THE WOOD BLACKSNAKE

george catlin

A few weeks ago I attempted the gentle way of encouraging a phoebe, a fly-catcher, to find another location for a nest. The phoebe was constructing a nest on a rafter above the deck at the Carpenter's house across the road and into the trees. The nest was directly above the deck on the place you put your foot for first step onto the deck going out the door. Phoebes use mud to construct their nests. On the deck under the nest the bird left an area of mud splatters. Later, when chicks hatch, she throws their droppings out of the nest and they land on the deck below, in front of the door. It makes a mess. We considered what to do, harm to the bird not an option. I remembered a wooden snake I had found in Halsey drug store's toy shelves. The price was $5. I thought it would be fun to have one, but not for five dollars. After having them awhile, they reduced the price to $1. I said, hail yeah, I'll buy myself a toy snake for a dollar. Ten to fifteen years ago. It has floated about the house. It's flexible and wiggles in a serpentine way that is almost creepy. Thought I'd paint it black, black as night, black as coal, I wanna see it painted, painted, painted black. Sprayed its belly white, turned it over and painted it black, tip to tip. It's made of little wedges of wood attached to a ribbon. Painted glossy black, it favors a blacksnake well. We put the snake on the deck a couple weeks ago. When I go to the house, I move the snake. On the big table, on the small table, on the deck floor, on the railings, on chairs. I've seen no more mud droppings under the nest. I see no bird droppings on the railing where she likes to stand still and watch for flying bugs. 

george catlin

We might have found the key to keeping birds off the deck. We were glad to note Mama Phoebe had enough time to build a nest somewhere else. In my early years in the mountains I probably would have found a long branch on the ground in the woods and knocked the nest down or sprayed it down with water from a hose. This is the Western way. Destroy. I have found after a lifetime of paying attention to the four-legged and the winged, consciousness without spoken language, they are conscious, I set out to learn how to communicate with them. I don't mean conversationally, but consciousness to consciousness. Eye contact, tone of voice. Words carry the vibration of their meanings. We hear the vibration, though we're not aware of it. The four-leggeds are not aware of it either, yet they hear it and pay attention to it closely. Consciousness is love, which tells me they live their grazing lives in love, uncluttered by mind, by self awareness, by self consciousness, by worry. I read Donkey Jen's mood by her movements, her eyes, her ears, her snorts, her face, her general demeanor throughout her body. It is similar with Jack, though a different personality. Talking with Jack at carrot time, when I say to him, Jack's my friend, he snorts approval. I remember the first time I told him he was my friend. He put his head down, snorted and shook his head lightly. He understood it and it touched his heart. He feels the same toward me, he just isn't able to say the word. I see it in his behavior, in how he takes a carrot from my fingers and never bites, even when a finger gets in the way. 

george catlin

The donkeys, big, rambunctious, powerful, fierce, dangerous, have become quiet and gentle with me after a year and a half, even affectionate. I feed them treats, talk to them, and most of all, I love them. They, in turn, love me and want to please me. I don't need to scold them, even when they get rampageous and have a sparring match with me between them. They don't want to kick me, step on my foot or knock me down. They know I'm a fragile two-legged easy to push off balance. It is something they'd use against me if I were to make them mad enough to want to get back at me. Donkeys are like cats in that they return to you what you gave to them almost immediately. If not now, soon, and if not soon, when the time is right. I have no reason to make them mad at me. It is natural for me to treat them with respect, because I respect them. They, in turn, respect me. I respect them as other conscious beings, like people, aware they are animated by love, itself, minus the distractions of mind, the illusions of duality. I regard them with a loving heart and they open their hearts to me in turn. It brings to mind a Doc Watson concert. He sang his songs from the heart with a loving attitude toward his audience. The people in the audience felt his love, it opened their hearts and they sent loving feeling to him, enlivening him, and he sent it back to the audience, enlivening them. I felt like a circle of love was flowing between him and the audience, from him to the audience, from the audience to him, until there was no knowing when or how it started.

george catlin

I feed my birds and squirrels every morning close to the house, and the crows across the road by the mailbox. It's an open place for them where they can see up and down the road quite a ways. They used to scatter when I went out with seed. Now, if any are there when I go out, they fly to a nearby branch and watch. Mostly, I never see one. I call out with two caws when I throw the seeds into the air. Monday, I went out to throw some seed. I did not see a crow that was perched closer than one has ever been while I was out there. I cawed twice, threw the seed, and turned to walk back to the house. I turned around and saw the crow, surprised to see it so nearby. The crow looked at me and said caw twice. Consciousness to consciousness. It doesn't matter how the two caws translate. It matters that the crow spoke to me, person to person. It used the be the squirrels would run for their lives all the way to the nest when I went out the door. Now, a squirrel will jump onto a tree trunk and move around to the side I can't see and wait for me to leave. The birds fly up from the ground to rhododendron limbs and low branches to watch what I'm doing. Chickadees chirp at me. Squirrels sometimes make their chirping sounds. This morning the cardinal did not fly away. I whistle back and forth with a towhee when I walk to the car. Jack likes me singing with him so much that I can start him braying by doing my part of our duet. He joins me right away. Every day we sing our duet at carrot time and grain time. 

