Do I turn off the laptop when cleaning the keys? No. Do you?

Sometimes odd things happen on the desktop as I do this, but nothing particularly dramatic. This morning, I seem to have hit a happy combination of keys. The CD that has been stuck for a year or so popped about 1/16th of an inch out. Then it ducked back in. ‘No!’, I yelped. ‘Come back out!’

A son finally bought me an external CD drive since nothing could be installed. But I was determined to get this thing out. The famous orange juice spill may have factored into its stubborn refusal to exit. Seizing the opportunity, I hit the eject button. Then I grasped it firmly as it slid out the fraction of an inch. Sigh. At last. But I hesitate to insert another disk.

Maybe I should clean the keys of the old laptop where another CD is stuck.

If you look a little more closely at the second photo in the preceding post, you’ll see that the raccoon is a lactating mom. It did not move erratically or otherwise seem sick. Most likely, it is out looking for food at a time when most of its babies’ predators are sleeping.

But I’m sure no one would object if I keep the screen door closed today.

The lingering scent of a man’s deodorant prevails in here as I work, even though I work alone. The UPS man uses this particular kind. Ditto the FedEx guy. Various workmen that make expensive visits to disabled appliances and plumbing. On occasion, a son, despite my pleas for him to desist. And now, apparently, the mailman. To say it’s strong is an understatement. Somehow it gets on the mail and most of the packages.

I don’t know how this happens. But unless I take the mail back outside, this will be the smell of the day. Sometimes, if there is no breeze, it will stay in the air for hours.

But it’s the 4th of July weekend. My next door neighbor will be grilling. There is a nice cool breeze. Soon, the smell of charred meats will fill the air. But I’m moving the family member’s mail to the other room.

I’m not the only local person missing resident hummingbirds . For the past few days, however, a smaller version of Sparky has been appearing sporadically at the feeder. I know it’s not him because it doesn’t have the full gorget, plus it is easily intimidated by the chickadees. Sparky always stood his ground, even to the bigger birds. This younger one wasn’t quite sure how to use the feeder at first.

Since we found the body of a hummer that was Sparky’s size a while back, I concluded that he had succumbed to our bad weather. Today, there’s a different one the same size as Sparky, and not flitting away as soon as I appear. By the end of the month, I will be setting up the laptop outside. If it’s really him, he will take my presence in stride, as he did all last year from May on.

As the June 30th deadline approaches for a work project, I can’t allow distractions to keep me from falling behind. Life, however, tosses a dump truck full of issues on the doorstep when I get these deadlines. The days are just packed, as Bill Watterson used to say.

Most of these issues have been shoveled aside, and pity the poor solicitor who rings the bell, expecting a gracious hello, yes I’d love to hear about your bond spiel. I’m taking a lesson or two from a) my extremely rude neighbor Ruth, b) my late Aunt Sissy, who had hooded eyelids and a venomous tongue.

The only distraction I allow is the Wii tennis. It makes me get up from my chair, forces me to sweat, and in ten-minute sessions several times/day, slowly makes me lose weight. To my dismay, I discovered that once a certain level is reached, it’s no longer a matter of merely beating the opponents. Points go up only if the match is won in a decisive manner, as in not letting it go to deuce, for example.

Looks like I will have to spend some time on the balance board next.

The tufted titmouse is one of the shyer residents of the yard, overly fond of mealworms. I don’t get many pictures of it, but lately it has become emboldened by the apparently addictive nature of these worms.

Things have been really hectic around here on the human front, and I’ve not paid a lot of attention to the bird population except to keep the feeders full of seeds and suet. Once or twice a day, I open the box of mealworms, which, to my surprise, grew mightily during the warm spell. I put a few in each feeder. Today, I only did it once early in the morning.

Various events occurred to make my morning extremely unproductive, none of which were my fault. After lunch, I had a lot of catching up to do, and by 4, I went to shower, bringing in the suet feeders to keep them safe from the squirrels.

Afterward, I had time to tackle the work pile again. What should appear on the nandina branch that I can see just over the laptop but the titmouse. It turned this way and that, keeping its eyes on me. I waved, as crazy bird people like me do. (I have found that hand motions make them less wary; this has worked on the towhees and wrens. Working on the goldfinches and doves.) It did not leave. Instead, it stopped, and just perched, looking at me.

