This odd January is full of grey and wet and wind. The unusual weather seems a misstep in the cycle of the year. Birds that should have traveled long before to warmer climes may find themselves in perilous and dire straits when the course of the season corrects itself with an icy rein. For now they fill their bellies with the leavings of a fall harvest that by all rights should be buried under a covering of wintry white. The creatures that live by the length of the days and the angle of the earth have been caught unawares by this suspicious lack of seasonal scenery and oddities abound.

     As the year cools through the autumn months we usually play host to a variety of uninvited guests. Members of the indigenous bug population find their way inside drawn by the comparative warmth and the availability of entrance due to the idiosyncrasies of an old house. The most common immigrants are Asian beetles, spiders and oddly enough mud dauber wasps. Unlike the beetles or spiders, the wasps are always found below ground in the basement.

     These basement visitors are known as black and yellow mud daubers. They use mud to build small nests that can be found in sheltered places such as eaves or porches. Usually an inch or so in length they are impossibly slender at the waist (hence the term "wasp-waisted”) and black and gold in colour. When in flight the hind legs dangle down, equal in length to the body, seeming to increase the overall size to twice the height. The glossy wings are long and graceful. The head is well shaped, crowned with a tiara of ebony antennae and accented by black orbs full of age old wisdom and power. All-in-all the mud dauber is an impressive creature.

     It is somewhat of a mystery how something the size of a mud dauber could make its way inside. We've a variety of hypotheses for ingress that include entrance through the exhaust pipe of the gas furnace or through a room located off the very back of the basement. That particular room is not completely dug out and as a result carries the unknown element of an uncertain wall depth and a questionably sealed window. Whatever the way, they can be found hovering in the basement as the frost settles on the ground outside. Though the number is not great it is a startling sight to be greeted by a hovering and somewhat frazzled wasp as it searches for signs of familiarity in an unknown basement environment.

     These visits occur late in the season and the mud wasp is not a social or aggressive insect so it's been my practice to leave them alone. It does take a bit of effort to remember to look where you put your feet and hands but it's not too much of a bother. Often I will find the alien visitor drowned in the laundry sink before too many days have passed. It seems to hold a special attraction for those late season wanderers.

     Well before the ground has a chance to become snow covered the last of the wasps have gone to ground or left this world behind. This year though the unseasonable warm weather of January has created a revival in basement tourism. Unlike the wasps of late autumn these weary travelers don't lumber through the air. As a matter of fact they can barely drag themselves across the old area carpet that covers the basement floor. A mud wasp in flight is an intimidating sight, to watch one drag itself across the floor is tragic. 

     Unintentionally awakened from a winter sleep, the humbled pilgrims traveling across the green wool are all potential mothers of a new line. Only the females last the winter to carry on the survival of the species. Mud daubers are not a volume reproducer. A single female will only lay approximately 15 eggs for her nest. A shame really as this type of wasp is especially beneficial in the garden, helping to keep the spider population in check. A wasp provides that control through the grizzly parasitical practice of using living prey as nutrition for her babies. Obviously we find this somewhat gruesome but for the wasp it ensures the survival of her line.

     These future mothers traveling across my floor are tired and confused. Instinct tells them that it should be spring and that there are nest to be built but like Rip van Winkle they awaken to a strange and new world. As I pass by, on whatever errand that brings me below ground, the wind from my passage brushes against the gold and black bodies. Wings stir, perhaps in warning, but I like to think they stir in memory or anticipation of the spring breeze. To put them outside would mean certain death. To leave them inside, awake and confused, no real food in sight and too weak to hunt, really means the same. The unsettling warmth of this unexpected thaw has tolled a death knell for these graceful builders. They are a step out of time and as a result they will be lost along the way. Still they force themselves across the floor seeking hope in the dark corners not knowing that it is too early for the new life they carry, too late for the old they lived and only a few more steps to oblivion.

     The cold will return and I will sweep up the remains of those stalwart travelers resting in those dark corners. Nothing will be left of  the potential lost under the grey rainy skies of unseasonable January weather, a step out of their time and just a husk and a memory in ours.     

