Another Life Renewed

My Rose of Sharon is blooming, thirty dainty flowers just outside my kitchen window. I quite love it.

I have watched for it this year, as I do each year, waiting for the flowers to come. Their blooming means something, like there is still order in this world that feels so full of chaos. We do watch for such signs. It's what people are happy and, I think, relieved about every Spring. Green comes back, flowers poke up through the soil, gardens begin again.

Thank goodness for it.

Oh Well

How to Make a Flower from Plastic Straws

Glass cuff

These darling flowers can be made with just two colored plastic straws, and can be used to decorate cocktail glasses.

* * *

This from Wikipedia HowTo. And I am led to say there's a whole world out there of things like this, and obviously I have no part in that world because I would never have thought of something like this, and now that I know about it, I can say without the slightest hesitation or doubt that I will never make something like this.

Am I missing out on something? Depends on who you ask. Ask me--no.

P.S. Note the word "darling." This is 2009. Where does "darling" come from in this context? Like 1950?

Frank McCourt

"A happy childhood does you no good," a ponderable from the memoir Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, who died yesterday of metastatic melanoma, age 78.

I read Angela's Ashes in the mid 90s, after it won the Pulitzer Prize. Almost everyone I knew read it. I heard interviews with Frank McCourt. I liked him. I liked his Irish brogue, and I liked the things he said. He taught high school English many years, thirty or more, then at age 60 wrote that memoir. He said all literature is nothing more nor less than a story.

The book? Good writing but hard reading, very depressing and relentlessly so. No happy childhood for him and no happy motherhood for his mother. Three of her five children died as children. And that's only the beginning. His father? A loquacious drunk, like so many other Irish men, who drank up and probably "puked up his week's salary" in the street outside the pub.

And yet, I recommend the book. It's a should read.

I didn't read his other two memoirs. 'Tis, about his life after coming to New York, or Teacher Man, about his life as a teacher in New York City. But now maybe I will read Teacher Man, if I'm tough enough to do it.

Saturday Morning

I hear on the radio the price of gas is coming down--no, has been coming down--because crude oil is down to $60 a barrel. So far Boise prices have come down four cents. "Has been coming down" seems to indicate a longer time and more than a one-time four-cent drop.

There is a portable toilet now on the greenbelt. I don't want to use it but need to. However, the sign says Please be Courteous This facility is reserved for handicapped individuals.
I don't go in.

Seven ducklings ride the river current, parents close behind.

A couple with three big dogs take them right to the river's edge. No plastic bags. Makes me mad.

Two guys on recumbent bikes nearly run me off the greenbelt. Funny they don't see me; they're riding straight at me.

The butcher at Albertsons passes on his bike, "You're out early," he calls to me. "Yeah, feels good," I answer. He's from Virginia. We sometimes chat about Virginia because I've been to Alexandria, where he's from. Alyce lived in Alexandria. Nowadays he tells me about the wonderful place he and his wife have here in Boise. "You should come and see it," he says.

Yes, red-shafted flickers do eat from the ground.

I think of my friend Vonda, who has moved to Minneapolis. We took many walks together that summer she studied for the bar exam.

Three geezers greet me as I step on the path that leads to my car. One speaks, "Well, good morning. How are you this morning?" They're nice, though. No looking me up and down as geezers are apt to do. Maybe a quick glance was all they could handle.

George out walking, not quite up to his former speed. But neither am I moving very fast these days. At least not yet.

I have a story in my head and want to go home and write it.

In My Own Backyard . . . And Front . . . And Side, Part 6 and Last

When I was growing up we had mice in our Santa Monica home from time to time. We might find their droppings on kitchen counter tops, in kitchen drawers, or even in dresser drawers. It kind of makes you sick to see mouse scat on your silverware or your clothing. I can still hear my mother shriek, “Oh! Filthy little things.” And me. I can hear me shriek, too. My mother would clean and clean and set her traps and hope. She was usually successful; I had to empty many mouse traps. Not a job I ever sought.

