Going Political

 On March 17, 2025, Phoebe and I were taking the scenic route to Ohio from her home in Indiana. We wanted the smallest backroads, the nicest little towns, and Wabash, Indiana, was exactly the ticket. I love to look at the original courthouses in small towns, built on such a grand scale and with such lofty intentions.

 Here resides our government. Here, you can come get your marriage license, your dog license; here we store the plat maps for your property, the births and deaths in your family. Here is the judge and the court. It all happens here. Welcome, they seem to say. I was humbled and thrilled to see a beautiful bronze monument to Abraham Lincoln in front of the Wabash courthouse. Phoebe and I parked and jumped out to photograph it.

I first stepped up to the sign and learned that Wabash, Indiana, was the first U.S. city to have electricity! 

Next, I noticed a male American kestrel performing a display flight right over the courthouse, which happens to possess innumerable nooks and crannies where a pair of kestrels could lay eggs and raise little falcons. I was beside myself to be in on this moment of unbidden grace on such a searingly beautiful day, and to be able to share it with Phoebe!

And then I moved over to pay my respects to President Lincoln. He's depicted in contemplation, his angular form a little slumped in repose and apparent deep thought. I was struck by how much better this old bronze is than most newer portraiture one sees. It was created by New York born Charles Keck (1875-1951). It was installed in 1932, and its original all-dark patina has weathered beautifully to copper-red with a few verdigris highlights.  An identical casting of this beautiful sculpture stands in Hingham, Massachusetts. I hope to see it someday.

What does Abraham Lincoln have to do with Indiana? The Indiana Museum explains at this link. The story mentions slavery, unlike government websites which are being wiped "clean" of any mention of this vital part of our history. They've totally rewritten the story of the Underground Railroad on the National Park Service website, taking down a photo of Harriet Tubman, widely acknowledged "Conductor of the Underground Railroad," and replacing the actual history with lines of  AI-generated pap. Here's a 

gift link to a Washington Post article about the stripping of Black history from the National Park Service website, if you're interested in seeing what they've removed and what they replaced it with: meaningless, "authoritative-sounding" AI whitewash. Now that is governmental efficiency. 

Here's part of the Indiana Museum's writeup about the Lincolns in Indiana:

"In 1816, Indiana was a new state, forged out of the Western frontier of the United States. The land, abundant with animal and plant life, attracted men and families daring enough to make the journey and create a home in the dense forests. The Lincoln family of Knob Creek, Kentucky, was one family willing to take that risk. Unable to deal with disputes over land boundaries and disagreeing with Kentucky’s pro-slavery stance, Thomas Lincoln decided to leave in the early fall of 1816 and seek a new home for his family in southern Indiana. Like many new settlers, Thomas faced this challenge by first searching for land he liked, building a temporary home (which gave Thomas first claim to the land), and then returning to prepare his family for the journey. In November 1816, the Lincolns packed their few belongings and traveled north to Indiana. Thomas traveled with his wife, Nancy, their daughter, Sarah (age 9), and son, Abraham (age 7)."

The story goes on to tell how Abe, only 7, and his two siblings helped their dad build a cabin to shelter his family, and how his mother, Nancy Hanks, tragically died from "milk sickness" only two years later, when Abe was only 9 years old. When a milk cow eats white snakeroot, it poisons the cow and her milk, and can kill the cow and anyone who drinks the milk. White snakeroot grows all over my open woods. 

I stood before the monument, my eyes running over the statue, landing on the inscription, reading it over and over. The Zickefoose family has a special connection to Abraham Lincoln. All my life, I've been told he's my eighth cousin. The link seems to come via a relative named Susannah Buzzard, who was one of Nancy Hanks' forebears. After that, it gets hazy, and I know better than to even dip a toe into genealogy. Interestingly, that also means I'm distantly related to Tom Hanks, who is a second cousin five times removed of Nancy Hanks. George Clooney is also related to Nancy Hanks through his mom, Rosemary Clooney's, bloodline. Oddlly enough, neither Tom Hanks nor George Clooney have ever reached out to me, their long-lost cousin, but I'm not mad about that. I've always been proud to have some connection to this learned and deeply humble man.

