Category Archives: Animals

Baby Bird Saga IV

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Well, a few updates.  When my friend went down to check on Lenny, he had flown the nest!  It was almost impossible to find him as he was in a fenced-in area full of plants and vines and there was no room to enter–just to try to look.  We couldn’t even reach past the chicken wire that held up the vines that obscured the heating unit.  Nonetheless, we both looked for what added up to an hour, I would imagine.  Finally, we just had to give up, but I stayed down in the hammock, hoping the parents would fly over and Lenny would somehow extricate himself.

When my friend came home, she took my place in the hammock and a half hour or so later I heard her call out that she needed help.  She had spied Lenny and was able to reach in and extract him from his jungle prison.  Back to the big rock, where lo and behold, his parents spotted him and his mother came and fed him one more time.  Then it was into his cage and into the house before a COLOSSAL rainstorm hit.  Buckets of water, crashing lightning and thunder that sounded like it was cracking the world open.  So glad our baby bird was not out in that!

Later I discovered two interesting facts on the internet.  #1. that just because we share a common last name, Lenny Dykstra does not serve as a good role model to name anyone after, even a bird.  So, I’m up for suggestions about what to rename him.  #2. that baby bird is most probably not a vermillion flycatcher but rather a house finch.  He looks exactly like the image online and male house finches do get rosy coloring around the head and chest, which accounts for the rosier birds we’ve seen accompanying the dull females.

So, very early Monday morning, my house guest departs leaving my family two creatures larger.  Hopefully the parent finches will continue to feed their baby and I’ll take over at night.  I’ve done some reading about the diet of finches and will provide sunflower and thistle seeds to attract the parents and give them a close by place to feed so hopefully they’ll continue to feed him. Looks like I’ll be spending a lot of time in my hammock in the lower garden, since the rock is a familiar feeding spot for both baby and birth parents.

Morrie, in the meantime, is leaving  a pathway of chaos in the front garden: pots tipped over, plants ripped out by the roots, little round stones from a mocajete spread over the terrace.  Diego is complicit in the chasing games that created some of this disorder, but with the baby bird feeding in back, I dare not put the dogs there.  I fear they don’t understand about inter-species family fealty.

Now it is 11:22 PM.  Morrie is curled up beside me in bed, I can hear strains of banda music from the town down below.  It is the festival for the town’s namesake, St. John the Baptist, who has done a good job of baptizing us all this day and for the week preceding it.  The bird formerly known as Lenny is literally asleep with his head tucked under his wing and I am about to do the same.  Your mission, if you should choose to accept it, is to help me think up a new name for baby bird.  Sweet dreams to all, or, more likely, good morning.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/all-about-me/

This Bear Walks into a Bar in Alaska

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“This Bear Walks into a Bar in Alaska”

I sit and wait for their cessation–
these blocks to actual conversation
that make me want to sputter, choke,
and leave before another joke
escapes the lips of that lame teller
who thinks his dumb jokes are so stellar
that they stand in for actual
statements that are factual.

It makes me want to take a toke,
to whinny, bark, meow or croak.
I don’t like jokes too awful much.
I find they are another crutch
that keeps at bay words intimate
with words that entertain or cut.
Make no mistake, I love a pun,
and humor is a lot of fun.

Laughter’s not the problem, see.
It’s jokes that really bother me.
Using someone else’s words
is what I find slightly absurd.
What’s more, there’s always just one more
joke to tell.  It’s such a bore.
I want to hear your mind at work–
not jokes retold by every jerk.

Even so, I’m prompted to
find a joke to tell to you.
So rather than betray my taste,
and hoping you’ve some time to waste,
I’m going to give a punch line here
and though I know it’s kind of queer,
I hope you’ll try to take a poke.
Here’s a punch line. Please write the joke:

“You see, I’m a bipolar bear.”
(Write me the joke now if you dare.
Don’t feel you have to make it rhyme.
A joke in prose takes half the time.)