It is the same look I get from the chickadees. So I dutifully got up and pulled out a few more mealworms. My supply is getting low, hence the rationing. But when the towhee removes them three at a time, and the wren and its baby hop up and swallow them whole, I have to consider reordering. Real soon.

The wren baby watched while its parent moved a mealworm around till it was just in the right position. It flipped the worm a few times, and down the hatch it went. It ignored the baby, who was waiting with its beak open. But thankfully, it is a fast learner. It reached in, selected a worm, and just like Mom, maneuvered it into position, and the worm disappeared.

The loudspeaker is turned up very loud at the junior high up the street. Soon the struggling sounds of the band will carry over on the spring breeze, a yearly interval of certain pain. Speeches are currently being practiced, and then there will be the reading of names.

One night soon, every possible space on the surrounding streets will be occupied by hurrying parents, desperately late ones will park illegally. There will be much cheering, airhorns, screaming, etc.

Mornings will be quieter, no stream of cars up and down the street to tell me it’s close to 8:00 a.m., and I’d better hurry up and focus on my work, time’s a wasting. Afternoons, ditto, except, it’s 3:00 p.m., why do I have so little done.

As mentioned in previous posts, my yard has become heavily populated with wildlife of all kinds. Squirrels especially. Years ago, a pair of mockingbirds had an annual nest in the pyracantha bushes along the fence. Squirrels ran through their territory regularly. Those were the times when we would catch more than one squirrel a day in the traps. After a time, I noticed that whenever I went to move these traps, the mockingbirds would fly overhead and along the fence not too far away. I just assumed they were happy to be rid of one more squirrel.

Eventually, the birds were defeated, and moved away. I miss their songs, even the ones in the middle of the night.

In residence and busily raising their family are a pair of towhees. Extremely shy, they have recently begun coming to the feeder more regularly. They are the last to feed at night, and when I’ve gone out to retrieve the feeder tray, they can be heard nearby chirping away. So I leave the food out a little longer.

In the last few days, two large black squirrels and assorted smaller gray ones have been leaping up on the tables. (Seriously cutting into my Wii time.) The black ones avoid the traps as if they’ve been caught before and somehow gotten out. Finally, a few minutes ago, a gray one found the peanut-butter covered nuts too irresistible. I went out to cover it up, and took a stroll around the garden. The towhee pair flew past down low.

I went out front to plant some pansies. The towhees came out there too. Not real close, but keeping me in sight. Did they make the connection between the food and me? Their nest is low in the arbovitae, and I’ve seen squirrels run in there, so maybe they recognize the removals are to their benefit.

Now if I can only get the three doves to hang around me.

Possibly the most retiring of the menagerie. It was all I could do to set up the tripod and camera (open door, equipment inside) without spooking it. And that, of course, is why it is not in focus. This is also from video. But it craned its neck so it could check out the camera and me for a few seconds before taking off.

There are three of them, one bullies the other two, so maybe it’s not a pair with their young one, but a male and two wives. Now I’m trying to get used to big shadows across the yard as they fly back and forth, but they get closer each day.

Next thing I know, there’ll be a dove or two in here making those frantic twittering sounds which seem to be their normal mode. We will scare each other to death, no doubt.

Readers will note that the blog is mostly concerned with birds now. What started out as a small tray on an old table with two or three juncos and a few chickadees has turned into something completely different.

Over time, a titmouse and a very shy wren would make an appearance, quickly disappearing when intimidated by the juncos. The towhees built a nest in Mr. Maria’s trees, and raised their family on cornmeal suet. A very large flock of sparrows forced me to shut down the feeder till they lost interest. More juncos came by. The resident hummingbird defended his feeder fiercely. A lone Townsend’s warbler visited late in the year and stayed.

