Red Hawk Down

One morning two weeks ago, I started my morning routine as usual:  wake up, hit snooze button, wake up again, get out of bed, feed cats, take a shower.  Itchy and Scratchy are usually waiting (im)patiently at the sunroom door, ready for breakfast, and of course, when I feed them, Itchy usually takes three bites and announces he’s done. By the time I usually get out of the shower, Itchy’s insistent crescendo of meowing has woken Ray (and probably the whole neighborhood!); the only thing that will assuage him is to let him out into the garden.

On this particular day, Itchy had already gone outside, and I had continued my morning routine:  check email, read the newest blog posts from my favorite bloggers, and finish getting ready for the day.  I walked back into the bedroom, and I glanced out to the sunroom, where I saw Scratchy staring intently at something outside.  I figured he must want to go outside as well, so I went into the sunroom to let him out.

And that’s when I saw it:  a large bird, face down, on the balcony right outside the sunroom’s sliding glass door.

“Ray!” I shouted through the bathroom door.  “There’s a falcon or something outside the sunroom.  I think it’s dead.”

Ray opened the bathroom door, looked outside and said, “That’s not big enough to be a falcon.”

“Okay, a hawk or something.  A large bird of prey.  It’s not a sparrow.”

“Did Itchy catch that and drag it up the stairs?”

“Um, no, Itchy usually brings headless mice.  I think bird this is a little big for him. But I think it might be dead.  What should we do?”

Ray mumbled something about going to take a shower and retreated back into the bathroom.

Great, I thought.  I guess it’s my job to take care of the dead bird, since I’m the one who cleans the cat puke and disposes of the aforementioned decapitated rodents.  It’s hard enough to pick up dead mice, though; this bird was as big as the cats.

So I did what anyone would do when faced with a situation they know nothing about:  I looked stuff up on the interwebs.  Wikipedia told me that the accipiter in question was the Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus), and a quick Google search told me, to my dismay, that NJ Department of Animal Control didn’t have an office in my county.  I did find a phone number to call, though…only to find out that office hours started at 9:00.  I looked at the clock.  Crap.  It was only 8:15.

Okay, I thought.  This can’t be too bad.  I’ve always enjoyed biology and never got squeamish when dissecting animals, so I’ll just treat this like a biology experiment.  I put some gloves on and opened the sliding glass door.

Scratchy inched out the door, cautiously snuck over to the bird, sniffed it, and backed away quite quickly, retreating to the safety of the sunroom.  Not a good sign.

I picked up the bird.  The head lolled lifelessly to the side, its eyes closed.  The body was still warm, but there was no muscular response to my touch at all.  As I began to look at it more closely, examining it for puncture wounds or anything that would explain its appearance on my balcony, a spider scurried out from in between its chest feathers.

I screamed and dropped the hawk.

Then I felt terrible.  I’m sorry, hawk, I kept repeating in my mind to the dead bird’s soul, if it was still around.  I bent over to pick it up and saw that one of its eyes was open.

Now I started to freak out.  Was that eye open before?  Did it open when I dropped it? Is this animal really dead?  Did I kill it by dropping it?  Oh, no!

But I calmed myself down quickly, saying out loud, over and over again, “I’m an adult.  This thing is dead.  There’s nothing to worry about.”  I took the bird down the stairs to the hole that I had dug for it.

But as I placed the bird in its grave, I thought I saw its leg move.  It could have been a trick of the light, the way I was holding it, but I couldn’t bear the thought of possibly burying this bird alive, even if it was mostly dead already.  I put the hawk down next to the hole and went inside.

Once inside, I told Ray about my experience.  I told him I was having the heeby-jeebies, and I didn’t feel comfortable burying the thing.  He said I should see if the state wants to take it and test it for whatever avian diseases there are in the area.  It still wasn’t 9:00 yet, but I thought I’d try calling Animal Control just in case.

I got through to a dispatcher, who then patched me through to someone in Animal Control.  I told them my story, and they said that if the hawk wasn’t dead already, it probably would be very shortly, so there was no point in them coming by to pick it up.  “Don’t you want to test it for West Nile or something?” I asked.

No, they responded.  The state hasn’t requested that they pick up any dead birds at this time, so they’re not going to bother doing it.  I can do whatever I want with the bird: bury it, leave it be, or stick it in a garbage bag and throw it out.  (It’s nice to know that the Animal Control people are so sensitive!)

I decided that I would put the bird to rest at the foot of my rose bush.  I didn’t bury it, but I figured that with the heat and humidity forecast for that weekend, the body would decompose quickly, especially in the open air.  I briefly thought about saving some of the feathers from its gorgeous plumage, but I decided that I wanted to be as respectful as possible, so I let it alone.