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/ha-ha-ha/

Achievement

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ACHIEVEMENT

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I’ve been trying to locate these fellows in my Virginia Creeper vine that hangs over my terrace table for weeks. They are huge, but also hard to find in the foliage and they do make a tremendous mess, pooping on my glass table. So, our achievement was actually finding two of them in one day. I never have been able to figure out what kind of caterpillar they are, but we’ve had some great adventures over the past 13 years. One day I’ll publish pics I took of the year I established a caterpillar triage unit. Does anyone know what those “crystals” growing out of its head are? The above guy looks like something out of Alice in Wonderland!

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WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge Prompt: Achievement —Have you just run 26.2 miles, finished a long-term project, or met a personal goal? This week, show us an achievement.

“Flutter” : The Surrogate

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The Prompt: Sounds Right—This is clearly subjective, but some words really sound like the thing they describe (personal favorites: puffin; bulbous; fidgeting). Do you have an example of such a word (or, alternatively, of a word that sounds like the exact opposite of what it refers to)? What do you think creates this effect?

I’ve always loved the word “’Flutter” as it applies to a butterfly or moth.  What better word could be used to describe the motion of their wings?  The moth described in my poem, however, was noticeable because of its lack of flutter.  It landed upon my computer screen like a magnetized object to metal and remained there for over two hours.  The moth pictured in the poem is the actual moth.  Tiny and green, it became part of my writing experience. Since it had chosen to remain in one position, directly on my screen, I was forced (by choice) to write around it, which could not help but influence the poem that resulted.

 

 

Away

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Away

Written in the morning, long before the day
sneaks in like an intruder, intent to have its say,
words born in the nighttime flower on their own,
bursting into bloom as soon as seeds are sown.

Truth is there behind us before it ever shows—
in words before they’re spoken, in wind before it blows.
Once recognized, I free these words to flow over the world—
off on their own to have a life wherever they’re unfurled.

Sent swiftly to their different spheres to live a life apart
from one who followed after, like a horse without its cart—
I like to set my words loose to canter on their own,
to feed upon wild grass that also roots where it has blown.

The Prompt: After an especially long and exhausting drive or flight, a grueling week at work, or a mind-numbing exam period — what’s the one thing you do to feel human again?

Groundhogs in Sri Lanka

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Groundhogs in Sri Lanka

Groundhog Day (the movie) was frustrating for sure.
When that same day kept happening, there seemed to be no cure.
But this was not reality. It really could not be.
And so to write about it has no appeal for me.

Instead I want to write about something on my mind;
and it, indeed, is something day after day I find.
When I look at my statistics on my blogging site,
I see the countries that have viewed my blog each day and night.

And when I see “Sri Lanka” occur day after day,
I wonder who that person is and what they’d have to say
if they could comment on the words that I have said to them
and wish that I could know a little more of her or him.

So if you read this message and know that it is you
who reads my blog, reveal yourself. Say who you are, please do.
I’ve been to Sri Lanka many years ago and saw
Colombo and the stupas—I viewed them all with awe.

The elephants in Kandy, the tea fields on the way,
the little inn called “Bird’s Nest” where we slept at end of day.
We climbed Anuradhapura, we stood beneath the tree
where Buddha sat 2,000 years ago. (How can this be?)

You probably weren’t born then so I’m sure we didn’t meet;
or as a babe in arms, perhaps you passed me in the street.
But nineteen sixty-seven (or was it sixty-eight?)
is very long ago and so I’m sure it’s not my fate

to reconnect with anyone I might have met back then
and it is not important what happened way back when.
To me, it is more vital to know what’s happening now,
and that is why a day or so ago I made a vow.

I mention this thing only to try to drive you to
share a little bit of what it might be to be you.
I’ve told you all my secrets, kept nothing back in shame;
so dear Sri Lanka viewer, please at least reveal your name!

 The Prompt: Groundhog Week—If you could relive the past week, would you? Would you change anything?

