Sooey, Pig, Pig, Pig!

At the end of May I saw this Facebook conversation between my sister and an old family friend:

I wanted to get in on that conversation, but if I'd posted there, I'd have felt obligated to acknowledge forty-some-odd other posts by "liking" them, and I just didn't have the energy. I decided to put in my two cents here, where things are quieter.

I'm pretty sure the wild hog incident occurred in 1958, the second summer we lived in Texas and our second visit to Keith's parents' camp at Cow Creek. As former city girls, this was as close to roughing it as my sister and I had ever come, but nothing had prepared us for the wild hogs. I say "hogs," but they were pigs, really--big enough but not yet full-grown. And I say "wild" because they behaved wildly, even though it turned out they belonged to someone.

It was early summer, a month or two before my little brother was born. I was 15, my sister Judy was 11, and I believe Keith would have been about five. Here's a photo of Mother and me at the camp. Click on the picture and look how pretty she was, all happy and expectant. (She was 34. I was excited about the idea of a new baby in the family but embarrassed because people would know by Mother's obvious pregnancy that she'd been having sex at her advanced age.)

We didn't know that marauding pigs had invaded the camp while we swam and played all afternoon in cool, brown creek water. When we climbed up the bank at the campsite,  they greeted us, oinking loudly, racing here and there, rooting around in our overturned ice chests in search of one more morsel of food. They had already eaten everything we'd brought. (I think Judy was right about the number of pigs, but the way they were running around, it's easy to see why a little kid like Keith might have thought there were more of them.)

With dusk approaching and nothing left to eat for supper, the men talked each other into catching one of the pigs to roast. They found some rope and, through trial and error, eventually set up a respectable snare. They had plenty of time to work on it; the pigs didn't seem to be as afraid of us as we were of them and continued running around, making serpentine paths through the camp area. It didn't take too long before one pig stepped into the noose, and Judy or Keith or somebody pulled the rope and caught it, by one hind leg if I recall correctly. One of the men struck the trapped pig with an axe, and the other pigs went nuts.

You never heard such squealing.

That's when the men shooed us women and children away from all the unpleasantness. We didn't want to be there anyway while they finished killing the injured pig, then butchered it. I don't remember seeing the sheriff Keith mentioned, but I do recall encountering the old farmer as we walked down the narrow dirt road away from camp. He wore overalls, a long-sleeved shirt in spite of he heat, and a dirty, floppy hat. He had a shotgun propped over his right shoulder. He looked at us suspiciously as he passed by, striding quickly toward the camp, but he didn't say a word. Neither did we.

We didn't walk much farther after that, just stood around and toed the loose dirt while we speculated about what was happening between the men and the farmer. By the time one of the dads walked close enough to see us and shout for us to come back, the farmer was gone and so were the pigs, except for the one that was just being hoisted over the fire. Later that night I heard some talk about money that had changed hands: the agreed-upon market price of one half-grown pig minus the estimated cost of the groceries they'd consumed.

It would be another 14 years before Deliverance would come out in movie theaters, but I've seen that film half a dozen times since then, and the old man in it has always made me think of the scary-looking old farmer we met the day of our wild pig adventure. I've never forgotten the chaos or the squealing or the creepy feeling of waiting on that dirt road while the sun sank lower and lower in the sky. I remember that captured pig, too. I didn't intend to eat a bite of it, considering its unfortunate demise and the fact that I'd never before eaten meat that I'd met personally in its live form. It took a while for the pig to cook, though, and hunger, along with a sensational aroma, overcame my convictions. Best pork I ever ate!

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If you can't see the Deliverance video below, click on Watch on YouTube. (And don't worry, this is the Dueling Banjos scene where the old man dances, not the horrible "pig" scene.)

Thanks to Floris Verschuren for posting the video on YouTube.

Neglect and Indecision

For years I had a recurrent dream in which I walked out my backdoor onto a short sidewalk that ended up at the door of a large, greenhouse-looking building that I had forgotten was there. It turned out to be an aviary for tropical birds. The enclosure was filled with cages containing birds like the beauties pictured in this post (photographed at the Greater Baton Rouge Zoo), plus dozens of small, colorful parakeets. 

The difference between the birds in the pictures and the birds in my dream is that the dream birds were dying. A few of them were already dead. All the food and water dishes were empty, the cages covered in droppings, and those birds that were still alive, lying on their sides and gasping for breath, had ragged feathers and bald patches.

I was horrified in the dream to find the birds in such dreadful condition and horrified even more to know that I was the one who had allowed it to happen. I loved the birds, but, feeling overwhelmed by life in general, I'd allowed one day after another to pass without tending to them. Now I was looking at the consequences of my neglect.

Every time I had that dream, the guilt I felt lingered long into the day ahead. It's been years since the dream has recurred, but I remember the lesson of it well.

I thought about it the other day when I was considering this blog. I've been neglecting it, I know, and I'm pretty sure it's dying. I'm not feeding it on a regular basis. The number of readers has dwindled down to a small fraction of what it used to be. My fault. 

I have loved the blogging experience and the people I've met along the way, but when days or weeks pass without new posts, I feel as guilty as I did in the dream about the birds, and I do not like that feeling.

My choices are to stop -- to scratch this blog off my to-do list so I don't have to think about it anymore -- or to pick up its ragged body while it has one breath left and attempt to resuscitate it, to nurse it back to health. At this point I don't know what I want to do.

