Previously on “The Secret History of Vermont”
Introduction
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Obverse: In Vermont Ira Allen is best known for being Ethan Allen’s brother. Reverse: Commemorating the official extinction of the catamount.
Chapter 7: Vermont Wildlife
Vermont is inhabited by noteworthy wildlife in addition to the Vermont Fresh Water Plesiosaur mentioned in Chapter 4.
The Vermont Quantum Moose
It’s practically impossible to travel a single stretch of the interstate in Vermont without seeing a sign saying something like, “Moose Next 5000 Feet.” It’s just as impossible to see a moose. What’s going on here?
Being large animals moose had a particularly difficult time of it when the Burlington Free Press started publishing daily weather forecasts and making everything uphill both ways. After putting up with it for a few years the moose population in Vermont decided to take advantage of the new environment in a particularly elegant manner. I am pleased to reveal their discovery which is a breakthrough in modern physics: The Unified Quantum Moose Theory.
Moose have always been very quantum animals. Either there’s a moose in front of you or there isn’t. No doubt about it. When the quantum fabric of Vermont was weakened by the Free Press’ weather forecasts, individual moose discovered that they could teleport themselves by shifting into quantum phase space. Once you understand how it works teleportation is really very easy. All you have to do is reduce the probability of being in your current location to zero while simultaneously increasing the probability of being somewhere else to a certainty. Moose seem to have a knack for it.
Moose also discovered that it’s possible to live in quantum phase space which turns out to be handy during difficult times like hunting season. Eventually the entire moose population in Vermont emigrated to quantum phase space, returning to our reality only occasionally for a “vacation in the old country” or when accidentally precipitated by an observer.
Remember that the role of an observer is very important in quantum matters. Nothing can be said to have really happened until it’s been observed. This is a minor nuisance for moose because an intent observer in Vermont can force a moose to appear out of quantum phase space just by being really observant.
Of course it’s extremely unlikely that a 180 pound person will precipitate a 2000 pound moose even under the best conditions. The rare times one sees a moose along the interstate it’s certainly because several people in different cars were all looking at the same patch of ground at the same time and their combined observational power forced the moose to appear.
So if moose can be said to hardly exist in Vermont any more, what’s with all those signs on the interstate? Blame the Montpelier Legislature. When the Vermont Department of Moose Management was made aware of the Unified Quantum Moose Theory it reasoned that a moose in quantum phase space could be thought of as occupying the entire State because no matter where you point, the probability, however low, of the moose being there, is the same. Therefore, if a moose is everywhere then it could be anywhere, and if a moose is anywhere then the VDMM might as well put up all of its Moose signs on the interstate where they’re highly visible and, as a gesture of solidarity with the Vermont Department of Interstate Management, it’ll inconvenience the maximum number of commuters when the signs are installed and maintained.
The Vermont Libertarian Mountain Lion
Unlike moose, which are officially everywhere, mountain lions officially don’t exist. There hasn’t been a proved sighting of a mountain lion by a certified official for over a hundred years. Occasionally someone will claim they’ve seen a mountain lion, or catamount as they’re sometimes called by Native Vermonters, but the evidence is never enough to survive the so-called trial by immersion in a Montpelier manure pit.
Reported sightings are rare not because sightings are rare, but because people don’t bother. Reporting seeing a catamount in Vermont is like reporting seeing an ATV. If you reported every one you saw you’d never get any work done. Certain woodlands in Vermont are crawling with mountain lions yet when someone discovers a partially eaten deer in the woods or a downed cow, wild dogs always end up with the official blame.
A hundred years ago the common Vermont Mountain Lion was subjected to some intense evolutionary pressure by virtue of Montpelier’s policy of paying a generous bounty for every one shot. When the bounty money ran out the Montpelier Legislature reasoned that the mountain lion must have become extinct and declared it a retroactively endangered species, making shooting one a felony.
This was just fine with the mountain lions who had in the meantime evolved into a new species that instinctively avoids being seen by members of the Montpelier Legislature, members of the Vermont Department of Mountain Lion Management (still going on strong despite its officially extinct subject matter), game wardens, UVM zoology professors, and anyone else who might be in a position to officially recognize one.
Occasionally a kind-hearted person tries to restore to the catamount some kind of official existence in under the theory the species can only benefit from the protection and management of the wise inhabitants of Montpelier, but the Libertarian Mountain Lion is having none of it. Mountain Lions are practically the only living entities in Vermont who don’t pay taxes.
