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The Sorrow of Daedalus: Performing Prosthetic Surgery on a Monarch Butterfly

When young and foolhardy Icarus fell from the sky into the sea and drowned, poor Daedalus was forced to watch helplessly as his child floundered before him. Inexorably plummeting earthward to fatally kiss the face of Poseidon.

The guilt and sadness that Daedalus must have felt is appreciated by me more than ever. For today, I have failed one of my flock in a similar fashion. Today I was unable to successfully perform prosthetic surgery on a poor wayward monarch butterfly.

I was going to name her Jamie Sommers (The Bionic Woman). I thought we had the technology. I thought we could rebuild her. Faster. Stronger. But I failed and now she will be called Icarus. Here is her story…

Monarch munching milkweed
young Icarus full of promise

Icarus was born in the midst of my scattered milkweed plants that I added to my yard in to help give the monarchs a safe haven on their long journey from Mexico to Canada. It was part of my work to make my yard a certified wildlife habitat. All official like!

She and her siblings voraciously devoured the milkweed until they were fat and happy. Many of her siblings then wandered off to find a nice quiet place to begin their transformation. Much like this one here… Continue reading “The Sorrow of Daedalus: Performing Prosthetic Surgery on a Monarch Butterfly”

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The True Evil Empire is Monsanto and They are Trying to Kill the World. Join the Rebel Alliance!

Dear reader. Kind reader. Gentle reader. I am so sorry to do this to you, but I am about to go off the rails from my normal posts. I adamantly try to avoid politics or anything too controversial on Mind Your Dirt. I usually try to be approachable in order to reach the widest audience. My goals have always been three-fold: to learn/teach, to inspire and to amuse.

Today, I will be abandoning this goal. I’m throwing it all out the window and I hope that you can bear with me and perhaps even, one day, forgive me. Afterwards I will return to our normal programming. And as a sign of good will, I made certain to make the feature image above hilariously entertaining. At least it is to me. The entire time I created it, I was laughing maniacally. I really crack me up. I sooo get me. When this all blows over, I and I should move in together and make out a bunch. Replacing Darth Vader’s head with that of Monsanto’s CEO, Hugh Grant, tickled me tremendously. But nothing cracked me up as much as sticking Piper’s head on Princess Leia. I digress.

That said, I am about to go on a rant the likes of which you have not seen from me. There might even be a curse word or two! I have always been angry with Monsanto and companies of its ilk (like Dow Chemicals), but I saw something recently that really pushed me too far. I’ll explain below what that something is, but first let’s all get acquainted with Monsanto, shall we? I know that by now, you have all heard something about this company. I know that you know about GMOs and pesticides. You’ve formed your opinions already. But if you’re here, or are one of my regular readers (wassup guys), then chances are your opinions and mine are very similar.

I want to go a little deeper than that however. For herein lies well over a century of the purest evil, manipulation and widespread global murder the likes of which is seldom seen.

Like all great stories, it’s best to start in the beginning…

Mind Your Dirt is Mad at Monsanto 04_James as Lord Vader

Part One: The Dark Lord Emerges:

The company was founded in 1901 by John Francis Queeny, a member of the Knights of Malta and the original Grumpy Cat. He was a thirty-year pharmaceutical veteran. Below is a photo of Queeny at the age of twelve with his pet kitty, Darth Mittens. The powers of The Dark Side had aged him well beyond his years.

Mind Your Dirt is Mad at Monsanto 02_John Francis Queeny the Grumpy Cat
John Francis Queeny, the original grumpy cat.

Continue reading “The True Evil Empire is Monsanto and They are Trying to Kill the World. Join the Rebel Alliance!”

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Life After the Drought

I feel like I just awoke from a long coma. This last Thanksgiving was full of mirth to the point of making me a useless blob. My hobbies have included laying East/West on the couch watching Netflix, laying West/East on the couch watching Netflix, steadily observing the physical changes (or lack there of) of piles of dirty dishes and generally boring the shit out of my dog, my girlfriend and you, my gentle readers. For that I am sorry. Not so sorry that I didn’t enjoy the indulgence of my inertia or revel in my lethargy. Because I truly did. But, I’m back now. At least until Christmas rolls around. Continue reading “Life After the Drought”