Indecision feels almost as unpleasant as guilt.


PS: I once told a co-worker about my dying-bird dream. She then told me she had an almost identical dream, also recurring, except that the victims of her neglect were fish in an enormous aquarium. According to articles on the Internet, these types of dreams are fairly common. Weird, huh?

Odds and Ends and Reasons to Floss

September ended with a suggestion from the man who mows my lawn that it's probably safe to cut back from once a week to every two weeks now. Yay! Lawn care is my third-biggest monthly expense, after house note and telephone/cable/internet bundle, so reducing and eventually eliminating lawn care for the cooler months serves as my version of a Christmas Club Account.

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I try to get all four dogs to go outside at the same time, but that doesn't always happen. When Gimpy asked to go out yesterday, I called all the others to the door. Until I opened it, I hadn't noticed that a light rain was falling. Gimpy and Levi went outside anyway, but Lucy and Oliver steadfastly declined. That's what made it so funny afterwards when I towel-dried Levi, then Gimpy, while Lucy and Ollie queued up behind them for their turn with the towel. It reminded me of our last set of dogs (RIP, beautiful babies!), when Butch needed ear drops twice a day, and the others always lined up behind him, rolling their eyes and looking gloomy, while I pretended to put drops in their ears.

*****

Seems like it was about this time last year when Levi and Gimpy discovered a possum on the fence. It happened again the other night:

The possum sat as still as a statue while the dogs repeatedly leaped and threw themselves against the fence. They seemed to have no fear whatsoever of the ugly creature. The next night, however, a cockroach (yuck!) got into the house and strolled boldly through the living room. I might have missed it, except that both Levi and Gimpy stood very still, swiveling their heads back and forth between the nasty intruder and me, until I got up to see what they were looking at. I killed it, of course. I guess I don't blame them for not taking care of it themselves; they weren't wearing shoes.

*****

I've been reading, reading, reading in the daytime and at bedtime, taking a break in the evenings to watch the season's new episodes of Survivor, The Amazing Race, Grey's Anatomy and Nashville. Also burned some CDs so I'd have new tunes to listen to on weekly trips to Walmart or Life Writing Class. 

I wanted the songs in the second (bottom) CD insert to be numbered from 21-40 but couldn't figure out how to make iTunes do it that way. Meh. Teenagers may think they originated the "whatever" attitude, but I have it way more in my seventies than I did in my teens.

*****

If you're retired, do you sometimes get your days mixed up? I missed a dental appointment a couple of weeks ago--first time I've ever done that. I knew the appointment was on the 23rd; I just didn't realize that that particular day was the 23rd until they called to see where I was. Fortunately, they had an opening later the same day, so they didn't charge me extra for wasting their morning slot. 

Wouldn't you know that my one molar that doesn't already have a crown on it suddenly needs one? I'll dig into my savings and let them fix that tooth, then I'll look forward to seeing what dentist-income source they can find to fix the next time I go in for a cleaning. They've been pushing me for years to replace my partial with implants, but I have no intention of paying for teeth that will live longer than I do.

*****

That's about all that's going on around here. Book list coming up tomorrow.

Simple Pleasures

What a lovely day this is! It's bright and sunny, with the temperature hovering somewhere in  the mid-80-degree range, just enough of a drop to take the abject misery out of summer.

After fasting overnight, I hit the road early this morning to go for more blood tests. The woman in line behind me at the lab was holding a three-week old baby girl, whom I volunteered to hold while the mother filled out paperwork. At first the mom declined, but minutes later, when she had to go to her car to retrieve insurance forms, she approached and asked if I'd still be willing to hold the baby. Of course, I would.

The baby slept the whole time she was in my arms. That's good, because I'd have hated to have panicked in front of strangers. I loved having a close-up view of her tiny, delicate features. Her brown skin and straight black hair were so different from the pale pinkness and blonde fuzz of my own children and grandchildren, but were every bit as precious and beautiful. In fact, I can't really think of anything more beautiful than a newborn baby. Although Last Comic Standing's Rod Man makes a good point to the contrary.

The television in the waiting room was showing a clip about a lost dog's reunion with its owners. From where I was sitting I could see all the other patients in the room. Everyone was turned toward the TV, and every face wore the sweetest, gentlest expression when the dog saw its people for the first time. Happy dogs do that to people.

When the lab technician called my first name, I jumped up and followed her back through a curtained door, where she handed me a gown and asked me to change. What?!? I have to strip for blood tests? Turns out a different woman named Linda was there for x-rays. I knew lots of Lindas in elementary school, but these days it's rare to run into another one.

Later, when it was my real turn, I felt sorry for the lab tech who tried to draw blood. She blew the veins on her first two tries, which made her so nervous she almost gave up, saying she didn't want to stick me again and suggesting that we wait for another, more experienced tech to return to the office. I talked her down off the ledge and assured her the third time would be the charm, which turned out to be true. I hope her bad experience with my stingy old veins didn't destroy the confidence she needed for the rest of her patients today.

On the way home I stopped at McDonald's two minutes before they stopped serving breakfast and scored a Diet Coke, hash browns, and a bacon-egg-and-cheese biscuit, probably my last one. I've been cheating on the low-carb diet for months now (hell, not cheating--over-indulging--occasionally binging), as evidenced by tight-fitting clothes and higher cholesterol levels. I know I need to stop that. The only thing that's holding me back from healthy eating today is the blackberry-cobbler ice cream in the freezer. Oh, and the Cheezits in the pantry. As soon as I finish all that, I'll get back on track.