The Vermont Tin Pecker
The absence of the usual clue, warmer weather, makes it difficult to tell when spring is coming to Vermont. Nevertheless there are a few signs well known to all Vermonters. When people all over the State are awakened half an hour before the alarm clock by the vigorous percussion of a diamond-hard beak on chimney pipe or roof flashing then you can tell that the springtime mating season of the Vermont Tin Pecker has begun.
Thought to be an evolutionary offshoot of the common woodpecker, the tinpecker is adapted to survive in climates where the frozen trees are harder than locally available metal artifacts. Very little is actually known about the tinpecker, like what they eat, what they make their nests out of, and the composition of their eggshells. The only interaction so far between Vermont ornithologists and tinpeckers is when the former swear at the latter at 4:30 in the morning.
The Vermont Common Porcupine
Foreign visitors to Vermont (mostly people from other states) are often aghast at what they see. “How can these people live when all they own is a large 150 year old farmhouse in good repair, fertile fields, lush healthy forest, unparalleled views, and unlimited fresh air?”
It is true that one does not generally see great displays of mundane wealth in Vermont. That doesn’t mean that such wealth doesn’t exist, it just means that it’s well invested and not obvious. Vermont has a boom-bust cycle that has served for centuries as a reliable and comforting source of income for those who are wise and disciplined enough to take advantage of it. The cycle depends on two critical components:
- Not appearing to be wealthy.
- Porcupines.
Here’s how it works. Remember this is a cycle so the “starting point” here is arbitrary:
- Vermont appears to be largely unoccupied. There are a lot of fields with incredible scenic vistas and no buildings. The natives appear not to have very much money.
- Foreigners visit and say to themselves, “Wouldn’t this be a wonderful spot on which to build a log cabin for a summer vacation home? And I bet we could do it quite reasonably.”
- Negotiations take place and the foreigners borrow money from their foreign banks to buy fields and build log cabins. The price of the land is relatively low, the price of the structures is (in comparison) relatively high. Vermonters get all this money in return for deeds, logs, and labor. The money is carefully invested.
- At this point the population of the Vermont Common Porcupine (Consumium Logcabinae Profitablus) is at its cyclic minimum. The favorite food of the porcupine is dry spruce and balsam wood which is, entirely coincidentally, the cheapest bulk material for cabin logs. Absent human intervention the natural supply of dry spruce and balsam is limited to what gets blown over by strong winds in the woods.
- A few log cabins are built but there are too few porcupines to be noticeable. The delighted foreigners invite their friends to visit and some of them buy land and build their own log cabins. As the number of cabins and the supply of food grows so does the porcupine population, exponentially.
- In the classic boom-bust tradition the last generation of porcupines devour all the foreigners’ log cabins in a single season and then have a massive die-off for lack of food. (Vermonters’ log cabins aren’t made of cheap logs and are left alone.) The foreigners discover that they can’t afford to rebuild with good logs from their insurance settlement (the damn natives are asking outrageous prices) and so they put their lots up for sale, quite reasonably as they didn’t cost that much in the first place. Vermonters buy back the land.
- Go to step 1.
(Author’s note: Unlike the rest of the Secret History of Vermont which was revealed to the author by real Native Vermonters, the author, who lives in a log cabin made from logs of spruce and balsam, figured this part out for himself.)
I can attest to the quantum power of the moose. Driving down a rural highway late one night in Maine, a moose running the same direction as my car suddenly materialized next to me. A few seconds later it was gone back into whatever dimension it had called me from.
Tin Pecker
We have those in Virginia. They love to use rain gutters to signal territory. It was worse when I had a fireplace and they would use the chimney cap.
Also in AZ. I have come very close on several occasions to subtracting them from the local environment.
This may be my favorite series.
This was my favorite installment of it!
Me, too. I don’t have a favorite series, but I am really enjoying this one.
Mountain Lions are practically the only living entities in Vermont who don’t pay taxes.
An fictitious inspiration to us all.
I saw a catamount in a neighbor’s driveway once. It looked like this:
https://newengland.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2_Cougars.jpg
but was darker brown.
The case was mahogany?
How many different names does that one type of big cat have?
“The mountain lion—also known as the cougar, puma, panther, or catamount…”
from this:
https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Mammals/Mountain-Lion
I’m not a hunter. The only animals I’ve shot were porcupines gnawing on my cabin. I haven’t had that problem for several years now.
