Shark Song

We went to the beach today to get a little color. There were sharks (small ones, about 2-4 feet long) swimming up to the shallows. I think they were either dogfish or nurse sharks. I didn't really get a good look. What does one do when one sees such a thing here? I stood around to try to get a photo, of course, and the locals, well they sang the Baby Shark song, which apparently everyone but us had heard of and knew. and danced around until they got the silly giggles.
We walked along the beach and found whelk egg casings (photo above), lots more Cannonball Jellies, seaweed and one dead puffer fish. Here's the photo. I'm too tired to be thoughtful.

Natural Rhythm

One of the best things about living in a place, or going to it very frequently, is the pleasure of learning it. It is cliche to say that all places have their own rhythms, but it's true. We are on St Simons Island now, where the rhythms of all things here are tied to the moon and the tides that are dictated by it. It's nearly June, a bit early for the mating and migratory seasons of the crabs and rays and stinging jellies, so the pier is not so full as it will be in another few weeks, and there are more swimmers than we'll see in August, when the wind-shoved waters and tides become filled with jellyfish as hurricane season really kicks in. Yesterday we walked to the village and went out on the pier to watch the creatures that the fishermen were hauling in, and while we were there, a man caught a nearly five foot Bullnose ray. We didn't see any other rays (their migration from their breeding areas isn't due for another eight weeks), and I was surprised to see how our attitude about catching them changes in relation to how abundant they are. I began to understand in a way that I hadn't before, the conservationist's heart. And since we have been spending a lot of time lately at Hobcaw Barony, the value of conservation has been on our minds. All three of us said our silent prayers that the ray would get loose; we crossed our fingers, held our thumbs. We knew that the fisherman would haul it up and chop it to bits for shark bait, and that would be just the wrong fate for such a graceful creature. (Bram would argue that it would be a sorry demise for two graceful creatures.) As the ray slipped loose and swam away, we all smiled.
There were a few people crabbing, with little success, and most of what was being caught by those not yet fishing for sharks were mostly small spade fish. We walked the beach and saw only a few hermit crabs (I guess it isn't time for them yet,either), some conch shell casings, millions of sea roaches (ugh) and a positively irridescent glass snake. It isn't actually a snake, but a legless lizard, or Eastern Glass Lizard so I don't have to add it to my official snake count. And we came across one big fat Cannonball Jelly about the size of a four year old's head. Mercifully, the Canonball isn't a stinging jelly. This photo was actually taken on Huntington Beach, NC.

Natural Order

Here is the last photo that I took of the little robins. As you can see, they had grown more feathers and opened their eyes. We made multiple trips to the bathroom window to watch the mother bird feed them and began to notice that she was not so fat as when she was sitting on the eggs. It reminded me a bit of my own first months as a mother, when my son was so frequently at the breast that I sometimes felt he was more of an appendage, albeit a lovely one, than a child. Even so, there is something very satisfying about watching mothers feeding their babies, however they do it. So perhaps, naturally, I felt some connection to this bird, though now I feel a bit silly saying such a thing.
Thomas and Bram and I had been counting the days, wondering how many more it would be before the nestlings wings would be feathered out and strong enough for flight. The view into that nest had become a real source of entertainment, and dare I say it, joy for us. It gave us all a sense that everything was as it should be, at least for this little nest hinged in the shrub branches: for here, for the moment.

Until yesterday. After our walk, Thomas went back to peek at the birds again before he started work. When I heard him cry out, I assumed that the birds had fallen out of their nest. I was prepared to tell him that it was no big deal, that we would just gather them up and put them back in. It isn't true that mother birds will kill their young if humans touch them. But when I got to the window, I saw the snake swallowing the last of three little robins while the mother bird and some cardinals flitted from tree to shrub making distressed peeping noises. Thomas and I are heartbroken for the mother bird. She was so very thin looking from working so hard to be a good mother, and now some awful, heartless creature had just taken all of her nestlings. We both wanted to cry.
It's the natural order of things, I know, and I am one to admonish others in their upset over such things. But this time, we had some of our own emotions invested the welfare of these common little robins, and well, it hurts. It reminds me rather painfully of a former colleague whose daughter, a dear sweet girl, was gunned down in the street a few months before she was to graduate with honors with a pre-med degree. Is that the natural order for humans, too? Am I wrong to expect our natural order to be less fraught with senseless violence? To think that good mothering should be rewarded somehow with the safety of our offspring? We haven't told Bram about the birds. He has such a great fondness for little things. Maybe he will forget about the nest. Or maybe he has already looked and seen it empty and knows the fate of the birds was not a good one. Right now, I am not sure which is sadder.

Baby Robins : Day 7

Anybody want to suggest some names for these guys? Click the post title and then "comments", prossim. One velke pivo in Brno or Prague pub of your choice per winning name recommendation.

It's My Birthday, Too

At least one of these little robins was born yesterday, on my birthday, and if I count that as one of my birthday presents, then I am officially spoiled. I think that birthdays are a bigger deal for Americans than for Czechs (and maybe most Europeans). We celebrate every birthday, not just the round anniversaries. The car washes here give birthday discounts on washes and oil changes, my bank and insurance agent send me birthday cards. The drug store sent me a coupon for three dollars to spend on anything I want, and I don't even take any medicines, so it isn't as if I'm a good customer. Many restaurants will bring you a free dessert with your meal if you or someone at your table tells them that it's your birthday. There is of course one small catch: when they bring your dessert, several of the servers sing loudly and clap all the way to your table so that everyone in the place knows it's your birthday.
At lunch I told the waitress that it was my birthday, and that if she wanted to bring me a dessert, I wouldn't mind it at all if she and her associates didn't sing. I was lucky and she served it alone, with a smile and a quiet "Happy Birthday". At the Mexican restaurant later, however, Bram played the part of informer, so I had to wear a silly tourist sombrero while the servers sang to me.
One year when Bram was small, we went around to various places just to see how much free stuff I could get. It's a silly thing to do, I know, but well, I am what I am.
It's no wonder that Americans have the reputation for being like children. We chew our gum (even bubble gum sometimes); we are boisterous and naive. We smile too often and too big, and we love to play. We are hopeless dreamers. It is said that we believe that the difficult we will do now; the impossible will take a little longer. It is one of the things which I like most about being an American: we believe that nothing is really impossible and we are willing to work to prove it. Maybe we are a bunch of big children, but I figure what's the point of threatening as a child to do whatever you want when you grow up, if you don't make good on it--at least every now and then. Now where is my Play Doh?

