Wild Wild West

It's 3:30am in the sleepy little town of Cardiff by the Sea. Nothing is stirring, not even a mouse. Or are they?

Outside, on the front lawn, the sound of a cats battle cry is heard. Cats will be cats. As it goes on for a few seconds I lift up window shade to check out the skirmish. Out of my periphary I see a tan tabby on the lawn, but no adversary. Its hissing and screeching searing my ears. Then immediately the cat is flying through the air and lands, presumably on its feet, a few feet away. More terrifying shreiking from the pussy. As my eyes focus and my pupils constrict I make out the outline of its adversary.

I'm confused. I'm unable to grasp right away what it is I'm seeing. Understandably, my brain is looking for another cat. Tonight reality is throwing my brain for a loop. Undeniably, the cat's opponent is not another cat. The predator towers over the cat, brown coloring in the moonlight, long legs, long snout, long perked up ears. The cat makes no move to escape. Calmly, exuding confidence and seemingly with all the time in the world the predator snatches the cat in its mouth. Violently shaking it's head back and forth a few times before dropping the cat to the ground.

Simultaneously, I notice the the absence of hair raising screeching from the cat and my brain finally catches up with the scene before my eyes. Through the open window I lower my mouth and let out a hiss to alert the predator to my presence and scare it off. It looks quizzingly towards me. Although it's too dark too see and I'm not that talented of a mind reader I imagine the look on its face is saying "What are you doing up at this hour?".

Not sticking around for my answer it takes the cat in its mouth and high tails it down the block. I'm left somewhat shocked at what I just saw and with the question, "What was that predator?". Dog, fox, coyote, or maybe I'm dreaming and it's the dog from Resident Evil!? So I get out of bed and begin the internet search. I'm pretty confident now that I'm not having a Resident Evil dream (I can't imagine that dream not being dominated with visions of Milla Jovovich) so I rule out the Resident Evil dog, although in the dark there was a uncanny resemblance I couldn't quite shake.

In the end, I have settled on the Canis Latrans, The Coyote. In any case, I would think twice before letting your small pets (or children) out at night in Southern California. Wild Wild West indeed!

In other news: The Congressional Budget Office will release the summer update to the Budget and Economic Outlook on Tuesday August 25th. No matter how they cook the books it won't be good news, unless its a complete work of fiction. I mention this because there is a lot chatter about an upcoming bank holiday. I doubt this will be the trigger. Then again the actual trigger could come at any time. Such as the DOW taking another big dive which I believe is on track to happen soon, probably 6-8 weeks, tops. Or another big bank failure such as the five failures announced this week including Colonial Bank with 346 branches (6th largest failure in US history). That is 3,433 bank failures in a little over a year. The point is it's a smart move to have cash, food and water stocked up. If you are skeptical about the afore mentioned points, then how about something more concrete like Hurricane Bill for you eastcoasters or an earthquake for you west coasters or a tornado for you midwesters, etc, etc. You get the point.

Be prepared. Be Safe.