Stuck

Beautiful day, but I felt like little bunny *no-name* stuck on the inside looking out. I just had to stay in and take care of mundane things like housecleaning and laundry and bill-paying. What a drag! My DH cut the lawn and then went off crabbing, but I had to stay behind and *get something accomplished* – not very good at that lately. Blame it on the lazy days of summer, I guess.

The stray bunny is still here and is settling in, sort of. She (I’m guessing) is badly in need of a *fix* – I’m nearly certain that she was dumped by someone who couldn’t deal with the negative behaviors associated with sexual maturity in a rabbit. Most folks won’t even consider spending the money to neuter a rabbit. Too bad really, because neutering is the key to a good houserabbit. I can put up with the boxing, grunting, and circling because I understand what it’s about and that it’s a temporary behavior and how to fix it. I’ve scheduled an appointment with the vet for her to be spayed later this month – until then I just have to put up with a sex-crazed bunny. It’s sad to think of all the hutch bunnies that spend their lives in such a state! She’s given me quite a scare today, pulling out a mess of fur from her belly and arranging it with scattered hay in her litterbox to make a nest. I’m praying that she’s not already pregnant and is just practising.

As if nest-building weren’t entertaining enough while trying to get the house cleaned, Cricket, destroyer of cardboard boxes, got into a tussle with the vacuum cleaner while I wasn’t paying attention. She isn’t afraid of it at all, unlike Boomer who runs for the other end of the porch. Any time I try to vacuum their bed, she pushes the vacuum hose out and tries to bite it. This afternoon while vacuuming I set the hose down to move their toys out of the way and turned around to find the hose attached to sweet Cricket’s face! Poor thing – I couldn’t stop laughing, but felt so guilty for doing it! Gotta wonder if she’ll ever try that move again.

Found!

After listening to this tree frog sing for the last 2 weeks, I finally found him early this evening and was able to take his pic. During the day he’s been hiding inside one of the rungs on the vinyl fence that surrounds the pond. I found him there by accident one afternoon while weeding. Later I realized why I think he chose that spot. When he calls in the early evening from inside the fence he sounds very loud and his song has a fantastic echo! Smart frog.

Once the lightening bugs were out and the crickets started making noise I went looking for him in the bog garden and found him perched on a low Joe Pye leaf – he must have just come out of his daytime hiding spot to hunt for bugs. Bev at Burning Silo had a great post a few weeks back about gray treefrogs called What do you see? – neat pics and her blog is always a good read.

Walking on water

I spent too long this evening trying to get pics of the water striders on the pond, before deciding I don’t have the right equipment or enough patience, or both. I found this pic on an invasive species website (click on pic for link).

Water striders, also called Jesus bugs or pond skaters, are true bugs that can run across the surface of the pond because of lots of microscopic non-wetting hairs on their legs. The short front legs are used for grasping prey (of what type I’m not sure), the long middle legs are used like paddles to skate across the water, and the rear legs are used for steering and braking. I’ve read that they’re sensitive to vibrations on the water’s surface and use that skill to locate their prey. Fish and birds will dine on them, catching them because these bugs aren’t able to detect motion from above or below the surface of the water. My trying to photograph them caused them to leap onto a lily leaf or amongst the water lettuce; I suspect because my being so near the water attracted the interest of the fish looking for a handout.

If you’re interested in reading more about how water striders use surface tension to walk on water, an article describing a study by MIT researchers is available here. Neat pics from the study, done using dye, are available here.

The science behind it all is interesting, yet I’d much rather just watch and wonder, enjoy their skating and the dimples they make on the pond’s surface when still. Wonder and curiosity about the natural world need not be satisfied or lost because of knowledge. For me, it seems that learning only leads to more questions and an even greater curiosity.

Bee balm

A bumblebee a bum will be,
a bumbling, grumbling bum he’ll be,
who stumbles, tumbles clumsily,
a-mumbling his ho-hum hum, hee-hee!
He fumbles, thumbles, bumptiously,
a-mumbling his ho-hum hum, ho-hum!

