Reasonably Educated Bumpkins

(Posted concurrently at my other blog, Foolery)

We visited Redding last weekend, for a stay at the Gaia Hotel in Anderson. Please visit my other blog, Foolery, to read about that.

Here are some photos of the Sundial Bridge, Redding's most prominent feature these days and one of the architectural and engineering jewels of Northern California. If you haven't seen this bridge in person, try to get here. It's truly spectacular.

Hello, Bridge Zamboni Guy. That's what I will call you. That's what I want to do for my next job.

Santiago Calatrava, the designer of the Sundial Bridge, has given Redding quite a gift in this bridge. Please come see it.

I just read that a retired Chico State professor died last night of a gunshot wound. Clicking the E-R link, I held my breath in case I knew who the man was. I really didn't expect to know him; after all, how many retired CSUC professors must there be? I clicked.

And yelped.

It was Professor Richard Ek. I had taken one of my major's core classes from Dr. Ek in the spring of my freshman year. The survey course, "History of Communications," was taught in the largest classroom I had ever sat in -- Holt 170, if there are any Chico State readers out there. My regular spot was in the lowest third of the auditorium, right next to an aisle and a guy named Vince.

Vince and I used to keep track of Dr. Ek's diversions from the topic at hand, which were legendary, and often fascinating. We once counted five major "rabbit trails" during a single lecture. His really good stories were so engrossing that, when Dr. Ek reached the story's end and paused, we would collectively realize how far afield he had led us from our topic, and all of us would laugh.

"But I digress," he would say, and often.

One spring afternoon as I sat waiting for class to begin I heard a commotion in the back of the room. I didn't look up immediately, but heard the commotion roll like a wave toward the front of the room. I looked up just as Dr. Ek passed me in the aisle, his extremely tall and gangly frame bedecked in lemon yellow polyester slacks -- you know the kind with the "crease" down the front actually sewn in? -- and a hand-knitted sweater in a brilliant fuschia. (Go check your box of 64 crayons for that color reference; I'll wait.) It took a while for the room to quiet down, but he waited out our laughter. This was his spring outfit, he explained. He wore it once every spring semester to welcome -- or hurry along -- the warm weather. Then we got down to business, with a digression or two, of course.

(Photo stolen from The Orion)

I never got to know Dr. Ek, as I was in the graphic design program, not journalism. But I learned a lot from him. Dr. Ek seemed to love his vocations, both teaching and journalism, enough so that he kept writing, occasionally, for a local newspaper right up until his death. My alma mater and the community have suffered a loss. My thoughts are with his family.

(Posted at Foolery as well)

It got a little windy here last week.

Not exactly, "Dorothy, don't let go of Toto" windy, but rather windy.

The kind of windy for which the local weather guys often use the word breezy.

This chunk of barn roof nearly took out my dad's zebra finch house. The roof was a bit damaged, but no birds were harmed. Of course, two did get out, and then they remembered that they have no idea how to deal with out, and tried to get back in. The last I heard one of the two was living in a mobile, parked just outside the bird house door. He's now zebra trash.

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas at all.

Add to my list of things to worry about: ducks.

While there have been wild mallards around this ranch for a few years -- at least, according to my limited awareness -- this is the first year I have ever noticed any mallards try to make a home in the corral across the road. Again, as a caveat I cite my not-particularly-sharp powers of observation. There could actually be throngs of ducks and I have overlooked them.

But I don't think so. I think the three mallards who are trying to keep their tenuous foothold in that grassy corral are new. I did write three; you got that right. Three seems odd, right? As far as I can tell, there are two drakes competing for the attention of one female. I don't actually know what you call a female duck -- probably hen, but I don't know, and I'm too lazy to look it up. FEMALE wins. The boys chase one another around the skies every now and then. I can't tell who to root for and I know if one wins I'll only obsess about the loser.

They have been setting up house for a little over a month. When our big rains came in mid-February there was only dry ground, but it quickly ceded to a massive puddle which has always formed in that spot. The puddle isn't very deep, but what it lacks in depth it more than makes up for in geographical reach. Same concept as American Idol.

There were over a dozen ducks at first, all doing duck things in the shallow puddle they thought of as a pond. We watched out our dining room window as we ate meals, charmed by the many carefree ducks paddling, waddling, and flying by. I didn't know how to tell the little guys that it wouldn't last; Walden West was doomed.

One by one the ducks decamped, until only three ducks remained, and they didn't seem to notice their shrinking habitat. Soon the puddle was maybe the size of a queen-sized bed, and slightly muddier.