george catlin himself

*

MY LIFE IN THE THRILL KILL WORLD

donkey jen

It is a moderate time of winter this week. A few days of sunlight and cold. The sun makes the cold feel better than cold under dark clouds. By chance, I saw a weather report for the next week. It looks like every day above freezing and every night below freezing. It's not bad. The floor is not quite so cold. After maybe four winters with two bird feeders, the bird community has worked out a flow that works for all concerned. Blue jays, one black and white woodpecker with red on top of its head, and other big birds go to one feeder. Chickadees dart in for a seed between the big birds. Snowbirds, nuthatches, chickadees, the smaller birds use the other feeder. Cardinals go to both. The birds have an understanding among themselves, something like the way animals of the African plain gather around a watering hole in peace. The family of red squirrels that live in the pines around the house use the feeder the small birds go to. Gray squirrels from the trees across the road use the one the big birds go to. The squirrels don't take everything. They eat what they want and go on. I throw seeds on the ground for the squirrels so they won't go to the feeders so much. They're not a problem, but the birds have to wait when a squirrel is at the feeder. I see the birds in peace with each other, the whole variety of birds, big to small. The blue jays are not aggressive with the smaller birds. They wait their turn when another bird is at the feeder. They perch on the rhododendron branches waiting for next opening. They live in peace. The feeders are the communal station for nearby birds. The hawks know the feeders are here. Among the tree limbs and rhododendron is not an easy place for a hawk to maneuver. They wait outside the grove of trees to nail birds coming and going. I suspect one is living in a grove of white pines up the hill behind the house. I hear it from time to time. I've seen a sparrow hawk fly in here, but it didn't do any good. The birds scattered. The hawk had no reason to wait, perched on the bird feeder, and flew. 

donkey jack

At first, I didn't like the idea of the hawks invading my bird sanctuary. It wasn't long before I caught on. The feeding station is here to feed hawks too. They're birds, they live here, it's communal, they're welcome. They're part of the balance. I once saw a Cooper's hawk land just beyond the window, a big bird with impressive wingspan. It looked in the window, saw me and flew. A red tail lives nearby. I see it sometimes sit on a wire or sail by. It is Justin's hunting buddy. When he was using his tree stand, he said the red tail would fly up and perch on a branch uncannily close to him. Soon after, a deer would appear. He learned the hawk knew he was hunting. The boom of the rifle did not make the bird fly. It stayed in place, just a few feet away. The hawk knew Justin was a predator too, who went after the big animals the hawk couldn't handle. The hawk knows Justin's truck. I think of the thousands of years the Indians lived in peace with mountain lions, rattlesnakes, bears, wolves. Europeans discovered the world was round and went looking for gold. The age of discovery on one hand---the age of genocide on the other. They not only annihilated Indian civilization on two continents, but killed about everything else too. Killing became American tradition unto an attitude pervasive all my life I trained self away from: if it's living, kill it. Buffalo Bill's genocide of the plains buffalo made his name, got him fame and fortune, ostensibly to starve the Indians into submission. Someone I know heard something on the deck in the night. It was a possum. He went and got his gun and shot it. And I say within, Wha? I wanted to say, It was only passing through. He knew. Something to kill. Easy target. Hear the gun go boom. Nailed the sucker. Good shot. By this time in the life, I have emotional, as well as physical, reactions I suppress from view hearing somebody tell about killing something. I'm not a good actor.

donkeys and their shadows

I've noticed my hunting friends like to watch my face while they tell me about a kill. I do my best to keep a poker face, which gives me away. I've heard some stories that make me want to cry. The hardest time I had keeping reaction from showing in my face was the time my friend Jr told me about shooting a hoot-owl out of a tree at a hundred yards, watching my face to see me hold it. One of the great ironies of my life came the night of the morning Jr left the body. Parking at home, when I opened the car door to get out, I heard a hoot-owl in a tree so close my first thought was, why didn't you fly when the car drove up? Next thought, It's Jr telling me he's all right, saying hi and thank you. I wondered why he chose an owl to speak through. At the house I looked up owl in Jamie Sams' book, Medicine Cards. I already knew the wisdom part, but wanted to see what else the book had to say. Owl fit Jr. He was the one I call the only man I've known all along the way who had true wisdom. I found the owl is also the deceiver. It flies on silent feathers and sees the unknown. Both these aspects of owl point particularly at Jr. I was not the only one who knew him to see the deceiver, but knew I was the only one to see his wisdom. I mentioned to two of his friends of many years, separately, a few weeks after he'd been gone, "Jr was the only man I've ever known I'd say without hesitation had wisdom, the real deal." I knew neither one would allow him wiser than themselves. Also knew neither one would see wisdom in him or anywhere else. It's a bible word with no meaning in the now, like prophet or king. It's not a word you hear much on tv. Both men without much school education, though both with PhDs and post-docs in experience, answered after a pause of a few seconds in the same words, "Jr did have some wisdom about him." I took it for affirmative, knowing neither one had seen wisdom in Jr, consciously, and knew both had seen it unconsciously. I wanted to bring it into their consideration to add a new dimension to their memory of Jr.

found on a maple

I personally do not like guns, though had two that were given to me, didn't want either one. After several years of catching dust, I gave them away to get them out of the house. I'm of the belief that guns attract guns. I also believe I'd rather be killed than kill, though haven't had a chance to test it and don't want the chance. I do not believe I'm safer with a gun. A possum wants to sleep under the house, you're welcome. A coon wants to eat leftovers at a bird feeder in the night, you, too, are welcome. It's communal. Coyotes come around in the night, I don't need to kill them. I step outside and yell big and loud, GIT. The giant's left his barn. The coyotes leave. My reputation as a human precedes me. Everything is afraid of humans. The animals left in the wild tell their babies the humans can kill you just by seeing you, they go boom and you're dead. A wild animal weaned by its mother cannot be tamed. A wild animal brought up from birth by humans is easily tamed; it hasn't been trained by mother who knows to avoid humans, rule number one in the wild. They'll kill you just for living. American cops kill three people a day, one of them an unarmed black man, woman or child. It's not safe to be a human in America either. Then we have the homicides and all the other -cides. My way in this world is to go in peace. Merely having a gun in my mind is not peace. Some friends taught me to fill half gallon plastic fruit juice jugs with water and blow them away. I had a .45 that shot magnum hollow points. I went out one day and blew holes in a few. Never touched it again. Hot dang, blew up a plastic bottle. I liked the balance of the weight in my hand. I liked the feeling of power when it went boom. OK, I experienced it, now what? I'm suspicious of "power" so readily available. As for the balance, a brush feels better in my hand. I'm of the belief that guns, like money, create more problems than they solve. A gun is an instrument of hate. I don't trust hate either.    

