Man Vs. Nature - Part 2

In a recent post, I told you of an epic battle that is taking place in a yard right here in Caledon… a battle between a determined man and an equally determined squirrel. This is an ongoing struggle and I’m sure I’ll be telling you more about it as time goes on.
But today, we’re going to visit another yard in Caledon… and this yard is also under siege. But this time the battle rages between a woman who should know better and raccoon who most assuredly does.

Now public opinion varies widely when it comes to raccoons… there are those who love this wily little rodent and there are those who curse their very existence. Our hero this week (who must remain anonymous because – as my sister – she deserves that small courtesy) falls somewhere in between… she is quick to appreciate the attractiveness and cunning of the small forest creatures whose very name is said to mean “dexterity”. 
But as she goes about setting up a new compost bin, she quickly sees the other side of the coin…

Now I know you are sitting there thinking “All this lady has to do is properly install the composter and follow composting “best-practices” and she’ll have no problem.” But therein lies the rub… this poor soul has set up kitchen composters before, and she does it all by the book. She secured the composter by digging it into the earth… she put the right things into it… avoiding meats and cheeses that were sure to attract “pests”… she layered, watered, added earth and organics… she made sure the composter she was using had a secure lid and trap door. She did it all correctly.

But in a matter of hours, the coon’s were into the composter. The yard went from “Better Homes and Gardens” to “Better Haul Away Garbage” in a trice. Unable to open the lid of the composters, the coons had opened the trap door at the bottom and dined on the “patio”, as it were.

The next night, the trap door was secured by 9 inch nails (the spike, not the industrial rock group) and sturdy wire. The coons, undeterred, dug under the composter & chowed down.

Night number three – a roll of chicken wire is buried in the ground around the composter’s perimeter, intended to discourage excavation. And it does… the little beggers simply tip the entire composter over.

Incidentally, we’re not sure how the heck they did this… but my sister… (er – I mean “our hero”) begins to mull over a theory in which the coons might have learned how to start the Bolens… Its at this point that I begin to recognize the tell-tale signs of that same “wilderness obsession” that afflicts all those who grapple with the wild. I sigh, and walk away knowing that another “wildly ingenious” solution is imminent.

• And so, we come to the end of Man vs. Nature (Part II). And although we’ve shared a couple of chuckles, I believe we’ve also learned several things…
  First – humans (at least those around me) tend to be a bit “obsessive-compulsive” when nature issue a challenge;
• Second – if wild animals are to be used as an example, there’s no such thing as an insurmountable problem (that’s a great lesson, I think);
• And third – It’s a lot of fun to sit back and chuckle at someone else’s misadventure’s.

But that begs the question… have you checked your composter lately?

Man Vs Nature - Part 1

It is the stuff of legends – the ongoing struggle between man and the wild. This battle – as old as time – is widely fought, and means man must use all of the knowledge, ingenuity and cunning at his disposal to triumph over a force of a nature so powerful, it is virtually unstoppable.

I refer, of course, to the battle to keep the squirrels out of the bird feeder. This is a battle that has driven more than one perfectly rational human being to commit acts which confound, confuse (and perhaps even frighten) his family and friends. I’m going to share one such story with you now. (Names have been with-held to protect the identity of my father-in-law.)

Let us take you back a number of years, to a winter day shortly after our hero moved to Caledon. The homeowner’s lovely rural property is a scenic, private retreat and he and his wife enjoy the company of natures winged creatures so much they install a bird feeder in their yard.

All is well for a number of weeks but soon, the squirrels discover that a new “all you can eat buffet” has arrived in town. The homeowner is not too concerned. He puts a “squirrel collar” on his feeder, assuming he has put paid to his unwanted seed-poacher. But he has underestimated his adversary…

A few days later, he looks out his kitchen window just in time to witness an acrobatic act worthy of Cirque du Soliel. One of the squirrels has discovered that if he travels far enough out on one of a neighbouring birch tree’s branches, he can generate enough “lift” to launch himself onto the bird feeder, thereby circumventing the offending collar.

The homeowner retaliates by getting busy and giving all of the trees neighbouring the birdfeeder a good, thorough “haircut”, assuming this simple act will thwart his red-coated foe. Alas, he is wrong.

So it goes… over weeks, months, seasons, and years, our hapless hero uses every humane and ingenious idea he can come up with to protect his precious feeder. He employs wider collars, self-closing feeders, motion sensors and noise-makers – all with no success.

But is our hero a beaten man? Never. He now realizes that nothing on the market will work on his particular squirrel – a squirrel so wily that he will have to manufacture something of his own design, if he ever hopes to win this war.

And so a new battle is begun. The last report we had from the battle front involved the re-engineering of an old metal lamp shade and a complicated system of pulleys, wires and gears which would somehow protect the feeder and dislodge the squirrel, should it try another assault. Still in the planning stages, we are given to understand that this new weapon will be added to the feeder sometime in the next week or so. I should probably mention that the bird feeder is now starting to develop a somewhat “unusual” appearance – something that fits somewhere between “alternative garden art” and “home-made rocket launcher”.

In all of this struggle, there is hair-pulling, fist-shaking and – yes, I suspect a certain amount of questionable language… but there is also a grudging respect for the instinct, cunning and determination that drives the squirrel just as hard as it drives the man.

In the end, we fear it will come down to “nuts”… either the battle with the squirrel will be won and it will return to a diet of them, or the man will eventually lose his battle (and his mind) and be diagnosed as one.

A Brush with the Past Gives a Special Gift

My friend Kim is a daily painter, and often her paintings depict “everyday” items or situations – seen as only an artist can see them. Today, she painted two humble dandelions in a glass jar, and posted it to her blog with a short but eloquent note about childhood bouquets. Something about Kim’s words and the golden blooms on her canvas transported me back to my grandmother’s kitchen and for a moment, I was 7 again – sitting on a wooden hoop back chair that had been painted white, but had black feet. I was looking at the windowsill over the kitchen sink, and in front of the view outside to the barn, I could see the small posy of dandelion, devil’s paintbrush, violets and red clover – which I’d carefully picked moments before – proudly sitting in a small jar of water. I was eating my reward for such a lovely gift – a small bowl of fresh strawberries from Grandma’s garden while Grandma puttered around the kitchen talking about what she still had to do before the “men” came in for dinner.

That’s a lot of detail for a split second vision, but such is the power of memory. We all have these wonderful little snippets of the past tucked away in our consciousness. Little pockets of our lives, carefully packed away – just waiting for the right trigger to remind us of them once again. And these swift “visions” of the past sometimes bring forward much more detailed remembrances, as did this one. It reminded me of the sound of Grandma’s water pump, and the sweet, wonderful taste of their well water – the best water I ever tasted.

 The other memory it triggered was of my Grandfather’s huge hands opening an amber coloured pill bottle with a white lid, and tipping out 2 or 3 pennies or nickels to share among his 3 freckle faced granddaughters. I remember the 3 of us standing around him in hushed expectation. In those days, a penny or a nickel was a rare gift for a child of 6 or 7 and we were breathless with excitement to receive such a prize.

So thank you, Kim, for this rare little trip back to moment from my childhood. It was a lovely treat to spend another moment or two in Grandma’s mint green kitchen with the late afternoon sun warming me though the windows. These little gifts that life throws our way must be savoured and appreciated, and this one certainly was!

Cords

I have been planning to do some painting in our living room and actually found myself with a few minutes to work on it this week.  Actually, it would be more accurate to say I’ve been planning to finish some painting in our living room, since this is a project that got started several months ago and got set to the side when I suffered a rotator cuff injury.  Since then, it’s been sitting there in its unfinished state, mocking me – a daily reminder of one more unfinished item on my cosmic (and unending) to-do list.

In any case, with my found time, I jumped right in and got to work. In no time the wall in question (behind our fireplace) got a nice coat of semi-designer café au lait paint.  Okay – who are we kidding here - it’s what my mom used to call dirty beige.  I like it, its bright and clean but not too stark and harsh.  If you happen to come over and see it – humour me when I tell you it is café au lait, okay!?  I’m very sensitive about crap like that!

Anyways, when i was finished, I decided that we had too many cords and power supplies all twisted together in a monstrous, writhing abomination of electrical conduit – all making itself into a wierd little nest behind the satellite box.  Perhaps it was time  to do a bit of “cord organization” to finish things off, I thought to myself?  I was so naïve…

I got right to work, and in no time at all, I was frustrated, lost and (I have to admit) a trifle frightened.     You see, not only do I have a limited knowledge of what cord goes where and why, but I also have no idea (nor do I care) why you would ever need to connect the vcr to the dvd player to the satellite to the gaming system(s).   Just looking at the whole mess makes me dizzy and a trifle ill. I have to face facts -  I am hopelessly cord-challenged.  There’s no other way to say it.

But I’m not a quitter, and so I started tracing wires from device to destination, carefully noting what started where and ended where-else.  I began the dizzying process of carefully untangling each 12-15 foot long section of cord, and re-attached each connection with what I felt was a suitable amount of care and precision.  When I was at last finished and had plugged the last cord in, I stepped back, picked up the remote and triumphantly turned on the television.  

