The Coffee Clatter

Awakening in autumn in Colorado means hot cocoa is required.

“Anything Goes” splits the airwaves on a weekday morning about 7:15 in the morning, just about the same time the sun lifts over the eastern horizon on a clear September day. I’ve spent the majority of my life listening to the same radio show. The voices change, but the show remains remarkably the same as it was say 40 years ago when Claire Behan first woke up the prairie.

In a recent show, Ty Harmon mentioned shooting prairie dogs as a cowboy sport. The comment was made innocently enough. Cowboys have a reason for shooting prairie dogs, and while it’s often a necessity to thin out the high numbers of prairie dog holes in order to herd cattle in a pasture, they really do consider it a sport. There’s nothing mean or cruel about it. Prairie dogs often out breed the area they have for housing and their food supplies get thin, then they begin moving to different pastures and in order to maintain a pasture and prevent prairie dogs from filling it up with holes where cattle break legs, or horses break legs, the prairie dogs have to go.

Unfortunately, out here on the prairies, we can’t round up the prairie dogs and take them back to Boulder — like they did when they hauled their excess population of prairie dogs to the country a few years back.

So, what does that have to do with mocha? Quite a lot…

Sitting here sipping mocha and listening to “Anything Goes” it hit me that way back when folks took their coffee off the campfire, they didn’t make a big deal out of shooting prairie dogs, or cooking meat, or living off the land. It seems that having a choice of coffee flavors has made a massive difference in people’s outlook on reality. Campfire coffee is pretty simple, you add coffee grounds, water and set the pot on the campfire until it boils a while. Life was pretty simple back then too.

Now, not only is it wrong to kill prairie dogs, it’s all right to kill babies and call it abortion. Now that’s an irony that just ain’t quite okay in my book. If it’s wrong to kill a prairie dog that’s disrupting your livelihood, then how can that liberal earth friendly protester not determine that it’s wrong to kill a baby for being conceived when it’s inconvenient?

A few years ago, I had a conversation with a man who believes that any time a baby is conceived “unplanned” the baby should be aborted. He’s a proponent of free sex. If you want to “do the deed” as the kids nowadays call it, you should have every right to do it, “that’s why abortion is an option” (in his words). I argued that if you have sex, you know pregnancy is a likely after affect, therefore, if you’re going to be sexually active, you should be prepared to have a child, therefore the child is expected and not unplanned.

His argument that women plan to get pregnant, therefore men shouldn’t be held accountable or liable for a child didn’t wash. If you choose to have sex, you must be aware that pregnancy and a child are the likely result, therefore, if you choose to have sex, you’ve made the choice to have a child. You’ve already made the choice. It’s no longer an option at that point.

Maybe we should take away all the coffee flavors and go back to a time when killing prairie dogs is okay and it’s a crime to kill babies? I’m all for it!