yard art

*

THE OUTSIDER

grace hartigan

It has been a daily blessing since I clicked the power button *off* to my mental interest in following political nonsense. Simultaneous with turning off that interest came the facebook group, The Daily Creative Practice, brief conversations by way of comment boxes and photographs of varieties of works of art shared, the ones that want to, showing something new. It has brought me new friends, people I'm happy to know and communicate with almost daily. We tap into each other's aesthetic. One, Lee, I feel like we've known each other in lifetimes past. I appreciate about the group that nobody is promoting a given point of view. No games. I was gaping out the window a moment ago at a dove pecking around among last year's pine needle's on the ground, fixed momentarily on the subtle haze of pink on their gray-brown donkey color I can't find a name for. A red squirrel charged in from the right, straight to the dove from behind. The dove fluttered and twittered into space, the squirrel ran to the tree in front of the window, ran around the trunk, then out of sight. Now it is back at the place where it chased off the dove. The squirrel had been seed-hunting there before. A small black and white woodpecker is going over the bark of the white pine out another window. There came a day that I realized how truly ignorant our politicians are. They don't even try to cover up anymore. It's straight up they're in it for the money, they lick the hands that feed them. I asked myself why I was paying so much attention to ignorant people. A waste of my own mental time and space.

 

grace hartigan

 

The Daily Creative Practice has taken the space left over by the sudden vacancy of  my dim-witted drift through the mind-space of below average people. Pay more attention to the books I want to read, the art I want to make, the people I want to interact with. Pull back from media-fed mind to the world of people I live among, the people I care about who care about me. Eliminate the static of media nonsense from my own interior motion picture collage of mind. I want less of that belief system, less of that tone of voice in my head, less of that mind. It's been well over a month since I've paid attention to the vanity of self-centered men on the take. I see a picture of weeping Boner and it makes me laugh like seeing a cartoon, a 2D caricature of complicity with corporate greed. I used to react with a feeling of GAK in my belly. I don't value somebody of that mind, so why pay attention to him even to be disgusted by his Xtreme shamelessness? Why even laugh at cartoons about him? Our political system has become something I cannot support with my attention. I'm considering not participating in the vote later this year as a way of unplugging myself from the corporate media belief system that money is the only purpose. Much as I'd like to feel support for Obama because the racists hate him so much, I can't help but see him a corporate plant. I don't mean a rubber tree. The black people caught on early that he was not with them. He talks to them the way white men talk to them; you needta, you oughta, you better, you should. His white supporters are catching on gradually he's not there for them either.

grace hartigan

My new friends at DCP are a million times more interesting than Machinegun Barbie. At DCP, we have Paleontologist Barbie. I have also learned not to comment on memes I get from places I'd clicked Like on in the past. I got into a brief exchange with a guy involved with Occupy, and he was one hard core activist, the kind that ends up in a deep dark dungeon a political prisoner. Just his attitude made me shudder. It was a friendly exchange. I didn't know what to say. I seem far left in relation to the republican party, but when I have a glimpse of somebody far left, it throws me way back to center. In the face of the two extremes, I'm neither one. I could call myself of the right because I believe the people making ridiculous noise about guns have a right. I don't have a gun, don't want one. Somebody from the apparent "left" gave me all kinds of hell for using the "cruel word," redneck, "you know better," dotted with yellow smiley faces. It threw my mind to kindergarten and refrigerator magnets. I want nothing more to do with the left. I wrote back, "I AM a redneck and proud of it." Unliked the place. Lord have mercy, now I can't even say redneck. Two days ago I saw a thing saying it's not all right for white people to use the enword. I wrote back, "Can I say white emeffer?" I've become a little bit confrontational with those people. I've found some who promote tolerance are as judgmental and intolerant as the most adamantine baptist preacher. The very most intolerant person I know had a sticker on the back window of his car that said Tolerance, and called himself a Buddhist. I figured the sticker on his back window was there to remind himself--albeit in reverse, thinking he's telling everybody else. I seldom let any of them get away with their judgmental statements about the South.

grace hartigan

The liberals who want me tolerant of everything and everybody are severely intolerant of the South. They give more evidence that people outside the South have no idea about the South. I remind them the slavery they're pointing the finger at the South over has been gone over a century and a half, while in American coastal cities is more slavery going on than there ever was in the South. Only difference, the slavery now is Asian, and Asian's aren't cool to wax self-righteous over this year. It's still ok to say the A-word. And the Asian mob, the noise-makers intuit not to provoke that beast. Benign Southern people living in poverty in a trailer by the side of the road, a confederate flag in the bedroom window, did not have slaves, do not have slaves and never seen no damn slave in their life. The only thing the flag means is they drink beer, love the South, and just to be spiteful embrace everything Yankees judge wrong with the South. The South they love is the Lynard Skynard and Allman Brothers South. Southern rock! Hail Yeah! That's something else outsiders don't know about Southern rednecks; they embrace everything Yankees say is wrong with them, because Yankees don't like it. It's comedy. It's I-am-I humor. When I wrote back to the person on facebook saying I am a redneck, it was in place of saying, "Y'all sure are a judgmental bunch." I reminded myself of a saying learned from an aunt, Don't start it if you don't want it started. It's time to pull my mind out of that kind of thinking too. I'll be Unliking some more of them. I will kick into gear an attitude that I like people outside the South looking down on us--it keeps them away. I tell myself, don't educate them, let them believe the highway patrol south of the Mason-Dixon line pulls over every car they see with a Yankee tag. I must let go of my own intolerance of intolerance of intolerance.

grace hartigan herself

 

 

*

 

MY FRIENDS THE CROWS

Weary'n wore out all day. Up til 3 writing, then up at 9 to feed the donkeys and calf. I wanted so badly to tell them by telepathy to wait a few more hours. Couldn't do that. I forced on outdoor clothes, dragged myself about the house. Birds outside were chirping at me to come out and put seeds in the feeders. Sometimes a squirrel will hang onto the trunk of a tree outside the window and stare at me, calling me to bring their breakfast. I put out seed for the crows across the street. When I take my time getting out there, they call to me from a tree in front of the house. At the first feeder, I looked in the trees overhead. The branches were alive with chickadees, titmice, snowbirds and nuthatches, all of them twittering, talking to each other, excited that the ice cream man came out of his barn for them. Jenny squeals when she sees me and Jack commits to full bray. I walked over to the crow feeding station and three crows flew into some nearby trees, not too close, far enough they feel they can get away in a hurry if they need to. They watched me throw out the seeds. Every morning when I throw seeds out for the crows, I call to them two caws. I've done it for so long that by now they know when the goofy sounding crow calls to them that doesn't know their language at all, it's their human friend with the bad crow accent. They know it's not a crow, but that doesn't matter. They know it's the ice cream man. He can't talk crow very well and that identifies him.

