Last week, we took our dog Chester to be groomed. Because he is half poodle, he grows hair, not fur, so he needs to be trimmed every two or three months to not become overly shaggy and matted. He also gets a bath from his groomer when he is trimmed.

When he gets back, he smells very nice and is especially fluffy, encouraging humans to endlessly pet him and enjoy his soft coat.

The day after taking him to the groomer, we drove up to the Cloudcroft area to enjoy turning leaves and cooler mountain air. Chester went with us, always excited to go in the truck somewhere new.

We found a spot along a gravel U.S. Forest Service road that was great for a picnic. Chester leaped out of the truck and immediately began sniffing the area for new and unusual smells.

He first found what we think was a mound of elk or cow poop and began to rub his face in it before we scolded him to retreat from the spot. Within seconds, he found something else more amusing — a mucky pool of water from a nearby spring that had deep, almost black mud at the bottom.

He always relishes taking a dip and wading in shallow water, although he won’t go into anything deep enough that might force him to swim.

So before we could catch him, he sank all four feet into the muck, drank a sip of the turgid water, then emerged looking like this:

So much for our $85 grooming tab at the dog salon. It looks like someone dipped each of his feet in black paint or tar. Or, except for his floppy ears, he kind of looked like red fox, which has black legs as shown in the photo below.

At any rate, when he got home, he got a second bath in as many days and cleaned up pretty well. I think he enjoyed his first visit to the groomer. He was not happy about the treatment he got from me and my wife when we got home from the mountains. And I’m’ still removing clods of dirt from the back seat of our pickup truck.

For my wife’s birthday, I purchased her a new purse. Now I understand that men buying personal things for spouses, such as purses, can lead a guy into a dangerous minefield. However, I was fairly confident on this acquisition, since it was basically the same purse she had received as a gift from her daughter a few years ago, only a little bit larger and in a more subtle color. She had liked the original purse, but it had become a bit tattered and she agreed it was time to “refresh it.”

After she got it, she began removing things from her old purse and putting them in the slightly larger new one. The new one, however, had many more compartments than the old one. So many, that some compartments may have been left vacant after she finished the transfer.

So what do you do if you have this irrational need to make sure every empty closet space, every drawer, every nook and cranny in you car’s interior, every hook on your peg board in the garage and every compartment in your wallet is filled with something? This brings me to my fly fishing vest. It has a seemingly endless assortment of compartments available for accessories, fly boxes, tippets, leaders, fly flotant, sunglasses, licenses, water bottles, nippers, knives, extra Kleenex, bandanas, lunch and whatever else I could stash in it.

My good friend, associate and colleague from my previous work in marketing, Andrea, could probably help me with this dilemma. She was (and I am sure still is) the queen of organization. She told me a story once about her Christmas wish list when she was still in Middle School that suggested an office filing cabinet would be the most wonderful gift she could receive for the holidays. At a large group meeting some years ago, she was the last person standing when people were being categorized by personality. She was sorted out as the most intensely detail oriented and organized person in the group of about 150 people. She admitted to being slightly embarrassed about it, but I thought it was great — we made a great working pair.

Andrea could probably tell me what I could and should put in every one of the 24 compartments in my fly fishing vest, even if I didn’t use what was in them very often.

However, here’s the problem. When you start stuffing so much stuff into your vest, it becomes heavier and heavier, weighing you down and tiring you out as you trudge up the trail to your perfect fishing spot. And it has other ramifications. When I lost my balance and fell on my back last spring while fishing in the Gila, breaking four ribs and cracking two more, I think the shifting extra weight in my vest from all my unnecessary accoutrements contributed to my loss of balance and toppling over next to the creek.

I did pare down my vest after the fall. I got rid of a small metal net to catch stream insects to help you evaluate the hatch in the water. I tossed some tungsten weights to keep your wet fly at the bottom of deep pools. I got rid of fly goop that made your flies either float better or sink more rapidly. I got read of a stream thermometer that would tell me if water temperatures were conducive to fish feeding. I nixed a heavy tool to help you tie the perfect fishing knot. I weeded out my more than 15 different lengths and strengths of leaders. I parted ways with a file to sharpen fish hooks. I got rid of two extra pairs of sunglasses with differing tints in case the available sunlight changed one way or another. I ditched two or three extra fly boxes for patterns that I had never used on the stream where I was fishing. I got rid of some kind of orange-colored goop that may or may not have been illegal fish attractant.

