The Creepy Day ... and Night

Alex had just snitched the last piece of my bacon that I'd cooked for my breakfast, and was munching it while looking out at the back patio off the kitchen. I was in the front room, fiddling with my computer.

I heard Alex squawk, and she came back-pedaling into the front room, talking around the bacon in her mouth. "A BEHEADED RAT JUST FELL OUT OF THE SKY!!!"

Everybody leaped up and ran to see if she had lost her mind at last.

"Is it an omen, like the wolf pup being dropped into Claudius' lap in I, Claudius?" she asked, a grimace of horror on her face.

No, not likely, but since I've found bird feathers scattered at the exact same spot as the toes-up headless rodent, it seems likely that the little hawk I'd seen being chased by crows earlier in the day had sloppily dropped his lunch.

"Is that our rat?" I asked Bernie. ('Our rat' lives in the neighbor's roof and comes into our yard to steal bird seed and I haven't been able to kill the bastard yet.)

"That's a mouse," he said, disappointed as I was that Rat had not met his demise.

Just then, a scrub jay began to hop down from the tree, purposefully and strangely possessively.

Speculating on whether or not the jay wanted the dead mouse, or could successfully carry it away even if he did want it, we all withdrew to the house and watched from the windows. Sure enough, the jay pounced, grabbed the mouse, and flew off into the neighbor's yard with it.

"Good job on clean up, Jay."

But although a decapitated mouse falling from the sky was creepy enough on its own, that same night brought a troubling incident.

Allergies are really bad here this year, and Bernie and I take turns sleeping on the couch when our sinuses are bothering us. He was on the couch, I'd had a pretty sneezeless day, so I was back on the futon with Kermit. It was a warmish night, so the door to the outside was open.

At some point I felt Kermit roll up from his sprawl, and I turned over to see what looked like a dog sitting outside our sliding screen door. At first I thought that someone had found a black dog and shoved him in our gate, thinking it was Kermit on the loose. But then I remembered locking the gate before bedtime. I disentangled myself from the covers and got up to have a look.

Nothing was there.

I'd have thought I was dreaming, but Kermit was still staring intently at the door. And whatever it was that I saw was sitting, while Kermit was still lying down, so it wasn't a reflection from the glass part of the door.

I shut the door for the rest of the night.

The next day Bernie told me he'd heard something on the fence that woke him up, there being an open window beside the couch.

Makes me kind of nervous now to sleep with the door open.

If That Mockingbird Don't Sing ...

... it would be because of this guy.

A few evenings ago, a family (?) of six Cooper's Hawks came sailing through the neighborhood. Amazing sight to see, loud and plaintive sound to hear. The juveniles obviously didn't want Mom and Pop to leave them all on their own, screeching their pleas to the world.

You can hear a recording of their calls here: Just scroll down the page to "Begging Calls of Chicks."

At least one of the young birds has been hanging around, doing a low fly-by each day, perching on the street-light out front or in the neighbor's sequoia trees.

In June of 1997, we woke to our first morning in this house, hearing the beautiful sound of singing birds, so different from the previous home, where the predominant morning noise was the traffic from Highway 99, one of the main arteries of traffic running north-south in Central California.

Since Young Cooper's Hawk moved into the area, we hear NO birds singing. No crows, no jays, no finches, no sparrows ... because what Cooper's Hawks eat is other birds. How awful, you might think, and indeed, some birding sites on the web advise people to take down their bird feeders until a hawk moves on to a different locale.

We're ambivalent about this. It's true that we miss the song of house finches and the company of scrub jays on the back patio, but none of us misses that blasted mockingbird who used to proclaim himself Ruler of the Block incessantly all day long, and in the middle of the night, too.

The other possible benefit of the hawk is that the jays and mockingbirds aren't gobbling up our ripening grapes for the first summer in a long, long time.

Eventually, the hawk will fly off to the river a few blocks away and hunt more fruitfully in the canopy of the trees. In the meantime, silence is golden.

Quite the Day

This is what the avocado tree looked like at the end of that nasty freeze we had a couple weeks ago. Poor thing really took a beating.

But although this tree plays into today's monumental occurrences, the brown of the leaves does not. The tree will live.

