Over the years, the owner of an apartment complex in Bernalillo, a bedroom community to Albuquerque, probably found lots of unusual things left by renters after they vacated their digs.

However, in 2010, what the owner found was especially disconcerting.

Left behind in a kiddy pool on the floor of the the living room of the apartment were two South American spectacled crocodiles — probably anxiously awaiting their next meal and happy to see a potential snack.

How the crocodiles got there and what eventually happened to them was not disclosed in anything I could find. However I have a theory about that.

Our neighbor to the south along the Rio Grande — El Paso, TX — was famous for having a group of live alligators slithering around a pond in the middle of the downtown San Jacinto square. The alligators were a popular tourist attraction from 1889 until 1965, when they were removed because they had been abused by spectators.  History is unclear about how the gators first appeared in the pond, and there were many of them who lived there over the years. The last remaining ones were relocated to the city zoo. In honor of the displaced alligator mississippiensi, a fiberglass statue was erected at the site of the original pond in San Jacinto Plaza in 1993.

Since Albuquerque has been seen as a competitor with El Paso for years, perhaps someone was surreptitiously planning to outdo the “Sun City” to the south with a display of a more ferocious type of swamp dweller.  The city’s somewhat sterile all downtown Civic Plaza might have been livened up with a pond of crocodiles. 

Okay, I know that’s a stretch, but in these days of conspiracy theories, I think it’s an entertaining one.  

Apparently too anxious to get out for the party on New Year’s Eve in 2010, an employee of AAA accidentally typed in the wrong number for a “Tipsy Tow” service in Carlsbad.

Off by just one digit, it turned out to be an 800 number for a phone sex service. 

I’m just speculating here, but I’ll bet that error kept a lot of men off the road that evening while they jabbered with Buffy about how to meet with her in person on the banks of the Carlsbad River Park. 

 

My blogs have been a bit scarce for the last week because we were entertaining our daughter and two small grandchildren from Austin for the first time in more than a year.

Our week consisted of daily hikes around the area to see things we thought everyone would enjoy experiencing. We visited Slot Canyon, the Bosque Trail by the Rio Grande, the Organ Mountain-Desert Peaks National Monument, Prehistoric Trackways National Monument and the Tortugas Dam with its spectacular artwork by Kathy Morrow (if you haven’t seen it, it’s really worth the trip.)

At the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument, we visited the cave in the La Cuevas rock structure that was once inhabited by a hermit in the mid 1860s. Giovanni Maria de Agostini, an Italian, wandered around Europe, South America, Canada and New Mexico before settling in Las Cruces in a cave (actually an overhanging rock formation) near the base of the Organ Mountains. He befriended several people in nearby Mesilla and became known for his healing powers.

His friends warned him of the dangers of living in the cave so far from civilization, but he insisted on the solitude it offered. However, he promised his friends in Mesilla that he would light a fire in front of his cave every Friday night to assure them he was still alive. The fire, it was said, was clearly visible in Mesilla, almost 20 miles away.

“I shall make a fire in front of my cave every Friday evening while I shall be alive. If the fire fails to appear, it will be because I have been killed. I shall bless you daily in my prayers,” he reportedly told his friends.

One Friday night in 1869, the fire failed to glow from the base of the Organ Mountains. Friends rushed to the hermit’s cave the next morning and found him dead, laying on his crucifix with a knife in his back. His murder was never solved. 

Just like the sun reflecting semaphores used on top of the Robledo Mountains by the soldiers at Fort Selden in the late 1800s, men have used light to communicate over long distances before telephones were invented or even telegraphs were widely in use. In Giovanni’s case, his method of communicating with his friends was innovative, but it in the end, it wasn’t fast enough to save him. 

When I was beginning my career in journalism, newspapers had copy desks. They were filled with sage older writers who had migrated from the thrill of being a beat reporter to the seemingly mundane task of reviewing every article that was to go in the paper, writing a headline for it and them assembling the stories for each page of the publication.

These were talented guys — Millard Hunsley, James Abar, Jim Smith, Bill Bogle and others — who sat around a U-shaped desk to review every sentence and word printed in the newspaper. They were sticklers for proper spelling, sentence structure, general readability and compliance with the Associated Press or United Press International stylebooks. I learned a lot from these men about writing that has served me well through the years. And I feared when they would send a story back to me for clarification, correction or — in one case — a note that just rejected my story as “lousy.”

