What Curiosity Did

Well... as of yet, it didn't kill our cats, but it did shorten our lives by adding to our stress.

If you've seen the pictures of our yard, then you know how this little 1/2 acre of North Carolina must look through a cat's eyes. In a word: irresistible.

While we are not the sort to let our cats run free, especially in a county with leash laws and newly-enhanced animal control, we have been known to take the cats on what we affectionately refer to as "supervised prison yard walks". This means both of the humans take up posts in the yard, after boarding up or otherwise obstructing the most obvious escape spots, and let the kitties out in the fenced portion to nibble on grass and explore the interesting sights and scents.

Our cats never cease to amaze me with their ingenuity, and this move has taught us things about both of them that we didn't know before.

Case in point: MooMoo is a door darter. MooMoo stays close to the ground. MooMoo is not a climber, indoors or out. MooMoo is timid and something of a cry-baby, though not to be trifled with if you happen to annoy her, because she manages to put all of her 7 pounds into a swat. However, MooMoo also apparently reserves the right to break her own behavioral rules in order to climb 20 or 30 feet up into our willow tree. Twice, so far.

Once up in the tree, she cries inconsolably and climbs further out onto the slender branches in a sadly misguided effort to get down. Monte? Well, he sits at the base of the tree, watching her with a mixture of curiosity, amusement, disdain and bewilderment.

The first time, "daddy" met her halfway by climbing a good 7 or 8 feet up a ladder so she could come to him -- this after attempting to lure and coax her down for about an hour in every way we could imagine. Unlike MooMoo, we learn from our mistakes. The second time, we ignored her, wished her well, and figured she'd find a way to come down when she got hungry enough. Sure enough, she did. She hugged the tree and shimmied down tail-first, crying and scolding the whole way.

Monte, on the other hand, shows a very different brand of resourcefulness. He's not a tiny, slender thing like MooMoo, so he doesn't climb trees and slip through fence slats with ease. He, however, climbs chain-link fences... much in the same way a human would, minus the benefits of opposable thumbs. It's rather remarkable to watch, if a bit distressing when you happen to want to keep him IN the yard and you are on the other end.

Given their naturally opportunistic nature and the fact that no yard or human vigilance can keep a determined cat fenced indefinitely, the inevitable happened this past week. They both got out into the wild world... the how of it is a long story and hardly matters once the cats have scattered to the 4 winds. We tracked them at first, but we soon realized that there was no catching them and that our following only drove them further away. So, we retired to the house, leaving the doors open, and waited for hunger, a big frightening deer or the desire for a nice scratch to bring them back.

They returned long enough for capture a few hours later. We knew they were here when we heard cats growing and yowling. They had company -- a neighborhood cat that had decided to invade our cats' territory. Bad idea. Although the last fight Monte picked nearly cost him his life because of secondary infection, he fights to win. Even through his fever and post-surgical drug-induced fog, you could catch a glimmer of his "you should see the other cat" satisfaction. Having seen his freshly-sharpened claws recently, I would not want to be the other cat. As for MooMoo, there is no alpha male of any size or description that she won't take on.

Fight narrowly averted, Daniel marched them both inside, expressed his displeasure, and slammed the doors shut. Thus ended their first foray into the forest. We're sure this won't be the last... it's the way of cats and curiosity. However, we remain hopeful that curiosity will never finish its murderous work here.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

Autumn is just around the corner, and nature is preparing to welcome her. Temperatures are dropping and breezes have picked up, causing the fluttering willow leaves to dance all day and inviting open windows in the morning and evening. The weather is more balmy than suffocating, and the insects are becoming less plentiful. Our herbs have taken root, flourished and are, many of them, starting to go to seed. The trees are beginning to contemplate shedding their adornment, turning yellow in patches as if to try out the new color before committing to the new seasonal look. The stream is low, but clearing -- its bottom visible through the less muddied and algae-clotted water. Minnows swim, and squirrels frolic, but the deer and other four-legged visitors have become less frequent. The small patch of green beyond the stream, as if overnight, exploded into wild yellow blooms. The sun still shines, but it sometimes rests behind the clouds.

There are things I miss about California, but this place holds incredible charms for me. It's really quite lovely. I feel very blessed. I love to call such a place home.

Place

"I really enjoy forgetting. When I first come to a place, I notice all the little details. I notice the way the sky looks. The color of white paper. The way people walk. Doorknobs. Everything. Then I get used to the place and I don't notice those things anymore. So only by forgetting can I see the place again as it really is." Narrator, True Stories

We've been busy noticing the details of this place. There is so much to see that we haven't seen before. So much that provides "scope for the imagination." So much to file away for when it all becomes commonplace and ordinary.