 

 

I love the crows most of all birds. Other birds are interesting, but crows are fascinating. I have learned from knowing a crow family that they live in families. When you see a small cluster of five or six crows flying together, it's mama, papa and the kids. Crows do not wean their young. The young ones are only able to make the basic caw sound. They have to learn their language, which takes years. There are certain crow calls only older crows know how to make. The language is complex. They have extended family, and a certain number of extended families make a tribe. In October all the crows of a given region gather in big meetings of a hundred crows, more or less. I had the good fortune to see one of their meetings at a place they thought they could not be seen. I was in a house maybe 400 yards away, seeing them through a window. If I had just opened the door they all would have flown. It was an assembly of more than a hundred crows. They were walking in a huge pack over a large meadow after the last mowing of the year. The ones in front would fly up into the air and and drop down, repositioning themselves. Some would move forward and some would move back. Marching out in front were the elder crows that walked tall and proud like roosters, like Chinese soldiers on parade. They spent quite awhile repositioning themselves in the front of the pack until they were satisfied everybody was in place. Then they went aloft in a black swarm, circling, breaking up into clusters of immediate family that flew off into the directions of their homes. I've been hoping the cow and donkey manure would attract crows to the meadow out my window. They tear apart dry cow pies that are loaded with larvae of some kind of fly. I don't know about donkey. I've not seen any crows at the old faded piles of their droppings.

 

 

Over the course of about a year I gave all my time taking care of my neighbor and friend Jr Maxwell, a tractor mechanic, welder, sawmiller and bluegrass banjo picker. He was up in his eighties, had become feeble, mind was drifting away. He did not want to end his life in a nursing home. He wanted to die at home. I wanted to allow him that. I was on Social Security, so I had the time to help him out. He was one of my very favorite people, so it was not a labor looking after him. His last wife, a Yankee twenty years younger, moved in on him when his real wife died of cancer. She thought he had money, which really tells her limitations. He had no more than I do. He worked all the time keeping her credit card bills paid the best he could. She left him because he was getting old and kept on living, didn't die soon enough to suit her. She went off to Michigan where she came from. He was devastated, so down and out I wanted to help him. I diagnosed a great deal of loneliness in him. I couldn't help him in is suffering, but I could visit him regularly, be some company, another presence in the house. For five years I stopped by on the way home from work and we sat for two hours over orange juice glasses of white liquor we sipped on as we talked. He told me his whole life over that time. Our hours together became valuable for me learning the life of someone I eventually came to see was the only man I'd ever known I could call wise without hesitation. He called himself a fool, could make a better case for himself a fool than I could for him being wise. I came to think of him as the wise fool. Thinking about it, it becomes obvious right away that a wise man in this world can only be a fool.

 

 

I sat on his front porch, an 8 x 12 cement slab with an overhang, reading, watching the cars and trucks go by on the highway while he slept most of the time. I started paying attention to the crows. I'd buy apples and slice them into eight slices and throw them out on the lawn in front of the porch, at first some distance and closer to the porch gradually. Even got to where I'd put one on the porch and one of the crows, the same one every time, would step onto the porch very cautiously, pick it up and carry it to the grass to eat it there. They walked around in the grass in front of me. They would take an apple slice in one foot and peck at it. I noticed they even shared. One would peck on a slice for awhile and then leave it for one waiting its turn. They were a family of mama, papa and four young'uns. I felt like the younger ones were in their first year. They could only squawk and some of them followed mama wiggling their wings, beak open wanting mama to feed them. She would. One of them would not eat for itself. It was at her all the time wanting her to feed it. It got on her nerves. I saw her one time jump on him. She stood on one of his wings that was spread on the ground, other foot on his back, held him down and barked in his face for a long time, telling him in no uncertain terms, stop it. Next thing, he was at her fluttering his wings wanting her to feed him and she did. The young crow didn't seem to be very healthy. It gradually learned to peck at an apple slice. Over a period of time, I was able to throw a slice to the crow and he would not jump. He ate so much apple every day that he gradually came around and seemed to be about as healthy as the others. Any garbage from the kitchen went out the back door. A crow would be scouting somewhere nearby. Open the door, step out, sling the unused food onto the ground and here they'd come. I'd watch them from the kitchen window descend the long hill behind the house in a long glide low to the ground. The only things they did not eat were watermelon and cantaloupe rinds, onions and banana peels. Possums ate the rinds. The onions and banana peels rotted into the ground.

 

 

I studied them closely, not by the scientific method, but looking for the people in them, gradually able to tell the apart. I wanted to learn more about crows, so I found a book somebody was getting attention for at the moment about studying crows. I bought it excited to have a book full of crow knowledge. The first half of it was filler, writing about the publisher asking her to do it, she didn't know anything about crows. Pages and pages of supplies she bought for her study, told about her daughter being impatient with her for hanging her underwear on the clothesline. I quit reading half way into it. She had told nothing about crows and made it clear to me she had nothing to say. I sat through a Joe Cocker concert in 1976 expecting it to get better, it could only get better. After half a concert of waiting for it to get better, I left. I've finally learned that when something starts out bad and continues to be bad, it's not going to get better. That's how it was with the book. I told myself I'm on my own. There were other crow books, but that one put me off studying crows by second hand and third hand knowledge. It wasn't long before they walked casually up to the edge of the porch. I missed that family of crows after Jr's spirit left the body. Driving by on the highway, I always look to find a crow nearby in a tree or flying, one of my old friends. Back at home I started putting out sunflower seeds across the road by the mailbox to attract the crows. I can't get to know them like I did the others, which is kind of disappointing. However, I am able to be a part of the lives of the crow family that lives nearest by. I gradually put them at ease seeing I am not about hurting them. I let them know the human in their territory is a friendly, giving them treats they can depend on. It cracks me up when I'm late and they come calling to me. I have a family of red squirrels. They used to run through the trees out of sight when I stepped out the door. Now they go up a tree just out of my reach and watch.