I read the inscription, and something started rising up in me. It was sorrow. Sorrow at how very, very far America has fallen, how broken it is right now. Lincoln also knew a broken nation. The 1860's weren't the good old days. We were at actual war with ourselves, killing each other by the hundreds of thousands. But we had a wise, kind and strong leader in Lincoln, from 1860 to1865, when he was taken from us by a bullet. He was too good for this world.

My eyes traveled over Lincoln's stately form, and over the monument's inscription, taken from

his Second Inaugural address.

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation[']s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations[.]"   

And it hit me hard that everything in this eight-word outtake, and in the extended quote, has been turned inside out, upside down. Bind up the  nation's wounds? No, they're making more wounds, abruptly firing thousands upon thousands of federal workers without cause. Deporting people without one single thought to due process; deporting and holding them in deplorable conditions, and all for show. To get that body count up. Eliminating foreign aid. Even now, people--little children and babies--in Africa are starving to death, waiting for food that will not come, because Trump and Musk have smashed foreign aid to smithereens. Caring for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan? No, they're gutting the Veteran's Administration (no mortgage rescue for veterans any more!), and throwing the Social Security Administration into a death spiral, firing thousands of workers in the name of "efficiency," without the ghost of a concept of a plan for how to run the place without them. The money all of us have set aside through our entire working lives is now in question. People can't get through to the SSA any more. Everything is in uproar and chaos. Who, I ask, thinks that's necessary or beneficial? How does gutting the Federal workforce make things more efficient? How does destroying the government help anyone? Project 2025, in full force. Oh, but Trump doesn't know anything about that. Liars, liars, liars all.

Doing all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations? No, we're actively antagonizing every other country except, possibly, our old enemy, Russia, now our BFF, with tariffs designed to hurt trade, which constitute a new and onerous tax on the consumer. Canada hates us now, with good reason. Mexico, too. They're doing end runs around us to trade with anyone but the U.S. And don't get me started on the president's "review" of university grants and demands that they scrub DEI initiatives, lest they lose them. Or on the mass firings of national park employees, leaving nobody even to clean toilets, and turning national parks over to states for management. Oh, and FEMA. Who could possibly need our government's help when every single week, some massive flood or fire or hurricane or tornado rages through some part of this country, leaving scores of people dead or homeless? No, let's turn disaster relief over to the states. The federal government doesn't need to help. That would be expensive. They're saving money here. They're neglecting, even killing people in the name of efficiency. I refuse to use "we." This is not my government, and I did not vote for this. I'd wager that a number of people who believed Trump's endless spew of lies didn't vote for Project 2025, either, but now, thanks to those voters, we have it, and we are stewing in dystopia the likes of which I've not seen since the Viet Nam war days.

Standing there, with those thoughts and many others banging around in my brain, I teared up with the horror and injustice of it all. I felt ashamed to stand at Lincoln's feet and tell him about the disaster raging in our government--its utter dismantling by cruel and ruthless oligarchs and their fervent youth disciples who know and care nothing about anyone but themselves. Who are erasing anything that doesn't forward the interests of rich white men. Suddenly, diversity and equity are dirty words. And I realized that there was a painting in all this. 

From this:

to this.

  Our hero.

About that Goldfinch

On February 27, a sick goldfinch I'd been watching for a week or more finally became blind enough to catch. Her eyes had sealed all but shut. I walked up on her blind side, and caught her in my hand as she sat on the platform feeder.  Here's how she looked from above, her eyes so swollen by Mycoplasma  infection that her entire head looked weird and big. This is called house finch disease, because house finches are the primary vector. They first caught it in the early 1990's from our domestic chickens, and have little resistance to it. And now house finches have spread it to more than 35 species of wild birds. I like house finches. Nice little birds. I hate house finch disease. 

It's a painful thing, as you can see from her swollen red eyelids. 

She sat, quiet and still and mute. The first thing to do was mix up some tylosin tartrate (Tylan), an antibiotic effective against Mycoplasma spp. , which I get from my veterinarian. I held her in my hand as I administered that solution, drop by drop. Birds with house finch disease are very thirsty, and spend lots of time sitting on bird baths, which of course allows them to infect lots of other birds. I wanted to get this bird out of the mix at my feeder, so I caught her and put her in a small plastic Critter Keeper with a couple of small crocks of hulled sunflower seed and medicated water. By that evening, her eyes had opened enough so she could see me! It always feels like a miracle that Tylan works that fast. But she had a long way to go. To clear her system of the germ, I'd have to medicate her for three weeks. 

