Category: Birds

Mice and Snow

7/2/2017

Christmas Tree Farm on our Road

I think Houdini, the escape-artist mouse whom I caught and set free somewhat less than two miles from our trailer, has made it back to our abode. (See Blog 63: “Houdini” ).

Why do I think this? Because the damn mice are now entering the foyer of our ‘live mouse trap’, finishing off the peanut butter and then vacating our sure-fire trap in an orderly fashion. We haven’t caught a single mouse.

Live Mouse Trap

Hell, I’ve even seen them, late at night, inside the live trap. However, in the morning, when I went outside to warm up the truck and then returned to collect the mouse and escort him to the warm vehicle in order to taxi him or her to a new home, he or she had slipped away into some dark and mysterious trailer place.
You know what else I think? I think Houdini is a gifted instructor. I think he’s teaching late night and early morning courses. Giving mice instructions on how to escape from our variety of traps. Escapology One, Two and Three.

I’ll also tell you why I’m thinking this and it’s not just because the mice are pigging out on our peanut butter and not worrying a whit about getting caught.

You see, last night, around two am, while I was stumbling around the kitchen, trying to find the outdoor light switch, so I could turn it on and look outside to see amazing weather phenomena and any of the night creatures who might be sneaking around our trailer while we’re in la-la land, I heard a squeaky mouse voice.

Mouse-hunting Fox in our Yard

I heard the voice just after I’d stubbed my toe on the kitchen chair. His utterances drifted up from the bowels of the trailer’s internal workings. And the lecture seemed to be about our traps and how to escape from them.

I specifically heard this bit of scholarly conversation: “Squeaky, let’s say you’re eating a meal in what you assumed was a mouse greasy-spoon diner. And let’s say you’ve just finished your peanut butter meal and you’re ready to leave a tip and be gone. You get to the exit and my gosh, there’s a metal barrier in front of you and you can’t find a way out. What do you do?”

“Don’t panic, Sir Houdini.”

“That’s the very first thing you do. You don’t panic. You sit down and assess the situation. Then what do you do? Anybody else? Nobody? Okay, what we’re going to do is go visit a live trap which has been conveniently set up for our instruction and edification. And when we’re finished, you’re going to know it from head to stern. You’ll all be able to take one apart and put it back together with your eyes closed and you’ll all be able to weasel your way out of the traps as if there were no tomorrow. Just think how much this will improve your quality of life!

“Follow me, please and don’t forget to pray for our comrades who have been forced to emigrate from our home-sweet-home.”

And my, oh my! I could hear such a scurrying and a sliding in our walls and under our floor. I thought, “My god, how many of them are there?”

I wished I hadn’t watched the movie, ‘Willard’ earlier in the evening.

Later on, when I was back in bed, I could hear the sound of those unescapable hinges and doors opening and closing. Which, I assumed, were caused by the mice practising their escape skills.

***

ICE GLISTENING ON MOUNTAIN

A few days ago, I went searching for a Houdini-escape-proof live trap. I visited the local hardware store, but they didn’t have any other live traps.

They did have a rather intriguing death trap. I didn’t buy it. It was a deadly trap that looked like a live trap, but wasn’t.

It was a contraption that had a foyer, as does my now-useless-after-Houdini-returned-live-easy-to-escape-trap. However, inside the peanut butter room, it had some kind of killing machine. When the mouse entered, it zapped the mouse into infinity before the poor mouse had a chance to chow down on one morsel. Theoretically, one only had to remove the trap’s roof and remove the dead mouse. Hopefully, completely dead and not suffering.

Icy Mountain Dwarfs My Truck

***

Are there any other reasons, besides the reasons I gave in Blog 63, for my not buying traps which kill mice? Yes, there are.

You see, last summer, I purposely let a wasp nest be. This experiment is also described in an earlier blog post. The nest thrived under my step-ladder for the whole summer until it was blown away by a hurricane.

The experiment, in my mind, was a success, except of course for the hurricane disaster. Because, in spite of all the chitter-chatter about how mean wasps are, those wasps and I thrived. And in spite of the fact that the nest was only around the corner beside the wood-shed, where I often ate and drank, we got along splendidly.

Only a few, maybe ten wasps, came close to me. Cross my heart! And I believe it was only out of curiosity and maybe to make sure the terms of our treaty were being followed. Why, they gave me less trouble than a neighbour dropping around to borrow some sugar or to drop off religious pamphlets.

I do, however, worry about the cold weather and other hazards the mice must face, but these are genuine field mice and they know how to survive.

Plus, I did some research and learned that the fairly radical animal rights organization called PETA has declared that releasing them into the wild is the most humane way of treating your wild field mice intruders.

“The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit,—-not fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.”
Henry Thoreau, "Walden"

Ice Art

Winter Wonderland

I don’t want to state that my mouse and wasp handling techniques could be applied to the situation the world is finding itself in, but I will. Because there is an elephant charging around in our only earth’s very large foyer and this elephantoid creature’s name isn’t Jumbo.