This year, the chickadee pair seems to have only one baby. Mourning doves have a nest in the honeysuckle, and while fleeing at shadows, land on the table. During dinner on Sunday, one settled down for a rest right next to the food bowl, watching us as we ate inside. It stayed there a long time. (I have witnesses.) The towhee pair not only lands on the table, but also on the smaller table right against the wall. A phoebe comes to the yard but not to the feeder, being an insectivore, and a grosbeak eats seeds that fall on the patio. Robins have a nest either in the street oaks or a neighbor’s yard, and stop by now and then. A house finch feeds on the finch sock along with at least six goldfinches. The hummingbird I named Sparky has died, I’m afraid, but has left such a force field around his feeder that few hummers even dare to stop there, and then only briefly. The wren has become so familiar and content that it too flew inside (as did the juncos and a chickadee), and exited in a timely fashion.

All this occurs in a very small space of the patio and surrounding semi-grassy area. I am constantly amazed, and if I didn’t have a stringent deadline of June 30 for a large project, I would be sitting outside filming all this, especially the goldfinches, who have a most picturesque lifestyle.

These activities have been going on for almost two years. In that time, the birds have become quite used to me, most particularly the chickadees. They know how to get my attention to get mealworms out of the box outside. I will swear that they have a meaningful look.

Lately, the squirrels are back, leaping up on the tables, knocking things down, and the black ones have figured out the traps. I have watched as they smell the nuts inside, nose all around, try to reach for them with their paws, and can actually remove them if the trap is set on the ground. They go all around, even on top, but avoid the opening. But I can’t fend them off all the time.

This morning, I was deep in work when a chickadee landed on the bush in front of the window where I work. This is nothing unusual, they do this all the time, usually to chip away at a piece of suet or a mealworm. But this chickadee was giving me the Meaningful Look. I stared back, said hello, went back to work. It persisted with this look, bobbing back and forth a bit, then kind of moved its wings out a little. That’s when I saw the black squirrel on the small table next to the wall, big chunk of suet in its paws, eating away.

So, message sent, message received. I ran the squirrel off, and everything went back to normal.

The pair is finally making regular appearances at the feeding table, taking the cornmeal suet, but much hesitating and apprehension. I don’t dare try to photograph them yet, they startle so easily.

Yesterday morning, I glanced out, debating whether to bring the feeder closer to the house since it was sprinkling. To one side, there was a pale blue egg similar to the plastic miniature eggs I’d been using as Easter photo props. Being so light, they were frequently blown off the table. I assumed the family member found one on the ground, and put it there for safekeeping.

But when I picked it up, it was much heavier than the plastic eggs. The only answer was that the female towhee somehow laid this while eating or while being startled. (I looked it up, the only other sizable bird that comes to the table is the mourning dove. This resembles more the towhee egg.)

So I figured if I put it in their nest, they would abandon it and any other eggs already there. It’s probably illegal to be in possession of this egg. Meanwhile, depending on how long it had been out there, it was no longer a viable egg anyway. But the family member, who gets up at dawn, did not see it earlier. So there was the chance it was a freshly laid egg.

While I pondered all these issues, I put it in a prop nest, and put it under a lamp.

For the last few days, work has been very intense and I’ve been unable to take photos or footage of the birds. The goldfinch mesh sock has attracted what amounts to a small flock that seems to eat constantly, and the pile of seed hulls underneath is thankfully blown away each afternoon when the wind picks up.

I’ve left the mealworm container (a transparent plastic box) out on another table. Just now, a chickadee lands on it and walks all around, inspecting the contents. The titmouse has given up on the possibility of live food, and hacks away at the cornmeal suet to feed its brood.

A hummingbird that is not Sparky comes daily to the deer scare fountain to take a bath. Now this is amazing to watch. The goldfinches also visit the water, and take frequent drinks, sometimes a bath as well. The family member says we have sparrow hawks in the redwood tree. I think there is a juvenile in the neighbor’s pine tree, and spotted it one afternoon as it flew across the court.

Last week I bought a bluebird house.

For a couple of months, it seems, the two towhees have been trying to build a home in the large but dead arborvitae. I have a great view of this bush. Maybe the squirrels get in there and tear their efforts down. There is constant construction, and as late as last week, they brought in long pieces of grass and twigs.

Their parents would regularly empty out the cornmeal suet container last year, raising at least three offspring. However, they failed to teach them where the human-provided foods came from. Despite numerous comings and goings all day long of chickadees, juncos, wrens, titmouse, and most recently, mourning doves, the towhees don’t land on the table. They will look under the table and all over the patio, which is mostly covered now in nyger seed hulls from the constant eating by the goldfinches.