Anyway, with breakfast bag in hand, I sat down at the computer to watch the Tiger Cam, but it seems to be turned off this morning. Instead, I'm getting my wildlife fix by watching a tiny lizard,  no longer than three inches from nose to tail, that has crawled through a small hole in the window screen and can't seem to find its way out again. Tigers...lizards...I'll happily watch any of God's creatures that has four or fewer legs.

Hm. A minute ago I discovered that the Tiger Cam trouble is on my end, not the zoo's. It's not too difficult a problem to solve, just time consuming, what with resetting Safari, rebooting the computer, and remembering infrequently used passwords, so wait a couple of minutes...There, it's fixed now.

The tiger cubs are sleeping. So are all four dogs here at my house.

Yep, it's a good day. Not without its minor complications, perhaps, but still peaceful and lovely--and a little bit cooler, thank goodness.

It's The Eye on the Tigers; It's the Thrill of the Sight

As you might guess from the dearth of new posts, things have been pretty boring around here lately. At least for me. Most of the folks I know have plenty of interesting things going on in their lives, but I don't. It's all routine. Maybe I'm the one who's boring.

I've had a routine visit to the cardiologist, who sent me to the lab for routine blood tests. I'm going to see my new primary physician for the first time tomorrow, but the purpose of the visit is to get a long-term prescription refilled. They've allotted only 15 minutes for the visit, so I don't expect it to amount to much.

The weather has been typical for this time of year: hot, hot, beastly hot, thunderstorms. I suppose I should be grateful for boring weather in the midst of hurricane season.

I've spent my days reading one book, then another and another and another until I struggle to remember the ones I finished two weeks ago. The last few have been fine; they just haven't charged my emotions the way a really good book does.

Just when I thought I was mired in such lassitude that I'd never crawl out of it, an article in our local online newspaper this morning caught my attention. A Malayan tiger at the Baton Rouge Zoo gave birth to two cubs near the end of July. The cubs aren't old enough to go out into the zoo's beautiful "Realm of the Tiger" exhibit, but there's a live stream "Tiger Cam" on the zoo's website. All morning long I've watched the mama tiger tend her babies in their den. She cuddles and licks them and doesn't object when they crawl on top of her or snuggle underneath to nurse. They nurse often.

Just now I watched her stand up to retrieve a cub that had strayed to the far end of the den. She picked it up in her mouth and carried it to an innermost corner, where she laid it down and licked it gently for a few seconds before exiting the den, leaving the cubs on their own. In less than a minute she came back, stuck her head in the door to check on the twins, then left again. In another minute she came back to stay. She stepped carefully around the sleeping cub to pick up the rowdy one; it's climbing on her again now. She's a good mama, that one.

The last time Kim and I went to the zoo was in April of 2013, and I posted a few photos the following day. This morning I searched through all the photos from that trip to see if I'd happened to take a picture of the mama tiger. Yep! I've matched the right side of the live-stream tiger stripe for stripe with this one:

Photo at Baton Rouge Zoo - April 22, 2013

A beautiful animal, she appears to be a little heavier now. Childbirth will do that to you.

Watching the tigers on the live feed may be slow entertainment, but their interactions are too life-affirming to be boring. I expect I'll clock lots of hours viewing this big-cat family in the coming weeks. Click on the image below to join me there if you can.

Screenshot of nursing cubs - Tiger Cam - August 11, 2014

Um...What Was I Thinking About? It Wasn't Birds, Was It?

My home office area is set up in a corner of the den where two windows meet and allow sunlight to pour in and brighten the room. I enjoy looking out those windows while I'm pondering a blog post idea, deciding the best way to structure a sentence, or editing photos to share. (I pay bills in the same spot, but that process doesn't involve much restorative window gazing.)

Lately, for some reason, sparrow-sized birds have been flying up and attaching themselves to the window screens. They'll hang there for a moment then hop across to a different spot on the screen or maybe fly away altogether, only to return a few minutes later. Sometimes more than one bird will land on the screen, one right after the other. Most of them eventually move upward toward the corner of the roof and out of my line of vision. I don't know why. I've looked twice and can't detect any sign of a nest up there.

The birds scratching on the screen sound very much like mice inside a wall, so the first time I heard that scratching I was relieved to look up and see a bird. Actually, because they are backlighted by the glaring sun, I see only their dark silhouettes--black, bird-shaped blobs. I can't identify what kind of birds they are.

As much as I like our fine feathered friends in general, about the only thing I can say for certain about these particular ones is they sure have a way of knocking an idea right out of my head.

Snail Trails

I've written before about the tiny snails that live in my backyard. They mostly stay in the grass, so I forget about them until we have a bout of heavy rain that drives or floats them up onto sidewalks and patios. One rode into the house on Levi's leg the other day. I gently plucked it off and set it carefully back on the patio, which was ridiculous since the snail population out there is often so thick we can't help but step on them.

