Posts with the Armageddon tag

Barris Beat

In step with the environment

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
The prairie dog that suddenly appeared.

It seemed an unspoken rule by the time I got there. Every step was deliberate, unobtrusive and (I hoped) non-destructive in this place of nature. I made my way through sage and other prairie grasses, closer to a mound where a couple of prairie dogs were playing. I didn’t want to scare them down their hole; I just wanted to get close enough to take a clear photograph. Then, I looked down and suddenly there it was.

A prairie dog emerged from a hole in the ground right at my feet. And he, or she, chirped at me, as much surprised to see me lording overtop, as I was to see an animal nearly under foot.

I aimed and fired my camera and got the picture. (more…)

Barris Beat

Preparedness or paranoia

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Neither the sight nor the sound any homeowner wants to hear - a burst water pipe in the basement.
Neither the sight nor the sound any homeowner wants to hear – a burst water pipe in the basement.

As I drove up the ramp onto Hwy. 401 near Kingston, following a talk I’d given last Saturday night, I thought I’d call my wife (on a hands-free device) and let her know I was en route home. I phoned once at 10 p.m. I tried again at 10:30 and every half hour after that. But there was no answer. I stopped calling around midnight, figuring she might have gone to bed. But when I got home, she was up. Or, actually she was down… in the basement.

“A pipe broke and has been leaking water down there all day,” she told me. “We had several inches of water in the basement.”

(more…)