The Walking Fiddle

I feel like blogging. I know it’s been several eons since I last blogged- February 24th, good heavens! I often think about blogging. In fact, I find it very soothing to sit here and type. BUT, life seems to have decided to turn up the pace and I just don’t get around to it. Oh, I am constantly thinking about things to blog about! I read a book on local wildflowers and I thought I’d like to introduce you to them. I wanted to do some research on blue jays and cardinals. Explore the ecology of Devon Island. I’m sorry you haven’t been enlightened on any of these subjects. Meanwhile, 2 extremely energetic children have been lovingly pestering me from dawn to dusk, we’ve been to Florida on the great Schrafation, the bath flooded and went through the ceiling, we thought we might have an asbestos ceiling (we didn’t), I’ve been to NJ twice, Schraf family members came to visit, and most recently the basement flooded and all week we’ve been cleaning and had workmen coming in and out to dry it out, spray for mold, and they are ripping down the kitchen ceiling tomorrow and spraying for mold and scrubbing the air. Plus, I shattered the passenger sideview mirror on the car today. In general, I feel there has been quite enough excitement lately and I’d like some unexcitement for awhile. Well, on second thought, I DO like good excitement. Visitors and free tickets to exotic destinations are always welcome.

So, I hope that the next time I blog we are eagerly exploring marine life under the polar ice cap from our armchairs. Thank you, this is Kirstie reporting from Baltimore.

Crows just don’t get the attention they deserve. I’m going to help them out by spotlighting them on the Walking Fiddle tonight. We saw a huge flock of them when we were out driving yesterday and I suddenly thought it was time to write a post for the old blog, on crows. Yes, I am going to educate you on this rascally black creature that shares planet earth with us.

First off, if you are a crow, and it’s winter, there is one place you want to be: Auburn, New York. It’s the happening scene. About 30 miles west of Syracuse, Auburn has been one of the most popular winter vacation destinations for the American crow since 1993. 25,000 to 50,000 crows gather in Auburn’s trees annually during the winter. One of the main reasons they seem to like it is the great city lighting, which allows them to stay up and socialize till the wee hours. Now, I don’t know how they know this, but crow experts say they sit around talking about where they found the best food that day. My personal opinion is that they are exchanging ideas on the best ways to torment cats. Ever seen a crow torment a cat? They are quite good at it. Anyway, the citizen’s of Auburn aren’t too pleased about becoming the headquarters of the Crow National Convention. It’s pretty noisy when tens of thousands of crows are roosting outside your office window and I don’t dare to guess what the ground looks like either. Some just want to get rid of them, but others think more creatively. One particularly out-of-the-box thinker named Joshua Klein suggests opening “crow vending machines,” where you train the crows to pick up trash and they bring it to the vending machine and deposit it for a reward. Brilliant! I’m signing up to be a professor at the crow trash collection training college.

Moving on. The crow is considered to be one of the smartest birds in world. Some even think they may actually have a language. Many of the sounds are lower than frequencies we can hear. The typical “caw caw caw” that we humans are familiar with supposedly means either “I’m hungry,” or “This is my tree!” But apparently they make quite a lot of other sounds that we never hear because they only happen crow to crow in the top of a tree. Crows also make tools out of twigs and blades of grass to do things like get food. You’ll be interested in this tidbit from the Wikipedia crow page: “Another skill involves dropping tough nuts into a heavy trafficked street and waiting for a car to crush them open, and then waiting at pedestrian lights with other pedestrians in order to retrieve the nuts.” Next time I see a crow sitting on a traffic light I am going to wait and see what it does!

Young crows stay at home with their parents for several years and help raise their siblings. Most smaller “gangs” of crows you see are probably actually families, which stay together during nesting season. In the winter, though, they like to go roost with other crows- Auburn, anyone? Over on Cornell’s crow site, I found this roosting behavior description which is quite fascinating to me because I have actually witnessed it myself: “Before heading to roost, crows will congregate in some area away from the final roosting site, usually an hour or two before complete darkness. Here the crows spend a lot of time calling, chasing, and fighting. Right at dark the main body of the group will move toward the final roosting spot. Sometimes this final movement is relatively quiet, but usually it is still quite noisy. I have seen crows coming together from several separate congregation areas, heading to one final staging area where they all coalesce, then everyone heads to the final roost. The final roost can be a cohesive group in a single woodlot, or it can be rather diffusely spread out over quite a wide area of suitable trees.”

If crows manage to make it past the first year (many die as babies), they can live 17-21 years. They lay eggs very early in the spring and it takes about four months to build a nest, lay eggs, hatch them and raise the little crows. They mate for life unless the pair failed to breed successfully- then they split up amicably and try someone else. Sometimes they go back home to mom and dad.

