Got back late from an evening out, so this will be quick. We picked up a friend and gave her a ride, and she directed us over a small bridge to get to the freeway from her home.  Houses on this side, apartment buildings over there, the freeway and a large retail complex, a swanky hotel, etc etc right over thataway. We are talking city.

She happened to mention that her neighbor had seen a full-grown mountain lion sandbathing in the dry creekbed there.

Well now there goes the neighborhood.

Don’t stomp in the puddles! You’ll get your feet wet!

Well, yes; that’s what puddles are for, aren’t they?

One of the treasures of my childhood was all the times when, on returning from following the trails and climbing over the rocks and splashing around in nearby Cabin John Creek, my mother would look us over appraisingly with a big grin and pronounce, “You must have had FUN getting THAT dirty!”

If you remember, the peregrine falcons who fudged their fledge the first time got rescued by Glenn Stewart, the UCSC biologist in charge of the peregrine recovery project. He would scoop them off the ground, (like this time) put them in a box, and take them up the elevator back to the nest area–and before releasing them would give them a good soaking so they couldn’t try to get away from him in a panic till they’d dried off enough and recovered, by which time he’d be long out of sight.

So. Today, after their usual six months’ vacation, the clouds came back and started back to work. Rain! I remember rain… (My children do not believe in this myth of warm summer rains back East. Rain is never in summer. And it is always ocean-cold. Or so they say.)

With the new camera up on City Hall this year and its new views, there was one of our peregrine parents, EC, this afternoon. On the 18th floor louver. Spreading his wings open to the rain, then splashing across the louver to the other end, turning again, his wings wide to the sky still.  Puddles incoming! Catch me if you can! And he flew off into his game of tag with the raindrops.

And Clara flew from her tree to join him.

This is not the most reverent post. Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends!

When my boys were young, they–well let’s see. Dates. 1990 for the first Super Soaker? Sounds right. They kept making them bigger and squirtier from there on out, coinciding with my boys’ growing appreciation for just what a fine piece of machinery these could be. (With the occasional summer exclamation heard of You boys keep those things AWAY from my hearing aids!) The girls played with them too, but with not quite the same passion for power.

There was a birthdays-and-Christmas arms race going on for several years running. If one of the boys got one (and they did, it was at the top of their wish list), their dad had to have a bigger one.

I thought the things had all long since gone to that great recycling squirt gun in the sky, but no: when I said something last week, my husband grinned and said he’d kept his biggest baddest one all this time. Never know when you might need it. (Grandson? January?  Did you say grandson? Dude!)

Remember that book my daughter-in-law sent me that says squirrels don’t learn by fear because then they just couldn’t be squirrels?

The gray ones have, with the onset of Fall, gotten bossier and meaner to my cute little black ones I watched grow up and have been vigorously chasing them away at teethpoint from the area under the birdfeeders.

This will not do.

The first time I hefted that thing, wondering, (for the record, it weighs more than I do) I had a gray bushytail looking at me like, what is that? Is that fruit? Those bright colors says it’s fruit and it’s sweet and I want some. Just hand it over, lady, winter’s coming and I gotta stock up.

I opened the door.

It couldn’t take its eyes off–but no wait Feederfiller is coming OUT! RUN!

That water can run faster than I can. Okay, wait, I have to prime the thing, open the door, raise, aim, oh wait hang on, step further away from the feeder so I don’t get the seed damp, okay, now try!

Those gray squirrels, over the last few days, have stopped doing a flat-out run and have started doing the anti-hawk zig zag dance trying to get away from it better. They can plot the spray’s trajectory better than I can theirs. I’ve barely gotten a drop of water on any of them and only from a goodly distance.

But still.  Turns out they like being squirted about as much as cats do. And they don’t come slinking right on back, either, like they would if I’d only scared them–not if I’m anywhere in view they don’t.

The black squirrels have already caught on pretty much that I’m totally cool with them.

And now they get the place to themselves, unbossed and unbitten. The supersoaker is resting pointing at the porch. They’ve all learned.