So, I think that my experiment might be applied to some governments and might be an alternative approach to how they perceive and treat foreigners and strangers. Because I think there are all kinds of ways of being a good Samaritan.

Plus, when I see our ‘AS-WE-MOVE-FORWARD’ society relentlessly and thoughtlessly injuring, destroying, or being unaware of the infinite number of living organisms that are part of our world, well, I think my experiment was worthwhile.

“It is only when the gods finally begin to die completely out of the land and when many human beings begin to live totally divorced from nature -at the beginning, that is, of the modern age-that landscape painting, picturesque architecture and landscape description——become the obsessive themes of art.”
Vincent Scully

***

Too Much Snow For Buster

My Old Truck

I think the mystery of why all our Evening Grosbeaks have disappeared has been solved. We usually have about forty-to-sixty of them in the winter. A hardware store employee told me that an agile hawk will scare them away.

We’d had an agile hawk hunting around our bird feeders just before the grosbeaks disappeared. The grosbeaks, apparently, got out of town and are now supping at our friend’s bird feeder, which is situated in downtown Baddeck.

We hope they come back next year.

Sue and Buster on their daily walk down our road

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Where's My Shovel?

24/12/2016

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View From Our Kitchen

John Muir wrote: “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”

True enough Mr. Muir, but don’t forget to carry a pair of snowshoes. Because it has been snow, snow, snow. Day after day, snow. Shovelling, shovelling, shovelling. Day after day, shovelling.

Running out of Room for Snow

Our Deck

But so gorgeous! Beautiful snow sculptures, which I think, make up for the hard work and the isolation. We were trapped in the woods over two days before the last storm cleared out and made way for the next snow and freezing rain parade.

Snow-covered Trees

Dancing Snow Fairy

                                   “When the wind works against us in the dark,
                                    And pelts with snow
                                    The lower chamber window on the east,
                                    And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,
                                    The beast,
                                    ‘Come out! Come out!’-
                                     It costs no inward struggle not to go,
                                     Ah, no!
                                     I count our strength,
   Two and a child,
                                     Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
                                     How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,-
                                     How drifts are piled,
                                     Dooryard and road ungraded,
                                     Till even the comforting barn grows far away,
                                     And my heart owns a doubt
                                     Whether 'tis in us to arise with day
                                     And save ourselves unaided.”

                                                                                                      Robert Frost, Storm Fear

Buster Waiting out the Storm

Old Blue Jay, Who Hangs Around Our Feeder

When our television satellite stops working, I know what to do. I don’t have to phone a help-line. I grab a broom and swim my way through the snow to the step-ladder which is leaning against the satellite dish pole. I climb the ladder and, using a witch’s broom, I sweep the snow off the satellite dish and onto my head. Great fun.

Note the clothes line, which has now become a snow life-line, because it is darn deep, folks.

Sue's Car Buried in Driveway

An Old Van Buried in Snow Down Our Road

                         “Perplexing forest
                                              where God lives without money.
                                                                          The walls were shining.”

                                                                         Tomas Transtromer, The Great Enigma

And then on Sunday, after I’d finished writing this blog, a warm front moved in, bringing rain and heavy fog, so by the next morning we’d lost about a third of our snow. Still have a pile left, but I was surprised at how much snow had melted in only a few hours of rain. Heavy rain, yes, but still!

Until I ran into a fella who told me that fog is a Mr. Snow Destructo. It demolishes snow and is much more effective at removing the white stuff than only rain and warmth.

Always learning something new on Cape Breton Island.

Snow-Covered Hay Field Across the Road

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Cabot Trail 's Magic

9/12/2016

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Cabot Trail

Before I begin this blog I want to answer a question which I received from one of my blog readers. She asked me why the dog in my last Maritime Mac blog looked so much like Buster.

The answer is my Maritime Mac stories are re-enactments. It’s just too difficult to track down all the actual dogs which are in Maritime Mac’s large extended family. The real Bradley, who was in the last blog, is a border collie. His day job, is as a security guard at a sheep farm. He was not available.

Also, it can be very expensive to pay a dog to sit for my photographs although I have begun to use the social media to try and find other dogs who might like to make a few bucks. Luckily, Buster has offered to pose for the blogs and for this I’m thankful.

Now, onward and upward with Blog 61.

***

One morning, last week, I woke up and the very first thought that came to my mind was, “I woke up. Whew!”

Now, are these the thoughts of a person with a healthy balanced philosophy on life or the thoughts of a hypochondriac? I’ll let you decide.

A clue. Last week I went to a chiropractor. The doctor handed me a handful of forms and a pen. It was a questionnaire. On one sheet there was a list of disorders. I was to indicate the diseases I have or ever had. My god, just give me a loaded gun.

Since this check-the-illnesses-off event I have been gradually dredging up, in my memory, each and every disease listed on that sheet and have had to try, super hard, not to believe I’ve contracted all the listed maladies. There is a down-side to having a good imagination and I can actually create believable pseudo symptoms. I’m that good.

But what does this have to do with this blog? A big donut hole except for the part about waking up. That fact is relevant in everything I do.