With jumbled eyes and winglets wee,
cumbrous thighs and nimble knees,
he lumbers by the tumbleweeds,
a-rumbling his hum-drum hum, ho-ho!
He rambles by the bramble-weeds,
a-rumbling his hum-drum hum, ho-hum!

His bulby bum with ringlets three
and stinglet numb may humble thee:
No dumbbell he, this bungly bee,
a-humming his hum-de-dum hum, ha-ha!
Some bundle he, this blundery bee,
a-humming his hum-de-dum hum, ho-hum!
—Andreas Wittenstein
copyright 1985 by Andreas Wittenstein
In searching for a poem to accompany this pic I came across this charming site that I’d like to pass along. There are twenty or so animal poems, songs, and a bit of natural history for background. Fun stuff! The author’s introduction to the poetry is interesting, as well. More info and a nice list of plants for pollinators is available at the Bumblebee Pages.

7/5/06 Mid-week bunny fix

This young wildling thinking about sampling my geraniums was to be this week’s bunny fix. In the midst of taking pics I looked up from the camera to see a neighbor standing on my front steps. She had found a domestic bunny running loose a few days ago and could I take it or did I know of someone who would? My first question was, “Who told you I keep rabbits?” I don’t want a reputation as *the bunny lady* because I’m afraid people will dump rabbits on my doorstep. It was the neighbor with the hutch bunny that gave me away.
So. This very scared lop-eared bunny is here in Dora’s cage with fresh hay and water and a pooty box. Very well-cared for from the looks of him/her, but so scared she is chirping at me like a little lost bird. And thumping! Thumping like mad any time the dog walks in view. What to do?

Do I bother with putting up flyers in the neighborhood with the idea that someone out there loves and misses this young bunny? Or follow my gut and know that this is an Easter dump of the worst sort – a bunny set free to fend for itself? Keep it here and provide a home or go to the SPCA or a rescue with him/her?

The rescue that I adopt from contacted me shortly after Dora passed away with the offer of a young bunny that needed a home. I’ve hemmed and hawed for the last month feeling like I was content with the four I have and am not really ready for the heartbreak of another bunny yet. It seems like the universe may have other plans for me, doesn’t it?

Ka-boom!

Red Bank has one of the biggest fireworks displays in NJ and it draws nearly 200,000 people to this one-mile square town. Traffic and parking are hellish, but the last few years we’ve been lucky enough to be invited to a party on the river to enjoy the show. The masses of people are centered in two parks on the river, boats come from everywhere for a close-up view, and the people who live in nearby towns (like us) hope to know someone or come up with a creative solution to seeing the fireworks while avoiding the crowds. We’ve seen them from just about every vantage point along the river, but this house has a terrific view and an even nicer party, plus at least 200 or so others to mingle with.

I brought along my camera hoping to get a few pics of the show, but discovered how difficult it would be without a tripod. I have one, but wasn’t about to lug it along. Anyway, the sunset pics turned out okay for my first attempt.

We spent today trying to stay cool and decided to try some crabbing from one of the bridges over the river. Neither my husband or I really like to eat crab, but my mother-in-law loves it, so we go for her. It was fun and there was a nice breeze by the water most of the afternoon. For every nice-sized crab we caught, we must have thrown back at least 20 little ones. We also caught a Spider Crab, which neither of us had ever seen before – according to what I found online, they’re pretty common “walking-crabs” who are cousins of the Alaskan King Crab. Ugly things, but very docile compared to the blue claws! We were caught in a terrific thunderstorm which made me glad I didn’t bring along my camera.

There were a lot of birds distracting me from the crab traps – laughing gulls, egrets, terns, cormorants, and even a few black-crowned night herons along the banks of the river. Surprised to have not seen any Osprey, but for some reason there aren’t any nesting platforms along this stretch of river. As we were leaving with the tide going out, chimney swifts were chattering overhead and thunderclouds were threatening again. A nice way to spend the 4th!

July is…

“July is the year at high noon, a young matron with hazel eyes, sun-bleached golden hair and a cloud-filmy red, white and blue scarf with spangles. July is festival and celebration and long remembered holiday as well as full moon and fireflies and smell of sweet clover at the roadside.

