Journal of a Sabbatical

June 20, 2001

almost good service

Adopt these cats at Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society

Today's Bird Sightings:
Plum Island
cedar waxwing (2)
redwinged blackbird (6)
American robin (2)
brown headed cowbird (1)
least tern (1)
killdeer (4)
gadwall (30)
great egret (1)
double crested cormorant (61)
common grackle (1)
Canada goose (16)
willet (2)
bobolink (2)
common tern (3)
ring billed gull (3)
mourning dove (1)
mallard (8)
herring gull (30)
yellow warbler (1)
gray catbird (4)
eastern kingbird (2)
northern mockingbird (1)
purple martin (2)
snowy egret (1)

Today's Reading: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan by Isabella Bird, Pilgrimage for Plants by Frank Kingdon-Ward, On Agriculture by Columella

Today's Starting Pitcher:
David Cone

2001 Book List
2001 Plum Island Bird List
Plum Island Life List

Photos:

Big Plastic Bull

Savannah

Sandy

Miss Newburyport

Carmine and Jemma on the Dusty Laptop

Carmine on the Dusty Laptop

Jemma on the Desk

Rough-fruited Cinquefoil

Common Milkweed Flowers

More Rough-fruited Cinquefoil Flowers

English Plantain (close-up)

Sweet Clover

Lately besides carved wooden fishermen in yellow slickers, giant channel marker buoys marooned on land, a sign advertising 53 years of almost good service, and a life sized plastic shark I've been driving past a way larger than life sized plastic bull on the way to the cat shelter. The place stores carnival rides. You never know what you're going to see there on any given day. The plastic bull has been sitting there placidly for about three weeks next to a fried dough truck. I don't know if they're trying to find a home for at a steakhouse or a western themed mini-golf course. It sort of sets a tone for the Bridge Road neighborhood sandwiched in there between a preschool and 53 years of almost good service.

A number of the cats are all riled up today. Seamus is harassing Sandy, even spilling coffee (Chris's I think) on him and dethroning him from the big yellow bucket briefly. Savannah is going after everybody. Duchess perches on top of one of the kitty condos glaring malevolently at all of feline kind. Any cat that gets within 6 feet of her gets hissed at, pounced on, you name it. Poor Emma bravely set out to get a drink of water from the community water bowl and watch Roy dry the dishes when she came to the attention of both Savannah and Seamus at the same time. Roy fended them off barehanded and is darn lucky he shed no blood. I reminded him to use a towel next time. Is it the 90 degree weather? The barometric pressure? Massachusetts politics? Who knows? All I know is they are hissy today.

Emma did get to settle in and watch Roy dry the dishes, and Sandy found a comfy place to sleep in the closet. Somebody put Seamus back in his cage. Duchess took herself as far away from other cats as possible up on top of the bank of cages. Things got calmer after that.

Bianca was cozying up to Roy again, head butting him and everything. She's nowhere near as shy as she used to be. She actually finds people interesting now. And even Priscilla, who has been spending all of her out of cage time peeking out of one of those kitty condos so only her nose is visible, actually walks around in the open and dares to come sort of close to people though not huge hissing cats. Kendra has been getting Priscilla to rub against her legs and actually allow petting by sitting on the floor and offering her little bits of dry food. She put on a demonstration of this and we all got to witness Priscilla being friendly.

In the office, I lifted up the plastic dust cover over the Dusty Laptop and found Carmine and Jemma all curled up on top of it. Hey cats, that's a "laptop" not a "lap"! I was all confused because I thought Carmine had been adopted and it was Vito who was still here. But Vito's been adopted and Carmine is still here. And darn cute too. Carmine was thrilled when Jemma let him take over the whole laptop while she cuddled up behind the printer. They both love the desk. Why not? It's full of cat toys.

Just about anything is a cat toy around here. The shorts I put on this morning had a small hole in the seam by the left pocket and a little balled up thread hanging down. I made the mistake of sitting on top of the credenza when one of the cats was playing with a pencil. The pencil rolled toward my left hip. Next thing I knew the seam of my shorts was unraveling. Moral of story: never wear anything with a loose thread to the cat shelter. It's so hot today I could use the extra ventilation. I need new shorts anyway.

I pulled my T-shirt down over the hole and went for the usual veggie sub. Angelina's is like a refrigerator compared to the cat shelter. The cat shelter does have air-conditioning but I was sweating buckets at the sink anyway. Whatever Angelina's has is more that air conditioning. They could put a skating rink in there. The TV is tuned to CNN and the news is making no sense to me. I can't tell the difference between Alan Greenspan and a tornado. The heat and the refrigeration must be scrambling my brain.

For like half a minute I'm refreshed enough to consider getting a cup of coffee for my drive-by birding expedition. The feeling passed. I decided against coffee.

The drive-by birding was weird in that the first birds I saw were two cedar waxwings, which I always associate with fall even though I know they're here in the summer. Another bird for the year list, but this is too easy - Monday a blue jay, today cedar waxwings - I get to add something "new" to the list with such common species! The other weird thing is seeing so few kingbirds. I was almost to the very end of the island before I saw even one! Considering how conspicuous they usually are I was puzzled. No crows for them to harass either.

The weirdest thing by far was one of the suicidal mourning dove pair perched on top of a tree. A tree? Perched? Not walking recklessly in the road? OK, I don't know for sure whether it was one of that pair but it was in the right spot - just on the tree instead of the road.

Since Monday the fields developed huge yellow patches of what I'm guessing is rough-fruited cinquefoil. It's for sure some kind of cinquefoil. Yellow all over the place. The milkweed is in bloom too with those weird balls of tiny flowers. The flowers are minuscule but there are so many of them in each ball that it looks huge. Actually a lot more things are in bloom since last week and the rosa rugosa is busting out all over.

I could have photographed a lot more plants today except that I didn't want to get out of the car. That would be because when I did, to photograph that weird-looking thing I think is English plantain, bugs of many species swarmed around me landing in my hair, my ears, my pockets... I looked down and my left knee was bleeding. I don't remember scratching it. Must be one of these strange little flies.

Biodiversity is great but does it have to happen all at once? How many species can fit in my shorts?

Well, that and the fact that it's 90+ degrees. Have I mentioned it's 90 degrees? Even the birds seem subdued by the heat. Even with all these bugs around, the purple martins and and tree swallows aren't swooping around gobbling them up. The weather guy on the TV says we can't call it a heat wave because yesterday only got up to 89. The definition of heat wave is three days in a row of 90+ temperatures. So if you sandwich an 89 degree day between two 90 degree days, what do you call it? Too darn hot. That's what I call it.

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