You see, I awoke, without my glasses on. I never need glasses to see in my dreams. Perfect twenty-twenty vision. But in the awake world I have a seeing ailment. I need my glasses.

Anyway, that morning the outside part of our bedroom window was not the colour it usually is when it is out of focus. It was white out of focus. Lots of white, so I asked Sue, who was awake. “Is that snow or fog?”

Our Snowy Cape Breton Highlands

Sue can see better that I can without her glasses.

“Snow, dear.”

“Nuts. I was kind of hoping it was fog.”

However, it was pretty, and when Buster and I went for our tromp, there was a Christmasy feeling to the morning and that’s not a totally bad experience. At least if you’re lucky enough to not have a life that makes Christmas feel like a deep black hole you may never be able to climb out of.

PUTTING DOWN ROOTS

But, what does all this have to do with the story I’m going to tell you? Not much, except to say that, after I’d asked Sue to give me the early morning window report, beeping sounds reverberated from somewhere near or in the kitchen and to hear them we had to be awake. I assumed it was Sue’s computer.

“Is that your computer, my sweetness?” I asked.

“Jeepers. You want a weather report and now a beep-beep report, my love?”

Anyway, a few minutes later, when I walked into the kitchen, I found Sue and she told me she figured she knew where the beeping sounds were coming from. The stove.

So, I checked the stove out. The timer was the first dial I suspected. I turned it on and off, so I could make the timer go beep, beep, but when it beeped, it didn’t sound at all like the beeping sound we were hearing.

I then checked the oven light switch, looked inside the oven, looked around the oven and etc. etc. And when we heard the beeps again they still didn’t sound anywhere near the stove.

One problem was that the beeping sounds only happened about every three minutes and both Sue and I have trouble localizing sound, which made it even more difficult and puzzling.

Every three minutes we’d hear the beeps and they would sometimes sound like they were coming from the oven and then they’d sound like they were coming from behind us and then they’d sound like they were coming from below us. Good lord!

We were pulling out drawers, hoisting boxes, checking our pockets and shining our flashlights into tiny, never before explored, kitchen crevices.

I even found myself looking in the broom closet where I actually checked the broom and ironing board for expiry dates or, get this, expiry warning lights.

No expiry dates or warning signals here!

After one beep-beep, I found myself looking at the microwave. Looking to see if it was looking guilty, and it was, so I set it for three seconds. Poked the button on. Put a water glass stethoscope to its nervous window and listened to the sound it emitted. A definite heart murmur, but not even close to sounding like the beep-beeps.

“You may go, Mr. Microwave, but don’t leave Cape Breton until we’ve solve this puzzling beep-beep thing.”

Another beep-beep and these seemed to come from near the front door. So, we removed the little flashlight which hung from a hook. Looked to see if it had a blinking light. It didn’t, nor did the dog leash, Buster, the candles, the scissors, any of my hats. Not a friggen thing.

So, I dropped to my knees and crawled under the table where I checked all the black worms and snakes that poked out of Sue’s computer and other creepy looking electronic gadgets. Anything, that looked guilty, expired or had a friggen light flickering. Nothing.

CREEPY ONE-EYED FOREST CRITTER

The next beep-beeps sounded like they were coming from the floor next to the stove. Where I found a possible suspect. A dust-covered fire extinguisher that was hidden behind a bag of recyclables and looked kind of electronic with all sorts of warning labels on it and I had hope it would have an expiry date or a flashing light.

I picked it up, gave it a close examination, looked for anything that look beep, beepie. Nothing, but it still looked suspicious so I set it on the table and waited to see if it would beep, beep.

Three minutes later: “Damn it! Not the fire extinguisher.”

By this time we were beginning to think it was my deceased friend who’d dropped around for a little more fun. That’s another story.

“Why don’t we each park ourselves in a different part of the kitchen and wait to see who’s the closest to the beeping,” I said. Really didn’t sound like much of an option and, to tell you the truth, this whole thing was becoming not fun. We were gobsmacked. (What a neat word).

“I think I’ll take a shower,” Sue said.

“Okay, my dear. You go ahead.”

“Thank you, my love. Please don’t turn the cold water on while I’m sudsing myself up or I will get burned. I hate that.”

“Don’t worry, my love. I will set Buster’s treat stool in the middle of our beloved kitchen floor, sit on it and wait for the beeps.”

“Thank you, my love. That is a very good idea.”

“See Spot run. Run Spot, run.” An excerpt from my Grade One Dick and Jane reader. It is from this reader that I learned how to write the proper and sparkling dialogue you are reading in this blog.

Blue Jay in our Tree

Anyway, if you ever drop around our place you will see, in front of our trailer, a picture of two crows, and written underneath the crows are the words, “Two Old Crows Live Here”.

Yes, two old crows, bouncing around the kitchen, in a forty-five-foot trailer, which is tucked in the woods, is situated on a flood plain, and in the winter, is regularly pounded by heavy snow, because it is also located in a snow belt, and yet, these two old crows can’t find the bleep’n beeps.

“We are hearing these beeps, aren’t we my dear?”

“I think so, my love, although Buster seems to be totally uninterested in the beep noises we think we are hearing.”