July is gray-green of oat fields turning to gold. July is meadows frosted with Queen Anne’s lace and daisies, and night hawks in the evening sky, and fledgling robins, and half-grown rabbits eating the lettuce in the garden. July is lightning and thunderstorms that jolt the hills, rain like silver threads hung from the high, dark clouds. It is field corn reaching for the sun and glistening with the morning dew and thrusting its gold-hung spire of tassel up for the dry winds to kiss and bless and make fertile the sprouting young ears beneath.

July is weeds grown lush, horseweed in the waste place, and milkweed and nettle and forbidding thistle; and pigweed and purslane and rough-leaved German weed in the garden. It is string beans prolific, and bean beetles; it is squash flowers, venerable symbol of fertility, and squash beetles; it is tomatoes coming to fruit and horned tomato worms which turn into sphinx moths.

July is get-up-and-go, vacation time, the shore, the lake, the country, anywhere but home. July is hot afternoons and sultry nights, and mornings when it’s a joy to be alive. It’s fresh cherry pie. It’s first sweet corn. It’s baby beets, well buttered, please. July is a picnic and a red canoe and a sunburned neck and a softball game and ice tinkling in a tall glass. July is a blind date with Summer.” –Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons

Pics taken at Ocean Grove in early April. I’m sure the beaches and boardwalk are packed with people this weekend. Most locals don’t brave the beaches until after Labor Day.

The Door of the Moon

I don’t know which one of us named it the “Door of the Moon”. It’s possible that we were influenced by stories of pirates and hidden treasures, or something similar read in some book. In any case, none of us fully understood the name, but it contained all of a secret world, separate and absolutely ours.

The Door of the Moon was a place, a cliff, a sort of stone platform that stood out from the mountain named “El Sestil” that was behind the house. That platform was capable of holding three or four children, canteens of wine, weapons, some frisky and affectionate dog, part of an old army tent, and a variety of more or less precious and indispensable objects.

Although the Door of the Moon was a magnificent observation point, it was also the perfect hiding place during our childhood because it was hidden between the hawthorn and bramble bushes. It was there that we went to escape punishment or when we simply wanted to be alone. Later I found out that our hiding place was also the secret legacy of my mother and her brothers, and later it was used again by my little sister and her friends. But none of us ever told the secret. Each batch of children discovered it on their own and each group gave it a different name.

As I said, many times we went alone, one by one, under different circumstances and in different states of mind. I remember now with great nostalgia the solitude of sitting there on the cliff looking out between the leaves and the hawthorns on the mountain. There below in the house, the adults were like multi-colored ants. Looking at them caused a strange thrill of tender, condescending superiority. The comings and goings of the servants, the messenger boy… that was complete and splendid solitude. Sometimes from underneath the buds of the hawthorn bushes, I would turn my face up to the sky to see it broken through the branches. You could hear the ravens that nested close by in the ramparts on the cliff, among the bats and the black butterflies. It was dim and luminous at the same time. I think that all the children of the world need a Door of the Moon.

When I came back to see it everything was flooded. I looked with my hand over my eyes to the other side of the marsh, for that marvelous place. The water hadn’t touched it. From the other side of the bank I made out the stone platform, the wind among the leaves, the cries of the crows and the ravens. I recognized it the way you recognize a friend, a bridge, or a tree. The Door of the Moon appeared desolate without children’s voices, or whispers, or the solitude of a child beginning to think and to grow.

Nonetheless, we still have the Door of the Moon. We recover it, I know very well, in the hour of solitude we all look for during the course of the day. That hour of solitude we all ask for and need in the course of months and years. At the Door of the Moon, children grew slowly, inside themselves. In our hour of solitude, the Door of the Moon takes us back to the child who still wanders around inside of us, searching in vain for doors and windows to escape through.

The above essay is another small piece from “El rio” by Ana Maria Matute that I translated from the original Spanish as part of an undergraduate project many moons ago. I’m including it here, and cross-posting at whorled leaves because it relates to the first essay in our July book, “The Geography of Childhood” in which Gary Paul Nabhan discusses a child’s sense of wildness and relates the story of his own children’s secret hideout and the importance such intimate, wild places have in the lives of children.

Just me rambling about birds, books, bunnies, or whatever!