This morning, the male towhee took a giant leap forward. It looked terrified while pecking at the seeds. Later, it took a big clump of suet, retiring to the patio to eat. I can’t wait to film them when they come swooping in when the nestlings get hungry.

The other night a raccoon apparently entered the trap we set for squirrels (not the first time this has happened). When it was unable to exit in a timely manner, it called in the troops. One must have strapped on his handy tool belt. Next morning, I noticed that the trap was turned around and not where it was left the day before.

I asked the family member if he moved it. He said no. When I tried to reset the trap, an important part of the trapping mechanism didn’t work. As if something took a pair of raccoon pliers and loosened it. When the family member returned from work, he made adjustments, but he failed to take into account the technical expertise of raccoons, especially the ones who go to college on a tools scholarship.

It happened that for the past week, I had been troubled by a pack of squirrels who kept jumping on the bird feeding table. I then placed the big trap right under this table. Caught one, waited to catch the other two. And that evening was the night of the raccoon gathering.

After the human adjusting, I baited the trap the next day. Sometime in the afternoon, the loud metallic sound of the trap was heard, which tends to make me leap up almost like the squirrel does. I looked, and indeed, there was one of the gray squirrels. Usually, I put a towel, tarp or some such over the trap, which calms the animal down till it is deposited in parklands not close to here. I neglected to do this because I had a lot of work.

When I got up to get a tarp, the trap looked empty. Sometimes, if the angle is right and the squirrel is crouched in the corner eating the walnuts in there, it can look empty. But no, this time, it was really empty, and the squirrel was pausing at the open door, seconds from entering the house.

Part of the trap door had been loosened in such a way as to be undetected by mere humans. But the raccoons had figured out a way to let the next animal get loose on its own.

I bow to their superior intelligence in matters of the trap.

Thanks, Kaiser, for canceling my appointment today, but not telling me till I got there.

The towhees have a nest in the dead arborvitae, along with at least one other unidentified bird pair. I glanced up as a towhee flew out of the bush, and right behind it was a hummingbird, which landed somewhere in the bougainvillea. Just out of fun, I called out ‘Sparky! Sparky!’

Thank goodness I work alone, as this may seem like demented behavior. But I used to talk to Sparky all the time as he visited the feeder. There’s a goodly amount of footage of him looking directly at the camera as I’m saying his name.

The hummingbird came to the tomato cage about 18″ from the feeder, and looked at me. The cage is what I hang the feeder on when there isn’t enough light under the overhang where the feeder normally is. He had the bright red throat, so I knew it wasn’t a juvenile or the missus. Then he was gone.

Could it be? Does he actually help feed them, and that’s where he’s been the last 2-1/2, almost three weeks?

Yesterday, I saw two hummers high up in the oaks going through what appeared to be a mating dance. I don’t think juveniles can fly that well. We’ll see what the following days bring.

Thanks to the continous downpours today, I now know what hydroplaning is.

I’m happy that so many loans are available to all and sundry. I just wish they wouldn’t offer every one of them through my sites.

My brain knows when I need to get up. I think my body does too, but it’s going, ’seven more minutes’, ah, five more’. Sometimes, desperate measures are called for.

This morning, I found myself in the middle of a pristine ski run. (I don’t ski.) I stood there and thought, ‘All I have to do is get down that hill, get to the lodge, pack and I’ll get home.’ Except I had no skis. No even a snowshoe. People began showing up, including a family of four, who walked right by, but didn’t see me trying to flag them down to use their cell since mine wasn’t working. Some guy skied past on the left.

Then I thought, ‘If I could only get home without having to pack, and endure that incredibly long ride.’

That’s when I woke up. Very happy to be where I was, and needing only to rise and do the usual morning routine. Thanks, brain.

I spent the first years of my childhood in a small Arkansas town, then we moved to one much smaller. My world shrank in all kinds of ways. As I would discover, my older sibs had received a much better education in terms of literature. Before we moved, I used to look through their old textbooks out of boredom as much as anything else. When I found the lit books, I fell into a completely different universe.

