"Men are qualified for civil liberty..."

                                              this fox is standing in front of a 12 in ruler                                                         well i hate to admit it but i have hundreds of fox videos now and could not be sure whether I am seeing a kit fox or a swift fox...but i am astounded at how small these animals are...once when I went out of the van to see them shortly before sunrise I was startled because I thought I was looking at a house-cat...and not a very big house cat either...a couple of mornings ago there were several barking near the van an I suspected that they  needed something and sure enough the water dish was empty...     considering how many kangaroo rats I have caught on video with the new game camera I would thing that occasionally they would devour a few of these...and I have seen a new diurnal ground squirrel which I had not seen before...the round tailed ground squirrel...Citellus tereticaudus...which has no stripes...from the number of tracks and holes I see of the rodents I think there must be enough to support a sizeable population of carnivores...But I have never seen a snake...which would get a lot to eat....very few raptors but several shrikes (or butcher birds) which like to eat the lizards...i have found several dead lizards pinioned on a shrub where the shrikes apparently forgot where they left their meal.  

i figured I would write my favorite Edmund Burke quote...which i may have written somewhere else already but it is worth repeating...pay attention...i have neutered it...

"People are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put chains on their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the councils of the wise and good in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite is placed somewhere; and the less  there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that people of intemperate habits cannot be free. Their passions must forge their fetters." Edmund Burke      

so i would like to recommend a movie which I picked up a while back...it is "Algiers" with  Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr and Sigrid Gurie..from 1938...it is about a man who escapes...it will make you cry.

and also a CD which I picked up in Mississippi by gil scott heron called" I'm not from here"                   this recording is kind of unique in it's raw emotion...it may make you cry also