And then I got rid of my beloved “Walton’s Thumb,” a Swiss Army Knife kind of gadget that could cure any problem you had on a stream — trimming fishing line, removing a hook from your elbow, picking out a size 22 emerger pattern from a crowded fly box, screwdrivers to repair your fly reel, and maybe even surgical blades to perform major surgery on your knee after a fall in the wilderness.

It was a magnificent gizmo, weighing almost a full pound by itself. The device was named after Izaak Walton, a 17th century English writer who is viewed as the Godfather of fly fishing because of his book “The Compleat Angler,” first published in 1653.

I now feel guilty about removing it from my vest, although I really can’t recall using it more than once or twice. I looked for it today in my various bags, tackle boxes and other hiding places in my fishing closet, but could not locate it. I fear I tossed it in the trash in my rush to remove all things unessential from my fishing vest.

I looked on the internet and the original versions are now kind of collector’s items, selling for more than $40 on E-Bay. You can buy a similar replacement with the same name, for about $23, but it’s made with much lighter gauge stainless steel and probably weighs about half of what the original weighed. And I’m sure it doesn’t have the character as the original version.

So now, I’m left with a fishing vest with lots of empty compartments, begging to be stuffed with something. I’m thinking I may eventually restuff one of them with an imitation Walton’s Thumb. And maybe wads of Kleenex will made the rest of the now empty compartments look somewhat useful.

The first time I went with my family to visit Santa Fe in the late 1950s, we ate at a restaurant on the south side of town called Bobcat Bite. It was in a former trading post on the old Las Vegas Highway. According to legend, the restaurant was named for bobcats in the area that would stop by for scraps of food.

The restaurant continued in operation for many years, but closed in 2013. It has since reopened, but I’m not sure if it still feeds area bobcats.

What triggered this topic was a message I got regarding my earlier post on critters in urban settings. Apparently, it’s happening even more these days.

My long-time friend Joel sent me pictures he took last spring of a couple of juvenile bobcats lounging on his back porch in the Sonoma Ranch area. And I mean literally lounging.

Then my sister, who lives in Cochiti Lake, recently said she feared that a mountain lion was cruising through her neighborhood. She sent this (rather disgusting) photo of some cat scat to prove something was running around near her house. She later said it was probably just a large adult bobcat, which she sees frequently in her rural area.

But so far, I have not seen a live bobcat around our home — although I’m certain they are nearby.

However, I did for the first time spot a roadrunner cruising through our neighborhood and crossing a corner of our lot. I see them all the time when driving around areas near the desert on the east side of town, but they seem to have avoided our more lush environment in the valley.

And it turned out — as I have told my children and grandchildren — that it was a good omen. I had lost my money clip with about $25 in it when I went to a nearby store earlier in the day. I was pretty sure I would never see it again. But my wife convinced me that it was worth the effort to go back to the store and see if anyone had turned it in.

To my surprise, the store manager said someone had found it and gave it to him — with money still intact. I took $10 out of the clip and gave it to the store manager and told him to buy a six pack of beer for his staff.

Here’s hoping all of us see more roadrunners — or even bobcats — in the future.

Twice last week, while our daughter and granddaughter were walking to school in their north Austin neighborhood, they spotted an armadillo right in the middle of the urban sprawl. We’ve seen possums and lots of squirrels in Austin before, but the only time I’ve spotted armadillos was in the Texas countryside. We thought this was pretty interesting and immediately claimed it was a sign of good luck, which (for what it’s worth) seemed to be verified through a quick search of the internet.

In addition to good luck, spotting an armadillo also seems to be a harbinger of wealth, fertility and protection, according to various websites.

She managed to snap a picture of most of its armored body rooting around a ground cover landscape.

We’ve always told our kids that spotting a roadrunner in our native New Mexico is a sign of good luck, also verified through a search of the internet. Roadrunners also seem to embody strength, courage, endurance and speed, according to legend. So without any roadrunners nearby, our family in Austin can now look forward to spotting armadillos for good luck.

Native Americans seemed to think that roadrunners were especially crafty because their feet have four toes– two pointing forward and two pointing backwards — which make it difficult for predators to know which way the birds were running. The technical term for their toe arrangement is “zygodactyl.”

After our excitement about the Austin armadillo, two stories about other animals in urban settings popped up in our own state.

The first involved the spotting of a 900-pound, fully-antlered bull moose in the middle of Santa Fe near Fort Marcy Park, where Zozobra had just been burned a few days prior. This really large animal was eventually captured by New Mexico Game and Fish Department officials and relocated closer to wilderness in the northern part of the state.

