Cooper & Redford

We have 2 new residents at Casa Vulpini and, as is the custom here, they have received their names (whether they want them or not) by virtue of their multiple appearances.

The first is Cooper, a Cooper's Hawk (I know, not very original, but we seem to think it fits) that has a nest high in one of the taller oaks and has become a regular feature in the yard - much to the dismay and detriment of the birds that feed here as well ... they are, after all, its preferred food. We've watched our little daredevil live up to its reputation as it flies perilously fast through the fairly dense woods here. I was reading that in a study of Cooper's Hawks, they found that nearly 1/4 of the ones examined had healed fractures in their chest - typically their wishbones. Dangerous game, this eating stuff!

I caught Cooper during his/her ablutions one Saturday morning. Cooper and I watched each other for a while before I decided to risk slowly dragging the camera out of its bag and changing lenses. Perhaps the raptor was waiting on the rapture because it seem to care less about my very obvious presence. These are but a few of the shots spanning a 15 - 20 minute period.

I'm quite sure we will have words if Cooper decides to snatch dinner from under our noses, but perhaps the raptor will keep it on the sly and wow us with its aerial stunts instead.

Next on Kitsuni Acres is Redford. He appeared as a complete shock early one morning and has now shed the light on the recent questions of, "...what are these deer rooting for?" He's big enough (we think somewhere around 150-200 pounds, although looking at him tonight he seems bigger than that) that he should have tusks already if he's a wild boar; so perhaps he's an escaped domestic. Either way, we aren't really keen on having Redford as a guest beneath the bird feeder. He's sharing the space with both the deer and the fox routinely so there seems to be some peaceful accord ... so far. We now suspect he's been around a while and that would explain the few odd diggings in the yard. Redford does have a sweet tooth for the bird seed. He is very shy and very fleet footed. Ah! The pleasures of rural life! Sigh...............

On Books

Have you ever read something that truly surprised you – something so far off your radar that you actually thought about it long after you read it? I had just such an occasion reading Wings of Madness recently. It was an intriguing biographical and historical story surrounding something that we are all more than familiar with … flight – specifically, the beginning of flight! The biographical subject rubbed shoulders with many notables with whom we are so familiar: Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel Pierpont Langley, Gustave Eiffel, Theodore Roosevelt as well as the Cartiers, the Rothschilds and Princess Isabelle. Yet this is a man who was unknown to me, absent from the histories I have read and studied. He was a Brazilian national who spent most of his life in Paris and was on the very public forefront of man’s venture into the realm of birds at the same time as Orville and Wilbur Wright, who, in stark contrast, were keeping their aeronautical developments quite secret. His name is Alberto Santos-Dumont.

Santos-Dumont is revered in the country of his birth, Brazil, and many there hold that the homage of first in flight should belong to him. I think it curious that, I feel safe in saying, most of the people in this country have never heard of this shy, eccentric personality.

I kept waiting for the book to become dry and overly factual – a sure antidote for insomnia for me; however, dryness never happened. The book did plod along in a few places and the very nature of the subject would seem to dictate a yawn, but the author, Paul Hoffman, just kept drawing me in further and further. That I’m even writing about it here is a surprise, but I felt it worth sharing.

I am making a conscious effort to read through the embarrassing amount of books that we’ve collected over the years. Granted two thirds of the books are how-to books and such, but it’s the volumes of fiction and non-fiction that I am trying to claim. Books just seem to collect on our shelves like dust and are often abandoned after acquisition; overwhelming in their weight and noticed only upon moving. Ironically, the re-claiming began during a week long bed rest in a Vicodin haze after pulling my back out moving boxes of said books. It has been interesting and enlightening to go to a shelf and pick a half a dozen books and just read them through, not thinking about "what's next". I’m finding while reading I’m remembering why I chose a book to begin with, be it subject, author or both. Although there have been some exceptions to the moratorium on “new” books over the last 13 months, in the main it has been a worthy endeavor to visit our own library instead of another worm’s shelves. Equally satisfying is keeping a list of what I have read, therefore eliminating the dependence on a disgustingly shallow short-term memory pool that is evaporating by the day.

Happy reading!

Flip

There’s a new pea in our pod. Grandchild #5 and this time it was a girl! I’m still amazed after raising 3 girls that we only had grandsons. I figure this girl is either going to be very spoiled or very tough – perhaps both!

It was pretty much a dream delivery, except she apparently got stuck for a bit and it broke her right collar bone. So her little arm is all trussed up in a mini-sling. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s already got one up on her brothers and cousins – guess there’ll be a time for bragging rights, huh?

She arrived with a full head of blond hair and has a brother/cousin approval rating of 100%. Her oldest brother met her for the 1^st time in the hospital and after examining the bar coded ID band on her leg he turns to his mom and said, “Mommy, have you paid for this baby yet?” (great fits of laughter erupted among the adults in the room). With the most serious look on his face he pumped his right arm with a flat, backhand for emphasis and continued, “Mommy, you HAVE to pay for this baby!” After the ruckus died down a bit he observed the changing of the diaper and further added to the family we’ll just save this for later archive with a, “Mommy, why is her willy so little?” May the Goddess help her!