Crows actually cast pellets, did you know that? I didn’t. I assumed they pooped white goop like other birds (though honestly I haven’t spend much time considering this assumption). Nope, they have pellets, like owls.

It’s only females that sit on the eggs. They guys don’t. BUT, they will come and bring tidbits to the incubating crow mama and guard the nest if she leaves to get a coffee down at Crowbucks (har har, I know).

Crows can recognize human faces and even associate them with the cars they drive. They get to know people. If you go out and bring them peanuts, they will hang around waiting for you, not just anybody (they really like peanuts and this is a good way to start a friendship with a crow).

I could go on considerably, but I might alienate my potential audience of crow lovers. Perhaps there will be a future installment of crow information. Anyway, if you are looking for sources and citations, I refer you to Wikipedia and renowned crow expert Kevin McGowan’s crow FAQ.

We are pretty sick around here. But I am happy to say we are having a very nice day anyway! Which is excellent because the rest of this week has been absolutely horrid. My temper has been completely on the edge and the kiddos constantly provoking me. I hate it when I get like that. Snapping my poor son’s head off because my head hurts and I want a little peace from the endless questions and two little people constantly on my tail. Yesterday was just about the worst ever and I didn’t want to go to bed because then it would be morning and I would have to do it all over again. Well, I had a very encouraging read before bed of a new book I am starting “Battlefield of the Mind,” by Joyce Meyer. I felt much better and woke up refreshed this morning with a new outlook on life. Elijah seems to be coming down with the local cold so I kept him home from preschool today and we haven’t gotten out of our pajamas. It’s been great. I’ve had so much more patience, I haven’t been using my mean-mama’s-had-it voice, Brynny napped and Elijah and I had some good read-aloud time. That’s the kind of day I like. Sunshine breaking through the grump-slump of the last few days.

I’m not trying to prove to the world that I love my husband. Because I really do and I don’t need to convince anybody. But man, he’s so awesome that he just deserves a shout-out once in awhile. Because I married the cream of the crop. It’s true. The International Council of Bachlorettes went into mourning and raised the flag at half-mast the day I got ‘im! I just felt like boasting a little. I was thinking this morning about our dating days and how fun and exciting they were. But you know what? I don’t look back on those times with nostalgia and wish I could go back. Every day just gets better. Not to say that we haven’t had our rocky times, misunderstandings and so forth. But even during those times I never once wished we hadn’t gotten married. Such a thing would have been too horrible to consider.

Well, I’ve got a grumpy boodle girl here who isn’t interested in letting me continue this ode. Marc would probably have a fit if I continued anyway, he’s rather modest about his awesome husbandness. See ya!

I thought I would tip you off to a great blog I’ve been reading: rowforwater.com. Katie is 23 and is rowing across the Atlantic by herself. She just started the trip so you can easily go catch up from the beginning. She’s writing it herself- she has a satellite uplink so she can blog during rowing breaks. It sounds like a phenomenal adventure! Go Katie!

This morning is not, shall we say, quite as cozy as yesterday. I have on a turtleneck, wool sweater and down vest as I sit here. And my fingers are feeling quite chilly- almost wishing they had gloves on. Elijah, my little miniature furnace, does not seem to be cold whatsoever in just his pajamas and socks as he works on his breakfast. We did quite enjoy a hearty pot of hot oatmeal. In short, our new furnace is not working. It was installed yesterday and when the workmen left it was making the house very nice and warm. Then we went out to dinner at Joel & Jess’ place and when we came back we were rudely greeted with a 60 degree house. We bundled the baby and stayed warm under our covers all night but my, it IS rather chilly when you come out from under the down comforter. We’ve put in a call to the heating company, and I do hope they will return it soon. Brrrrrrr.

Food seems to be so attached to our feelings of comfort and warmth and happiness. I feel perfectly happy to smell the muffins baking in the oven, the bacon frying in the pan, the happy sound of Bonnie Rideout’s fiddle on the CD player. Little feet running around and around the circle of rooms, pounding on the floor till someone says, loudly “Elijah, slow down!” Cold winter morning sun streaming through the windows. The grinding, grating loud sounds coming from the basement- our new furnace being installed (they estimated our previous one was circa 1950), the promise of toasty days and nights to come.

Snowfalls past- my sister and I, NJ, circa 1984

I figure that riding out one of the top ten storms of the century in Baltimore should probably elicit a post to the old blog. It’s not that bad, really. I’ve got my hot cup of keemun and cinnamon toast and some slices of smoked dutch gouda. And certain of my offspring, I won’t say which, doesn’t seem to realize that we’re in the middle of a blizzard but has no qualms whatsoever about running around in his birthday suit for fifteen minutes instead of getting dressed. I think if we opened the door and said “it’s time to go play in the snow!” he’d run right out.