But here's the good part. Once she could see, I could move her into a large cage. Then, all I had to do was keep her in fresh Tylan-medicated water and food, and leave her the heck alone. The healing was up to her. 

Here she was only a week later. Understand: she wasn't always this agitated. This behavior is elicited by my entering the room and making a video. She was perfectly calm until she saw me! I was the monster who caught her and made her drink medicine.

By March 12, she was looking and acting ever so much better.

She'd had two weeks of treatment when I had to leave to speak at the Michigan Bluebird Festival. I left her in the loving care of my neighbor, Martha J., who is a bird whisperer. When I saw her last, canary babies had just hatched in two nests in her bird room! Martha kept my goldfinch isolated in a back room for almost a week, until I got back with Phoebe in tow. I felt confident leaving the wild bird with Martha, because she'd been medicated for two weeks and was asymptomatic, and Martha was careful about containment. I'm very grateful she could step in. Thank you SO much, Martha!!  It's really hard to do wildlife rehab when you travel for work.

Only one day to go until release time! I put her in the basement because Liam came home for a few days to see us, and I couldn't use his bedroom as a finch sanctuary any more. She's sharing space with an enormous geranium called Frank Headley, one of three huge mother plants I have kept over the winter. Ain't it gorgeous? A semi-dwarf zonal geranium developed in the U.K. in 1957. I adore it and plan to propagate it very soon. 

Finally, March 20 came. I love this little release video Phoebe made. Goldfinches don't stop to say thanks and goodbye. They just GO. 

May this bird be the only sick one I treat this spring. There's an element of luck to it, but more to the point, I'm not using tube feeders--only port-free mesh cylinders and small platform feeders. Everything is covered by hanging acrylic domes that keep droppings from falling into the food. 

I'm feeding sunflower hearts, safflower, and peanuts both in and out of shell in a small gray hanging platform feeder (behind the cylindrical peanut feeder), and suet and black oil sunflower hang from the other two hooks.

I just ran outside to shoot these photos. Brrr!! It's 56 and incredibly blustery. Gusts up to 39 mph make it feel like about 40 degrees out there! This is a somewhat better look at the small platform feeder in the foreground. I love this one because the birds tend to perch on the rim to feed, butts over the ground, and don't crap into their food. Good feeder hygiene is all about controlling poop.  And I don't use tube feeders because goopy sick bird eyes rub against the ports. So think about that. If you've got disease at your feeders, your first best step is to discontinue using tube feeders. Next, stop feeding when the weather is reliably warm. If you feed all summer long, you'll probably wind up feeding familes of house finches, who will happily breed nearby, producing multiple broods. Yay! you'll have even more disease vectors for your feeding program. See the connection?

My hanging system is the Denali Squirrel Stopper with four hooks, made by JCS Wildlife.

I save SO much money on seed now that the squirrels can't make it up the pole! The sliding baffle is very effective, as long as they can't leap from a nearby tree--which they sometimes manage to do.

Thought you'd appreciate some birdfeeding tips from someone who's been at it since she was about 10. Hard-won experience has led me to the conclusions I state here. Farewell, little goldfinch, and try to stay out of trouble now.

Oscar’s Top Three Olive Oils

Olive oil is a Very Big Deal for Oscar Bello Goya.  He cooks with it, pours it over his food, and spends a good amount of time thinking about it, selecting it, and enjoying it every single day. 

When we ask him what he wants for his birthday or Christmas, it's always olive oil. Imagine. (Says the woman with the Filippo Berlio cooking oil in the clear plastic bottle, and a small bottle of Trader Joe's Extra Virgin for salads.) I mean, I know enough to know you cook with cooking grade oil and make salad dressing with EVOO. I know when I'm dredging my crusty bread in something bright grass green and incredibly nice at a good restaurant. I swoon. But I don't generally treat myself to that kind of thing. I just didn't grow up appreciating olive oil. I probably never even tasted it until I was in my mid-twenties!

You all were so generous when I asked for some contributions toward olive oil for Oscar's 30th birthday. We were humbled. I put his birthday post up in the evening and when I got up the next morning I gasped and immediately removed the donation solicitation from the post. I mean, enough! So generous. So enthusiastic. And we are so grateful! Oscar gets his olive oil at oliveoillovers, the best source he's found for exquisite oils from around the world. 

