FoxCraft

There Goes the Neighborhood

The first new house wasn't so bad. It went in just up the road and around the curve from us. A nice enough house. Well-constructed, too, based on the illicit walk-through we did one Sunday morning after the walls were up but before the doors were hung.

Then came the second new house. It's hasn't actually been built yet, but the contractors have cut trees and dug trenches and poured the foundation. It will probably be a nice, well-built house, too. The only problem is that it's just across a driveway up the hill from our house. It's closer to us than our mailbox is. It's going to have front windows that face directly into our bedroom windows. It's going to loom. It's going to be—gasp!—visible.

We live in a neighborhood full of hills, gullies, and trees, with one-acre lots or larger. It feels more rural than urban, even though it reluctantly allowed itself to be annexed into the city limits a few years ago. There's plenty of room for deer, turkeys, and mountain lions. Most of us can't see our neighbors' homes very well, and that's the way we like it.

Except that our neighbor to the north, with his small house tucked away discreetly behind the hill, didn't consult the rest of us before he sold the front of his large lot as two separate building sites. The new houses—too close to the road, too new, and too obvious—felt like invaders. They were violating what we considered to be our space.

Then one evening this week, out for a walk, we met a young man with a wheelbarrow full of dirt. He, his wife, their baby, and two dogs are the proud new owners of the house around the bend. As we were introducing ourselves and talking about landscaping and grass seed and other such homeownerly topics, a car came by. The woman driving stopped and told us, "I just came by to see the new house my daughter and her husband are building right next door. She's so excited—she said, 'Mom, there's really going to be a house there!'"

Well, yeah, lady, there's really going to be a house there. That's what we've been so annoyed about.

But as she spoke, I could almost hear her daughter's delighted voice. It sounded a lot like my daughter's voice. Something odd happened during just those few minutes of conversation. All at once, the new houses that were such odious encroachments into our turf weren't merely houses. They were homes. Home to new neighbors.

Yes, we can't see many of our neighbors' houses in this area. But once in a while it's good to be reminded that we can, if we choose, see our neighbors.

One of these days we might have to take them some fresh cinnamon rolls.

You Can Call Me Hank--Or Not

Maybe he didn't exactly come out swinging, but Henry showed up with a major-league attitude. Of course, when you're only a few minutes old, and people are scrubbing you and weighing you and measuring you and taking pictures before you've had a chance to put any clothes on, a guy can be excused for feeling a little annoyed.

Henry Orrin made his appearance on Monday, April 16. He weighed seven pounds ten ounces and was 20 ½ inches long. (Since the powers that be subjected him to all that weighing and measuring, we might as well report the findings.) The brand-new pictures of his brand-new self showed him to be a sturdy, healthy little person and much better looking than Winston Churchill.

One of his grandfathers has already been caught on camera calling him "Hammerin' Hank." Whether the nickname sticks, or whether he and his parents will prefer the more formal Henry, remains to be seen.

Given that his parents are golfers rather than baseball fans, Hank Aaron won't necessarily be one of Henry's idols. Nor, I'm guessing, will Hank Williams. Henry VIII? Please, let's not even mention him. Henry's mom and dad are both articulate attorneys. His role models will probably be Patrick Henry and Henry Clay.

And a good thing, too. Henry also just happens to have an articulate, very bright older sister. She's probably going to treat him with that loving bossiness only big sisters can achieve. The kid is going to need all the verbal skills he can muster.

Of course, a good strong swing might sometimes come in handy, too.

Hi, Henry. Welcome to the family.

Spring Cleaning, the King, and Killer Art

"Fill a wall with a really, really big piece of killer art."

This, according to a decorating article by Mary Carol Garrity that appeared in our newspaper this week, is a way to add "lots of drama and personality to a room."

I skimmed the article over breakfast, mostly because lingering over the newspaper and my second cup of tea was a good way to avoid getting to work. I wasn't looking for decorating tips, since we already did the spring cleaning for this year. It consisted of clearing several cubic feet of stuff out of the hallway closet. I also rearranged the formal living/dining room by moving the sewing machine from one side of the big front window to the other to make room for the treadmill parallel to the wall instead of facing it.