 

 

Dreaming A Path

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Dreaming A Path

Dream, Fri. Oct 18, 2013

We were at a booth in a café. It was a huge room with booths on every side and each booth had a clock, or at least I thought they did. I don’t think I ever looked. Our alarm started going off and there was no way to turn it off. It was by me and I tried and tried but couldn’t get it off. I said I was just going to unplug it, but Patti said perhaps it was timed with all the other clocks at tables and then it wouldn’t match. I said couldn’t they just reset it when we left? Someone agreed, but still we didn’t unplug it and it went on and on and on. Very annoying. Our booth came equipped with a little dog. It was tiny and light with long very curly white hair that was in loose corkscrew very long ringlets. It was so adorable and affectionate. I held it most of the time. It had legs like wires that went straight down..very skinny…and it jumped a lot. When the waitress came, we told her about the alarm and she said yes, she’d noticed that it was going off…but she didn’t do anything about it. We told her how cute the little dog was and she said yes…but then it seemed like it was the little dog who had the alarm that was going off. We ordered and afterwards I was wanting a dessert but thought I shouldn’t order one. Patti was to my right and I suddenly realized she was eating a very rich chocolate dessert—a sort of fudge flan or very moist slippery cake that was hot with a hot fudge sauce over it. She offered me a taste. It was a very small rectangle…not very big…but I tasted it and immediately said I’d have one, too. It was incredible. Still, the alarm went off. It was driving me crazy! Then I woke up and realized it was my own bedside alarm. I reached up with my eyes still closed and tried to turn it off, but couldn’t find the control. Finally I picked it up, opened my eyes and found the control. It was 8:10. The alarm had been going off for 10 minutes!!!!

My interpretation:

I found this dream in a folder on my computer. I have no memory at all of having dreamed it, and perhaps that distance makes it easier for me to interpret it. In a few weeks, I turn 67. For the past year, I’ve thought repeatedly about death and the fact that if I’m lucky, I probably have only 30 years left. For some reason, that awareness is very stressful. I feel a need to finish everything I’ve started and never completed. Earlier, that consisted of a lot of sorting, construction of storage spaces and weeding out of the contents of my house. That effort is ongoing. What also happened, however, is that I have an incredible drive to get everything published that has been lying around in file cabinets for many many years as well as a need to write new work and somehow disseminate it. My blog is part of that effort, as are my efforts to get all my books on Amazon and Kindle.

Seeing this dream as if for the first time, I clearly see that theme of time running out coupled by a sense of alarm that I need to do something about it. The little dog shows the attractive quality (adorable and affectionate) of finally dealing with all these loose ends—(note all his corkscrew hairs). Those wiry little legs that kept him always active certainly reflect the urgency I’ve been feeling to write write write.

One aspect of this awareness in my real life for a time consisted of my fear that I will stop breathing. This often gets me up gasping at night to run outside to try to breathe. For some reason I haven’t had any of these panic attacks since I started writing every morning. What I interpreted as a growing fear of death and a dread of ceasing to exist was perhaps a fear of not living and creating while I am alive.

I think the interplay between my sister Patti and me in the dream reflects a number of things. One is a difference in our approaches to life. I think in a way, she is more of a rule-follower and since she was my immediate pattern for most of my earlier life, I think a part of me feels this same need, but this is coupled with an equal and stronger need to create my own path in a direction unique from my two older and very competent sisters and to break a few rules to do so. At a very early age, much as I admired and imitated my sisters, I felt the need to prove myself. To find something to know that they didn’t already know. I found this route when I started venturing out at an early age to find new ground where they had not gone before me. It led me first into the homes of friends and strangers where I saw life being acted out in a manner entirely different from my own home. The road led further—to summer camp where I was a stranger to all and vice versa. I loved being the stranger. In choosing a college, I fell back on the reliability and comfort of attending the same school my sister had attended, but in my Jr. year I took my first big leap—a trip around the world on World Campus Afloat. That early adventure in seeing dozens of new and strange cultures set my life path. I’ve been traveling ever since and have been living in Mexico for the past 13 years.