 

 

 

 

*

 

HALCYON DAY

Another wet Monday with dim light all day. Not many squirrels and birds at the feeders. The traffic at the feeders is so slow in the rain, a coon climbs the post, maneuvers over the squirrel guard that only keeps chipmunks out, throws the roof off the birdfeeder and finishes the day's unfinished supply. I've put hook and eye at both ends of the roof, but raccoon hands have no problem unhooking them. The hooks are primarily to keep the tops on in a big wind. Raccoon throws the roof to the ground and has plenty of room to sit down and have a snack. I don't care. It's easy enough to pick up the roof and sit it back on. Squirrels climb a tree nearby and leap to the roof of the birdfeeders. It cracks me up to see one leap through the air twisting the tail for balance. Like a coon and a possum, squirrels have hands for all four feet. I've seen them leap through the air at the birdfeeder and often in the canopy of trees, from a branch of one tree to a branch in the next tree. The squirrels travel through the trees almost like monkeys. They catch the branch with all four feet. When they land on the birdfeeder, it is all four feet at once. I see a nuthatch darting about.

I enjoy seeing the rainwater drip from leaf to leaf through the rhododendron and leaves of an oak sapling. By this time of summer, the leaves everywhere in the mountains are lush green like in June. Everyone who has seen as many summers in the mountains as I have knows that no two summers are alike and no one of them was predictable. It's the same with winter. People are talking about what this summer of wet shoes almost every day means for winter. I heard my first folk-report yesterday that we're looking at a hard winter. What does hard winter mean? A lot of snow? A lot of cold? A lot of both? Or maybe a not very cold winter that rains as frequently as this summer so we have freezing rain almost daily, ice. If it rains as much in the winter as it has this summer, we'll have ice regularly. That's the worst case look at it. Winter is never the worst or the best. It wavers between the two poles all winter long. I have no argument with the rain because it is bringing the water table back up, which was sinking fast, more springs drying up, due to the new houses all over the mountains, each using an electric pump to get their water from a well and returning it to a septic tank. I suppose the water table by now this summer is up to where it was maybe fifty years ago. I call that a blessing for the mountains and for the people living in the mountains. When fracking comes here, that's it for the water.

I see a towhee at one of the feeders. I go out every morning to fill the two feeders with black oil sunflower seeds. More than one pair of towhees is nesting in the grove of trees around the house. One or more of the towhees will make their distinctive whistle, and I respond with my poorly executed imitation of their whistle. We get a call and response communication going on while I'm visiting each feeder with the day's serving. At the place across the road where I throw seeds on the ground for crows, I call to them with a caw-caw, again, my version of it, which to a crow is obviously not a crow. It tells them it's the giant that puts out snacks for them making an attempt to speak Crow without knowing the language. In the old days when a farmer went out to call the cows, he didn't holler Moo. Come to dinner can be understood in any language once it is established. The towhees know the giant has a terrible accent, but they know what it means when the giant responds to them. Come and get it! The bird chirpings are quiet when it rains. The rain is merely sprinkling all day. I can walk to the mailbox and not get wet above the knees. Jewelweed on both sides of the path to the mailbox soak my pants from knees down and shoes. I don't care. It's summer. If the sky were not overcast, the temperature would be in the nineties. It sits on seventy today.

A moment of stillness outside. The sprinkling has let up, leaves are no longer wiggling, no birds chirping, so quiet I hear the clock ticking off the seconds. It is a momentary calm in the air that brings to mind days at sea when twice I have seen the ocean mirror smooth, not a ripple all the way to the horizon all the way around. Clouds reflected on the surface of the ocean exactly as above. It was one of those perfect as-above-so-below moments. The ship's prow did not break the surface. That point was where the great V of ripples began that spread out from the ship all the way to horizon. I believe such days were called halcyon days. Ships with sails sat in place waiting for wind to stir. Even with the rain I think of today as a halcyon day. Quiet, calm, at peace outside and inside. A day of stillness. A good day for reading and a nap. A fog is coming in, a low-flying cloud crossing the ridge here in slow motion. Silence but for water dripping from leaf to leaf, and visual stillness but for one towhee on a rhododendron branch grooming itself. It's a day that makes me think of Toru Takemitsu's compositions for piano. I don't want to put one on the jukebox, don't want to break the halcyon nature of the moment. I can hear him good enough in my mind.

 

 

*

GRAY SQUIRREL IN THE BIRDFEEDER

chickadee pecking a sunflower seed

It's a cool, damp day, raindrops dripping from leaves, fog whiting out the distance, nice white backdrop to foreground. A chickadee standing on a rhododendron branch pecking open a sunflower seed, eating the treat inside. I think of unwrapping a Hershey's "Kisses" with the dexterity of a critter with hands. The chickadee uses what we call feet for hands. A chipmunk has walked out to the limp extremity of the branch looking for a place to get a foothold to leap from. Couldn't find a firm part of the branch close enough to jump to the birdfeeder from. Brings to mind an old-timey word that has left the vocabulary, scutter. It was something of a generic term like critter. A dog could be called an old scutter, or somebody could be called a scutter. It's one of the words with its meaning in the sound. I doubt the word had a concrete definition. Looked it up just now in an online dictionary. It's the noun form of the verb to scurry. I think of a chipmunk scurrying over the ground foraging for leftover sunflower seeds. It's then natural to think of a chipmunk as a scutter. Even this definition leaves the meaning indefinite, something like a slang word, particular to context.

