Earlier today, WGMD News reported the story of three men arrested by the Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife for spotlighting deer:

Three men have been charged with spotlighting and killing deer in Fenwick Island. Fish and Wildlife Enforcement Agents arrested 28 year old Manuel Galvan, 32 year old Ariosto Lopez and 36 year old Javier Mendez on Wednesday after receiving a complaint about spotlighting. Each of the men face a variety of charges and officials also seized a truck and .22 caliber rifle as evidence. All three are being held at SCI in default of $3500 dollars secured bond.

Since then, and after making more phone calls than a teenager on a Friday night, WGMD has learned that the trio of deer poachers were in the United States illegally. Here’s what we know so far:

- The Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement had to make the determination as to whether or not the men were legally in the USA.

- The men are “Mexican nationals.” This was determined by ICE (much cooler name than “INS,” by the way), as the men sat at the Sussex Correctional Institution.

- Only one of the men had a driver’s license. The license was from Florida. Florida is one of the few states that will issue a driver’s license to an illegal immigrant. Big thanks to the Sunshine State for aiding a series of criminal acts with their slacker policy.

- The three were caught in Fenwick Island “spotlighting” deer, which is illegal. No one had a hunting license. They killed an antlerless deer that did not have a tag. Some of the other charges against them are shooting near a road, hunting out of season, and conspiracy. They were hunting with a .22 caliber rifle, which is also illegal.

- They were apparently not shooting from their truck, but they did throw the deer in the truck, and the truck has been seized.

- The .22 caliber rifle was the only weapon they were caught with. But that still begs the question as to how people in the USA and Delaware illegally got their hands on a rifle like that.

- The Delaware Fish and Wildlife officers were unable to communicate with the armed criminals because of a language barrier. They had to get an officer from Laurel to translate. What an incredibly dangerous situation for our men and women at Fish and Wildlife, fully armed people who can’t understand each other face to face in the middle of a crime scene.

- According to Michael Gilhooly from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the men may be entitled to a hearing, but when the State is finished with them, ICE will take them into custody and deport them, which is eerily similar to the way law abiding citizens of the United States want situations like this to be handled.

Dramatic reenactment of the deer’s final moments.

So “thank you” to Delaware Fish and Wildlife and ICE for administering some much needed justice. At a time when Delawareans are getting ready for a wave of regulations and financial costs associated with the State’s new Salt Water Fishing License, it’s nice to know that this is at least one area where being a lawful US citizen is an advantage. I’m sure that deer would totally agree with me.

Heather Mills wants you to think that cows are worse than “charity campaigners” in SUVs.

Heather Mills showed up at an “ecological event” in London last Sunday in a “gas guzzling” Mercedes SUV to tell a crowd that eating meat is killing the planet with greenhouse gases. She wondered why we don’t drink “rat’s milk:”

“There are many other kinds of milk available. Why don’t we try drinking rats’ milk and dogs’ milk?”

Mills, who became a vegan when she married Paul McCartney in 2002, allegedly turned down a $50 million dollar divorce settlement from the former Beatle because she wanted $100 million. After the London event, she went to Dublin, Ireland where her hypocrisy took an unexpected turn as she berated wealthy people:

“Because people are very snobby - these people who have lots of money, they’re either snobby or they’re stingy.

“If you have lots of money you have to be stingy because why would you want that amount of money.”

Yes, Heather, “why,” indeed. She went on to explain that basically she needs money because that’s what it takes to hang around rich people all day long “to actually make a change.” Mills apparently suffers greatly at cocktail parties to save the planet, and yet, she feels she’s being mistreated by the media:

“I don’t think anything can prepare you for being treated worse than a murderer or a paedophile when all you have done in 17 years is charity work,” she said.

(17 years? Would it be wrong to mention that if you go back 18 years Mills was shooting a German porn book? Ouch.)

And why does Mills think she’s getting a raw deal from the media?

She suggested at different stages that she is being attacked because she is a woman and also because she is campaigning for real change in the world.

“I’m a woman who puts fear into men who want to control women,” she said.

“If you look at every single person in the history of the world who has tried to make a difference, you’ll find a very long section of their lives where they were treated horrifically by the government or by the media.”

Heather…are you being “treated horrifically” by the media because you’re a woman trying to exact change, or could it just possibly be because you’re a hypocrite and a total flake?

Let’s face it, the friction created by Linda McCartney spinning in her grave right now is probably contributing more to global warming than all of the earth’s livestock and transportation combined.

(I guess this post means I’m “banned” by Heather Mills now, bummer.)

No, your turkey doesn’t cost more because it hangs out with President Bush and his buddies.

This year your Thanksgiving turkey is going to cost more than last year because we’re turning to alternative fuels:

Turns out your Thanksgiving dinner is going to cost about $5 more this year. One big reason? Ethanol. Here’s why. The most expensive part of the dinner is the turkey (though some grocers give it away if you overload on everything else). And 60% of the cost of the turkey is the feed. Most of the feed is corn, and corn prices are through the roof because corn is being diverted to the hot item of the moment: ethanol.