However, we finally solved the puzzle, but I think there were at least two reasons why we had so much trouble finding the two beeps.

First, Sue threw me off by telling me she thought the beeps were coming from the stove. So, I spent a lot of time on the stove. This kind of put a block in my mind about what it might be.

Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, both of us have trouble localizing sound.

However, the answer to the beep puzzle was forthcoming because, while Sue was showering, I heard the sound once again and it happened while I was leaning on a kitchen chair. Hanging on the back of the chair was Sue’s purse. And inside the purse was her cell phone, bless its little heart.

You see the chair and the hanging cell phone were equidistant from every part of the kitchen. Almost dead centre and this was the reason why the sound was hard to localize.

So, Sue’s cell phone had been, all this time, heroically shouting out for all us old crows to hear, “My BLEEP’N BATTERY IS NEARLY DEAD. NEARLY TITS UP. NEARLY GONE TO THE GREAT HUNTING GROUND IN THE SKY. PLEASE ATTEND TO ME!”

“Oh thank you dearest, for finding the beep.”

“You’re welcome, my sweetness.”

And Buster, who sensed a break in the ambient emotional stress that had laid its harsh hand over our forty-five-foot trailer, proceeded to his treat stool and stood on it and looked up at his myriad bags, boxes and plastic wrapped assortments of doggie treats.

“Woof, woof! I believe I deserve a treat, my dearest care-givers. I have had a rough morning trying to figure out what the hell you two were doing.”

                                                          (my master is an idiot
                                                                        how freely I admit it
                                                                        he used to have a thinking-cap
                                                                        but someone must have hid it)
                                                                                                      Abigail Thomas, Doggerel

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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Maritime Mac

24/4/2016

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Misty Morning Mountains

Once upon a time, an old, white-haired fella by the name of Maritime Mac, entered a coffee shop. Now, he knew that coffee shops taxed his mind and his nerves, but he went into the coffee shop anyway.

Maritime Mac in Person

Where he ordered a tea. Which didn’t go so well because he was on the wrong side of the tea purveyor who had a dead ear.

Maritime Mac shifted his position and ordered again.

“One tea, please,” he shouted.

The nice server, his hair all bunned up, grabbed a tea bag and a tricky brown tea jug. He dropped the tea bag into the little jug and poured steaming hot water over the crinkled up bag. Maritime Mac watched him screw the complicated plastic lid onto the jug as he felt the beginning of the jingling and jangling of his nerves.

The server handed Maritime Mac the jug, a tea cup with a spoon in it, and a saucer.
Maritime walked to the counter where they kept the tea and coffee additives. He set down the cup and saucer and the brown tea jug.

His nerves began to further unsettle as his mind switched to auto-dumb mode. He searched for the milk container. He felt the coffee shop customers watching him as his mind slid to other nerve-wracking times. To places with polished wooden tables, formally set with forks, spoons, knives, plates, tea cups, saucers and napkins or serviettes. And who the hell knows what those mouth wipers are supposed to be called? These eating objects all placed on the table, in their correct places, as decreed by the Department of Correct Positioning of Consuming This and Thats. Rules thought up by the powerful cabinet of etiquette-crowned heads ruling from the great city of Oz. Not to ignore those fellas behind the curtain.

He pictured the intelligent folks in other coffee shops, scrunched up around tiny wobbly tables, many with wireless ear buds hanging out of their ear holes, some reading books or papers or conversing with each other about urban topics that were super important for people to know in order to converse in such establishments. And most importantly, all of them knowing exactly how to load, pour and carry their teas and coffees.

Birds at our Coffee Shop during a Recent Snowstorm

Before him were three imposing shiny metal jugs. Like three doors, but only one that would lead to milk. Must it not? But where the hell was the label? Tea a la Russian Roulette. His friggen’ hands began to shake and to make it worse, a couple, looking wealthy, healthy, well-dressed and wise, was checking him out.

He picked up a jug. Tipped his glasses down and searched the container from stem to stern. It was on the handle. The word, ‘milk’, written in ancient Greek script.

Maritime Mac tried to pour the milk. Nothing came out. He spotted what looked like a bear spray can trigger. He pressed it. A little milk peed out.

He pressed harder. Too much milk poured out.

Someone behind him had surely consumed too much coffee, for a stink bomb was now wrapping itself around Maritime Mac’s taste for tea. His tea was paler than he had planned, but he didn’t want to hang around the counter much longer or his tea would have a Flint City tang.

He looked for the sugar. No sugar, but instead a shiny honey container. It had a wee, bear spray trigger. He pressed the trigger. The thick honey crept out of the little honey pot so slowly that he’d have to be fumigated before he got a teaspoonful.

He thought he heard the well-dressed couple chuckling.

He tried to pour the tea. Nothing came out. He spotted an arrow on the plastic top so he aligned the arrow with the spout. Good thinking, Maritime. But nothing came out. He loosened the lid. A pathetic bit of tea wee-wee’d out. He loosened it some more. He poured. The top fell off and into the cup.

