Nobody told the British Mormon missionary, carving his first pumpkin, that you’re supposed to cut the top off going at an angle so it won’t fall in on itself when you’re done–so his jack o’lantern ended up with a hat on its bald head, a pumpkin with a costume.  (And he did an impressive job making an expressive face, but I don’t have a picture–you’ll just have to take it on faith.)

The hubby bought candy. So did I. Oops. Total number of small children: about 10. Medium-sized children: 1.  “Take some more” can only be repeated so many times and be gotten away with when the child’s mom or dad is standing right there knowing full well what you’re up to: better your fight with yourselves than ours with our kids, was the unspoken smiling conversation.

Where are the towering greedy teenagers in goofy outfits when you need them?

I put Michelle’s jack o’lantern on the back patio afterwards to see, today, if the wild things might take interest. The wild things’ reaction was they weren’t going anywhere near that scarecrow head–we had  a squirrel-free zone and even ground-bird-free zone all the way till this afternoon, till finally one towhee braved that patio. Did I get to see gray squirrels doing the bobbing-apple dive for the seeds or the peanut butter I put inside that pumpkin?  Did I get to videotape baby black squirrels climbing through eyeballs?  No I did not.  Two finally showed up and only one so much as deigned to sniff in poor Jack’s direction. Rejection is brutal.

It didn’t hit me till later that for all but that one older kid, we could have skipped the candy thing entirely and helped Peruvian women feed their children actual and decent food: the handknitted fingerpuppets!   The little ones would have been thrilled! Their fingers could have been costumed year-round!

I AM slow sometimes! Oh well. Now you know what I’m doing next year, and the cash outlay will actually be less.

Except for a small bag of Reese’s. For that one eight-year-old. And maybe (not that I’m admitting it) me.

I made it to the post office yesterday, and on my way there there were turkey vultures circling–at first glance, it seemed they were above the new assisted-living center in town. I thought, c’mon, birds, that’s tacky.

But I had maligned them.  They were, rather, staking out the garden center two blocks closer in.  Ah, I see: vegetarian turkey vultures! Spotting a would-be gardener with a brown thumb arriving at the hopefully-named Summerwinds–definitely the territory of fly-in-the-sky plans–and waiting to zero in on the kill. What’s on the menu, friends? Tulipanfried bulbs? Apples, crisped by the drought? Or maybe peaches; they would make a cool whip.

Okay, almond my own business now.

The first picture, taken this morning through double-paned windows, is for Lene, who has a much better camera.

Let’s see, what’s in the fridge that needs using up…  Zucchini, leftover guacamole, bacon bits, some cheddar we could melt in there, hmmm… (offered to make some on the side with tofu mozzarella and the kid heated up a can of chili instead.)

She: “I’m sorry I forgot to cook dinner.” (She’d made and decorated and filled up on chocolate cupcakes.)

Me: “I bet he’s more sorry I remembered to.”

He: “No thank you; that’s enough Venusian slug guts for me.”

He: “She’s giving me that look.”

She and he more or less in unison: “MOM–she’s LOOKING at me! Make her STOP!”

We’re all space aliens here.  Pass the black holes on that flying saucer for me, willya?

(The lighter areas on the towhee are flash artifacts.)

LynnM says that that order of Superballs would be enough for all the employees at the Pentagon, but that they probably don’t play at work like that.

I told her, of course not; those would be weapons of mass distraction.

Meantime, I got a nice dose of October in the mail yesterday, a surprise from Margo Lynn: the best of the bright red autumn leaves around her in Connecticut, with just the slightest touch of dampness to them (perfect!) as I pulled them out of the package, thundery storms and blustery days and all the color the trees celebrate the season with all right there in my delighted hands.  Very thoughtful and very cool, thank you, Margo Lynn.

I wanted to see the reaction of the locals to this cultural event.  It took a moment. The patio didn’t look quite right, or maybe it was that Feederfiller/Godzilla hanging around with that camera.

The towhee checked things out first and decided to play leapfrog over the offerings to get at its dinner.  The black squirrel thought about it but hung back along the fence a moment, thinking things looked suspicious; a few minutes later, though, there he was, sniffing out each leaf one by one.  It went back to the long, narrow leaf, the first one it had gone to, and took a few thoughtful bites before deciding no, it didn’t want to eat its veggies after all.  Back to the sunflower seeds. It nosed around and under the bright maple leaves, while the mourning doves looked on and debated.

