{"id":13762,"date":"2021-07-20T08:03:47","date_gmt":"2021-07-20T15:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=13762"},"modified":"2021-07-20T12:10:22","modified_gmt":"2021-07-20T19:10:22","slug":"a-childs-garden-of-animals-barnicide-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-childs-garden-of-animals-barnicide-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Child\u2019s Garden of Animals: Barnicide"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Private Papers<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Part Two<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Eight years after that last auto-avicide, the barn began to slowly tip over as the old eucalyptus poles wobbled, and the fir rafters finally after a near century and a half bent. At some point, after 40 years of fixing, repairing, borrowing to keep ancient things viable, I thought for a second \u201clet her topple.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The barn was largely full of junk anyway and an eyesore. I called around and got an estimate of $5,000 to haul it away\u2014and be done with the headaches of constant repair, junk collecting, and whitewashing. Now and then a thief would get in, rummage around and find the booty wasn\u2019t even worth the break-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

But instead I heard voices in the shadows of rebuke and hired a local carpenter, as if one has no right to destroy what was left of his great-great-grandmother\u2019s barn. So Saul Ruiz rebuilt the rafters. He put in new four-by-fours. He framed the interior out, and nailed \u00be inch plywood throughout. With jacks and rope, soon the barn was perfectly straight, firm and stout. I had a master builder put new sliding doors in. I though it looked as it did when my grandfather, not me, was 7 in 1897\u201427 years after his grandmother had built it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then Saul Ruiz said, \u201cBictor, compadre, now we come to the siding. Let\u2019s finish the job right. OK? You buy, I nail. I\u2019ll get good redwood and we will go right over the old stuff. Then it looks like new. No cracks, no nothing wrong.\u201d I liked Saul a lot. He had an in with a lumber yard. The cost was reasonable. It would bolster up the barn even more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But suddenly I thought, why cover up something that has lasted 150 years? And what of a future barn owl, or maybe one is here tonight?  So I said, \u201cSal, I like the old wood and the cracks too. Owls do too.\u201d He thought I was crazy and said, \u201cNever leave a job unfinished.\u201d So, instead, I had him repair the shed and skip the barn siding. He was happier working there anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But at least we pressure-washed the old siding, and painted it, cracks and all. The barn still looks old from the outside but new and strong from the within. Saul\u2019s work. But then suddenly I thought too\u2014\u2018Here we go again. Another dead barn owl?\u2019 And then I sort of remembered, \u201cLife is a tradeoff, good and bad, bad and good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far I\u2019ve notice the rodents are still sporadic. I think I hear swishing at night. I put a studio in the barn. One night during a filming, I heard a strange sound right outside. When it was over, I walked outside, and couldn\u2019t see a thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I had an eerie feeling and looked straight up, six feet above my head. There was a barn owl, alive and glued to the side of the barn. He seemed he belonged there more than I did on the ground, his superior right of inheritance I guess. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thought \u201cHe\u2019s stuck, so here we go again.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he swished off without a hitch, a perfect take-off, his landing gear free and clear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thought of my now late daughter, the empath, and wanted to yell out to her, \u201cBut look! He\u2019s free and alive. You see him. He\u2019s alive!\u201d And then I heard too mom, above the swishing, once more whispering to me, \u201cGood and bad, bad and\u2014good<\/em>\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Private Papers Part Two Eight years after that last auto-avicide, the barn began to slowly tip over as the old eucalyptus poles wobbled, and the fir rafters finally after a near century and a half bent. At some point, after 40 years of fixing, repairing, borrowing to keep ancient things viable, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-3zY","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13746,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-childs-garden-of-animals-barnicide\/","url_meta":{"origin":13762,"position":0},"title":"A Child\u2019s Garden of Animals: Barnicide","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 17, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Private Papers John Gould Wikipedia Commons Part One Barn Owls really do like barns. 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Savvy Americans\u00a0always see through the fraud in the end and\u00a0do the right thing\u00a0are infantile and don\u2019t know what\u2019s good for them. 2. 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You would walk through the Santa Rosa plum orchard at dawn. Then suddenly this huge, hidden monster would spring out from\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 4 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 4 comments","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-childs-world-of-animals-%ef%bb%bf\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Great_horned_Owl_in_flight_1811_Southern_Ontario_Canada_Captive.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Great_horned_Owl_in_flight_1811_Southern_Ontario_Canada_Captive.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Great_horned_Owl_in_flight_1811_Southern_Ontario_Canada_Captive.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Great_horned_Owl_in_flight_1811_Southern_Ontario_Canada_Captive.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":13368,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-childs-world-of-animals-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":13762,"position":3},"title":"A Child\u2019s World of Animals","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 13, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Spike, a Queensland Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Private Papers \u00a0Part Three At 10 or 11, we graduated to\u00a0do more of the shooting\u2014with more of the same repetitious caveats, \"Never shoot\u00a0a bird on the wire.\" I shot instead cottontails with another of my dad's\u00a0ancient guns, a 1890 Winchester\u00a0.22 pump. 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Now it has trumped those past linguistic contortions by changing words to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Healthcare"","block_context":{"text":"Healthcare","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/healthcare\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13762"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13762"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13767,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13762\/revisions\/13767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}