Six Minutes

Researchers at the University of Michigan have concluded that drinking Coke might be shortening your life. Taking into consideration things like additives, fats, calories, and sugar content, they estimate each can you drink may shave a full twelve minutes off your life. And you have to wonder, what if those are the best twelve minutes you had coming?

A sobering thought there.

Well, I’ve devised a workaround where I don’t need to worry about that. I now drink the little half-sized cans of Coke. Therefore, I am only losing six minutes. I figure not much can happen in six minutes. Most days, I can’t even decide what to watch on Netflix in that amount of time.

Mini-Cans of Coke in My Refrigerator

—Mitchell Hegman

Sunroom Privileges

Filipino pork siomai (pronounced shu mai) started life as a Chinese dumpling, but the Philippines grabbed the ball at some point and has been running with it ever since. Siomai has become one of my favorite island dishes. To make hers, Desiree seasons ground pork appropriately, tucks little scoops into wonton wrappers, and steams them into soft, savory perfection.

But that’s barely opening the curtain on this act.

The real magic arrives when you dip the bundles into soy sauce brightened with freshly squeezed calamansi juice. For those of you hoisting a beer at a bar in East Helena, calamansi are tiny Filipino limes. They are small, but fierce and full of attitude. And this is where sunroom privileges come into play. We happen to have a modest but wildly productive calamansi tree living its best life in our sunroom.

Limes in Hand

Steaming Siomai

Siomai with Soy/Calamansi Sauce

—Mitchell Hegman

A Quick Recap of Our Conditions

We are sentient beings trapped inside leaky bags of salt that will eventually fail us. At the same time, we are presently trapped on a big rock hurtling through mostly empty space at 67,000 miles per hour. Our quest, simply enough, is to change at least one of these conditions.

—Mitchell Hegman

A Few Pluses

Here are a few pluses in my life at present:

• I’ve had a woodstove in the house for over a year now and have not burned myself.
• Last time I checked, both of my feet still reach the ground.
• We have enough caramel popcorn to last at least another week.
• The coffee maker has not staged an uprising in well over a month.
• I opened the fridge, forgot what I wanted, and still found something snack-worthy.
• I’ve learned to accept phrases like “limited lifetime warranty” and “free with purchase.”
• I’ve finally lost enough hair that I no longer need to worry about where to part it.

—Mitchell Hegman

In the Abstract

Photography, at its heart, is nothing more and nothing less than painting with light. An extremely tight focus, tipping the lens at a weird angle, extending the exposure, using a soft focus, or playing in the shadows: a multitude of tricks can reshape familiar things. Before long, the camera turns honest scenes into soft mysteries and outright abstractions.

Today, I’m posting one of my favorite abstractions. It’s a tight shot of water beading on the cover of my hot tub, captured in directional light.

—Mitchell Hegman

When Playing the Accordion Is Cool

The accordion is something of a latecomer as far as woodwind musical instruments go. It originated in Germany in the early 1800s, but was quickly adopted throughout both Europe and the Americas. When growing up, I knew a few kids who (usually pressed by their parents) learned to play the instrument.

But most kids in my era drifted toward guitars and rock and roll. Let’s be honest, nobody thought you could rock an accordion.

Well, we were wrong about that. To prove it, I’ve posted a short video of Vivaldi expressed on the accordion.

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRWuEnjfYTE&list=RDkRWuEnjfYTE&start_radio=1

Something Herbert Hoover Said

Herbert Hoover served as the 31st President of the United States (1929–1933). He entered office with a reputation as a humanitarian and skilled administrator, but his presidency was defined by the onset of the Great Depression just months after he took office. Though often portrayed as inactive, Hoover did pursue relief measures: public works projects, loans to banks and businesses, and other forms of federal intervention. At the same time, his deep belief in limited government, balanced budgets, and voluntary cooperation kept him from embracing large-scale, direct aid. His policies, combined with poor public communication, made him appear out of touch with widespread suffering. Today he’s viewed not as uncaring, but as a capable and principled man whose philosophy proved mismatched to an economic catastrophe of unprecedented scale.

Following are three of Hoover’s quotes:

—"All men are equal before fish.”

—"About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.”

