Dead or alive

The women found a small green snake, no thicker than a shoestring. Lifeless ruby red eyes stared out at the brave woman who picked it up. Its tiny mouth dropped open as it dangled over either side of a stick.

“It’s alive!” I screamed and leapt out of the way.

What could have been a squished piece of pasta and sent me flying through the air with a save-yourself-attitude turned out to be a harmless garden snake. I am sure it did not inspire confidence in those who were my responsibility.

Earlier in the year, the same panicked flight reaction overtook me when I was by the river with my boys.

“Watch out,” Daddy Longlegs said.

It was like someone hit my funny bone and I moved reflexively, without thought or hesitation. It was totally automatic, I jumped back and then looked.  

The sleek head of a snake was raised out of the water, swimming directly towards Baby Brother, who sat swinging his feet over the rocks. 

As quickly as I jumped back, I jumped forward, grabbed the child and pulled him to safety. Afterwards, I felt no small amount of disbelief at how I cleared the area and momentarily left the wee-man behind.

When there is a fire, I am not the one who is running towards the smoke. Not at first, anyways. 

I am in a state of self-discovery, trying to work on my strengths and weaknesses. Courage is not one of my strong suits but it is within me, deep down, and each time I find myself in a state of flight or fight, I check in with an honest curiosity.

And in review of both cases, it was the damned snake and a natural, God-given fear to get out of the way when one is heading in my direction.

Alive or dead.

Tell me another story

“Tell me another story,” Little Legs said.

Grandpa yawned in a way that could have been mistaken for a growl.

“Ok, just one more,” Grandpa agreed, “And that’s it.”

Little Legs laughed, neither agreeing nor disagreeing to the terms.

“When I was a little boy, my brother and I were playing in the woods,” he began.

“Like me and Baby Brother,” Little Legs interjected.

Grandpa nodded, “Yes, just like you and your brother.”

“We were playing when we noticed that we weren’t alone. Something white was watching us from a pile of leaves. It twitched its nose and sniffed at the ground to see if we smelled safe.”

“Like this?” Little Legs wiggled his nose back and forth.

“Just like that,” he continued with a nod.

“At first, we thought it was a rat and then we decided it was a new type of cat. The woods-cat had shiny black eyes and a pink nose and sharp, white teeth. We noticed the teeth right away because it hissed at us.”

“Like this?” Little Legs gave his best hiss as observed from his temperamental cat at home.

“Exactly,” Grandpa said.

“We thought maybe the woods-cat was hungry, so we pooled our snacks together and found we had a piece of cheese, two carrot sticks, three pieces of celery and a handful of crackers.”

“You had cheese in your pocket?” Little Legs asked. “Do you have any cheese now?”

“Do you want to hear this story or not?” Grandpa asked.

Little Legs nodded and snuggled down with his pillow, ready to listen.

“We broke off pieces of carrot and tossed it to the cat and that’s when we saw it didn’t have paws, it had fingers. Well, we were mighty curious about this critter and decided to bring it home with us. Slowly but surely, we brought her along, every few steps throwing a piece of celery or a carrot to keep her right behind us. By the time we could see the front porch, that little critter was practically at our heels.

My brother ran ahead and opened the door and I pulled out the last cracker to get the woods-cat up the steps when your great-granny, my momma, ran out.

She screamed with a broom in her hands, “Watch out, there’s a possum behind you.”

She was ready to go to battle for us with the creature from the woods.

I said, ‘Don’t worry, Momma, that’s not a possum. It’s our pet.’ And we brought it right inside.”  

Little Legs blinked hard, fighting sleep, and said, “What’s a possum? One more story?”

“It was our pet. That’s it, now go to bed.”

Grandpa flicked off the light with a snap like the closing of a heavy book and walked into the living room.

“Did you really have a pet possum? And Granny let it inside? How long did you have it? What did Grandpa have to say about it?” I asked, wondering how much more I didn’t know about this man.

Grandpa laughed, “No dummy, it’s just a story.”

“Ok, how about one more,” I picked up where Little Legs left off.

“Please?”