I’ve shot mice. darn glue traps catch them but don’t put them down humanely.
I went on a squirrel shooting spree a few years ago. Realized that there are an endless supply of them in the woods so shooting the ones in my yard just invites others. In case of an apocalypse or famine, I’ll be living on the little critters.
You can shoot them but if you are ever able to understand them you are in trouble.
We had a calm sunny day a few weekends ago so I got out my Adirondack chair and sat outside exposing a few square inches of face to the sun. Some squirrels that live in my woodshed were out and about playing. At one point one of them scurried over to within a few feet of the chair and gave me a good stare to put me in my place. The squirrels sometimes crawl on the cabin but aren’t a problem.
My neighbor growing up would live trap squirrels. He’d just leave them in the trap until they died. Usually within a day. I’m guessing dehydration mostly, but I don’t know for sure. Always seemed a little cruel to me, but I use a bucket trap for chipmunks, so who am i to judge.
UCS, these traps work great:
https://tomcatbrand.com/en-us/shop/traps/tomcat-mouse-snap-traps/0361501.html
Snaps their little necks instantly. The gel attractant is neat and effective.
I’ve had a lot of success with the electric one, once or twice a year it gets a mouse that I didn’t even know was in the house. I don’t even bother rebaiting it. I’ve never heard them screaming so I assume it’s fairly instantaneous.
build a better mouse trap and the world will beat path to your door.
I don’t want the world at my door.
They’d probably leave their trash in your cans.
Would happily shoot the raccoons who raid the cat food put out for the neighborhood outdoor kittehs, but are limited to BBs due to the close proximity of neighbors, dammit.
I would suggest traps, but then there’s a chance of catching one of the cats. But there are pellet guns powerful enough to kill a raccoon.
Live traps and sort ’em out as necessary. Never move an unwanted critter to a new location, ’cause he’ll be unwanted there and the new recipient(s) will move them back to you anyway. Solve the problem and discard.
Bear in mind that raccoon is pretty decent eating in casseroles and stews.
I have wondered if my neighbor (see below) caught the same raccoon eight times.
My neighbor has a raccoon problem, traps them, and relocates them a few miles away. Last year he got eight . And one pissed-off cat that was observed to be alive when he opened the trap.
🙂
Not bloody furious?
–Terry Pratchett, Discworld
A few miles is definitely not far enough for raccoons, they’re almost certainly coming back.
And this time, it’s personal!
Just when you thought it was safe to take out the trash…
Can confirm. The Old Man used a ten-mile minimum, otherwise trapped raccoons would be back within a couple of nights.
A permanent solution is required. I do let foxes go because they are on my team but skunks, ‘coons, woodchucks get a Mafia type hit. Stand back a little on the skunks.
Yep. They don’t bounce like BB’s if you miss.
“I haven’t had that problem for several years now.”
Pour encourager les autres
I’m not a hunter
Not all of us can smoke as much parmesan as Hunter.
“Moose have always been very quantum animals. Either there’s a moose in front of you or there isn’t. No doubt about it. When the quantum fabric of Vermont was weakened by the Free Press’ weather forecasts, individual moose discovered that they could teleport themselves by shifting into quantum phase space. Once you understand how it works teleportation is really very easy. All you have to do is reduce the probability of being in your current location to zero while simultaneously increasing the probability of being somewhere else to a certainty. Moose seem to have a knack for it.”
I loved this paragraph, seemed absolutely Douglas Adamsy.
Moose in Alaska are also hip to the quantum phase space thing. A moose has been manifesting in our yard on and off throughout the winter, and leaving piles of quantum moose poop sprinkled generously about, most notably directly in front of our garage door.
Have you tried putting up a “No Moose” sign?
I did, but unless I’m directly observing it, the wave function won’t collapse and since it may or may not exist at any given moment, it seems to have little effect on the moose.
I wonder if moose have signs saying, “No pooping in quantum phase space. Return to the classical world for that.”
I’ve heard Bose–Einstein condensate is really just a euphemism…
Yep, brought to mind the mechanics of flight in HHGTTG.
Great stuff Richard.
throw yourself at the ground and miss ?
Wonderful!
When the bounty money ran out the Montpelier Legislature reasoned that the mountain lion must have become extinct and declared it a retroactively endangered species, making shooting one a felony.
