Three times in a couple of weeks.  This is getting kind of weird.  This time the hero is a 5-year-old boy, and the animal was another fox.  In Kingstown, North Carolina:

A 5-year-old boy grabbed a rabid fox by the neck and pinned it to the ground during a family cookout, protecting six other children before his stepfather could step in.

"I wanted to protect my little brother," said Rayshun McDowell, who battled the animal in the front yard of his home Sunday in Kingstown, a town about 50 miles west of Charlotte.

The fox bit Rayshun in the leg, but the 61-pound-boy held the animal down. Health officials later identified the fox as rabid.

"I looked out the window and Rayshun had the fox by the neck and was pushing it into the ground," said his mother, Shinda Linder. "I couldn't believe what I was seeing."

Rayshun's stepfather, Ryan Thompson, pulled the boy off the animal and kicked it. A neighbor fired a handgun three times but the fox continued to advance.

Thompson, wearing a cast because of a broken leg, said he used a stick and his crutch to beat the fox to death. Rayshun, meanwhile, asked only for a Band-Aid and didn't complain of any pain. "Rayshun was really calm and wasn't upset," his mother said. "I couldn't believe he would do something like that. He was so brave, and I was a wreck."

Without being there I can't criticize the neighbor for apparently trying to fire "scare shots."  It could easily have been a case of a mad fox tearing into the step-father and the boy at close quarters, and he didn't want to risk hitting them.

Way to go, kid.

My son is six years old.

Yesterday on the way home the jazz station I always listened to advertised that they would be playing Louis Armstrong all day today.

"Woo hoo!" I said.  "Louis Armstrong, all day tomorrow!"

My daughter asked who that was.

My son said, "I know!  He's that guy that sings, "I see trees of green, red roses too..."  And he warbled out a few lines before he forgot the rest of the lyrics.

"How did you learn that?" I asked.  I was surprised.

"Internet," he said.

"Internet?"

"No, I'm just kidding.  I learned it in school."

"You learned about Louis Armstrong in school?"

"Yeah, in music class."

Maybe public schools aren't all bad.

Make your own postage stamps at stamps.com.  Here's my first one.


It occurs to me that this might be a good way to sidestep the postal service's reluctance to print certain politically incorrect religious-themed holiday stamps, as well.  If that's the kind of thing that turns you on.

UPDATE:  See also the John Moses Browning stamp.

I'm thankful that today is a holiday.  Working in this weather would be really miserable.  It was bad enough yesterday, and it didn't rain nearly as much as it already has today.  We have a 90% chance of rain all day today, and flash flood warnings for all of this part of Texas.  At least we shouldn't have to worry about fireworks starting fires.  This is the first wet 4th we've had in three years, if I recall correctly.  I guess the drought is officially over.

I went over to my dad's already to check the deer, but over there it was raining so hard I could barely see to drive--and this was going only about 15-20 mph on that old dirt road.

Lots of other bloggers have already made much more eloquent comments on Independence Day than I can.  Many freedoms we still have, but many have been taken from us.  The saddest thing to me is that many people either don't believe our liberty is being infringed upon, or they think we are better off because too much freedom is dangerous.  We should not count our blessings for the freedoms we do enjoy without reflecting on what we have lost and how we can get it back.


Happy Independence Day, everyone.  Make some noise--firearms are always preferable to fireworks--if you're not getting rained out.

UPDATE:  It stopped raining long enough for me to check the deer.  Still no new fawns.  My dad is going to have to build a foot bridge across his little creek if it doesn't stop raining soon.  There are sporadic, weak breaks in the clouds right now, but more rain is expected later today.

David Hardy has an insight into the new OSHA backdoor gun ban that everyone has been talking about.

UPDATE: one commenter points out that OSHA cites, as a reason for the rule, a 1947 explosion. As OSHA admits, that was a huge detonation of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. I know a bit about it because it gave rise to a Supreme Court case construing the Federal Tort Claims Act.

Basically, in order to get fertilizer to Europe after WWII, the federal government cut a lot of corners. It allowed the stuff to be bagged when it was too hot for safety, allowed it to be put in waxed sacks (more waterproof, but if the wax melts it becomes the equivalent of fuel oil in a ANFO bomb), etc., etc.. The port of Texas City was full of boxcars of the stuff when some of it spontaneously ignited, then detonated -- the resulting explosions essentially levelled the town.

Some people sued the government -- it had, after all, ignored all the standard industry safety standards. They lost because the Supreme Court ruled that the situation fell under the "discretionary function exception" to the FTCA. The agencies that ignored the safety standards had discretion to do so, and had essentially made judgments that speed of production was worth the risk to life, and that was that.

A rather strange case to invoke for an argument that government regulation is necessary in order to make us safer.

This is more than just malicious nannyism.  OSHA has clearly joined the gun-banner camp.