FoxCraft

Who's the Real Turkey Here?

It's embarrassing for a grown woman, a grandmother no less, to charge out onto her deck, yelping and growling like a Chihuahua that's had a can of Red Bull dumped into its water dish. In broad daylight, mind you. In full view of the new neighbors and their impressionable small children.

It's even more embarrassing to be ignored. Not, unfortunately, by the neighbors. By the pair of predatory turkeys at the bird feeder who are the target of the attack.

Oh, they took off, launching themselves off the deck in flapping disarray, thumping to the ground, and scuttling off through the back yard. All the while they clucked anxiously to each other: "What was that scary critter?" "I dunno. Run faster." "What'd we do?" "I dunno. It was your idea. Run faster." "Was not." "Was too. Run faster."

They would trot off out of sight, catch their breath and calm their nerves—probably with illicit cigarettes—and come right back.

One day I chased them away six times. They finally left for good, but only because the bird feeder was empty.

And they've kept coming back. Now they bring along their brothers and sisters and cousins. They can empty the feeder in sixty seconds flat, meanwhile emptying something else. They seem to think our deck is not only their own personal buffet, but also their own personal poultry port-a-potty.

Even though we've left the bird feeder empty for now—thereby depriving all the innocent little birds of the food they've come to rely on—the turkeys still stop by every couple of days just to check.

Yesterday, there they were again, walking along the deck railing like a couple of prehistoric klutzes in a gymnastics class trying to master the balance beam. Watching them slouch along on their scrawny long legs, I realized for the first time how young they were. This year's hatch, they were lanky (though if they keep raiding our bird feeder, that won't last long) and didn't have the full feathering and wattles that mark adults. Even by turkey standards, their heads looked small, as if they were trying for a cool Mohawk look but had picked the wrong barber.

Suddenly, it all made sense. They're adolescents. No wonder they're always hungry. And no wonder they never listen.

People Walking

There they were, as cozy as could be, obviously an item. She didn't seem to care that she was blatantly strolling down the sidewalk with someone new, only a few blocks away from the house where she lived with another man. She looked as ladylike as ever, with her thick white hair and dignified pace.

And her waving plume of a tail.

She, in this case, was the Great Pyrenees (think St. Bernard, only white and a bit less jowly) that lives along my regular walking route. I see her often, out with her owner, so it was a surprise the other day to see her with someone new.

It was even more of a surprise, a couple of blocks later, to see her walking with her owner just as usual.

Oh. I didn't know there was a second Great Pyrenees in the neighborhood. Never mind.

Watching dogs walk their people is one of the things that keeps my mind occupied while I, not having a dog to look after me, am out walking myself. There are as many different walking styles as there are breeds of dogs and body types of people.

There's the all-business chocolate lab who sets a brisk pace and is too focused on his destination to bother with being petted by strangers. The two lively little dogs, sharing the same woman with separate leashes, who are so busy trying to sniff everything that they yank her in opposite directions. The three Shelties, also with one woman but separate leashes, who trot along with such obedience and good behavior that it's almost scary. I've wondered whether drugs might be involved.

One of my favorites is the middle-sized terrier that ranges out to the end of its unreeling leash, dashing through the weeds and exploring here and sniffing there with unrelenting energy. Meanwhile, its owner ambles along in her pajama pants and flip flops, with the leash in one hand and her coffee cup in the other. There's more than one way to enjoy an early morning walk.

Earlier this summer, on a visit to Devils Tower, we saw a family heading out along the path that circles the tower. It looked like Mom, Grandma, and three kids ranging in age from about four to ten. Mom was pushing a baby stroller, one of those deluxe jobs with room for so much stuff that it would be easy to overlook the kid altogether. As we passed them, I glanced inside to see the baby.

There, in regal splendor, sat a tiny terrier, all bright eyes and brisk mustaches. Now, there was a dog that knew how to take his people for a walk.

Not In My Back Yard

In the coolness of early morning, the aroma was earthy, with self-assured woodsy top notes and a confident musky undertone. It was clear evidence, especially backed up by the marks of fresh digging beside the bush by the front door, that a skunk had been in our front yard.

Being a person who used to know eleventeen verses of "Kumbaya" and who tries to be tolerant and inclusive, I have no personal animosity toward skunks. From an appropriate distance, they're even kind of cute. And it's hard not to have a little sympathy for a critter whose Latin name, Mephitis mephitis, translates as "noxious vapor noxious vapor." Surely just once would have gotten the point across. Repeating it seems a little rude.

All of that peace, love, and tolerance, however, does not mean I want a skunk living in my yard. The morning after I smelled it, I saw it for the first time, rippling its way across the back yard. After several more sightings over the next few days, I had figured out that it was living under a wood pile just a few feet from the garage door.

I called the animal control number. Sorry, the man told me—not sounding sorry at all—but they didn't do skunks. He offered to rent us a live trap for a mere $10 a week, but said, "Once you catch it, you're on your own."