This photo of two brown snails and a dragonfly will give you an idea of how small the snails are:

I didn't realize how much traveling these little popcorn-kernel-sized creatures were doing until the late-afternoon sunlight caught their slimy trails on the slab in front of the garden shed:

Where do snails go, I wonder, and why do they go there? The photo above shows that the snail at the upper right had traveled in a nearly straight line, so why did so many others take crooked paths to get where they were going? Do you suppose the shells on their backs make them wobble? Or that most snails are male and refuse to ask for directions? Or that there's a high incidence of craziness among snails?

The older I get, the more I realize how many questions there are that I can't answer. With new ones popping up all the time, I'll never be able to catch up.

To Quote John Lennon: "Imagine..."

Stopped at a traffic light on the way to Life Writing class yesterday, I glanced up at the birds on the utility lines overhead and saw two doves, side by side, with a red-tail hawk perched just below and a foot or two to the right of them. All three of them were watching the cars pass by, showing neither fear of nor interest in each other.

I wanted to share with you the promise I perceived in that avian symbol of world peace, but there I was, without my camera. Obviously, I'm not the star student in the Drawing 101 class, but I have now recorded that tranquil scene for posterity:

Just imagine.

Promises of Spring

I cannot adequately express how happy I am to type the following short sentence: It's warm today.

In fact, it's in the mid-70s. Earlier this afternoon I sat out on the patio, leaned back in a chair, closed my eyes and let the sun beat down on my face for several long minutes. What bliss! Then I opened my eyes, took a good look at Levi and Gimpy, and marched them one by one to the driveway, where I could hose the mud off their legs without creating more of it in the yard.

The man who cuts my grass called yesterday to ask when I'd like him to start again. We agreed I'd call him when everything dries up enough that his lawn tractor won't get bogged down. As expensive as lawn maintenance is, right this minute I'm looking forward to the kind of weather that hits me hard in the pocketbook.

Remind me of that when I start complaining about heat, humidity, and grass allergies, would you? Until then, these birds and I will sing in praise of warmer days.

The Great Duck Rescue

We're experiencing another cold spell today, nothing like the so-called polar vortex that's wreaking havoc on much of the nation, but still very cold for us. Tomorrow is supposed to be even colder. Local news outlets are, of course, issuing warnings to protect  "the four P's--people, pets, plants and pipes," so we're doing that. I didn't realize there had even been a discussion about the possibility of a rare Louisiana snowfall until I watched TV last night and heard the evening news crew groan in disappointment when the weatherman told them that, no, conditions aren't quite right, it won't be snowing here after all.

Our last snow was about five years ago. I have pictures of Butch and Kadi playing in it. Oh, wait--I probably wrote about it at the time--yes, here's the post. I remember that day well, especially the concerned phone calls I kept getting from my daughter Kim as the day wore on. The more I've thought about it this morning, the more tickled I've gotten, so I asked Kim for permission to repost what she wrote on her own website about that day. Here's her story (the beautiful photo is hers, too):

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Untitled

by Kim Neely

Believe it or not, this is what we woke up to here on Thursday morning:

To say that we were all excited would definitely be an understatement. We hardly ever get to see snow in these parts, so when we do, it's reason to celebrate. People were calling all their friends, running around with their cameras getting proof for posterity, and it seemed as though every other house had a snowman in front of it. Very cool, except for one episode that my friends and family aren't going to let me forget about any time soon.

There was a duck in the lake, about 4 feet from the bank on the other side, that kept swimming in the same place for hours. I had been seeing him there from 6:30 in the morning until around 10 AM, every time I passed by my window, before I realized that he was just swimming in the same spot and that I had never seen a duck do that for so long before. He looked OK, not like he was injured or anything, but there was snow accumulating on his back. Wasn't he cold? I just thought it odd that he wasn't off somewhere with the other ducks. I became convinced that he must have snagged one of his feet in something beneath the water and gotten stuck there. I worried about him for another long while, even soliciting advice about the situation from a few friends on the phone, before I finally broke down and drove to the management office of my apartment complex. My plan was to borrow the pool skimmer to try and rescue the duck, but they wouldn't let me use the skimmer - some nonsense about "possible liability issues." (I refrained from telling the nice management lady that if I wanted to go stand at the edge of the lake and help the duck, I was damned well going to do it, whether it was with the building's skimmer or the one I was about to go buy at the hardware store.) Anyway, she said she'd get the property manager and one of the maintenance guys to go check out the duck and see if they could help it, so I came back to my apartment and waited. After about an hour, when the duck was still there and I hadn't seen anyone out by the lake trying to help get it unstuck, I called Management Lady again to see what she'd found out.

There was kind of an awkward silence, and then she says, "Ms. Neely, the property manager did go out to see about the duck, and he says...um...well...he says it's a decoy."

"Is he sure?" I asked. She said he was, and I wanted to argue with her for a minute, but instead, I apologized for the inconvenience and hung up. I still wasn't convinced, but not long afterward, the sun came out and the surface of the water calmed, and I could see very clearly that the duck in distress was, indeed, faux. Even as I write this, 3 days later, it's still out there, "swimming" in the same spot.

I am choosing not to be embarrassed about this.

Scary Is in the Eye of the Beholder

The waning moon was large enough to cast a faint light across the sky, but everything at ground level was steeped in shadow. The nether regions of my backyard were dark. Very dark.

It was past bedtime. Twenty minutes had elapsed since I'd let the dogs outside for the last time of the day. I stepped out onto the patio and called them, softly, so I wouldn't wake the neighbors. They didn't come. I called again. And whistled. Still nothing, except, in the distance, the muffled clanging of something bumping against the wire fence.

