What is THAT??

I've been collecting photos of weird stuff I find on my runs and thought I'd share them here. Sometimes it's the mysteries that pull me down the road each morning. 

I suspect the people who drive the roads I run are accustomed to seeing me crouching on the road, studying and photographing something or other at my feet. If only they knew that I am often studying a mess of stomach contents... I wonder if they think I'm simple. I'm anything but simple. I'm curious. And don't give a frog pellet about what they think of me as they whizz by in their cars and pickups.

I have absolutely no idea what happened here on our county road one July night. Did a skunk throw up? It's an assemblage of bugparts, including roaches, tiny green hornets, and unidentified beetles (maybe big green June beetles? The other thing that occurred to me was that perhaps this was the stomach contents of a frog or toad, the rest of which got eaten by an owl. Or perhaps it's an ill-formed screech owl pellet. I just do not know. And it will drive me crazy for awhile. Maybe forever.

Hayrolls are an amazing feature of midsummer in Ohio. They're these huge architectural structures that suddenly appear in new-mown fields. And the animals take note. They love to sit on them, hunt from and around them.

Phoebe found a bolus atop a hayroll and brought it to me for identification. I studied it for a long, long time. There were green beetle wing cover bits, and many seeds, perhaps of blackberries or dewberries. So whatever made this bolus eats fruit and insects. And whatever made it is pretty darn big. See quarter for size comparison. The bolus is 1.5" long.

Because I had the advantage of using all my senses to explore this item, and you have only sight, I will tell you that it was fresh, hard-packed, still slightly moist, shiny on the outside and absolutely odorless. So that rules out poop.

I don't want to give away the myskery. I thought about it for about 45 minutes while I straightened the studio. And suddenly it hit me what it had to be. It was a Eureka! moment. I will reveal in the next post, after you've had time to guess. There's also the fascinating possibility that it's not what I think it is, and that one of you has the answer. So guess away!

There have been many other such boluses, most of them much smaller, but made up of much the same thing: insect parts and seeds. All deposited atop hayrolls. So think about it...

I'm guessing that this disorganized regurgitant came from a screech owl or red-shouldered hawk. Small mammalian vertebrae and fur...again, odorless. Not poop.

Sometimes I generate my own mysteries. I was so struck by these structures in some garden plants I was pulling out that I freed them of leaves and roots and laid them out on the sidewalk.

I put it out on Facebook and only one person guessed correctly what they were. Vickie's a great gardener. 

Clue: I told Chet not to chew them. He was thinking about it, too. 

On the porch of a recently abandoned cabin I found this:

Any child of the 70's will know this. It's a dead lava lamp. My friends and I decided that this is where wax lips go after you chew them up. Sad to see the majestic heady mystery of the lava lamp reduced to alcohol  (missing here, thanks to the cracked glass housing) and wax lips. 

What do you give a curious Science Chimp for her birfday? Ask Bill.

How about an anatomically correct broken heart (note Band-aids), and pendants cast from  real hummingbird and bat skulls? Yeah, I squealed too. 

 

Phoebe found them on Etsy and all hell broke loose. We love them. Corey gave her an anatomically correct heart for her birthday. Only no Band-aids. If you love them too, check out Blue Bayer Design.  Tell Billy Blue I sent you.

 This post was inspired by a moment this afternoon when I was munching on a Mojo Bar. Laid the rest of it on my sidetable, and jumped when I realized that, if I weren't paying attention, I might just ingest one of my many Mystery Boluses. Classic Zick moment.

One tastes like chocolate and coconut, and one likely doesn't.

Delft Days: The Aesthetic Workout

The start of last night's run. This is the only road we can use right now. The main road is too busy and dangerous with snow taking up the shoulders, and the dirt roads like ours are still covered with ice. Talk about dangerous.

I'm thankful for this road, every day. It's been my best friend this winter.

I haven't juiced these photos up at all. They are what I saw. LOOK at the shadowblues!!