There's a house on the main street through town. The lawn is high and strewn with skeletal remains of lawn furniture of all sort. There, in a plastic lawn chair, during most of the daylight hours, sits a somewhat plump older woman with skin the color of milk chocolate and hair that looks a bit like it was permanently frozen into place by a Van de Graaff generator. She sits, unmoving, clutching a well-loved baby doll, once the color of peach flesh, swathed in the tattered remnants of a dress.

There's a pond not quite in and not quite out of city limits. Most of the time it lies still and unmolested. But if you happen by at the right time in the relative cool of the evening, you may find two barefooted figures seated atop overturned plastic buckets, dangling bits of bait into the murky water from their simple fishing poles.

There's a field outside of town to the south that has transformed in a matter of weeks from rows of nondescript small, leafy plants to a jungle of large bushes of yellow-green rippled tobacco. Down the road a piece is a small swamp that clearly used to be a patch of forest. Now all that remains are small, dark stumps of trees, peering out of the water as if to mark their own graves for anyone who cares to remember.

Throughout town, and scattered along the road to and from, there are dozens of structures, most of them obscured by a profusion of trees and kudzu vines, that clearly used to be someone's home. Sometimes the windows are boarded. Sometimes a weather-beaten official notice flaps on the rakishly-hanging door. Sometimes a hand-written "For Sale" sign molders on what was the lawn. Almost always you can see traces -- from the sagging roof and tumble-down outbuildings to the vine-draped car frames and silent farm equipment -- of the lives lived there before the place was given up to the elements.

There's a plot of land downtown that at first glance is just a patchy lawn, perhaps a public space. But if you walk by and look more carefully, you can make out, through the grass, the outlines of a structure that was almost certainly a house. A rusted-through pole stands sentinel in a distant part of the yard, now bereft of backboard and hoop. A string of large brown Ts lean, as if they would prefer to just take a nap in the grass, still tenuously connected by lengths of clothesline. Nearby lies the battered wood and brick pump house, and if you look carefully at the ground beside it, you can make out ruddy chunks of masonry brick sticking up through the grass. The house and its occupants are gone, hints of their lives remain.

In the neighborhoods surrounding NC State there are more used book and record stores than anything else besides eateries. The Reader's Corner stands out from the pack. The entire storefront is lined with shelves. And every shelf is lined with books. Every book is 10 or 25 cents, and there is a "honor" slot in the door. So, if you get a hankering to find something new-to-you to read at 3 am, you can walk or drive up and grab a book, as often as not bearing the name of a previous reader in faded ink inside the front cover, leaving only pocket change behind.

There is little need here to separate the new from the old. Life goes on, and what is no longer needed is abandoned. Nobody comes through with bulldozers and restores order where it is lost until commercial interests come in with their master-planned communities and revitalized ideals. Even then, the past isn't obliterated -- it is just slowly asked to give way to the new, acre by acre, and somehow the up-to-date coexists with the irrelevant. The new is built in the shadow of the old, and much of the old remains... a tangible memory of what was. I find it all comforting, somehow. Place is more than architecture and nature. It is our collective experience in the space, and it bears the imprint of otherwise forgettable lives.

Knowledge of Creeping Animals

Herpetology is quite literally the knowledge of creeping animals. While I am far from an reptile and amphibian expert, my appreciation for words and penchant for prolixity make me quite happy to have an excuse to use the underutilized word for one who actually IS an expert on such things. Indeed, ignoring the word for the discipline "herpetology" and the related title "herpetologist" is nearly criminal in my mind, and I daresay Daniel agrees. About two weeks ago we watched the epic, um, masterpiece "Snakes on a Plane," in which the protagonists repeatedly and franticly referred to "snake experts," prompting my erudite husband to proclaim, "Herpetologists! They are called herpetologists."

Ahhhh... I love him. And, I confess, I like snakes, too.

I'm not disturbed by snakes in general. In fact, they excite in me more curiosity than disdain, which may explain how all but a handful of the snakes I have encountered in the wild and in captivity in my lifetime came to bite me: I get close enough to get bit. That is not to say that I am reckless... in every case I was quite sure they were not venomous before I laid a finger on them. But, I have received -- from the grass snake in Colorado to the king snake in the gutter of our Whittier house, and the boa constrictor at a friend's house -- numerous little reminders that even non-venomous snakes have a bite.

The snake that opened the door to my curiosity and high regard was Wilhelm Von Snakenstein, or "Willy," as he was known in our house. Wilhelm came to live with us when, one night (a rainy one, I think), Dad came home from his accounting courses, while studying for his master's degree in taxation, with a plastic bag containing a coffee cup that held a little something he had found outside the college building. Willy was a small, unassuming gopher snake who, aside from suffering from delusions that he was actually a rattler and having a penchant for squeezing cute little white mice to death before swallowing them whole, turned out to be quite a pleasant companion. I offer as proof the fact that Willy never did bite me, in spite of my apparently irresistible appeal to snakes.