I went inside to get a flashlight, shined it from one corner of the yard to another until its beam fell on Gimpy and Levi. They were standing on their hind legs, stretching upward against the fence, their front paws batting at something I couldn't make out in the dim light. I could see that something's eyes, though. 

If I'd go closer, I thought, I could grab Levi by his collar. I knew that if I could do that,  Gimpy would follow Levi back to the house. In my ankle-length, navy-blue bathrobe, the one with the hood, the one that looks black in the dark, I traipsed through the damp grass toward the back fence. The dogs started barking. I wondered what the neighbors would think if the noise woke them and they looked out to see a dark-hooded form, holding a torch, moving through the pre-Halloween shadows.

Once I got close enough, I could see that the object of the dogs' interest was a possum (an opossum, if you want to get technical about it, but here in Louisiana we don't do technical) that was huddled on the fence rail, its prehensile tail just out of their reach. The possum wasn't moving, and the dogs wouldn't leave it. To lean over far enough to reach Levi's collar, I'd have had to turn my back on a possum that would be no more than two feet away from my head and shoulders. No way did I want to put myself in that position.

I turned around and slogged back to the house to get Levi's leash. And the camera. If I was going to risk letting a possum jump on my back, I was at least going to get blog photos out of the deal. 

Once more I trudged toward the back fence, a witchlike figure with a digital camera strapped around my neck as if I'd been elected public relations coordinator by a majority vote of the coven. I raised the flash attachment, pointed the camera at a patch of darkness in the general area of the dogs and the possum and hoped for the best. After half a dozen shots, the flash quit working (it's working fine today), but I got some pictures of the creepy thing.

Gimpy in the red collar, Levi in the black. 

Stealthy night visitor.

I got the leash on Levi and dragged him away, Gimpy followed as predicted, and we all went to bed and slept soundly. This happened several nights ago. I haven't seen any sign of the possum since. I know it's out there, though, probably nesting somewhere with its mate, the two of them raising a pouchful of ugly possum babies, teaching them to lurk in the darkness and look like they're planning to pounce. 

Are we safe in our own backyards? I think not.

Happy Halloween!

I know that I shall never see...

...a hawk on that persimmon tree.

Recently, the barking of my two big dogs alerted me to a tree-removal crew in my next-door neighbor's backyard. Off and on throughout the morning, I watched them work to take down a large oak tree. It was a fascinating, carefully choreographed process: one man in the bucket of a crane, several others on the ground, working with chainsaws and ropes to lower sawed-off branches and huge segments of tree trunk safely to the ground.

If you click this image to enlarge it, you'll see that

the white spot just above the center of the photo

is a man working from the bucket of a crane. 

That tree grew on the far side of my neighbor's house, so, even though its higher branches were visible to me, I never paid particular attention to the tree itself. The same cannot be said for the tall, spindly persimmon tree that grew farther back in the same backyard. The persimmon tree was a focal point of my daily nature watch.

The persimmon tree in question is the tall tree on the left side of this photo.

I must have well over a hundred pictures of that persimmon tree. In winter and summer both it provided photographic opportunities: cloud formations behind it and birds flying onto and away from its branches. Birds of prey seemed to consider the top of that tree an ideal spot for waiting and watching, for scoping out meals in nearby yards, and I delighted in watching and photographing those magnificent birds.

I felt nothing more than curiosity when the men took down the oak tree that day. It took them several hours to do it, and, when they were finished with the oak tree, I assumed their work was done. You can imagine my surprise, then, when I looked out only minutes later and saw the persimmon tree lying on the ground.

The pile of green at the center of this photo is the felled persimmon tree.

Today there's hardly any evidence that the tree ever existed.

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I cried when I saw that the persimmon tree had been cut down. Not that it was ever any of my business, but my neighbor later mentioned why she'd had the two trees removed, and her reason is a good, sound one. I didn't tell her what I've just told you--that I felt sad (still do) about the loss of the persimmon tree. There's no reason to make her feel uneasy about doing something she had every right to do, and besides, I feel a little silly about discovering I'd become emotionally attached to a tree.

I will miss it, though. Just probably not as much as this guy:

Mississippi Kite on uppermost branch of persimmon tree.

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Since I've only written one blog entry between now and last Saturday, it seems too soon to post another Saturday Song Selection. Eh...who cares? There's one song that's perfect for today's topic, so I'm going to post it anyway. It's a lovely version of a children's song, and the photos in the video are gorgeous.

The song is "Tree Song" by Evie Tornquist Karlsson.

Thanks to Barry Desaine for posting the video on YouTube.

Click here to read the lyrics.

Hitchhiker

Yesterday afternoon I had to make a quick trip to the post office. As I turned the corner nearest my house, a tiny brown head popped up at the corner of the windshield, quickly followed by the rest of a panicky lizard. Having Googled lizard coloration after witnessing an Anole lizard fight recently, I knew that the colors of this one indicated an extremely high stress level. No $hi#! How would you like to be resting peacefully in a shaded carport, then suddenly find yourself hanging onto the outside of a moving vehicle?

It was 102° here yesterday afternoon and much hotter than that, I'm sure, on the surface of my car. But I was stuck on a narrow, two-lane road, deep ditches on either side, and knew that if I pulled into someone's driveway, I'd have a heck of a time backing out into the steady flow of traffic. So I kept moving.

