(Opinion) Bear Flat Dispatch: Thoughts on politics drama, wildlife confusion and losing at cribbage

There has been a firehose stream of news lately, and most of it is bad.  I have refrained from writing lately for the sake of my sanity, but alas, one must carry on, so here goes on a hodgepodge of issues:

Arlene has been on a disgusting winning streak with our crib games lately.  I don’t understand it, because after all I am a better player, and I remind her about that all the time.  Since watching the disastrous meeting between Trump, Vance and Zelensky in the White House, she has started taunting me with “you don’t have the cards!” when she is about to skunk me.  Then I reply with “oh yeah, well you’re not dealing with a full deck!”, it goes downhill from there – kind of like Trump in the White House.

Talking about politics: what is up with our new MLA? First Jordan Kealy joined a small group in the caucus who wrote a letter to Rustad complaining one of their fellow Conservative MLAs was too woke or something. Then he didn’t support a mask mandate introduced in certain healthcare settings during a dramatic rise in infections. Next, he refused to sign on to a motion condemning the Trump tariff madness, and now he has bailed out of the party to support a fellow MLA who did a disgraceful podcast that mocked residential school survivors. Like, really?  Me thinks he should just go to work as our MLA and avoid all the divisive ‘culture war’ distractions.  If not, then he should resign so a by-election can be held.

A funny sidenote on this Kealy story is the party-versus-independent candidate scenario.  In this riding, it seems to be impossible to elect an independent candidate, and the big party candidate always makes a big deal out of how ‘ineffective’ an independent MLA would be during the campaigns. Then, one way or another, our MLA ends up as an independent and they downplay that whole ineffective thing.  Perhaps instead of voting for the party, we should just start voting for the best candidate.

Ok, enough politics for today.  It is nice to see that the geese are back here at Bear Flat, although they are likely quite confused.  There is a bit of open water again along the south bank of the reservoir where I see them hanging out, but they are probably wondering what has happened since they left last fall.  However, I imagine there are lots of confused critters.  Numerous people have told me about wildlife in unusual numbers or places since the reservoir filled last fall.

The ravens were all over a dead deer here and making lots of noise on March 3^rd.  To our surprise, the next day there were tracks from a black bear all over the kill site. I know of a nearby bear den, and with the ruckus those ravens were making, I am pretty sure they roused him enough to sleep-walk over for a snack. March came in like a lamb, so will it go out like a lion? It was nice to get a bit more snow this winter, but after years of drought conditions, more snow is welcome before spring.