He grabbed some paper mop-ups and wiped up the spilled tea. Threw the mop-ups at the garbage can under the counter. Half-point for the effort.

He snatched up a long wooden stir stick that looked like what he should use to stir his tea, drop of honey and abundance of cow milk.

The couple had escalated from chuckling to laughing. Maritime Mac didn’t look up.

He stirred with the wooden stir stick. Was irritated by the spoon that got in the way. The metal spoon which had been in his cup the whole time. He put two and two together as he heard more chuckling. As he had feared, the aroma was sticking to his new winter coat.

“Lord god almighty,” he whispered. He tossed the stir stick at the garbage can. Half point for the effort.

He then slunk to a quiet table in a section far away from the toxic table. He was so relieved that he hadn’t tripped and spilled anything. So happy that he could settle down with his dripping cup of tea, his spoon, his tricky jug, his saucer and ten or more paper slop suckers.

He sat and watched other folks work for their tea. He smiled and chuckled from time to time, just for the effect.

When he’d finished his tea and was heading for the large, darkly burnished front door, he stopped to ask the nice server about the arrow on the tea jug top. Asked, if he lined the arrow with the spout, wasn't the tea supposed to pour out? That rhymed and he damn well knew he’d just made poetry, but the server was a professional coffee shop employee, or maybe he couldn’t hear the full rhyming cadence and so he ignored Maritime Mac’s great poetry and explained to him, in a deafening voice, that the arrows do not work anymore.

                  And there was a poet I used to know,
          Who built a balloon and let it blow
                  On the curving track of the Southern Trades
                  That caress the breasts of Samoan maids,
                  And brush like a lover’s hand across
                  The great grey wings of the albatross.
                  And that poet, in his balloon, still flies.
      —-And the earth has lost him until he dies.
                                                  Farley Mowat, BALLOON SONG

Buster by our Pond

“So screw the arrows, the bear spray milk and the anal retentive honey containers,” he mumbled to himself as he opened the door of his truck. There he was greeted by the ecstatic tail-wagging whirligig of a little dog. Who had been told he was to stay at home, but had, by some sleight of mind, been able to connive his way into this epic trip to a Cape Breton coffee shop.

Our Home Sweet Home

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An Earth Memorial

29/11/2014

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Blog number thirty-one. Where does the time go?

            “I spoke a word
            And no one heard;
            I wrote a word,
            And no one cared
            Or seemed to heed;
            But after half a score of years
            It blossomed in a fragrant deed.”
                      John Oxenham, "We Never Know"

Well, I can hope that after a half a score of years, my writing will blossom in a fragrant deed, or at least a deed of some sort.

***

A few months ago we had a visitor. He wanted to inspect our river. Wanted to see if he could find a way to persuade the powers to be to come up with some anti-flooding action that would be legal for us to undertake. So we could stop the river from gnawing away at our land.

Anyway, as he was looking at the river, he said, “You’ve got a really nice salmon pool down there.”

That down there salmon pool he was talking about, was totally built by the river. There were no blueprints, schemes, or late night conferences, just the river doing her thing. In this instance her legacy was a salmon pool. Which had also become a haunt for the beavers. Life flows on and on.

However, this semi-blockade-salmon-pool place might be a little troublesome for us in the future. The pool has now become an area where large and small uprooted trees and branches loiter. That gathering of trees and branches has spread out since last week’s flood and is now blocking over half the river’s right of way.

Now, when it floods, it either roars over the blockage while pushing it further out into the river, veers to the left and roars over our hiking trail, (that’s a laugh, our "hiking trail"), or swings to the right and heads for the bridge. The force of the rushing water is awesome and I know this: the river doesn’t dilly dally.

Middle River Fury

***

You know, I think we might live smack dab in the centre of the Cape Breton Wizard of Oz climate-making factory. I got a hint of this last week. The river was once again rocking, roiling and rolling over her banks. So we did what we always do when caught in a flood emergency. We grabbed our cameras and headed for the rushing water. Focus, snap, click.

Anyway, we took some pictures and then returned to our little trailer in the woods. A few minutes later, I looked out the window. My gosh, the world over the river had filled in with a bank of fog while thicker blobs were still coming down the mountain when she comes.

Fog seen through our window

So, ?????????. Come on, you can guess. Correcto. I grabbed my camera and headed outside. And, oh man, such a chill wrung out my bones, but as I scurried down the short path to the river, (which is getting shorter), I was accosted by a sauna wave. Just like that. Boom! It was mid-summer.

That’s why I say we might be living in a special place where the invisible fairy weather-makers create the weather for the rest of the island. And I don’t have a big ego either.

***

Two Sundays ago, I climbed the steep mountain not too far from our place. The higher I ascended, the more snow there was on the ground.

Here, I was surprised to find the heights swarming with tiny brownish coloured moths. Now, these moths can also be sighted around our place, but not in such numbers.

The next Sunday, I hiked back up the same mountain. There was more snow on the ground this time but there weren’t nearly as many of these wee moths. However, I did find many lying still on the snow. I figured that they were dead or waiting to be dead.

moth on snow

What affected my poetic sense was a little moth who speedily fluttered past me. I wondered, where was he going in such a rush?

