Poop for Profit

Read an article in the paper this morning about how the Chinese are converting panda poop into souvenirs and making a profit. Seems it's big enough news that Business Week picked it up.

I hate to disillusion the enterprising Chinese, but poop for profit is nothing new.

When I was a tender young girl of 19, I took off on a grand adventure; I hitchhiked to Alaska. Did I mention that I was also very stupid?

The Canadians wouldn't let me across the border as a hitchhiker, so I flew red-eye standby and arrived in Fairbanks late one mid-summer evening. Having spent most of my money on the plane ticket, I hitchhiked from the airport to a campground where I spent the night.

I had heard of "Land of the Midnight Sun", but hadn't fully understood what it meant. I kept waking up through the night thinking it was morning because it was light and wondering why I was still so groggy. When my watch told me it actually was morning, I crawled from my tent to face the day and ended up staring at a big pile of droppings.

My still fuzzy mind was boggled. I'd seen rabbit poo before, and this looked just like rabbit poo, only bigger. And in a great big heap. What weird kind of rabbits lived in Alaska that used communal poo heaps? Was it snowshoe hares or some other kind of bunny?

Eventually, of course, I found out that it was moose poop. Received a good little bit of ridicule from the fellow who enlightened me, but how the heck was I supposed to know about moose scatology when I'd never seen a moose.

The Alaskans, being every bit as resourceful as the Chinese, have been hawking moose turds to tourists for decades. They make earrings and necklaces out of it as well as "Genuine Alaskan Moose" (two pellets, pipe cleaners, two google eyes, a slice of tree branch for a base and glue it all together.) Talkeetna, Alaska has a Moose Dropping Festival every summer.

If this has sparked a mad desire in you to own such a precious gem, you can buy them on-line from Grizzly's Gifts in Anchorage, Alaska.

Hummingbird Heaven

In the back northeast corner of the yard is a scrofulous thirty foot upright juniper. It is hummingbird heaven.

The hummers set up housekeeping in the juniper tree every year in May and they've come to know the humans pretty well. As soon as they arrive, they start buzzing me, knowing that I am the one who fills the feeder. Being a well trained human, I go back into the house and cook their elixir.

The first few feeders full in the spring I mix one cup of sugar to three cups of water because I figure the birds need a little extra oomph in their food after their long migration. I put cold water into a small pan and bring it almost to a boil, then pour in the sugar and stir until dissolved. It keeps in the refrigerator for weeks if necessary. I have a special plastic bottle boldly labeled "Hummingbird Food" so that no one accidentally drinks it (yuck!)

After a couple of weeks, I use 3 and a half cups of water to one cup sugar and in a couple more weeks I do four cups water to one cup sugar, which is what I've been told is the traditional formula. It seems to work because I have the busiest feeder of anyone I know in the neighborhood.

This has been a spectacularly successful year for the buzzy birds. I think that all of their chicks must have fledged because they are zooming and fighting in flocks around the feeder. I'm putting out twice as much food as usual and the feeder is drained dry about every 36 hours.

I do miss my North Carolina hummingbird feeder, though. I had it hung on a shepherd's crook at one corner of my 5 foot by 5 foot back deck. I would sit out there reading and watching the hummers feed and fight at close range. Usually Esmerelda would lay on the deck rail beside me, keeping me company and ignoring the hummingbirds. I think she thought they were big bugs and thus beneath her dignity.

Then one day there was a major twitter fight -- two hummers making like World War I dog fighters, buzzing and diving at each other, twittering madly the whole time.

Esmerelda sat up and stared at them. I could practically see the little light bulb over her head.

"Wait a minute! Those are birds!"

She dropped into hunting cat posture and began creeping towards the feeder just as the losing hummer zoomed away. The winner chased for a moment, then turned back to the feeder and saw Esmerelda. It zipped up to her and hovered inches away, bird beak to cat nose, totally unimpressed and unafraid, and twittered at her.

I could see the tension of an immanent spring in her legs, so I tapped her gently on the rump with my paperback and said, "No!"

She went one way, the hummer went the other, and the next time she lay out on the deck with me, the hummers had regained bug status. She never stalked one again.

Down the Foundation and Into the Basement

I think there's a curse on the end of July.

We finished breakfast at the picnic table this morning and the Engineer went to the basement to gather tools for his day's activities. He came pounding back up the stairs shouting, "The basement's flooding!"

My mouth said, "Not again!" You don't want to know what I said inside, it would singe the skin right off of you.

Fortunately (yeah, right) we haven't gotten half way through the repairs on the basement from last summer's flooding, so there was no carpet on the floor to be ruined.

Late last July, the sprinkler system of our behind neighbor up the hill broke at the junction box and ran all day flooding our basement. This time it was his next door neighbor whose sprinkler broke. When I went around the block to try to find out what was going on, I just followed the stream in the gutter to the geyser in the neighbor's front yard.

The Engineer had claimed that my raised beds would cause our basement to flood, but I think they helped in this case by absorbing enough water that the fill was sodden.

Months ago, the Engineer in his worry dug a trench behind the raised beds that spreads out towards the sides of the house and put down french drains then pea gravel. The water didn't get into the back of the house, it mostly flowed around to the side. Looks like we will have to spread those drainage ditch wings farther and do a little grading.

