The Sounds of .... something other than silence.

It sounds as if our pond - or some water creature just below the surface of the pond – is having major dental work done. “And … spit.” There’s a continuous sucking emanating from across the road. I know from whence it comes, it comes from the standing pipe Richard and I opened up yesterday afternoon in order to lower the level of the pond 10 inches because the constant flow of water down the overflow has made a Mekong Delta amid our grove of very beautiful and tall pines next to the pond and jeopardizes their future health. So this sucking shall past BUT it wreaks havoc with a sense of pastoral bliss.

But hark … the sucking just stopped.

It does that every once and awhile which gives me hope that it won’t be a constant once the level of the pond is down to its top.


And now Royce decided to chain saw.

That’s okay. Might as well make a list of sounds greeting us this morning.

Unfortunately there’s a wheezing sound from one of our Copper Blue Marrans which breaks both our hearts. And she’s one of our best layers, a sweet, beautiful bird. There’ve been a lot of deaths lately in our ranks and since Richard is usually the dispatcher, my heart goes out to him. He loves his birds so much. As do I. Most of the time. Richard was beating himself up yesterday feeling he was the cause of this malady. There’d been an infestation of mites in the coop accompanying the damp, damp weather we’ve been having lately, and Richard felt so proud that he’d gone out and gotten organic mite powder to sprinkle throughout the coop after he’d scooped out the old straw and pine shavings and replaced it with dryer stock and then he’d powdered each bird individually. He learned afterwards that holding a hen upside down when administering the powdering – as he had done successfully with other powders he’d put on them – could lead to respiratory ailments should they inhale it. Ugh, ugh, ugh. So we’ve been giving her some antibiotics – a last resort for us – both as a hypo and orally. She did insist on laying an egg today, what a trooper, but is she getting better? Our fingers are crossed.

More hopeful, happy sounds? The squeezebox tweet of the 2 goslings which cracked into this world over the weekend. One boy, one girl. They’re adorable and have firmly and joyfully imprinted on both of us. They have 4 newly hatched chicks in the box with them and they’re all having a ball together. It’s going to be hard getting rid of them. So fun to pick them up and feel that lighter than air, fluff ball nothing of them in your arms as they nibble your chin and give their squeezebox tweets of delight.

Writer’s Almanac. Garrison Keillor’s basso monotone telling me that it’s Walt Whitman’s birthday today. Way to go, Walt; many happy returns. I’ll have to pull out his Brooklyn Ferry poems today. What a sucker I am for his time travelly pieces. You rock, Walt. Song of Yourself, baby.

Birdsong. What a variety. The calm, comforting clucks from our hens and roosters. Red Barber’s proud crow. Bomanitious’s neck stretched gobble (he’s our Tom), sounding like some sort of goofy wind instrument constantly tuning up, never quite getting it right, wanting to give it another try. Shmuel’s demanding trumpet blast of a bray “Let us out NOW!” as I near the fence and the rest of the girls – Mary Ann, Daphne, and Felicity – crescendo into a panicked chaos of jabber. The lazy buzz and brass, then sweet call of the red wing blackbird, reminding of hotter days to come. Thrushes deep in the cool, cool woods with their sad echoey siren song as if saying “Come find me, you won’t get lost, come find me deep, deep in the woods. I’m waiting for you.”

Oh, the chain saw just went off. And no sucking sound from the pond. Bird calls code the air. And the soft liquid massage of a stream nearby, our pond emptying down the path that will soon be its only stream, landscaped, green, of the woods. Our doing.

There’s a far off murmur of a truck grumbling somewhere.
The wind doing its invisible act through the rustle of leaves on the magnolia.
Here come our geese walking single file past the screened porch, Shmuel, 3rd in line, giving high wheezy murmurs that sound as if he’s talking to himself. Or whispering sweet nothings to Mary Ann. They always look like the Snow family from “Carousel” when they walk in formation like that.
A jet high, high above, sounding extra terrestrial, incongruous, not of this world. A ghost’s inhalation.
The cats are all sleeping somewhere, conked out, but earlier I had Oliver’s almost understandable “Turn the faucet on, I need a drink” complete with body language; Sofia’s shameless, seductive Salome “Oh, baby, I’ll do anything for you if you just feed me. Feed me, baby. NOW!” ; Astrid’s brief little keens “My heart is always breaking, but I keep it together for you, for you, for you.” And Miss Crab, Delilah. She’s really not crabby, she just sounds like that, this harsh, raspy Selma Diamond complaining sound when she begs for food or attention. If she were human, I see her in curlers and a robe, a drink in one hand, a cigarette dangling from her lips, the town gossip. Richard calls the Mrs. Kravitz of cats.