To find out, I increased my hiking speed, so I could keep up with the little fella. Well, he flew a little way further, then swerved off the trail and landed on a patch of snow. There he remained still.

I couldn’t help but think that the moth was hurrying to his dying place. And it seemed so natural and so not a big deal. Probably lived well as a moth and now he was resting in his dying place. Doing what comes naturally.

Of course this is only a conjecture because for all I know he might have been preparing for hibernation. A place where he would get a minimum of a good eight hours sleep. Whereby, sometime in the spring, he would awaken hungry, jump out of bed and begin nibbling away our forest.

Maybe, he’d even shape shift and switch into a caterpillar costume. Miraculous, really. There are lots of metaphors for death, resurrection and such which may have been floating around in my subconscious thinking when I watched the little moth lay down his head.

If anybody knows what kind of moth he is, feel free to let me know.

                   “Come with me
                    amongst the shadows
                    where inner wounds
                    can quietly heal
                    where anger melts like snowflakes
                    and love blossoms
                    like a warm embrace.”
                                                 John George Williams, "Come With Me"

                “I love to pick
                    the flowers
                    that grow
                    in splendid fields
                    for those flowers
                    that I pick
                    shall never die.”
                                                  John George Williams, "Immortal Flowers"

John George Williams is a Cape Breton poet. You can find more of his poems at:   www.voicesnet.org/allpoemsoneauthor.aspx?memberid=99549

***

Last week another poor little chickadee banged his noggin against one of our windows. This time we immediately got out a plastic container and lined the sides and bottom with a little towel. Then I picked the poor little fella up off the deck floor.

This bird didn’t make a peep. I think he was super stunned. He couldn’t even sit up straight but kept wobbling back and forth like a roly poly.

However, when I placed the bird in the container, he immediately hopped up on the side and soon had his posture sorted out.

With him perched on the plastic private room, I put the container and the bird on the deck railing, so he could keep an eye on his buds. I then went inside. From the kitchen window we could see the poor bird teetering on the edge, but only for a minute or two. It wasn’t long before he squirted up off the plastic container and was soaring off into the pasty gray sky.

Now, that’s two birds in a week I’ve picked up and then watched fly away into the sky. So I suggested something. It was only a suggestion.

I just said, “Why don’t we go to a discount store, buy up a whole whack of cheap headache pills, bring them home and mix a bunch of them in with the birdseed?”

Was that such a crazy idea?

***

One of the thoughts I can’t seem to shake loose from my brain, concerns the definitions I learned in school related to the meaning of the words finite and infinite. Because, you see, these two words seem so philosophically solid in their essences.

To me, infinite means there is no end to something. For instance, if there were an infinite number of moose, then we would never have to worry about depleting the moose population. Of course there might be a moral aspect to the number of moose we could shoot or kill, but we would not have to worry about there not being any more moose.

Then there’s the word “finite”. Which may not apply to our universe, although Einstein might disagree, but it surely does apply to our earth. For me, the word means, there is only so much of something and then there is no more, if we use it all up.

So you see, I can’t get my noggin around the idea that we live in a finite world and yet the wizards out there spew out theories that treat finite as infinite. There is always getting more of this and that, or we always need more of this and that. Until the this and the that is depleted and then we won’t have any more of this or that. See what I mean? Oh where, oh where has the little boy gone who said, “But the emperor has no clothes.” Is he locked up somewhere?

Up here in Cape Breton we have much natural beauty. The tourists love it and come here to get away from the places they call home. Many of them live in communities where they can find all the conveniences they need close by. However, they love visiting places that are naturally beautiful and have been mainly untouched. Uninhabitable, some of the visitors say. But they love to visit.

Now, some of the more spectacular beauty around here can be found in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. An area that is a preserve for our finite (oops, there’s that word again) number of wild places and creatures.

To my mind, we have this wonderful preserve as a result of damn good luck as well as hard work. I’m so thankful that the people who created it and continue to maintain it had firmly implanted in their minds the meanings of finite and infinite.

However, there are, up here, some folks who plan to build in the Park a ten-storey high war memorial. Which they want to call, “Mother Canada”. This Disney World intrusion into a spectacular, mostly untouched part of the Cape Breton National Park coastline will come with tons and tons and tons of concrete, gift shops, parking lots and I don’t know what else.

I understand the need to remember those who fought to protect our freedom. I also have an idea that some day we may have to build a gigantic memorial to remember the wild places that were lost through decisions that seemed more important at the time.

You can read a thoughtful and well written open letter by Susan Zettel, if you want to see a balanced approach to this project: http://susanzettell.blogspot.ca/2014/11/never-forgotten-national-memorial-open.html I, meanwhile, have nothing more to say about this project except to repeat my mantra. Finite, infinite. Finite, infinite.