Willy occupied a small aquarium in our playhouse and dined semi-regularly on the mice we supplied. At first, little more than a baby himself, he could only stomach the rather disturbing little "pinkies," but he grew to appreciate the larger, much more pity-inducing cute little fuzzy mice for whom I always rooted (sometimes more secretly than others) when they were deposited in his cage. Most of them lasted minutes, others lasted days, perhaps giving Willy a little bite on the tail when he worried them, but whatever the length of their stay in the chamber of death, I hated to see them go. Then again, I felt for their executioner. After all, he was only acting on orders from the big Man upstairs. I am sure that if he had been ordered from the dawn of time to enjoy the crunch of a nice beetle or the pleasing coolness of a leaf of lettuce, he would have done as he was told. As it was, he went through the humiliation month after month of having to disfigure himself with a rodent's girth, sometimes leaving, for a moment or two, a strangely long non-bifurcated tongue hanging out of his bulging neck and head.

I liked Willy. I enjoyed having him as a pet. However, my mother, who I don't think particularly enjoyed buying mice for the slaughter and cleaning up snake droppings, finally had her way, and Willy took up residence in the Biology department at Biola University. For a few years I heard the occasional report about his academic career. It seems he preferred fieldwork to office work and tended to slither off God knows where for months at a time, before re-emerging in some cupboard or other when it was time for a nice meal for him and a good scare for some unsuspecting student who just wanted a materials to prepare a fresh specimen.

Willy was amazing, and he was an education for me. Moving here, however, has opened up a whole new world of herpetological possibilities. Our proximity to a small stream and the abundance of trees and tall grasses in our yard makes the place where we live prime real estate for snakes. On our first visit to the property I spied a rather nondescript greyish snake about a foot in length. I still don't know what kind of snake it was, but I poked at it gently with a stick to verify that it was alive. I'm still rather vexed that I cannot remember enough about it to identify it, and it is perhaps for that reason that I have become obsessed with logging and tracking and identifying any and every slithering thing that passes in my line of sight.

We've since seen a 3-foot-ish long black racer snake on the far bank of the stream. I failed to capture it on film, because rather than handing the camera calmly to Dan, who had spotted the snake in his more gentle wandering, I rather clumsily approached the near bank of the stream, disturbing a frog or other jumping creature, which proceeded to plop loudly into the water. The splash was all the racer needed to convince him that the tall grasses beyond the stream were more hospitable, and, true to his name, he was off at what would be termed a run if he had legs.

Racers and lazy grey garden snakes are one thing. Copperheads are another. I am quite certain that I will eventually meet one, and I would like to recognize it for what it is when I do. Yes, having copperheads about makes me a trifle nervous when it comes time to let the cats prowl the chain-link-fenced portion of the yard, because I have been quite certain that curiosity would get the best of them when faced with a slithering, glittering, animated toys. My suspicion was confirmed today when MooMoo found her first snake.

Far from a copperhead, MooMoo's little discovery was a tiny southern ringneck (known as diadophis punctatus punctatus to our distinguished herpetologist friends) that was no bigger than a penny when he coiled up and wished like anything that we would go away. He was so small that it looked very much like MooMoo was again playing with an invisible toy, as she often does when we start to settle down for the night and she becomes possessed by the irrepressible need to run around like a mad-kitty on a catnip bender. He wasn't, in fact, invisible, but he was incredibly small. I captured him in a small container in order to take a few photographs, looked him over to see if he had any obvious and serious wounds, and then let him loose a bit further from the fenced portion of the lawn than he had started out. He slithered almost imperceptibly toward the stream, displaying a great deal of unmistakable relief in his silent retreat.

Once our little visitor was gone, Daniel looked at me and smiled. "Now you have an excuse to go look at some more of those amateur herpetology websites." I grinned back. I did indeed. I did indeed. I suppose that, helped by my field assistant, MooMoo, I have developed a something of a passion for, well, acquiring knowledge of creeping animals.

Doe a deer...

a female deer!




Today I have had proof that we do indeed get deer in our yard. And I submit it here for you. She was really quite lovely... especially because we have a fence separating her from the bits of our lawn we care about.

Creature Comforts

I have been on a mission since we moved, namely to transform a pile of boxes and a bunch of empty rooms into something we are able to call home. This mission has consumed most of my mornings, many of our evenings and much of our weekends. We're finally getting to the point at which everything essential is more or less put away, and the rest is woefully out of place.

Homes here have traditionally been built without garages, possibly because if you had an outbuilding around here, it was a barn. While our house was built in 1994, and is therefore not exactly a relic of the old South, we're just around the corner from houses built in the 1890s, and while these homes were not built to the same scale, they were built with the same aesthetic. So... we have no garage.