I believe this dream depicts the sense of urgency I’ve had my entire life to “do” something with experience. My art and writing allow me to turn off the alarm for the hours in which I practice them. That small dessert might symbolize the rewards of doing what I need to do to do so.

P.S. An interesting insight I have had just as I started to post this: (And, interestingly enough, wordpress will not accept my blog entry. Perhaps it is insisting I add this P.S. before it does so.) I just got back to Mexico from a visit to the states wherein I visited my oldest sister Betty who is now in the depths of the world of Alzheimer’s. While I was there, she seemed increasingly distressed by the fact that she can no longer communicate, but one day as we were sitting in the living room portion of her small apartment in a managed care Alzheimer’s wing, she motioned to the middle of the floor and said, “Look a that cute little white thing there—that fluffy little white dog!” This was the first incidence that I know of of her actually hallucinating visually, and for some reason it popped into my mind in relation to the little dog in my dream. All of these images—of our dreams as well as our daily life—remind us to live while we can and to do what is most important to us. In my case as well as my sister’s—to communicate. Too late for her, although she continues to try. Not too late for me.

P.S.S.  By the way, the instant I completed the above P.S., the wordpress page that had continued to not allow me to post this blog entry flashed the message:  What do you want to post?  Text? Picture?  I chose text and and you have just read it.

The prompt: Freudian Flips. Do you remember a recent dream you had? Or an older one that stayed vivid in your mind? Today, you’re your own Freud: Tell us the dream, then interpret it for us! Feel free to be as serious or humorous as you see fit, or to invent a dream if you can’t remember a real one.

Note in response to this prompt: (When I think of dreams, I think of Jung, not Freud, and he continues to influence my thoughts and actions much more than Freud ever did.)

 

World Like a White Stomach

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World like a White Stomach, Red Optional

My world is not round
and so it does not move in circles
like your world.
It is so small I stand above it, my head in space,
while a two-colored rainbow stretches out in my wake—
a straight line which is an echo
of my unbent trajectory into the universe.
Three navels has my world
for the three births it delivers us to:
into this world, within and out of it.
Each is an adventure more easily seen
in a straight world where everything
is not always repeating itself.
Here, fish swim out of the water.
Birds more commonly walk.
And in the distance, we see colors
not of our world.
Stop and go.
The green of earth.
The red that is only an option as we look away,
searching for the million worlds beyond.

The Daily Post Prompt: One day, your favorite piece of art — a famous painting or sculpture, the graffiti next door — comes to life. What happens next?

Daily Post: The Avid Student

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Today’s Prompt:  You can choose any person from history to teach you any topic you want. Who’s your teacher, and what do they teach you?

The Avid Student

Mrs. O’Leary, teach me how
please oh please, to milk a cow.
I won’t leave here till you do.
I’m bored today, and feeling blue.
Yesterday I baked a cake
with that new baker, name of Jake.
It didn’t rise.  It tasted awful.
Couldn’t eat but one small jaw full.
Day before I went to see
Joe the tailor.  Him and me
made a dress of chambray lace
but when I held it near my face
I found it itched me terrible.
To wear it was unbearable.
So I went on to see the preacher.
Wanted him to be my teacher.
But when it came the time to pray,
he found he hadn’t much to say.
I fear that I destroyed his faith.
I left him white as any wraith,
but found the cobbler in a pew
and asked him how to make a shoe.
He’d witnessed what the preacher did
and so he ran away and hid.
So Mrs. O’Leary, it’s up to you
to show me something I can do.
I know it’s dark, but I need right now
to know just how you milk your cow.
I brought a lantern.  I’ll hold it high.
It’s not real light, but we’ll get by.
I’ll just sit on this straw bale.
You fetch the cow and fetch the pail.
I love the way the hot milk steam
swirls around the rising cream.
I love the rhythm and the pomp
of my light squeeze and Bessie’s stomp
whenever I let loose her tit.
I cannot get enough of it!
But now we’re done and I can see
that bucket’s much too much for thee
to lift,  I’ll put the lantern down and
come with thee to give a hand.
I’ll come right back and close the barn.
Tomorrow, I’ll have quite a yarn
for everyone I want to tell
I finally did something well!!!!