Aha!

I just knew it was the Ground Chuck! I caught him snacking on leftovers over in the compost pile.

And so I decided to take a video of his dastardly doings:

The Case of the Missing Lettuce

I’ve been fortunate enough these past few days to have a little more time on my hands than usual…so much so that I can actually spend time puttering about in the garden, as you can see from my previous post.

A friend started too many tomato plants from seed (despite my warnings that there was something about NJ that makes tomatoes thrive!), and now she’s been giving away her surplus plants. Good news for me, since I’ve been spending all my money at the nursery buying sweet woodruff and tansy and pennyroyal because I’m a big herb geek. As a result, my herb collection is growing nicely, but my vegetable garden is somewhat lacking. These new tomato plants make up for that.

You may be wondering about the red stuff under the plants: that’s red mulch, and it’s supposed to reflect red light back to the plants, which apparently makes the plant produce more tomatoes. I’ve never used the stuff before, so we’ll see…I did need some mulch, though, because weeds in my garden are vicious! And while I was buying tomato ladders, I figured I’d try some of this stuff and see how it works out.

I haven’t been completely negligent with the vegetables; I did buy some Boston lettuce to fill out my little kitchen herb garden outside the back door. I figured that was a good place to put it because if I ever felt the hankering for a salad, all I’d have to do was walk five steps out the door and satisfy my urge for roughage. However, as I was tending to my plants this morning, I noticed that someone…or something…had pilfered my lettuce!

At first, I thought it might have been another mistake by the overzealous weed-wacking lawn guy who destroyed my herb garden last year, but he’s the whole reason I put the little white fence up. Surely, I thought, even he would think twice before going inside a clearly designated growing area before laying waste to all things leafy and green.

And then I took a closer look. This looked to be the work of a smaller animal, perhaps one with a certain amount of intelligence and strength, but not a very good capacity for jumping over fences, because as you can see from the picture (if you click on the pic, you can get a closer view), the fence has been pulled out of the ground, and clearly with a certain amount of force, since Ray and I made sure those things were good and stuck in the ground.

Could it be one of the cats? Somehow I highly doubt it. Squirrels? They are pests, and omnivores to boot, but why wouldn’t they just jump over the fence instead of picking it up? An opossum? They, too, are pests, but I think they would rather just root through garbage or eat leftover cat food rather than go through the trouble of pulling up the fence. Besides, I’m not sure they’re smart enough or strong enough to pull up the fence.

My guess? A groundhog. We do have a resident groundhog in our neighborhood; Ray and I call it the “ground chuck” because I keep confusing the name groundhog with woodchuck (they both refer to the same animal, by the way, and yes, I realize that ground chuck is something one usually finds at the supermarket). Our Ground Chuck has been known to munch on the dandelions in our yard, which certainly has endeared him (or her?) to us. I know they do eat snails and grubs and insects, too, though, so they’re still beneficial animals to my garden, and I’m not inclined to go on the offensive with this guy.

I guess my only option is to either plant a whole lot of lettuce and hope there will be some left for me (doubtful) or just not plant lettuce and let Ground Chuck feast on the dandelions. We have plenty of those, for sure.

Feeding the Compost Monster

In our household, we have all sorts of characters doing domestic chores: our dish fairy will miraculously do the dishes overnight; the laundry fairy will take the dirty clothes downstairs and put them in the washing machine; and our trash goblin makes sure the trash gets taken out to the curb.

Today, though, I spent a good amount of time in the garden talking to all the feral fairyfolk outside, including the compost monster, which is a friendly sort of beast that I feed kitchen scraps to. Some of them didn’t mind being photographed, so I thought I’d share my garden bounty with you.

And we seem to have a gnome infestation as well.

I also had some time to (finally) plant my herb garden, replacing the one I had cultivated two years ago, but which had been blithely mowed over by an overzealous yard worker last year while Ray and I were on our honeymoon. I didn’t have the heart to start over when we returned, but now I feel it’s time to turn over a new leaf (so to speak) with a new spot for my kitchen herbs.

Sage in foreground; behind that: lavender; in the very background, dill

My poor pond has been neglected for quite some time, and although the frog has lasted so far for about 4 years, I have not seen him this season, despite the fact that I had a little floating froggy home for him in the pond. It may be past time to clean the pond and populate it with new fish and tadpoles.

Oh, the pond needs to be mucked out, big time!!

Now that I am done with three months of nonstop singing, I can actually relax with a bit of pond-mucking. There’s nothing like getting in waist-deep into a pond full of partially-decomposed plant matter. Mmm.