At least five members of my extended family used these books, and on some pages, you can barely make out the text, given the bored doodles, underlinings, the circlings of important phrases. Not one picture of a poet or writer has been left alone. All manner of black eyes, dark blue lips, inked eyebrows, furrows on the brows, crossed eyes, extra hair and eyeglasses embellish the portraits. For some reason, they left the drawing of Gunga Din alone. The illustration of The Lady of Shalott is unadorned. Maybe they just didn’t get that far.

Therefore, not too long after I learned to read, I was exposed to the world of Lilliput, Gray’s country churchyard, Kubla Khan, and the use of ‘Childe’ as a first name. I wondered why Lord Byron had two names. This new universe had a completely different language. I had questions, but no one was around to answer. Being the youngest in a family has its advantages, but I felt the disadvantages far outweighed any perks.

Later on, I found Keats’ The Eve of St. Agnes’ . When you say the words ‘The silver snarling trumpets ‘gan to chide’ in my part of the deep South, you will be speaking the new language, which was frowned upon or laughed at, so I kept silent. But it bounced around in my head, like many of the phrases both underlined and not.

Was literature taught in my schools? We got a brand new graduate from the university one year, and she taught us Macbeth. I think we spent the entire year on it. We memorized some lines, the farm kids complaining loudly the while. Not once during all those years did I hear the name ‘Keats’ or ‘Coleridge’ or even ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne’. Poe maybe, maybe not.

After seeing Bright Star last night, the lines from Keats came back. (The movie is great, btw, but be prepared to get misted up toward the end.) I was too sad to sit through the end credits, and hear the recitation of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.

But I went to the bookshelf today, and took down one of those old lit books. Thumbing through it, I landed straight in the middle of my early childhood, when I was lucky enough not to have a faculty decide what I should or should not read, or could relate to, or comprehend.

Just now, the female hummingbird comes to gather more nesting materials from the old abandoned nest hanging in the bush about two feet away from my desk. Which begs the question, does Sparky have two wives? Or has their nest fallen victim to the horrendous storms of late?

Trying to shoot footage of Sparky today has been fruitless. He is constantly being distracted by the Missus. But I thought the courtship stage was completed. For a while, I thought it was Sparky himself coming to get the nesting stuff, but this afternoon, he was at the feeder while she was pulling the softer stuff off the old nest.

A team of plumbers out front is finishing up their two-day task of installing cleanouts. Their efforts will make future removal of tree roots (a constant problem) in our pipes easier. Today was jackhammer day, when they cut through the driveway. I took a heavy-duty aspirin after three hours.

Just now, there began a terrible pounding, vibrating the whole house. I took a quick look. One guy is holding up a large piece of plywood against the garage door while another is pounding on it with a mallet.
Mercifully, I think they have finished.

The water is turned off. This is less a problem today than yesterday, when we went the whole day without. Yesterday, one of the workers was washing his hands in the deer scare pot, something I will discourage today.

No, this is not an account of the one attacking the other. High up in the oaks at the moment, a squirrel is doing a great imitation of a red-tailed hawk’s scream.

I took the laptop outside, and played this for the squirrel. It moved a little farther up the tree, but is still out there screeching away.

On the other hand, all the birds have vanished from the feeding table and the yard.

Despite the gloomy morning skies on Monday, it was brighter somehow. More sky showing. Overnight, a neighbor seems to have put up a new addition to his house. Either that or some mature landscaping was removed.

This particular neighbor, the one we refer to by his ex-wife’s first name, as in Mr. Maria (not her real name), seems normal. Until you try to have a conversation with him. Then Mr. Maria becomes Mr. Strange. But I digress.

All that sawing we heard Sunday night, thinking it was the solar guys working overtime - that must have been Mr. Maria. His driveway has the remains of a very large tree, which must have toppled over in one of the recent storms. We did hear a really loud ‘POP’ one night that sounded like a balloon in the next room.

So being the man he is (I should mention that he is also the guy who goes around with a tank of pesticide killing ants, one by one, it looks like, when he sees them on his driveway), he must have felt the need to deal with the tree before morning.

Most weekends will find him working on or washing his car. I shudder to think what his reaction would have been had the tree fallen on the car. He probably sits bolt upright in the middle of the night when he also thinks about this narrow miss.