Plausible.
Rather surprised the legislature didn’t declare it extinct. After all, the government experts knew exactly how many catamounts there were in Vermont, because that’s exactly how much bounty money they put into the fund.
Then when some Vermonter or flatlander later says they saw a catamount in the state, they’d obviously be lying and spreading misinformation around.
Hence the ‘trial by immersion in a Montpelier manure pit’.
By that I meant they ordered the miscreant to take a tour of the city of Montpelier.
Aiyeee! It’s full of lawyers!
I agree with Jeff I am buying luxury Ford Sedan working home from, $6000 dolar for day work home from.
Err…I mean I agree with everyone else, I am enjoying this series Richard.
Thank you and thank everyone. Two more chapters to go.
Now I’m sad. There must be more history. It’s not Idaho.
You guys are still doing this?
This morning, I tested positive for COVID-19. Thankfully, I am fully vaccinated and boosted and only experiencing minor symptoms. I will quarantine consistent with CDC guidelines and follow advice from my doctor while I continue to work remotely.
Thankfully he was vaccinated and boosted, otherwise he could have ended up with COVID.
I had some retard come for a job interview last week wearing a paper mask.
He did not get hired.
The Cleveland Clinic was still requiring masks for people inside as of Saturday.
Good call, solely on the basis of him not being able to read the room.
“I don’t really care if he wears a mask, as such. I’m just not going to hire somebody who is the only person in the entire building wearing a mask.”
LMAO
At the risk of doing a “nobody I know voted for Nixon”… Nobody around me is doing this. They’re all treating it like a flu or something. Half don’t test, and the other half just stay home while they’re sick if they test positive. When I read this it feels like I’m in a time warp.
VDMM – Very-dumb
VDIM – Very-dim
VDMLM – Veneral diseases by multi-level marketing
These really are great, Richard.
I mean, I’m sure your manifesto is good too, but I’m enjoying these in the meanwhile.
I’m still working on the manifesto. I’ve been waiting for the snow to recede a bit before I go out to collect bark to make more ink.
Sir, this is an ice rink.
Sharks may want to focus more on their game. Just sayin’
It’s fascinating how the trans religion has infiltrated everything.
I look forward to everything going back to normal, with the Sharks joining the Flyers down in the cellar…
And they’re not exactly respected or fit in to those societies.
They’re freaks and prostitutes for the most part.
https://twitter.com/deoiit/status/1637636076570378243
But of course…
While we wait to see Trump hauled away in chains here in clown world, the rest of the world seems to be moving on without us.
Saudi Arabia to reopen their embassy in Damascus. Our days of Syrian oil might be coming to a close.
https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2023/03/20/2870105/saudi-arabia-to-reopen-embassy-in-damascus-after-9-years-of-closure
What’s going on between the Middle East, China and Russia right now should be the biggest news in the world. China seems to be making a play to unite the countries with all the oil that we’ve been keeping in a constant state of civil war for two decades. I can’t imagine it would take much for them to garner genuine popular support from the masses. The petrodollar is perilously close to collapse and we may suddenly find ourselves down our knees begging for oil from a new alliance between all the countries outside of our hegemony. We’ve foolishly gutted our manufacturing base to the point of non-existence and put our oil production decades behind where it would need to be if we had to rely on ourselves for it. Throw in the fact that that our financial system was already being exposed for the fraudulent house of cards that it is even BEFORE the collapse of the petrodollar all but wipes out the leverage it’s held as the defacto reserve currency of the entire world. It seems we’re being outmaneuvered on all fronts right now.
Perhaps pretending to be the world’s corrupt policeman while abusing third world countries and turning them into money laundering schemes for our elites while raining fire from the sky on them for decades on end while incentivizing our “allies” not to build up their militaries so no one would ever become a real threat to us was a fucking bad idea.
“I can’t imagine it would take much for them to garner genuine popular support from the masses.”
I can’t believe popular support from the masses is something anybody who matters (Chinese, ME dictators, etc.) cares much about. The “Arab Street” seems to have very little effect on who is in charge or what they do.
I think the civil strife in a lot of ME countries comes down to sectarian differences (Sunni v Shia being the big one). They were fighting with each other long before the Global American Empire, and will continue to do so after we have left the scene. I doubt new sugar daddies from China will really make much difference.