I have to admit that in all my years of tramping around New Mexico’s forests and wild lands, I never thought I would see a moose here. From what I’ve been able to determine, they were once fairly common in the northern part of the state, but migrated north at some point because of climate change or increasing human presence. However, in recent years, they apparently have moved back into the region, apparently thinking that this was not such a bad place after all.

Friends in Santa Fe say a younger moose was spotted on the road to the Santa Fe Ski Basin last spring. There is speculation that the 900-pound bruiser spotted around Fort Marcy Park was the same animal, but pumped up over some tasty noshing over the summer. Given that moose can be fairly ornery and fast, I would have given this guy a lot of distance had I spotted it.

And then to top things off, a high school football game in Rio Rancho had to be postponed last weekend because a ground squirrel tunneled too deeply into an underground electrical box and chewed up some live wires that resulted in shorting out the field lights. The squirrel apparently was vaporized in the process of chewing on the hot wires and the game had to be moved to another (squirrel free) stadium while repairs were made.

These animal capers reminded me of a women’s softball game at New Mexico State University that I attended some years ago that was delayed when prairie dogs from a colony adjacent to the ball field began scampering around the diamond during a game. The critters were eventually chased back down their tunnels and remained there until the ninth inning was over. I think steps were taken to permanently move them to another location. There was also a time when plans to install new artificial turf at the NMSU football field had to be delayed because a colony of burrowing owls had taken up residence in the stadium.

As I think I’ve mentioned before, our own neighborhood has hosted foxes, raccoons, skunks and even a pack of javelinas in the past. It makes you realize that nature is never too far away — which I think is a good and entertaining thing.

And if you have any urban animal encounters, let me know and I’ll share them.

My second round of surgery to remove the remainder of a lodged kidney stone is complete and my recovery is much, much easier than the first round. I’m till a little sore and having a couple of other expected after effects, but I think that will clear up soon.

I had lots of time to ponder things while was out of commission and not in a writing mood.

Mostly, I thought about how lucky I was to have a patient, understanding and logical wife in dealing with the labyrinth of issues we had to sort out during the process. And I thought a lot about how difficult it was to go through the steps to get this surgery done. The doctor who performed the surgery was excellent. I can’t say the same for her staff, who repeatedly neglected to call me back when I had questions or concerns, treated my wife rudely and seemed to be pre-occupied with other matters most of the time when I met with them.

I also gave a lot of thought to our dog, Chester. I know we all tend to anthropomorphize our pets, but in my recent observations of Chester during this event, I think he really seemed to express empathy about my condition.

He hovered around me constantly, leaped into the bed to be near me at night on a couple of occasions (he never does this other times), and wanted me to pet him frequently. I’m certain I smelled strange when I came out of the operating room and the hospital, which may explain some of his hovering and attention.

When I would sleep in my chair in our “TV Room,” I’d wake up to find him staring at me. It might be just wondering while I smelled differently, why I was sleeping so much or most likely why I hadn’t been giving him frequent treats. Or maybe he was really concerned.

Chester’s top 10 priorities are pretty simple. They are:

1. Get a treat
2. Take a morning nap
3. Go for a walk and get treats from friendly neighbors
4. Take a mid-morning nap
5. Go for a ride in the truck and get a beef jerky treat
6. Take a noon nap
7. Get a Poochie Cone at Caliche’s
8. Take an afternoon nap
9. Get a belly rub
10. Take a nap before sleeping for the night.

He also likes to perform “zoomies” in the back yard, wade in belly-high nasty water in our irrigation ditches, likes to leap in the air when he sees friends, greets everyone enthusiastically when the front door bell rings (always hoping that the ringer will also be the bearer of a treat, even if it might be an axe murderer). Oh, and did I mention napping?

At any rate, thanks to all of you who were thinking of me. Glad this I done and hope I can go fly fishing again soon.

Yes, I’m still here. It’s just taking longer than I thought to recover from this surgery. And to make it worse, I have to go in for a second procedure later this week that I’m hoping won’t be as painful as the first one.

And I promise not to bore you with all the details of what’s going on in my future blogs. I’ll look for something really off the wall to talk about when I’m back.

This summer, when I managed to bust six ribs and crack two more in a fall in the Gila, the follow-up exam revealed a large kidney stone that I needed to have removed before it further aggravated that organ.