Itchy was taking a nap before I started bothering him.

Oh, yes, and Itchy was hanging out in his favorite catnap spot while I was puttering away.  He, too, allowed me to take pictures, but only because he knew I was getting his good side.

War of the Weeds

I actually had a whole day off yesterday, and I almost didn’t know what to do with myself. I slept in (until 9:30!), I watched TV, and I tried to turn into as much of a vegetable as I could. But it was such a beautiful day, I couldn’t help myself; I had to go outside and garden.

Every year I come to the same conclusion: I love how big my yard is, because it really gives me a lot of space to play with, but I hate it, because I never have any time to play in it. My pond needs a good cleaning; I tried to start doing that back in March and never finished. I thought for sure my frog was dead, killed off by all the leaves that have fallen in the pond and are slowly decomposing at the bottom, but yesterday I walked past the pond and heard a telltale “eep!” followed by a splash, alerting me that he has indeed survived another winter. I’m going to have to start calling him Wonder Frog.

Since it just rained a couple of days ago, I felt it behooved me to take advantage of the wet ground and start pulling weeds (in case you didn’t know, it’s much easier to pull weeds out of wet ground than dry ground). The main enemies in my garden are Pennsylvania smartweed, which is prolific but fairly easy to pull, and pokeweed, which isn’t quite as ubiquitous, but has a HUGE tap root and stubbornly refuses to go. My arms are already sore from the strain of pulling, even in the soft, wet ground.

I did see the dreaded poison ivy, although only one plant, but that means I have to go get the chemicals to eradicate it. I know it’ll never truly go away, especially since the neighbors over the fence have a whole poison ivy patch, but I will do what I must.

In the meantime, I have been coddling my seedlings, both the ones started indoors and those started outdoors. At this point, it’s pretty hard to tell the seedlings from the weedlings, so if I’m not sure, I just leave it alone. I bought a few full-sized herbs to put in the herb garden. The hope is that if some of the more aggressive herbs take root, they’ll fight my weed battles for me. I have already seen my pumpkins do well against the morning glory, so we shall see how the rest perform.

A large section of garden is now inundated with catnip, in which the cats love to roll around. Every once in a while, I see a large cat-shaped dent in the plants. Sometimes Itchy comes in for dinner stoned, and it’s hilarious to watch him roll around, play with my foot, and act so incredibly not-Itchy. I’m not sure Scratchy really likes the catnip…either that, or he acts the same way whether he’s stoned or not.

Hopefully it will rain again today so that my seedlings can get watered and I can do some more weed battling tomorrow or the day after.

Suburban Wildlife

Last night, when Scratchy was halfway in and halfway out the door, deciding whether or not he wanted to spend the night outside, he froze, staring at something in the yard. It was a raccoon, wandering about in the leaves. Ray yelled at it and told it to get out of our yard, and after looking around as if it were lost, it scuttled off. Scratchy puffed himself up as if to say, “Yeah! And stay out!”

Ray told Scratchy that he should stay away from the raccoon unless he was with his brother. I told Scratchy that both he and his brother should stay away from the raccoon, because that thing could beat them both down without batting an eye.

We have had some other visits from various wildlife from time to time. There is a possum that waddles, in typical R.O.U.S. style, through the bushes almost every night. Sometimes it climbs the stairs to the sunroom on the second floor where the cats stay, and the cats have a staring contest with it through the closed glass sliding door.

I have a theory about some of our new animal neighbors. There is some construction going on a few blocks away from our house. What once was dense forest just this spring is now laid bare, getting paved over daily to make way for a housing development or a strip mall. Just a few weeks ago, I saw a hawk alight on a tree next door, crying out, perhaps to his family? He has lost his home to the developers, I think, and was trying to relocate. Perhaps the raccoon is also just trying to find a new home, now that he can no longer live near the construction.

In the meantime, we’re bolting down our trash.

Pretty Things

So this morning I was waiting for a FedEx package that was supposed to arrive by 10. Apparently, the FedEx guy showed up at 10:51, but didn’t bother to ring the doorbell (he’s done that before, so I wasn’t surprised, just annoyed). However, I really needed to have that package so I could do some work today.

That was fine, I thought. I’ll just do some sewing…I’m making a duvet cover for a friend, and he’s giving me a few bucks for it, so the day won’t be completely lost, right?

Wrong.

My sewing machine has been on the fritz for the last month or so. Yesterday, I took it into the repair shop and the guy opened up the bottom, sprayed some WD-40 into it, and said, “That should make it better.” I took it home and it seized up again. Ray and I took it mostly apart and found a little plastic gear at the back of the bobbin that was causing the whole problem. I took the machine back today, and the repair guy started futzing with it and said he’d have to take it and look at it, but it wouldn’t be ready for a few days.