Watching them awhile, I didn’t get any knitting done…  Code Red!  Alert the Pentagon!

At Purlescence I reached back towards some of the baby alpaca on the sale table behind me and got caught wincing. I admitted I’d had a recent near fall and someone had grabbed me on my way over and had saved me. I’m glad they did, but my shoulder’s been begrudging it.

“You need to come with airbags,” one knitter opined about my balance issues.

I hesitated just long enough to almost have some sense of propriety before I opened my mouth and went straight for it and answered her, “I do, now.”

So.  ‘Hem.  Meantime.  I read somewhere that a Slinky toy on a birdfeeder pole will send the squirrels and their ex-seed-ing greed back down to earth.  Curious.  That could be entertaining, along the lines of the kid I saw trying to run up the then-World’s Longest Escalator (the downward side, of course) at the Montreal World’s Fair, Expo ’67.  I was in third grade at the time and stunned, stuck between being awed at his having gotten halfway up–IF he’d started running at the bottom, good and honest–and the idiocy of the idea. I remember looking up at whichever parent was closest and half-asking if I could try that or was it as dumb as it looked.

They quickly affirmed it would be stupid.  And don’t.  I think they could just picture all six of their offspring suddenly taking off trying to beat each other going the wrong way through a crowd unhappy at being pushed at long narrow heights, and somehow that idea just didn’t appeal.

Dunno if they make Slinkys wide enough for my awning poles, but, hey.  I thought it would be worth checking out; we were going to Target anyway.

Ever try to find a low-tech toy these days?

Online later, I did find them. And variations, including–now wait a moment.  I’m assuming someone placed a special order and that they had to make so many and now they’re just trying to sell off the rest of the stock.  (Tell me this isn’t in their normal line!)  How about: 14k gold-plated. Slinkys!

This is so begging for CEO jokes.

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around and around and around and…but I think it’s flipping out.  Can you just picture it? A golden pawshake for the high-fliers.

Okay, so it’s not much of a brick.  I remember when I lifted it to put on top of the tomato netting my moment of surprise at the thing’s being quite lightweight–but still, it seemed to do an okay job of helping fence off my now-fading plants.

I first noticed the squirrel gnawing on it yesterday. Today it was at it again, and I noticed it had managed to move the thing over a bit, though it still couldn’t squeeze under the netting.

Rodents by definition have teeth that never stop growing, so they have to chew to keep them from growing right through their heads, but it seemed to actually be eating the darn thing. I watched it swallow, looking thoughtful. Yum? Tastes like chicken?

A brick?! Okay, well, beats chewing on the fence or the awning poles, I guess, for my purposes, anyway. No de-fence-iveness allowed, no pole-emics.

Maybe it’s trying to tell me my sun-drying tomatoes need a little calcium in the dish.  Maybe it’s just being bright-eyed and Bush-y-tailed: “Brick it on!”

Or maybe it’s just trying to collect some brick-a-brac for its collection.

Maybe the truth is, it just couldn’t make it as a Rolling Stone and a Slipped Brick was the closest it could come. I could maybe see it odd-itch-oning  (fleas!) if it were a chipmunk off the old block, but squirrels should strive for higher a-chew-ve-mints.

The last two years, we did a sideways migration and flew East for the fall, just enough of a pattern to make me wistful lately.  It’s been a long year and a good one for taking it easy, but I’ve missed my annual trek home.

I think the towhees (great pictures there, although the first two are darker than what we get) sum it up nicely for the season: Eastern towhees are splotches of bright colors. Californian towhees, however, are the ultimate drab brown bird, a little plump, their wings a little droopy, with no more color than a dry October hillside being watched cautiously by the fire stations before the rainy season starts up.

Autumn just doesn’t quite have the same visual punch of leaves turning across the hillsides en masse here.

And yet.  Where else on earth would I get to watch a small baby black squirrel trying to bury his cache for the winter in the ground–and it’s an olive?