Sure wish the flooding had been from a big rainstorm instead of the neighbor's sprinkler system. Then it would have done some good as well as some damage.

I Want to Take a Poll Tonight.

Sometimes I think the Engineer was put on earth to make me nuts.

If he has a piece of knowledge that I need, he thinks I know it because he knows it. Does he think I acquire this knowledge by osmosis?

Or he will be talking about one thing and change the subject without letting me know, or pick up a lapsed conversation hours later without any warning, then act like I'm an idiot because I don't understand what he's talking about.

This evening, he was talking about wearing his New Balance "river sneaks" in Idaho on vacation and asked, as he was staring at my new pair and my old pair of New Balance shoes, if I had shoes good for the trip. Then commented he guessed I did since I had a new pair.

I said planned to take the old New Balance, but I didn't want to wear them to wade in the river because I didn't like squishy shoes. He looked at me like I'd just grown a second head and said, "No, I mean flip-flops."

Huh?

I keep reminding him that I am not the Twin, I cannot read his mind, but he keeps assuming I can.

Is this normal spousal behavior, is it Engineer behavior, is it just plain weird, or am I an especially unperceptive wife?

Would you folks out there in the blogosphere who are reading this, please, drop me a comment about communicating with your current or previous spouse or significant other? Any insight or editorial comment or "my partner does such and so" story will be appreciated.

And hopefully enlightening, scurrilous or amusing.

Leaving Well Enough Alone

I can't do it.

I'm one of those people who has to poke and pick at everything. From the time I was crawling, I made my Mom nuts because I picked apart anything I could dig my prying little fingers into. Fortunately, I always had an empathy for animals, so I never tried to take a critter apart, but plants were not safe.

One of my favorite dismantling memories was my Big Ben alarm clock. Ever taken the back of one of those off?

When I took the last screw out and eased the back off, I saw a confusing bunch of gears with a big spring in the middle. I poked it. It sprung. Scared the beejeebers out of me.

What scared me even more was my Mom finding out I'd done it again. She had real trouble distinguishing between intellectual curiosity and wanton destructiveness.

I couldn't figure out, for the life of me, how the heck they got that huge spring into that little case. I rolled it up as tightly as I could and tried to wedge it back into the case. All I succeeded in doing was knocking a couple of things I didn't know what they were out.

Finally, holding the clock between my feet so I'd have both hands free, I managed to stuff everything back into the case and got the back screwed on. It didn't look quite right, but it was subtle enough I didn't think an unsuspecting parent would guess I'd transgressed again. And I knew the subject would come up, because the darn clock sure didn't work any more.

Even in those days, Big Ben alarm clocks were too cheap to be worth trying to fix. All I got was a suspiciously raised eyebrow from my Dad when I told him that it didn't wind right any more and a new, electric alarm clock.

Which I never did try to take apart.

A couple of decades later, I found out that a lawnmower starter cord is attached to a spring that's almost identical to the one in a Big Ben alarm clock -- only bigger. And just about as hard to put back in.

Waiting For Harry

And it's hard, oh so hard.

I ordered the book from Amazon months ago. It came Saturday, as promised. I tore open the smiley faced little box and held the long awaited book in my hands, turning it over and over, looking at the front and back and fly leaves, ruffling the pages, but not peeking.

You see, I'm going to be traveling a whole lot in August and spending a week up in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho in a 100+ year old trapper's cabin (fortunately much refurbished.) The family does this every year. The Engineer and his Twin spend most days fishing. I love to fish, but not like they do.

The Doctors Demento (they have matching PhD's) don't consider it fishing unless life and limb has been risked.

This is Birch Flats, one of their favorite fishing holes.

To quote their annual joke, "There's no birch trees and it ain't flat." Then they laugh uproariously.

They scramble down the baking, black rock cliffs to the river, wade through the rushing current, swimming when necessary, to get to the productive spots, then they fish. They carry Motorola radios with them. Whenever one catches a fish, he radios his brother to taunt him - especially it it's a big fish. They take lots of nice Utah beer (next thing to water) with them to drink so they don't get dehydrated (and I know they pee on the fishes' heads to get rid of it, I've been fishing with them.) When they've either caught their limit or run out of beer, they head back to the car (usually a Cadillac referred to as "the rental heap") after stuffing any fish they've caught into their day packs and pockets. (Guess who gets to do the laundry for both of them at the end of vacation.)

To facilitate their ascent, they have a favorite culvert that's been well colonized by poison ivy. They use the poison ivy vines as climbing ropes. Oddly enough, one or both of them ends up with that particular rash every year. Since they have no nerve endings it bothers them not a bit.

So, no, I don't go fishing with them. I enjoy nature and the tumbling creek beside the cabin, take some photos and read.

I'm saving Harry for Idaho. Don't dare tell me how it ends!

Just a Quickie

I'm not sure how I landed on this page, http://heatercats.org/humor/resolved.html, but I laughed until I could hardly breath. I suspect anyone who's owned by a cat will have a similar reaction. Number 4 had me on the floor.

Brianna with a nasty suspicion that someone's making fun of her.