Cat and Mouse

Have you ever watched what a cat does when it corners a mouse?

Sure, there are some who just gobble them up, but MOST cats prefer to play with the mouse first.

There is a lot of batting it around and letting it run off a bit only to be heart-poundingly captured yet again. Then, just when the mouse has resigned itself to the inevitable fate, the cat relents just long enough for the mouse to taste freedom before being reeled in for the kill.

OPEC is a lot like the cat and we gas guzzling consumers are most assuredly the mice.

They know we NEED the gas as surely as a junkie with the DT's needs the next fix. We can't stop. Everything we do - EVERYTHING - depends upon the gasoline in the tank.

We have forgotten how to ensure our own survival and have become slaves to a system that we can't escape. Teasing us with temporary fixes, OPEC's cartel knows that we will be back. We can't live without the trickle of fossil fuels in our tanks.

We have other resources. And we have smart enough people to make something different. But the reality is that greed runs the show as surely as the hungry cat who wants a bit of sport before the dinner bell rings.

Jared and I have taken to the open road (or sidewalk, as the case may be) and are walking to his therapy appointments. I can't stand to watch the needle fall from the "F" to the "E" at a pace that would make a marathon runner look weak. At about nine miles to the gallon on a old handicap van, I feel as decadent as if I were driving a Hummer without all of the bling.

And dang it all, if I am going to have to pay the price for the bling, why can't I SEE the bling?

The fact is, whether you are driving a Tin Lizzy or a brand new Ferrari, they all need gasoline. Even the people who are mortgaging their automotive future on recycled french fry oil have a problem.

Ethanol doesn't produce the same MPG as gasoline. Apparently there is nothing like burning up "a dinosaur in your tank" to make that trip on Route 66 (and if you are too young to catch that reference, I am truly sorry for you).

And the limited choices on just where you can get the raw material from greasy spoons across the nation and how to turn it into actual fuel is dicey at best. There are actually waste collection services who, in seeing a new opportunity, have leapt into the breech and are turning fat into fuel. Who knew?

So, in my own ode to the sheiks and potentates of the world, I am eating more salad and using my OWN fossil fuel around my mid-section to carry my carcass where I need to go. If the walk is further than a mile, I will be riding my old, but trusty bike. I suspect there will soon be a whole lot of other people who will rebuff the Arabs and burn something instead of gasoline - like gumption.

We have more at stake here than a tank of gas or who gets the mouse.

We have the very real possibility that we will, by our own demand for gas and oil, become a dependent caliphate that begs for subsitance instead of standing on our own two feet and making the needed decisions to cut the umbilical cord to the Arabian Penisula and the greasy cartel.

Enough ranting for now.

It's time to shower.

While I am more than happy to burn my fat as a gasoline substitute, it still produces an unpleasant and polluting exhaust. So, I will take a quality and timed shower.

Meanwhile, remember that there ARE a great number of people who have never owned nor thought about having a car. And they have lived an entire life never thinking of themselves as being deprived.

Maybe it's time we do the depriving. We need to cut off the cat and become better mice. The bait is becoming too expensive to use.

To quote the words of Ali ibn Abi Talib of Saudi Arabia: "A man's measure is his will."

The question we need to ask ourselves is are we mice or men and in either case, is our will worth the bondage of a gallon of gas?