Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Progress in Paradise...

Progress in Paradise...  Not much, really.  The wet weather today kept me from working outside, so I had a day of (physical) recovery indoors.  I kept myself busy catching up on all the bills, receipts, etc. that seem to pile up at a breakneck pace.  Debbie's still feeling puny from the cold she's caught, though it looks like she's on the downhill side of it.

We did take an early evening drive out to Porcupine Reservoir.  With the dramatic stormy skies, spots of sunlight, and the lush green of the fields and hills, it was very pretty.  The reservoir's level is distinctly higher; it's now within 24 or 30 inches of spilling over.  Better late than never!  We didn't see any loons, but did see a solitary Sandhill crane, a boatload of mallard pairs, and two terns doing their fancy flying while looking for fish.  Lots of horse and goat babies all along the drive.

I just got back from a walk along the dirt road east of us, with all three dogs.  The rains today brought the worms up, and a platoon of robins was feasting on them.  I'm sure they're all feeding some hungry babies.  This made them bolder than usual; several times we walked up to within about four feet of a robin tussling with an uncooperative worm (not my photo, but the same idea).  In the end, the robin would always decide that risking an encounter with three slavering dogs and a weird human was too high a price to pay for a juicy worm that would momentarily satiate their basically insatiable chick...

Jerry Yellen...

Jerry Yellen...  How lucky we were to have such men.  There are fewer of them today, I think – but if you talk with some Afghanistan and Iraq veterans, as I have, you'll see that we still have some...

Tradescantia occidentalis...

Tradescantia occidentalis...  Common name is prairie spiderwort.  Via BPOD, of course...

Excitement in the cattery...

Excitement in the cattery...  We have a room in our basement that's dedicated to seven of our cats.  The room has five windows to the outside, despite being in the basement.  These are well windows, much as in the photo at right (ours are a bit bigger, though).  These let in more light than I ever would have guessed.  For several hours each day, they also admit bright spots of sunlight for the cats to luxuriate in.

This morning Debbie walked into the cattery to see one of our cats (Kapua, aka “mom kitty” ) very excited about something she saw in one of the north-facing windows: a fledgling robin.  It had either fallen or flown into the well, but couldn't fly straight up to get out of it.  It was a very confused and unhappy little fledgling.

Now if you're not familiar with birds, and especially baby birds, there are a few things you need to know about them.  The first is that to say they're as dumb as a stump is to insult all of stumpdom.  The second is to note that they're incredibly fragile – if you grab them in the normal human way, with your hand, you're almost certainly going to injure them.  They likely won't recover from any such injury.  And, naturally, when they see a great big monster human trying to capture them, they struggle to get away – they think you're going to eat them.  Like Kapua wanted to.

Debbie and I both thought of getting a dish towel to cover the fledgling with.  We know from (hard) past experience that you can turn a bird “off” by covering its head.  But Debbie had the real winning idea: to throw the towel so as to cover the fledgling, while I stayed at some distance.  That worked perfectly: I got it covered on the first throw, then packed it gently into a bubble in the towel, and took it outside – to the vast disappointment of the feline crowd watching the whole affair carefully.

I let the fledgling go at the end of our front door walkway.  It flew away from the house, toward the pines in our front yard, then did an about-face and flew straight back to the house, landing in a planting about one foot from another well window.  Sheesh.  Dumb as a stump would be a welcome upgrade to its brain-power.  As of this writing, the fledgling had not fallen back down into the other well window.  I bet it does, though...

Update: just a few minutes after I first posted this, Debbie called up.  “Bird in the window, again!”  Down I went, dish towel in hand, and repeated the entire exercise.  This time I let it go at some distance from the house, under a blue spruce.  Hopefully it will stay there for a while before diving into a window well again.

Stumps are positively brilliant by comparison!

Hula-hooping, manly edition...

Hula-hooping, manly edition...

Three inches...

Three inches...  Of lovely, gentle rain, that is.  That's the storm total since last Thursday...