My dear friend Hodge, who takes me around Cambridge when I'm there, showing me the most wonderful things, wrote a post on her blog, hereswhatiknowsofar, about the blue and the white.  She hadn't yet seen "Mood Indigo," Tuesday's post. We're just in tune, that's all. We notice the same things.

This synergy between dear friends who live ten hours apart by car inspired me to go look for some more blue and white on a beautiful 34-degree evening. Which was just Wednesday evening. Blue sky, which you see a lot in Cambridge ourfaircity MA, is so very rare here in the mid Ohio Valley winter. I treasure it, for winter blues are singular blues. And these blues help me fight those blues. You know the ones.

I took Phoebe and Chet along. Liam has an iffy throat and a sore neck and wanted to rest instead.

It makes me so happy to run with my kids. I can't go out with them without wondering what I'll do when they leave. I wish I could stop wondering that. Dang it.

Running "with" my kids is a misnomer. Phoebe soon left me in the dust, or more properly the grit. Chet likes to run faster, so he went with her. She picked him up every time a car passed. We do that when the snow eats up our road shoulders. Sometimes I do it just to give him a kiss on the brisket. He waits to be picked up, gives a little lurch up into my arms to help.

The more blue and white I saw, the farther behind I fell. "How do you get anything DONE?" Phoebe, my lithe greyhound, asked. "Well, I consider my runs an aesthetic as well as a physical workout. Stopping is part of that."

Which may be why I feel like so much donut batter poured into my clothes right now. I hate being sidelined, but I have to wait until I have asphalt to run on. It's been a long wait. 

I very much appreciate the fact that Phoebe doesn't make fun of me when I swoon over scenes like this. She does, too. But sometimes when Liam's along the temptation is too great and they laugh at me. That's OK. So many folks drive right by scenes like these without stopping to notice, that I figure I have to swoon hard enough for everybody. 

My favorite lane. Oh my gosh. The corduroy mud, the color harmony with the tree and shed. I almost wept. Just leave me here, looking at all this, the blue, the white, the violet, the russet mud. That little combed cloudlet. 

I always find these trees so graceful, the way they lean toward the road and then correct themselves. Oh, excuse me. I'm not supposed to occlude the road. Maybe it's because they've been trimmed back again and again over the years. Or maybe they just know. But they're all doing this little samba, and the snow points it up.

I see my favorite sassafras peeking between them. She always looks like she's waving her wooden hands, hoping to be noticed. 

No worries, cold Sassy. I notice. But for years, I didn't notice her. I've been tending a bluebird box just downslope from her for probably 18 years, and I never noticed this tree until this winter. And now she's a destination for me. I guess I had to come here a few dozen times before it sank in on me how beautiful she is. Before I wondered what she was and walked up the haymeadow to see. Before I started noticing how she shows in every kind of light and weather.

Chet goes snoopin' around the barn foundation 

while Phoebe and I ogle the first calf of spring. So tiny. Hang in there, little Bully. It's supposed to warm up this week. 

You can see the tiny calf in the background. 

We chug toward the car, parked a little more than a mile and a half away. The whole run is a little over 3 miles.

And it all looks different on the way back, as the sun sinks. Swooning again at the pewter sky and the frosted wheat biscuits, the swoop of the guardrail, the delta of clouds, the plunge of the treeline. If there's anything better for one's compositional sense than iPhone photography, I've yet to find it. My compositional muscles are now much firmer than my thighs. I hope to correct that by summer.

Blue on white, Delft days, the aesthetic workout. Hodge, this one's for you. A blue Valentine to my Cambridge muse.

Trumpeter Swans in Ohio

SWANS! Wild swans! But not just any wild swans--these are trumpeter swans!

Y'all know how I love hayrolls. There are plenty of them at The Wilds.

But there's something else there besides hayrolls. For one thing, there are northern harriers coursing low over the meadows.

There are expressive sweeps of brush and field, with hayrolls for punctuation.

And there are trumpeter swans at The Wilds.

I did not know that the trumpeter swan is the largest waterfowl species in the world. Heaviest and largest. Wow! Seventy-two inches long, weighing up to 30 pounds, with a eight-foot wingspan?!? Holy cow.