As I read further, I realized I had inadvertently followed another tip in Ms. Garrity's article: to "add a piece of eye-catching furniture." It's possible that she wouldn't think a treadmill qualifies as "furniture," but since it's the biggest thing in the room except for the piano, it certainly catches the eye.

Just as I was about to fold up the paper and head to my office, serendipity struck. I noticed an ad in the antiques and collectibles section of the classifieds for a wall hanging made in Turkey. Since my partner has spent a lot of time in Turkey and we have Turkish carpets on several of our floors and walls, I read further.

This item wasn't a carpet, but a "close up portrait of Elvis," size two feet by three. It was only $35, surely a bargain figured by the square inch.

Suddenly, the ad and the decorating article came together in a stunning moment of decorating inspiration. What would more effectively add "drama and personality" to a room than an oversized portrait of Elvis? True, it wasn't on velvet. Even with that drawback, however, it would certainly qualify as "killer art."

It would be the perfect focal point to complement the treadmill. One could commune with The King while huffing and puffing along at 4.2 miles an hour. Listening, of course, to "You Ain't Nothin' But a Hound Dog" or "Blue Suede Shoes."

The Secret Life of Lovebirds

The dove approached the bird feeder with hesitant dignity, gracing the common flock with its presence rather like Queen Victoria at a backyard barbecue. She—it was somehow impossible to think of the bird as anything other than female—was different from any of the other doves and pigeons that occasionally wander across the deck. This one was smaller and paler, so soft a gray as to be almost white, with one black stripe across the back of the neck.

We looked it up in The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds, and there it was, number 350. Our guest looked just like the picture of the ringed turtle dove.

There was nothing in the least remarkable about this until we read the description on page 585. According to Audubon, the range of the ringed turtle dove is Los Angeles, California. To quote: "Escaped from captivity. Also established locally in southern Florida. . . . The small population in downtown Los Angeles has apparently not spread and is localized in a few parks and tree-lined streets."

Okay, then. Assuming our dainty visitor was indeed a ringed turtle dove—and no other picture in the bird book even came close to resembling it—how did it end up in western South Dakota?

True, we'd recently had a human houseguest from California who flew here in a manmade bird. The chances of a lone turtle dove stowing away in his luggage seemed remote, especially since he came from San Francisco. It's also possible the bird we saw was a local escapee, maybe one of a pair released at a wedding reception who had fled from its matrimonial obligations.

Or perhaps the truth is deeper and darker. What if there are tiny colonies of fugitive ringed turtle doves hidden all across the country? The one in Los Angeles could be the home base, showing to the public a peaceful community of harmless lovebirds, billing and cooing in the most innocent way. Behind the scenes, however, it could be the logistical center for a secret underground—er, aboveground movement of turtle doves with a goal of freeing all their relatives still held in captivity.

The one we saw could have been a scout, sent to search the middle of the country, checking every bird feeder, wedding venue, and party supplier to compile a list of captive turtle doves. Then, some dark night when we least expect it, the birds will launch Operation Winged Freedom, a massive aerial assault intended to release every enslaved lovebird.

The scout certainly wouldn't have found any captives here. We put out food so we can watch the birds, not capture them.

I just hope she doesn't know what happened to all her cousins that have disappeared in such numbers during dove season. If we're lucky, she'll never make the connection between us, my father, his shotgun, and all that dove-breast jerky that shows up at family reunions.

Marooned, Cast Away, Stranded, and Forsaken

Here's a potentially serious drawback to Kindles and Nooks and other e-book readers that some of us didn't think about before we bought ours:

Suppose you were on a vacation cruise, well supplied with books that didn't take up much space in your luggage because they were all on your e-reader. Then the ship sank and left you stranded on a deserted island. Before long, you'd have no more battery—and no more books. About the only use for the device would be to reflect the sun's rays onto some dry tinder in hopes of starting a fire.

Which brings us to today's important question. If you were ever marooned in the middle of the ocean, and you could have only one book, what would you like it to be?

When this question came up in a group recently, one person creatively opted for her own journal. Another voted for the Bible. A third practical soul suggested the Boy Scout Handbook.