(Psst–that thing’s obsolete by ten years. Did you see that Wikipedia link? How to powerboost your soaker? Go for it, kids!)

And while I’m talking about education…

The story stuck with me and I went searching to finally share it here. The description of the new school building is here. It will provide the bridge between medical-school book-learning and actually putting that knowledge to practice on patients without freaking out in an emergency when one realizes that an actual life is depending on what you do now.

The San Jose Merc recently told the story of the man who built the place. He’d been deprived of an education growing up in China and had sorely missed it; his son was accepted  into Stanford, and the father walked around the place with his incoming freshman 28 years ago, awed by it all.

But the real reason Li Ka Shing built that new medical school building halfway across the world from his home?

On that trip with his son, he saw a beautiful blue bird. I’m guessing it was a scrub jay, by its location and the fact that it stood its ground so long, but whatever, he stopped with his camera to take its picture.

He was trying to get just the best shot; he was totally in the moment, seeing something novel and beautiful and wanting to bring it home with him on film as part of his trip where his son was going to be able to attain what he himself had never had a chance to.

And then finally he looked up and saw not one, not several, but dozens of students on their bikes, presumably on their way to their classes, whom he was blocking.  (I can guess where on campus that bottleneck might have been.)  They had noticed what he was doing and were reverencing his experience: they had stopped, waiting, fingers to lips in silence to others approaching that he might be able to get a good shot and that they might not scare the bird away from him.

Love silently expressed for a stranger’s love of nature.  A generous impulse, repeated over and over on the part of a whole nameless crowd who, like his son, had come to this place to learn.  It left a lifetime impression. He wanted to give back.

And so those who dedicate their lives to making others well will now have the biggest medical simulation facility in the world to learn in before they go work with live patients. They will have a better education, others will be taught from what they will learn, and we are all the better off for it. Having been a patient at Stanford Hospital when the alarm was sounding for me, having dealt that day with a novice doctor, that means a tremendous amount to me.

I hope they have photos of blue birds all over inside the place.

We’re in the middle of a serious heat wave. I’ve been being careful to keep the water outside filled up for the wildlife, amused and gratified at the finches’ tiny feet gripping the edges of the clear cup as they play bobblehead dolls, leaning way over to sip.

There’s nothing quite like making a small thing comfortable. They’ve been drinking a lot with the temps so high.

Last night, cooking dinner, I was surprised to see my favorite black squirrel with the red belly: usually he’s busy running around in the back yard. Just then, though, he had found me.  In the kitchen.  On the other side of the house.  He was doing the monorail act, lying on the fence just outside the window there, legs splayed two to a side, tail stretched out casually with just a bit of a lilt near the end, trying to increase his surface space to cool down, I’d guess.

He’d found the perfect place to relax and people watch on a hot feels-like-summer evening.

I looked up, startled at first to see him right there right outside the window. What are you doing here?

Watching you cook dinner, was the answer: as I went back and forth from counter to drawer to other counter to fridge, chop cook rinse clean, he lifted his head and turned this way and that, that way and this again, steadily watching, watching as I went about my work, while the rest of him stayed splatted out, completely relaxed. Just hangin’ with my peeps.

I laughed.

He leaped up! Oh good! I made her laugh–that means I get a cashew! And he raced over the house to the backyard to where he knew I would put one out for him, his favorite, as a reward.

How could I resist that?

With thanks to Margo Lynn for the heads-up: I have to show you this. I’m just glad the birds’ cameras didn’t catch on anything, especially the goshawk’s while going through those trees Star Wars style. Wow.

I was in the Martin Luther King library in San Jose once when one of the peregrines from the nest across the street suddenly flew down the narrow treeline along the side of the building, so fast I had to blink a moment and question whether I’d even actually seen it–I knew I had, but it had gone by too fast to even begin to make out anything other than the sheared-off vision of speed.

(Oh, and, while we’re at it: a few Eagles. Congratulations to my sister’s sons!)