    

Inscrutable black eyes, reflected orient, have come to spread the communist theory of common ownership.

An illegal alien, no visa or passport, makes its home in trees stripped bare by the acid blood of a dying metal beast.

In the vacuum left, when the dream was farmed out to the lowest bidder in tropical climates and the coolies back home, a corundum carapace balances on shiny springs under a lotus crown. Hitching a ride duty free on NAFTA promises a brother's kiss seals the deal. There's a bigger border marked out in an adjacent point of view than a place of birth.

THE pride that splits and divides turns a blind eye. Habits too well known cosset a bad seed. Drowning grey, a cancer that kills is reflected in the GLOSSY enamel of shining empty eyes.

 

     The sun chose to stay abed on Thursday morning to avoid the leaden overcast October sky. It was one of those days that, having given itself over into self-pity, decide to drip away through all the chilly hours that remain. Thursday is the day before Friday and Friday is garbage day so Thursday morning's tasks predictably covered preparations for the impending pick up and, most unexpectedly, a shocking glimpse into the mysteries of the universe.     

     The gilded doors to the unknown plane, oddly enough, swung open above the white hex tiled floor of my upstairs bathroom. As some of you may already know the unexplained lurks within the walls of my historical residence, in particular the back stairwell and upstairs bathroom. One might think I should be well acquainted with the mysteries of existence or lack there off. I would disagree and I must say that I am convinced that there will never be a time that a cynic's heart will find me unaffected by the spans that breach and join distant worlds together.

     Thursday morning, the key that opened the door just a crack was my son's hedgehog, Joe MacHedgie. I'm still not sure what happened. I could make a semi-educated guess. Joe was seriously overweight, he had a stubborn temperament and he was a slave to his own nature. Joe was a grumpy spiky Walter Mathieu of a beast. A foul-mouthed house gnome, Joe held a special place in my heart despite his temperament and abusive vocabulary of grunts and hisses. When Joe was young he was a playmate and active member of our family collective. Time and the teenage years sent Joe the way of "painted wings and giant rings" and almost overnight he disappeared into Puff's distant cave. Certainly still loved in an abstract way but not always remembered.

     Joe was absolutely filthy, covered in newsprint ink and his own excrement that he'd managed to smear all over himself while he waited for me to clean his pen (he definitely knew how to make a statement when he was displeased). An unscheduled bath in the porcelain shallows was the obvious solution. Hedgehogs are great swimmers. Their quills act like a little life jacket to help keep them buoyant. Never the less Joe had never liked baths and his already stormy mood picked up speed and became a full-blown hurricane as the ablutions commenced.

     Joe stood in 2 inches of water at the deep end of the tub as I squeezed the facecloth above his head. Angry as always he hissed as the tepid water trickled over his face. He ducked his head into the water but that only served to irritate him more. As I continue to wash he worked himself into quite a state. I squeezed more water over his head and he curled into a ball with his head in the water again. The span of two breaths and I told him not to be so silly and rolled him over. He uncurled and looked at up at me his head just up out of the water. I picked him up and told him to snap out of it. I chided him, telling him that it was only a bath and if he hadn't gotten so dirty he wouldn’t have needed one.

     Lying on his back in the towel Joe's face contorted. He took a deep breath and his mouth opened wider than I’d ever seen. He cried out in a voice I'd never heard before and I realized that this was no normal temper tantrum. His head lolled back as his tongue extended out like some horrible cartoon joke.

     Panic-stricken I was caught, held by his eyes. They opened wider, and then wider still. For the first time in the hand span of what had been his life he was focused, seeing, really seeing...something. Mesmerized I watched emotions chase across his face, wonder or horror, certainly not fear, maybe surprise. His dark eyes were impossibly black and wider still, so full of visions. The whole sky could be lost in that inky distance. He looked inside me, through me and beyond. Full up with the universe the key broke and the door began to close. Wild and fast, the darkness emptied out like the line of a reel on a rod that's been hit hard and fast from the cool weedy depths below or the tail of a kite that's broken its line and flung itself across the sky. The door slammed shut and Joe's head sagged forward, eyes drooping in an eternal slumber, angry no more. The rod snapped back, the broken string fell to the ground as fish and kite disappeared into the great unknown.

