Wild Things

Hope Sprouts Eternal

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Kathleen Fox

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.

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Dreaming of a Redneck Christmas

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

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!

Categories: Family, Wild Things | Tags: , , | 2 Comments

Why My Plants Are Thirsty

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

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.

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Black and White and Dread All Over

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

One of the pleasures of hiking in the Black Hills is seeing wildlife. Mule deer stand and watch you go by with casual interest. Whitetail deer leap away through the woods when they hear you coming, their tails waving to signal danger—not seeming to realize that if they just stood still you probably wouldn't see them in the first place. Turkeys flap away in flight as inelegant as the first attempts of the Wright brothers. Chipmunks dart across the rocks as if an invisible force were pulling them along by the tails that stand straight up over their backs.

On one recent hike, though, we saw something different. We were walking along an old railroad bed that had been built some 130 years ago a short way above the bottom of a narrow canyon. A moving flash of black and white in the canyon caught my eye, and I thought, "There's a Border Collie."

Close, but not quite. It was a skunk, the biggest one I've ever seen. (Of course, it's hard to get an accurate comparison, since most of the skunks I've seen were in various stages of squashedness in the middle of the highway.) It was a beautiful animal, with its dramatic striped coat and magnificent plume of a tail. Presumably the stripes help camouflage a skunk at night, but in the sunlight it seemed a tad overdressed, like a socialite in pearls and satin at a backyard barbecue.

Since skunks are both nocturnal and also one of the most common carriers of rabies, it's not a good sign to see one in the middle of a sunny afternoon. We kept very quiet, preferring to remain anonymous while we watched this one. Its behavior seemed normal enough. Though since we tend to do our hiking in the daytime and had never seen a skunk in the woods before, how would we know?

It was obviously on a mission, trotting down the bottom of the canyon. It came to a little spring, stopped to get a drink, then pattered on up the canyon and out of sight. Reassured—at least until we realized the skunk was between us and our car—we went quietly on with our hike in the opposite direction.

A little further along, on the opposite side of the canyon, we saw a huge bird perched atop a pillar of rock. We thought it was an eagle until we spotted its red head. It was a turkey buzzard, basking in the sun. It sat and watched us watching it, seeming to wait while we got the camera out. Then it spread its wings into an elegant sweep, the sun behind the long pinions haloing them in golden light. We expected it to launch into the air, but instead it just sat for several minutes, sunning itself, watching us take pictures almost as if it were posing.

Or maybe it was just waiting to see whether we would stop moving long enough to be considered lunch. We made sure to stay in motion, and after a while it gave up on us and flew away.

Some people might consider seeing a skunk and a turkey buzzard in the same afternoon a bad omen. It may have been. Or maybe not. We were just glad neither one was a mountain lion.

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Facing Up to the Pansy

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

I'm not sure when or why the word pansy became an epithet, a scornful term for a man who didn't seem "manly" enough. Besides, as a feminist and a parent of both daughters and sons, I could—and do—certainly take issue with why being considered effeminate is an insult in the first place.

But that's a rant for a different day. For now let's talk about pansies.

I bought a bunch of them this week, which I plan to put outside if it ever warms up enough to actually plant something. I've liked them ever since I was little and first noticed, in my grandmother's bed of pansies beside the back step, how much their blossoms resembled vivid little faces.

In the hierarchy of the garden, pansies are members of the chorus rather than stars. They don't have the fragrance of roses. They aren't dramatic and showy like peonies or gladioli. They aren’t temperamental or difficult to grow.

What pansies do have is character. The heat doesn't appear to wilt them. The ever-encroaching creeping jenny doesn't defeat them. Even the ineptitude of my gardening doesn't seem to faze them. They just keep blooming, through spring hailstorms, summer heat, and even the first early frost.

According to Merriam Webster, the word pansy comes from the Latin “pensare.” It means to ponder, and it’s also the root of “pensive.”

The name suits these bright yellow and purple flowers. Blooming is their business, and they do it conscientiously. Pansy faces aren't smiling and carefree. They wear the focused, serious expressions of those with important jobs to do.

Actually, they remind me of another group that does important work. A group that certainly would be described as effeminate and could easily be called pansies if the word meant what it ought to mean. They're tough, they have character, and they hang in there even when conditions are less than ideal.

Surely, by now, you know who I'm talking about. Mothers.

Categories: Wild Things, Words for Nerds | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments

Back Yard Biddies

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

It might be due to the economy. It might be due to the "natural foods" movement. It might be due to pressure from otherwise law-abiding citizens who have been seduced into illicit behavior by the lure of fresh eggs.

At any rate, earlier this spring our town considered an ordinance that would allow residents to keep chickens in their yards. The proposal was defeated, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it come around again.