(Ed. to add: I had a photo I was looking for for this post but stumbled across this one first.  When I shot it awhile back, it rather annoyed me that my straight needles in their holder had reflected in the window.  And yet.  Yesterday, it was striking to me that that reflection looked like the top of one of the Towers, with the needles as the cell-phone antennae that had been on the roof.  There/not there, with the peacemaking birds as the intended subject of the picture several months ago.)

Watching the various species that have been coming up to my porch and my birdfeeders the past 17 months, I’ve learned something:  each of the territorial types chases after newcomers of their own species.  There is plenty of food for all but when the level in the feeder gets low, I seem to get more, not fewer finches, as if suddenly they need to make sure there’s enough for them even if they have to fight to get to it.  They often do not all come back after I refill their supply; they just seem to need to know it’s there.

But do the towhees feel threatened by the doves? No. Do the doves feel threatened by the titmice or the adorable little Bewick’s wren that flips itself around by the tail?

No.  Even when they eat the same sunflowers or skitter around the same area: they only feel a need to establish dominance over the ones the most like themselves.

(Then there was that remarkable pair, the little junco feeding his ladyfriend finch that I got to watch over several weeks.)

We are all most like each other.  We need to get to know one another better for the fear of the different, of the unknown, to be replaced by our common human ground.  I loved this article (thank you Margo Lynn).

We are better than birds, and it is said that He knows even the sparrow in its fall. And I have to tell you that, outside their native European element, sparrows are absolutely terrible to those around them.  But He knows them too.

There are no strangers before God.  All He asks is that we live as best we can by love as He freely offers love to us, however we may understand the life He has given us.

In anticipation of our own nest about to empty: Veer, the baby peregrine tiercel (male) hatched last year at City Hall, has clearly found and established his personal space, having been found there, repeatedly.  Although he won’t officially be a mature adult till next spring, his adult featheration is pretty much in–and he has a falcon (technical term for female) hanging out with him these days. Look at that lovely white line over her beak. Just like his mom’s, only a bit poofier, even shaped like knit stitches across a row; ya gotta love it. (His father’s is dark all the way down.)

I guess it’s official: everybody’s into knitting now!

So we finally got our summer.   It’s today and yesterday, with records broken yesterday and probably today too. Then it’s supposed to go back to  the 60ish-to-70-degree coolness with the usual breeze off the Bay that we’ve had for weeks, perfect shawl weather. Tomorrow.

There’s been a goldfinch just outside my window putting on quite a display today:  it’s been holding its tail stretched open as wide as it can go, trying to cool off.  I’ve been watching it relax, go oh wait that’s right and stretch it back out–hold it right there–that’s better. Relax, flare out, hold. Repeat.

On the ground, the mourning doves are winging it in their own AC effort.

My hanging sugarpine cone was held to its string up there, I learned, by glue. It came unglued in the heat.  Smashing Sugarpines would make a great rock band name.

The suet cake is dripping slowly.

The squirrels are looking longingly through the window at my tomatoes that are grabbing at their chance to finally turn color–inside, out of reach of their greedy little thievery.

A house finch lands and spreads his tail in a wide V too as I type this.

I tell you. It’s feather-and-fan weather out there.

Kyle and his wife and small children were here visiting today from the Boston area.  His is still one of my favorite stories ever. We caught up a bit, and I got his tired new babe-in-arms to grin and play peek a boo and to start to giggle. Success!  It was so good to see them.

A total non sequitor, but, I haven’t seen a possum in our yard since we cut down our date palm years ago.  Brought back memories.  But there was one on the back patio tonight and it ambled away at the sight of me, sniffing at the birdseed can and then hunkering in a corner behind the earthquake-supplies larger trashcan; I called out to Michelle. Hey! You want to see a possum?!

She came, but in the dark it was hard to tell where it had gone off to. I went out there in my stocking feet (not handknit), thinking one should only be so stupid about this (have you seen the teeth on those things?), camera in hand, and hoped the flash would find it for her and me both. Flash flash flash. Or if nothing else it would discourage it from staying.

