a racetrack betting coup

i have a friend who is a clever handicapper.  just the other day he told me this tale


tom's got a "virtual" stable wherein he can store horses he's watching and be notified - by email - when they are next entered.  he had been following a two year old - listed as a ridgeling [one undescended testicle] and was impressed with its early speed.  he'd bet on it a couple of times but the youngster had folded when it hit the half mile mark.  it was stored in his stable.

suddenly, one day, he got an email telling him the horse was entered to run in the near future - this time listed as a gelding.  on a hunch that the problem the horse had as a two year old stemmed from that wayward testicle - now gone - he bet it up and down in the exactas.

the horse went off at  60-1. 

it didn't win - but finished second to a horse that went off at 30-1.  the exacta paid $1500 - for $2...i don't know how much he bet, but you get the idea.


 there's more than one way to skin a cat if you're clever - and pay attention.

pigeons

i owe the loss of my lower four front teeth to pigeons.

i hadn't been asleep long when stiles banged on my apartment door...we'd gotten in late and now it was past seven a.m. on a freezing winter day.  we'd planned this pigeon shoot, over decoys, shortly after i'd found the flock in a field on the old convict farm.

we had a great shoot, hurling some of the dead ones into the air from the blind - to simulate decoying birds - and augmenting our spread with the several other cadavers.  later, on our way out to the chadds ford inn i, hungry and sleep deprived, after a long, cold day in the blind, drifted off the road and hit a tree.  hence the loss of teeth.

later in life i encountered the wood pigeon, a larger and stronger flyer than our citified rock type...specifically in britain and scotland.

my first wood pigeon shoot was in dorset where my father, after his retirement, lived.  much to his horror i arrived on a visit with a shotgun.  when i, on his demand, presented myself at the local police station i was met by the officer in charge with a puzzled stare...obviously i was legal...i had passed through customs hadn't i.  anyway, gun registered to my father's satisfaction, i joined the head of the county pigeon control office and banged away at the scoundrels over decoys in the kale fields and in the roosts in the little forests which dotted the countryside - a very pleasant diversion from family obligations.

my last confrontation with the wood pigeon came in scotland under very different conditions.  i was salmon fishing in aberdeenshire when my great friend tiger thouron and i came upon the gamekeeper of our host's estate.  "will you shoot some of these bloody pigeons," he asked.  "they're in migration from norway and they're everywhere."

yes we would we nodded vigorously...and happily so.

what i didn't know was that i would be sent up a tall pine tree..."when you come to the top of the ladder you'll have to climb the last twenty feet or so to the platform. tie your gun to this rope and you can pull it up behind you...be careful, the boards are wet and slippery."

i did as told and found myself amid the tops of the trees on a wooded slope on a platform with no railing, the wind blowing hard at my back.  the birds, tacking in to roost, came in numbers as the sun set.  the shooting was fast and intense what with the slippery boards and the wind.  i clambered down in the dark to meet tiger who'd had equal success from his position on the ground.  the gamekeeper allowed us four birds each for a pigeon pie.

i have great respect for pigeons.

a prayer

     now i lay me down to sleep,
     i pray the lord my soul to keep.

     if i should die before i wake,
     i pray the lord my soul to take.

pretty scary notion for a young child to consider...a plea that worked out well for my mother

danger

for all you thrill seekers:

      i'd  rather be charged by a rhino than go to the circus...and so would my wife, which is why i love her.