—"I'm the only person of distinction who has ever had a depression named for him.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Notes to Self

• Find more than one way home.
• Add something sweet.
• Don’t feed the monsters on Sunday nights.
• Use respect as your starting point.
• Don’t dress yourself so you look like a bee.
• Take more sunrise pictures.
• Borrow an old muscle car and spin a doughnut.
• Use smaller nails on trim.
• Own the days when you do everything and own the days when you do nothing.
• Use your words as thoughtfully as you would use permanent ink.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Quilters

Desiree and I watched a short Netflix documentary about a unique quilting club of sorts. Titled The Quilters, the thirty-some-minute movie reveals the operation of a quilting club within a Missouri maximum-security prison. The prisoners in the club design and sew beautiful, personalized quilts and give them to foster children and charities.

All the materials are donated, and inmates can participate in the program only if they have no prison infractions on record. Several of the inmates in the club are convicted murderers serving life sentences. Most have been incarcerated for several years. No matter the path that led them to the quilting club, they are, to a man, dedicated to doing their best work when producing the complex and often quite stunning quilts.

The work done by this quilting club is impressive and worth replication, and the film offers a brief but meaningful look at what such a project can accomplish.

I’ve posted a short trailer from the movie.

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1j8RoIiMi8

Growing Up in East Helena

Growing up in East Helena, Montana, back when the smelter still operated and shift workers swarmed the town, gave me an interesting perspective on things. For one thing, by the age of ten, I already had a favorite bartender.

—Mitchell Hegman

A Twisted Teddy Bear

The premise was pretty noble: make a teddy bear that could interact with children in a realistic way in real time. You know have a bona fide conversation. Maybe the bear could answer a couple of questions. You know, something like tell a kid why the sky is blue.

A prefect job for Artificial Intelligence. With this in mind, Singapore-based toy maker FoloToy stuffed AI capabilities into a cute $99 teddy bear named Kumma.

Brilliant!

Curious about the bears capabilities, a group of researchers from the U.S. and Canada held test conversations with Kumma. Well, let’s just say Kumma got a little frisky.

The researchers said they found it easy to get the bear to discuss sexually explicit topics, including spanking, roleplay and BDSM. Kumma would take a single sexual topic introduced into the conversation and run off the cliff with it, escalating in graphic detail while introducing new sexual concepts of its own. 

The researchers noted the bear "discussed even more graphic sexual topics in detail, such as explaining different sex positions, giving step-by-step instructions on a common 'knot for beginners' for tying up a partner and describing roleplay dynamics involving teachers and students, and parents and children; scenarios it disturbingly brought up itself."

The teddy bear also offered other worrisome advice, such as where to find sharp knives in the house.

Following these conversations, FoloToy immediately removed the raunchy stuffed toy the sales shelves… almost as if they knew I would have bought one the instant I heard about it.

Kumma

—Mitchell Hegman

Source: UPI

People I Know

People I know write books. People I know help cows give birth during blizzards. People I know drive SUVs on dirt roads and set the thermostat to sixty-eight. People I know go back home. They jump high. They sing low. People I know eat spicy foods and can fix any mechanical contrivance you limp into their shop. People I know grow fat pumpkins and tall corn and dill. People I know seek gold and sapphires and clean their houses on Sundays. People I know can turn an ordinary Tuesday into something worth remembering. People I know can skip a rock across the entire pond. People I know help other people.

If you have a problem, I know some people.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Surprise Rock

I have a serious thing for rocks. I mean, let’s do the math on this. I have dedicated two display shelves in my den for displaying rock specimens. I go to gem and mineral shows for fun. One of my blog categories is literally titled “Rocks.” If I’m out walking, I’m looking for rocks at the same time. Honestly, I suspect I like rocks better than the proverbial “next guy,” unless the next guy is a geologist who licks them to identify minerals.

All that considered, there are moments when I am not seeking rocks and would prefer they stay hidden—digging a hole to plant a tree, for example. And yesterday, while scooping out a handful of what was supposed to be garden soil from a 1½-cubic-foot bag we bought a few weeks ago, I fished out a rock nearly big enough to qualify as a boulder. Nothing pretty. Just a plain, garden-variety lump and exactly what you don’t want in your garden soil.

To be fair, calling the stuff big-box stores bag up and sell as garden soil is something of a stretch. Typically, what you get is a bunch of small sticks from a big-city compost pile, some of which are mashed up pretty well.

But on this one, I think someone owes me my rightful handful of sticks.

I’ve posted a photograph of the rock posed with a Cold Smoke beer as a righteous reference to size.

The Rock

—Mitchell Hegman

Machines of Love and Devotion

Can you imagine a world in which people build and program machines that lead them in hallowed worship, where printed circuits write and deliver our songs of devotion?

