Happy Thanksgiving from the Wilder Clan



Kate, Marilyn & Shannon



Shannon, Marilyn Scotty, Kate



Kate, Scotty, Shannon, Eric

 Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

Bird Deaths in Edmond Oklahoma

Crow in Eric's Backyard

Edmond Crow

I’m a bird watcher and so is wife Marilyn, our backyard rich in birdbaths and feeders. Since I moved to Edmond, I’ve marveled at the species of bird in the area. One thing that always amazed me was the many crows that live near my house. Crows  are social creatures and you rarely see one alone. They are intelligent and I’ve heard you can even teach them to speak.

A month or so ago, Marilyn went out our front door and noticed a crow in distress. It had fallen to the ground and was struggling to stand. Not long after, she found its body. When I got home, I disposed of it, noting that the bird looked young and healthy—except that it was dead.

Since I’ve lived in Edmond, I can’t remember not seeing lots of crows. Since the bird’s death, I’ve only seen one in our neighborhood. Tonight, when I was leaving a local watering hole, I noticed a crow on the grass in front of my car. As I watched, it walked in circles on the ground, its mouth open wide. When I approached it, it didn’t fly away. I didn’t wait around to see it keel over and die.

My first thought was someone must be poisoning the crows in Edmond, and maybe not just the crows. Thinking about it though, I can’t recall seeing so few birds in the area since I moved here. Is there an environmental pollutant killing our bird population, or someone poisoning them, or maybe some bird influenza rapidly taking down the avian population. I wonder. Am I the only one that’s noticed this?

Eric'sWeb

UFO Sighting

UFO against blue sky

I was lying on my back in the pool, just before dark tonight. Looking up, I spotted a distant object shaped somewhat like a distended drop of oil. It wasn't moving away from me, or getting closer, but it did appear to move slowly up and down. Very slowly. I confess, I didn't have my glasses on so I didn't get a clear view of the object. It could possibly have been a weather balloon. Anyway, it was a UFO to me since it was flying and I couldn't identify it. I drew a picture but I'm not an artist and this is just a feeble attempt to show what it looked like.

Eric'sWeb

Edmond, Oklahoma Marks 25th Anniversary of Post Office Massacre

Mystery and controversy still shrouds the brutal mass killing that occurred in Edmond, Oklahoma twenty-five years ago, and many deep wounds remain unhealed.
Edmond Post Office Massacre

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Silkwood Story

In 1974, Marilyn and her two children, Shane and Shannon, lived in a small apartment near the Edmond college that is now the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO). Living in an apartment directly across from Marilyn was Karen Silkwood and her roommate Sherri Ellis.

Karen Silkwood was the subject of the 1983 movie Silkwood that starred Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, and Cher. Silkwood worked in the Cimarron plant that processed plutonium for Kerr-McGee. Mysteriously contaminated with plutonium, she died shortly after in a single car accident while on her way to give an interview to a New York Times investigative reporter.

Karen, according to Marilyn, had discovered that a large number of the workers at the plant had developed cancer, as had she. She, along with many others, believed it was because the plant had lax procedures for handling the deadly plutonium. The plant had de-unionized and she was one of the few remaining members. As such, she felt it was her responsibility to expose the plant’s dangers.

As a union spark plug, Silkwood became a target, either by workers fearful of losing their high paying jobs or by Kerr-McGee itself. More than once, Marilyn observed Silkwood in intense arguments with some man driving a blue pickup, the last argument occurring the day before her death.

Before her death, Kerr-McGee personnel conducted a search of her apartment, finding high degrees of contamination. They even found an object, clearly marked as radioactive, in Shane’s toys. The Company maintained that Silkwood had contrived to contaminate herself, and thus implicate Kerr-McGee.

Karen Silkwood swerved off the road on her way to meet the investigative reporter. The car, when searched after the accident, contained no contaminated evidence, but had blue paint on a rear fender from an accident with another vehicle.

Did Kerr-McGee plant radioactive material in her apartment? Did Kerr-McGee have Silkwood killed? Did she have illegal drugs in her body at the time of the crash? I do not know, but I do know that the resultant lawsuit filed by her family settled out of court for more than a million dollars.

As a geologist, I also know that Kerr-McGee had another plant in Gore, Oklahoma - a place that insiders now consider one of the most contaminated places in the United States. Carroll, a friend, and fellow geologist, once worked for Kerr-McGee Minerals and told me that they would calibrate their helicopter-borne Geiger counters by flying over Gore.

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Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He is the author of the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans and the Paranormal Cowboy Series set in Oklahoma. Please check it out on his Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iBook author pages. You might also like to check out his website.

Night Crawler - a picture

Here is another spider pic. I got home after dark last night and walked through the web of this spider. As I drink my coffee this morning I'm still combing bits of the web out of my hair. No, she didn't bite me.

Eric's Web