Writing a headline for each story was an important element of their job. Even today, when something odd or exciting happens to me, I immediately write a headline in my mind for the story about whatever happened. For example:

• “Unfocused Mesilla Park Man Trips While Walking Dog; Fall Smashes Prized Neighborhood Flower Garden.”
• “Propane Tank on Outdoor Grill Catches Fire; Owner Placed It Too Close To Burning Coals”
• Flames Almost Torch Owner’s Home; Embarrassing Fire Department Call Made

I bring this up because of two glaring errors I spotted in Albuquerque Journal and Las Cruces Sun-News headlines this week.

In the first incident, the front page of the Sun-News announced that “Freshman claim state speech and debate title.” The adjoining picture showed two different people who won the separate awards. So it clearly should have read “FreshMEN claim…” In the second incident, the Albuquerque Journal headline announced the eruption of a new volcano in “Ireland.” Well, sorry, Journal, the volcano was in ICELAND.

The problem isn’t really the fault of most newspapers who no longer have the money or resources for a real copy desk . It’s really a symptom of fewer and fewer people reading newspapers these days and a squeeze for more profits from newspaper owners. As a result, you, the reader, often get poorly edited copy and we all suffer the loss of well written, grammatically and factually correct newspaper stories. 

My recommendation to everyone is that you read a reliable mainstream newspaper every day and not rely so much on online sources for your news. 

Okay, that’s my rant for the day.

About six months ago, I wrote about a guy in Clovis who was standing naked on a street corner and ranting about various injustices when city police stopped and tried to diffuse the situation. The naked perp managed to jump into a still-running police unit and streak (pun intended) off to the hospital, where he turned himself in. This happened about six years ago

Well, Omaha, Nebraska, seems to have had a similar incident just last week.

Police responded to reports of a naked man running along a downtown street and damaging vehicles. When they arrived, they spotted him on top of a semitrailer truck.

Confronted, he leaped off the truck to jump into a waiting police cruiser and sped away, crashing into several other cars and objects before his arrest.

I have to believe it had something to do with New Mexico. I’ve written several blog posts in the last year of naked people doing strange things in our state. From a rugby player I knew who stripped naked in the back of a pickup truck to wave at passers by on I-10 to a naked man who confronted traffic control cameras in Santa Fe, I think New Mexico just invokes this kind of weirdness. I believe the freedom of our wide open spaces invokes the need to strip down to basics and just let it go. I think the guy in Omaha must have passed through the Land of Enchantment at some time in his past and was infected by our lust for the au natural.

So far, I’ve been able to keep my wits — and my clothes — about me. Except for the time I participated in a Zulu War Dance ritual after scoring a “try” in a rugby match. But that’s another story for another time.

In the last few years, I have started reading obituaries in the Albuquerque Journal about people I’ve never met. I’m mostly interested in what people did during their lives and if they are not native New Mexico residents, how and why they ended up here. I feel that by reading these obituaries, I am in some small way honoring them for their accomplishments in life.

Last week, when searching through the obituaries, I found one for a man whose family noted that he was “a typewriter repairman most of his adult life…” It was an honest profession and he retired from it about the time it no longer became relevant. That was perfect timing.

When I drive through the town of Espanola, I am often amused by the sign painted on the side of a downtown building which proudly announces the name of the business inside as “Espanola Typewriter Repair.” I suspect the business ceased to exist many years ago and no one has taken the opportunity to paint over the sign. I imagine most people don’t even think about typewriters any more until they see that sign.

I’ve pounded out what I think must have been thousands of stories over the years on typewriters. I’m proud to say I still have one — an Underwood with a hefty metal frame and elite type face. It still works — qwerty keyboard and all — but I wonder if I can still find a ribbon for it.

It makes one think about what things we use and do frequently in our lives today that will no longer be relevant in about 20 years. In my case, I hope writing will still be relevant as long as I can do it and I can find someone who cares enough to read about what I wrote.

In 2005, workers at the Albuquerque Zoo discovered something rather gruesome outside the cage of the resident Jaguar. It was a human finger, severed no doubt by the bite of the “panthera onca” in the cage.