Even though I am not a fan of chickens until they're cooked, this seems like a good idea to me. A handful of hens would be less aggravating to one's neighbors than a couple of Chihuahuas or a pit bill. It makes sense to have back yards used for something practical rather than just a place to water the grass and fertilize the grass so you have to mow the grass. Not to mention the appeal of having fresh eggs for the price of some vegetable peelings and a little chicken feed.

Of course, having fresh tomatoes from one's own garden is appealing, too, and we all know some of the pitfalls that lie between that particular idea and the reality. No doubt raising chickens would be the same.

In our case, for example, we have a huge back yard with ample grass in its natural state—even more natural since the lawn mower broke last fall. Theoretically, half a dozen hens could find a wonderful home out there.

I’m sure some of our neighbors would love the idea. The red fox who lives in the gully, for example. Mountain lions probably wouldn't bother much with chickens, but you never know. A fat hen now and then might be a tempting morsel and a nice change from venison. The money-saving aspect of raising chickens for the eggs would pretty much be wiped out if we had to lay in (if you'll pardon the expression) a fresh supply of hens every week or so.

Then there would be the issue of keeping the flock fed and watered when we're traveling. I suppose, in exchange for the eggs, it might be possible to find someone to look after them. We’d just need to enunciate very carefully when we asked if they’d be willing to chicken-sit.

Categories: Just For Fun, Wild Things | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

Crying Fowl

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

This was too much.

At the bird feeder, we've welcomed blue jays, tolerated an oversized yellow-shafted flicker, and succumbed to the overstuffed charm of a persistent squirrel who is even now probably eating for three or four. But today was beyond what even the most generous sunflower-seed provider should have to put up with.

In the middle of the afternoon, I heard thumping outside the window of my office. It sounded as if a heavy body had plunked itself down in one of the metal chairs out there on the deck.

Someone had landed in one of the chairs, all right, but only to use it as a launching pad onto the railing of the deck. There the uninvited visitor was, perched in front of the bird feeder, helping itself. Okay, okay, I do realize that having birds come and eat at the bird feeder is sort of the general idea.

Except that this was a turkey. A relic of the Jurassic Age that had no business inviting its large, awkward, and ugly self onto our deck. It was busy gobbling food intended for birds that were much smaller, much needier, and, let's face it, much better looking.

I charged outside, broom in hand just in case my yelling needed any emphasis. It didn't. The invader scrambled off the deck, landed in the snow, and made turkey tracks. It hasn't been back—so far.

But this was the last straw. Or the last turkey in the straw. If it shows up again, I may have to replace my broom with a slingshot or a pellet gun and teach it an important lesson about manners and the English language.

There is more than one way to interpret the phrase, "stopping by our house for dinner."

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The Wrestlers and the Resurrected Raccoon

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

Why would you put a dead raccoon into the luggage compartment of the bus in the first place? The brief item in our local paper didn't explain, but inquiring minds would like to know.

True, the passengers on this particular bus were high school boys, which may be all the answer inquiring minds need. I could understand their interest—purely scientific, undoubtedly—in a dead critter. What I didn't understand was how the raccoon ended up stashed with the luggage. To me this implied a certain amount of official collaboration, since presumably only the coach or the bus driver could open the storage compartment.

The person who shares my morning newspaper suggested I might be underestimating the ability of a group of teenaged boys both to sneak a dead critter past their adult supervisors and to surreptitiously open the electronic latch to the luggage compartment door. Having been a teenaged boy himself, he ought to know. He claimed he wouldn't have put a dead critter on a bus himself, but would have abetted such a project.

Not satisfied with this explanation, I did further research. (Yes, I know. Certain people have occasionally implied I don't have enough to do.)

I found that the raccoon caper was sanctioned, however unwisely, by at least one adult. Furthermore, it involved raccoon-bashing as well as raccoon-stashing. On a Friday evening, the high school wrestling team from Carrington, North Dakota, was on a bus headed for a regional tournament in Grafton. They spotted a raccoon and the coach stopped the bus. Several wrestlers got off, hit the raccoon with a pail, picked it up, and stuck it in the baggage compartment under the bus.

Presumably, this whole operation seemed like a good idea at the time.

But apparently a pail (plastic, do you suppose?) isn't a very effective murder weapon. The next morning, when somebody opened the compartment, the "dead" raccoon hopped out and trotted away.

The poor critter must have been confused. First it had been knocked unconscious with a pail and shoved into a cold metal compartment among luggage filled with wrestler's uniforms and socks (freshly laundered, one can only hope). Then it escaped, only to find itself in a strange place miles from home.

Maybe its near-death experience has led to a spiritual awakening, and it will spend the rest of its life ministering to homeless critters in the parks and alleys of Grafton. Or maybe it will sell its story ("Captured by aliens and left for dead in subzero weather!") to the National Inquirer and retire to a cozy home well out of sight of the highway.

Meanwhile, back at the bus, the wrestlers and their coach were having an awakening of their own. Because some of the boys had handled a wild animal and therefore might have been exposed to rabies, the whole team was deemed a health risk and barred from the tournament.