Great. So now, although I’ve got plenty of housework and chores and other stuff to do, but no income. I’m needing the income right about now. And my church still hasn’t sent me a check for the solo I sang back in July. To be fair, none of the soloists have gotten checks for their summer stuff, but that still doesn’t make it right.

Anyway, when everything in the world was going wrong and pissed me off, I looked out my window and saw the most amazing thing: one of my waterlilies was blooming. They only bloom during the day and close back up at night. So I raced out with my little camera phone and took some really nice pictures. Here’s one. Isn’t it pretty? Somehow, simple, pretty things make everything all right again.

Poison Ivy

So I’ve been spending a fair amount of my free time recently out in the yard trying to get rid of poison ivy. Yes, yes, I’ve been safe. I’ve covered my body from head to toe, used disposable latex gloves, hosed myself down before going back into the house, washed my tools, and washed my clothes. I’m not even allergic to the stuff, and I’m more paranoid than Jill, who just has to see it to break out in a rash.

I’ve decided that poison ivy is my new archenemy. No, not like Poison Ivy was to Batman, because I’m fairly sure that it doesn’t plot new ways to bring me down. But I plot new ways to bring it down, so does that make me the bad guy? It’s just so prolific in the backyard. I even broke down and got that horrible systemic poison that does terrible things to plants just to get rid of it. Some of the warnings on the label were pretty serious: don’t spray this near plants you want alive, don’t spray this near anything you might eat at any point. It sounds like these chemicals (triclopyr, to be specific) are almost worse than the poison ivy itself.

I’ve been trying to use it sparingly, cutting the plants and brushing the poison onto the stump so it can be absorbed into the rest of the plant. But when I figured out that most of the poison ivy was coming from the neighbor’s yard behind the fence, I surreptitiously dumped some over the fence. Maybe they’ll thank me for it. I doubt it.

As a huge organic gardening activist, I’ve had to wrestle a lot with the use of chemical herbicides to get rid of this scourge. This has been really tough. But I guess there comes a point in life when you have to make those tough decisions…as I said, I used it sparingly. It was either that or vinegar, which I used last year, and the vinegar killed it off for a little bit, and it came back bigger and stronger (and probably madder) this year.

By the way, if you are allergic to the stuff (and apparently 85% of the population is), you should be as paranoid or even more so than I have been. Learn how to identify it (that’s a big one, because Jill still can’t identify it, and I think that’s one reason she keeps getting it). Wash all your clothes after coming in contact with it. You don’t have to use the expensive stuff that comes in tiny bottles and tells you to soak your clothes in it unless it makes you feel better. Dishwashing detergent can get it off your skin as long as you wash with it 10 to 15 minutes after contact, and laundry detergent can get it off your clothes. As long as the detergents you are using cuts grease, you’re good to go, since the poison in poison ivy is an oil.

So that’s my public service announcement. For those of you on the West Coast where there is no poison ivy, substitute the word “oak” for “ivy” in this post.

Friday Pi-Day

I’m home right now waiting for the landscaping guy to come and give me an estimate on some work to be done to our yard. Basically, I didn’t have enough time or energy to take care of the backyard and it is now a big huge jungle. I’m going to try to get him to completely remove the shrubs on one side of the house so I can start from scratch next spring.

Yesterday was okay. I had church rehearsal, which went okay, but I’ll tell you, the altos are not doing nearly as well as they did last year. And V. doesn’t really rehearse us properly. His idea of rehearsing is to run through a piece, and then it’s rehearsed. Only the week that the piece is going to be performed does he stop and work on stuff, but by then everyone’s already learned the mistakes, which makes it too late.

I’m doing this gig soon with the Muse in Westchester County. She sent me some music and a CD that she had put together, and when I got it in the mail and listened to the CD, I was kind of confused. First of all, the music on the CD was just the alto part out of an SSA harmony (which, if you didn’t know, is not very melodious at all), and the music she sent me was, like most of the stuff she does, a piano/vocal score with only the melody written in. So I’m supposed to guess where my part fits in. I wrote to her and told her that this was a lot of work, because basically what I was doing to learn the music was transcribe my part into the music. Sheemailed me back and said that she never intended to make the music learning more work than we had originally talked about (what does that mean?). She insists that all I have to do is listen to the CD and memorize the words and I’ll be fine. She also insists that my notes are in the accompaniment and I should find them just fine, but she’s only about 80% correct. Dude, I don’t WORK like that. Argh.