The Second Law of Thermodynamics

Entropy always increases. In other words, it is easy to mess everything up and much harder to put it back into order.

This week provided an excellent illustrating example of this aspect of physics.

This winter, in exchange for free rent, I am charged with defending the homestead while the ‘rents winter in sunny Palm Springs. This involves some watering, re-staking the odd wind ravaged olive tree and other such miscellaneous tasks, but the primary responsibility is to fend off the invaders, ravagers and pillagers. Said invaders, ravagers and pillagers tend to take the form of turkeys and deer. At first it sounds somewhat quaint – particularly to those from less rural areas – to imagine those strange turkey creatures and little Bambi-types frolicking about. One soon realizes, however, that the deer have so infested the area that they are literally more common than squirrels and about a thousand times bigger. Then we have the issue of them providing themselves, for no extra charge, as traffic hazards and demolishers of any and all plant life. As for the turkeys… Loud, unattractive creatures that poop everywhere! I arrived to find the patio and patio furniture (including the table and barbeque), littered with the stuff. Strangely, the leader of the turkeys is a male peacock. He seems like a displaced noble sent to the wilds where he naturally rules the savages he finds there. You are probably thinking, “oh how cool!” But no, not how cool. Peacocks are even more aggressive and noisy and turkeys and they poop even more. Or at least, judging by what was laying around the patio they do.

It is my job to “dissuade” all these creatures from loitering about the premises. We used to use a bb-pistol but the neighbor told on us and we got in trouble. Now I generally go for the slingshot while Franko, my step-dad, goes for the horsewhip.

Wednesday morning dawned gorgeous. I did my morning yoga thing as the sun rose. I saw all sorts of sunrise splendor spreading across the valley, had a lovely breakfast and was just about to leave for class. Then the f-ing peacock showed up! He came right up to the glass door and seemed to look in (and mock me, I’m certain!) He has no respect, and no fear, but I was going to show him. I got my slingshot and some small rocks and went outside. He was really close to the house and just about 10 feet away from me so I couldn’t quite get an angle on him (I didn’t want to shot the house after all) but as he slowly meandered along I was able to get a relatively safe angle. Or so I thought. Being extra careful with my aim and barely putting any tension into the shot I aimed for the cocky peacock. In a freakish transcendence of the normal laws of physics the small rock hit the patio, ricocheted sharply to the right, and smacked right into the glass of a large French door window. The custom-made, expensive, fancy, large French door window. At first it seemed not-horrible. There was a dent or chip or something in the window, but it seemed okay (I could get that fixed, right?) About ten seconds later the entire plate shattered into approximately half a million pieces.

Ooops.

Turns out, though, that I won’t need to replace the entire door and that even though the whole thing was custom, the size of the glass is fairly standard. So it isn’t going to be as much to replace as I originally thought. It is still very expensive and I am still, officially, a bonehead, but I have sworn not to shoot the peacock with my slingshot. The turkeys and deer are still fair game – I’ll just be a teensy bit more careful.