out front door looking left

 

The two windows with a birdfeeder in each one make better viewing than tv or movies. I sit here writing, looking out one of the windows for the next sentence, snowbirds and towhees hopping on the bare ground beneath the rhododendron. I also throw a big cup of sunflower seeds up high to rain down through the leaves to the shaded ground below. It sprinkles them fairly evenly in the shade where the birds and scutters feel safe. A gray squirrel is nibbling in one of the feeders. I don't mind. It's for them too. They don't take everything, though I do have eight squirrels now and at least that many chipmunks. I throw a fair amount over the ground too. It's for anybody that finds it. Possums come out after sunset and scrounge for leftovers with their noses that look like trunks snorting the seeds. Possum goes all the way back to dinosaur times. I theorize that possum has continued by not being very particular about what it eats, and by not being a fighter. A possum passes out from fright when attacked, farts a scent of death, pursuer backs away freaked out. Possum comes to, pursuer is long gone, possum goes about its way.

out front door looking right

Last night late driving on Glade Valley Road in rain and intermittent fog I came upon a possum in the middle of the road eating something that had died on the centerline. I slowed when I saw possum's eyes look up. I slowed further ready to stop, because possums are bad to get run over. My feeling is what's fatal for them is that it takes a moment for their pea brain to figure out that those two lights are a car going fast--lookout-lookout-lookout---so I like to give them time needed to figure it out, a second chance so when a pickup comes along driven by a consciousness that will turn the steering wheel to hit a possum, the possum might think a little faster about getting off the road. I can't save all the possums. The one last night turned and ran to the other side of the road instead of running across in front of my lights. I don't like it when one runs under a tire out of nowhere. Those get written off as consequences of the modern world. It's not my fault we need cars to get around in and roads to go fast on. We're victims together of the harsh edges of the modern world indifferent to consciousness.

happy gray squirrel

I believe what it is that makes the scene in the window more interesting than movies or tv is the feeling in myself. I feel love in my heart for the birds and the scutters. I'm happy hawks can't get them here. I'm happy to buy bags of sunflower seeds for them. The seeds are good nutrition, the oil good for their joints, their feathers, fur and much else, about like olive oil for us. They live in a world of humanity hostile to wildness while loving the idea of it. When a hawk catches one of my babies out in the open, the hawk gets a good meal. The hawks are part of my feeding stations too, part of the cycle. Maybe cardinal will come back a bluejay for a new color experience. Maybe chipmunk will return squirrel for the arboreal experience. I think it's their hands that make squirrels pesky. They use their hands the same as a raccoon. I like that my neighbors come to my house for dinner. I feel like everything that lives around me in the woods, in the meadows, in the ground, are my neighbors, same as human neighbors. This is a way of loving my neighbors, a seed kitchen for the feral. Caterpillar sits in the open doorway and watches. A bird, chipmunk or squirrel approaches her strike zone, she squeaks and her whiskers twitch. She doesn't eat them anymore. She knows them well like hunters know their prey, though in this time of her life she's an observer.  

caterpillar bird watcher

 

 

*

 

A PEACEABLE KINGDOM

gray squirrel

Feeling good today, sun is out, a little wind, temperature 60, a nice spring day, birds singing. Feeling good on the inside such that it's not swayed by what is outside. If it were rainy and cold, I'd still be feeling good. When it's cold, I like to take a nap this time of day. The fresh leaves, the birds passing through on their way north for the summer, the air outside the windows visible in the small oak leaves wiggling, and behind them the rhododendron branches moving up and down, leaves in motion reflecting evening sunlight in sparkles of white light dancing on the green. A bluejay stands on one of the branches pecking at a sunflower seed to open it for the meat inside. Some of the chickadees and snowbirds have stopped flying away when I open the door. A few of the chickadees will stand on a branch in the rhododendron just a few feet away to watch me put seeds in the feeder. They greet me with their clicking sound. The squirrels don't run far when I go outside anymore. They used to fly up a tree like the giant that lives in the shack was going to puff up like Godzilla and snatch them with dragon teeth, swallow them in one gulp. By now they see the giant is about feeding them. They hop to a nearby tree and hide from me on the other side of the trunk, or go to a branch not too high and watch the giant serve their daily seeds.

Two kinds of squirrels dine here, gray and red. The reds are pine squirrels that live in the white pines around the house, this area their territory. A gray is close to the window foraging through the pine needles on the ground, staying behind greenery aware the giant is inside the window. It keeps an eye on me from time to time to see if I'm still in place. The giant watches the squirrel with the same thrill upper-middle class Americans get on a camera safari in the Serengeti to see lions and rhinos, leopards, herds of antelope from a cage on wheels driven by a local man armed with stopping power. I don't care that my squirrels and birds are not exotic. They are living beings same as the exotic varieties. They are the untamed people in my world. Watching a squirrel play chase with its friend, I am watching the spirit of life in squirrel form, not far from a monkey form. They have hands they hold things with, all four feet are hands. They have claws to help them climb. I've seen squirrels leap from one tree to another, jumping from almost a twig at the extremity of one tree and sail through the air straight up like standing, all four feet forward and open to grab the small limb at the extremity of the next tree. I've seen them run through the canopy in the forest from tree to tree as freely as on the ground, better. The ground has leaves and sticks, rocks, logs. Up there in the trees a squirrel can get around pretty good.

 

In my adult life I have focused a great deal of attention on seeing the consciousness in the non-speaking animal world where I live. I learned first hand from living with dogs and cats, finding that I can know the "person" there, the consciousness, the mind. They have all the mind we have except for the forebrain activities where the capacity for reason is located. The four-leggeds are only one leap in consciousness from my consciousness. In the time of taking care of my neighbor and friend in the time of leaving the body, I discovered when his mind went away (dementia), I could communicate with him same as before, but without words, like I do at home with my four-legged friends minus forebrain. Their inner peace tells me the forebrain is as much a curse as a blessing. I watch the squirrel through the window knowing if I had raised it from a baby, bottle-feeding it, we would be able to communicate. We'd be friends. The squirrel would probably be surprised at how illiterate I am to the way squirrels communicate and what they have on their minds. The same consciousness as in a cat or a dog. It could be fun understanding squirrel nature like I understand cat and dog nature.