It was too large to pass naturally (I think it was the size of a small bowling ball) so I had an outpatient procedure to remove it last week. My recovery has been a lot more painful than I anticipated, so sitting at a desk and writing has not been in the cards.

I’ll get back to writing again in a week or so, but just wanted any readers to know what was going on.

See you on the web again soon, I hope.

Driving back from El Paso on Interstate 10 last week made me draw the following conclusions about how others perceive Las Cruces and New Mexico.

“They smoke a lot of pot, they’re in a lot of legal trouble, the only eat Mexican food and they don’t know how to spell very well…”

That’s the vibe you get when you read the billboards heading north out of El Paso when you enter the Land of Enchantment.

I counted at least four cannabis “dispensary” signs along the highway. There were a couple more heading south, as I recall.

Next seemed like an endless stream of lawyer billboards, many promising big settlements for accidents involving large trucks. Others dealt with basic ambulance-chaser matters. I counted at least half a dozen.

Okay, well, the legendary and imaginary Saul Goodman didn’t actually have a billboard down here, but I’ll be he would have, given the opportunity.

And then next were billboards from several local Las Cruces Mexican food restaurants, all promising the best tacos and enchiladas around. If you counted francises which offer fake Mexican food (think McDonald’s, Taco Bell and others), there were at least half a dozen of those.

Then next was a billboard that has bothered me for years. It is for a desolate looking mobile home/RV park on I-10 about halfway between El Paso and Las Cruces. It is called:

“Western Skys RV Park”

Really? Skys and not Skies?

And, adding insult to injury of the English language, another sign promoting the business is spelled SKYS’ with an added superficial possessive apostrophe.

That’s my rant for the month of August. Stay tuned — I’ll have another one next month.

My wife, Margo, was walking our dog Chester last week when she came upon a Little League practice in a park near our home. There were two teams, one practicing shagging flies and the other working on batting.

The one working on catching fly balls needed to hone their skills a bit, she observed.

“They were using whiffle balls, I guess so they wouldn’t get hurt if they got bonked on the head,” she said.

She said the kids were looking up in the air for the ball and waving their gloves around in a frantic manner to catch it.

“Then It would just plop to the ground next to them,” she said.

She said the next group working on batting practice had some great instruction from their coach.

“Remember, you have to take you glove off before you can bat,” he admonished the youngsters.

I’ve been randomly watching the Little League World Series this week. The game on Wednesday between a Texas team and a Washington team was a gem. It was a 0-0 tie after the regulation six innings (for Little League). It finally was won by Texas in the ninth, 1-0

There were some outstanding defensive plays by both teams — stuff you’d expect to see in the big leagues. I think the catcher from Texas will be playing in “the show” some day.

Pitching was great as well. One Texas kid pitched the maximum of 85 throws he could make before he was retired. He managed many strike outs during his effort. A pitcher from Washington was boxed in with three men on base and no outs in two different innings, yet managed to work his way out of the predicament.

This made me think about something I believe most New Mexicans don’t know about. In 1956, a team from Roswell won the Little League World Series. I happened to go to college and was friends with one of the kids who played on that team, but never heard him talk about it. My brother-in-law, who lived in Roswell at the time, has a souvenir baseball from the team. He witnessed them boarding the train as they left Roswell for Williamsport, PA, for the series.

It is a great feel-good story about a rag-tag bunch of kids from a relatively small town in New Mexico who defeated teams from big city programs around the country on their way to become champions. My hope is to write a short book about it someday.

You’ve probably been reading a lot lately about Artificial Intelligence and the dangers that some scientists, politicians and others think it poses for the human race and the planet.

My wife ran across something last week that adds some fuel to those concerns. It was on a website called travlers.com (you should be able to click on the link and you’ll find the article). It is a collection of portraits generated by an AI algorithm showing what best represents the average person or persons in each state may look like.

I’m assuming that the system plugs in things like landscape, climate, cultural identities, history and other things that make each state unique, then uses AI to generate a portrait.

Some of the suggested images of the “average” person in each state are pretty reasonable — a “Bubba” looking guy from Alabama, an older Hawaiian native warrior in what we’d think of as traditional clothing for that state and a cool looking blond dude with aviator sunglasses and a beach shirt for California.

So here’s what AI thinks we New Mexicans look like:

Here’s what the website says the portrait represents:

“Under the canopy of the vast Southwestern sky, the AI representation of New Mexico stands as a weathered elder, his deep-set eyes filled with countless untold stories. There’s an air of gentle, enduring strength about him, as resilient as the desert landscape he originates from. Framed but the backdrop of a clear sky and endless sand, his spirit and both expansive and quiet- just like the endless stretched of sand dunes throughout the state.”