I made a couple of videos when I was last in Indiana, of Oscar cooking his amazing Spanish tortilla (a big wheel of eggy deliciousness with fried potatoes in the center and a dash of curry and a ton of olive oil poured over top). It's soooo good. Oscar got a certification in kitchen operations at IES San Sebastian de La Gomera, on his home island in the Canary chain.

 I have had the great pleasure of Oscar and Phoebe's company over their spring break. Last night I made a little video of Oscar administering a very fine olive oil which was a gift from Liam. It's a varietal called Hojiblanca (white leaf) and it's from a company named A Twist on Olives in Westerville, Ohio. This stuff is as smooth as it gets, without the throat-burning bitterness of some great olive oils that sort of baffles me. The thing is, olive oil is meant to be drizzled over foods that will cut that burn and turn it into a peppery asset. You aren't really supposed to guzzle it straight.

Hojiblanca EVOO gets Oscar's vote, and mine, too. This was our Thanksgiving in March meal. I roasted a turkey breast and did my best to make good gravy from it; Oscar made mashed potatoes, and I made some pretty fab lima bean and carrot succotash. YUM. It was a proper feast, but every night they've been home has seen a feast. Gravy is an unknown thing in the Canary Islands, but Oscar has taken to it like a duck to water. Every meal I make with gravy he tells me is his favorite American food. :) I have to look aside when he pours olive oil on top of my American gravy. 

 

My kids seem never to be happier than when they're tucking into a feast here at home. When I was a teen and college student, highly peripatetic and apt to be out biking and birding when 6 pm rolled around, I couldn't understand why everything in my parents' house had to revolve around meals. Now, as the meal provider, I get it, totally and completely. Meals were when we got together. That was when we talked and caught up together. Nobody but my busy mom stood and ate over the sink in my house, growing up, the way I often do now. And when my kids are here, we plan around meals. 

Look at that smile. He can't wait to tuck in!

Now for a few tips on selecting olive oil. Oscar doesn't just taste it, but he looks carefully at it, as well. He likes a strong, clear color, which can vary from pale straw yellow to emerald green. He checka to see that it's fresh and recently pressed (you can't age olive oil the way you can let wine age; fresher is better). Olives are harvested in October, November and December.

You should be able to see on the label where the oil is from. Oscar prefers Spanish oils. 

Oscar likes to see cloudy stuff in the bottom of the bottle; he says that's the sign of a good olive oil. 

Olive oil is usually sold in opaque, dark green bottles, and that's because light destroys its unique properties. Oscar keeps his oil in a closed cabinet. For that reason, olive oil sold in clear plastic or glass bottles is likely to be less than top grade. 

There are cooking oils, and oils that are not meant to be subjected to heat. I do buy Bertolli and Filippo Berlio oil for cooking, and that often comes in a clear bottle. Extra virgin (EVOO), sold in opaque bottles, is not used for cooking but for dipping and garnishing, and for salad dressing. 

In this video, Oscar introduces his top three oils, and talks a bit about why he likes them. I thought you would enjoy hearing from him in his own kitchen. Please accept our sincere thanks for making his 30th birthday so very special. I trust you can tell how happy a good olive oil can make him. With your generosity, he'll be sitting pretty for quite awhile! 

               

About That Kestrel

 

Around January 22, 2025, a beautiful little falcon appeared, hanging around Jess' garage in Devola, Ohio. The bird couldn't fly much at all, but it managed to get atop a lawnchair, where it would perch, looking out at the wide fields stretching to the Muskingum River. At one point, Jess found it hiding in her garage. This went on for a few days. Jess knew something was wrong, so she asked her bird-loving friend Shelley what to do, and Shelley led her to me.

I went over, armed with leather gloves, a butterfly net, and a cat carrier, and swiftly had the female American kestrel in hand.  A quick check revealed no broken bones, but she was flightless, so I looked closer and found some matted feathers and abrasions on the underside of her right wing. It turned out they were rakes in the flesh of the biceps and triceps, which would certainly impede flight. I put a snap-trapped mouse in the carrier with her and headed northwest, for Coshocton, where Airmid Place, a new home rehab center, is located. It was almost a two-hour drive. She was well worth it. A quick dropoff and turnaround and I was headed home again, a day spent for a good bird.  She had eaten half the mouse by the time we got to Coshocton. That was a great sign! I could only imagine how hungry she was, after several days of immobility in the intense cold.