 

     Someone once wrote that death was so frightening because it was so ordinary and it happened everyday. As I stood shocked, full of profound emotion at all that had transpired, I did not feel fear but a lack of comprehension. What had been was now no more. All that was left, the broken rod, the string and the bobbin, was a pale shadow of the journey. Now after days of reflection on what I had seen and the context in which it was shown I could never call any death ordinary. For in this "small" death so to speak I had seen my own. The details and effects will differ but still in the end all that will remain is the snapped rod, the broken string and the bobbin it was once wrapped on.

 

It did not seem at all ordinary to me

     Unseasonably warm October weather has delayed the parade of autumn's coat of many colours. While we wait for the onslaught of that glory we are laid under siege. Each morning finds the landscape strewn with an ever growing number of corpses piling up higher haphazardly stacked like cords of firewood. The annual influx of fish flies, also known as dayflies, Canadian soldiers or shadflies, has begun.

     Beautiful gossamer wings crown sinuous stripped torsos. Empty of all but a burning desire (and the air that fills their digestive systems) they live for nothing but the hunt of procreation's heated embrace. Each night a new army girds itself and joins the fray seeking a place of glory in Valhalla's vaulted halls. Entry it seems is only to be gained on the white-hot blade of burning consummation.

     There is no shame in this penultimate act of sacrifice. Drawn to the light they will commit these final desperate charges within the rays of whatever false sun that can be found. Pull back the blinds and a scene worthy of Hitchcockian horror greets the viewer. The outside world is lost to sight obscured by an immense wall of flesh, blindly scrambling, a pulsating mass of bodies intertwined and interlocked. Coating the windows, tumbling over each other in rapturous ecstasy, the minute forms coalesce to create an orgiastic curtain of writhing bodies. The span of each night marks the time of this legendary tryst and only dawn slows the wanton rhythm of passion's desperation.

     The light of day lays bare the fallen. Crisp bodies crunch underfoot. Spider webs hang heavy, laden with the bodies of those too blinded by passion and nature to avoid those murderous pitfalls. The odor of the lake at low tide, like the smell of blood, overlays the fields.

     Another night and new multitudes rise and take to the skies. They will join those still waiting to pass over into the western lands. Lemming like they seek the light with a voracious appetite that is not to be denied. Though empty husks slow the flood, those that follow climb that piled legion to sate a hunger absolute. 

 

There is an army in my garden and like all armies it marches on its stomach. Leaves broad and verdant that once shaded vibrant blooms now resemble doilies that would better serve as coverings for the backs of armchairs. Hostas, cornflowers, roses and hollyhocks, none are spared. If I could only find their headquarters I'd call for a truce to parlay my case. I'd treacherously offer up a martyr to save the fruit of all my protracted labours. After all there are acres and acres of soybeans just behind the pines out back. Granted it is cicada and cricket territory but they have so much while I have just one acre. They probably wouldn't miss a bean leaf or two. Maybe I should put a little white flag out by the gladiolus just in case.

If memory serves me correctly this particular species should be laughing it up dancing the days away while the industrious ant prepares for the cold weather ahead. No such reprieve for my flowerbeds is in the offing this year I'm afraid.

A lone scout explores and marks a path for the troops to follow. Such a wide swathe of destruction from such a charming little fellow; he really should be wearing a little top hat and a napkin tucked into his paper collar. Sigh...

 

 

                                   

 

                                         

 

 

It really is a strange thing, if you give it some thought, that we take animals into our homes and treat them like family. I don't know if any other species in the world exhibits the same behaviour. My childhood was littered with the comings and goings of many creatures furred, feathered or scaled. For several glorious years we shared a house with a beautiful budgie named Blue. At the time I did not know that Blue was the name of many different budgies. My mother had taken it upon herself to replace the predecessor with a bird of the same colour when age or misfortune in the shape of a cat or front door left open had occurred.

