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Category: animals

Welcome, Toby!

Welcome, Toby!

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Turns out there’s not only a wood shortage and a computer chip shortage but also … a parakeet shortage.

The local animal shelter had only a bonded threesome. And pet store clerks said that shipments of birds sell out the same day they arrive.  

Our new bird, Toby, was part of a “shipment” of three, first seen huddled in the bottom of a cage at the local Pets Mart first thing on a Monday morning. 

“I just put them in the cage an hour ago,” said the manager, who seemed to know and love the critters she was caring for. “They’re really scared.”

Toby, the green-and-yellow bird above, was sitting slightly apart from the other two parakeets at the pet shop and seemed the one most likely to be a boy, though all bets are off on gender at this point. 

More to the point, he spoke to me, not literally, though if he wasn’t living with another bird he might learn to. No, it was more of a psychic connection. There seemed to be a valiant little spirit in him, something plucky and endearing. He and Alfie first sat cage-by-cage and now perch side-by-side. It’s still early, but they seem to like each other! If only it was always this easy.

Brown-Edged

Brown-Edged

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You’d think writing several posts about the Brood X cicadas would have been enough. 

I described how I felt sorry for them and their short lives. Then I wrote about how they inspired me to want to “seize the day.” Finally, I noted their departure..

What I haven’t yet described is what they left behind: the brown branches hanging from cherry, gum and oak. The crinkly brown tips that fall off and litter the yard.

Known as flagging — since the limp branches wave in the wind like so many sad little flags — the condition is not serious, I hear. Trees affected with this look sicker than they are, gardening experts say. 

But for folks in my neighborhood, who are quite used to 100-foot oaks toppling over in a storm or breeze, any sign of sylvan distress is taken seriously. 

Walking the other day, noticing the damage and thinking about a name for it, I came up with “brown-edged,” which reminds me of a cookie, the brown-edged wafer, popular in my youth. 

Though a brown-edged tree looks nothing like a cookie, somehow that makes it easier to take.

Eat Your Greens

Eat Your Greens

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The parakeets consume mostly seed (and a prodigious amount of it, too, I might), but every so often I dig up some dandelion greens for them.  The plants are pesticide-free and full of nutrition. 

Interestingly, though, when I’m actually looking for weeds, I have trouble finding them. Or I should say, when I’m looking for dandelion greens I have trouble finding them. They’re increasingly pushed out by the Japanese stiltgrass. 

Ah yes, it’s a battle of the weeds in our yard, with the much-preferred dandelions on the losing end of the scale. Which means that when I do score a clump of them, Alfie and Bart tuck in with all the ardor those little beaks can muster. 

In my more earnest moments, I think the birds have the right idea: eating seeds and greens — and singing their hearts out the rest of the time. 

The Bunny

The Bunny

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I’d heard a bunny had been spotted, a creature new to these parts, but until last Saturday I had yet to lay my eyes on him. I was mulching the knockout rose and digging up day lilies when I caught his slight movements from the corner of my eye. 

The rabbit was about eight inches long, with perfectly upright ears that perked up at the slightest noise and strong little jaws that would, if they could, eat all the flowers we’ve fenced off from the deer. At the time, though, he was only nibbling harmlessly at the weedy grass on the garden’s border.  

I watched him for several long minutes, pondering the nature of cuteness, how much of it has to do with the size, shape, fluffiness and configuration of the tail — long and thin (rats) creepy; puffy and white (bunnies) adorable. 

Though we have squirrels, chipmunks, deer and even the occasional raccoon and skunk in these parts, rabbits are rare. Which gives them a luster — and a free pass — that other creatures lack.

Were the bunny to procreate, though (which bunnies are wont to do), he might lose a lot of his charm.

Bye Bye, Brood X!

Bye Bye, Brood X!

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There’s no way of knowing who he or she will be, no way of pinpointing the last cicada in Virginia. Will it be a female dragging herself to a Kwanzan cherry tree to lay her eggs, perform her final duty. She walks so slowly up the trunk, settles herself with infinite tenderness. 

Or will it be a male, singing forlornly to the ether, no ladies left with whom to mate but warbling his most beguiling tune anyway. Beguiling to other cicadas, that is, shrill and sad to us.