Whew!!! Allow me to catch my breath. I’m sure that bit of prose was penned by an AI robot somewhere in the bowels of a computer lab in California.

Actually, I kind of feel like that guy — a weathered elder with “countless “countless untold stories” waiting to be posted on my blog. I do take offense that New Mexico is nothing but an “endless tretch of sand dunes.”

But if you think AI was a little too harsh on New Mexico, take a look at what it posted for Florida:

As the website describes the Sunshine State’s representative:

“We’re presented with a character who’s part man, part lizard, and entirely Floridian. From his reptilian eyes to his yellow hat and Summer shirt, he’s got the sun-soaked vibe down to a tee. After all, when you’re in a state that’s almost entirely a beach, why not go full-on sand lizard when you can?”

Hope you have fun finding your home state’s “average” person or couple. And I’m glad (for many reasons) that I don’t live in Florida.

You might recall that a good friend of mine was enraged several years ago when he read a New Mexico State Highway Department sign warning vehicles pulling “trailors” to reduce their speed along a section of Interstate 25 north of T or C. He fired off a letter to the authorities — maybe even the Governor — saying that the misspelling made New Mexico look like we were a state full of illiterate dolts. The sign got changed shortly after he submitted his letter.

Well, it appears that the bad sign bandits are at it again.

A new friend recently sent me this photo of a sign on National Forest Service land in western New Mexico:

And an Albuquerque Journal article earlier this week had an article about this sign which showed up in several locations in the Gila National Forest.

Maybe the “INFORMATION SIGN” should point to the “?” sign.

This reminds me of a bit of semi eco-vandalism that I participated in during a short period of time when I lived in Telluride, CO, and owned the “Telluride Times” newspaper.

A resident of the town who was rehabilitating older buildings in the community became incensed when, while driving along a road through one of the most spectacular mountain vistas in the West spotted a sign with an arrow proclaiming that there was a “SCENIC VIEW” nearby. Maybe Hellen Keller and some really slow people would have missed the view, but I think everyone else didn’t need the reminder to look and appreciate it.

“It’s like putting up a sign that read: “CLEAN AIR. BREATHE,” he mused.

One night, after a couple of beers, he decided to take matters into his own hands and invited me and another local writer along for an adventure to correct the display of the sign he deemed to be obnoxious. He loaded a chainsaw in the trunk of his car and drove to the location of the offending sign. He fired up the chainsaw and then chopped the sign post off at about four feet above the ground with a wickedly jagged cut. Anyone who saw the remaining stump of signpost would have concluded that there had been vandalism. The sign, with about two feet of remaining post, fell to the ground. About that time, a vehicle approached on the highway and we all ran for cover. He had dropped the chainsaw at the base of the mangled signpost, but wasn’t able to turn off the device before he initiated his escape. It was left idling on the ground as the car went by, slowing down for a minute while its occupants tried to decipher a strange rumbling sound, then proceeded on its route at a regular pace.

We sprinted back to the car with the finally silenced chainsaw tossed in the trunk and sped away. We managed to escape incarceration that night, but it was indeed a thrilling moment.

I drove by that mangled sign several times after the incident and I don’t think anyone from the Colorado Highway Department had noticed the infraction before I left Telluride and returned to New Mexico. Maybe it’s never been replaced and some really dense people driving along that road don’t know that there is a spectacular view nearby.

(And I think I’m beyond the statute of limitations.)

Marijuana dispensaries.

Last week, when I went to pick up a pizza, I discovered two more new cannabis dispensaries that I had not seen two weeks earlier.

I went online and asked for “cannabis dispensaries near me” and found at least 30 of them in the immediate Las Cruces area. I don’t think the map is up to date, given what I see when driving around town.

Really — more than 30 of them. Along Solano Drive and Valley Drive, it seems like every other storefront is how a dispensary. Even residential streets like Conway Avenue in my neighborhood has one and short commercial Wyatt Drive has two.

I do wonder, with more than 30 dispensaries around town, how many people are driving around buzzed. Or how many people may be working at the edge of consciousness at some business I frequent. I hope it’s not at any of the medical facilities where I am occasionally treated.

The map below came from a website called “Weedmaps” and because of the many stores located along some streets, not all store locations can be seen.