No one came forward to claim the severed digit, maybe because they were too embarrassed that they really didn’t believe the “DO NOT STICK YOUR FINGERS IN THE CAGE OR FEED THE ANIMALS” sign. Or perhaps the Jaguar might have had more for its snack than just a finger. The critter wasn’t interested in discussing the matter.

When I looked up information about Jaguars, the largest cat in the Western Hemisphere, I found this frightening entry: “They’ll eat almost anything.” You have been warned.

I’m very proud to say that my wife (and three nephews) have retained possession of a family farm in central Nebraska that was homesteaded by her pioneering great great grandfather. It’s nothing that will ever make us rich, but it is a great source of pride to be able to hang onto a piece of land with so much history, filled with the hopes and dreams of those who worked the Platte River Valley homestead for so many years. Besides, we recently learned that Bill Gates has been buying up farms in Nebraska, so it’s a hot property these days.

For legal reasons, the property is set up as the “(My wife’s maiden name) Family Farm,” with my wife listed as the principal contact for the operation, even though it is farmed now under a contract arrangement with local farmers.

So we were rather amused last week when this piece of targeted direct mail arrived in our mailbox, addressed to Margo Lamb of the “Lamb Family Farm.”

It seems that Whataburger is soliciting businesses in our area in Las Cruces to give free food coupons to their employees as a reward. “Please put these coupons in your break room or where your team can share them,” the direct mail piece suggests. Of course, to get a free Whataburger, “Honey Butter Chicken Biscuit,” milkshake or “Breakfast on a Bun,” you have to buy a bunch of other food items that you probably don’t want. It also says you can order some “made to order appreciation” for your business team.

Well, let’s put this in perspective.

For starters, There are no Whataburger franchises in Nebraska. The closest ones are in Amarillo, TX, or Stillwater, OK, about 475 miles away from the farm in central Nebraska. Secondly, the “Lamb Family Farm” really has no employees, although I guess you might consider my wife as one, even though she receives no compensation for monitoring the legal affairs of the property. And then there’s the issue of the non-existent “Break Room.” Maybe the cab of a John Deere tractor?

But what is kind of creepy is how this direct mail program seemed to come up with enough personal data to know that my wife was involved in a family farming operation. Of course, they got the name of the operation wrong and assumed the farm was just out our back door somewhere in the Mesilla Valley.

I think I may give them a call to see if they can send up a box of burgers and fries for a TGIF “team” celebration 977 miles away in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, I guess we could enjoy some of the 16 different coupons

However, if you’re trying to reach potential customers in Nebraska with fast food, I think they’d actually prefer a Runza (look it up) to a Whataburger.

When my parents first began operating the Ruidoso News in the early 1950s, we did not have a large enough press to print the newspaper in our home town. The closest place with a broadsheet press for printing newspapers was in Alamogordo. Our staff would “make up” the lead type pages of local news and advertising on large metal frames called trucks, then load them into the trunk of our car and drive them 45 miles to Alamogordo for printing every Thursday.

Often, I would accompany my father to watch the newspaper being printed on the press of the Alamogordo Daily News. One time, I chose to stay home in Ruidoso with friends to see an exciting new science fiction movie while my parents drove to Alamogordo with the print ready pages.

The movie was called “Them” and the plot was this: After the testing of the first atomic bomb near Alamogordo in 1945, common ants living at White Sands National Monument were exposed to radiation and mutated into giants insects the size of elephants. Naturally, they began creating a giant colony underground in the sand dunes and began terrorizing the nearby town of Alamogordo. The military finally was able to finish off the adult ants in the colony with napalm guns, but not before the critters had munched down several brave soldiers and scientists. However, the last scene of the movie showed a deep dark corner of the ant tunnels in which eggs for a new wave of the mutant ants were beginning to hatch.

Needless to say, I was most anxious for my parents to get home that evening. It really did enter my 8-10 year old brain that they might have been intercepted and turned into dinner by the mutant pogonomyrmex barbatus species (common red harvester ants).

Strange things do inhabit White Sands National Monument. Take for example the fact that in 2018 Ozzy Osborne was wandering around there to star in an episode of some video production. I don’t think it involved ants.

However, while he was waiting in his trailer for the cue for him to go on the set, the manager of the Alamogordo Chamber of Commerce stopped by and casually asked him if he would consider being a member of the organization.

