More and more these days, I spend my time sittin' on the porch, putting fresh miles on my old oak rocker, watchin' the birds and wonderin' 'bout things. Seems to me the world's full o' things just beggin' to be wondered at...an I figger I'm just the man for the job.

One thing I've wondered about for a while is spiders an how they get their webs up in the air between two trees. I saw one yesterday about fifteen feet off the ground between two cedars waitin' for an stray horsefly or love bug. I just couldn’t figger out how he stretched that fancy web o' his between the tops of those two trees twenty feet apart

I've brought this mystery up to various folks since I began to puzzle on it and every single one had an answer they was real proud of. Course, they was all just guessin'. Nobody really knew.

Ain't it funny how people want to tell you their opinions about things they don't know a darn thing about?

I’d like to give you my opinion on that, but first ... I got to tell you about hummingbirds.

I’ve had a flock of 'em flyin' around the porch since I put out the feeder an I got to say, it's been real educatin. They're feisty little demons, always arguein' over who's king of the feeder. They got the disposition of a rattler and the tenacity of a pit bull and go at each other all day long. Never seen such ornery critters.

Now here's where the halter goes on the lead horse. What are they fightin' over? Food? Girlfriends? A little of both, but mostly, it's land. Yep, territory; a place in the sun or I guess with hummingbirds, a place in the sky. Just like nations , borders are what's got ‘em so worked up.

I read up on it and found out different birds stake out different bits of ground. Golden eagles claim close to thirty-six square miles. A bitsy little seabird called a Murre don't fence off more than one square foot. Cardinals claim two to ten acres. But big or little, once one o' their own kind crosses the line, look out.

I guess you and me are just the same. We all need our own space.

There used to be plenty o' space for everybody. People got in the habit of claimin' as much as they could. In Texas, we're known for claimin' big things. Big men with big hats and big boots push big cows across big country. A man's claim to bigness was tied to the size of his ranch. Big men had big spreads. A big bull defends a big pasture.

Now, Texans are a vane and fiesty people. When the land ran out, we had to spread our territory other ways.
b That's where the bull got out the pasture and into our conversations. Now a ranch that's on land that ain't really there is built on what I call "Talk Territory". You fence off a few acres of opinion and try to hold it against all comers. To defend it, you use what the bull leaves in the field.

These days, anybody who wants to have a big spread has got to spread it on...get as many people as he can to believe his malarchy. Political Ponderosas get built that way. People tend to vote for the candidate with the best line of bull.

This style of pursuasion is called the "bandwagon appeal". It plays on a man's need to be right, in other words to have his fenceline in good repair. If he picks a winner, his ideas are legit, his "Talk Territory" is secure.

The economy works the same as politics. The ranch is called market share or trade territory. If a man tries to move his product line onto another man's territory, he can expect a trade war. This is where airlines and hummingbirds got a lot in common. They both love to argue over who gets to dock at the feeder.

Advertisers are the rustlers of talk territory. They move past fact fences faster than a coyote after a rabbit. Give 'em a chance and they'll move a whole fenceline just like a Florida land speculator.

A lawyer once told me that if you move a fence in Texas over some disputed land and pay the taxes on it for a while, you can claim it as your own whether it is or not. Advertisers and politicians have figgered this out and are now usin' the same method on the truth. They just keep sayin' the same wrong thing over and over until people forget the right thing. Then the wrong thing becomes the truth.

If you got no land to fight over then you lay claim to a financial empire or a social position or you go in cahoots with a group of folks with the same opinion so you can cut down the competition and more easily defend your turf. Next thing you know, you got Russians and Americans and Democrats and Republicans, capitalists, fundamentalists, survivalists, environmentalists, traditionalists...lists and lists of 'lists. We all know how much arguin’ comes from that.

Now I ‘ve been askin' myself how come folks act like this. How come we live in a world of talk and make a mess out of the real world God made us out of dirt and rock?

It's a real problem and I don't have a good answer but I learned somethin' about hummingbirds that might be a clue. You see, them little critters got really amazing tongues. The thing is so long it stretches all the way from the end of their long skinny bills, down their throats, past their spines, around the back side of their skulls, over the top o' their heads and hooks on just behind their eyes. Even though there's so much of it, it can still move up and down thirteen times a second, almost as fast as Aunt Jewel's when she plays canasta. Another thing is, it's forked.

Now, I think we can learn somethin' about our own situation by watchin' God's other critters. I think maybe we got the same problem as the hummingbird. We got so much tongue, their ain't room left in our skulls for brains.

I don't guess I got to explain the forked part.

(P.S. If you got any idears about them spiders and how they do it, send 'em in to the folks here. I could use a hand.)