The Bible wouldn't be a bad choice, actually, regardless of your religious beliefs or lack thereof, simply because of its length. It would have enough complex drama, history, and thought-provoking content to keep an inquiring mind occupied for a long time. Just finding all the contradictions would take weeks. The Book of Revelation alone ought to be good for at least a couple of months.

Though the Boy Scout Handbook might be more useful. So might 1001 Quick and Easy Campfire Recipes for Fish. Or better yet, Boat Building for Dummies.

My choice, though, would probably be a big, fat, unabridged dictionary. Instead of just one story, it would potentially hold an endless supply of them. I could browse for fascinating new words, make up word games, and even learn a few handy phrases in other languages to be prepared for possible rescue by a ship whose crew didn't speak English. I could even find rhyming words to write sad songs about being lost and lonely.

When it wasn't being used linguistically, the book could also serve as a chair, a table, or a shelf. And if I did manage to build an escape raft, it would be heavy enough to serve as an anchor.

Of course, after a few years as a castaway, even if I were rescued I'd probably have long since lost my sanity. But at least I'd be talking to myself with one heck of an impressive vocabulary.

The Orangutan and the Face Cream

"Why do you have a pair of pliers on the bathroom counter?"

To the man who shares my life and bathroom space, it apparently seemed like a reasonable question. And, of course, I had a perfectly reasonable answer. "To squeeze the last of the face cream out of the tube."

For some reason, he thought that was the funniest thing he'd heard since the joke about the orangutan and the zookeeper. Funnier, actually. He hadn't laughed nearly that hard when I told him the joke. Come to think of it, he didn't actually laugh at all. He just groaned and rolled his eyes. It was that kind of joke.

But back to the pliers. Their presence in the bathroom made perfect sense to me. The face cream—nighttime moisturizing lotion with Retinol—is expensive. Not in the fifty bucks a half ounce range or anything like that, but not cheap, either. It comes in a metal tube. When it's almost empty, there are still several applications left at the top of the tube. Not having hand strength anywhere close to that of an orangutan, I can't squeeze them out with my bare fingers. Hence the pliers.

This brings us to the crucial question. Is squeezing the last possible bit of stuff out of the tube with pliers practical and frugal, or is it obsessive and cheap? Or, even worse, is it simply odd?

In my opinion, it's merely sensible. No different from using a spatula to scrape the last peanut butter out of the jar or storing the jar of salad dressing upside down to get the last couple of servings without having to sit at the table holding it over your salad for 17 minutes until it oozes out.

You just squeeze the top of the tube slightly with the pliers, and there's another application of lotion. No muss, no fuss, no wear and tear on the fingers. There you are, and Bob's your uncle.

Which brings us around to the orangutan and the zookeeper. (I know, I know. Admit it. You only read this far because you were looking for the joke.) There was an orangutan who was amazingly intelligent. Not only did he learn to communicate fluently in sign language, but he learned to read as well. One day the zookeeper came by and saw the orangutan reading two books at once—the Bible and Darwin's Origin of Species. The zookeeper asked, "Why are you reading both of those together? Isn't that confusing?"

The orangutan signed back, "It is, a little. But I'm just trying to figure something out. Am I my brother's keeper, or am I my keeper's brother?"

Ole and Lena and Paddy Went Into a Bar . . .

Okay, it's nitpicking and grammar nerdish of me, but I can't help it. It isn't "St. Patty's Day," people. If you must be informal, it's "St. Paddy's Day."

Since March 17 falls on a Saturday this year, I suspect the consumption of green beer may hit record levels. Which around here isn't necessarily a bad thing. We've had such a dry winter that we can use all the moisture we can get.

Despite all the celebrations in honor of his day, about the only things most of us know about St. Patrick are that his birthday was on March 17 and that he is crediting with driving all the snakes out of Ireland.

Both of these are wrong. Most of us have probably suspected the truth about the snakes, which is that, Ireland being an island and all, there were never any snakes there in the first place.

