Possum

The three opossum orphans were soft as chick down. Each was about the length of my finger, if you didn’t count their pink, snake-like tails. They all had that dazed, faraway look on their slender faces—that look that all of us get when our lives have been suddenly, violently altered.

These three babies were in their mother’s pouch when she was struck and killed by a car on a moonless, wet night when the rain poured down like ocean waves and the trees cracked and groaned in the wind. The possum babies were in good physical shape, it seemed, for all their trauma. Just stunned and unnerved.

I’d never fostered baby possums before. Greta, WildCare’s possum team leader, gave me a sheet of feeding instructions and a bag possum formula frozen into ice-cubes, and sent us on our way. Before I’d gotten home, I’d named the two girls Lily and Sage, and the little boy Red.

 

DOING JUST FINE

The early half of this winter was one of the most restful, peaceful, lovely seasons of my life. I actually managed, for the

Spring chicken

first time, to settle into a routine of serene activities—baking bread, writing, cooking, tending chickens and bunnies, making potions and salves from my summer herbs, and watching old TV series on Netflix (I missed the X-Files the first time around).

All this luxurious quiet and contentment fortified me for the second half of winter, which was neither. As many of you know from following me on Facebook, hubby Carter entered the hospital on January 20^th for a ventral hernia repair. Three weeks later, after bouncing between intensive care and the surgery wards, interrupted by two nights at home mostly consisting of dizzy spells, falls, and an ambulance trip in the middle of an ice storm back to intensive care, Carter returned home.

 

BE WARM

I awoke to the sound of someone nailing railroad spikes into the side of our house. Then, the mystery handyman switched to power tools and fired up a jackhammer and started on our cedar siding. The racket was intense, and the fact that this was all going down before morning coffee made me especially foggy headed.

Stuffing my feet into my slippers, I hurried downstairs and crept quietly out the patio door. I craned my neck around the house corner, my ears ringing from the racket, and there he was in all his black-and-white glory. Close up, pileated woodpeckers are huge. I call them pterodactyls. This fellow visits us a lot in the winter, defying his local nickname of “ghost bird.” We see this magnificent guy several times a week at our feeders. I’ve just never found him clinging to our house wall, doing exterior remodeling not seven feet from my nose.

 

I NEED YOUR HELP, FOLKS

This holiday season, WildCare, the rehab center I volunteer for, is selling calendars to raise funds. WildCare gets NO outside funding other than donations. They don’t even have regular memberships. And I’m certain you can all imagine how donations are going in these troubled times.

 

AUTUMN LEAVES

I’m back from a lovely trip to Florida visiting our enchanting granddaughter, Taylor, and her devoted parents, Johnny and Candace. At 16 months, Taylor is becoming excited about the great outdoors, and we had magic moments with acorns, Sandhill Cranes, a tiny cricket frog, a hungry and long-tongued giraffe (at the zoo), and leaves.

Back here at home, our leaves have finished their exhilarating tumble to the forest floor, and the trees outside my windows stand tall, fresh, and newly bare. I like seeing them this way, arms up, bodies erect and hiding nothing.

For the first time since last May, I am able to see the stars at night from my bedroom window, and enjoy some morning sun touching my pillows come dawn. The tree canopy is lush and utterly dense here in the summer, secretive and sheltering and wonderful, but I like this open time, too, when the sky returns and the branches of the trees paint a crazy lace across the morning sky.

 

THE HUMMINGBIRDS

Buzz and Flipper

A crisp breeze is sending a low moan across the top of our chimney. Outside, it is raining leaves. Most of the fall colors came down in a thick cascade last week, but these breezy days still keep our back deck coated in yellow, reds, and browns. Yesterday was a leaf day: Get ‘em off the roof, off the decks, into the chicken yard, and mulched into the front lawn. Scoop ‘em off the pond, and out of the dogs’ water bucket. Feed a few to the rabbits, and use them to cover the bunny poop pile.

 

TURKEYS AND TURNINGS

Buddy and Wiley

It wasn’t supposed to happen quite like this. That is, I didn’t expect summer to streak by like a comet. Last I remember I was in an all-out effort to keep Wiley, the wild turkey, alive and on earth at least one more day.

I’m sorry to report to you that I kept him alive for only two more weeks, during which time he remained happy and relaxed in the company of Buddy, a tiny Spanish Black heritage poult I drove across three counties to acquire.

To my great sorrow, Wiley succumbed to his original cat bites. The antibiotics came too late. I found him nestled against Buddy one hot morning, still. I won’t embellish on the confusion of the next few days, as I scratched my head over what to do about Buddy. The little black baby with eye markings as dazzling as Cleopatra was suddenly and sadly alone.

