Some people seem to think police officers should be capable of feats that would amaze David Copperfield and Doug Henning.

I just want cops to arrest, as quickly and painlessly as possible, anybody who poses a threat to innocent people.

People like me, for instance.

Not everyone is satisfied with that simple standard, though.

They expect police to not merely apprehend suspected lawbreakers, but to always do so in a way that doesn’t look, you know, violent when you see it on a grainy black-and-white videotape.

That is a pleasant thought.

I’m something of a Beatles aficionado and so it causes me considerable shame to admit the following:

For a lamentably large number of years I believed the group’s last album was “Let it Be.”

I am not at all consoled by the fact that I recognized this error before I was old enough to drive.

Nor does it lessen my embarrassment that my mistake, besides being a common one among Beatles fans, is not, in a semantic sense, even wrong.

The place where we hunt elk lacks certain amenities, including, rather unfortunately, elk.

I don’t really mind, though.

A rifle is no great burden, slung over a shoulder, and I enjoy getting out in the clean air and having a look around the country on the cusp of winter.

Besides which, elk could enter the picture at any time. In theory, if not always in reality. Every hunter will tell you the elk are out there; it’s just that “there” is never where I happen to be. At least not when I have a hunting tag in my wallet.

And even if, say, a six-point bull does wander into view, it’s apt to vacate the premises before I can bring my scope to bear. Which is just as well, since I’m a lousy shot.

I don’t care what the wildlife biologists say — elk can disappear. And I mean literally disappear, not merely step behind the camouflage of a Douglas-fir. I’m talking about different dimensions, or astral planes, or whatever.

There is something uniquely sad about the sight of a certain sort of barnyard on the gray morning after a hard autumn rain.

This affliction does not affect outfits which have enjoyed a long and consistent run of bountiful harvests. The prosperity of such enterprises is easy to gauge from the well-tended lawn and the freshly painted buildings and the general absence of disorder and neglect.

Even these farms are not immune to grime — it’s awfully hard to grow anything edible without the occasional appearance of mud — but the mess is in the main confined to the fields. The public face of the place, what passers-by see from the road, must at all times and in all weathers present a picture of constant care.

The recall is over, and I suggest everybody eat a piece of chocolate.

Except for dogs, who can’t tolerate the confection.

Halloween is nigh, so the availability of chocolate ought to be at its highest level since Mother’s Day.

I suspect that most every elk hunter who habitually pursues the wily animals (and it is a habit, much like smoking, and for some equally addictive) can tell you about the one shot they yearn to have a second chance at.

The arrow that nicked an unseen limb.

The bullet nudged off course by a sudden gust.

I’m referring, obviously, to shots that missed the target.

But there are other cases, albeit of extreme rarity, when the hunter’s aim was true but he wishes, given time to reflect, that he had not pulled the bowstring or the trigger.

Mountain ranges, it seems to me, ought to be depicted on maps as something more noteworthy than a handful of the highest summits.

The ranges tall enough to cast shadows across most of a valley should, at the least, have names.

On Good Friday morning three generations of Jacobses got to experience firsthand the havoc two wolves could wreak. Just a two-minute jaunt from our sleeping households, four of the five documented wolf attacks occurred on what we call the “Home Ranch,” a 640-acre chunk of farm and pastureland, just a part of what we make a living on in this high desert country.

From that day in April until today, Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife and Animal Damage Control confirmed 29 lambs, a pet goat and one calf killed on two ranches. This act stirred and spread the hotbed of debate in our small ranching community of Keating Valley to the Legislature in Salem and beyond.

America has survived wars, floods, famine and high-fructose corn syrup, but those rank as minor distractions compared to the malevolence which today threatens our nation.

I’m referring, obviously, to the Chia pet.

This diminutive decoration has long hidden behind its facade of tackiness, but the evidence of Chia’s evil plot is so compelling that no jury would acquit.

Not even one with a majority of members who have been rescued, from the brink of a birthday or Christmas gift disaster, by a fine Chia product.

Despite America’s ability to defeat all manner of enemies, the damage the Chia pet is now inflicting on our reputation surpasses, I fear, even our power to repair.

When I’m careening down a slope of talus I like to know whether it’s granite or chert that’s excising the skin from my back in the manner of a cheese grater wielded by a sociopath.

“This stupid rock” seems to me a pathetically impersonal epithet.