***

“A light had gone out from his vanquished eyes;
His head was cupped within the hunch of his shoulders;
His feathers were dull and bedraggled; the tips
Of his wings sprawled down to the edge of his tail.
He was old, yet it was not his age
Which made him roost on the crags
Like a rain drenched raven
On the branch of an oak in November.
Nor was it the night, for there was an hour
To go before sunset. An iron had entered
His soul which bereft him of pride and of realm,
Had struck him today; for up to noon
The crag had been his throne.
Space was his empire, bounded only
By forest and sky and the flowing horizons.”
E. J. Pratt, The Dying Eagle

***

       “The last wolf hurried toward me
       through the ruined city
       and I heard his baying echoes———--

       I heard his voice ascending the hill
       and at last his low whine as he came
       floor by empty floor to the room
       where I sat in my narrow bed looking west, waiting
       I heard him snuffle at the door and
       I watched as he trotted across the floor

       he laid his long gray muzzle
       on the spare white spread
       and his eyes burned yellow
       his small dotted eyebrows quivered

        "Yes," I said
        "I know what they have done."
                 Mary TallMountain, "The Last Wolf"

***

Moss-covered Stump on Moth Mountain

1 Comment

Fish Stories

13/11/2014

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No matter how hard we try to make our windows look like windows and not entrances to a more exciting and fantastic forest, we always have birds crashing into them. Most of the birds survive but unfortunately a few don’t.

Like last summer. We found a Northern Parula Warbler lying on our little side porch. She was a beautiful little bluish coloured bird with a yellow throat and breast and two white bars on her wings. We looked her up and discovered that our area is definitely part of her breeding range. I also read that they like to nest in moist woodsy areas. BINGO. That’s our woods to a tree. Moist and mossy.

Last weekend we opened the door and found a stunned chickadee lying on our deck floor. He was alive, but looked like he was down for the count. I picked him up and let him sit in my warm cupped hand. The little rascal chirped at me when I picked him up but then settled down and just sat there.

Sue brought out a box with a cloth inside. She thought it might be like a nest to the little feller. It wasn’t. To the bird it was a jail or a superbug-infested hospital room and when I tried to gently place her into the box, she fluttered away and landed on the edge of our porch railing. Then she just sat there and sat there and sat there. Perched precariously on the edge, looking around and, as I said, sitting there.

That got us into a caucus meeting. Should we go and try the box out again? We deliberated and discussed and watched the little fella through our window, just sitting there and not doing much of anything. A motion was passed, which we put into a birdie omnibus bill, which said that we should, once again, retrieve the box and put clean water in the nest along with a bowl of black oil sunflower seeds.

It was also passed that we place the hospital room/King Cole Tea box into the woodshed where we figured the poor little bird would be comforted by Skippy the squirrel. Who we’re sure has now finished building her condo in the back of our firewood pile.

We also passed 100 other motions that had no relation to birds, so if anyone votes against our omnibus bill, we can accuse them of voting against the welfare of our birds. Democracy is alive and well in Cape Breton.

But guess what? All the plans of men and mice were for naught. The tiny chickadee looked through our window at us, with what looked like a thank you in his eyes, and then he looked up into the sky and whoosh! He was soaring off towards the trees.

Thinking it over, I would have to say that the chickadee had been down for the ten count. We should have put the little bird in the corner, given her a shot of water from a water bottle, dried her off with a towel and given her a pep talk. “You go out there, keep your left up and punch with your right.”

***

There’s a wonderfully informative column in The Victoria Standard, our local weekly paper. It’s called ‘Strictly For the Birds’ and it’s written by a knowledgeable birder by the name of Bethsheila Kent.

I phoned Ms. Kent one afternoon and told her about some of the birds we’d seen at our feeders. Two exciting sightings were a brightly coloured Baltimore Oriole and a Red Bellied Woodpecker.

The Red Bellied Woodpecker and the Baltimore Oriole are outside their ranges. The Oriole not so far outside but I believe the Red Bellied Woodpeckers are supposed to be found south of the Great Lakes, a long way from Cape Breton. But with the climate warming thing going on, these sightings are probably just going to become more common, as long as these critters can survive our rush for lower taxes, greater wealth and higher productivity. For some fascinating information about red-bellied woodpeckers, look here: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/red-bellied_woodpecker/lifehistory

Red Bellied Woodpecker at our suet feeder

We’re happy that we have these birds to entertain us. I’m also grateful for being able to help so many birds make it through our rough winters when the snow and ice lie thick on the ground.

                        “How do you know but every Bird that cuts the airy way,
                          Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?”
                                                                              William Blake, A Memorable Fancy

***

I read somewhere, in some book, at some time in the last six years, that the universe has a strange and unique way of looking after those of us who, how do I put it, have our heads in highly charged fog and aren’t quite so logical and good at rational planning as others. It compensates. Puts events and opportunities and solutions in front of us, so we can at least give them a good eyeball.

And if we’re perceptive, we’ll take a good look at these universal gems and see them as important messengers for our pilgrimage through this earthly gift of life. Maybe clearing out some of the stifling socialization defaults we’ve been hobbled with.

