on, give me some power man, I can’t on line gamble!” Life was sweet. To put in that switch, a conduit had been put through my wall. I hadn’t put putty into the extra hole space yet. As I go to roll out of my water bed, I’m looking eye to eye with five big, black ants on my bed railing. Huh? I raise my hand to smack them, they open their big jagged mandibles and brace themselves…Scary. Not afraid…I Windex the patrol of ants then paper towel them into oblivion. I shower, then head for the wood rounds. My sons Noah and Ty tag along. We use steel bars and my Power Wagon to roll the logs to inspect them. HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of pissed off ants are boiling out of the very first log we rolled. We actually ran for our lives. Army ants have nothing on these guys. The poison seemed to do zero to the colony. We head for Barnes and Noble for ant books. The library? Don’t even go there. Not with my kids banned for life. I try all kinds of things. Nothing works. I end up telling Dave to get the logs out off my property. I was to get one log for storing them. I gave up that idea. Just get ’em gone. After the logs were down the road, we finally high-fived each other. Game over…They had queens popping out new colonies all over my entire property. They didn’t need those logs any more. I ended up paying a pro, eleven hundred bucks to exterminate their sorry ant asses. Even with that, we found one more colony the next spring. I made sure my weed and brush pile for burning was right over their heads, then, nuked ’em. They are very worthy opponents…
My youngest daughter, Sage, when an infant, could only drink goats milk. FRESH goats milk. So, we get a mini herd of Nubians. Nice goats. Tough to milk though. With two nannys, milking two or three times a day, you get the hang of it. My pal, Doremus, wants to bring his Buck over to knock up two of my does. He brings this smelly, mean, well horned bastard over in his wife’s Mercedes back seat. Oh yeah. That’s another story. After he left, I end up putting this prick in my stone well house since he was beating up the girls. I had just sat down inside, when, POW, all the lights go out. I check the circuit breakers. It comes down to the well house circuit. I take a flashlight down the path. I smell burnt meat. Opening the well house door, I see why. The old goat had chewed into 220. His ass was stuck on the inside of the well house door. Literally…
So I’m doing a phone disconnect for some animal trainers in Simi hills. Neighbors complained about noise, smells. I tell the owner the same thing had happened to my Uncle, Melvin Koontz, and all his MGM lions. As I’m boxing his phones, a man walks by with a friendly looking black bear on a leash. It also has a muzzle and its claws have been blunted. I say on off hand, “Sort of an overkill for such a small bear isn’t it?” The trainer stops, says, “He’s our wrestling bear, want to try him out?” I had wrestled a little in high school. Actually, very little. Tossed off the team for screwing around. I drop my phone tools, get out onto this big mat, get in my stance. Off comes the leash. The bear stands up. I go for the easy take down. Nope. The bear gets me in a hug, falls on me with 500lbs. My contacts explode off my eyes, my bladder goes too. The bear wins. In thirty seconds…
The Snake Whisperer
I’m in Aqua Dulce. I’m heading into the hardware store. Next door, the cafe. A strip of lawn in front between cement walkways. Hardware stuff all over the front of the small store. I spot a retard with a live rattlesnake around his neck. Its a good four foot timber rattler. The guy is getting pictures taken and yakking a spiel on how he bonds with reptiles. He puts it down on the grass, then, picks it back up. I keep a wide berth and hit the store. I come out with my bundle, just as the village idiot is picking up the snake off the cement walkway. Guess the cement warmed it up. It strikes this six foot four duffus right in his chest. Since the firemen from 81 were in the cafe, I rolled for home…
So, here I am at Stevie Wonder’s house again. Nope, in the half dozen times I did repair there, never met him. I knew his gigantic Harlequin Great Danes real well though, from the first visit after they had tossed an all nighter party. People were still crashed all over the place. Sofas, chairs, the floor. Two maids were busy cleaning up all the wreckage. A ten button wall phone had been torn off the kitchen wall. No big deal. As I set my tool case down, these big dogs scared the crap out of me, bounding into the kitchen through the garage. I froze like a rusted tin man. One maid said, “Feed ’em this bone here, they’ll love ‘ya for evah!” I took the bone. Both dogs would have jumped off the Empire State building for that bone. I chuck it far into the vast living room. People are yelling and cursing the dogs. I knew a good thing when I saw it. I reached into the sink, grabbed about five big rib bones, tossed them through the doorway. Pandemonium. I snap the cover back on the wall phone base, now reset with new anchor bolts, slide out the back door. I escape…