Sunday Surprise

There's a Robin's nest outside our bathroom window, so we are all excited about watching the mama bird and the babies when they emerge. These eggs seem bluer than the ones I remember from my childhood. Oh, and the ants are still here. They've just moved to the other side of the kitchen. Ants don't like cinnamon. Indeed. I'm laughing.

Would You Spit on Me

if I were on fire? I heard this expression from my mother, who was telling me some story that she heard from one of her sisters. When my mother asked her about the unkindness of some woman they know, my aunt’s response was, “No way she’d help. She’s so hateful she wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire.” They went on to discuss the sheer selfishness of this woman, her unwillingness to be kind when it cost her nothing, and her inability to be more than angry and jealous about any good thing that might happen to someone else. Sadly, I know this person. Well, not this exact one, but several of her ilk. I suspect that her life is so devoid of things to make her happy that she hasn’t enough experience with that feeling to be able to enjoy even a vicarious experience of it by being glad for someone else.
I was a bit shocked, thinking how harsh it was that someone might care so little for you that they wouldn’t cross the street to help you, or, even worse, would have too much contempt to spit on a person even if you were on fire. The expression conveys a diffidence which may be worse than contempt, don’t you think?

Recently, I came across quite the opposite the phrase “pay it forward” and an example of what this means. Basically, it’s just doing a kindness for someone for no reason without expecting something in return. I think it is a part of what some religions call karma and what cultural anthropologists term, “generalized reciprocity”. My brother laughs at me because before I learned these terms, I called it “cosmic quid pro quo”. Whatever it is called, I really like the idea of being nice for no reason. I like to give little presents to people and to do nice things for them, especially when I get to see them happy about it. And I like to think about them paying it forward by doing something unexpectedly nice for someone else. Today, I am going to do a little paying it forward and say something nice, do something helpful, give something away. We'll see if that improves my mood.

Crabby [krab-ee] grouchy, in a bad mood

Saturday: Up early, coffee, reading for a couple of hours, interrupted by Bram's complaints of boredom, which bore me to the point of anger. Breakfast of toast and egg yolk. Yeah, I know it's the unhealthy part, but it's the part of the egg I like. Plans for a trip to the street festival downtown, the library and to the Greenville Zoo ditched because of the weather forecast. I just have no energy for enduring even the possibility of driving in another nasty storm. So, we went to Wal Mart where I noticed that the mean SPF of sunscreen is now more than 50. There is also quite a lot of lotion with SPF 70. Jeez, have we screwed up the ozone so thoroughly that we really need SPF 70? When I was a kid, SPF 15 was marketed for former skin cancer victims and people with sun allergies. Now we don't spend time in the sun without at least 15, and usually it's higher than that. I skipped the sunscreen and got a tiny kite (10cm) and a floppy flying disk.

We went to Toys R Us and did that parent thing that kids never seem to catch onto where one parent "goes to the restroom" and in fact is buying what the kid picked out and putting it into the car, while the other parent stands around feigning interest in as many things as possible. Then to the bookstore to use gift cards from Christmas. Bram refused to hang out with me because, as he puts it, I "read only murder and death books" and am interested only in books with dead bodies in them, which is sheer rubbish . The fact that only one of the last eleven books I read was about death and dismemberment aside, at the time he said this to me, I was looking at blank books. Don't think it didn't cross my mind to write a story about a killing just then. I sent him back to his father and briefly considered spending his college savings on a new sports car. I hate his complaining. I have zero patience for it after all I do to be the kinder, gentler parent. There are times when I would dearly love to slap him, just once. Heck, maybe a bunch of times. I will start dinner soon, and if Bram is wise, he will have listened to his father's entreaties to not mess with the cook. They'll get nothing or English peas, beets and burnt toast if they tick me off. So you see I haven't the perfect child and I am far from being the perfect wife and mother. But as hard as I try, I figure at the least I am owed not having to listen to complaints about my reading tastes or my cooking.

The Ant Experiments: Trial 1

Those of you who were hoping to see a nice photo of me and Bram tormenting ants are going to be disappointed. We didn't want to kill the ants, merely discourage them from continuing their annual march through my kitchen. I had hoped to have a photo of an ant for you, but the first experiment with a natural ant repellent is going so well that I don't have any ants to photograph. Every April, ants migrate through my kitchen for about a week. They go from one end of the counter to the other, down the wall and out the door and disappear. Another foot to the north and they would be going through the garage instead of my kitchen, but what could I do? I have tried all kinds of things to get rid of them in the past. I even tried insecticide once, but then stayed up all night worrying about poison in the kitchen. The ants don't get into the food (though it is a bit disheartening to see them when I am preparing meals (I use the other counter when they're here), but I would still like them gone. So this year, I tried an extremely simple natural remedy: ground cinnamon sprinkled along the ant trail. In a matter of hours, the number of ants decreased. Yesterday I saw fewer than fifty and today, only four! Ants don't like cinnamon. I wonder why.