“There’s a camel.”

We took our traditional annual Thanksgiving trip to North Little Rock to spend a couple days with my parents, my brother, David, and his daughter, Haley (15, beautiful, and brilliant).  Even though I didn’t get to visit much with my brother, Jessica and Haley maximally enjoyed their few hours together and we all had  a nice visit with Mom and Dad.  As usual, we ate  plenty of delicious food, and Grandpa capped it all off by reading “The Snaystorm Surprise.”

On the way home today, I was driving while various other family members were reading, working, and/or snoozing.  A bit north of Clinton, shortly after the long uphill, I spied a brown horse in a pasture off to the right of the highway.  He was head down grazing, but the base of his neck formed an unusually  sharp angle with his shoulders, making him look like he had a hump.  Jokingly, I pointed toward him and called out to the crew, “There’s a camel.”  Just then, he raised his head, and, lo and behold, he really WAS a camel!  He just stood there in his field, minding his own camelly business.  How very strange.  A real, honest-to-goodness camel (single hump variety) right there in suburban Botkinburg – and on Black Friday to boot!

How much is that doggie. . . on my porch?

For the umpteenth time, someone dropped a stray dog on us last week.  This dog lived on our porch for several days and of course, Andrew became DEEPLY attached to it.  Many of the dogs who have shown up have been really dumb, but this one was quite intelligent.  It was a female, young, but not just a puppy, black all over, probably part Labrador Retriever.  She was friendly, but not yipping and jumping all over you.  If I wanted a dog, she could have been it.

I have learned how to wean Andrew from these dogs.  I have to give him at least a day’s warning that we’re taking it to animal control.  I must then remind him a few times of what is going to happen and why.  Then, at the moment of departure, I take some pictures of him with the dog, he helps load it into the van, and I drive off.  It’s fifteen miles to animal control and “Jenny” spent her time sitting up regally and looking out the windshield or curled up resting on the front seat.  She was totally calm.

At animal control, however, she would not get out of the van, and the worker had to come out and carry her into the building.  I drove away, crying.  Why do people do this to us?  They rip our emotions and cause us inconvenience, and we haven’t done ANYTHING to them.  They don’t even know us, for crying out loud!  Why DO they feel compelled to drop their unwanted animals on us?

I guess that’s one of those rhetorical questions that cannot and will not be answered, but she surely was a nice dog.  She made me actually think seriously about the possibility. . .

Lizard in my living room

I was on the phone with a friend and sat down in my green recliner.  While we talked I suddenly became aware of something moving just outside my peripheral vision, over my left shoulder.  Thinking it might be a spider, I stood up and turned to see a blue-tailed skink crawling up the chair, where the back joins the “wing.”  Wow!

Fortunately, I am not averse to insects, spiders, snakes, reptiles, or amphibians – when observed in their natural habitats.  I do, however, take exception to lizards in my LA-Z-BOY.  I called Andrew to, “QUICK, come see it” – partially because blue-tailed skinks are so unique (their tails really are a bright cobalt blue) and partially because I am lazy, and I was hoping he could catch it and relocate it to the great out of doors while I finished my phone conversation.

The little feller was perched atop my chair, but while we studied him and considered our options, he dove down into an upholstery crevice and out of sight.  Hmmm. . .  As far as we knew, he was still somewhere inside the chair, so we searched, we dug, we prodded, we tugged.  We tipped the chair up and pulled it out from the wall, but no lizard appeared.

Now, this was a bit of a problem.  I did NOT want to wonder, each time I sat down, if my LA-Z-BOY was still harboring a lizard.  No, sirree.  I wanted to find him, catch him, and remove him from our interior premises.

After a few minutes, our little friend climbed out of the bottom of the chair and began cautiously crossing the carpet. Thence ensued a lively living room lizard chase.  I’m sure Kelly was entertained to hear me say things like, “yes, we’re taking a week off from home group this Sund… Wait!  Maybe he’s down inside the chair.  You can’t catch a speedy lizard with a round container.  Get me something square,” and “So I’ll let you know once I know what we’re cooking for the cookout…  But without a lid, even if we catch him he’ll just jump out, so… THERE HE IS!  Give me that chopstick.”

When he settled in to moseying back and forth along the baseboard, I gently tormented him with a chopstick till he flopped into the (square) leftover dish Andrew had provided.  My young gentleman then carried the traumatized skink out front, where we will all three be much happier with his surroundings.