Hmmm, let's think about this. Which is worse, a skunk living in the back yard, minding its own business, or a seriously irritated skunk in a live trap?

Even though we have a one-acre lot in a neighborhood that feels somewhat rural, we're in the city limits. I'm sure shooting a skunk with a .22 would be frowned upon, even if I were a good shot, which I'm not. My partner, who is a good shot, was out of town. Of course, accurate shooting might not be strictly necessary, since the skunk's cozy little home was right next to the propane tank, though the potential for collateral damage would be a bit high.

About now I remembered a story my father told a long time ago. He and several neighbors were working together, shelling corn. At that time, corn was harvested with a machine that left the ears intact. It was stored in bins and then later run through a corn sheller that stripped the kernels off the cobs. The men were shoveling corn into a conveyer that moved the ears up into the machine. All at once a skunk ran out from under the grain bin and made a dash for a quieter neighborhood. As it ran along the row of men, each one stepped back to let it go by. Except the last guy in line, who jumped on the skunk and stomped it to death.

Thinking about that particular piece of gratuitous idiocy made me feel somewhat kinder toward the critter in our back yard, though I still wasn't happy about having it there. It didn't help when my sweetheart got back from his trip. His contribution to solving the problem was to name the skunk Priscilla.

The next evening, I saw Pris—er, the skunk again. With the air of someone on important business, it was trotting toward the ravine at the back of our lot. I haven't seen it since. Maybe, all this time, while I was thinking unkind thoughts about our unwelcome lodger, it had been thinking unkind thoughts about the lack of privacy in our woodpile and the poor quality of the table scraps in our compost pile. Maybe it had decided to move on.

Then last night, just after I went to bed, the cool breeze coming through the bedroom window brought with it an unmistakable aroma—earthy, with a musky undertone.

Drat. My only hope now is that one of the neighbors has a really stupid dog.

Where does a 2000-pound buffalo play?

Anywhere he wants to. Or, as my 13-year-old grandson put it, "Any time a buffalo wants to go to the playground, he gets to be first in line at the slide."

This conclusion might not be scientifically researched, but it is based on personal observation.

On a 100-plus degree day in the Black Hills, we stopped at Legion Lake. I was sitting with my toes in the water on the opposite side of the small lake from the beach, which was crowded with shrieking, splashing kids. On the playground beyond the beach, a few more kids were playing on the swings and slides.

All at once, a hush fell over the swimming area. Well, not really. The noise level changed pitch a little, though. I looked up and saw the cause—a buffalo bull near the edge of the water. He had apparently just come out of the trees beyond the lake. Huge head bobbing with every ponderous step, he was striding toward the beach with the implacable air of a large critter who goes anyplace he damn well pleases.

Disregarding the lesser beings all around him, he marched across the grassy area between the beach and the playground equipment. The kids at the top of the slides and ladders stayed put. Most of the people on the beach, though, seemed unconcerned as they watched the buffalo go by just a few feet away. Most of the kids in the water kept right on shrieking and splashing.

Personally, I would have been dog-paddling for the far side of the lake like a Malamute out to win the Iditarod. On a hot day, a buffalo isn't going to stay out of the water just because he can't find a Speedo to fit him.

The bull got to the far side of the playground without running over any innocent out-of-state toddlers. By that time, a park ranger in a pickup had driven up to show the buffalo, "This beach ain't big enough for all of us, buddy." With some encouragement from the vehicle, the burly beach bully kept on moving and disappeared into the woods.

For a little while. About 20 minutes later, he was back, wading into the water a little way from the beach. No mere pickup was going to keep him from quenching his thirst.

Note to all Black Hills visitors: Those "Buffalo are dangerous" signs? They mean it. A buffalo is not a nice, gentle cow. (As a matter of fact, your average cow isn't a nice, gentle cow, either. Those soft brown eyes are deceptive.)

No wonder that Dr. Brewster M. Higley, who wrote the words to "Home on the Range" back in the 1870's, was willing to let the deer and the antelope play but preferred the buffalo to roam. If one happens to roam onto the beach or the playground, it's wise not to challenge his right to play wherever he wants to. Even when the chips are down, the buffalo is always going to win.

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.

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.

Dreaming of a Redneck Christmas

The man next to me was snoring. Thank goodness it wasn't that awful kind of snore that builds to a crescendo, then pauses for a few moments to prolong the suspense until, about the time the weary listener has resolved that tomorrow—no, make that today, it's 2:37 a.m.—is definitely the day to call the sleep apnea clinic, the hapless sleeper gives a strangled snort, gasps for breath, and starts in on the next measure.

This was a regular, rhythmic snore that wasn't really very loud. It probably wouldn't have kept me awake had I been in my own bed.