Next time.  And surely there will be one.

Meantime, I pulled up the tight-fitting handle over the lid on the birdseed to lock it shut for the first time in a long time.

We had one time, years ago, when we were driving through California’s Central Valley around harvest season and found ourselves behind a semi.  It was loaded past the top with grocery-store-ripe (as in, not) tomatoes.  We couldn’t see any wooden crates dividing them into layers, although there may have been; from our vantage point, it was simply one giant  mounded-over pile and one could only imagine the weight on the ones at the bottom. Had to be for canning, right?

We kept our car back a little bit after the first time that truck hit a bump. We didn’t want those fresh round rocks in an argument with our windshield.

This is the second year in a long while that I’ve planted my own and I’m hoping it becomes a habit.

And so I was so looking forward to that first really good, sweet, homegrown tomato on my (yes just) one little plant.  That biggest one was a goodly bright orange and getting brighter, not quite red yet; it didn’t have that intense tomato essence yet, but give it time.  I tried not to examine it too closely too many times a day.  Getting there…

And then the water that I always have set out for the critters got pulled over by one of them and emptied out and I didn’t notice immediately.  I found out when I looked out the window and discovered my so-anticipated veggie out in the yard: when I stepped out to see, hoping that maybe just maybe I could simply retrieve it (good luck with that), I found that one of the squirrels had stripped the side open, sucked it out, and left the hard outer carcass lying there in reproach.  It didn’t even eat the piece it had torn off.  It didn’t even pull it to the trees for a proper burial in hopes it would sprout more like the one squirrel had done with the whipped cream cup.

It didn’t like grocery-store-hard tomatoes.

Turkey.

Chucked that one. Okay, then. Four more to go and lots of tomato flowers.

Since then, no more fruit has set and the plant has just barely been hanging in there. I’m thinking I got a determinate variety, which sets all at once and then dies, good for someone doing canning, rather than an indeterminate, which keeps producing merrily till frost like I’d hoped for.

The plant is in a pot and I keep threatening to bring it inside out of the squirrels’ reach, but it’s pretty leggy and windy and viney, y’know?  Those four tomatoes, hanging on. It’s been a slow, cold season this year.

I noted a black squirrel rubbing its face vigorously today–I’d shaken some very hot pepper flakes around those four after the theft. Busted!

Meantime, a few days ago I thought part of the problem with losing our water supply out there is these plastic disposable cups I’ve been using (because I don’t care what happens to them) –they’re old, they’re thin, they crack easily.  I ought to put something sturdier and steadier out there.

And so I braced an old Tupperware cup in the usual spot and filled it up.

It didn’t stay put long at all!  It disappeared, and I had to go looking.

Dang, that must have been one hard tomato.  But someone kept on trucking–I found the plastic slivers.  And this time it *was* over by the tree trunks.  That squirrel kept on chewing, sure the juice and seeds must be in there somewhere: Come ON! GIVE it to me!

I don’t think Tupperware’s lifetime warranty quite covers that.

I got permission to post a picture of Rachel, my great-niece.

I took the damaged birdfeeder down yesterday and gave it a good cleaning and disinfecting and let it dry inside overnight.

What was amazing to me is how fast one of the black squirrels figured out, before I did, that it was open season–a couple of hours is all it took: the feeder cage wasn’t going to close down on it now.  Did it make a different sound now when the birds landed? Did it give slightly under their weight and now it didn’t? Did the squirrel remember the short time awhile back when I put it together wrong and they could get at it and what it sounded/looked like then?  I don’t know. But clearly, it had been looking forward to this for a long time and I had made its day. Forget those nuts over there–I’m going in!

Nope. Sorry. Mine.

What made me laugh later was, after thinking how smart the one was for figuring it out so fast, how dumb a sneaking gray one was for trying to gauge jumping distance from the forbidden pole (that they normally really do stay off of)–not quite noticing that, duh, dude, it’s.not.there.now. If your friend takes a flying leap, does that mean you have to take a flying leap? Huh? Huh?

