Spring here and there

Both New York and Vermont are having their particular versions of "cold snap" - New York's chill has hovered in the upper 30's and 40's while Vermont's went to 4 degrees yesterday morning, icing the flowers that had popped up for a Spring stretch. As I mentioned before, I'm in New York for work so Vermont is kept alive by my imagining and by daily calls with Richard. Goose eggs continue to pop out in prolific fashion. Schmul is as cantankerous and protective as ever and the girl's necks are almost feather free from his rough love making -- Schmul grabs their necks in his beak and presses them onto the ground but they don't seem to be complaining much. Richard swears he hears strains of "Oh my man, I love him so" coming from the coop. A pair of Canada geese recently circled our pond and were coming in for a landing to scout out nesting areas when they spied Schumul and the girls loitering around the icy shoreline and the Canadian's promptly banked back up and flew off to other sites. That's fine by me. Canada geese are beautiful, but since Richard is planning on letting the girls hatch a few eggs of their own rather than ship them all out, one family of geese on the pond, with their attendant feces is enough, thank you very much. AND in April Richard is receiving his long delayed shipment of turkey eggs; he intends on raising Thanksgiving birds for this November's feasts. Pictures of the mature turkeys look very fine indeed, plump and proud and colorful. Richard also just hatched a new batch of chicks which will help re-populate his flock after a recent bloodbath.

Last week Richard came home to find 8 of our chickens slaughtered about the yard and hill, a kind of chicken Columbine. I was crushed by the news. I couldn't sleep the next night imagining the carnage and wishing I could be there to mourn their passing. Yes, they were chickens, but we'd named them - Nanna and Grace, Taffy and Blackie, Dottie - and they hovered somewhere between pet and farm animal, sometimes a pest and bother, but mostly good mothers, good providers of eggs, a colorful additions to our place, pecking and scrounging, running and squawking. Even Mumblestump was traumatized by the event. Richard found him inside the coop, his usual boastful demeanor stilled by shock. There were gashes and bite marks on his back, many of his fine feathers gone; Richard feared that he might have to put him down. Thank God that a few days later he began to crow again. I'm sure he had been a hero, the male, as he so often has before against staggering odds. Poor baby. Richard phoned with the fresh news moments after he'd gotten home as he was quick collecting up the bodies to deposit them into the woods so animals could feast on them and they wouldn't go to waste. He too was in shock and the emotion wouldn't hit him until the next day. He tried to stuff it down, deeming it silly, they were just chickens, etc. I urged him to let whatever came up out. And so he did. We took it for granted that a coyote or fox had been the culprit and that this was to be expected, that we'd lucked out not having any events like this until now. Richard and Royce further secured both pens and fences and so the subject stood for several days until a new drama arose. Our friend Butch said that it didn't sound like a fox or coyote, that if it had been one of them they surely would've taken one of the birds with them. Then came the further news that some of our next door neighbor's chickens had been killed and that it had been another neighbor's young huskie dog that had done it and now the dog was missing. I knew this dog, a sweet, rambunctious, untethered dog that would come out to sniff and frolic around me whenever I would pass its place on my walks down the road. He had chased a Bull Moose down our road in July and Richard found out from still other neighbors that there had been many complaints about the dog that its owner had ignored. It had harassed sheep and other animals and had been generally wild and undisciplined and running free. The rumor is that someone shot it, very possibly our neighbor after his chickens were killed. Richard said it's like Peyton Place up there now with charges and countercharges and sides being taken. He has opted to not even mention that his chickens were killed though he would like to be compensated for them in the future. He just doesn't feel this is the time to enter into the fray. I, of course, am chomping at the bit to confront the woman, but it's really none of my business. He's probably right. It's sad all round. Drama in the hinterlands.

I'm trekking up to Vermont tomorrow via Dartmouth Coach and then back the next day on Amtrak - a 7 hour plus ride. Ugh. Why, you may ask? I need a hit of New England. I'm a Vermont junkie, jonesing for a little bit of serenity, a walk down our road, a taking in of the views, a big deep breath of our place up there. I long to be around the sap flowing and the bits of mud season, to see our cats and geese and chickens, to wake up in my own bed for one morning. It'll be a while before the next opportunity provides itself. It's worth it. Also, driving back and forth, though an adventure, is wearing. I had thought of bringing my subaru outback down to the city, but though it may be a good idea a little bit later, right now the prospect of jockeying it around from parking place to parking place in the city is not fun. AND during my most recent trip up and back to the Green Mountain State I got a speeding ticket that puts a couple points on my license. Ugh. I called up the Vermont DMV to see if, as in Los Angeles, one could take a class online or in person to erase those points. No, was the answer, those points would be on my license for TWO YEARS. Oh well. My responsibility. Just a little over eagerness trying to shorten the 5 hour plus drive. Slow down, Daniel. Take a lesson from the way Spring comes in Vermont, slowly, slowly, slowly.

First Goose Egg!

Let the word go forth! One of our geese has laid her first egg!! Don't know for sure whose it is, but hip, hip, hooray! Royce found it this morning, not in the coop as expected, but out back in the hay I had spread down weeks and weeks ago. It doesn't surprise me one bit because all three loved lounging there during the day. Grand news though. I attach a few pictures passed on to me from Richard that show the egg itself, the girls and Schmul taking a dip, Ginger and Mary Ann shaking off after getting out of the pool, and all three of them again, lounging around newly freshened hay. Doesn't the sky look fantastic?! So fresh and clear. It just grabs me in the gut and heart, makes me smile, makes me want to be there right now. Enjoy!

Touching Base

I have been truant about writing, mostly due to having been in New York City working on a project that will keep me away from Vermont for a while. How long that "while" may be is still up in the air. A friend wrote me this morning to tell me that they had recently happened upon the blog and read all the back installments and it gave them such a sweet sense of the place and I realized now more than ever I do need to find time to write of and about Vermont to keep that "sweet sense of the place" alive in me. I do miss it so, the smells, the sights, the embrace of it all. I long to take a nice meander down our road and take in the slow changing of the seasons. There's still ample snow on the ground, but the temperatures have been rising into the high 40's during the day, which is prime for the sugar maple sap to flow. Richard says that our road is alive with little trucks back and forthing with their huge plastic gathering vats in back, filled or unfilled depending upon the direction they're driving. Soon sugar shacks will be steaming up and the men will gather round with beers and conversation as the sap slowly boils down to syrup. The warmer temperatures have also stimulated our fine big white gander Schmul.
"He's been mating with the girls," Richard told me.
'How can you tell' I rejoined.
"It's pretty obvious."
Richard proceeded to recount that he'd been the barnyard voyeur the day before watching his very own version of the nature channel.
"Ginger and Mary Ann just submit, they flatten out on the ground like pancakes and he climbs up on top of them. And he's big! He grabs their necks in his beak and positions them. He's not as rough as the roosters are with the hens, but Ginger and Mary Ann look a little the worse for wear. Some of their feathers are gone on their backs, on their necks."
'Poor babies.'
"But they seemed fine with it. He couldn't quite get positioned right on Ginger and Mary Ann seemed jealous while he was doing it. She'd nip at both of them until he finally climbed off Ginger and flattened Mary Ann to the ground. Then Ginger nonchalantly walked over to the water bucket and drank while he was doing Mary Ann."
'Brazen hussies.'
A pause.
'So how does he know when to stop?'
"What do you mean?"
'If they have eggs inside them, how does he know not to mount them? If he did, wouldn't it squash the egg inside them if he flattens them out so?'
Richard didn't really have an answer beyond "they just know."

More later.