A dove the same color as the ground is bobbing around in the shadow of the rhododendron, wary of being seen. If I were to open the door the dove would fly straight up making its vibrato squeak that sounds like a rusty hinge vibrating. A dove is a good catch for a hawk, making them extra cautious. All the birds are wary unto instantaneous flight response to the unexpected. The cardinal, too, seems wary as the dove. He makes an easy hawk target. They have a hard time hiding. This feeding station has such a network of branches around that hawks are disoriented when they fly into the feeding zone. All the birds scatter, leaving the hawk to sit on the roof peak of the birdfeeder and assess this webbing of limbs easy to fly through, but all maneuvering attention is focused on missing the limbs. Leaves filling out on the limbs will make a canopy over the feeding station hawks will not be able to see into. Red squirrels have a life span of one year, I presume because they are hawk targets. I have four red squirrels now. It tells me they're safe here. The new pair look a little bit smaller than the others, making me suspect the pair that live here have multiplied. Baby chipmunks (ground squirrels their old-time name) scurry about in the shade under the rhododendron, looking for food and playing chase at the same time. I like having my peaceable kingdom where everybody is safe from hawks. The two gray squirrels have become four. A chickadee carried a sunflower seed to a rhododendron branch, held it with a foot, pecked and pecked at the shell, ate the treat inside and flew in a straight line back to the feeder.

*

A SAFE ZONE FOR BIRDS



            red squirrel

This evening's film, Jane's Journey, put me in a somewhat pensive mood. Wanting to get to some painting, wanting to open the laptop and write to you, needing to get up and refill the cup with Kenyan coffee and put a bowl of dry catfood outside the door for the possum. Possum comes by after dark for leavings. Initially, I put Caterpillar's unfinished "wet" food of the day outside next day for Martha the dog or Posie the possum, whichever found it first. If Martha didn't drop by during the day, Posie found it after dark. A gravel parking place across the road I shower with sunflower seeds in the mornings for the crows and whoever else wants them. By the end of the day the seeds are all consumed; at night Posie goes about eating the shells the birds discarded for the seed inside. A pair of red squirrels, also known as pine squirrels, live in a white pine close to the house. They run the ridge of the roof to a pine limb, then another pine limb, down the pine to the ground by one of the birdfeeders. I throw sunflower seeds on the ground for the squirrels so they won't have to raid the birdfeeder. At first, I wanted them squirrel proof, but found if I feed the squirrels too, they don't raid the birdfeeders. Originally, the birdfeeders were closed up by a plexiglas storage bin for seeds that the coon, whose territory includes my space, would break into at night, throw the roof off and get the leftover seeds.

Seeing there was no way I could keep the coon away except by trapping it, not an option, I decided to forget about the feeders holding several days of seeds, dismantled the seed bin and left an open space with the tray at the bottom to put two kinds of sunflower seeds in every morning, enough for the birds and the squirrels to consume in one day. Every morning the 2 birdfeeders are empty and I don't have to latch the lids anymore. I put hooks at both ends of the roof to keep hard wind, coons and squirrels from throwing it off so much. Wind is the only force the hooks work for. Squirrels and coons have no problem with hooks. They have hands like ours with claws for fingernails to help them climb trees and fight. Between the birdfeeders is a huge rhodedendron where I throw a fistful of seeds as high into the air as I can throw and let them sift down through the leaves to the ground. This gives the bluejays, the bullies of the birds because they're the biggest--the law of the jungle, a place to peck around on the ground and let smaller birds have the feeder. And the other way around; when bluejay is at the feeder, smaller birds peck on the ground. None of them are particular about feeder or ground for picking up seeds; the seed is all they want. Also, the seeds are spread evenly over a large enough area under the rhododendron that several birds can peck about and stay out of another bird's pecking range.

So it costs me a little bit a month for the seeds and allowing for the "mauraders" who are not bandits if I put something down for them too. About daily, a red squirrel will step inside the birdfeeder shelter, sit there with tail curled nibbling at the seeds. This happens after the seeds on the ground have run out; they're available to the birds too. This miniature forest out my front door between the house and the road has enough small trees with branches and rhododendron growing that hawks don't have a chance. I saw out the window a Cooper's hawk fly to the ground and stand surveying with a hawk's eye the obstacles for big wings that inhibit maneuvering. Another time I saw a beautiful gunmetal blue sparrow-hawk fly into the wooded zone and sit on the ridge of one of the birdfeeders, it too surveyed the obstacle course. The hawks flying into this zone cannot fly with abandon, it slows them down and distracts their focus of attention. The birds feeding all fly away the moment a hawk enters the wooded zone. The small birds can fly through the tree limbs with ease. All escape.

I love to watch them out the window, especially knowing my birds and squirrels are safe. I love having a pair of squirrels that amount to the same as hawk fodder, a lifespan of about a year, because hawks evidently get them all. This pair of red squirrels live successfully inside this zone that's hawk proof. It's been a year that I've been seeing them. I understand the environmentalist principle that feeding the critters influences them away from the grains they'd otherwise eat. It also turns out to be responsible for bird overpopulation of a given area beyond what can sustain them without people feeding birds. It's not like the birds are immortal. The seeds I feed them are healthy for them, seeds they can't find in their "natural environment." What about all the birds in the days when farms grew fields of grains to feed the horses, picking up the remains of the harvest from farm to farm? Following farming used to sustain huge bird populations, though the way monoculture farming is done now, it's death to the birds with chemicals that poison the bugs the birds eat. I'm not doing that. In fact, I'm not unbalancing anything. Even here in the mountains the human element is eradicating the birds as fast as it can be done. That doesn't strike me as natural balance.