One of the neighbors hired a couple of guys to put in solar today. I can see the roof from my desk. At 5:30 p.m., it was getting dark, but they continued. We could hear the power tools still going as we got ready to eat supper.

At 7:00 p.m., the whine of the tools could still be heard. I hoped they weren’t still on the roof, which was black. The only light came from the atrium, and I’m going to assume they were prepping boards and such for tomorrow on the ground.

This morning I was ready to walk down the hall to work, since I work at home, thank goodness, given the rambunctiousness of the weather. A bubbling sound came from one of the toilets.

Not a good sign. We recently had a plumber out, not the one at Thanksgiving, but a better one, who gave us a 90-day warranty. Meanwhile, the other toilet wasn’t flushing. The family member noted the condition of the drains on the street, and he called PG&E.

Meanwhile, the non-flushing toilet corrected itself with a thunderous roar. The bubbling toilet became serene. The utility company was called again, and the request to come out was cancelled. However, a crew was coming out regardless.

All morning, the suet-eating birds were casting meaningful looks through the window. From what I could see, there was enough food out there till I could get through a large chunk of work, and I ignored them. Till I realized I had an opportunity to bond with the lone chickadee that will eat from my hand. With a perceived lack of food, maybe it would take a peanut from me today.

What does this have to do with toilets and utility men? Just wait. So I went outside with peanuts, and sure enough, the chickadee hops onto my hand, choosing a nut. Sparky, the hummingbird, had plenty of food in his feeder.

I got settled in with work again. The doorbell rang. A PG&E guy in full fluorescence asked where my clean out was. I hate it when this happens. Usually it means a call to a family member, and in this case, he said we had no clean out. He and the guy spoke at length on my cell.. The guy went back out front.

A few minutes later, here he comes with another guy, less fluorescence, bigger boots. They’ve had a long, trying day. At the same time, Sparky also comes in to his feeder, which is right beside my head. The guys tell me I should call the last plumber back, that there is a blockage somewhere in the line that will come back to haunt me. And that if he won’t honor the warranty, to not pay a cent. If that is the case, the PG&E guys will come back. Sparky makes his humming noise as if he’s truly annoyed.

Then the guys ask what do plumbers do since there is no clean out? They go up on the roof, I said. Sparky was sounding really upset. I know he’s only a couple of inches from my head. PG&E doesn’t go up on roofs, they told me.

So was Sparky guarding his territory? These guys sure had colors that outshone his, even on his sparkiest days.

When the tree-cutting truck pulled into the court this morning, I knew prospects were dim. While I’m glad some of the very mature trees in the neighborhood are coming down, the grinding of the composting machine two doors away is already making me grit my teeth.

Wait, wait. Either the guys are having an early lunch or are finishing up early. Hmm. Usually they are here all day.

A large bag of Christmas decorations, including bells, slid to the floor from a chair about an hour after the Milpitas-centered 4.1 quake.

Another reminder to put holiday stuff away.

I was out for orange juice, although it may be a bit late for the family member down with a cold. Heading to the parking lot, I encountered a fellow striding briskly toward the store. He made a kind of flapping sound with one foot, and when he got closer, I saw a white plastic bag stuck to his shoe.

He didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t look like the sort of person you’d want to go up to and say, ‘Uh, look, there’s a bag on your shoe. And everyone is looking because it’s making a lot of noise.’

So I came home with two large containers of juice and a pack of Ace bandages, the new kind that doesn’t need the sharp little grippers that I hated. I never know when one of my thumbs is going out of whack, and it’s good to be prepared. I’ve spent many weeks with sore thumbs, one from repetitive use, the other from multiple lacerations brought on by pruning of overgrown ivy and honeysuckle vines.

I’m just sure that I’m going to catch the cold as well, two weeks before Christmas.

Usually, when I dream about dead family members, they are alive and well. Seldom are they frail and sick, especially my parents. Sometimes they might show up with a walker, but not often.

The other night I dreamed my Mom appeared back in the family circle, going about her business as if she didn’t die around Christmas 2006. She sat at the table, bemused.

All I could think about was how to explain to her that I’d given away all her clothes.