 

TALKIN’ TURKEY

Turk Mahal

In the bird care room at WildCare, you don’t ever have to wait long these days to hear a timer go off. Baby birds are set on 30- to 45- minute, or 1-hour feeding intervals from dawn to dusk, 24/7, and I’m always certain to do at least a quick walk through the bird room, if not a feeding or two, on my Wednesday volunteer shift.

I’m a sucker for those gaping, yellow mouths, and the insistent peeping that says, “Hey, it’s me…over here! Hurry up!” This past Wednesday, I peeked into a small pet carrier to find one of WildcCare’s less common avian orphans: a small wild turkey. I don’t know what came over me, but less than a minute later, I was tracking down our animal technician, Amelia, to see if I could beg her into letting me take the lonely little guy/girl home.  A few phone calls to the Department of Natural Resources later, and I had myself a turkey.

 

TURTLES, CHICKENS, AND SPIDERS-OH MY!

Christmas and his small exterminator crew work the grounds.

I’m told that Bloomington got three times its normal rainfall this June. It must be true. The ground squishes beneath my feet with every step. I don’t think we’ve gone more than three days without a rip-roaring thunderstorm. The skies have been heavy with fat, black clouds. This kind of weather—when it seems endless—can set up an army of black clouds in my mood, and I find myself struggling to keep some sunshine in my inner world.

I’ve learned that focusing on nature and my animal family and taking time to settle more deeply into their daily lives is the best medicine—the best mood enhancement—I have for such sodden times. Blessedly, I’ve been surrounded by an unlikely array of “light bearers” these past few cloudy weeks, and had more than enough sunshine moments to get me by.

 

CROWHEART

The first time I met DaVinci, WildCare’s crow ambassador, I was intimidated. I didn’t know that at the time, but I’ve come to realize that the unsettled feeling in my belly and the self-conscious hunching of my neck and shoulders are my personal markers for that uneasy emotion. WildCare, our local wildlife rehabilitation center, is where I spend my Wednesday mornings, cleaning cages, feeding wild orphan babies, and fraternizing with the best bunch of wildlife fanatics it’s ever been my joy to know.

DaVinci lives in a huge flight cage on the upper level of the center. He was found as a youngster on university campus grounds, which was a fitting place for him to fledge because he is an eccentric professor at heart, brilliant and quirky. Crows are in that rarified community of the smartest of all birds, sometimes being compared intellectually to a five-year-old. I’m here to tell you that he is far brighter, and more calculating, than that. DaVinci remained at WildCare because of a bum foot and wing that never repaired.

 

Enchanted Frogs

Spring has brought so many gifts for me on her annual visit to my forest, but the gift most precious to me has been the coming of the frogs, especially the first frog, who landed in the pond with a hearty splat in early April.

"Ooooomm"frogs. Of all the first sounds of spring---first robin’s trill, first meadowlark, first spring thunder claps---the most precious “first” for me this year was the lovely, loud “plop” of the first returning frog to our backyard pond.

The sound was solid, satisfying, and—because I had been wondering if any of our wintering frogs had survived—utterly thrilling. I didn’t see who made the sound, because the pond was brown as chocolate from the rains, but I smiled at the concentric ripples that glided swiftly to the pond’s stony edges.

As the weather warmed, I counted up to ten individual plops, splats, and splashes when I’d burst out the back door, forgetting we had pond tenants who required peace and quiet from the landlord. I learned to walk softly and move slowly when my chores and my curiosity took me to the pond’s edge, and was rewarded with the blessed sight of frogs of every size and color perching on stones, branches, and lily pads, just a short hop from the water. If I moved quickly, they’d launch like Olympic swimmers at the starting shot.

 

DOG LUV PART II

Mazel in red

Once upon a time long ago—last February, actually (sheesh, where does the time go?!)——I told you part of a tale of two dogs. Well, it’s high-time I tell you the “rest of the story” of my two dogs.

If you remember (if not, just read the post a few down from here), I had described as best I could the differences in tone of my two dogs. Those differences have given me much pause to ponder this past year.

Since I last wrote, winter finally packed up and left south-central Indiana. Spring flew in immediately, and has been busily unpacking for her three-month vacation since about the middle of March. She brought so much stuff with her!

 

AN UPDATE

Whew, I’ve had a busy posting day! For those of you who follow my personal life as well as my writing life, I wanted to let you know about some happenings here in my own private Indiana. It seems that the fates have a lot of medical meanderings in store for Carter and me this year. Carter will be having two serious surgeries (neck/back and abdomin) in the next few months, so we’re pretty busy right now with doctor visits and testing (this following a recent fainting spell of mine that was of no medical consequence but kept me busy with tests for the following two weeks—sheesh!).