The so-called natural world is so far out of balance that giving birds a safe place to have their choice of two sizes of sunflower seeds puts a miniscule spot of the planet into a little bit of balance for a short space of time. The more they eat here, the less they'll eat in the christmas tree fields 2/3 of the way around our safe zone. They sing to me spring and summer. This spot of ground was not a good haven for birds before I let the seedlings grow into saplings then trees and planted rhododendron, small ones dug up from the woods years ago. The so-called natural world is under assault by the human population responsible for a high rate of extinctions hourly around the globe for more than half a century. Assault is a gentle word for what is happening to the critters and to us, we the meat people.  Is that a healthy planet? Duh. Is that even a question? When everything living dies off, it will be too late to build a rocket to some moon of Saturn or into another solar system. The part I really don't get, and am afraid of going so far into a jaundiced point of view to get it, is why the human people who have been to college (corporate execs in skyscrapers = ivory towers) keep on with the destruction. The answer, though, is obvious as 1+1, even if you want to make it 11. Money is the only purpose. The only. It's gone so far by now the evidence is everywhere it's too late to turn around the mega-force in unstoppable motion until the house of cards skyscraper, after taking over our government, collapses of it's own too-big-to-fail. What comes next we've yet to see.

*

THE WILD THINGS

      caterpillar lioness

A squirrel has lived in the trees somewhere near the house for several months. I put up a bird feeder and the squirrel discovered it. The squirrel jumped from a tree to the roof of the birdfeeder. It's a little wooden one with a roof. At first, it was something new for the squirrel, but the benefit of the birdfeeder was negligible. A lot of work for very little. I started throwing seeds on the ground for the squirrel and birds that like the seeds on the ground. There was a period of time I didn't see the squirrel. What looked like at least half a dozen chipmunks ran about under the feeders nibbling seeds they could find. None could get past the squirrel guard. I threw seed on the ground for them. I don't mind who gets it. I put it out there for whoever comes along. A raccoon discovered one of the birdfeeders. When I put in too much during the day for the birds and there is some left in the night, the coon will sometimes throw the roof off the feeder and tear it apart getting at the seeds. I can't defeat the coon, so I put the roof back on and try not to have any left over by dark. If there is, it doesn't matter. If it gives the coon a vicarious thrill to feast on some morsels from a birdfeeder, I say go for it. Give it all you got. I don't mind the coon having some sunflower seeds the same as I don't mind the birds eating them.



I've been seeing what I thought were two young squirrels on the ground around the birdfeeders. So I've been throwing seed on the ground for them. Since they have come around, the chipmunks have vacated the birdfeeding area. I never see one. Earlier in the day I noticed two of the young squirrels running up and down a cedar tree outside the window that looks to the meadow. Then I saw a third one join in their game running up and down the trunk and the branches. Thought I saw a 4th one, or maybe the 3rd one again. I watched them all run up the trunk of the cedar to a nest. It looks like the squirrel that jumped on the birdfeeder from the tree had some babies and they're now big enough to run about on their own. One day last week I had the door open. I noticed Caterpillar on the inside of the screen door and one of the young squirrels outside the door and they were looking at each other. Caterpillar at age 14 is heavy enough she can't jump onto the footstool, needs to climb or be lifted. On a sunny day she lays on the ground like a gray rock and watches the flying candybars.



Caterpillar is long past catching birds. I saw her one day when she was a couple years old stalking a snowbird. From about 6 feet beyond Caterpillar the bird took off and flew over Caterpillar. She leaped straight up and swatted at the bird that was about 4 feet above the ground. She tapped one of the wings and set the bird to wobbling, and I saw she'd done that before. Three young cats was the end of birds around the house for a long time. No danger lurks here for birds or chipmunks or squirrels now. I sit at the desk with 3 windows and Caterpillar looking up at me wanting to be touched. Needing a few minutes of attention. Not a lot. She doesn't like too much attention. When she wants me to pick her up, it's for no more than a few minutes. If I act like I don't have time sitting at the desk looking at the rectangle of light, she can sit at my feet and beg plead until the end of time. I've learned when she wants attention, pick her up, talk to her, pet her and inside 2 minutes she wants down. She's satisfied. That was all she needed, held and touched, keeping the cat batteries charged.



I have a nest of squirrels now. That feels good. I've let trees grow around the house and made the ground like in the woods, a carpet of leaves, some rocks, some ferns. I like it that a squirrel chose to nest maybe 20 feet from the house. I laugh at myself. That means the attic space of the house has a good chance of becoming a squirrel apartment this winter. Exactly what I don't need. How do I get rid of them? Bring home a young cat. Then it's back to no birds or squirrels or chipmunks. Martha, the dog from next door, who spends her days here, is no bother to the critters. Dogs are good to keep critters like possums and coons from taking up under the house. A few weeks ago Martha killed a rabbit that ran under the house when it saw her, and Martha knows under the house like a kid knows its own bedroom. The rabbit didn't have a chance. While they were thumping around under the house, Caterpillar was listening with her ears alert, eyes inward, seeing with her ears. I didn't worry about Caterpillar feeling bad for the rabbit. If she were able, she'd have at least attempted to catch it. Martha brought it to the door to show what she'd done for me. Half-heartedly I told her she's a good dog. She picked it up and carried it off someplace to eat it.



Caterpillar, the lone cat now, seems to be happy with her place as the best and only. She didn't like the other two cats. Caterpillar has a solitary nature. She did seem to me to feel sorrow for a few days after TarBaby and Tapo had been gone long enough to see they're not coming back. I learned to communicate fairly well with my cats, enough that I believe I could tell sorrow when I saw it. She felt it. But like a cat, it lasted a short time, then it's back to the concerns of the day. Extended mourning is a mind thing for humans. I've learned from cats that our human way of standing over a grave or lingering at something sentimental is superficial. A cat sees a thing one time. That's all it needs. Second time, it doesn't need to look. It's already seen. When I took Jr to the cemeteries to visit his mother's grave and his dad's grave, he walked up to each one, looked at it a brief moment, turned and walked back to the car. He didn't need to stand over the grave. A look was what he went for. When I visit his grave, that's what I do, see it and leave. I learned it from him and the cats.    



 *