Ozzie, surprisingly, said yes.

I’m not certain whether Ozzie kept up his membership in the Alamogordo Chamber of Commerce. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Ozzie in the last couple of years on the tube. Maybe “Them” got him.

New Mexico has had its share of notorious UFO incidents over the years, beginning with the famous Roswell incident in 1947 in which an unidentified object crashed on a remote ranch northwest of the city. Air Force officials in Roswell first declared it was an extraterrestrial object, but later recanted the story to say it was just a weather balloon.

Similar sightings have been recorded in New Mexico in Socorro and Aztec.

Last week an American Airlines pilot spotted a fast moving tube-shaped object whizzing by his San Diego-bound flight over northeastern New Mexico near Clayton.

“Do you have any targets up here,” the incredulous pilot asked air traffic control after the object flew by. “We just had something go right over the top of us. I hate to say this, but it looked like a long cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile type of thing moving really fast right over the top of us.”

He got no confirmation from air traffic control but the matter has been referred to various federal agencies for further investigation — of course they aren’t commenting. And as expected, it has lit up UFO conspiracy internet search sites.

Here’s my theory on the UFO sighting. On the same day that the UFO incident happened, Union County in northeastern New Mexico was declared as having the safest rating possible for COVID-19 spread in the state. It had earned the squeaky clean “turqoise” level for having fewer than eight COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents of the county. (Trust me, Union County has nowhere near 100,000 residents.) Yep, the little green men just wanted the safest place on the planet to avoid getting a nasty human infection.

I say welcome back, guys.

During my years as a journalist reporting on the New Mexico Legislature, there was an oft told joke around the capitol that many of the lawmakers were elected to their posts simply because local constituents just wanted them out of town for a month or two.

I had great respect for many of the legislators on both sides of the aisle who did their jobs well and had the best interests of the citizens of New Mexico in mind. There were, however, a few oddballs that fit the joke.

Last week, someone must have taken the joke a bit more seriously. It seems that an Albuquerque TV station discovered that the emergency exits inside the Roundhouse had been locked from the inside during business hours. With the capitol already on lockdown because of pandemic protocols, it became even more difficult for lawmakers to make a quick getaway.

Once the incident was reported, the locked exits were quickly unlocked so certain legislators could return home to annoy their constituents.

During the pandemic, my wife and I have relied on curbside delivery to pick up basic grocery items from a nearby Wal-Mart. The experience has been pretty good for the most part — the store occasionally substitutes items or is out of stock of other things, but we get most of what we want without having to go into a store.

Last week, we had a bit of a humorous incident involving an order which included two heads of iceberg lettuce. Instead of getting two heads of lettuce, we got this:

Yep, that’s a cabbage on the right. It didn’t have a wrapper which said “ICEBERG lettuce” like the one on the left. Kind of hard to miss that, we thought.

Oh well, we will have to update our menu. Instead of regular salads in the next couple of weeks, I guess we’ll have coleslaw. And of course, St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner, so corned beef and cabbage is definitely a possibility.

But next time you order a red onion from Wal-Mart, remember, you might get a beet or a red potato instead.

Two posts I recently wrote discussed an incident in which a Taos woman sued the local McDonald’s for injuries she suffered when a toilet paper dispenser detached from the wall of her stall and struck her in the head. She claimed she merely tugged on the roll of toilet tissue when the device turned into a flying projectile.

The suit was ultimately dismissed. I noted in my blog that a previous lawsuit against McDonald’s involving a spilled cup of hot coffee resulted in a large settlement and consumer warnings on coffee cups about the dangers of hot beverages. I concluded that we probably would not be seeing similar warnings about the dangers of flying toilet paper dispensers.

However, it may be time to reconsider. A long-time friend, business colleague and someone I consider to be my career mentor (he taught me the value of patience, remaining calm and putting things into proper perspective) mentioned a similar incident that occurred at our place of business many years ago. It seems that a renter in our building sought damages for a similar injury he claimed happened in a common bathroom. It turned out that in this case, there was a modest settlement. My friend noted that our business “wound up paying something just to get rid of it (the nuisance suit),” my friend noted.

So maybe we do need consumer warnings on toilet paper dispensers. In the interest of protecting citizens from themselves, I am proposing the following consumer alert to be posted on all toilet paper dispensers in public buildings: