what is this plant doing in my sandwich? Wednesday, June 19 2019
Beatrice the baby pileated woodpecker was making lots of noise this morning, using her big-woodpecker whinny. She was planted firmly in the hole of the nest tree as I walked by twice on my way to and from the brownhouse. She doesn't seem that concerned at the sight of me; she's been curious enough to come up from deep in the nest to sit in the entranceway just to watch me when she's heard me walking past.
By the time I got to work, Beatrice was no longer visible in the nest. She could've been resting unseen down below the hole, but then, at around 9:00am, the mother woodpecker showed up, looked around, and, not seeing Beatrice, flew away. Evidently Beatrice had fledged and mom hadn't gotten the memo. That was the last woodpecker activity I saw today. Supposedly pileated woodpeckers abandon their nests when they're done raising a brood, leaving them available for the many animals that have a use for them. I'd noticed that the parents had stopped cleaning the nest a couple days ago, so they left it a mess for whomever the next resident will be.
Our friend Chrissy came by the house with Chongo the Corgi some time later, but it was too late for her to get pictures. Still, she braved the huge Japanese hornets buzzing around the telescope in the garage for awhile in hopes at least one woodpecker would return.
I caught the mother pileated woodpecker making that last visit to the nest on video.
These days I'm usually the second or third person to arrive in the workplace, usually some time between 7:45 and 8:15am. This morning, while Beatrice was busy fledging, I arrived about 7:50am as Morning Dave and Jon (the guy who facilitated a Girl Scout cookies sale between me and his daughter) were talking animatedly about something that made no sense. It sounded like they were describing certain very specific locations on Earth, but it was wrapped in a mysterious, slightly archaic jargon. I'm used to these sort of conversations among the younger folk when they're discussing their videogame exploits, though the jargon in those cases sounds completely made-up and unfamiliar. It turned out that Morning Dave and Jon were discussing golf, the pass time of the old and the rich. How does one even get started in golf? And when you do, does that mean you're finally old and rich? At some point within the last ten years, Ray started playing golf, but I have no interest in joining him. It sounds like a terrible use for a weekend. Also, at this point it would feel like a stepping stone towards the grave, not to say there aren't other stones along the way I have stepped upon.
Throughout today I had another mild nervous-system annoyance. At times it felt like the sides of the middle fingers of my left hand had developed some sort of rash, though it was clear that the feelings were phantom. Later in the day, I sensed a thin background hiss of noise coming from those fingers, like very mild case of pins & needles, or, if you will, television static of the feeling sense. Perhaps something had happened in my neck or shoulder that slightly pinched a nerve, and all I needed was a round of golf to fix it.
In the late morning, a fire alarm went off in the building, forcing all the employees in all the businesses within to spill out onto the porch. I always love it when this happens, as it's one of the few times we're compelled by circumstances to have conversations. Today, for example, I learned that the new guy who does support work on the other side of a divider had been a downstate cop for twenty years and recently retired (though he doesn't look any older than me). Asked what it was like being a cop on the edge of New York City, he said, "I've heard a lot of, 'Do you know who I am?'" Another amusing incident happened after Jake and Victoria returned from Red Hook with sandwiches they'd gotten to go. The alarm was still raging, so they plunked down and started eating them there on the porch. And then Victoria freaked out, almost the way she does when she sees a spider. It seems a piece of lettuce had made its way into her sandwich! I turned to the guy I was talking to and said, "Oh my god, there's a plant in my sandwich." This led me into a brief monologue (borrowed from the Suzy Fauber trolling days) on the topic of meat alternatives to products normally made from plants. The hardest of these, I figured, would be mustard. What could possibly be an all-meat substitute? Bile? Joe the Technician thought that was a horrible idea.
After the fire department finally came and silenced the fire, I returned to the office to resume my work. But I didn't last long. The Spectrum guy was tinkering with the wires, and now the internet wasn't working. So I said fuck it, climbed in the Subaru, and started driving back home.
As I drove down Rokeby Road on the south edge of Red Hook, I passed a messy pile of cut-up tree branches in someone's yard (you can see the house in this Google Maps link). Next to the pile was a cardboard sign reading "free wood." That's my kind of wood. So I doubled back and pulled over. You can see the tree in that Google Maps link; it's some sort of locust, honey locust, or acacia, though one I am unfamiliar with (it was probably some sort of cultivar). Such trees usually make good firewood, so I loaded all the big pieces into the back of my car. The exercise felt good and might've even helped with the weird nerve issues I mentioned earlier.
Back at the house, I unloaded the car and took the dogs for a brief walk in the forest west of the Farm Road (Gretchen had gotten up very early to attend a graduation at the Shawangunk prison and hadn't walked them this morning).
To celebrate the fledging of Beatrice the Woodpecker, I made a quick painting of her looking out of her hole on an absurdly thick tiny canvas (it measured four inches by four inches but was a full inch in thickness). I wasn't quite done with it when I impulsively decided to visit the Tibetan Center thrift store, where I got two extension cords, a five volt wall wart, and a 18 volt Ryobi charger for $3. I thought an extra charger would be useful given all the Ryobi equipment I have, and the charger turned out to sort of fit my Ryobi batteries. But then I saw that it's a NiCad charger, not a Lithium charger. I don't think they're interchangeable, but I'll research the issue further. If nothing else, I can use the socket from the charger as a way to get power from an 18 volt Ryobi battery in some sort of battery-powered application.
I tend to be very conservative when it comes to my automotive musical entertainment. For example, back in the mid-1990s in the Punch Buggy Green, I had a stereo strapped to the dashboard and connected to the car's 12 volt power supply, and on that stereo I mostly just listened to a single 90 minute tape over and over and over again. On one side of that tape was Nirvana's Incesticide and on the other was something from Slayer's classic period, either Seasons in the Abyss, South of Heaven, or Reign in Blood (or some combination). In the Subaru these days is a cheap Chinese MP3 player that has had the same SD card in it for many months. It has a mix of songs, including Slowdive's "Star Roving," "Entertain Me" by Bear Ceuse, " If You Talk Too Much My Head Will Explode," by People in Planes, a cover of "Wasted Years" by Ryan Adams, "Further the Earth" and "Apparent Silence" by the Distants, "Monument Sails" by Centromatic, and a bunch of songs by Buffalo Tom that I always tried to avoid. Today I finally did something to improve this collection, replacing all the Buffalo Tom with heavy metal songs from the first two Judas Priest albums, the early 1980s career of Accept, and the first two albums of Ozzy Osbourne's solo career. This was the music that I was listening to today on the drive to the Tibetan Center thrift store and back.
a painting of a woodpecker chick
I sometimes write joking messages on advertising and parcels that arrive in the mail. Gretchen had liked an invention we'd seen recently on Shark Tank called the FlipIt, a screw-on stand for plastic bottles which allow you to keep them upside-down, thereby allowing you to use all of the product inside. The FlipIt did not get a deal with a shark, but Gretchen immediately ordered a box of FlipIts, which arrived today in the mail. The cat in the box is Charles.
