History will remember the sixth month of 2025...

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The nasty Demoncrats and their Prince of Persia acolytes despise this.

I have lived with these traitors all my life.

Filthy hippies during Vietnam.

I have relived in my mind the exploits of my dear departed friend, Rick Sharp, and his defense of the Colors with the butt-stroking of the long-haired flower child during our 1974 New Orleans Mardi Gras Parade.

God bless you, Dr. Sharp...

Never has their true anti-American, antisemitic, anti-Christian and, frankly, unabashed evil, been exposed as it is today.

The few scumbags who view CNN, MSNBC, et al., remind me of Uncle Buddy's hogs wallowing in the mud after a good rain in Snow Hill, NC....

No disrespect to those hogs...

Regarding President Donald Trump...

To reiterate, Gutfeld! is right:

"We don't deserve him."

Each and every visit was unique at my Manly Man Gentleman Farmer, truck-driving stud Uncle Buddy's farm.

First cousins are such an important part of a Southern family.

My Mother's siblings provided five great playmates when I lived in Kinston, NC...

...  until I was seven and moved to Fort Carson, CO, upon the Sergeant Major's initial active duty assignment to the Rocky Mountains. 

 Those early years' frequent interactions with them at various family events or afternoons visiting Aunt Sister and Uncle Bill Pittman or Uncle Buddy and Aunt Katy Gurley have left lifelong memories that I cherish to this day.

My studly cousins, Eddie and Robbie Gurley, had those qualities that are seen in Southern boys raised in a Manly Man environment.

From jug fishing for gar in irrigation canals and Yellowhammering in dark tobacco barns twenty to thirty feet off the ground, to the hundreds of miles we racked up on our bicycles, God had provided another distraction from the worry for my father who was battling Chinese communist forces in the jungles of Vietnam.

I remember the funeral for my dear friend and cousin, Eddie.  I prayed for God to ease the anguish of Uncle Buddy, Aunt Katy and brother Robbie.

Eddie will always be missed; thanks, Cuz...

Catching critters is an innate desire of virtually every Southern boy.

That was particularly true for Eddie and Robbie Gurley and myself.

Always catch-and-release, we competed for the best rabbit trap, for example.

The design of the trap entailed not only proper construction techniques using pine boards, chicken coop wire or similar, but also a most important aspect of the capture.

After luring feral bunnies into the trap, its escape would be negated by activation of the trigger. 

A number of different rabbit traps involved a variety of trigger designs and construction.  

I'm glad we didn't have cell phones...  Would have missed all this fun!

In retrospect, Robbie, Eddie and I, who ranged in age from 11 to 13, possessed skills learned from our fathers that enabled quite a number of successful trappings...

Summer heat required irrigation canals be filled in order for those crops to flourish.

The 4 to 6 feet deep canals provided another opportunity to catch prey, most notably gar, which was the dominant species of fish accompanying those canal waters.

We utilized bleach jugs with baited hooks and on autopilot...

That was daytime fun....

Early fall found species of birds beginning their Southern migration.

One of those species was the Yellowhammer which favored the shelter provided by a dormant tobacco barn.

Further, their safety was ensured by being tucked under the eave of the barn roof -

- two stories or more off the ground.

Southern boys learn early in life how to climb trees, as did our ancestors. In order to access the furtive and quite reclusive Yellowhammer, we removed our shoes and socks in order to grip the narrow beams on which the tobacco-laden sticks were hung to cure.

In a dormant tobacco barn in October, they provided a mechanism for ascent to third level rafters, enabling a bit of Commando Crawling, slow and silent to 'sneak up' on the resting Yellowhammers.

Martha, by the way, our dangerous mission to capture this beautiful bird was in the dark.

Whatever ambient light was present, as provided by the moon and greatly diminished in the tobacco barn, was utilized until we reached the objective.

Consolidation on the objective found Eddie, Robbie and myself poised with flashlights to the ready (bright ones).

On cue, we flooded the Yellowhammer's sanctuary with light.

Momentarily frozen by the illumination, these birds presented the opportunity for quick but gentle grabbing and stowing away in a burlap sack.

One evening found a bounty of three birds which we subsequently released outside the barn...

God's creations are beautiful, indeed.

He was also watching over three kids who could have been seriously injured as a consequence of their judgment...

That darn testosterone...

A most memorable Sunday afternoon found Eddie, Robbie and myself checking those Clorox jugs.

This was to be the highlight of the day.

This Sunday started with church in Belfast and returning home for me to change clothes for the twelve mile or so bike ride to Uncle Buddy's...

I joined Eddie and Robbie for the baiting and placing of our gar fishing apparati.

We then rode a few miles on our bikes and romped through the woods and fields of rural North Carolina, anticipating the excitement preceding our next ride back to the canals...

