I was trying to install a Firefox extension that is a page load analyzer.  It killed Firefox.  I uninstalled it, deleted the leftover junk, downloaded it and installed the new download, and it's still dead.  This computer just won't run Firefox anymore.  I'm stuck using IE now.  This really sucks.

UPDATE:  I didn't feel like tackling this last night but this morning I did some searching for the answer and fixed it right away.  You have to start Firefox in safe mode with all the extensions disabled, then uninstall the offending extension.  Everything is now back to normal.

NOTE TO EVERYONE:  Do not install the Load Time Analyzer extension.

I still don't know exactly how to refer to this.  But today we started moving deer.  Unfortunately, the guy my dad is buying them from specified 6:00 PM for the moving time, so that's what the moving permit says.  I'll be going back to my dad's house later when they should be getting there with the deer.

This is a practice that is so heavily regulated it's just mind-boggling.  Robin Hood wouldn't like it one bit.

Anyway, so far it's been interesting.  An old associate of mine is the son of the guy who we're buying from, and he was the designated deer darter.  The deer have to be darted with a tranquilizer before they can be loaded in the trailer.  The trailer is a cow trailer that has been specially modified for deer.  It has had three interior gates installed so the inside can be separated into 4 different cells, each one holding two deer at the most.  Also the inside has been covered with sheets of plywood so the deer can't see out and get spooked at everything.  There are holes drilled in the plywood to help provide ventilation, and while it's parked it has a fan in the front end blowing air into it.  The owner's license number must be prominently displayed on the outside of the trailer.

When a deer is born in captivity, it must be tattooed before it is sold for the first time.  The tattoo is an alphanumeric code inside the ear.  This is its permanent identification.  Each agent must keep a bound book record of his deer, quite similar to the C&R bound book.  Each deer must be identified by its permanent number in this book, and all records of acquisitions and dispositions must be made.  Additionally, the deer's lineage must be kept recorded in this book.  Each deer is also tagged with a simple number tag in one ear so that it can be easily identified at a distance.  One side of the tag just has a large-format sequential number that's arbitrarily assigned by the owner, the other side has the owner's four-digit license number which was assigned by the state.  When the deer change ownership, the old owner's tag is removed and the new owner's tag is installed.  The change of these "temporary" numbers must be recorded under the deer's permanent number in the bound book by both old and new owners.

The deer were darted with a dart rifle.  I got a chance to glance at it, but of course didn't get to examine it closely or actually use it.  It's a modified Marlin bolt-action .22 that uses a removable magazine and fires .22 short blanks.  There is an extra barrel on top of the original barrel, which holds the dart.  The back end of the dart barrel has an adjustable knob on it so the amount of gas that propels the dart can be regulated.  He had a small notebook in which he had written down all the knob settings and scope settings up to 50 yards in 5-yard increments so he can be sure and put the dart in exactly the right place.  If the deer come within 15 yards or so, the gun is too powerful and can hurt the deer even on its lowest setting.  So for close-up shots, a regular 6-foot blowgun is used.  He said anything over 50 yards wasn't a good idea, because the slightest crosswind can blow those darts badly off target.

While the deer were out, they were given shots of vitamins and had their hooves trimmed.  They are allowed to sleep it off for a period of no less than 80 minutes but no more than 90 minutes and then "reversed," or given another shot that neutralizes the tranquilizer.

It was a little odd at first being so close to deer that were still breathing.  As I told someone, any time I was that close to a deer before, it was already dead.  We carefully lifted them and carried them into the trailer where they slept off the tranq before being reversed.

Maybe I'll have some pictures later tonight.

Here's a website for a big deer ranch:  VLC Whitetail Ranch.  Our deer are much smaller than these.  My dad is hoping to get a bigger west Texas buck next year.  And yes, apparently it's customary to name your breeding bucks.

And here's the website for the Texas Deer Association.

UPDATE:  No pictures.  They had to be unloaded with a minimum of humans around, so I could only observe from a distance.  It was recommended that no one approach the pens for at least three days to minimize spooking.  Maybe I can get some pictures next weekend.  They were up and around by sundown, eating grass and checking out the feeder, drinking water and so forth.  I checked them out just before dark from a couple hundred yards away.  They all appeared to have gone through their transportation ordeal just fine.  These are all pregnant does, and we should be able to expect a bunch of new fawns during the month of May.  These doe are in sets, as far as their breeding goes.  One pair was bred to a so-so buck.  Another pair was bred to a buck that has been producing excellent antlers, but the antlers are relatively low in mass.  The last pair was bred to a buck that has very heavy antlers.  Five of the does weighed around 80 pounds or so, one of them was right at 100 pounds.  All the bucks are in the 120-130 pound range.  Hopefully when we get around to buying a buck, we can get one up in the 170-180 pound range for breeding.

This post by Hammer got me to thinking.  Hmmm...I might be able to come up with ten things, but it will only serve to once again show that I've led a very quiet, boring life.

When I was a kid, we lived in an ancient farm house in the country that my parents rented.  It had three bedrooms, but at the time I was still an only child, so one of the bedrooms became my play room.  One day my mother found a shed snakeskin in there.  She locked it up and I wasn't allowed to go in that room for three months.