So … Flip … a nickname - a grandpa’s. How did this name come to be, you may ask. In a text message from me to the auntie person, I asked for baby news while labor was happening. Auntie replies, “No flipping baby yet!” So there you have it folks, Flip, the new pea in a pod of boys – maybe the Goddess should help them!!!

btw Michelle, funny that we both did a baby pea post - appears we both believe in a certain prerogative ;)

Bittersweet

A few nights ago I lay back in the lounge on the front porch, wrapped tightly against the cold, and listened to the sounds of the creatures of the wood. Warmed by a glass of wine and the enjoyment of being able to spend some time outdoors on a cold winter’s night, the smells were crisp and clean and I caught an overtone of someone’s fireplace smoke. The night air was still and there was no other sound; no planes, no traffic, no gunfire and no insects – blissfully quiet. I watched the stars gather overhead, offering but scant light to the landscape and little-to-none beneath the canopy. There was movement beneath the Catalpa tree and sounds of drinking from the birdbath. The birdbath lay in such shadow that I was having a difficult time discerning which of the wood folk was there; perhaps a fox, but the sounds were sloppier than their petite, polite drinking. Then there was a familiar scrape/click sound that told me it was Tiny Tim before I saw the little deer cross the drive to browse the leavings under the bird feeder in the front garden. Scrape/click … Tiny Tim was by himself again and once again I felt sad for the fawn – sad for his aloneness and sad for his struggle. I also felt glad that he had appeared once again. I was barely breathing and stayed stock still, hoping that he would ignore my presence on the porch and continue his browse.

Tiny Tim and his mother showed up one Saturday morning a little over a month ago. They could have been any number of fairly nondescript doe/fawn pairs that have graced our feed, but this morning they stood out in a very disheartening and grotesque way – both were limping terribly. I grabbed the binoculars and discovered that they both had a problem with their left front leg. The doe was missing the lower part of her leg, just below the knee and Tiny Tim looked like his leg was broken. Though stunned, I managed to get the shot above. I called the wildlife rescue group and they were very sympathetic and very pragmatic about the realities of intervention. They were most emphatic that the deer, like dogs and cats, learn quickly and adapt to just the use of three legs. They went on to say that tranquilizing and movement usually created such trauma that the deer usually expired. It was hard to hear, but I felt better for making the call. It’s not ours to know what happened to this pair of ruminants; it could have been a catastrophic stumble following a startle, perhaps dogs or coyotes or an intersecting vector incident with a vehicle. On that Saturday the doe looked pretty scrawny, but over the next couple of weeks she was filling in the spaces between her ribs and overall Tiny Tim looked healthy except for his ruined leg. Much to the delight of the other ruminants we increased the ration of corn and feed so that Tiny Tim and mom would be well provisioned. It was always bittersweet to see them appear in the following weeks.

I sat listening to Tiny Tim munch on the fallen bird seed, pushing his snout beneath the landscape cloth that had a seam that passed beneath the feeder and collected pockets of seed. My eyes had adjusted to the scant light of the night and I watched with amazement at his capacity to support himself with his one good leg. I worried that he would spook if he noticed my presence; however, he did not. I cannot imagine any deer not noticing a human presence a mere ten feet away. Perhaps this night it didn’t matter.

My thoughts drifted away to my dad who is recovering from a fall and broken hip that resulted in a replacement surgery a few weeks ago. I’ve listened to him verbalize his struggles trying to stand and sit following surgery and I began to weave a symbiotic pattern around my observation of Tiny Tim. It was woven mostly of threads spun from the will to survive and the fortitude it takes to do so. When I walked into dad’s hospital room he was napping and the first thing I noticed was the sign above his bed that read “BLIND & HOH”. The blind part registered but the “HOH” took a few minutes before I realized that it meant hard of hearing. Almost immediately I wished that it said “92 YEARS OLD” as well. What a lot to deal with, but he seems to have a good attitude when he’s not being goofy from the pain meds and such. I thought about Tiny Tim and actually marveled at nature’s mechanism (whatever it may be) for dealing with pain and infirmity. Dad’s in a sub-acute rehab facility after his release from the hospital. Tiny Tim is browsing for food and water. Dad’s range is 4 feet from the bed to the chair. Tiny Tim’s range is far beyond our vision.

Again, in the darkness, I hear scrape/click, scrape/click as Tiny Tim, dragging his left hoof and catching himself with his right, moves off to parts unknown and other morsels. We haven’t seen his mom in a couple of weeks. It’s probably a safe bet that she didn’t make it. Thankfully he’s old enough to know where and how to browse for food. My thought returns to dad, wondering if there aren’t volunteer’s who will read to him since he falls asleep during a book-on-tape. Thankfully he still knows his way around the dinner plate.