Attribution: René Cortin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper’s recall of the starvation zoo story that never became a news story because the culprit was an acquaintance of the publisher of The Wisconsin State Journal where the keeper was employed. The zoo owner’s plan had been …
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Category:Wisconsin
Kickass Milks the Cows
Attribution: Harris & Ewing, photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Common By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper offering to teach the ICE agents how to milk cows, a skill that heretofore had been performed by those who were more recent immigrants than all the rest of us and who needed to lay …
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Kickass Goes South
Attribution: Florida Memory, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that for many years the keeper would be using these post-holiday days to return his Christmas gifts for cash he could use to buy enough gas to get the hell out of Wisconsin and far enough south to go …
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Kickass and Polar Plunge
Attribution: eagle102.net, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper is anxious to firm up his and Phyllis’s excuse for not attending the big Mazomanie Winter Solstice bonfire and the subsequent plunge into Black Earth Creek. The fact is they were both busy with their recliner clinical trials …
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Kickass and Inoculation Mishap
By Bill Stokes Attribution: James Gillray, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper in acknowledging the news that a Fox Lake herd of dairy cows has been infected with the bird flu; and this of course prompts the keeper to tell Phyllis—probably not for the first time, about his inoculation …
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Kickass and Deer-Yard Night
Attribution: Photo by Nathan Karsgaard on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, notes the inevitability of the keeper using the first bitter cold winter day to regale Phyllis with the account of his spending the night in a Bad River deer yard when the temperature dropped to 30 below and he could not buckle his snowshoes …
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Kickass and Broken Tail
Attribution: T. H. Heard (engraver), Heard, T. H. (engraver, active ca. 1879) (Engraver) Harper’s magazine, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper, ever anxious to share his vast store of rural knowledge with innocent citified friends, notes that growing up “country” means being surrounded by critters …
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Kickass and Girls’ Ride Home
Attribution: Photo by A n v e s h on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper identifying with FBI director Kash Patel on the possible fallout of giving girlfriends a ride home. When it happened to the keeper, that fallout literally turned his life around. He was doing the chivalrous task of giving …
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Kickass and the Speed of Electricity
Attribution: Thomas Booker (CoderThomasB), CC0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, observes, along with the keeper and Phyllis, that life is a continuous process of learning from the curious among us, such as Louie the hired man who once challenged the horse barn ghost to come out and account for itself. …
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Kickass and Dog Ski Wax
Attribution: EgorovaSvetlana, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, indulges the keeper as he wallows in a memory of the early days of cross-country skiing—wooden skies with metal bindings that required constant attention from the rapidly evolving world of ski wax. To replace out-of-season trout fishing or grouse hunting, the …
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Kickass and Snow Sounds
Attribution: Breaking ground in deep snow by Trevor Littlewood, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper and Phyllis in listening to the sounds of a snowy day coming out of the muting gloom: *The scrape of a passing snowplow. *The buzz of the neighbors premature snowblower. *Command signals …
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Kickass and Others’ Misery
Attribution: Javier Vieras, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, notes the sensations to be had by the keeper and Phyllis’s crowd in learning of the misery of others—some sympathy of course, but more feelings that “they” probably deserve it followed by an overall smugness that it is better them …
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