I was delighted to learn from Shane Pyle, proprietor, that her prognosis was excellent. He put her on antibiotics and pain medications and wrapped the injured wing. 

The weeks ticked by and the kestrel's wing healed, was unwrapped, and she was transferred to a flight aviary to build her strength back. Finally I got a text from Shane that she'd be ready to go on Saturday, March 8. This time he met me halfway, for which I was grateful. 

This little lady came in at 97 gm, and was going home at 118 gm. Shane said that he has to keep kestrels under about 130 gm or they'll be too fat to fly. I thought about my bats, Stella and Mirabel, who got too fat to fly, and what it took to get the weight off them and get them flying right. I never got a bat too fat again.

Here's Shane Pyle, owner/operator of Airmid Place.

He loves kestrels and said it was an honor to keep her while she healed. I felt the same about being her driver! Driving Miss Weezie. (I named her in honor of my friend Matt Mullenix's mother, a fiery and brilliant Louisiana lady-in-the-truest-sense who passed away in late February). Like a beautiful little bird, she is. And Matt is a world-renowned expert on falconry with the American kestrel. So.

I drove along the Muskingum, through the floodplain farm fields, past the old, old homes.

We got to Jess' home just before 11AM (not bad for leaving the house at 9!) She had assembled a nice little gaggle of excited kids who were waiting to see the release of the famous falcon.

Way back when I was a young rehabber a crowd like this crowding around a wild bird would have rattled me. Now I say, "Give the kids a look!" A small price for the kestrel to pay to get back her soundness and her life, and you never know whose life direction it might change.

Please pardon my release technique. I should have taken the carrier apart, in retrospect, and let her launch out of the top. Instead I had to clumsily dump her out. She didn't want to leave the safety of the dark carrier and kept scuttling way to the back when I tried to get her out. Who can blame her?

Real-time video by Jessica Black.

And now for the slow-motion video by Shila Wilson! 

She circled three times and fetched up in a distant treeline, the lone tree on the right. Her flight was strong and beautiful. Weezie perched up there for about 15 minutes, surveying the fields she knows so well. Then, when we weren't watching, she vanished into the clear blue.

Here are some stills from Shila's video. Oh, is she lovely!

See ya! Thanks for the mice and the rides!

Deepest gratitude to Shane for healing, feeding and exercising this little jewel since late January, that she may arrow through the Devola skies again! If you'd like to contribute, here's Airmid Place's website. Be sure to say it's for the kestrel!

Óscar Turns 30!!

  Óscar Jesús Bello Goya is a man of very few possessions. After all, in January 2024, he picked up everything that he owned and put it in two suitcases to come to America to be with his love, Phoebe. After a courthouse wedding within days of his arrival (by his fiancée visa, they had to get married within 90 days of his final arrival here) he and Phoebe have been living together in the USA for over a year. He's got his green card and a job, too! He's learning to use all kinds of electric tools. He's learned to drive (there was no need to on the island; he biked to work); gotten his driver's license; he's gotten so much practice on English and is getting so good!

He's also learning to survive an Indiana winter, and as NO FUN as it's been in Ohio, it's been worse there. Brrrrr!! 

I’ve been observing this charming and unusual man since early 2019, and I can say that they broke the mold when they made Óscar. The one thing he loves most besides Phoebe, his family and friends and the ocean is... food. Ohh yes. It's food. He definitely came to the right wife and mother-in-law.

 And that food must be swimming in olive oil (note bottle on table by his place!) Really, really good olive oil. It goes on everything. Sometimes even on dessert...I’ve seen him buy cases of EVOO from Lebanon, and cases from Spain. Wherever we travel, if there’s an olive oil store, he’s going from tap to tap, holding up the cup, squinting at the color and cloudiness, tossing it back, a thoughtful look on his face. To say he’s a connoisseur is putting it mildly. He’s got particular tastes, and not just any oil will do. He's a purist.

 My sister-in-law, Jade, had a fabulous idea for the Thompsons to pool our funds and get him a gift certificate to OliveOilLovers. com. We each threw in $50 and this is what happened. (Some of these he already had; he's just gloating over the spoils of all the oil he owns).

photo by Phoebe

Phoebe said he was like a kid on Christmas morning. Pretty adorable. This made him so happy. I’d say we created a monster, but he was already a Cookie Monster for food and olive oil. A very handsome one, but definitely a monster. There’s no going back now. The olive oil genie is out of the bottle, and he’s not going to fit back inside.