Nothing else really threatens the ducks here: no large dogs roam the area, and the only cats passing through are in a hurry to get to Laurie's Cat Cafeteria, so they aren't likely to cause ducks any harm. The horses in the above photo have gone back to Canada to foal, so no large animals will step on small ducks. Coyotes don't usually come quite so deep into human territory, so the only real threat left to the ducks is the rapidly-advancing Valley Heat. Puddles don't stand a chance against spring north winds and summer heat waves.

But just when I was wondering how far a hose could be made to stretch while still maintaining water pressure, an unexpected thing happened: my father irrigated his fields. The runoff from the irrigation turned Sometimes Puddle into Walden West again. The ducks were saved for another week! Unfortunately for ducks, the irrigation water comes every 12 days in a normal year; with lake levels at the top of the water system being low, I haven't heard what the water schedule will be this summer, but water delivery can't be as plentiful as a normal year. I hope the ducks like mud baths and have a good sense of humor.

So I am worrying about ducks now, too.

(Original photo stolen from Steven Pinker)

Sparky screamed as I stepped out through the kitchen door. I hesitated on the step a moment to hear her excited explanation: "There's a TURKEY on the lawn!" I closed the door behind me and headed for my car. Sure there's a turkey on the lawn, I thought. We don't have wild turkeys near the house, and if we did, why would one brave the neighbor's yappy dogs to walk onto our lawn for no gain? That's crazy. We do have turkeys around here, but they stay in the pasture, out of sight up against the berry bushes. I've seen turkeys on the ranch only two times, ever.

Two more steps and I saw the turkey.

It was tall. Did you know that turkeys were tall? I didn't know they were tall. This one could have ridden any ride at Disneyland that he wanted to ride, as long as he kept his wings inside the car at all times, ba-dump bump. This one would have had to stand in the BACK row for Smedley's second grade class photo. This one would have made me nervous in a dark alley, so I readied my arsenal of turkey-fighting words: cranberries, gravy, mashed potatoes, green been casserole, and, of course, STUFFING. Them's fightin' words.

The turkey was not looking for a fight, and he moved on, nervously. Of course my camera was in the house; I watched him closely since I couldn't photograph him as he made giant strides away from the house. I followed slowly, only to watch. He, being bird of extremely small brain, ran crazily in a zig-zag pattern, back and forth across the road and then wildly veered onto the dairy driveway and behind a manger, out of sight. I let him go.

I drove to work dreaming of Thanksgiving.

(Posted simultaneously here and at Foolery)

On my way home from work tonight I saw a hot air balloon. We see them a lot in September, early on weekend mornings. Other than that we don't ever see them, so this was a rare treat.

I saw the balloon again after I picked up Smedley from dance class. It hadn't moved too far up the valley; the wind was very light. I walked into the house and promptly forgot about the balloon.

It was Sparky who saw the balloon after dinner, nearly two hours after I had first seen it. "I'll have to call you back," I told my friend Gubby. "I have to go find a balloon."

About two miles away the balloon dominated a local pasture. "Hey, that's Becky's pasture!" I told the girls. "Who's Becky?" they asked. I can see I need to get out to see the neighbors more often.

Here is a photo pictorial of the balloon as it was carefully deflated and put away. The balloon in its bag was about as big as a beanbag chair. The whole process was very elegant and took under half an hour.

I'm pretty sure this heralds the end of winter and the coming of spring.

I used to mow the east pasture for my dad in the summer once in a while. Had I worked dawn to dusk it might have taken a full day, I don't know; I remember completing the job in two afternoons.

Dad's little John Deere tractor (sadly, it's no longer with us -- may it rest in peace) provided the horsepower, and the mower rolled along behind, cutting a swath just a bit narrower than the tractor through the thick pasture grasses. There are many things I cannot do, but even I could manage to mow the field with the tractor, slowly lowering the chopper, engaging the PTO to start the blades slashing, putting it into gear and starting around the perimeter of the pasture.

Round and round, clockwise, hugging the edge of the tall virgin grasses, the marked line of demarcation shorn by my previous pass.

Round and round, no radio, no air conditioning, only my thoughts as I watched for large rocks or boards in my path; occasionally I had to throw the tractor out of gear to jump down and move something that didn't belong in the pasture and certainly couldn't be mowed over.