Of course, in my own bed I could also have easily poked him in the ribs with a loving elbow and asked him sweetly to roll over. That wasn't an option here. For one thing, I wasn't quite sure who the guy was.

Besides, we weren't in the same room. My lower bunk with its hard mattress was on one side of a thin wall and his was on the other. So much for sleeping like a baby at the annual family Christmas gathering. (Actually, I was sleeping like a baby—the one next door was awake several times during the night, too.)

Sleeping arrangements aside, here is the important question for this year's party: Did this qualify as a redneck Christmas?

Possibly. Here are the contributing factors:

1. We were at a hunting lodge in the South (well, South Dakota). It was decorated in Modern Taxidermy with mounted deer heads (the one with only one antler looked embarrassed), elk heads, turkeys, bobcats, and pheasants. One of the gifts in the joke gift exchange was a set of mounted antlers—from a deer personally shot by the giver, Great-Grandma (who was merely Grandma back when she shot it).

2. Grandma wouldn't have been up for any deer hunting this year though. A fall on the slippery back step a couple days earlier had left her stiff, sore, and with stitches in her arm. She joked that she hadn't exactly been run over by a reindeer; she just felt like it.

3. The entertainment included the usual board games and even a little bit of televised football, but the featured activity on Saturday afternoon was target shooting, with coaching from Great-Grandpa. Shooters included most of the granddaughters as well as the grandsons and sons-in-law. The great-grandkids are still too small to manage a shotgun, but they helped by picking up empties and unbroken targets. Next year, maybe.

4. The feature story of the weekend was the encounter some of us had with a dead skunk when we went for a walk. Someone suggested taking our picture with it, like the picture taken with the dead porcupine a few years ago (don't ask—that's a different story). As we approached, however, the "dead" skunk lifted its head and looked at us. An unhealthy-looking skunk out in broad daylight is not a good sign. We scrambled to a safe distance, my sister used her cell phone to call her husband the veterinarian, and he came and shot the critter. He also saw that it was caught by one leg in a trap. That immediately changed our perception of the skunk. Shooting it, instead of a necessity to get rid of a potential threat, became a necessity to put the poor thing out of its misery. (We skipped the picture.)

Arguments against this qualifying as a Redneck Christmas:

1. None of the in-laws were related except by marriage.

2. Too many teeth.

3. Too many e-readers.

4. Too many college degrees.

But I'll let you decide. Redneck Christmas, or just another ordinary family get-together?

And while you're making up your mind, have a Merry Christmas!

Why My Plants Are Thirsty

Warning: The following story may not be suitable for small children or those with weak stomachs. If you're eating while you read, any adverse consequence are not my fault. Remember, you have been warned.

Just before bedtime one night, I was sitting in the recliner in my office, reading. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something little and gray run across the floor and disappear under the printer stand in the corner. Trying to convince myself that I hadn't really seen a mouse, I went to bed.

When the phone rang a few minutes later and I had to go into the office to answer it, I made sure to walk as loudly as bare feet allowed, just to scare off anything small and scampering that might possibly be in there in the dark.

Two days later, needing to give a drink to the thirsty pansies out on the deck, I grabbed the watering can from under the kitchen sink. It was already full because, thrifty soul that I am, I empty half-finished water bottles into it instead of dumping them down the drain. When I watered the pansies, the water didn't seem to come out of the spout properly, but I thought it was just because I was tipping the can too far. I also caught a whiff of an unpleasant odor that I hadn't previously associated with pansies.

After the can was empty, I noticed that something gray seemed to be stuck in the spout. It took me a minute to realize what alert readers have no doubt already figured out—the gray thing was a drowned mouse. I banged the watering can on the deck railing to shake the dead little critter loose, then tried to dump it out. Instead of falling out of the rather small opening at the top of the can, it got stuck in the spout again.

I am not afraid of mice. I don't consider myself especially squeamish about critters in general, even dead ones. I am a practical, prairie-raised woman who knows how to clean a fish and pluck a chicken. But at this point I lost it. There was something about the pathetic little dead feet hanging out of the spout of the watering can that was pitiful and disgusting at the same time.

I threw the mouse, watering can and all, off the deck into the back yard.

After I recovered from my spasm of disgust, I told myself to look on the bright side. With the combination of 100-degree heat, ants, and other scavengers, I should be able to recover the watering can in a couple of weeks. And at least the mouse was gone.

That evening, just before bedtime, I walked into my office to shut down the computer. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something little and gray run along the wall.

 

Epilogue: Three weeks later

The second mouse succumbed with gratifying promptness to an easy-to-set and—far more important—easy-to-empty contraption named "A Better Mousetrap." So far, I haven't spotted any more little gray critters. (At least not moving ones; dust bunnies don't count.)

But watering the house plants just doesn't work as well with the recycled juice bottle I've been using. For some reason, I haven't wanted to use the watering can. It's still out there in the yard.