Little did we know the excitement awaiting us would far exceed any we could have anticipated.

We pedaled furiously all the way to the point in the canal where we had placed the  three jugs.

Unceremoniously dropping our bikes while they were still rolling, the three of us quickly approached the canal and found one jug jiggering, as to indicate a fish...

... one jug immobile in the water...

... and the third jug was spotted some forty yards away, mostly submerged, near the bank.

We knew what that meant - turtle (!).

Jackpot!

Martha, this wasn't just any turtle.

It was an alligator snapping turtle.  And he was a monster.

Eddie and I lacked baskets on our bikes.

Robbie did, however, enabling transport of fish and other treasures of the day back to home base...

The three of us had that Banty Rooster inside, relishing the one gar and huge reptile we had on full display as we biked the few miles back to Uncle Buddy's carport.

Eddie was eager to be the first to venture close to the basket in order to view this magnificent creature.

  This close inspection would not be possible in the wild for obvious reasons.

  Immobilization in the large handlebar basket in which he overflowed, however, allowed Eddie to see a rare up-close view of a most formidable and creepy fellow.

And he just couldn't resist petting this brute with his left index finger...

Ignoring the standard rule of not doing so...

I cast a glance at Robbie; he, too, was immediately concerned for his brother's appendage, given the alligator snapping turtle's reputation.

He will clamp on and stay 'lock-jawed' until his prey is conquered.

And he did.

Eddie was reeling in pain and grimacing.

He shortly began voicing his concern about the inability to extricate himself from the situation.

And without harming the turtle...

The situation that involved a powerful archosaur which had been biting him for about 30 seconds or so...

I remembered hearing of the powerful, unyielding jaws of this snapping turtle as a young boy.  Consequently, my interactions with them, as well as snakes, necessitated that Spidey Sense and care be utilized in the handling of these reptiles.

Regarding that 'lock-jaw',  I also remembered that the only way the alligator snapping turtle would release its grip on its prey was when it heard thunder.

That's right, Martha, thunder.

I would love to have video of three knuckleheads shouting 

"BOOM!  BOOM!  BOOM! ..."

All the while Eddie was dancing, trying to avoid making his entrapment worse...  

"BOOM!  BOOM!  BOOM, DAMN IT ! ..."

Not a cloud in the sky, but that turtle did, in fact, release his grip.

Southern remedies are generations old. 

 Although we fancied ourselves as 'turtle whisperers', Robbie and I agreed that the alligator snapping turtle just didn't like Eddie's taste...

...better send the babes packing.  Your harem is about to come under assault.

You are most definitely not going to like your new member of the community.

Analogous to the communities disrupted by Biden's 'newcomers' - vicious rapists and murderers...

... all with Demoncrat support.

With only one lonely exception in the hordes of Prince of Persia acolytes - Fetterman.

God put some common sense in this man via his stroke...

At any rate, we kept this anachronism of evolution for the remainder of the day.

The next day, Eddie and Robbie placed this beast in a nice pond nearby.

This provided the old fellow with a much better environment than he had previously...

Current theory proposes turtles evolved with archosaurs (crocodile like animals) over a span of time.   

The earliest turtle fossils show animals with interlocking plates that eventually evolved into a complete shell. 

The Alligator Snapping Turtle evolved over the past few million years exclusively in North America.

https://www.reptileknowledge.com/reptile-pedia/what-did-snapping-turtles-evolve-from

Again, the darker shade of the soldier's jacket was attributable to its much-less-laundered life than those trousers... 

Stationed at Fort Reilly in the summer of 1975 for the Leadership Development and Assessment Course, I was in awe of this beautiful horse.

25 June, 1876 ended a West Point-commissioned general's life.

The Indian Wars did what the Civil War and Gettysburg could not...

Standing prominently outside of General George Armstrong Custer's quarters, the bronze of Comanche has been touched by untold number of visitors to Fort Reilly.

I shall never forget admiring this remarkable horse as if he were gazing down at me...

Johnny Horton's ballads had Most Favorite status in my parents' record  collection; they were played many, many times.

His tribute to Comanche is priceless...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkIlxZxeK1s     

Elicited strong memories of my years as the ROTC Color Guard Commander at UTC.

Hearing those beautiful words and seeing the magnificence of The Colors always makes me proud of being an American and the son of an incredible soldier whose feats have become legendary...

The Sergeant Major.

 C-130 rollin' down the strip...

 An Army wife and incredible mother, my Mother was the anchor for our family when the Sergeant Major was somewhere in the world...

 One  year has passed since my dear Mother's ascension to Heaven...

 Columbia, TN, found Miss Dawn Kyla blessing our family...

Circa 1971...

 Note the Seiko...

 Fifteen years old...