But since March 17 is St. Patrick's Day, it's logical to assume, as I did until I looked it up just now, that this was his birthday. Nope. It's actually the anniversary of his death. The day seems to be accepted by scholars, though there's some confusion about the year, which was somewhere in the late fifth or early sixth century.

He was a real person, though, a missionary and an archbishop. As a Christian, he was committed to eradicating Druidism and other beliefs that he would have considered the worship of false gods. No doubt he wouldn't appreciate his name being plastered all over the place accompanied by pictures of leprechauns. What he would think of all the green beer, of course, is another question.

I think it's great to celebrate the Irish on St. Patrick's Day, even for people who are as Norwegian and as Lutheran as Ole and Lena. There's nothing wrong with wearing green and sporting buttons that say things like, "Kiss me, I'm Irish." Maybe it even does a little to make up for the days when the more common sentiment would have been "No Irish need apply."

But the man was an archbishop, for goodness sake. (At least one can hope it was for the sake of goodness.) In his lifetime, he would have been called "Father Patrick," or maybe "Your Grace." I doubt that his parishioners ever slapped him on the back and called him "Paddy."

And even if they had, they—or at least the few of them who were literate—surely wouldn't have spelled it "Patty."

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Watching the Watcher

The large furry creature was lurking in the dark hallway. I couldn't see it, but I knew it was there. I could hear it breathing. It was 3:07 a.m.

At times it slept; I could hear it snoring. But even then, I couldn't turn my back on it and go back to sleep myself. I could feel it out there: watchful, waiting, alert for any movement I might make. It was between me and the kitchen; between me and the telephone. There was no way I could leave the bedroom and slip past it in the dark without it catching me.

I knew this, because at 1:37 a.m., when I got up to go to the bathroom, I had nearly stepped on it.

On her, rather. Lucy. The chocolate lab of mature years and generous girth who is staying with us this week while her owner is out of town.

This is a new experience for me. I've never lived with a dog in the house before. Lucy is placid, obedient, and impeccably mannered, but even so, it's been an adjustment. She's patient, though, and so far she seems to believe I can be trained.

Parts of the routine of having a dog in the house are relatively easy to adapt to. I've learned that getting up from a chair to go to another room for just a minute means Lucy will heave herself up on her arthritic joints to follow me, so she can flop down onto the floor wherever I am. I've learned that even if you do it as noiselessly as possible, opening a bag of dog food is magical. It instantly makes a tail-wagging dog appear in the kitchen, even if a millisecond ago she was at the other end of the house. I've learned that a walk with a dog is a stop-and-go exercise. Who knew there were so many places to stop and check the P-mail?

There are even some advantages to having a dog in the house. When I mutter to myself over my keyboard, I'm not talking to myself; I'm talking to Lucy. Also, taking her along early in the morning to get the newspaper offers security against mountain lions. Not that Lucy could take on a mountain lion single-pawed, of course. But if her doggy presence wasn't enough to keep one at a distance, at least I could easily outrun her.

Still, I'm not sure I could live with a dog on a full-time basis. I could get used to the routine and the responsibility. What I can't handle is the guilt.

The long sighs she emits from time to time as she lies stretched out on the floor in my office while I'm working and paying no attention to her. Having to pull her away from a particularly entrancing smell so we can actually finish a walk the same day we started it. The long-suffering patience she shows at mealtimes—ours, not hers—when she sits at a polite distance, pretending not to watch every trip our forks make from our plates to our mouths. And especially, the sad, reproachful look we get when we leave the house, shutting her up in the utility room and telling her she has to stay.

Not to mention the vigil she keeps in the hallway at night, sleeping with one eye open, too obedient to come into the bedroom but ready to spring—or at least to lumber—to her feet the second she hears us get up.

I'm doing my best to manage the guilt, though. If Lucy wants to guard the hallway all night, I can't stop her. But I don't need to stay awake watching the watchdog. From now on, I'm sleeping with the door shut.

A Better Mousetrap

"Utah man’s shot at mouse hits roommate."

As a newspaper headline, this one certainly did its job of catching my attention. It wasn't immediately clear, however, whether the victim was the roommate of the man or the mouse. Finding out that and other details required reading the whole article.