After I hung up with Kelly, who’s surely now fully persuaded that I am, indeed, nuts, Andrew said, “Lizard in your Living Room,” now that’s a blog title, Mom.

Two by two

For the past few days, although not today, I have seen two lovely softshell turtles in the creek under the bridge!  One is larger than the other, about dinner plate size, and the other is sandwich plate size.  They are both dark brown with black speckles.  Jessica used to see turtles like that under the bridge a few years ago, but I haven’t actually seen them in a very long time.

Then yesterday afternoon, while I was cooking, I looked out the kitchen window and saw a thin brown dog in our back yard.  Actually, it was probably over the property line in the neighbor’s yard; it was hard to tell.  Brown dogs are common around here.  The Aselins have one, Sparky, and the Ipocks have one, Molly, and there’s usually a brown stray or two wandering the area.

So that dog standing there didn’t really make much of an impact, until I glanced again and saw that there were suddenly two of them, side by side.  And they weren’t dogs.  They were very young deer!  No white spots from where I could see, but they surely were babies.  We watched them for a few minutes.  Next glance they were gone.

Like swinging from a chandelier

This year, I have two hummingbird feeders, both on the front porch, but hopefully positioned far enough away from each other that the birds won’t fight so much.  Yesterday, I found the front on lying on the porch, with the knot in the red rope its hung from undone.  there had been a breeze, but it didn’t seem like nearly enough wind to blow the feeder down.   I cleaned it, refilled it, and hoped we all the ants in the area wouldn’t get the email about the feast to be found in the indoor-outdoor carpet of our porch.

This morning, I happened past the living room window just in time to see a Baltimore Oriole on the side feeder!  How exciting!  We had one last year, too, and they are so pretty – black with orange chest, and smaller than a cardinal but bigger than an indigo bunting.  I had read last year that they like nectar and will feed from hummingbird feeders, but watching this guy was something else.  He had to keep shifting his weight as the feeder swung back and forth.  Quite funny, and he probably would have emptied the feeder if I hadn’t opened the door, sending him flying into one of the paper birch trees.

At least the mystery of the tipped feeder is solved:  the oriole, not the wind, was the culprit.

Score 30 for the gnats

It was a memorable camping trip.

Despite a rainy,  stormy forecast, we Robertses-who-never-give-up spent days planning and packing for our camping trip with the Browns, and Friday morning we drove (in rain most of the way) to Buffalo Point.   We knew that the only good weather expected all weekend would be early Friday afternoon, so we were prepared to work hard and get everything set up as quickly as possible.

In campground C, we stepped out of the van and into something from the Book of Exodus.  Literal clouds of hundreds of gnats swarmed so thickly around us that we had to constantly wave our arms like windshield wipers to keep them out of our faces.  I exaggerate not at all.  In an incredible burst of creativity, Josiah even did a dance while screaming ballistically, “it’s in my EYE!”  We all wish we’d gotten video of that one.

We did get set up.  Our friendly campground host (“Louis” from Heber Springs) came by to tell us that we were forecast to get SIX TO SEVEN INCHES of rain over the next two days and to suggest (although the campground some twenty feet above the river wasn’t expected to flood) that we get our boat ready.  The kids did get to swim.  The Browns did arrive.  We did discuss the options with them, and together we did make a decision that has never been made in Roberts family history:  we would build a big fire, cook our respective meals, eat them, and then pack up and go home. Can you believe it?!?!?

Which we did. And by the way, as we were preparing to depart, the park ranger came by and informed us that the storm (complete with tornadoes and hail!) was some 125 miles upriver – less as the crow (or gnat) flies – and heading straight for us at 25 miles per hour.  We were advised that our safest place in a tornado would be in the bathroom building.  Not too recreational, to say the least, so it seems that our decision to wimp out and spend the weekend camping in our house (more news on that adventure soon) was a wise one.

But while we were there, the gnats attacked in rare form, systematically biting all sectors of my legs exposed between shorts (knees) and socks (ankles).  After dinner, there were actually small trickles of blood running down my legs, and the final count was about 30 bites.  We won’t go into how cruddy I felt over the next couple days or how ferociously those bites did itch (and still do).  We won’t divulge the vast array of over-the-counter and prescription creams applied in an occasionally successful  effort calm the fiery itch.