Well, you don’t need to expend any energy imagining this. The day is already upon us. A new sound, a new voice in Christian music has enjoined us to sing our praise. This is not a young worship leader from Tennessee or a rediscovered gospel singer from the Delta.

The new voice was born entirely from algorithms.

Enter Solomon Ray, the singer lighting up the Christian and gospel charts. Though a bio suggests he’s a smooth-voiced, Mississippi-born “soul singer,” he’s not human. He’s an artificial intelligence (AI) construct: voice, lyrics, persona, backstory, imagery. All of it.

Just this month, his EP Faithful Soul climbed to No. 1 on the iTunes Christian & Gospel charts. Songs like “Find Your Rest” and “Goodbye Temptation” hit the top of the Billboard Gospel Digital Song Sales chart. On Spotify, he’s listed right alongside real artists with a blue verification check and hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners.

For someone who doesn’t exist, Solomon Ray is doing remarkably well. Praise be to an uninterrupted power supply.

I’ve posted one of Ray’s videos for you here today.

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EAUk0NkyfU&list=RD7EAUk0NkyfU&start_radio=1

A Self-Starting Fire

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been starting fires in the woodstove early in the morning and keeping them going until midday. Then, in the early evening, I have been sweeping the blackened and (theoretically) cool remaining chunks of blackened wood to the back of the stove and loading new wood in the firebox for lighting the following morning.

Last night, nearly three hours after I loaded the stove for the morning, as Desiree and I sat on the sofa, she asked, “Did you start a fire?”

“Nope. I will tomorrow.”

I followed her gaze toward the woodstove twenty-some feet to my right. After only a second or two, I saw an orange flame curtsy forth and then withdraw again. A quick dash to the stove revealed that flames at the back of the firebox were actively scissoring at the lengths of wood I’d stacked together.

A fire had started itself.

Above all, this is a cautionary tale. Consider the Bucksnort Fire of the year 2000. That wildfire, started by charcoal thought to be burned out and tossed onto the ground, escalated into a conflagration that swept through 9,500 acres only ten miles or so from my house as the crow flies. This is dry country. The fuels are dry. Fire will claw its way back from winking coals if given any chance. Even in a woodstove, attentiveness is advised.

The Self-Starting Fire

—Mitchell Hegman

Embraced

While wandering about on the indigenous fringes of my property, I found Romeo and Juliet.

A quick synopsis of their tragedy: two young lovers from feuding families fall into a secret, desperate romance. Knowing they would not be allowed to embrace in life, they instead embrace in death.

In my local scrubland version of this tale, Romeo is a juniper and Juliet is a rock. Romeo died some years ago and was upended by the elements, exposing his tangle of roots. And this is where you find our Juliet, a smooth-sided rock Romeo gathered gently into his roots when he was young. Even all these years after death, Romeo still holds Juliet close.

I’m sharing a photograph of my Romeo and Juliet.

The Embrace

—Mitchell Hegman

It’s the Berries

In the end, the Townsend Solitaire wins.

If you are unfamiliar, the Solitaire is a somewhat bratty, juniper-berry-obsessed bird. Gray in color and quick on the wing, it’s a member of the thrush family, which includes the Western Bluebird and the American Robin. Here in Montana, these slim gray birds don’t bother migrating. Instead, they overwinter in the scrub and survive almost entirely on juniper berries. But they don’t just eat them: they stake claims. A single Solitaire will pick a cluster of juniper bushes in the fall and defend it with unwavering conviction, chasing away any bird or any innocent passerby (read “Mitch” here) that wanders too close to its chosen stash.

I am familiar with this because solitaires have been staking claims on my property for as long as I can remember. Typically, I see them perched high in the ponderosa trees or junipers so they can watch over their holding of juniper berries.

Theirs is a simple strategy: “It’s the berries, stupid.”

Given the abundance of juniper here, these birds thrive. While other nearby species have struggled to maintain stable populations, the Townsend Solitaire has held firm.

Both last year and this year, a Solitaire has included my house in its area of claim. So far, we’ve gotten along swimmingly.

Photo: Jonathon Jongsma

—Mitchell Hegman

More Valuable

Perhaps the earth underfoot is worth more now that it has swallowed Robbie.

This is by Robbie’s own accounting, of course. In a practical way of thinking (as opposed to the emotional), Robbie imagined he would be more valuable if he swallowed things of value.

As near as I can tell, a realistic 2025 estimate for the elemental value of a human body is around $130–$150, assuming you’re just breaking it down into its basic elements—oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and our weird mix of trace minerals.