Round and round, not fast enough to create a breeze. Funny, I had terrible grass allergies as a child which kept me from mowing the lawn and feeding hay, but the grasses never bothered me on the tractor -- oh, except for the one time I forgot to wear sunglasses. It seems that sunglasses keep the grass pollen out of my eyes and completely block my allergies. I didn't forget twice.

Round and round, uninterrupted . . . unless . . . sometimes the rhythm was broken when I hit a mound of dirt or a hidden piece of wood. When that happened, the mower did what it was supposed to do: it sacrificed its weakest link, called the shear bolt. A shear bolt is a fail-safe weak point which keeps a motor from slogging too hard against an impediment, such as a tangle of tough brambles -- anything which creates a lot of torque for the engine. So when I hit a rough patch with the mower, BAM, I'd shear the shear bolt right off, and I'd have to stop mowing, leave the field, and take the tractor all the way back to the dairy yard for my dad to replace the bolt. Yes, I was a weenie and I didn't replace my own shear bolts, or at least not often. I think I had done it but maybe I was really terrible at it (probably). I remember going through two bolts in one afternoon once.

Mowing was a zen experience, other than the occasional shear bolt. But once in a while I would hit something else. If you are squeamish, you must stop reading now. You won't miss anything you can't live without.

On one long straightaway pass I looked to the right of the tractor, where I had mowed on the previous pass. There was a scene of great carnage, and I had to look away before I truly understood what had happened. On the next pass I was certain: I had mowed over a nest of jack rabbits. The poor little guys never knew what hit 'em. The rest of the afternoon was spent going round and round, bawling my eyes out.

Round and round, *sniff*, round and round.

(Photo stolen from SigmaEye on Flickr)

Oh, the neighbor's German shepherd is out, I thought to myself as I watched him through the kitchen window. He was out in the east pasture, just beyond the ditch bank, digging. He jumped back and landed on four stiff legs, never taking his eyes from the freshly-dug earth. He was quite a distance from me, yet close enough that I could watch him doing doggy things.

Whatever he was digging must have gotten away, or he lost interest, because he sat down and scratched a flea, presumably, behind his ear. Wait, the neighbor has TWO German shepherds, and they are inseparable, I thought.

Oh.

This was no dog; this was a coyote. A big coyote, to be sure. I have seen him before -- once very near, on the road, as I turned out of the driveway and headed off to work. I don't think this coyote is quite as big as the neighbor's shepherds, but he's close. His thick winter coat, so beautiful this time of year, probably hides a lean animal, though not for lack of available critters to eat. He makes his den somewhere in the acres of berry bushes that encroach on the pasture and abut a marsh. The same berry bushes house rabbits, opossums, skunks, a host of birds, and feral cats. The adjacent fields are home to gophers, squirrels, moles, pheasants, and sometimes wild turkeys. The marshes support an increasing population of wild ducks and herons, and lately a chorus of cacophonous frogs, who are thrilled by the new network of puddles in the fields.

This coyote is at the top of the food chain in predator paradise.

No one ever takes a shot at him. There are very few large dogs roaming the area. His main competition is a den or two of foxes, and raptors in the air. He has all the food he can catch. And, as long as he does his part to keep the critter population under control, no human will bother him.

As long as he doesn't come for the chickens I plan to get this spring. We'll have to have a talk if he crosses that line.

I heard two or more coyotes on the west side of the property the other night, neither yipping nor howling, but singing a song I hadn't heard before. They seemed to be enjoying making Carlos's yappy dogs bark themselves silly. Let 'em bark, the coyotes were thinking. We have free range and total access.

Remember, Coyote, I thought as I watched him from the east window. No chickens, and you and I will get along just fine.

We are surrounded.

Winter skies are usually more interesting than summer skies in Northern California. That's because in winter we have precipitation, in theory. In summer, which lasts from April through October, we are drier than a Utah county.

Drier than a Dick Cavett/William F. Buckley interview.

Drier than the skin on the backs of my hands right now. Yeah, that dry.

Make no mistake about it, the rain that has been washing over us in sheets the last few days is beyond welcome and sorely needed. And the skies have been wondrous. Here are a few pictures from a thunderstorm that passed through a couple of weeks ago.

I played with the color just a tad, but not too much.

I took this one and the one that follows on my knees out the dirty dining room window. Even so, the sky was drenched in color, which I didn't mess with at all.

This last one was taken Friday morning. I was in my car, hand on the shifter, engine running, when I noticed how beautiful the view through the garage door was. No adjustment of your screen is necessary; the garage is crooked.

I have to remember days like these during our seven-month summers.