The lizard held on, all the while bobbing and weaving and crawling back and forth across the windshield. Sometimes it appeared to be staring in at me, though the truth is it was probably just looking into the shaded interior and trying to find a way to get inside.

Half a mile down the road, I pulled into the parking lot of a small church, stopped the car, and got out with my stamped mortgage payment in my hand to use as a prod. I tried to slide the envelope under the lizard so I could lower it gently to the ground, but the lizard just scooted over a few inches. I tried again and got the same results. By that time the lizard was hanging on at the very edge of the windshield, so I walked around the car, slid the envelope toward it again, and it jumped off onto the ground. People, I actually heard myself saying out loud, "Good job, buddy!"

Then it ran under the car. Great! Not only was I abandoning it far away from home (in lizard-miles); now there was a good chance of running over it. I looked under the car but couldn't see it in the shadows, so I finally got in, drove forward slowly and carefully, made a U-turn in the parking lot, and went on to the post office.

There was a time I wouldn't have cared about the life of one small lizard, but I've gotten in the habit of shooing them higher up the fence so Gimpy can't get them, and I think I may have crossed some kind of line. All I know is I'm feeling guilty this morning for not turning around yesterday and driving that hitchhiker lizard home.

If I ever start feeling sentimental about spiders and bugs (ladybugs being the exception), please have me committed.

I Wish I Had a Shell

The feeling of swatting at angry hornets that I mentioned in my last post has diminished slightly, so that now I only feel as if I'm juggling many balls--and that any ball I drop is going to bounce right into that hornet's nest and agitate all those suckers again. Still, I'm grateful for that small improvement.

One of the issues that's troubling me (not the most serious but probably the most expensive) is that we're going to have to replace our roof. I mentioned in an earlier post that our long-time homeowner's insurance company is discontinuing coverage in Louisiana and our policy won't be renewed. (I won't mention any company names, but picture a bunch of men wearing overalls and straw hats, holding hoes or pitchforks, and you'll figure it out.) One of my tasks last week was to check on getting a new insurer. I filled out a bunch of paperwork and thought the process was going pretty smoothly until the agent told me that our roof is way too old under their guidelines and that they--or anyone else, he said--can't write a policy until the roof is replaced.

We're waiting now for a roofer to come out and give us an estimate. This is one roof, but it covers two houses, so it's going to be costly. We've known it was just a matter of time until it would need to be replaced, but there's still some good left in it, so we didn't think we'd have to do it so soon--and on such short notice. We'll do what we have to do.

Anyway, the roof issues reminded me about something that happened the night before we got the bad news about the roof. I stayed up late and took the dogs out for the last time after 11:30. They went to separate parts of the yard and were doing their respective business. All of a sudden both of their heads snapped forward and they tore across the yard to the same spot, where they began to dance around some kind of critter I couldn't see. I called them several times (softly, didn't want to wake the neighbors), and they ignored me, so I came back in the house and got a leash, a flashlight, and my camera. This is what had them so excited:

I know it looks like this shot was taken in broad daylight, but it wasn't; I used the flash.

Now, this guy needs a new roof. That's the worst looking shell I've ever seen on a turtle. There's a chunk missing from its back end. (An old chunk; believe me, I checked.)

The dogs stayed back while I took pictures of the turtle, which I did until it started walking again and turned its head toward me with a pointed look I interpreted as, "Give. Me. A break!" So I did. I had to put Levi on the leash to make him come back to the house with me, but Gimpy followed Levi, and the turtle was gone by morning.

I've thought about that old turtle in the days since then. First, I wondered if a turtle's vantage point allows it to see high spots under a chain-link fence easily or if it has to slowly walk the fence line until it finds one. Secondly, I wondered about this: Wouldn't it be nice, on the days when the dogs of life are dancing around and poking you with their big, cold noses, to have a shell you could retract your vulnerable parts into while you sit and wait out the chaos?

Chair-ished Times

It was the chair that caught my attention in the picture above, a chair in the corner of the living room in the house where I grew up, my grandparents' house in Springfield, Missouri. That chair had a story behind it. If the dog in the picture had a story, I don't remember it; the dog didn't belong to us. That beautiful rug is the one on which I once accidentally dumped a dishpan full of heavily buttered popcorn after stumbling when I caught my toe on the edge of the rug.

It's funny how a single photo can grab you, suck you in, make you spend hours searching for clues about it. My search this morning led to this picture, obviously taken the same day:

Same chair, same dog, same rug, this time with the addition of my little sister, Judy (on the left), and me. I wondered what year this was and tried to figure it out. The first clue was Judy's teeth. Her permanent front teeth had grown in, but the ones around them hadn't caught up, so I guessed her to be around seven, which would have made me about eleven. That made sense, too, because my chest was still flat as a board and my legs were still bruised from childhood play, but acne had flared up on my face. I'm guessing that would have been the summer of 1954.