That’s not terribly valuable, and maybe that’s what Robbie considered when, at the age of about ten, he swallowed a small piece of flint he’d found on one of our excursions into the open fields near our hometown. “There,” he said, “now I’m worth something.”

Looking back, I realize that swallowing sharp rocks is likely not the best idea, but at ten years old such judgments are unreachable. At the time, there seemed a firm logic to his thinking.

I lost track of Robbie as we entered our teens. Perhaps he escalated to swallowing sapphires and gold to appropriately increase his value. I can’t be sure. But he passed not long ago and the ground swallowed him. Surely the earth is more valuable when it swallows your friends.     

—Mitchell Hegman

Band Strategy

Every jigsaw puzzle requires a unique strategy, or a mix of strategies, for piecing it together. We’re talking about all the normal stuff: starting with assembling the edge pieces, sorting pieces to your liking, finding and assembling them based on color, and letting the shapes speak to you.

Then come the bigger-picture tactics. Maybe you chase the sky first. Maybe a little house, a moose, or a boat catches your eye. Whatever the focus, most puzzles end up the same way: scattered islands slowly appear within the borders and then gradually connect as you hover over the table, feeding pieces in.

Good stuff.

The puzzle we are presently working on is strange. The usual methods don’t form islands at all. As you assemble pieces, they march you straight into building rows and then full-length bands across the entire scene of Emerald Lake. It comes together almost like a loom weaving a rug: one tidy row followed by another, the whole thing sliding into place with notable orderliness.

I find the weird organization of this puzzle satisfying. It feels more mechanical than organic.

Emerald Lake

—Mitchell Hegman

A Little Jazz

As part of the remodel for our small bathroom, we opted to add small, dark brown trim pieces to the existing whitewashed pine crown trim at the edge of the ceiling. It’s not much, just adding a little jazz to the simple lines of the existing wood.

We’re pleased with the results. The room feels decidedly different with just that small addition. It’s like adding racing stripes to a muscle car.

Crown Before Adding Trim

Crow After Adding Trim

The Bathroom as of Today

—Mitchell Hegman

The Clothes Dryer Riot

I’ve never been in or near a riot. But I’ve spent plenty of time partying in the bars of East Helena on rodeo nights, which may be as close as you can get to one without courting substantial jail time. As a kid, I also survived recess at a Catholic grade school—an experience that ranged from raucous to downright lawless.

Last night we stumbled into another near riot right here at the house, at least the audible version of one. After washing two pairs of tennis shoes, we tossed them into the clothes dryer for a spin.

Oh my. Even with towels pitched in to soften the blows, it sounded as if sofas and lounge chairs were slam dancing inside a barrel.

A quick life hack: after washing your tennis shoes, let them air-dry on a sunny sidewalk.

—Mitchell Hegman

Smashed Dinner

Desiree smashed last night’s dinner. I’m not talking about mashing it by some mechanical contrivance. I mean she literally stood atop our dinner and wiggled to squash it flat. This is not as crazy as it sounds. The idea was to make a thick shell from pre-cooked small potatoes pressed between two cupcake pans.

I need to preface the next part of our story by mentioning that this is exactly the sort of thing that makes me love Desiree unconditionally. Here it is: the next step is where she filled the cups with cheese and bacon bits.

Pure brilliance, this.

I’ve posted three photographs documenting our smashed dinner.

Desiree Smashing Our Dinner

Small Potatoes Mashed Into the Pan

Potato Cups Filled with Cheese and Bacon Bits

—Mitchell Hegman

Falling Stars

Somewhere north of 2:00 AM I woke with a start. The tail end of a sound had just whipped past me. A single, strange rush of air. Not a bump. Not a clunk. Not anything metallic or fleshy. Just one odd sweep and then silence.

As I lay there in the predawn dark, I rather quickly surmised that whatever it was, it wasn’t dangerous. Something that weird almost had to be harmless. I figured daylight would sort it out.

Late the following afternoon, Desiree found her window display of lighted plastic stars collapsed onto the sill and spilled to the floor. And, there, our answer. I had been awakened by the sound of falling stars.

Our Fallen Stars

—Mitchell Hegman

The Accusatory Stare

Someone left their poodle in the car next to where I parked at the store. When I glanced over, I found the dog staring directly at me, intently. Frankly, I didn’t like it. The stare felt accusatory—more a glower—like the dog knew that less than an hour ago I ate the last lemon cookie before Desiree got to it.

This is the reason I’ve always preferred to live with cats. A cat will stare right through you because they know you really don’t matter in the long run.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Upside

I would like this blog to be the equivalent of a whisper. I especially want to keep this on the down-low while in the vicinity of any teenagers.

