SIgns of the season

1. Yesterday, during the afternoon, chipmunks number 12 and 13 wandered into the live-trap. Not together, of course. Each got a spray of florescent pink hair dye before being transported to a release location a couple of miles away.  


2. During dog-walking and rodent-transporting, I noticed the air full of what I think are Ladybugs. Since both ladybugs and their similar-looking cousin Multicolored Asian Lady Beetles are supposed to be beneficial, I'm taking a live and let live approach, except for those that land on the back of my neck.


3. The afternoon brought another treat whens I noticed that "Gimpy Gobbler" is still around. He and three of his "bros" wandered through the yard, no doubt feasting on beetles of whatever kind we've got. Seeing that "Gimpy" has made it through the Summer pleases me all out of proportion to any rational response.


4. Icing on the cake came later when I saw a pileated woodpecker fly across the road as I was doing my second chipmunk transport.





Country road where pileated woodpecker was seen


Photo by J. Harrington



5. Finally, last evening, as I was letting SiSi out for her evening potty break, we spooked a couple of whitetails from the back year.

All of this, plus the growing, almost glowing, fall colors brings home again why I enjoy country living. I like going to a play now and then but I almost always, more than once a day, find something to enjoy in the neighborhood, and am slowly learning to manage some kinds of irritants, like an excess of chipmunks, although two in one day is pushing it. Lisa Williams' poem makes me think of Autumn. What about you?

Road

By Lisa Williams 

This is what poetry is (says the Road),

a laying down of uniform pattern

across a land you can't control

but which you think it best to flatten.

It's far from vivid. Look at the whole

flamboyant forest! Look at the paths

that can't be uttered by a mouth

and at the scattered arcs of light

more integral to this wide planet

than words will ever be. Your lines?

Like railroad tracks that cut the bracken,

bring something through, then disappear.

No one knows what speck was taken

or where it moved, and no one cares.

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