But surely we have a basement, you ask? No. A shed? No again. An attic? Well, yes, if you call a few sheets of plywood hurriedly thrown over the exposed beams of the ceiling an attic. Our landlord asked us to kindly not step in the unsupported areas, lest we put a leg through said ceiling. And, to be fair, we have a crawlspace. It's accessible from outside the house (the house is raised from the ground by about 3-4 feet) and it consists of a lightbulb, some damp earth covered rakishly by a tarp, a wide assortment of spiders and roaches, and about enough clearance to walk in doubled-over. This has been something of an adjustment, to say the least.

Those of you who saw the garage in our last house will understand how not having a garage might cause us some storage issues. I am a collector, of sorts. I cannot claim to have the more impressive and studied collections that some have, such as that of a person we know who has collected the twine from rolled-up newspapers for years, tied end-to-end, until it was long enough to transect a soccer field from goal to goal several times over. My collections are less intentional... I just can't bear to part with something that has memories attached to it. Well, after a while, almost everything has memories. So, while I have managed to decide to throw away enough stuff to necessitate two trips to the local "convenience center" (read "dump"), I have a really tough time with the last few boxes of miscellanea.

We have, however, succeeded in making a few rooms look livable, which brings me a great sense of accomplishment. So, for those of you who enjoy picturing us in our home... here are some pictures. I must say, moving has one benefit... it's a long-lasting good excuse to "nest."

The Kitchen


















































The Living Room





































































The Guest Room (Monte is displaying just how comfortable he thinks this room is. Hint hint)

From My Room With a View

One of the things that caused us to fall in love with the little house we are renting here is the beauty of its surroundings. The pictures embedded in this entry are actual photos of our home. The links show things I haven't managed to capture on film myself yet.

In order to best appreciate some of the loveliness of our backyard, I have situated my desk near the window so I can glance out as I work. As a result, it is not uncommon for my eye to be drawn to movement outside... most often a rabbit or a squirrel, or perhaps a cardinal, which, as State Bird, is quite appropriate.

Our house is situated on a small stream, which attracts wildlife of other sorts as well. Damselflies and dragonflies frolic, and the water teems with tadpoles. We have even encountered a turtle when he surfaced to breathe. We have also spotted a millipede and a katydid of rather prodigious size, and I have encountered black and yellow mud-dauber wasps in the house on two occasions. We've found that there is quite a variety of spiders here, as well. This one pictured above right has built quite an imposing system of webs in a holly bush. In the early evening we sometimes spot fireflies flitting about. As for those creatures that manage to find their way into the house... MooMoo, as bug sentinel, will find them. I have learned that when she is staring intently at something, it behooves me to look, too.


We have yet to see the deer that roam around in the wooded area beyond the stream, but our neighbor next door spotted one last weekend as she read on her deck, and I look forward to seeing them myself.

On our first visit to the house, I encountered a small gray snake near the stream. Thankfully it wasn't a copperhead, which I have come to understand are common around these parts. We have been advised to create a "snake stick" from an old broom handle to be used to sort of rustle the brush in the more over-grown portions of the yard, thus alerting any snakes that we're coming in, so that they may, avoid wasting their precious venom on us. We promise, we wouldn't appreciate it!

The only gardening we have managed thus far is a bit of the sort that one can do in containers. We have some rosemary, purple basil, culantro, Italian parsley and garlic chives growing, most of which we bought at the farmer's market in town. We have some small flavorless wood strawberries growing uncultivated in our back lawn. They are pretty, but as they aren't appetizing, we just enjoy they way they look.

Our street is pretty quiet. We don't get a whole lot of vehicle traffic, though it isn't uncommon to see a mom out walking with a stroller or a couple with their dog. From our new porch bench, we can sit and watch the neighbors walk by in the evenings. I have noticed two families with collies out for a stroll, and the sight unfailingly reminds me of Lassie... I must say, Lassie looks right at home here.Though the city is now home to about 18,000 people, this street feels much like the very small town this once was not so very long ago.

The trees here are very lovely. We have a variety of deciduous trees on the property, including a weeping willow and a cluster of maple trees. I should not neglect to mention the most prominent evergreen, as I have plans for it come December. (Not to worry, the plans do not include cutting it down!)

Our one sadness about the trees is that they are threatened by the beautiful but devastating kudzu vines that have made such a nuisance of themselves since their introduction in the Southern States. The vine is really quite lovely, creating cascades of green from the tree tops, to the forest floor, but its 12-inches-per-day growth pattern means it quickly overtakes the trees, eventually killing them. Most of the kudzu visible from our yard is technically on property belonging to our neighbors, so there isn't much we can do about it.

I don't seem to tire of the beauty outdoors. I sometimes find myself staring out at the leaves rustling in the wind, or I watch a bird scavenge for grubs in the lawn. There's something so peaceful about our little patch of nature. I look forward to watching it transform along with us as the seasons change.