Apparently this man spotted a mouse in the pantry of his apartment. His reflexes possibly being faster than his thought processes, he hauled out his gun and shot at the critter. The article didn't specify what type of firearm, but surely anything bigger than a .22 pistol would have been serious overkill.

Not surprisingly—mice are small targets, not to mention quick—he missed. The bullet went on through the wall into the adjoining bathroom, where it hit the man's roommate. In the best tradition of old Western movies, it was a shoulder wound.

The shooter was 27, old enough that one might think his brain would have matured into a certain minimal level of common sense. When he spotted the mouse, then, why didn't he do what any reasonably functional adult would do and simply set a mousetrap?

Well, maybe he didn't own one. Maybe he couldn't find one. Maybe, like so many of us, he had a couple of mousetraps somewhere, probably in the kitchen junk drawer. Amid the clear tape, masking tape, duct tape, scissors, screwdrivers, pliers, odd nails and screws, matchbooks, string, paper clips, rubber bands, bag clips, broken refrigerator magnets, pencil stubs, and nonworking pens, a couple of insignificant mousetraps could easily get lost.

Or maybe he was out of peanut butter to use for bait.

It's also possible that the "small, empty balloons and burnt tin foil" the cops found in the wastebasket had something to do with his decision. To me those items sound like evidence of a children's birthday party where somebody left the potatoes on the grill too long. Since the man was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia, however, apparently in the world of law enforcement they are evidence of a different sort of activity.

At least the story had a happy ending for somebody. With one roommate hauled off to the hospital and the other to jail, the mouse could enjoy undisturbed occupancy of the pantry. With plenty of space and plenty of food, it may have even decided to sublet to a couple of roommates. Slower ones, preferably.

After all, if the shooter got his gun back when he was released on bail and came home, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have more than one furry little target to share the risk.

Hope Sprouts Eternal

Siberian permafrost. It's sort of like the huge old chest-type freezer in your grandmother's utility room. It's so big and so full of ancient stuff that every once in a while, digging through the layers, you find a frozen treasure that's been buried so long no one knew it was there.

In Siberia, those frozen finds occasionally include intact woolly mammoths from the last Ice Age. Several have been found in such good shape that they could have been cooked and eaten, except that doing so would be serious scientific sacrilege.

Around 30,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age, Siberia was one of the areas that was not covered by glaciers. That's why so many mammoths lived there, along with fearsome predators like huge short-faced bears and giant saber-toothed cats.

Not to mention less fearsome ground squirrels. These little critters buried caches of seeds underground for the winter. Every so often, someone discovers one of these caches.

Some scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences got excited about trying to get some of these seeds to sprout. First they tried it the old-fashioned way—simply planting some. Nothing happened. Then they got serious about it. They took tissue from some immature fruit, found intact reproductive cells in it, and cultured those cells in some sort of goop that was mostly sugar. The cells grew into seedlings, which grew into plants that eventually bloomed and produced viable seeds of their own.

The plants are an older incarnation of a current Siberian flower called narrow-leafed campion, or Silene stenophylla if you want to be formal. They have white flowers with five long petals. If you saw one in your yard, you'd probably consider it a weed. It's pretty ordinary looking for being 30,000 years old.

As a haphazard amateur gardener, I found this story both inspiring and discouraging. In my kitchen right now, spread out on a tray with a thin covering of potting soil overlaid with paper towels, are a couple of dozen tomato seeds. They've been sitting there for two weeks now. I've kept them damp. I've kept them warm. I've even talked to them—though it's possible that, "Sprout, damn you, you dried-up little spaghetti sauce wannabes!" isn't working as motivation.

So far, nothing. Not a single sprout. Heck, I can't even see the seeds in there.

I've been trying to persuade myself that this isn't my fault. After all, the seeds are from last year. The expiration date on their packets was October of 2011. They must be too old to sprout.

That theory was working just fine, thank you, until I heard about the 30,000-year-old Siberian flower. Now, the truth has become painfully clear. An extinct Siberian ground squirrel has a greener thumb than I do.

Or maybe I just need to be patient. Maybe these seeds will sprout after all, if I just give them another 30,000 years to mature.