Suffice it to say that great progress has been made.  Last night, the fourth gnat-night, I was actually able to  sleep, despite the sheets touching my legs, and this morning I have even been able to tolerate jeans for short periods of time.   The mystery is why, out of eleven campers present, all of whom were swarmed by the gnats, I was the only one they chose to cannibalize.  Either they had all gotten the locals’ discount for an all-you-can-eat buffet on my shins, or I’m just very special.

Visitor list

See today on, under, or near the bird feeder:

Cardinals

Blue jays

Mourning doves

Goldfinches

Bunny

Rose-breasted grosbeaks

Red-bellied woodpecker

Gray squirrels

Chipmunk

Indigo bunting

Bottoms up

I started noticing inverted (deceased) armadillos on the way to church this morning, so I started counting them:  northbound on Highway 65 between 160 and 60, four.  Three hours later:  southbound on the same stretch of Highway 65, seven.  It must be open season on armadillos.

An open letter to the wasps of Walnut Shade

Dear Wasps,

I humbly acknowledge that God made you all a few hours before us humanoids, but I think you’ve taken this entitlement mentality just a few wing flaps too far.

Why, for example, must you spend so MUCH time banging your heads into the ceiling of my kitchen?  I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time in there lately, and I am more than a little tired of your constant whizzing and crashing.

And while we’re at it, how the heck are you getting in in the first place?  (Sigh) I’m guessing you’ll claim it’s the laundry room door, and you’ll probably want to press charges for what you perceive to be my unlawful six-hour detention of your relative between the storm door and the laundry room door on Tuesday, but lemme tell you, “this ain’t no Guantanamo,” and in my defense, I did try THREE TIMES to let him out.  Frankly, I think he may be playing with only half a deck or something, because even though I stood there holding the door to the outside WIDE OPEN, he insisted on continuing his head-banging routine with the window glass.  Sheesh.

Then there’s the issue of mortality; more specifically where and how your kind chooses to die.  I got in the van yesterday – um, that would be the van parked  on the driveway with all the windows tightly closed – and two of your compatriots were dead on the dash.  That, in and of itself, wasn’t particularly unnerving, but they had positioned themselves symmetrically before passing on to their final reward.  One was four inches in from the left and the other was four inches in from the right.  Come on now; what’s up with that?!?

And if you guys are really as superior as you make yourselves out to be, why in the name of all that is holy holey can you never simply go back out the way you came in?

Look, I’m not a masochist, and I’m not waging jihad against you.  I don’t want you dead; I just want you out of my house and my car.  Is that really too much to ask? After all, those two entities together comprise only about 20,192 cubic feet of airspace.  Pretty restrictive for guys with wings, huh?  Especially when you’ve got the WHOLE REST OF THE WORLD to inhabit, for crying out loud!

But if you stubbornly refuse to leave, could you please just let up on the intimidation tactics?  Andrew totally freaks out when you practice your ballistic missile dive bomb routines.  In fact, if you’d just volume down a few notches, I think all would be well.

Sincerely,

Walnut Shade Mom

P.S.  I could pull out the RAID, you know.

Chance glance

I was invited to speak at our church’s MOPS meeting Thursday evening.  Thursday afternoon was pretty full, and I arrived home at 4:50 PM from taking Andrew to the doctor and the gym and needing to change clothes, collect my stuff, rendezvous with Jessica, eat supper, and leave preferably no later than 5:10 PM.  That would explain why I was standing at the kitchen counter while I scarfed a small plate of leftover Tex-Mex salad and some cold cheese dip and chips.  While crunching and munching, I just happened to glance out the back window, and guess what I saw on the ground near the bird feeder . . . ?

No, it wasn’t the red-winged blackbird.  He and his brother were up at the feeder.

No, it wasn’t the mourning dove, although he was pecking around at the base of the feeder.

No, it wasn’t even the baby bunny, who comes out several times a day to nibble grass between the smokehouse and the bird feeder.  He was out, too, and he’s SO TERRIBLY CUTE, which is why I almost failed to see the. . .

TWO brilliant blue indigo buntings, side by side in the long and shaggy grass of our very own backyard!  Wow!  They are the MOST beautiful birds, and I wish they had hung around longer.  As it was, I glanced up, saw them, watched them for 8.74 seconds, blinked, and they were gone.  What a wonderful chance glance.