Andrea, who was also at Glenn Stewart’s talk at the eight-story-high (now there’s a good pun waiting to happen!) library in San Jose, sent me some photos she took and told me I could share; thank you, Andrea! Note that in the second one, Sophie has one foot up high, a sign of being relaxed, and that Glenn has that funky deelybopper piece over his ear here.

Meantime, I got a box I wasn’t expecting today: the return address said my daughter-in-law. Opening it up, I found this beautiful stained-glass birdfeeder “to add to my collection.” I tell you, if only Kim and Richard-the-younger could have seen the delighted surprise in my face!  Cool!  Thank you, you guys!  I’ll fill it after we decide for sure where to put it.

It’ll be interesting to see the squirrels trying to stand on the narrow bottom of this one.

Thanks to Kathleen, I found a reason to want to drop everything and go visit my sister in NYC right now.  Spinning straw into gold is one fantasy, but they actually did this?  Wow.  What does spider fabric feel like, I want to know! Gold, like glass, as an incomprehensible fluid.  Gorgeous.

I don’t imagine that kind of yarn will be on the market anytime quite too soon.

I hoped for a picture, but not so much so as to disturb it just at that moment. Having established myself as the meanie who must be run from and whose birdfeeder boundaries must be respected, I have to live with that.

I saw one of the black squirrel babies climbing over the edge of something on the patio that made no sense to me–and then I watched as it gagged.  Squirrel CPR being beyond me (oh, yeah, that’ll go over well), I held my breath till it was fine again.

I braved the sun time to go see what that was about: it was some water from last week’s brief rain, dripped from the awning and collected in a container with some potting soil in it and thoroughly rottingly gross by now. Mosquito heaven no more–over and out you go.

If it was thirsty enough to drink something that rank… I filled a small clear plastic cup with clean water and set it out at the edge of the porch, wedging it upright.

And was rewarded later to see a baby, the smallest of the litter, holding the lip of the cup in one paw as she lapped up the water; I could see tiny ripples moving in steady rhythm across the top.  So much dark fur on a hot day–I bet that drink really hit the spot.

I wonder if providing water will help keep them from the last of my tomatoes; I have no idea.  But the satisfaction of watching that tiny animal finding physical relief, a subject near to me, meant much.

Two things today. The first: I realized just as I hit the freeway that I’d forgotten my camera. I nearly took the next exit home to get it, but I didn’t have time and I didn’t know if it would be allowed anyway.

Glenn Stewart of SCPBRG gave a talk in the downtown San Jose library about the rescuing and recovering of the peregrine falcon population. I knew there’d only been two nesting pairs left in California in the 70’s; I had not realized they were extinct by then on the East Coast.

DDT accumulations had decimated the populations by thinning the shells, he said; that, I already knew. I didn’t know they were shot on sight in Europe during WWII so they wouldn’t intercept the carrier pigeons delivering wartime messages.

When he and his group started their efforts to rescue the peregrines, they were told it could not be done, it was a waste of time and resources–those birds were simply gone.

But how could they not try?  I got to watch a man showing the story of his life as well as theirs, the passion that had changed everything.  He showed slides of rappelling down cliffsides to retrieve falcon eggs to replace them with dummy ones in the nest. The living eggs were taken back to UC Santa Cruz, hatched where momma wouldn’t sit on them and break the shells, fed for a short while via injured/recuperating falcons on hand that were willing to adopt them, then the rappelling was done again, the babies put back in the nest, and the dummy eggs were taken away.

There are now about 250 breeding pairs in California, and the peregrines are making a comeback elsewhere as well.

Because a few people decided that if a difference could be made, if it were at all possible, it was imperative that they try to bring those birds back into life.

And they did it.

While he spoke, he had a marvelous distraction going on to his left: on a portable perch with a drop cloth of about four feet around it stood Sophie.

When there is a peregrine too ill or injured to be released into the wild, Glenn takes care of it: Sophie was certainly well enough to travel now. She would allow Glenn to hold her and take care of her, I was told, but no one else.

Well, yes.  I would definitely expect that.

But Sophie didn’t mind having about 15 strangers nearby as she preened, stretched, scratched herself with that enormous yellow foot, napped, stood on the other foot to show how relaxed she was, and generally kept us entertained very thoroughly.  Glenn reached into her space at the end, picked a downy underfeather off the drop cloth, and handed it to a thoroughly pleased listener.