The biggest abuse of third world countries by the US is through the dollar as reserve currency. When that gets supplanted by a new reserve currency, the dynamics and incentives that have made the dollar a burden on those countries aren’t going to change – they’ll be getting the shitty end of the stick under the new reserve as well.
All things considered, I think we’ve been a fairly generous world power.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole Jamal Khashoggi thing is a sticking point for mbs. Biden is an idiot and Saudi has decided to flex their muscles and go their own way a bit. We’ll find out if that’s just a threat/notice or if they really mean it pretty soon. I don’t see them totally cutting ties because their current situation is fairly beneficial to them as well.
If only Iraq was still there to scare them.
Would.
North Korean defector learns about race
She’s cute.
That is really funny.
That voice is why I quit banging asian broads. They squeak like my dog’s toys.
Throws me off stride.
I thought you were going to say that they’re too skinny.
What if you bundled like 4-5 of them together with some twine? I guess that really only multiplies the squeaking problem.
Surround sound.
Chubby asians are their own genre.
This is udderly ridiculous.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation this month awarded a $4.8 million grant to a company that sells “smart” face masks for cows.
ZELP, which stands for Zero Emissions Livestock Project, claims its artificial intelligence (AI) mask technology for livestock will reduce methane emissions — considered to be a main greenhouse gas — and curb climate change.
Cows and other ruminant animals emit methane in the process of digesting their food.
The mask goes around the cow’s head and captures the methane gas exhaled by the animal, oxidizing it and then releasing it into the air as carbon dioxide and water vapor, according to ZELP.
It also has sensors that continuously collect millions of data points on the animals that are processed by machine learning algorithms.
“Our AI is trained to detect heat, flag welfare conditions, and identify the most efficient animals with a high-level of accuracy,” ZELP said.
Seems counter to the carbon dioxide hate cult.
Looks like we have a job opening for a Cow Masking Technician I. Yes it’s an entry level job, but there’s excellent beneifts, all the dung you can burn, and unlimited promotion opportunities!
If methane is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide in trapping heat:
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases
Why don’t we burn as much as possible, extract useful energy, and reduce it to less dangerous CO2?
I thought the methane came out of the other end of the cow.
Lol. More methane comes from the ocean than cows could ever dream of producing.
Retards.
So what you’re sayin is, we just need to put a big mask over the ocean?
I was thinking just saran wrap, but whatever works. Gaia must be protected from our awesome might!
GF can’t find Saran wrap locally…she’s been bitching about it lately.
I mean, WTF is that about?
People have been stockpiling
https://kinky-world.net/everything-you-need-to-know-about-saran-wrap-bondage/
I fucking hate my species. Present company excluded of course. Mostly….
At the risk of reminiscing about TOS…
https://www.michaelkelly.artofeurope.com/karl.htm
I thought the big problem with bovine methane emissions was at the other end.
It’s all bullshit, from start to finish.
The only way to achieve zero emissions is for everything to be dead, and even then it’s debatable.
Not sure how we can find this out, but are there more cows now than there were buffalo a few hundred years ago? There used to be great herds of animals much larger than our domesticated livestock. And I’ll bet they farted.
The USDA says there are around 92MM cows in the US. I’m guessing that’s probably a pretty solid number.
How many buffalo back in the day? Now there’s a squishy number. Looks like between 30 – 60MM. Keep in mind, buffalo are bigger than cows, so by weight (which presumably maps somewhat to emissions), the gap isn’t nearly as big.
Thank you for enacting my labor.
Umm, how do they eat?
I looked into it. The mask just covers the cow’s nostrils.
So it’s going to be a very long way from “zero emissions”.
Next step: force bean eaters to wear a methane “smart” diaper.
Triggered by FACTS and LOGIC.
Cambridge University students at the Cambridge Union didn’t like hearing historian and broadcaster Rafe Heydel-Mankoo argue that Britain should not pay reparations for slavery & colonialism. Well-established facts about the British Empire, Asia and Africa, which were well known to earlier generations of students, seem to be completely new to many of them — and some do not want to hear or believe anything that contradicts the narrative they’ve been taught.
Cambridge Union motion for debate: “The House Should Pay Reparations”. Held at Cambridge University in 2022.
Real history is, like, nuanced and complicated, bro.
In Vermont, the catamounts have been replaced by the catamites.
Why am I picturing a furry, cat-faced, termite?
So the catamounts lost the Battle of Bennington and were banished to coinage? Cruel indeed.