Gather up. Here it is. Apparently, teenage binge-drinking may provide a key to success later in life.

According to Norwegian sociologist Willy Pedersen, young people who knock back drinks together may be doing more than loosening up. They may also be wiring in valuable social skills.

Two asides here. First, drinking alcohol at any age has a host of well-established downsides. Second, there is some wiggle room for distrusting a sociologist named Willy. That said, Pedersen’s long-term study tracked more than 3,000 Norwegians from early teens into adulthood and found that the hard partiers in their late teens and early twenties ended up with higher levels of education and income than those who barely drank at all.

The theory is simple enough: alcohol, in a social setting, acts like a kind of glue. It helps the shy find their footing, smooths the edges of awkwardness, and nudges doors open that might otherwise stay shut. Pedersen even points to groups like Oxford’s infamous Bullingdon Club, a drinking society whose alumni list reads like a political résumé.

But before anyone hands out six-packs to teens to boost their prospects, a quiet reminder: correlation is not destiny. As The Times of London noted, many of these high-flyers may have already been halfway up the ladder. And it must also be noted that some of my party-going high school buddies crashed later in life.

Still, whispered or not, the idea lingers: maybe a little communal chaos in youth can age into something surprisingly polished down the line.

Cold Smoke Beer

—Mitchell Hegman

Reality-Based Solutions

Given the “reality-based” programs we tend to watch, Desiree and I now figure we are qualified to solve a murder with very little evidence. We can help you glean more gold from your paydirt. We can bake a cake with wings or legs. We can help you survive in the wild if you happen to end up out there, naked. And, given the ads focused on our demographic, we can prescribe the drug Skyrizi to battle your plaque psoriasis.

—Mitchell Hegman

A Small Big Thing (35 Years Late)

My late wife, Uyen, and I constructed our house (with the help of many dear friends) using cash. We didn’t secure a construction loan, which provided us with more freedom relative to a timeline for finishing the house. But, given that, we struck a deal with each other when we broke ground to build our house in the late summer of 1990: we would not move into the new house until we had completely finished every room.

I didn’t quite hold up my end of that deal. One small thing remained undone. I never applied the trim to cover the upper track of the bi-fold door in the closet just inside the garage entry—a detail unnoticed by everyone but me. Yesterday, thirty-five years late, I finally cut and nailed that last piece of trim in place.

Remember what Neil Armstrong said when he took his first step on the Moon? This feels a little like that. A small big thing.

I’m sharing photographs of that final piece of trim.

Entry Closet

Track Before Trim

Trim in Place

—Mitchell Hegman

What It Really Means

Sustainable living: ready access to beer and vegetables.

Reality check: stepping on something wet and squishy on your way to the bathroom in the dark of night.

Insurmountable problem: a belt that cannot loosen any further.

Good neighbor: the one who buys the beer.

Home improvement: finding new and creative ways to hide extension cords.

Road to success: fixing the thing you broke last weekend while fixing another thing.

—Mitchell Hegman

We Survived So We Could Live Again

Today, we celebrate a remarkable achievement. My friend Sandi Coyle Benson has published and released a biography about her father, James R. Coyle. Titled We Survived So We Could Live Again, the book offers a deeply researched and well-documented account of her father’s military service during World War II.

Before the United States was drawn into the war, James Coyle was stationed in the Philippines. While he was there, the Japanese bombed and invaded the islands. Ultimately, he spent 1,184 days as a Japanese-held prisoner of war.

Sandi’s father endured unthinkable brutality during his captivity. Like so many American soldiers, he returned home and spoke little about what he had experienced. Thanks to Sandi’s determination and careful research, his full story can now be told.

Yesterday, Desiree and I picked up a copy of the book from Sandi. Both of us are eager to read it—me, because I remember James and have been friends with Sandi since grade school; and Desiree, because her grandfather fought alongside American soldiers to defend his homeland.

Sandi and Me with A Copy of Her Book

—Mitchell Hegman

The Swarming Sky

While soaking in the hot tub last night and gazing up at the sprawling canopy of stars, we spotted a pair of satellites crawling across the sky on the same path. Soon another appeared behind them. And then another. Before we were done, fifteen satellites had traced the same narrow line overhead.

We had, quite clearly, witnessed a Starlink satellite chain being drawn into service. Starlink satellites are launched in groups of sixty, and they initially travel in a “chain” formation before spreading out and settling into their own orbits.