Off to the shop.  They replaced the inner tube, it was under warranty, all taken care of, good to go.  Got it home, set it back in its spot, filled it up, walked in the other room, walked back, and it was–well, let’s just say I was no longer the bad Finch who stole Christmas. *Nah-voo dore-ace to you too, guys.

Meantime, I got some knitting done at Purlescence tonight and my hands were doing okay–I tell you, it feels good to be back in the land of the knitting.

————

*Richard thinks it’s ah-voo dor-ace. Michelle thinks we’re both not quite right. Wikipedia was no help, but I did find the theme song singing here.

(This was a nice even circle.  The squirrels are at it again.)

The ancient mystery is revealed. They worked for peanuts and yet accomplished so much. Tourists now flock to the site to see one of the Seven Wonders of the World:

Stonehinge.

Ya gotta love a date like that. The lazy days of summer… An amaryllis opening up four months early or eight months late, whatever, just because today seemed a good day for it.  A twined-twinned-stemmed avocado plant,  two  for the price of sprouting one.

My arthritis has been flaring for the first time in a long time–too much sun, I guess, and some heavy lifting I shouldn’t have done–and I knit one row today and stopped for fear of doing damage.  Ice and (I hope) tomorrow for that.  But I got day-t0-day stuff done that needed doing, watched the squirrel watching the day, and all the while you could almost see that flower opening up; it looked like the bud above it, this morning.

And I went off to buy birdseed to take good care of my flock.

Where I encountered someone I’ve seen just a few times who, when I said, with no previous conversation, that I’d like the patio mix and the sunflowers, expecting her to ring those up too, tried to tell me, rather tersely, that those three and a half inch square suet cakes I had at the counter were not my 20 pound bags of birdseed.

Wait, come again?

Yeah, that confused me as much as it does you.  What on earth?! I smiled sweetly and said, Yes, I have a suet holder. I feed lots of birds. (I didn’t add, a suet holder plus three kinds of birdfeeders and a giant sugar pine cone the chickadees love to dance on and I have nuttall’s woodpeckers–a male today at last, so there’s a pair now!  And juncos and titmice and house finches and goldfinches and Bewick’s wrens and pine siskins and bluejays and  chestnut-backed chickadees despite being at the edge of their range and drab California towhees that let you in on the secret by seeing they really do have a lot going on when they’re up close and a brightly-colored Eastern towhee going neener neener at its cousins and mourning doves and the occasional brown-headed cowbird that had taken over the bedroom and the fridge at some other bird family’s nest and a yellow warbler and what am I forgetting here, bright erratic hummingbirds, the Cooper’s hawk and a red-tailed hawk, the brief lamented budgie, the Golden Eagle next door–and then a mockingbird, the day after our trip last week, finally showing up on the porch for the first time after all this time to stand there staring me down from right there at the other side of the glass to demand, So where are MY favorites?  And so I’d read the packages and had picked out two suet cakes this time, one, my usual, and one that had dried mealworms in it. Mockingbird? You’re welcome.)

If I can’t be outside, bring the outside to me.

If only I understood why on earth she seemed put out, still, that I was buying that suet.  Huh.  Here, hon, I wanted to tell her, maybe you need to learn to knit. Maybe some feathery lacy patterns would be just the thing.

Or to take some time watching a black squirrel happily birdwatching on a perfect 72 degree Bay Area day.  Eight, nine, ten… And that’s just the ones on the feeders.

(I really needed some knitting time afterwards to bring things back to normal, a book wasn’t enough. I may just push my hands into it tomorrow anyway and maybe it’ll even help them recover.)

Several times I saw small groups of the most striking black-and-white bird in Utah, all dressed up and formal in  tux and tail (a really long tail!) and I knew that I should know what it was but couldn’t remember. I wished for my new Sibley books.

Curious.  I wonder if the people working on Lyme disease know about magpies eating the ticks right off the deer and moose?