Sweet Bee

The tribe of three marched through the woods, crunching leaves underfoot, hitting trees with sticks and reuniting acorns with their tops or “fingerhats.”

It would be hard to not hear the group, even though Little Legs periodically turned around with a finger held up to his lips.

“Shhhh….” He hushed his brother and mother who walked silently behind him, “deer might be sleeping.”

The trio emerged from the trees with bits of leaves in their hair and burrs on their pants, but otherwise unscathed from the potentially dangerous trip into Nature.

Of note, everything feels dangerous to the anxious/neurotic parent: grocery stores, backyards, stairs, uncut grapes and hotdogs, the list goes on and on.

“Let’s take a break here,” Mama said.

There was a flat rock wide enough for three behinds to rest on it, although, she knew that the chance of three behinds resting there for longer than a minute was slim to none.

Little Legs squatted down to draw on the rock with his hitting stick. Mama stretched out her legs and began the laborious process of picking burrs from her pants. Baby Brother dug into a pile of leaves, pushing the debris to the side as he went deeper towards the earth. He was a natural digger with strong hands and a need to make holes, he was in his element.

“Baa…baa…” he exclaimed in a higher pitch that made his mother take notice.

“What did you find?” Mama asked.

Baby Brother held his finger out and smiled at the buzzing yellow jacket that he had beefriended.

The social wasp buzzed comfortably on the end of the boy’s finger, exchanging curious looks and bee to boy, boy to bee noises.

Mama, who did not understand their language, screamed and reacted with a quick and well-placed flick, sending his friend backwards into the air and into oblivion, for all she cared.

“Bee,” Baby Brother exclaimed proudly, unaware of his brush with danger.

He stared at the empty end of his finger/bee-launch pad and then at his mother, in disbeelief, that his striped friend was suddenly missing.

“Easy come, easy go, Sweet Bee Boy,” Mama said with a twinge of regret at the interrupted friendship that was quickly replaced with a much greater sense of relief at not dealing with the pain and swelling of a sting.

Three Sisters

The day is already hot and muggy with air that is hard to breath. I hope that a storm is on the way to break the heat and drop some water on our pathetic little garden of corn, squash and beans.  

I read about The Three Sisters planting system, credit to Native American wisdom, in which corn is planted first. Once the corn is six inches high, beans are planted, followed by squash a few weeks later. The idea is that each plant supports the others.

Corn is the big sister; she gives structure for the beans to wrap around as well as shade during the hottest part of the season. Beans are the middle sister; she replenishes the lost nitrogen in the soil. Squash is the baby sister, she grows on the ground, trapping moisture in and keeping weeds away from her sisters.

It seemed like the perfect plan. Plant the seeds at the right time, add water and let Mother Nature do the rest.   

Everything sprouted as planned but then, like with children, the siblings began to experience life and misbehave. I suppose the troubles started when the eldest sister was munched on by a passing deer, leaving just a few inches of her stalks. She regrew but was never as strong or developed as her cousins in the fields. By the time she regained her shape and independence, the beans were starting to shoot out tendrils in search of anything on which to climb and grow.

The beans latched onto the still weakened corn and they began to grow upwards together while their baby sister snaked around their bases, littering the ground with orange blossoms the size of a child’s hand.

Today, on inspection of the raised bed garden, contained within its wooden walls and on top of a miserable limestone shelf of grass and thin topsoil, the effects of the sibling rivalry, rather than sibling love, are quite clear. Bean tendrils are wrapped around the corn every few inches, the corn is crippled and choking, leaning over to the side and dangerously low to the ground.

So much for working together. I think of my boys, in constant competition for attention, toys, time and energy. I don’t let them fight without intervention, for the most part, and wonder if the same thought process should apply to the garden. Who am I to intervene, but the gardener who created this mess?    

My inner scientist wants to do nothing, just observe the relationship and see what happens. And the mothering part of me wants to fix it and implement a no-touching, hands/tendrils to yourself policy.

I look back to the early people for guidance and remain unsure on what to do next.

However, I imagine they never would have let things go so wrong.

Honeybee Pile Up

Part 1

Snow and ice covered everything, turning our yard into a magical, glittering world.