One day we began to notice a smell in the kitchen. My mother looked for days but couldn’t find the problem. Meanwhile, the smell began to take over the room until it was unpleasant to take our meals there. Hard to forget that smell. It finally drove my mother to desperate measures.

“Carol,” she said, “I’m sure something has crawled in here and died, maybe a mouse. You’re going to have to get down and pull everything out of the cereal cupboard and find it.” Her desperate measures but my job somehow, and, again, not a job I sought. The cupboard was the kind that turns a corner and extends into darkness. Who knew what might leap out and bite my hand? But I did it. And I found the problem. It was a mouse. He had gnawed his way in and couldn’t get out. He died nose down in a box of Cream of Wheat.

Mickey Mouse is a lie, by the way.

I also had a brief encounter with rats, two of them, on a cobbled street in Quebec early one morning. We stood a while looking at each other, unsure who was more surprised, then they pushed on up the hill in no particular hurry. You know, like they owned the town. On their way to breakfast, I figured, and hoped that where I later ate lunch wasn’t where they had earlier eaten breakfast. They were ugly, by the way, and no doubt influenced my unfavorable review, years later, of the popular cartoon movie Ratatouille.

The thing that makes a rodent a rodent, the distinguishing characteristic, is its incisors, upper and lower, which are continually growing—continually, as in always. Hence the rodent’s need to gnaw continually so that his teeth don’t outgrow his mouth, I guess. I don’t remember Ratatouille showing us that fundamental rat behavior. It’s a behavior that doesn’t go well with what I want going on in and around my home, by the way. That and their propensity for sneaking into, and apparently wanting to hang out in, places where I don’t want them, places I consider mine.

And what does all this have to do with squirrels? Well, they are my rodent du jour, you know, and they are no different from any other rodent.

In My Own Backyard . . . And Front . . . And Side, Part 5

Some of my readers are clamoring for more on squirrels. Okay, one reader. So here are Parts 5 and 6.

I keep making the point that squirrels are rodents, as if that’s a bad thing. It may or may not be, and I suppose which it is depends on whether you’re a person or a rodent.

After all, the squirrels can’t help it. Rodentia they are, but did you know that 40% of this earth’s mammals are also rodents? Which is something I would never have guessed and which troubles me a little. Rodents include gerbils, hamsters, rats, guinea pigs (your pets perhaps?), mice, gophers, beavers, porcupines, ground hogs, prairie dogs, and others. In fact, 2270 species of rodents inhabit the planet.

So what’s the big deal? you ask. Well, my experience, limited though it may be, tells me I do not want rodents living with me, like in my house, or even very close to me, like so they could get in my house.

My experience:

When our son Richard was a boy he had a hamster, and, of course, the hamster got out of its cage. We searched the house for, it seems now, several days. Finally found him, cute little thing, under the heat register in the master bedroom. That would be my bedroom and Wayne’s. And that furnace shaft needed some cleaning, you can bet.

We also dealt with gophers, those relentless digger-uppers of our lawn and garden and pasture. Thank goodness there are no laws against killing them. Anyone who has suffered through a gopher attack phase in garden or lawn is sure to agree with me there.

Also, with a pasture for those 15 years on Canyon Hill, we saw a mouse or two in the house. Finding their droppings in the niche where my sewing machine resided was stunning and made me feel dirty. I had sat down to make a pair of shorts for one of my kids, because I thought the place was mine, you know. Such an experience leaves you reticent to go into certain rooms, keeps you looking over your shoulder, so to speak, ever fearful you will find what you hope not to find.

Another time a mouse built its nest at the back of the glove compartment of my car, which I always parked in the garage. And yes, I drove the car daily, but a mouse can build a nest overnight, apparently.