It will probably not surprise you to know that by the early 20th century the trumpeter swan was all but extinct throughout its North American range. A bird that big, with fabulous down feathers for clothing, and edible too--well, reason enough to wipe it out. You know those white muffs that stylish ladies warmed their hands in? Trumpeter swan skins. Yuck. Quill pens? Made from the wing feathers of trumpeter swans. A high use for a vanishing bird. By 1900, they persisted only in Alaska and very remote parts of the western US.  Where we couldn't get to them, basically.

Captive breeding efforts began in the early 1900's, with limited success. In 1982 the Toronto Zoo figured out how to captive-raise trumpeter swans, releasing over 180 into the wild, and many other institutions have followed their lead. Ohio got in the act in 1996. 150 birds were released at Magee Marsh, that mecca for warbler lovers on Lake Erie. Zoos and aviculturists contributed young swans to a swan conservation program at The Wilds, and these birds were augmented with eggs from wild nests in Alaska. Cleveland Metroparks Zoo hatched the eggs and kept the cygnets until they were three months old, and then they were sent to The Wilds in groups of 10-15.

Release sites are carefully selected for quality and forage.


 The Wilds has a bunch of swans still hanging around. What I really love is seeing birds without big colored plastic neckbands. I'm guessing that they're the offspring of captive-reared birds. In Ohio, trumpeter swans can be seen at Magee Marsh in Ottawa Co., Mallard Club in Lucas Co., Pickerel Creek in Sandusky Co., Mosquito Creek and Grand River in Trumbull Co., Killbuck Marsh in Wayne CO, and Killdeer Plains in Wyandot Co.  Cedar Point NWR also has released trumpeters.

These birds tend not to migrate, but to travel around just enough to find open water and something to eat (submerged aquatic vegetation, mostly).

We were incredibly lucky to find the water still open at The Wilds on this Sunday, January 14. By the next morning, all the ponds would have frozen over, sending the swans elsewhere.

This sign always makes me smile and think of my dad, Dale Zickefoose. He always wanted to live in the country again (he was born and raised on a farm in Iowa.)

We were lucky enough to see some trumpeter swans take off from a distant lake.

I was mesmerized by their beauty. A 20-30 pound swan has to run over the water for a long time before it can become airborne.

Their great webbed feet leave splashtracks everywhere.

They also make quite a racket as they lift off.

Finally, they were airborne, their great clean wings slicing the air instead of slapping the water.

And as they flew against the snow-dusted hills, they simply vanished from sight.

Which we hope they will never do again in Ohio, or anywhere else. 

This is a thank-you to all those wildlife biologists and zoo personnel who have worked so hard to give us a sight like that. A thank-you to The Wilds for its big part in bringing this miraculous bird back to our skies and eyes. They're on Facebook, too. Aren't we all? (Yes, Mether, we are. Or at least I am).

The Ephemeral Meadow

 Arrgh. It's all going so fast, so fast...the greens are leaving, the browns are coming. We haven't really had a proper fall here in southern Ohio, just a whole bunch of rain and wind and trees dropping their still-green leaves, and other trees that should be riotously colorful just standing around buck naked.

So I'm looking through my photo archives for things to share and it all looks impossibly bright and colorful and fresh and late-summery.

 I could just smell my neighbor winding up to mow this incredible meadow of mistflower (Eupatorium coelestinum.) I like to call it "wild ageratum" because that's what it is. It's one of my favorite flowers for the way it can paint a meadow sky-lavender.

I'd drive by the meadow and think, "I have GOT to get in there with the camera before he mows it!" Because when things are at their most beautiful, that's when he gets the bug to mow. You may remember the monarch rescue two years ago, when we saved 67 caterpillars as the tractor was grinding through. To his credit, he helped us gather them--once we told him they were there!

Wonderful guy. Just a different ethos about beauty, that's all. Mowed close is his beautiful. 