I also found it quite ironic that a once-illegal habit and an underground industry for many years has now made a plea to the New Mexico Legislature to limit the number of dispensaries in the state.

In a letter to state lawmakers, the cannabis industry stated:

“An unfortunate byproduct of the free-market approach that our state took for licensing new operators is a saturation of regulated and illegal cannabis products in New Mexico. These two factors are resulting in homegrown small and medium-sized cannabis businesses being forced to close their doors or lay off staff. Our local businesses simply cannot compete with the illicit market and the immense oversupply.“

After years of hiding from big brother, now they want its help. It’s like liquor license owners, car dealers and other industries asking the state to protect them from the ravages of a free market economy. I think OPEC invented the “let’s limit supply so we can raise prices” business model.

But I’m not here to argue that point. What’s fascinated me is some of the business names that have been selected by the local cannabis dispensaries.

Among my favorites:

“HIgh Horse Cannabis” (Open 24 hours)

“Everest Cannabis”

“Cannaverse”

“Dreamz Dispensary”

“Cloud House Dispensary”

“NM Cowboy Cannabis”

“The Haze”

So I’ve come up with a few names for these kinds of businesses as my own.

“Pot Head Paradise”

“Cannabliss”

“POTSTOP” (an annagram)

“WeedEater” (sales of magic brownies)

“Wheeler Peak Weed” (after the highest mountain in New Mexico)

“Weed Weed” (located in the community of Weed in the Sacramento Mountains)

“Up in Tokes” (after the movie “Up in Smoke”)

“Warm Up For Munchies Dispensary”

“Tia Juana’s Marijuana”

“Not Mary Jane Shoes”

“Spliff Spot” (what they call it in the Carribean)

Okay, these are lame, but send me your ideas for weed merchants and I’ll publish them.

I just looked up online how many times the average human heart beats in a day. The number I got from two sources as 100,000. When you load all of those into a year, it totals around 35 million.

Luckily for me, the faithful pig valve inserted into my heart five years ago on Tuesday has flapped along with no problems.

I feel very blessed for that and happy that I can continue to enjoy my life and my family as much as I can.

I’m told that my valve is good for several more years. And the good news is that the new procedure for installing an artificial valve in a human heart is now even less invasive than before. Las time, they cut open my chest, removed the heart, sliced it open and sewed in the replacement valve. The process now involves no more external incisions and uses a robitic device to insert the valve in the heart through a vein in the leg.

So here’s to another year of oinking along. And below is the best cartoon I’ve seen about this otherwise traumatic experience.

In our neighborhood, especially during their two-month mating season in February and March, we’re always cautious about the presence of skunks when we let our dog Chester out in the back yard in the early morning or at night.

Yes, he’s been spritzed once, but the second time he saw a skunk he backed off quickly, even though he got a glancing blow of the odiferous critter’s love potion.

However, after reading a recent story in the Albuquerque Journal and seeing a report on an El Paso television station, maybe we should start worrying about another more dangerous species of wild animal — cougars.

A woman in Rio Rancho was surprised recently when she went to open her back door and found a cougar lounging on her back patio with its head on a basketball. She said she almost went out the door and stepped on it before quickly retreating and calling another person in the house to verify what she had seen. She said a cousin who was in the home saw the critter and blurted out “Oh S—, that’s a mountain lion.”

“Curse words do not escape this man’s lips often,” she said of her normally proper cousin.

The Game and Fish Department was summoned to the home and the animal was eventually tranquilized and moved to a safe location away from the urban area.

And in 2011, a young cougar was struck and killed on a busy street on the west side of Albuquerque.

Two weeks ago, an El Paso television station showed a video clip from a phone of a cougar roaming in an arroyo on the west side of the west Texas town. That animal was not found, although there were several other sightings reported in the area.

I looked up information about cougars in New Mexico on various websites and found that there may be as many as 2,500 roaming around the state. There is a hunting season for them and as of the first six months of this year, 27 have been “harvested,” in a euphemistic description offered by the New Mexico Game and Fish Department.

The website also said that our state is a prime mountain lion habitat because of the wide variety of terrain, wide open spaces and plentiful supply of various food sources.

What made me think about this was a story by a next door neighbor who about two years ago told me she saw a cougar on top of the roof of a building just over the rock wall fence behind our house.

“It was very large and it had a long tail,” she insisted.

“Oh sure,” I thought to myself. “She probably had a couple of drinks and saw the fat feral tomcat that drives Chester nuts when he wanders through the back yard.”

Now, maybe I’m not so sure.