What I hadn’t expected was what followed: he pulled out the most curious contraption and I was trying to figure out what it was. First he put it on his ear, and I thought, okay, to protect his ear, as he put on his leather gauntlet–but it was on the wrong side.  He got her set up on the gauntlet, then he reached for that–thing.  And then he put it over her head.

It looked like she was wearing a WWII ace fighter pilot leather helmet, except that it covered her eyes (which I’m sure was the point.) But: it had black rubber deely-boppers, two each to each side, going out far from her head.

I tried to wrap my brain around that one. I guess it’s for a visual announcement of her personal space so people won’t try to pet her as he walks by?

It was 1:00 pm, and with San Jose State University in the same city block and school in session, the library was jammed with people.  Walking behind Glenn and one  of the moderators of the peregrine group as they left, I got to watch heads turn and feet stop, over and over and over.

There was an inner set of doors, an atrium, and then the outer doors; in the atrium stood three young men suddenly stunned at a falcon with deelyboppers going right past them. They started asking each other, and of course none of them knew a thing, so I stopped and told them that Glenn Stewart of the peregrine rescue and recovery group had just given a lecture.

“Will he give another one!?”

Google his name and UCSC. Okay; they asked about the lecture, and when I talked about those slides of rappelling down the cliffs to save the species, their eyes got big and clearly, this was something that appealed to 20-something young men.

Maybe Glenn will find his next set of helpers soon.

Now, thing the second today.

I was at Purlescence Knit Night tonight when their phone rang (and if the woman wants to add anything here, I would love it, but till then I’m keeping her name private.)  A few minutes later Nathania came over to me and quietly told me who had called: one of my readers had gone over to deliver a shawl to a friend who had Stage 3 breast cancer. It was what she could do about it.

Nathania knew and I knew as she relayed this message that when a person has been made suddenly acutely aware of how finite the minutes of one’s life are, having someone bring them hours and hours of their time, a gift of life as well as any stitches or fiber involved…there are no words.  But the caller wanted us to know the depth of the joy she had found in that giving.

She had welcomed her friend back into life in that moment.  How could she not try.  For every minute there might be of it, for however long, she was wrapping her friend in love.

Glenn would understand, too.

I wrapped up the one scarf in a doctor’s waiting room yesterday after it got as long as it reasonably could, and, needing something to do, cast on a second to match, risking the dreaded SSS with my sock yarn: Second Scarf Syndrome.

Heh. You can change the project, but you can’t change the essential qualities of a yarn.

Lots of bird puns waiting for more over at Lene‘s Sept 21 post.  I particularly like Karin‘s–I wish I’d thought of that!

Over here, there were some not-yet-swept-up sunflower hulls mixed with a few fallen seeds scattered around the base of the wooden pole this morning. I watched a gray squirrel go through all kinds of weird contortions trying to reach around cautiously, carefully to sniff out the good ones while trying really really hard not to appear to come near that dangerous thing. Pre-seed-ents had been set, after all.

Or pre-seed-dense, in its case.  I watched it for awhile, much amused, when suddenly it completely lost its head and leaped.  All that food up there!

Instantly the door flew open–caught!

Train them in the way they should go.  It *knew*.  I didn’t have to make a sound.  It scrammed all the harder in its guilt, twitching its tail hard from the top of a tree, staring at me. Do not stop, do not pass go, do not collect 200 calories.

I’m suddenly remembering my kids growing up, when they didn’t get their way, wailing, “You’re MEAN!” And I would grin back at them, “Yup. Rean, motten and nasty too.”   How do you argue with a mom who’s chuckling and refusing to give in to pole-emics? They tried, but it was all bluster from there from them and they and I knew it.

Meantime, Michelle and I went off to Los Gatos for birdseed today (no hulls, that was a one-time hardware-store mistake), and a raptor–a large hawk or peregrine, I couldn’t quite make out–soared over us on the freeway as she drove. I wonder, do I just see them now? Did I miss out on so much for so long? I know the populations have been recovering the last few years…  Wow. It was glorious, wide wings highlighted against the sunshine, riding on the breeze.