To further substantiate that date, I found an earlier picture, one in which Judy's front teeth were missing:

If Judy lost her front teeth at the typical age of six, this photo would have been taken in 1953. Here, we were posed on her bed in the upstairs bedroom we shared with Mother. Judy's  favorite stuffed dog, Snoozy, was on her lap. Snoozy was her equivalent of a security blanket. The doll between me and the foot of the bed was named (not very imaginatively) Clownie. On the wall over Judy's head you can see about half of the doll collection that disappeared when we moved to Texas in 1957. The portrait on the wall above me was painted from a photograph and sent to us by our father when he was stationed overseas. I was always curious about that, because he and Mother had divorced when Judy was about a year and a half old, yet she was clearly older than that in the painting. The last time I saw that portrait it was hanging in the guest room of my sister's home in East Texas.

Back to the chair, here's another picture of it:

In this one the chair's in the same corner but has been pulled away from the wall to put a desk beside it. I don't know who's in the framed photo on the desk; though he must have been someone important to our family, I don't recognize him from any other photos I have. The framed paintings on the wall were part of a shipment my father sent us from Germany when I was ten. They, too, are in Judy's home today, still part of the family. I think I was probably about twelve in this picture (my bangs had grown out), and, since I was wearing summer clothes, I know the cake I was holding wasn't for my late-autumn birthday. The only other thing I can think of that would have caused someone to photograph me holding a cake is if it was one I had baked, maybe my first one. And if there was a special reason for me to bake a cake that summer, it might have been for my grandmother's birthday or my mother's, which would have put this in either July or August of 1955.

So many clues, but no dates on the photos.

Now, back to that chair one final time:  My grandfather, Packy, worked at Martin Bros. Piano Co., which actually sold a complete line of furniture, not just pianos. This chair came from Martin's. Packy retrieved it from their trash pile and brought it home. He said there wasn't a thing wrong with it--except that it was crawling with the tiny, white larvae of some kind of insect. I don't remember what types of products he used to fumigate it or how long it was relegated to the porch before it was ever allowed in the house. And I don't remember how long it had been in the house before I ever got the nerve to use it. A loooonng time, I think. Once it was debugged, it was the newest, best chair in the house, and it's clear from that last photo that I did sit on it eventually.

Now, be honest: Did this post make you feel itchy?

The Great Tabletop Battle

It was time for lunch. As usual, we were heading for the patio, I with a book, a phone, a paper-towel bundle of cheese and crackers, and a diet orange drink, Levi with a tennis ball in his mouth, and Gimpy with only a happy face and a wagging tail. Just before I opened the door, I noticed movement on the patio table--movement that made me set down all my stuff, grab my camera instead, and leave the dogs in the house.

It was lizards. I see lizards all the time, but I'd never seen any like these before, with their brown coloration, black marks behind their eyes, and the dinosaur-looking ridges down the middle of their backs. What the heck were they? And what were they doing on my table?

I sat down at the table right next to them, aimed the camera, and watched as they circled each other.

They were focused. They paid little or no attention to me, even when I reached right between them and picked up the stick (makeshift paperweight) that was on the table.

They moved in closer and closer . . .

. . . and the fight began:

They were already turning green again by the time I started recording: 

The original video file was too large for Blogger, and it took me a long time to figure out how to reduce its size enough to upload it here. It looks fine on my computer, but there doesn't seem to be a way to test it on Blogger without hitting the publish button, so I apologize in advance if the quality isn't good. I also apologize for the wonky moment that happened near the end of the video when I jerked the camera because the loser lizard either (a) leaped or (b) was flung by the winner right at me. The good news is that we all lived to tell about it.

After a little bit of Internet research this afternoon, I've learned that the fierce-looking lizards in this post are the very same, usually mild-mannered, anole lizards that I see every day. Normally they look like this, all sleek, smooth, and green:

It's when they get riled up and stressed out--in a territorial dispute, for instance--that they puff up and morph into their darker, ninja-warrior selves:

I'm not sure what territory they were fighting over, but I can tell you that the loser eventually crawled over the fence, and the winner made his way up into the folds of the patio umbrella.

Afterwards, I ate my lunch right there and played ball with the dogs. I watched for the lizard the whole time, but he never came out.

********

UPDATE: The resolution on the Blogger video was really bad, so I deleted it and uploaded via YouTube instead. Not great, but much better. Thanks, YouTube!

Taking Liberties

Fact No. One: My mailbox sits beside the road near the end of my driveway, a long stretch with a downhill slope that prevents me from seeing the mailbox from the house. Fact No. Two: I never--ever--put outgoing mail in that mailbox. I always take it to the post office.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I drove out to go grocery shopping and noticed the red flag up on my mailbox. I stopped the car immediately and got out to investigate. Inside the mailbox were two Netflix DVDs in their red return envelopes, no return address anywhere. How odd!

Who was using my mailbox? And why? My neighbors have their own boxes, so it wouldn't make sense for them to use mine. I was puzzled and mildly upset that someone would infringe on the sanctity of my private mailbox, but what could I do about it? I put the envelopes back in there, closed the lid, and went on to the store.

Since then I've given some thought to who might do such a thing. I don't think any of the adults who live nearby would mess with someone else's mailbox. There is one boy who conceivably might have rented movies he didn't want his father to know about, but he's a really nice kid, and I can't see him being presumptuous enough to invade someone else's space. The more I've thought about it, I've narrowed it down to one key suspect--someone new to the neighborhood, someone who arrived without invitation and shows no indication that he plans to leave anytime soon. That same someone has plenty of time on his hands as far as I can tell. He has no job. He goes out every night and spends most of his day alone in his little man cave, so it's reasonable to assume that he might seek out some form of home entertainment. It could be . . .