When I was a kid, in that same house after my sister was born, my mother was washing dishes and I was drying them, with my sister playing on the floor nearby.  Suddenly a bat came out of the ceiling and began swooping around the room.  I stood there watching it in fascination, but my mother freaked.  She grabbed my sister, covered her head with a pyrex cassarole dish, grabbed me and ran screaming from the house.  I don't know how she managed to do all this with only two hands, but she did.  My dad had been outside feeding the cattle.  He went inside and killed the bat with a broom.

When I was a kid, my favorite book was Tom Sawyer.  I read and re-read it numerous times, until I was able to quote passages of it and sometimes work bits of it into conversation.  My mother thought this was great, I guess because it showed my reading comprehension.  But one day in Sunday school we were being drilled on the names of the Apostles and I said, "David and Goliath!"  My teacher didn't get the reference, and she didn't get the joke.

When I was a kid I read Where the Red Fern Grows at least a dozen times, but I could bring myself to read the last chapter only twice.  As a newlywed, I was watching the movie at home with my wife, who had never seen it before.  I had been trying to brace myself for it the whole time, but as it got up to the final scenes the tears began pouring down my face.  "What's wrong?" she asked.  "His dogs are gonna die," I whimpered.  It breaks me up now just thinking about it, which is one reason I don't like to revisit some of these old memories very often.

When I was a kid I read voraciously.  I always had a book.  One of the few things that would send me into a frothing rage was if someone took my book away.  I liked adventurous stories like Kidnapped and Treasure Island, and stories with guns, dogs and hunting like Red Fern, Goodbye My Lady, Bayou Boy, Old Yeller, and Johnny Texas.  For as long as I can remember I have liked reading ghost stories and anything science-fictiony, even when I was a little kid.  I remember especially one ghost story called The Hole in the Hill which I liked a lot.  It was about the ghost of a slave named Fewkes Gillespie, and about a young boy who helped him move on to the other side.  And I first read H.P. Lovecraft in seventh grade.

When I was a kid I got bullied a lot.  Unlike the mythical bullies always portrayed in feelgood movies, these didn't back down if you fought back.  They were perfectly willing to continue beating the crap out of you.  After I caught a few by surprise and hit them in the head with things like jagged rocks or coke bottles they started leaving me alone.

When I was a kid, someone about my own age who I hated lived near me for a little while.  One day he was riding his bike past our house and had to stop to walk it through some sand (wimp).  Our very old dog trotted out to investigate and he kicked her for no reason.  I happened to be outside practicing with my Wristrocket slingshot at the time, so I cut loose on him.  Based on his reaction, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that although .25 caliber steel balls were not fatal to him, they did cause a significant level of pain.

When I was a kid I used an old axe handle for my muzzle-loader rifle.  Sometimes I used a yardstick.  The axe handle, being bigger, kicked a lot more.

When I was a kid I had an interest in Texas history bordering on obsession and I frequently corrected my seventh grade Texas history teacher, who didn't know squat about it.  At first he appreciated being corrected, but after the third or fourth time he just started telling me to shut up.  He required us to write a monthly book report, and after I wrote one on Lon Tinkle's 13 Days to Glory:  The Siege of the Alamo, he gave me a poor grade and told me he didn't think they were heroes, he thought they were all fools.  I'm still convinced that I didn't get a poor grade because I deserved it, I got it because he hated me for always correcting him in class.  I don't know what became of him, but I hope he lived a long, miserable life and died lonely and forgotten.  I realize this is not a very charitable attitude to have, but I would be lying if I said I didn't feel that way.

When I was a kid, my favorite song was "Puff, the Magic Dragon."  The first non-religious song that I ever committed to memory was "What's Your Mama's Name" by Tanya Tucker.  The first song that I completely memorized I'm not sure about, but was probably the old gospel hymn "Here We Are, But Straying Pilgrims."

This has been all over the internet, at least on gunblogs, so you've probably already seen it.  But just in case you haven't, this from Bloomberg.com:

A U.S. appeals court struck down a three-decade-old District of Columbia law that bans residents from keeping a handgun in their homes, saying the Constitution's Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms.

Hard to believe, but true!

ALL THE WAY DOWN THE SLIPPERY SLOPE: GUN PROHIBITION IN ENGLAND AND SOME LESSONS FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES IN AMERICA  is an essay by Joseph Olsen and David Kopel, and studies how the "slippery slope" led to gun control in (no longer Great) Britain.

Is it possible for a nation to go from wide-open freedom for a civil liberty, to near-total destruction of that liberty, in just a few decades? "Yes," warn many American civil libertarians, arguing that allegedly "reasonable" restrictions on civil liberty today will start the nation down "the slippery slope" to severe repression in the future. In response, proponents of today's reasonable restrictions argue that the jeremiads about slippery slopes are unrealistic or even paranoid.

This Essay aims to refine the understanding of slippery slopes by examining a particular nation that did slide all the way down the slippery slope. When the twentieth century began, the right to arms in Great Britain was robust, and subject to virtually no restrictions. As the century closes, the right has been almost obliterated. In studying the destruction of the British right to arms, this Essay draws conclusions about how slippery slopes operate in real life, and about what kinds of conditions increase or decrease the risk that the first steps down a hill will turn into a slide down a slippery slope.

Thanks to Ronocracy.

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