New Mexico IS part of the United States -- You can even drink the water here!

If I hadn’t read such silliness in New Mexico magazine’s humor section, I wouldn’t have believed it, despite the National Geographic’s abysmal geography survey results. But this really happened to me last week.

The backstory: I had to call a medical laboratory, whose billing department is in Baltimore (funny, no one ever wonders where *Baltimore* is :-D Part of the conversation was to give her our new address so she could send us the final bill.

The conversation:
[me] “…Rd, Silver City, New Mexico”
[her] “Boy, you really DID move!”
[me] “Sure did.”
[her] “Better be careful of the water down there.”
[me] “………”
[me] “No, that’s NEW Mexico…”
[her] “Yeah, I hear the water can be a problem there.”
[me, rather less than gracefully] “We’re in NEW Mexico, the state between Arizona and Texas.”

I don’t remember what she replied because at that point, I had stopped paying attention and was trying to get off the phone before bursting into rude – at least to her – guffaws.

Nutmeg is off-roading now. She has finally figured out that she won’t get pricklies in her feet every time she gets off the pavement. It helped that we went to our friend Steph’s last Sunday, who owns 40 acres on the side of the mountain up toward Pinos Altos. Steph took her two dogs and I took Nutmeg, and let her off-leash to follow Steph’s boys. Nutmeg was in 7th heaven running up and down the hills, sniffing out every critter that had passed that way in the last month—and critters up there include not just rabbit and fox, but very likely bob-cat, mountain lion, bear, coyote and possibly wolf. She slept for a day afterwards. This weekend, however, she’s under the weather; although I won’t go into the gruesome details here, suffice it to say that I’ve been cleaning up after her night and day since 5 am yesterday morning. I think it might be an after-effect of her second in the series-of-two rattlesnake venom vaccines she got earlier in the week. I will probably take her to the vet tomorrow so he can tell me she’s fine.

Further on the subject of off-roading, Nutmeg ventured down onto the undeveloped lot that’s next to our house today, even though she was on-lead. That, of course, meant I had to follow. We got down just below the level of the road and I looked left, while Nutmeg was exploring something to her right. We had startled up a small group of mule deer that had been laying up in the grasses. I started counting, “1…2…4…6…8…10…11...” yep, there were a full dozen deer standing there staring back at me and especially watching Nutmeg. She, amazingly, had not yet seen them, being more interested in a scent to her right than the real thing to her left. So the deer watched her, and the big mamma of the group started to come TOWARD us! I was standing still, and Nutmeg was moving in a controlled way, and she could discern no threat, so she started coming our way, closer and closer. I was dumbfounded. This doesn’t happen with white-tail deer at home. I think it’s because there are so many mule deer in this community on the edge of Silver City, there’s plenty of graze, and no threats other than 4-wheel hunters. They are so acclimated to humans and humans’ pets that they just don’t run! Unless, of course, the dog sees them and makes a barking dash at them. Then they sproing. That’s something else I never saw white-tails do, either – sproing off all 4 legs/feet at once. Mule deer are grayer than white-tail, have distinct black markings and have these amazingly long ears; their ears are often as long as their face, and the ears are black tipped. These deer have the same “white flags” from which white-tail deer get their name, but the tail is tipped in black.

A story of a different kind of wildlife – the Brooklyn NY variety: Nick was walking back to his sister’s from the nursing home where his uncle has been moved from the hospital; this was Friday night. It was getting dark and it was rainy; he was crossing in an intersection and he had the light. Some woman wanted to make a right-on-red, but forgot the one cardinal rule: Stop first and look – pedestrians have the right of way! Nick saw her coming at, he estimated, maybe 10 mph. He thought she’s stop, but she didn’t. Rather than being hit and knocked down, he (as he tells the story) jumped up a little thinking to go up onto her hood. He rolled across her hood and across the windshield and off the other side to the road. Are you getting a chill and a sinking stomach? Imagine how I felt when he called that evening to tell me? He was not hurt, luckily. He sprained his hand, probably landing on it as he fell off the hood, and he had a “twinge” in his back. She stopped and they exchanged information, but he did not let her call the police or go to the emergency. He thought he was probably fine. Between his sensible sister and me, we convinced him to contact the police that night to make a report and go to the doctor the next day for an exam, which led to xrays of his back and hand. As of today, he is still ok, but still with the sore hand and twinge in his back. He flies home tomorrow, and not a minute too soon. It’s not that we don’t have crazy drivers here in Silver City, and maybe even the same percentage of crazy driver per capita as Brooklyn. It’s just that, with only so many people, the chances of getting hit in the crosswalk is much less. Here, we just have to remember to talk loudly and carry pepper spray where we walk.

Let me close with a temptation. Our friend, Ivia, is a New York Times reader. She sent me the following link. It’s a delightful virtual tour of our National Forest, and if you follow the links, of Silver City. If you do find it tempting, your bed was delivered on Wednesday. http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/travel/escapes/12american.html?ref=todayspaper Love, Sonnie