Anyway, we’re supposed to get 1-2 feet by tomorrow morning. Pretty exciting stuff. Good thing I finally got around to buying Elijah some good mittens last week. No snow pants though, unfortunately. Under the delusion that Baltimore only gets 3 inches a year, I didn’t think he’d really need them. Brynny, on the other hand, is equipped with a fantastically warm down snowsuit (complete with fur ruff), but no boots. I’m not sure her slipper-shoes would do the job if we took her out to toddle in the snow. I wish I had some down snow pants. I used to have some very fine bright red snow pants that I would tuck into the tops of my tall green wellington boots. Both items disappeared when I thought we we were moving to the subtropics for the next twenty years.

Well, Elijah has managed to dress himself admirably well for the weather and now he and daddy are off to explore the world of white. Too bad I dropped our camera and broke it earlier this week, so unless I con an unsuspecting neighbor to take a picture or two, Elijah’s first big snowstorm in Baltimore will go largely undocumented.

When Marc is out for his bi-weekly game night with the guys at work, some form of excitement is sure to occur back at home.

We have a fenced-in yard, and several weeks ago I had the bright idea to let Nutty (aka Nutkin, our cat) take in the air outside, under closer supervision from myself (to be sure she didn’t gallop up the dogwood onto the neighbor’s shed roof). She enjoyed her excursion very much. She sniffed around, ate grass, explored… until I noticed that there was small hole in the fence. She noticed it at the same time, apparently, because next thing I knew I was grabbing her hind legs as she tried to squeeze to freedom. That was the end of Nutty en plein air.  Unfortunately, her brief taste of liberty whetted her appetite for more. Prior to this little foray she barely noticed the existence of doors to the outside, and never attempted to dash through them when we came or went.  Now she listens for the sound of the car pulling up, and lurks, waiting for the second the door opens to hopefully catch us by surprise and exit between our legs. She has almost succeeded several times.

Feeling sorry for Na Na, as Brynny calls her, we threw around the idea of hooking up a tether system outside so she could go graze a bit on nice days. Today I was at Target and stopped by the cat section. Besides the usual rows of boxes of cats in stasis, peering with unseeing eyes out of their boxes, waiting to be dropped in the bathtub and be activated, I saw on the shelf a cat harness! I snapped it up.  It came with a nice bungee leash so you could take your kitty for strolls down the boulevard.

So, tonight, Nutty was prowling around while I was trying to wash dishes, letting out mournful howls and scurrying to the back door and looking at me suggestively. I took off my dish gloves and opened the harness. I actually got it on her pretty quickly since she didn’t know what was coming. As soon as I gave a little tug on the leash, however, she crouched and regarded me with extreme suspicion. She didn’t budge. So I picked her up and carried her outside. She liked that, all right!  I walked around the back yard with her for a few minutes while she nibbled and stalked leaves.  Every once in awhile she rolled over and attempted to claw the harness, but it seemed to be holding tight. The wind was picking up and I didn’t feel like spending my evening in the cold, dark backyard with my cat, so I brought her round front where I could easily look through the door and see how she was getting on. I tied the leash securely to the porch railing.

After about five minutes of washing dishes, I peeked through the glass in the door and to my consternation, there was the leash, tied to the rail, and there was the harness- dangling, empty! I ran out and looked all around. No Nutty. I called and tsked- nothing.  Finally, I got down on my knees and looked through the lattice to the crawl space under the porch. And there she was- a dim figure in the back somewhere, trying to figure out how she could get deeper into the little spaces under the house where sprickets dwell (look them up- a very interesting species of dark-crevice-habitating cricket/spider). She noticed me and trotted over to say hello through the lattice. I even felt her wet nose on my hand. And then she was out of reach.  At long last, she slipped under the lattice to see what lay outside.  I tiptoed after her, knowing that any sudden move could cause her to race off into the dark, never to be seen again. Suddenly, the neighbor’s dogs on the other side of the fence began to bark and poor, terrified Nutty went running. Lucky for me, straight into a corner between the garage and the fence. And that was the end of her adventure. I lunged, grabbed, and despite her wild struggles and swiping paws, deposited her safely inside the house.

Stay tuned for… “Cats in Space! One cat’s ride in a rocket after knocking over Christmas tree!”

I am looking for your recommendations, dear readers. Author recommendations. Or, less easy, people I should get to know. What I am talking about is this. Two of my great inspirers concerning the essential being of everything are Madeleine L’Engle and C.S. Lewis. When I read them, I somehow am launched out of my everyday survival mode into a place where the universe is strange and wondrous and undiscovered. I feel more Me and at the same time more one with everything else. Do you know what I am talking about? If you know any other authors I might get to know that have a connection to this sort of Being, please, leave a comment.