Mistflower and butterflies is mine. Here's a pearl crescent.

a clouded sulfur

A leatherwing or soldier beetle, possibly Pennsylvania Leatherwing (Chauliognathus pennsylvanicus) . You usually see these all over goldenrod.

 I kept stepping back, marveling at the beauty of the biggest stand of mistflower I'd ever seen. Knowing its days were numbered. Thankful it had been left this long.

Common buckeyes, a fall migrant around here, and one of my favorite butterflies. Those white wingbars flash in flight, and I can almost always identify this one on the wing before it alights. That's saying something for a butterfly.

And of course there were monarchs, but they preferred the more vividly colored tall ironweed.

On the leeward side, where he'd already mowed, mistflower still grows in the  uncut shadow of the hayrolls. There's a painting in there somewhere.

You know how I feel about hayrolls...

Not a week later, it was all gone. I guess you have to mow if you're going to make hayrolls.

 But he didn't even take hay this time. Just cleaned it up, made for an early frost.

More News from Paradise

There are some urgent news flashes from Paradise that I need to pass along. This is the only news that really matters, so pay close attention.

It is very hot, touching 90. I suppose it had to get hot sometime. August 9 seems like a good day for it to finally turn hot. Having spent the first half of the day sweating, weeding and getting filthy, I'm running the air conditioners. It feels divine, although I miss the bug and bird music that has filled our house this whole cool fresh summer.

Today I clipped off the green bean plants, about three inches from the ground. My friend David told me a couple of summers ago that he'd taken a lawnmower to his green bean rows, just to get rid of the bug-eaten old plants, and to his shock they had resprouted and borne a beautiful fall crop! It's too late to plant more seeds, so I thought I'd give it a try. There are good roots under that soil. Maybe they'll put on some new growth, bloom and feed us again before frost. They've already outdone themselves, but maybe they can do more.

While I was at it I planted some "Farmer's Market Baby Lettuces" from Renee's Garden Seeds. I have never succeeded in getting a fall lettuce crop, but if there were ever a summer to try it, this is it.

Big news: The tuberoses are going wild, 14 blooming stalks, a personal best and all-time high. From this I surmise that tuberoses like a cool, wet summer. Our nights are perfumed with wild dreams from the little white flowers in vases on the nightstands.


The dwarf peach tree gave its all this year. Too bad we were in Trinidad for peak peachdrop. I surmised by all the chewed pits on the ground that the 'coons had a field day, waiting beneath it each night. One thing I know: they didn't make it up my homemade baffle to pick them for themselves. The Science Chimp has learned a thing or two about stopping 'coons, having experimented with it since 1982. You may feel free to copy my original design with your own taped-together Yard Funnels. It is especially handsome, I think. Do not try to use duct tape. The only tape that works is that silver metal stuff. You could probably fix a car with that tape.


The Rose of Sharon "Satin Blue" that we bought at Chautauqua two summers ago is growing and blooming, delighting us with its delicate mix of lilac and sky. I do love the mallow family. I can think of seven different species growing in my gardens right now. Two are from Africa, several from Asia, exotics all. My giant pink hibiscus might well have been developed from the native marsh mallows, which are turning Marietta's Kroger Wetlands into a total fiesta right now with their huge red, pink and white blossoms. My cultivar and the wild marsh mallows have the same structure and blooming schedule. So I wonder if I could boil the roots and make marshmallows? As if I'd ever find time to try it.

More news: There is a beautiful sorrel pony on my bluebird route. Sometimes she comes down to the fenceline where I can admire her.


Almost all the hay is cut now, the last time this season. August looks like it's burgeoning, but in truth hardly anything is really growing any more. It's more just seeding and fruiting.



The hayrolls are almost all gathered up now, piled and coated in ugly white plastic. I wish I could say I find them attractive when they're shrink-wrapped, but I don't. Here's an unwrapped holdout, with a thunderhead crown.


Bill goes around this curve at least twice a day. I like how the road looks like a model racetrack in this photo, like you could just peel it off the land and roll it up.

And always the hayrolls, lurking like musk oxen off to the side of the meadows.