California’s poultry industry alone has seen a “$100 million dollar” increase in the cost of corn feed. So is there a bright side? Well, no, not if the “side” you’re talking about is creamed corn or cornbread stuffing….

Do kangaroos hold the key to ending the global warming?

Greenpeace wants Australians to eat more kangaroo in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the agriculture industry, in a report called, Paths to a Low-Carbon Future.

Greenpeace energy campaigner Mark Wakeham urged Aussies to substitute some red meat for roo to help reduce land clearing and the release of methane gas.

“It is one of the lifestyle changes we can make,” Mr Wakeham said.

Apparently killing the national symbol of Australia isn’t unheard of…

Roughly three million kangaroos are killed and harvested for meat each year. They are shot with high-powered guns between the eyes at night.

…but there is something unsettling about Greenpeace advocating shooting furry little creatures between the eyes and eating them as a way of addressing global warming.

 

Man-made or space aliens?  While some of the very elaborate crop circles that have been found in England and other places have been attributed to humans – not all have. 

Sussex County, Delaware has its own version of crop circles as I discovered one day while playing with the hybrid version of Google maps.  But what is making these?  While some are indeed circles – others are more reminiscent of Pac Man running rampant across our corn or soybean fields. 

As I scrolled around through Eastern Sussex County – I decided to see if these circles were found all over the county – and yes – they are – around Coverdale Crossroads and Seaford just to name a couple. 

I had an idea that the cause of the Sussex County’s crop circles is spray irrigation or wastewater irrigation.  Just to be sure, I asked Mike McGrath – with the Delaware Agricultural Lands Preservation Foundation what might be the cause.  He agreed that it was spray irrigation… ” I’m not sure whether or not they are wastewater spray…”

Next I went to a source closer to home – County Engineer, Mike Izzo who told me…

“You are correct, the circles are the result of irrigated fields, however they may not necessarily be wastewater irrigated. Standard “groundwater only” irrigation systems will likewise produce the circle effect. The specific locations you reference in your e-mail, i.e. Wolfe Neck, near Mountaire in Millsboro are wastewater -related. I’m not sure why the wastewater standout as much, but it may be related to the time of year that the photo was taken. Often, such photo’s are taken in the winter as you can see more with the leaves off the trees. Standard water only systems don’t pump in the winter because there is generally not a crop or it doesn’t need irrigation. But with wastewater, if it’s not freezing, we’re spraying.”

And looking at the area near Lewes, where the Wolfneck Rd Wastewater Treatment facility is – I saw more circles that along with the ones I saw near Mountaire tell me they really are spray irrigation – of one sort or another. 

These ‘circles’ are nothing that you will see from ground level, but I’m sure planes flying overhead as well as the satellite that snapped the Google images, have no trouble seeing the less-adorned Sussex County crop circles.  Mystery solved.

If I ask you to close your eyes and imagine a forest, and the image that comes to mind is this:

Instead of this:

Then you’re obviously a Sussex County Official.

Image of the phytoplankton bloom off of the Galapagos Islands.

Everyone knows that we’re all facing a horrifying end at any minute because of the global warming. With this in mind, aren’t we all glad that our dying Earth is full of people brimming with frantic ideas to save us before it’s all over? Like this, another plan to start a phytoplankton bloom in the ocean to absorb carbon dioxide:

A New Mexico Tech scientist believes he has found a way to head off dangerous climate change. Oliver Wingenter said the idea is simple — fertilize the ocean so that more plankton can grow.

But, just like the last “Create a Phytoplankton Bloom Plan,” when the World Wildlife Fund mentioned something about a potential “domino effect through the food chain,” this latest plan has it’s skeptics, too:

Caldeira said that, in principle, Wingenter’s idea looks like it might work. But he suggested a cautious approach, with more research to understand the effect fertilization might have on both ocean and climate.

“It might be relatively benign,” he said. “It might not. We just don’t know.”

Some of the other ideas that have come up over the years to save us from the global warming are far more interesting. For instance, “Meatout” says that “global warming threatens planetary survival…,” and wants you to end global warming by going vegan. Meanwhile, Ric Oberlink, from Californians for Population Stabilazation, had this to say:

“If we had half as many people, we wouldn’t have much of a climatic warming problem,” argued Oberlink.

Ouch, I think we all know what CPS’s solution to global warming is….while astronomer Roger Angel has another solution that’s a little less personal:

He thinks that by putting a giant sunshade - consisting of 16 trillion glass discs – in space, he can limit some of the Sun’s energy reaching Earth.

16 trillion glass disks, incidentally, would cost $4 trillion and take 30 years to get going. In the meantime, we can try this plan from a Nobel Prize winner:

His solution would see hundreds of rockets filled with sulphur launched into the stratosphere. He envisages one million tonnes of sulphur to create his cooling blanket.

