PopWars

Animals let it all hang out when it rains. We walk everyday regardless of the weather and even a gentle rain keeps most people inside. But we are guaranteed to see more wildlife when it rains. Turkeys and deer don’t even seem to notice the rain.

Bull frogs usually shut up when you get close to them. We stopped on the boardwalk over Tamarac Swamp this morning and Peggi took a movie of the bullfrogs below calling to one another. It stopped raining by the time we got to the beach and the lake was calm and dreamy with grey masses over Canada. It started raining as we walked on the sand. The cleanup crew had not been out so the beach was littered with colorful plastic toys and packaging, blankets, bottles, partially charred firewood and a pair of women’s sandals.

The trees are more colorful in the rain and easier to look at without all that sun. We came back along Eastman Lake. The white mute swans catch your eye. They are beautiful but invasive and they bully the other birds. The pair that has been at the southern end of the lake all spring had their babies and the whole family was out in the middle of the lake. A big fish was thrashing about near the shore. At first we thought it was a beaver but it stayed down too long.

A few turtles had crawled out of the lake, mothers ready to pop. One had already dug a hole on the fairway and was dropping her eggs.

We were coming up from the big lake (Ontario), walking along the west side of Durand Lake, the sunny side in the morning, and Peggi was telling me about her dream the night before. Ken, Margaret Explosion’s bass player, had suggested that we all wear hat and some funny suits at our gig next Wednesday, the first since they pulled the plug on live music back in March 2020. And he wanted us each to take a drug before the performance, some pills that he got from his mother.

And then I heard a splash as a bunch of these turtles were startled by our presence. We froze and they slow climbed back on the log. If you enlarge the photo above you can see more heads sticking out of the water to the left of the fallen tree. We stayed here for a half hour or so.

Earlier we had watched one of those white swans chase a goose across the lake. Closer to home a bull frog was holding court on Trott Lake. A Pileated woodpecker was competing with the sound of a nail gun from the workers on our neighbor’s roof. Back at home Peggi checked her fortune in today’s paper and found that she “would be favorably impacted by a member of the animal kingdom today.”

We rode out to Port Bay over the weekend in the the backseat of some old friends’ car. Old as in our age and due to the fact that I went to high school with one of them. We had not seen them since their trip to Mexico and we had a lot to catch up on. Traveling during a pandemic is adventurous enough but they pushed the envelope and arranged a guided psychedelic trip on an organic South American plant, Ayahuasca. It is said to trigger the growth of new brain cells and possibly treat disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s.

They took a taxi outside of town and met a young shaman and his girlfriend in a small building with no running water. They were instructed to keep their eyes closed for the entire trip, something that lasted til the sun came up. Their hallucinations were similar in that they both involved brightly colored objects, small Lego-like pieces and numbers on buildings. I was in awe that they were so trusting and so so open to this new, potentialy wild experience. Other than a few mushrooms I haven’t taken a psychedelic trip since 1969.

We walked up to Aman’s this morning and the he humidity was so low today, the cool temperatures so crisp, the flowering tress at peak color, I felt like I was tripping.

There must be a more humane way to get mice out of your house. A better mousetrap. Mice had free rein of our home before we bought it. The droppings were everywhere. We think one died in the furthest reaches of our oven because it took a year of baking to completely eliminate the odor.

We were watching a Perry Mason episode the other night and I was half asleep when I thought I saw a mouse scamper by. We had already heard suspicious rumblings behind the cupboards so I sprung into action. They can’t resist peanut butter. We use Wegman’s Organic Crunchy. In fact, I hear mice on death row request it as their last meal. We caught five in a twenty four period and think we’re good for another year.

Before the doctor set her wrist he had his assistant cut Peggi’s wedding ring off. We were out walking last year on a perfectly dry road when one of Peggi’s YakTrax came off and caught the other. She went down fast and broke her wrist. Now that the pandemic has settled down we entered a jewelry store to have the ring repaired. They were having a Mother’s Day sale of a Victorian collection they had acquired and they brought in some furniture to kick it off.

On our way home from the beach we noticed a couple bent over some green plants. They both were carrying plastic shopping bags and the man was cutting cutting something. We thought maybe they were foraging for mushrooms so I asked “What have you found.”

When they turned back toward us it became clear that they had no idea what I had just said. You know that look. I tried again. Blank faces. I know how they felt. I’ve felt this way many times in Spain. With hand gestures and Asian flavored words the man communicated that they were picking these weed-like greens for soup. Peggi reached down to pick one and the man said, “No.” He held up his hands and showed us he was wearing gloves.

After the couple moved on Peggi used her iNaturalist app to identify the plant as nettles, something we have been stung by in the past.