As far as I know, none of the wrestlers have come down with any mysterious diseases. But there's a rumor that several of them have developed an unusual urge to wash all their food before they eat it.

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The Case of the Curious Sciurus

Posted on December 17, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

"Squirrels are amazing climbers." I know this statement is true, because I saw it on a poster in my granddaughter's room.

She had done a fourth-grade research project on squirrels, which according to the poster are among her favorite animals. She has plenty of opportunity to study them first-hand, living as she does in a neighborhood where oak trees spread a lavish squirrel-friendly buffet of acorns on every street corner.

I also know the statement is true because I have seen it myself. A squirrel can scamper up the post to our second-floor deck and dash across the railing to the bird feeder faster than you can say, "That bushy-tailed little varmint is out there again!"

Squirrels are amazing eaters, too. In only a few minutes, the one that raids our bird feeder can stuff its furry little face with enough sunflower seeds to have fed the chickadees and finches for a week. For a critter without opposable thumbs, it is certainly efficient at shoveling in the calories.

The family name for squirrels, sciurus, comes from the Greek words skia, or shadow, and oura, or tail. A squirrel, then, is a creature who sits in the shadow of its own tail.

Our bird-seed pillager, however, would need a little hair-weaving or at least some serious backcombing before its tail could cast a broad enough shadow to cover it. We have a photo of the squirrel, taken from behind as it crouches at the feeder. The only possible caption for the picture is, "Does this winter coat make my backside look big?"

An honest answer would be, "Yes, it certainly does. You're well-fed, squirrel. Face it, you're fat. Why don't you put yourself on a low-carb diet? I'm sure the Atkins plan for arboreal overeaters would work well for you. By the way, it doesn't allow any stolen sunflower seeds."

To the frustrated owner of the bird feeder and buyer of the vanishing sunflower seeds, this has become war. He already captured a previous munching moocher in a humane trap and hauled it off to a different part of town. It was a sweet victory—at least until two days later, when the replacement squirrel and current occupant showed up.

The trap is back out on the deck. By request, I even brought home a bag of acorns to serve as bait when I came back from a recent visit to the grandkids. So far, it hasn't worked. The squirrel seems to be more interested in sunflower seeds than acorns. Which makes sense, after all; they're probably much easier to shell.

But when he does catch the squirrel, maybe we could ship it off to my granddaughter. I'm sure her parents would believe us if we said it came from Santa Claus.

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Robert Frost Didn’t Stop By These Woods

Posted on November 19, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

It's amazing what some people do in the woods.

The Black Hills National Forest is a multiple-use area, and on a shirt-sleeve warm Sunday afternoon in November it was certainly being used.

We were out there on serious business having to do with geology. Well, one of us was. The other, while willing to keep an eye out for the occasional outcrop or carry the rock hammer now and then, was just there for the hiking.

Pretty much everybody else was out on ATV's. We saw several family parties—Mom and Dad on the front seat of a four-wheeler, with two or three little kids squeezed into the back. There were a few hunters, in blaze orange caps and vests, with gun cases across their laps. There were a few hot-rodders whose goals seemed to be speeding over the bone-rattling trails as fast as they could go.

With all these vehicles buzzing up and down the narrow gravel road and dirt trails, walking in the woods wasn't exactly a deep wilderness experience. Not surprisingly, perhaps, we didn't see a single deer all day. We did meet one hunter, though, walking alertly through the trees with her rifle at the ready. She was obviously an optimist; in the unlikely event she did see a deer in the crowded woods, we hoped she was also an accurate shot.

Then there were the intrepid hill climbers on mud-spattered ATVs, with winches and ropes and tire repair kits. A group of them came up behind us in a narrow canyon, announcing their presence with a low rumble that increased to an ominous growl as they came closer.

We moved to the side of the trail, which suddenly seemed much too narrow. I alternated between apprehensive glances over my shoulder and checking the sides of the canyon for possible places to climb out.

But they were the ones looking for a place to climb. They stopped at the bottom of a slope that was almost a staircase of rocks. The lead rider, on his ATV painted with skull designs, took off his menacing full-face helmet and turned into a polite young Air Force sergeant. He pointed out to us the exact rock he had landed on when he had tried this climb earlier in the day and flipped his vehicle.

He made it this time, and so did his friends. Each four-wheeler crawled up onto the first ledge at just the right spot to avoid getting hung up on the big rock in the middle, jumped sideways at just the right angle to make it to the second level, then growled on up between rocks that a mountain mule might have balked at. It was impressive. It was amazing to watch. Personally, though, I'd feel safer on a mule.

We went out again the following Sunday, not in shirtsleeves this time but in warm coats, heavy gloves, and long underwear. It was 31 degrees and snowing. Oddly enough, we had the silent, peaceful woods to ourselves.

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