               “The world has room to make a bear feel free;
                        The universe seems cramped to you and me.
                        Man acts more like the poor bear in a cage
                        That all day fights a nervous inward rage,
                        His mood rejecting all his mind suggests.”
                                                           Robert Frost, The Bear

And is it possible that more of us would be aware of these connections and, dare I call them, messages from the other side, if we were more connected to nature and less influenced by the hypnotic attractions of culture, education, conventionality and unnaturalness, by which our citified population is so controlled?

As a writer, I deal in connections, happenstance, and surprise. And much like love, these things are not easy to codify. Thank God for that.

Because, if you too closely observe them through your logical microscope, there’s a good chance your desperate need to rationalize them into a neat bundle will get your brain all fired up and sweaty. Your brain warmth might then heat up and melt away these communications until they become only troublesome storm clouds lurking in the back of your subconscious.

That’s why I call my efforts at marketing, “soft marketing”. It’s loosely based on this happenstance theory. Because I know if I start too intensely pushing and jawing away about my writing, and if I start putting its source under rational scrutiny, then it’s bye-bye gut thoughts.

So, as with my marketing approach, it’s my responsibility to look at these surprises and connections and try to understand them, but it behooves me to approach them with child-like wonder and humility.

My Grandsons Tackling their Pumpkins

***

So let’s talk about our river, happenstance and surprise. As you know, it is prone to boiling over its banks and taking short cuts across our property. She even takes some of our property with her and carries it out to the ocean. Five acres and counting down. Four point nine, four point eight…

We haven’t really tried too hard to get something done about the flooding. We have even been told that we aren’t doing enough about the flooding. I call this soft flood marketing.
However, one day, the universe threw out a line of opportunity. Nudge, nudge, Larry, pay attention kind of thing.

This particular day I was hiking towards the trail that leads up the mountain. A man in a red pick-up passed me by. He parked in a field. Jumped out of the truck with a fishing rod.
We got talking. During the conversation I offered him the opportunity to salmon fish in our salmon pool, which the river had so kindly created, without a yes or a no from us.

At one point, the man pulled a cigar out of his pocket and reached for his lighter. “Damn it,” he said. “I forgot my lighter.”

I took off my knapsack, opened it up, pulled out a lighter and gave him the cigar starter.

Anyway, that’s when the fella told me he was a fishery enforcement officer. Then he told me that he would drop around sometime and look at our river and see how the river was treating our property. He said that after he made his visit, he would send out an official who would make suggestions as to what we could do about the flooding.

Of course, I now need to follow up. Phone him and remind him of the conversation. I mean I don’t just let the ocean roll over me without my helping it along.

Now, here comes the coincidence and surprise and being synched-in stuff I was talking about. Although this encounter was already a happenstance kind of thing.

At one point, the fisher person, (did I say that correctly?), told me that every year he wraps a salmon tag around a birch tree, at a certain place along the Middle River. It sounded like a ceremony of sorts. Maybe keeping a connection to a place he loved.

Have you followed the connections so far? How connections and happenstance and circumstance can create a story? A real story which can’t be imagined?

A few days later, we looked out of our living room window and saw two aliens walking around in the river. They looked like two salmon, who had undergone a pop-in-the-microwave-evolutionary burst and grown two feet and two arms and a head like ours. However, after careful observation, we realized they were two skin divers. Probably looking for relics and interesting things tossed into the river.

See what’s happening? Are you watching the connections here?

Skin Divers in our River

Later on that day, while I was hiking towards the Wilderness Area, I saw a Fishery and Oceans truck parked at the end of our road. I thought it was the fella I’d been talking to earlier, who was doing some fishing in the wilderness area.

Anyway, I hiked to my meditation place along the Middle River. There I sat on my tiny hiking chair and listened, smelled, observed and thought about unbelievably deep things. Ha.

Suddenly, I heard voices. I turned around and there were the two evolutionary-salmon guys walking towards me. Wearing the full skin diver outfit. It was un-nerving seeing these fellas pop out of the bush.

Do you know what they were planning on doing after they plunged into the water and let the river float them away? Their heads underwater and their feet thrashing from time to time? They were counting salmon.

Do you know who they worked for? The Fisheries and Oceans.

You see what I mean? It’s like the universe throws these themes out and you don’t have to be too far above dense, or below it for that matter, to know that there are these connections going on.

Guess what else I saw?

Wrapped around a thin birch tree, in the Middle River Wilderness Area, was a blue salmon fishing tag. Are you counting the odds here?

                         “The current of life runs ever away
                          To the bosom of God’s great ocean.
                          Don’t set your force ‘gainst the river’s course
                          And think to alter its motion.
                          Don’t waste a curse on the universe--
                          Remember it lived before you.
                          Don’t butt at the storm with your puny form,
                          But bend and let it go o’er you.”
                 Ella Wheeler Wilcox, As You Go Through Life

                                       “Your fish stories hang together
                                         when they’re just a pack of lies:
                                         you ought to have a leather medal:
                                        you ought to have a statue
                                        carved of butter: you deserve
                                        a large bouquet of turnips.”

                                       “There were no Christians among the early Gauls;
                             they were mostly lawyers.”

                                                          From ‘The People, Yes’, Carl Sandburg

***

Here's a challenge for you. Can you find the moose in this picture?