It was a big car with a deep glove compartment. I could hear something in the innards of the car when I would go somewhere. I finally figured out where it must be. But what? I thought it might be a mouse but kept telling myself “no way, impossible.” Finding out—it jumped out when I got up my guts and opened the glove compartment—was traumatizing for me and eventually fatal for the mouse. Thank goodness for that. But it left me shaken. I think I got rid of the car not long after.

In My Own Backyard . . . And Front . . . And Side, Part 4

Obviously I feed squirrels, too, although not willfully, or at least I provide a happy environment for them. Against my will, I say again. Obviously they like it here. They can be seen year-round running along the tops of my fences, usually one at a time but sometimes in twos and threes, stopping now and then to flick their tails, a behavior I always consider sexual but which I will have to google, I suppose, to know for sure.* They can be seen chasing one another up and down my trees during spring and summer, in twos and threes. They can be seen late fall and winter burying their cache in my back yard, digging through the snow, if we have it.

Sometimes I knock on the window to scare them off. Fat chance. I have also been known to step out on my deck and holler at them, and even that does not frighten them unless I start out in their direction with threatening steps and words. But I know the truth: they are not afraid of me, and all my threatening behavior accomplishes is a delay in their burying ritual or whatever they're up to in my yard. And where do they run in the meantime? Up one of my trees, of course, to wait until I go back in the house.

Just this morning I went to the front door and yelled, then banged on it, then went out and yelled, then stepped closer and yelled, then threatened to throw a rock, which I have done on occasion, never hitting any living thing. This squirrel, he ran up the big ash tree and just sat on branch looking at me. I was four feet away from him, and I'm pretty sure I saw him smirk.

*I did google. Turns out I was right. Tail flicking is sexual, precopulatory usually, but it can also be a defensive behavior or a warning for other squirrels. So says The Scholarly Squirrel A Definitive Online Resource for the Squirrel Enthusiast. That's not me, Enthusiast, but I read the page anyway, and in my short research, I also read the following:

Squirrels occasionally find their bushy tails tangled in knots, even elaborate braids, with the tails of other squirrels who share their nests. Groups of confused squirrels (and other rodents) have been discovered in this condition periodically since the early 1800s. If you find a group of such unfortunate squirrels, contact a wildlife rehabilitator immediately. Frantic to free themselves, squirrels have been known to try to gnaw through their own tails, so don't delay!

Top of Form

Yeah, right.

As for me, I see no help with the squirrels. They were here first and all that. I already know I am not allowed to kill them, if I had a gun, if I could shoot it here in my neighborhood, if I could hit something I aimed at, like a squirrel, if I would have the heart to do it.

In My Own Backyard . . . And Front . . . And Side, Part 3

Years ago three squirrels got into our crawl space somehow, although the builder of our house said it was impossible, and then found their way to an area between the floor of the kitchen and the ceiling of the basement bedroom, my son Paul’s bedroom at that time. They nearly drove Paul crazy mornings and evenings with their running back and forth. I think two of them finally ran themselves to death. But, of course, we didn’t find their carcasses right away, not until they started to smell. The third one Wayne caught in a trap, and then he brought it out into the daylight to put on display. I don't know if he ever trapped anything in his life that he could actually display except for that squirrel. You can't display dead mice and gophers.

As to the squirrel . . . The poor thing died of natural causes. I’d say it’s natural to die after eating poisoned food. Wouldn’t you? It’s a mystery how such a thing could happen when we knew, everyone knows, it is against Idaho law to kill squirrels.

An acquaintance of mine feeds squirrels. She likes to keep them in her yard because they are so cute, so she puts out peanuts and other goodies for them. I told you people think they’re cute, but I can hardly believe such behavior from someone who in most ways is a good person and who, I thought, had a measurable amount of intelligence.

Then there’s my own family. I was in Texas last week and stood a dumb witness as my daughter-in-law—and I love her very much and she is highly intelligent—pointed excitedly when she saw a squirrel climbing the deck post right outside the kitchen window. Judging by her excitement, I will guess this squirrel sighting may have been a first for her in their yard. I am willing to bet big money it won’t be the last.