Photo by Phoebe

 Judging from his buttery skin and that thick, shiny auburn hair that seems to grow an inch a week, I think he’s onto something. I couldn’t eat that much olive oil in a sitting. I couldn’t eat that much in a year. I’ll just be over here quietly drying up and blowing away. But I would like to see if I can help keep him in EVOO for awhile. 

 Oscar turns 30 on Saturday, February 22, 2025. UPDATE: Here, around 7 pm on Feb. 19, I posted solicitation for anyone who felt like contributing to send a small gift via my blog donation button or a direct link. SOME PEOPLE didn't follow the DIRECTIONS and they were FAR too generous. Everyone was! This boy is SET for olive oil for quite some time to come! It's now 11 AM Feb. 20 and with a sheepish laugh I'm pulling the plug on this spur of the moment "campaign." Man. The power of a guapito reclining before an array of bottles, and the power of a long-distance love story for the ages...

Obviously. many of you lovely people wanted to help keep our Oscie in olive oil! (Who wouldn't?) Here's a heartfelt THANK YOU from his doting mother-in-law. He is still in the dark about this; after all, it's not his birthday yet. But you have a treat coming. When Phoebe tells him, she's going to have her iPhone at the ready for his reaction. Stay tuned!  I, for one, cannot wait!

I call this the Burt Reynolds shot. Minus the bearskin. Photo by Phoebe.

It’s a “Welcome to America, happy 30th birthday, congratulations on your wedding, and we’re so glad you’re here!” for one very deserving, occasionally homesick, and freezing cold Spanish lifeguard. I know that nothing could make him happier! 

**I am being very sneaky about this. I put a teaser on Facebook, using the feature whereby you can block a certain person from seeing your post. I'm not putting it on Instagram, because he would see it right away. And he doesn't visit my blog because it's too difficult to read just yet. So if this works, it will surprise the heck out of the dear boy, and delight him beyond telling. I loove a surprise! Thank you so much! Y'all are absolutely the BEST!

Curtis and the Ghost Bone

Writing on January 12, the Ghost Bone has shrunk from over 9" to just 4" long. Curtis has been happily chewing it whenever he's hongry and it's not mealtime yet, or whenever I have house guests or a phone conversation and he wants to be part of it. But it wasn't always so...

 Curtis got the nickname Krampus at Christmas 2023 because he absolutely insisted on opening every gift before its recipient could have it. It was adorable, but it made the unwrapping process take hours upon hours. He is a very slow, nitpicky gift opener, tearing tiny shreds of paper away, savoring the process. 

So this Christmas I got him several alluring chewy treats (they have to be real; no toys or Nylabones for this primitive dog) and he spent almost the entire gift opening session finishing one small bully stick. Great! Krampus was occupied. In the center of everything, happy, but occupied. Surrounded by tiny shreds of giftwrap. And we were no longer his present prisoners.

 When he was done with that he started spelunking among the gifts and he found a huge collagen roll (who knows what that is--connective tissue, probably, but not rawhide, which is bad for him--and started in working on it. Perfect! 

He chewed on the bully stick and then the big collagen roll for so long I knew his jaws must be aching so after everything was cleaned up I took the big toy from him and put it high on the mantel overhead where there was no possibility he could reach it. I told him just to ask a human if he wanted it back, and we went about our merry business, me preparing a meal of prime rib, Hasselback potatoes, green beans and salad. The kids spent some time going through their loot and trying things on. 

You can see where I put the collagen roll in this sweet picture of Liam and Ayla. It's that foot-long tan-colored thing. Near the edge, but by no means hanging over it. There it would stay until the next sunny day, when I could let him out to chew it on the lawn.

Everybody gorged on the prime rib and sides, which miraculously got done by about 1 pm, and they'd all taken off for their next destinations by 2 pm. 

Curtis and I absolutely collapsed. It had been such a sweet but intense Christmas, and now it was over, just like that. 

I went downstairs to bed by 9 pm, leaving Curtis on his favorite couch. I was deep in a beautiful dream--it must have been about 1 AM--when Curtis whined at my door. I very reluctantly struggled up out of the dream, with no idea why Curtis chose to wake me. Was his stomach upset? I let him in, but instead of jumping up onto the bed, he circled the room a couple of times then stood looking out the greenhouse door. I could see him there, in the moonlight. What in the world? 

