Stochastic Factors

Any random or seemingly random factors that contribute to the decline of a species. Reminds me of idiopathic, of unknown cause, and I spend and hour with the dictionaries. Quammen's summation of the Alfred Wallace / Charles Darwin simultaneous discovery of natural selection is very good. Lucid even. Threat of rain, some showers, thunder in the afternoon. Bad tick year, too much rain, seed ticks, the little fuckers, everywhere. Just a little walk down to the printshop to look at the wrack pile, and when I get home I pick several large ticks off, and wash both ankles with alcohol and witch-hazel. When we picked blackberries in Missip we had to wear long sleeves and tie rags dipped in kerosene around wrist and ankle, pretty effective if you don't break out in hives. One of the most erotic rural scenes I was ever involved in. One of the good old boys had a beautiful wife, Rudy and Sonia, his family owned some acres for hunting in the fall, near our farm, and they'd stop by a few times, late summer, she'd stay at our place talking to Marilyn, mostly, while Rudy scouted his hunting sites. I was down at the hog-pen, Martina (the sows were all tennis players that year) had just birthed 13 piglets and only had 12 teats, so I was deciding which one I'd take inside and raise on goat's milk. The women had been for a walk. Sonia had about a zillion seed ticks on her ankles and Marilyn needed to go milk, the goats were talking loudly, so she foisted Sonia off on me. I go and get the alcohol and the witch-hazel (after an alcohol rub I always like to cool whatever it is off with witch-hazel, I love the smell), deciding on a course of action. She's a little freaked, not really a country girl, she's wearing open-toed, expensive shoes, and I take them off, she has great feet, well attended toe-nails, and lots of ticks. I've done this many times, and the way I've found that works best is that you seat the victim, hold a foot by the Achilles Heel and clean the foot area, then lean forward and anchor that foot above your belt, working on the zone between the knee and ankle. I kept getting sidetracked by her toes, and she was wearing a light summer skirt that drifted up her thighs, when I wiped her down with witch-hazel she was making sounds. I thought I was in a Faulkner novel. We never fucked, but she was later involved in an incident at the Super 8, a table thrown through the window. I wonder where we could have gone. Nowhere probably. I meant to go out tonight, listen to B's brother's band "Houndog Harrison" at the museum, but I started writing and there was thunder, I couldn't leave. I'll use any excuse to not leave the ridge, thunder is good, the price of gas, what someone had thought I meant about something I'd said about something; come on, get up to speed, what you think you say is a myth, a misunderstood fossil. It's those damned swimmers in those funny suits, you going to say something or not?