I think back to my boyhood, after the Soviet launch of Sputnik, when I spent countless nights scanning the heavens before finally spotting my first satellite drifting slowly across the Milky Way. Today, our sky is aswarm with them. Look up for any length of time, and you’re certain to see a man-made object crossing one of the thousands of orbits now enmeshed aloft.

It’s not difficult to imagine that someday we’ll overcrowd the “usable” space above us. This is a human tendency.

I’ve posted a video of a Starlink chain crossing our busy skies.

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link:  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Z7iOlvWEDk8

Our Giger Commode

Calling our new toilet sexy might be putting unneeded strain on our language, so I won’t go that far. Still, our new commode features design elements that set it apart from your typical workmanlike models. I like it.

In profile, the toilet reminds me of the work of Swiss artist H. R. Giger. His artwork is always surreal and often blurs the line between organic and mechanical forms. You may recall his creation of the iconic creature from the 1979 movie Alien.

The toilet, however, is bright white—whereas Giger’s works are typically dark in every sense of the word.

At any rate, I installed our new commode yesterday. I’m sharing two photographs of that, along with one of Giger’s works as a point of reference.

Side View

Set in Place

H.R. Giger

—Mitchell Hegman

Morning Report, November 8, 2025

After setting my coffee to brewing, I waddle to the woodstove and start a fire. At first, a single flame dances tenderly, seemingly innocently below an assembly I made last night in the firebox. The flames soon waver up into fingers clutching at the split lengths of wood.

I watch.

In a matter of minutes, the fire has become a thing of greed. Embers grin red at blackened fringes. Heat shoulders against me. Flames fill the entire box.

Hello, old friend.

I consider.

I am old. This is not how I identify, but this is how I classify. The passing years and all of my memories have somehow gathered themselves into a monolithic presentation. Yesterday feels the same as the times I sat sharing an afternoon cup of coffee with my grandmother forty-some years ago. In my mind, I’m still celebrating our landing on the moon. And directly beside that, I’m cutting the stray ends of my wife’s hair last week.

Hello, new friend.

—Mitchell Hegman

An Empty Room

We’ve fully engaged in a remodel of the common bathroom in our house. While the room has been repainted once, and I installed crown trim along the walls at the ceiling a half-dozen years ago, the vanity, toilet, and flooring are now 34 years old.

You may recall that this is the bathroom I inadvertently flooded a couple of years ago. That mishap damaged the vanity and swelled the subfloor in several locations. I removed the vanity a couple of days ago, and yesterday I pulled the toilet and prepped the room for painting.

It now feels strange and a little uncomfortable walking past the empty bathroom on my way down the hall to the bedroom. The feeling isn’t quite as jarring as finding an empty cupboard, but it’s close. The bathroom hasn’t looked this bare in 34 years.

On a final note, I’m not going to miss the toilet. Faithfully cleaning it all these years hasn’t exactly endeared me to it. Truthfully, I’m excited about the shiny new number we’ve chosen as its replacement. The new one is sleek and sports interesting curves.

We can have a full-on toilet talk later.

Before Toilet Removal

Empty Bathroom

—Mitchell Hegman

A Big Kitty in My Tree

It’s not unusual to spot a housecat in a tree. They are natural climbers. Even some of the bigger wild cats will climb. But finding a long-extinct saber-toothed cat in your golden willow registers as fairly remarkable.

Weirdly enough, that very thing happened to me.

More on that in a minute.

During the Ice Ages, Montana was home to a variety of exotic fauna, including mammoths, ground sloths, and saber-toothed cats. Fossil evidence suggests the big cats roamed the northern plains alongside herds of bison and other large prey. These cats were built for power and ambushed the herd beasts when they wanted dinner. All of these large animals disappeared around the end of the last Ice Age (10,000 to 12,000 years ago), likely victims of a changing landscape and possibly the growing presence of early humans across North America.

So, while on a walk along the lakeshore yesterday, I spotted a saber-toothed cat—not of the flesh-and-blood variety, but rather a flat version of one fashioned from metal, wood, and composite materials. The big cat was fastened to a limb by means of lag screws. The obvious work of my neighbor, this.

The cat in my tree came from a now “extinct” and dismantled display of the Pleistocene epoch at the old Montana Historical Society Museum. Surprisingly, I’m not opposed to keeping the big kitty in my tree. I’ve always liked cats. Even flat ones.

I’m sharing two photographs of the cat in my tree:

Saber-Toothed Cat Up Close

Saber-Toothed Cat in the Golden Willow

—Mitchell Hegman