Nothing.

It was deader than a doornail, to quote my ‘o-so-quotable’ father!  Obviously I’d done something wrong.  Of course, by now, my careful system of keeping cords separate and “remembering” where everything went was totally useless.  So I decided to just use logic.  I spent another half hour trying to sort the whole mess out – all the while fighting an overwhelming urge to heave the whole bloody mess out the window, plugged in the last cord, stepped back and tentatively picked up the remote.

Nothing.

It was now that my 12-year-old son came home from school.  After a short “de-briefing” session, in which I shouted… er, that is to say I explained what had happened and what the difficulty was, DS (Darling Son) sat down, moved three plugs, jumbled up a bunch of cords, almost pulled the new tv off the wall, fought with his sister, sent a message to his friend on his DSi and then plugged in the last cord, stepped back and casually picked up the remote.

Eureka!  Everything worked seamlessly – harmony restored once more to our little electronic universe.  I was thrilled - and more than a little relieved that DH (Darling Hubby) wouldn’t have to come home and repair all my hapless handiwork.  Then I happened to look behind the unit that houses the satellite receiver, dvd player, etc. and saw…  a monstrous, writhing abomination of electrical conduit – all making itself into a wierd little nest. 

It was at this point that I made myself a coffee and sat myself down to watch Oprah.  I’m not stupid - I know when I’m beat.

What's That Smell?

This story is a follow up to a piece I wrote last spring, regarding a certain 11 year old and how investigating the fossilized mess under his bed led me to solve the world’s missing sock crisis. A friend of mine (hi Cindy!) recently commented on the article, sharing a story about an odour in her daughter’s backpack that had her doing her own investigative work.  That got me thinking… and most of you know how dangerous that is! 

I grew up with a mother whom – I suspect – was part hound dog.  This was a woman  who would travel for days to find a missing item, never seemed to get tired if she was on the “scent” of something and had a nose that could smell spoilt milk (and untruths – but that’s another story) many days before it actually soured.  She could also sniff out bad meat, smouldering items or body odour from a distance of over forty yards. It is something I’ve never seen equalled, and it made my childhood a fair bit more difficult than it actually needed to be. 

You see, when your mom has a “super-schnozz”, you end up spending a lot of time searching for things.  My two sisters and I grew to hate hearing “What’s that smell?”  It was a phrase that was guaranteed to mean that all 3 of us would be spending at least an hour running around the house, lifting things and smelling under them – all the while being directed by our mother and her superhuman nose: “It’s a kind of funny smell – musty, fruity… a bit of perfume, maybe.  Shel – check in the hall closet by the door.” Of course, none of us could ever smell whatever it was she was “on about”, but she was uncannily observant about odours and freakishly accurate, which – in and of itself – was annoying. But she was also very, very determined… if Mom smelled it, it must be found.

Once an odour had been detected, half-hearted searching was never tolerated.  Heaven forbid that one of us kids didn’t look like we were taking “THE SMELL” seriously or concentrating on the task at hand.  Failure to search with the appropriate concern & vigour got you a “severe talking to” – something else this small, determined woman was VERY good at. I never met anyone who could wield the word like Mom and by the time she was finished with you, you were usually very ready to go back to the search. Now that I have kids of my own, I wonder if perhaps this was her intention?

So, back to the search you would go, being led from pillar to post, blanket to boot by Mom’s incredible sniffer.  Then at last, one of us would find the offending article and she could relax again.   And that – of course – was the key… if there was a smell which Mom couldn’t identify – she couldn’t relax.  And if Mom wasn’t relaxed, NOBODY got to relax. 

The good news is our house never burnt down, none of us died from smelly mould hiding in a secret location, that orange peel in the corner was always found and disposed of appropriately and we were all spared the embarrassment of someone outside the house smelling an offensive odour emanating from our young persons.  The bad news is we never got to choose our own perfume, eat certain kinds of food (the woman hated the smell of pizza, for heavens sake!) or bring certain items into the house.  Mom had one hundred percent control over “odour-emitters” in the family home.

Mom passed away fifteen years ago, and in true testament to the old saying that “You never appreciate what you’ve got until it is gone,” I have to say – there’ve been many occasions in the years since we lost her that I’ve found myself sniffing the air and thinking…”What’s that smell? I wonder where it’s coming from?”

And each time this happens, I have to smile as I think to myself: If Mom was here, she’d likely know.