Fill that feeder!

I told Kathryn (sp?) at Knit Night last night it was do or die. Thirty-nine inches later, with many breaks for the hands but with the rest of the evening open, it’ll totally be done.  We see the person I’m knitting it for tomorrow, a former down-the-street neighbor from our New Hampshire days.  Water Turtles stitch pattern, an extra stitch added to each edge, cast on 33, two skeins of Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend merino/silk handdyed (thank you Kathy!) on size 5.5 mm and there you go.

I was a bit late getting to Knit Night.  I glanced out the window before leaving, and, for the first time, there were two baby black squirrels!  And then a third!  The last and largest clearly had some gray squirrel parentage showing, and the three were in dark gray, charcoal, and black, in descending order of size to match their coloring;  I guess they’re all out of the nest now. They tended to keep close to each other.

There’s nothing quite like a baby animal.  I watched one doing the familiar semi-leapwalk squirrels do, except that, just for the sheer joy of it as far as I could tell, this one leaped a bit sideways each step forward, like a bouncing ball with a spin to it, just because it could.

Note to squirrels: you cannot climb windows.  Where there is a will there is NOT a way up.  Sorry. I decided Feederfiller had better make an appearance to discourage coming too close to the house.

One took a flying leap to the center bottom of a tree trunk–and missed!  Oops. It scrambled and grabbed the side of it at the last second–a save on that play! And the crowd goes wild!

I kept it short. I wanted enough yarn left to make a matching pair of socks of the merino Jasmin spun up for me: after I started with one pattern, I realized that at the size it was coming out to, I could switch and do it a la Water Turtles, a very open, stretchy lace, and not have to use up lots of yardage. I think my final stitch count was something like 241/row in the main body, only seven Water Turtle repeats long, and it’s plenty big enough for me. (Pardon me while I go run in those loose ends…)

This is the yarn Karin just surprised me with to replace the shawl I surprised her with to replace the yarn she surprised me with.

This is the baby squirrel near a towhee, to give a sense of scale.  It has already learned it is not to climb the awning support pole so temptingly close to the birdfeeder, not from me but from the other squirrels–and it was highly amusing to watch it and a gray squirrel this morning. They were staring at it longingly, twitching towards it and away and towards it and away in fierce repetitive tiny motions, not daring to but oh it’s fall!and you have to squirrel away food!!andandand!!!

All I did was unlatch the door and the two careened into each other while trying to run for the hills.   Guilty!

The baby squirrel tried to climb the fence yesterday and found itself sliiiiiiiiiiding back down the wood. Oops. Made it on the second try, though; it’s getting better at this quickly.  Yesterday the fence, tomorrow that pole, bwahaahaa. (If that big feederfiller isn’t looking…)

We’ve all had days like that–being new at something, trying again, and the sense of satisfaction at getting it right.

And one more thing.  My usual daily dose of hot cocoa?  Mom, this is for you: today I broke just a small piece off the end of a Valrhona 85% bar and grated it into the mug (and got tired of grating and just broke up the rest of it and threw it in).  Add the milk, nuke the milk (you don’t put solid chocolate into hot milk, they have to warm up together to keep the chocolate from seizing), and then I added the cocoa and sugar.  Skipped the usual dollop of cream.

Wow.  Things will never be the same.

My brother in Colorado had the flu two weeks ago and his fever hit 105, a new definition of Rocky Mountain High.  I didn’t have to go through anything like that, and today is definitely better than the weekend; thank you everybody for your kind notes.

I was filling the birdfeeder a few minutes ago, scaring off the squirrel and the birds as I walked outside with my measuring cup ready to pour sunflower seeds.  I stood on an outside chair to unscrew the top, looked up expecting to see the usual lineup of mourning doves and finches along the telephone wires watching and waiting–and saw, instead, familiar widespread wings riding the thermal up high above, soaring away…

Come closer! I silently begged at it.

And then it banked, turned, and it did.  Down much lower and towards me.  I could hardly breathe. I’d read recently that sometimes birds of prey will stake out birdfeeder territory as their own, so since this was my third sighting from my house, I felt I could claim it: this was my peregrine.

It swooped down low enough to show off.  You wanted to see me, lady? Here I am.

I am definitely better now!