I shone my iPhone flashlight on him and there he stood, the giant collagen roll sticking straight out of his mouth like a huge cigar. He had brought it downstairs to show me. I will tell you that this is absolutely atypical of him. He is not a dog who meets you at the door, carrying a toy. Nor does he carry them from room to room. He just doesn't carry stuff around. Probably because he has no lower incisors and is missing a top right canine (thanks to no vet care in his first four years, and his penchant for pulling roots when he's digging) And yet here he was, in the screaming middle of the night, wanting me to see that he had this coveted bone.

But how had he gotten ahold of it? How indeed? That chew toy was a good 6 1/2 feet above the floor. There was absolutely no way he could have jumped up to reach it. 

In the  morning, I texted the kids to ask if anyone had taken it down for him. No, they hadn't. And a photo I took of the Christmas tree--you can see the time stamp of Wednesday, 4:05 pm--two hours after everyone left--shows it still firmly in place on the mantel. Inaccessible. I certainly hadn't given it to him, or touched it at all, before going to bed.

My mind turned in circles there in the dark as Curtis settled in to sleep. Needless to say, between his snoring, hogging the bed, and cutting bully stick farts, and my brain racing around wondering what the hell had just happened, I didn't get much more sleep that Boxing Day morning.

How did he get ahold of that roll? I decided it could only have been Bill's doing.

He loved Christmas morning. I'm sure he was in that room with us, and it seems he hung around into the  night, maybe sitting on the couch with Curtis, looking at the Christmas tree.

I texted the kids to ask how they thought Curtis got ahold of it. 

Liam: "Maybe Dad flew by and knocked it over?"

Phoebe: "I am sure Daddy knocked it down and scared him. I remember thinking it was funny when you told Curt to just ask one of us when he wanted to get it down. He must have sent a message at some point and since none of us answered, Daddy did."

Short of an earthquake (which didn't happen) or a rat (which we don't have, and it's too big and heavy to be moved by a mouse), I cannot come up with anything other than telekinesis that could have made that toy fall from its secure position on the mantel. I mean, look at it! 6.25 oz. it weighs. And it's square sided. It wouldn't have rolled.

Telekinesis seems about Bill's style, and the middle of the night was always when he came alive. 

I remember once when I told Bill that Chet Baker was sitting there staring at me, sending me pictures of a treat. I don't remember what treat it was, just that I got the message (and picture) loud and clear, and got up to give him what he'd asked for.

Bill scoffed, as men often feel they must. The unexplainable scared him, I guess.

(Until he became the unexplainable, and now he enjoys messing with the ones he left behind.)

 I shrugged. "You just wait 'til he sends you a picture." I should have said, "You just wait 

'til you're open to his mind pictures." Because animals are always sending them. 

It's our reception that's bad.

It wasn't many days later that Bill came up off the living room couch, saying, "That dog just sent me a picture of a little bowl of ice cream!"

I smiled. "Oh, so you got his message? Well, get him a little bowl of ice cream*!"

*(teebo icekeem)

I dragged myself out of bed on Boxing Day and gave the roll to Curtis in the morning. He really, really wanted to take it outside. I knew better than to let him, but who could say no to this soulful, dome-skulled boy, his tail waving hopefully?

First he carried it to the place where he chews and piles his bones, in the middle of the yard. And the next time I looked out it was gone, and Curtis with it.

I stood and listened hard for the jingle of his collar bell. And there it was, tinkling on the edge of the woods. Curtis had shoved the bone up under a fallen tree and packed lots of soil around it. He was about to cover all that with leaves when I swooped in and rescued the bone from certain death by mold.

He'd really packed that soil with his nose and paws! But I clawed it out from under the log.

Good job, Curtis! But we're taking this back indoors. We'll give it a wash.

Am I going to have to ask Daddy for it again? 

I reckon so, Curtis Loew. You and your ghost bone.

A Spark Bird for Liam?

On New Year's Eve, Phoebe, Liam, and I were texting about remembering to notice our first bird of 2025 the next morning. Liam was already back in Columbus, but Phoebe and Oscar were still here with me in Whipple. Liam got very excited about going to an actual birding place on New Year's Day and trying to see a really cool bird. A birding co-worker had told him about Pickerington Ponds Metropark south of Columbus, which is the only place I've ever seen sandhill cranes in breeding season in Ohio. Oh, YES. Go there, Liam and Ayla! Go there!