The least savory amazing thing today was seeing a dead fox along the side of the road. Now I don't like animals being hit by cars at all, but while wondering why an animal as smart as a fox would get hit at an intersection right by a stop sign, I had to admire the size of the fox, and the richness of its pelt. It's fur was beautiful, and though it was dead, it was a reminder that this area does support some grand wildlife.

And speaking of wildlife, around lunchtime Bernie called me to the back door (the same one the thrush had hit, see below a day or two) to see an unusual bird. There, sipping out of the little fishpond, was a female oriole. (Bullock's Race) I've never seen a lady oriole in our yard before, and it's been many years since I saw a male. Glorious!

But there to the right was the capper for the day:
As Bernie was watering plants, including the beat-up avocado tree, he spied something in the branches.

Our very first avocado from our very own tree.

Now that's something!

You Dope, What Were You Thinking?

Each winter a thrush -- or maybe several -- makes his hangout our back patio, sipping from or bathing in the birdbath, rummaging around the plants on the back bank. In this picture, I caught the thrush rooting through the rosemary plants for whatever it is thrushes eat.

But this evening, as the sun was going down, there was a whonk! on the sliding glass door to the patio, and Alex exclaimed, "Oh, what have you done?"

We all talk to the birds. Who cares if they don't understand? We don't, they don't. Maybe they do understand. But Bernie and I rushed to the back door to see what bird had knocked himself simple (or killed himself) flying into the glass. Looking at the greyish-brown back, and catching a glimpse of the chest stripes, we knew it was our thrush. "Why where you flying so close to the house?" I asked. Usually he is no closer than the bird bath.

The poor thrush was lying on his belly on the cement outside the door, his head bent at a horridly unnatural angle. It didn't look good for the bird at that point.

But we've watched other glass-bonkers rally in the past, and while the thrush was still breathing, we kept vigil, with 18-month-old Joan shouting encouragement at the bird and thumping on the glass door.

Abruptly, the thrush rotated his head back to a normal angle. Good, good, bird's still breathing. A few minutes later, with a stagger, the thrush stood up. One foot was kind of bent under itself, but it was progress.

Then it was a waiting game, Bernie and I poised to open the door and drive off any of the myriad of loose cats that wander the neighborhood. The sun went down. Alex turned on the patio light. The thrush still stood there in the same position, breathing, unresponsive to our movements on the inside of the door.

It was nearly dark when the thrush turned his head and looked at us. He watched us all for a few minutes, then hopped forward, away from the house, his foot righting itself. We cheered as he hopped towards the back bank, and we followed with a flashlight, to make sure he wasn't going to try to go to sleep on the ground.

He hopped onto the retaining wall, and again took some minutes to re-boot his birdy programming. At last he fluttered up into the nandina bush, and we all expressed relief in cheers and sighs: a cat couldn't get to him there.

I have no idea why birds fly into glass, especially ones that usually don't come close to the house. But when one does, just leave it alone until it either gets up and flies away, or dies. Please don't try to "help" the bird by picking it up. The impact throws them into shock, and handling by a giant can push the shocked system right into the only escape possible -- death by terror.

We're all hoping to see the thrush back at the bird bath tomorrow around ten, when he usually drops by for a drink.

Cheers, Thrush.

The River Today

This locust tree lives down along the dirt levee road by the river.

The tree isn't blooming now, it being fall, rather than spring, but I always look for these branches when we're down there for a walk, which we were today.

The Stanislaus River is low right now, but crystal clear, and we stood along a curve of it above a deep pool and watched fish prowling back and forth. We must have stood there for ten or fifteen minutes, just watching fish drift in and out of the shadows, in silence, except for the faint rustle of the trees at noon.

On the walk back, a big blue dragonfly kept us company while we were in his territory. Once again we stopped and stood and watched, as the insect flew back and forth a few feet away from us, obviously watching us as we were watching him.

Bernie and I met in September, back in 1974. I remember being puzzled that the blond Polish boy seemed to have the same opinions about life and living that I did; I remember the fear I felt when I realized that I was in love with him. And then there was Love. A whole 34-year bloc of it so far.

Holding hands with him as we walked through the cottonwoods and bamboo and grape vine tangles, I still could not believe my good fortune in finding such a perfect mate. What other woman can boast that her love will watch fish and flying insects with her after so many years?

I hope, I truly hope, that there are many.