“Hydrocarbons are burnt to lift the rocket material, and the rocket then goes into the stratosphere. In the stratosphere, hydrogen sulphide is burnt, and the sulphate particles reflect solar radiation,” he explains.

But, if all else fails, there’s always the fall back plan provided to us by a former Canadian Defense Minister:

A former Canadian defense minister is demanding governments worldwide disclose and use secret alien technologies obtained in alleged UFO crashes to stem climate change. “I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation … that could be a way to save our planet,” Paul Hellyer, 83, told the Ottawa Citizen.

Our greatest attempt at combatting global warming to date, the Live Earth Concert Event, has so far failed to stop global warming. Other recent actions to stop global warming have also been fruitless, like getting naked with hundreds of other people and lying on a melting glacier, and helicoptering politicians to Greenland.

This morning, News Journal readers were greeted with two articles about the “cancer cluster” that was “confirmed” by the Delaware Division of Public Health.  In an earlier, August 5th article, we learned that six areas in Sussex were “examined in the report.”  Those areas are ”Dagsboro, Frankford, Georgetown, Millsboro, Ocean View and Selbyville,” and the cancer rates in those areas were found to be “17 percent higher than the national average.” 

In one of today’s News Journal articles about the “cancer cluster” titled,  Frustrated eastern Sussex residents want answers,” Tom Burke, a “professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,” discusses some of the factors that may be involved in the higher than average cancer rates:

Sprawl has a measurable effect on air and water quality, said Tom Burke, professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. More houses mean more traffic, which contaminates the air, Burke said. When it rains on rooftops and blacktop, the water does not “percolate” through the soil, but instead sends oil and fertilizer directly into the lakes and streams, he said.

More houses mean more wells and more septic tanks, he noted. People are drinking from the same groundwater into which they send their waste, he said.             

“There’s this whole cascade of environmental effects,” Burke said. “You have this taxing of a system.”             

 

The Indian River power plant, owned by NRG Energy, is also cited,

 

The Indian River power plant started operation in the late 1950s, and was bought by NRG Energy in 2001. It is the state’s top source of toxic and smog-forming pollution. The state last year passed pollution-control rules that would reduce emissions from the plant, but NRG has said it won’t be able to meet the state’s goals for reducing those emissions by 2009.

In another article in today’s News Journal, titled, State hunts cancer clusters,” there is a disturbing subtitle, “More heavily populated northern Del. needs attention before Sussex, activists argue.”  And it continues:

Sussex community groups have called for the state to study NRG Energy’s Indian River power plant near Millsboro as a possible contributor. But some northern Delaware civic leaders say that the state’s environmental monitoring resources are already stretched thin and that the state ought to devote attention to areas of Wilmington and northern Delaware where an environmental risk has been established.

So, some people in New Castle County want to push Sussex under the rug because our “environmental risks” basically haven’t been studied enough.  Sussex countians were called “the squeaky wheel,” by one Wilmington “community leader.”

As it stands now, a wind farm has been approved by the Public Service Commission for Sussex County.  But currently, Delmarva Power and Light and Conectiv are fighting that clean source of energy, while NRG is fighting any clean up of their facility in Indian River. With new development cropping up all over the county, increased congestion on our roadways, more people tapping into our natural resources, and the State’s biggest polluter in our back yard,  SUSSEX COUNTIANS SHOULD BE “THE SQUEAKY WHEEL!”    

(The original post said this, “bush Sussex under the rug.” That was obviously some kind of a Freudian typo, sorry). 

 

My withering magnolia tree and crunchy brown grass.

From WGMD News:

According to Accu-weather, the weather is expected to be dry with little if any rain through about August 10th. After that there will be a greater chance of some scattered showers and thunderstorms, but as far as any widespread significant rainfall—it doesn’t look like that is going to happen any time soon.

Department of Agriculture Secretary Michael Scuse tells WGMD News that the drought situation is “bleak.”

These are pictures taken while I was out and about around Delmarva this week:

Christy Freeman’s house in Ocean City, Maryland, where the bodies of four unborn babies were discovered.

Federal agents involved in the excavation of Christy Freeman’s house. Two cats and one dog were found buried in the yard.

Rick Leventhal from FOX News covering the Christy Freeman story in Ocean City, MD. He’s the guy with the blue shirt and jeans in the middle of the picture.

The Mountaire truck that crossed the center line and swiped a Mountaire tanker truck. It was rumored that the driver of the truck that crossed the line had a heart attack.

The beach at Tower Road today. The sun was shining and the water was refreshing and people were certainly taking advantage of the beautiful conditions.

Surfers and boogie boarders enjoy the little, clean waves coming into Tower Road today.

The seagull that pooped on me at the water park on Tuesday afternoon. Being pooped on by a bird is apparently considered “good luck” by some people. Those people all must have really, really bad luck.