A November day's stray fluff

[UPDATE: Very happy to report the stray spaniel's owner has been located and the stray will be returned home very soon thanks to PawBoost.]

This morning, thanks to Writer's Almanac, we discovered that we're neither the first, nor singular, in our reaction to the kind of cold, cloudy, damp, dreary November weather we've been "enjoying." From the introduction of no less a masterpiece than Moby-Dick comes this sentiment from Ishmael:

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses,..."

On a brighter note, yesterday a pileated woodpecker showed up at one of the suet feeders. Several downey woodpeckers and one or two hairy woodpeckers are also hammering the fat. A red-bellied woodpecker continues to prefer the sunflower seeds. A few goldfinches are back from parenting duties with this year's offspring on their own now.

hairy(?) woodpecker on suet

Photo by J. Harrington

Canada geese, and we think we saw a couple of swans, still are hanging around the Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area pools North and South of County Road 36. In fact, the river's main flow has returned to open water in a few places. For reasons we don't understand, and probably don't want to, some of the neighborhood crows have begun to stand around on the ice.

Yesterday's "lost" spaniel remains at our place per the guidance of the Daughter Person and Son-In-Law, who are concerned about the implications of a too prompt trip to the local humane society. Neutering isn't easily undone. We (actually, they, i.e., DP & S-I-L) will do another round of checking later today to see in any neighbors who weren't home last night are now home and missing a family pet. Would that the other canines that live with us were as well behaved as the stray. He (the stray, not the S-I-L) spent last night quietly resting in a spare dog crate in the upstairs bathroom. Of course we have an extra dog crate (or two), doesn't everyone?

As we listened last night and this morning to DP, we realized we've strayed too far from the "what's right" and wandered too far into the "what's convenient" basis for decisions than we're comfortable with. Another sign of advancing age, no doubt. We'll have to make some compensating adjustments, such as, dog forbid, remembering to actually listening to members of the younger generation and others with perspectives that may vary from our own? Sigh! Help us Ishmael!

common milkweed fluff

Photo by J. Harrington

Finally, for today, something that has nothing to do with the preceding except that we first learned of it this morning and think it's incredibly cool (or warm, as the case may be). They're now using milkweed fluff for clothing insulation!

                     Milkweed

By Bradford Tice

I tell myself softly, this is how love begins—

the air alive with something inconceivable,

seeds of every imaginable possibility

floating across the wet grasses, under

the thin arms of ferns. It drifts like snow

or old ash, settling on the dust of the roadways

as you and I descend into thickets, flanked

by the fragrance of honeysuckle and white

primrose.

I recall how my grandmother imagined

these wanderers were living beings,

some tiny phylum yet to be classified as life.

She would say they reminded her of maidens

decked in white dresses, waltzing through air.

Even after I showed her the pods from which

they sprang, blossoming like tiny spiders,

she refused to believe.

Now, standing beside you in the crowded

autumn haze, I watch them flock, emerge from

brittle stalks, bursting upon the world as

young lovers do—trysting in the tall grasses,

resting fingers lightly in tousled hair.

Listen, and you can hear them whisper

in the rushes, gazing out at us, wondering—

what lives are these?

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