My postings may be—and have been!—a bit sporadic for a time. I’m sorry about this, as connecting in this way with you all has great meaning for me and I look forward to both sharing with, and hearing from, you. Thanks so much for your patience and prayers!

 

FEBRUARY 2010-DOG LUV PART I

Mazel

Snow drapes the forest, the hen house, and my little pond. At the beginning of this month, a tiny puff of air whispered, “spring” in my ear, but some stiff winds and the clattering of occasional sleet storms have quieted that voice.

Still, down at Button’s Cabin, the first daffodil shoots are poking like slender green candles up from the snow. I tell myself, “Soon I’ll be digging in the garden!”

Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, so I’ve been thinking about love. Not the hearts and candy and card love, but the real thing, and so I want to write about Hannah and Mazel Tov—our dogs. I want to share with you some good old dog love, because it occurs to me that I’ve never talked about Hannah and Mazel but in the vaguest terms, and dog love—for those of us who experience it—is certainly not about vagaries.

 

DEXTER AND THE BIG SLEEP

Dexter

I’ve always been bats about bats. Long before I spent a week under the spell of a little brown bat Mirella had proudly carried in, I read about bats and looked bug-eyed at pictures of them.  The phrase I most uttered while under the enchantment of bats was “W…wow!”

Long after “Bat Masterson” had crept out of my life (flying off into the upper reaches of my Oregon barn), I would giggle uncontrollably just to think of him. Little brown bats are exactly that—little. My torn-wing charge needed to be fed with a surgical irrigating syringe. A bigger dropper than that and I’d have quickly drowned him. The only way I could guide the syringe to the pin-prick hole that he claimed for a mouth was to use a magnifying glass.

 

WOOD, SMOKE, SWEAT

Bread dough rises on our new woodstove insert

The thermometer this morning humg at a frigid 4 degrees. For the first time this winter, our pond was entirely frozen over but for a Polaroid-sized square of open water beneath the “waterfalls” we crafted last summer out of an old rusted wastebasket, and an older copper coal bucket.

Christmas, the rooster, kept his still-juvenile crows to himself today, maybe to conserve energy. The hens muttered quietly to themselves, careful not to shatter the air with their clucks. On such mornings, I am awed once again by the strength of the animals who can face such cold nights with little more than the feathers and furs on their backs.

 

KITTY BLESSINGS FOR A HAPPY NEW YEAR

Darter shows off her new Christmas attire

As Christmas recedes into the background, and the new year looms front and center, I find that cats brought me my Christmas this year.

Firstly, Bengal found his forever home on Christmas Eve! A women who works at the senior center my mom attends has been mercilessly pestered by her young son to bring Bengal home. It seems that the young fellow had a loving bond with Bengal, and played with him when his mom was working at the center.

 

DECEMBER MUSING 2009

December arrived with an arctic blast. And I don’t mean a nippy puff. Hard cold old poured into our area for the first time this fall, blocking up all the ponds and rivulets with thick ice and sending strong, frigid winds booming along the ridges and down into the hollows. In the forest, trees clacked together like bighorn sheep in rut, and snow fell alongside hundreds of branches, limbs, and twigs set loose by the winds.

How could I resist heading into the forest, both dogs at my side and Darter the cat chasing along behind? The thought occurred to me that I could be seriously clonked by a falling branch, or smooshed by a crashing tree, but for some odd reason my instant response was, “How thrilling would THAT be?!”

I started piling on clothes: a vest, boots, a scarf and hat, a handkerchief because my nose always runs when it’s cold out, a jacket, and gloves. Around my feet, the dogs spun in giddy circles, mouthing out little yap-moans of ecstasy.

 

GRIEF AND GRATITUDE, LEAVES AND RAIN

Leaves are falling now in a deluge. In the windless days, they dip down like feathers shaken off from some great, molting firebird. The forest floor is a fantastical mosaic of flame colors as autumn burns away the greens of summer in an inferno of golden, red, and orange. I’ve been wondering whether I could gather the leaves inside and decoupage them onto my kitchen counter, and marvel at them each day, all year long.

 

AUTUMN HARVEST

Ready for Winter

Last night, I took a flashlight out to the pond and gazed into the waters and around the limestone borders. Thanks to our nifty filter, the water is as clear as chardonnay. Two sets of eyes shone in the night: my larger frogs, Green Lips and Green Head (original names, huh?) lurked beneath the overhanging stone shelves, eager for some bugs to come their way.

In this colder weather, the bugs are increasingly scarce—good for me, bad for the frogs. I have been wanting to write about the glory of this new, fresh, fall season for weeks now. I think it was back in early September that I got my first whiff of the season, blown in from somewhere, that fleeting tang in the air that smells like a fermentation of all that was summer.