The rest of their brood has been swept off of decks and stairways. Cicada carcasses have piled up at the base of crepe myrtles or road berms, marking where the insects met with predators — birds, dogs, automobiles. The tiny corpses litter the yards and driveways. 

Except for a few stowaways, Brood X is becoming a memory, a moment, a thing of the past.

And yet … even now the young are burrowing into the dark soil, tunneling down to their long sleep. In their species memory is a golden era, filled with flitting and humming and loving. They know, if they bide their time, it will come again. 

Love Bites?

Love Bites?

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Skin: For so much of the year it’s just there, boon and barrier, boundary between world and self. 

In winter it may chap or dry, nothing lotions can’t handle. But in summer, ah, in summer — well, I forget every year that I’m not the only one who likes to be outside all day and into that evening, that there are skeeters and spiders and no-see-ums that leave their marks.

In time (starting day before yesterday!), I’ll spray on repellent if I venture beyond the deck. But up until then I’ve weeded and bounced and walked with springtime abandon, forgetting that the insects are out there too, biting and stinging their way into summer. As a result, I’ve been making liberal use of the hydrocortisone cream. 

On the other hand …  it’s finally warm. My sweaters are packed away with cedar balls.  I don’t exactly love the bites — but they’re worth it.  

(Photo of cicadas, which do not bite but which may confuse your arm or leg for a tree trunk.)

Seize the Day!

Seize the Day!

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Their sound holds within it the rattle of a snake and the swish of a beaded curtain. It has more crescendoes than a brass band on a June afternoon.

The cicadas have brought us quickly to the soul of summer.  They have taken us to the brink of that shimmering, simmering time of year when everything seems more intensely alive.

Yesterday, on the Glade Trail, I moved into and out of various cicada hot zones, places where the critters congregate more plentifully, where they sing their songs with more abandon than others. 

Maybe it’s because they prefer laying their eggs on these branches (in our backyard they seem to like the crepe myrtle more than the dogwood, for instance). Or maybe it’s for some other reason buried deep in the cicada psyche.

All I know is that seeing them mate and fly, hearing them shout and sing, knowing what I do of their lifespan and life story, leaves me with one urgent message: Carpe diem, folks, seize the day. 

Feeling Sorry for Cicadas

Feeling Sorry for Cicadas

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I arrived home to the sound of Brood X, the 17-year cicadas that have been biding their time underground since 2004 and are now living the high life in Virginia and other states. 

They are funny critters, singing and mating and getting stuck on windshield wipers, where one got a free ride for a few minutes yesterday as I drove home from the Reston trails. 

The hum they make sounds like a commotion in the next county, like something big is going on somewhere else, which indeed it is. 

But as I dodged their exoskeleton carcasses yesterday on my walk, my amazement at their presence was tempered with pity for their plight. What a life …. 17 years of nothing followed by three weeks of way too much. Theirs is not a path of moderation. 

On the other hand, who am I to judge a bug? My life may seem just as strange to them.

The Spa Treatment

The Spa Treatment

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I’m trying not to make too much of the fact that although there are three mothers now in my immediate family, the only creature who had a spa treatment on Mother’s Day was Copper the dog, who not only is not a mother but was most likely never a father either.

Granted, it was not exactly a long languorous soak in the tub followed by a mani-pedi and massage. It was a trying hour in a van in our driveway during which he almost hyperventilated. 

The groomer finally gave up without trimming his ears and neck, but she got much further than last year’s groomer, who cut short Copper’s appointment, told us never to come back, and left our nervous canine with a funny patchwork trim he’s been growing out all year. 

“Most of the dogs I see have already been banned from PetsMart,” this year’s groomer said. 

How did she know? 

Leaving a Trace

Leaving a Trace

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I noticed them the minute I stepped out of the house on Sunday. There was no evidence of humans making their way through the newly fallen snow — but a world of animal tracks greeted me on that still morning.

Tiny bird footprints, the skittering marks of a squirrel or chipmunk, and the more dog-like paw prints of our local fox. Whether hopping, scampering or loping, these animals left their marks.

We think of snow as a covering, coating the verges and leaf piles, making smooth the weed-strewn and the bald-patched.

But snow reveals as well as conceals. It tells us who was here and, if we pay attention, how recently. It’s a blank white slate on which movements make their mark.