For those of you unacquainted with Mrs. O’Leary, I include this description of The Great Chicago Fire of 1871:

“The summer of 1871 was very dry, leaving the ground parched and the wooden city vulnerable. On Sunday evening, October 8, 1871, just after nine o’clock, a fire broke out in the barn behind the home of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary at 13 DeKoven Street. How the fire started is still unknown today, but an O’Leary cow often gets the credit.

The firefighters, exhausted from fighting a large fire the day before, were first sent to the wrong neighborhood. When they finally arrived at the O’Leary’s, they found the fire raging out of control. The blaze quickly spread east and north. Wooden houses, commercial and industrial buildings, and private mansions were all consumed in the blaze.

After two days, rain began to fall. On the morning of October 10, 1871, the fire died out, leaving complete devastation in the heart of the city. At least 300 people were dead, 100,000 people were homeless, and $200 million worth of property was destroyed. The entire central business district of Chicago was leveled. The fire was one of the most spectacular events of the nineteenth century, and it is recognized as a major milestone in the city’s history.”

Nesting (May 3, 2014)

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                                                                           Nesting
For most of the day on Thursday, I wondered at the profusion of birds whose cheeping seemed to be filling the air outside my kitchen, but as the afternoon wore on, I realized that the sounds—like a cross between a puppy’s squeeze toy and a handful of fingernails scraping across a chalk board or 5 squeegees being pulled across dry glass—was coming from my kitchen. A dining room chair served as a step up to the counter top, where I stood as I removed  the terracotta statues and pots from the top of my cupboards. The sounds seemed to be coming from there, but I found nothing but a half-inch crack between the concrete wall overhang and a triangular piece of board that had been placed in the corner to seal the gap.

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I went outside to see if I could locate what I now was sure was a nest of baby birds making all the racket, but I could see no place other than the half-cylindrical teja roof tiles where the nest could be. Meanwhile, every time I drew close to the corner where the sound was coming from, they grew quiet, but when I whistled for the dogs, the little chirping choir resumed, as though I’d called out to them and they were answering. The next morning, I feared the worse, as for an hour there was no sound, but when Yolanda arrived to clean, they started out again, and she was as intrigued as I was about where they could be. We got a ladder and Pasiano climbed up to inspect every inch of area on the outside of the house where they could be. He peered up a six foot long expanse of tejas but could see nothing up the tubes for as far as he could see. Yet the chirping went on for all of yesterday as well as today.

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The biggest part of the mystery is that I have never seen a parent bird enter the tejas from any side. The babies are quiet in between chirpings, which seems to indicate a mother bird arriving with fresh nestling fuel, but I can’t figure out how she is getting to the nest—wherever it is. Needless to say, as irritating as their shrill chirpings have grown to be, I prefer them to the opposite—the silence that indicates the mother has not been coming back and that her nestlings have met with a premature demise.

Birds abound here, if not in the same profusion as when 13-year-old vines covered every surface of the walls and palms, but this morning I was awakened by the loud peckings of three woodpeckers on the now-exposed trunks of my 80-foot-high palm trees. I scrunched my eyes up to watch them hop up and down a 20 foot expanse of palm, working their way around the circumference of the tree as well as up and down, their very loud pecking forming a percussion background to the chirping coming from the kitchen. For once, I knew where my camera was, so I snapped a few shots.

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I had thought to spend this day in isolation to get some writing done, but sometimes the quieter our day, the more activity we find in it. Bottle rockets as loud as cherry bombs have been going off in the hills all around me for the past two hours. I don’t know what the celebration may be, but I’ve grown accustomed to their weekly if not daily presence. There is a birthday or a communion or a wedding or a quinceañera being celebrated. Or a holy day or some national holiday.

Even if I stay inside my house and do not answer the phone, the world finds me and I can’t complain, for I always have something to write about, even if it is not the topic I had planned.