(Sadly, they were not as well protected from cold on New Year's Day as they were the day before Thanksgiving, when we went to see cranes in Indiana! Didn't have me there with the giant duffel full of Michelin Man down parkas...)

I was at Pickerington Ponds in February, 2016, and it was fulla ducks and I'm almost sure the cranes were there as well. If you look hard you can see some ducks flying over this beautiful barn, a signature sight at the park.

So he and Ayla climbed in the car, innocent of binoculars or field guide, because they don't own either. I was of course writhing with frustration, but there was nothing I could do about it from two hours away. Believe me I was tempted to drive up with the right gear. My boy wants to bird? I am ON that like Bluebonnet!

I knew they'd have fun with the water and the open sky, and I figured they'd see something cool, binoculars or none.

It wasn't long before I got a call. "Ma? We're looking at some ducks with a white spot on the head. Do you know what they might be?"

Well, they could be several things, this time of year. Buffleheads. Goldeneyes, for two. Liam said he thought the white spot was behind the eye. OK, that narrows it down...

"Can you take even a horrible cellphone photo of them?"

I got these a few minutes later, just what I'd asked for.

Ayla had thought to bring a small astronomical telescope, hand-held, and she somehow held her phone up to its eyepiece and got...something. But in this one I could eke out enough to figure out what they were.

I studied the photos. "Am I seeing cocked tails here?"

"Yes!" Liam answered. "Their tails are cocked!"

I fired back with some shots of my Sibley guide, opened to the pages I knew had the answer.

When Liam realized the mystery birds were hooded mergansers, his excitement knew no bounds. "That's so COOL!!" he kept exclaiming. 

It IS so cool! I could have gone to Pickerington Ponds with Liam and Ayla, and shown them those mergansers through a proper telescope, and I'm sure they'd have been pleased. The whole difference was that he and Ayla found them themselves, had no idea what they were, were burning to know, and figured out how to get the information they needed to identify them. (call Ma).

I know damn well I was about three times as excited as they were. THIS!!

Phoebe was to drive up and have lunch with Liam on her way home with Oscar today, Jan. 5. So the second I hung up with Liam, I started making a birdwatcher's care package. First, of course, was a pair of 10 power Swarovski binoculars, one of my spares. (I find I carry the smaller, lighter 8 power).

I put a brand new bino bra on them, with a Zick-decorated leather shield.

Next was the field guide his dad and I had worked together on, with help from Phoebe's fourth-grade class focus group at Salem-Liberty Elementary. Why, that's Phoebe on the cover!

Bill wrote it, and I did many of the illustrations (My dear friend Mike DiGiorgio did lots of the western species). 

I also wrote the WOW facts.

I included a lens cleaning kit for the binoculars, with a lens cloth with my photo on it. Phoebe had found this red-morph screech-owl along the driveway when she was coming home from work around 9:30 one night when she was in high school. She came in the house, grabbed a flashlight, told me to get my big camera, and said she was going to show me something. 
She literally led me by the hand across the yard and just down the little hill in the driveway. She whispered that I'd have probably only one chance to take the shot. She flicked on the light, found the owl, shone it; I took the shot, and the owl flew away.

And the shot was perfect. We had no right whatsoever to get a good shot, but somehow we did. Angry bird! SUCH a great moment, captured forever, never to be repeated.

February 28, 2013, 9:28 PM.

Then I wrote a card to go along with it all. Now that's what you call home-cookin'.

I had to tell Liam how I'd been waiting for this moment for 25 years, and how excited I was that it was finally here. And that the perfect time to start birding is exactly when you start. 

I hope he'll remember that whenever he puts these old Swarovskis on. I hope he takes this moment forward in his life, and opens the door wider to the joy of birdwatching. Ayla, I'm counting on you to get him out in nature and noticing everything around him. You two can learn together. My mama's heart is full to bursting. 

If you're going to find a bird on your own, THIS is a mighty fine one to find. A spark bird for Liam? 

Time will tell. No pressure, darling boy. No pressure at allllll.....

                                    From the website of the Rosamund Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, NY.                                                                    

Isn't it lovely that the first bird Liam found on his own was this insanely cool little fish-catching                                                                   duck? May there be many more.