Nah! That's preposterous!

But what if . . .

C'mon! Don't be silly!

But think about it. We already know the new guy living at my house has a sense of entitlement. I think he could be the one using my mailbox to return his movies.

Yeah, right. And I think you're losing your mind.

I'm just sayin' maybe . . .

A Memory . . . Like an Elephant

Kim and I went to the zoo just in the nick of time, apparently. Local news outlets reported over the weekend that Bozie, the Greater Baton Rouge Zoo's only remaining elephant, will soon be leaving. I'm happy that Bozie's needs are zoo officials' primary concern, but I feel a little sad for those of us who have an affinity for elephants and will no longer have one in our community. Bozie is being relocated because elephants are social animals and she is lonely following the death of her companion, Judy, in March of this year. 

I remember Judy well. She's the elephant I helped bathe one day in the '80s as part of a "behind the scenes" zoo event.  She's the one pictured below with children riding on her back, a practice that was stopped abruptly years ago when it was discovered that Judy had developed arthritis. It's been reported that Judy died of "chronic gastrointestinal irritation from arthritis medication."

Judy the elephant in 1984. The little girl riding in front is my niece, Lindsay.

Judy and Bozie in 2006.

As sad as I am to see Bozie leave, I know it's best for her, and I'm excited that she's going to a good place, the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., where she'll live with several other elephants in a recently renovated (to the tune of $56 million) Elephant Trails Habitat. Judging by the many news reports from the area surrounding her destination , Bozie will get the kind of welcome she deserves.

Bozie in April 2013, getting a drink of water . . .

. . . giving herself a dust bath . . .

. . . and saying goodbye.

Good luck, old girl. We'll miss you.

A Place Untouched by Time

A few weeks ago my online friend and fellow blogger, Patsy, posted a 1992 song I'd never heard before. I loved it instantly and downloaded it from iTunes after listening to it only once. The piano and violin music at the beginning and end of the song are hauntingly beautiful, but it's the lyrics that capture my imagination. They tell a story about the changes that have occurred in Florida's Everglades as a result of man's intervention. That story immediately evoked this memory:

When we lived in Florida in the early 1970s, my husband, our two daughters, and I took a day trip into the Everglades. That was the first time we'd ever explored a real swamp, with its cypress knees sticking up out of the water and Spanish moss hanging from the trees. We walked above the water on a wooden boardwalk, a welcome safety feature that didn't detract from the sensation that we were in a place time had forgotten. The air was hot, damp, and thick with an almost mystical wildness.

We stopped at one lookout point and studied the nature that surrounded us. Directly below us was an alligator, one at least ten feet long, lying perfectly still. We watched a number of big fish swim back and forth in front of the gator's face, fish we thought might make a good meal for a hungry animal, but the alligator didn't blink an eye. We watched for several minutes. Just as we began to wonder whether the gator might be fake, another tourist standing near us opened a cellophane snack pack of peanut-butter-filled cheese crackers and dropped one over the railing. Before the cracker sandwich hit the water, the huge alligator began to roll. Roiling the water with the speed of its movement, it opened its mouth and caught the snack easily, then slammed its powerful jaws shut and settled once again into its own lookout point under the boardwalk. So much for a place untouched by time.

With a nod of thanks to Patsy for introducing me to this song, I'm choosing it for this week's Saturday Song Selection: 

The song is "Seminole Wind" by John Anderson.

Thanks to morgan7852 for posting this video on YouTube.

Click here to read the lyrics.

Squatter

The picture above was taken from my barely opened backdoor on Wednesday, about ten minutes into a heavy rainstorm. It's raining again today -- third day in a row. If all the precipitation we've had over the past few months has anything to do with the polar ice cap melting, I wouldn't be surprised to wake up one morning and discover polar bears washed up in my yard.

Wednesday's downpour helped me solve a mystery. What caused me to take my camera to the door in the first place wasn't the rain but a familiar voice I heard "singing" in it. For about a month now I've been awakened in the night by some creature that seemed to be right outside my bedroom window. I couldn't tell if it was a frog or a bird. It sounded like a frog but was unusually high pitched. Sometimes it's been so loud I've gotten out of bed and looked out the window to see if I could spot it. Wednesday was the first time I've heard it in the daytime. This is what I found:

That little tree frog has made its home under the trim on my bedroom window. No wonder I couldn't see it when I looked out: it was only inches from my head. The tiny green and pink frog is about an inch and a half long from nose to rear end, which is amazing when you consider that its voice box must be at least as big as a one-gallon pickle jar.

I've stalked it ever since I found it peeking out of its hiding place. It's small enough to completely conceal itself underneath that narrow trim, and it's been there every time I've checked except late at night, around eleven. I suspect that's when it goes out partying, only to come home drunk in the wee hours and hoot and holler with no consideration for the neighbors.

On those nights when I've dragged myself out of bed to try to find the source of the noise, I've intended to shoo it away. But that was before I knew it lives here. The small space behind the window trim is its home, its haven, a place where it's safe from hungry birds of prey and whirling lawnmower blades. I have no reason to believe home is less important to a tiny frog than it is to me, so I'll let it stay where it is for now. From now on, when I hear its shrill croak, I might even sleep better, knowing it's arrived home safely.

I can always take a nap if I need to.