And now there is a silent sound urging me to take a walk, one of those walks where I may write along the way or read or just take in all the sights and sounds along the way.

A Nature Give and Take

I walked to the top of our rise this morning, a grey, drippy morning, slight chill to the air, enough to warrant a warm wood fire inside. My head was down, I was musing about what to write, coffee in hand. Quiet. I like to get to the top of the rise without having looked back, so that when I turn the expanse of the Green Mountains in the background and the ever changing landscape is always a surprise. As I neared the crest, I brought my head up to look over to the left where Richard and I had felled 2 large ailing birch trees the other day. It had opened up the forest and the view of the far hill nicely. I turned my head straight ahead and I saw them. 3 young deer, grazing. I stopped still in my tracks, silent, and gazed. “Oh, Richard would love this,” I thought. The 2 farther up the hill turned to look at me, curious, as if they were focusing in on an eye chart, while the 1 closest to me continued to munch on grass with relaxed purposefulness. He raised his head and looked my way, and with a start and breathy snort, turned and hopped for cover in the trees, the other 2 following suit, their white behinds and upturned tails so gorgeous, like 19th century frocks. How wonderful!

And a little gift from nature was just what I needed for I, we, have been on the horns of a dilemma lately, namely what to do about the pair of Canada Geese on our pond. This is not a new phenomenon. For the 5 years we’ve resided here, this time of year has meant a pair of Canada Geese – we’re told that usually it’s the same pair every year, or at least one of the offspring – has come to our pond to lay eggs, raise their young (usually 4 gosling), teach them to fend for themselves and fly, and after flying lessons are completed to their satisfaction they leave for another year. This annual visit hasn’t been without issue. The prodigious amounts of goose poop around the edges of our pond, especially when added to our geese’s contribution, has been a gnarly topic. The past 3 years we’ve had our own domestic flock of geese and each year they’ve cobbled together an understanding of co-habitation with the Canadians. Last year it helped that both groups had offspring. This year, however, it’s gotten very contentious. When our geese get anywhere near the pond, they are dive bombed. They really battered and bruised Felicity the other day, she had to submerge and swim underwater most of the pond to get away from them, while I heaved stones from the shore to keep them off.

Compounding all of this is that we think the Canadians whole cycle is off due to the late ice covering on our pond which lasted until 2 weeks ago. If they did lay eggs, they’re no where to be found. When these attacks escalated in ferocity, we decided to discourage them from being here, and went after their eggs, but there are none anywhere near where they nest. Maybe they layed them and the weasel that’s around the pond nabbed them. It wouldn’t’ve been difficult to do. Or they haven’t laid yet and now it’s too late. There’s some frustration in the cycle. But what to do about our geese, that’s my main concern. They love the pond and now they’ve been spooked off it, they’re terrified and pent up, sometimes driven off the pond into the woods and I have to shepherd them back, concerned about them being easy prey for predators in the forest.

As I said, we’ve been trying to discourage the Canadians and run them off. We’ve chased them. Richard’s done some chain sawing of trees over near the pond, a chore he needed and wanted to do, and he discovered that they didn’t like that at all. We’ve taken to getting our .22 out and shooting above and below them. This works to a certain extent, but most of the time now they just sort of hop to another location. We don’t want to shoot them. I feel weird having a gun in my hand to just scare them. And if we got VINS to come relocate them, nothing is preventing another pair from coming in. So … hmmmmmmmmmm? In the grand scheme of things, this is a small concern, but there you have it. Nature.

Have a great day. And any suggestions about what to do are welcome.