With each step, we broke through the ice crust with a satisfying crunch. Little Legs was up to his knees in the snow, red cheeked and happy, despite the cold.

“Let’s check out the bees,” Daddy Longlegs suggested and with no better options, we followed him around the house.  

It was like taking a Sunday drive, one goes along not expecting to see anything but with the secret hope of spotting a loose cow or a car accident, of course, the kind where no one gets hurt.

Where I prepared to see an empty landing board on the beehive, I found a pile of fresh honeybee bodies.

“Oh God,” I cried out for divine help.

They were not yet frozen or covered in snow, so this event, whatever it was, had just happened.

A buzzing pulled me closer, a lone bee made his way out. It pushed past the bodies, stopped at the edge of the mound, and buzzed his last buzz before succumbing to the same fate as his brethren.  

There were more bodies just below the pile-up that made me think of a buffalo herd going over a cliff, one after another. What could have caused this much seemingly senseless loss of life?

After an extensive review of the bee-keeping wisdom on the internet, we concluded that we did not know why they died. The colony may have removed the weaker bees that died of the cold, dysentery from waste build-up, starvation, or mites. There was a reason, but what it was, we would never know.

Nature was cruel and mysterious in her ways.

Part 2

I returned the next day, with Little Legs in tow, to show our respects and clear the ledge on front of the entrance to allow for proper ventilation.

Another surprise awaited us.

The mound was already cleared with just a few bee butts remaining, crumbs that fell from some wild animal’s mouth as it devoured part of the colony.    

I took comfort that an animal was able to survive the cold snap a little longer with this unexpected snack.

Sad to say, that was not the last nor was it the biggest surprise of the season.

Part 3

Just yesterday, we returned with Daddy Longlegs when the weather improved, and the temperature soared to fifty degrees.

Little Legs stomped about, splashing in ice puddles while his parents hovered around the hive.

“Let’s just take a look in here,” Daddy Longlegs said.

“Do you need the smoker?” I asked.

“Not for these sweet bees,” he explained, confident in their relationship.

He was eager to check on them after the disturbing event of the honey-bee pile up, concerned and worried as any bee-daddy might feel.

Carefully, he removed the bricks keeping the lid in place and then the lid. He pulled up a frame that should have been vibrating with life and instead discovered the absence of movement, a waxy void of noise and movement.

The bees were there, clinging to the comb and to one another in lifeless fuzzy masses on frame after frame.

The colony did not survive.

Our world felt sadder and soggier than before as the snow continued to melt.

Little Legs splashed over and surveyed the situation with a knowing nod, “Honey-bees nap.”

Yes, the honeybees nap. All of them.

For a very, long time.

Ba Tat, an uninvited guest

“He’s back.”

Daddy Longlegs stared intently out the window and beckoned us over with an empty mug in hand. He was surprisingly alert for having had only one cup of coffee.  

“Shhhh…” he hushed Little Legs preemptively without looking at the toddler stacking blocks.

“It’s the bobcat.”

Little Legs squealed and shouted, “Ba Tat!”

He grabbed a block and banged it against the window in excitement, scattering the birds at the feeder into a mad flurry of wings.

The bobcat was crouching low with its tufted ears and wide eyes barely visible through the weeds and bramble, using our bird feeder as an extension to its hunting grounds. It watched its brunch plans disappear into the air, stood up and glared at us through the window before bounding away into the woods.

It knew we were inside watching. Or at least, it did after Little Legs alerted it to the fact. When the watcher becomes the watched, it creates an eerie feeling, a prickling on the back of the neck and a good reminder that the window works both ways.

“How in the world did you see him?” I asked.

“I thought it was a bunny because I saw his tail moving against the rocks.”

Meanwhile, Little Legs demanded, “More ba tat, more ba tat,” as though the ghostlike feline could be magically summoned for the king’s court.

With less territory to roam, the prey and predators are getting closer and closer and closer until they are in the backyard deciding whether to join us or eat us for their next meal.

No, sire. The ba tat will not be joining us for lunch.  

Bobcat

https://www.tn.gov/twra/wildlife/mammals/large/bobcat.html