When my son was small he laid claim to an albino longhaired hamster he titled Sir Putsy Tootsy. Putsy Tootsy was subjected to Lego mazes, Matchbox hot rod tubes and pocket journeys here and there. My son still has the pictures from the trip to the photo booth at the mall and he keeps a clipping of white hair in his desk drawer. When Putsy Tootsy passed away he received a state funeral with all the trappings. He was laid to rest in a decoupaged shoebox that had been lined with a soft blue cloth. We sang Amazing Grace and placed a cross on the spot where he was buried. Today, a grouchy hedgehog that goes by the name of Joe MacHedgie inhabits my son’s room. As cute as he is Joe will never take the place of Sir Putsy Tootsy in my son's heart.

 

I wait.

She was my husband's "divorce buddy". A sympathetic ear, it was her that he talked to in those difficult days of separation and anxiety. His confidante, she learned to voice her needs from his confessions...or maybe there's some Siamese there. Such a small thing, if she were to leave, his loss would be monumental. We didn't start out on the best of terms. He was her man and I was an interloper. She was herself and I was myself but we found an uneasy balance through the years.

 

I wait.

It's not me she wants but life being what is, I'm what she's got. Something is broken inside her. Blood stains her lips. She doesn't smell right. For the first time, in all the 11 years I've known her, she is quiet and that is the worst thing of all. She doesn’t seem to be in any pain but I don't think the medicine is helping.

 

So we wait, her and I, together so she doesn't have to be alone.

Somber sleep embraces her in arms of velvet dark. She seems so delicate and frail; maybe he won't let her go. I touch her side to feel the faint spark of life rise and fall. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

 

We wait.

     One of the good things about having a big back yard is the opportunity to hang your wash out on a line. My childhood was, as I'm sure everyone else’s, a combination of good and bad. Nothing takes me back to those good memories quicker than the aroma of baked bread cooling on the counter and the fresh smell of linen that has been line dried. My mother would hang linen all year long, even in the dead of winter. On the coldest days she would bring the sheets in, frozen stiff, and hang them over the rails of the loft where they would send wafts of winter kissed air across the house as they thawed. I'm not as ambitious as my mother. I usually start hanging out the sheets after the spring mud has dried and give it up around the first autumn frost.

     I'm a live-and-let-live homeowner when it comes to bugs in the yard. It's been my experience that for the most part bugs are important members of the garden cycle. This couldn't be truer when it comes to the much-maligned wasp. Wasps are responsible for the demise of a variety insects (through some very unpleasant methods) that include flies, ants and grubs. Although wasps have a very nasty sting (burning fire under your skin) they are actually quite peaceable unless they or their nest is threatened.

     There is an old mailbox bolted to my clothesline post that serves to hold my clothespins. For several weeks a yellow jacket had been doing her best to build a nest in that metal mailbox. On the advice of Internet authorities, I had been waving her away and removing her attempts at building a nest. The outcome of which, according to those same experts, should have been her desire to relocate to a new area. They were wrong.

     I had gotten a bit behind in the laundry and she had taken the opportunity to get settled in the mailbox. A single female wasp can create a legacy nest with the potential to house anywhere from 1,500 to 15,000 members (depending on the species). Common sense would advise to simply stay away from an established nest if you can. I could just buy more clothespins and not use the box for the rest of the summer. Unfortunately its close proximity to the clothesline (being actually bolted to it) would bring me perilously close to the nest every week. As the summer unwound the nest would grow larger and an ever-increasing number of wasps would become more aggressive in their defense of that nest.

   The nest was just started but she had already began to lay her eggs. A simple wave off was not going to scare her away. Believe me I tried. I had the utmost respect for her loyalty and bravery; her babies were in that box and she wasn't backing down. I suppose I should have found some way to block her access to the inside of the box. I really thought she would give it up and go look for another place. Hindsight, as they say, is twenty-twenty.

Friday afternoon, high noon…the train has pulled into the station but I don't feel much like Gary Cooper. Reluctantly I head inside to get the Bug-b-Gone. She is still on her nest when I return. I think regret is a pale term to describe how I feel as I raise the can. It’s over quickly. I know she saw me. I must have loomed absolutely huge as I stood over her but she didn't move, resolute to the end. I push the button, her thorax stabs down, she stiffens and then she is still.

I had expected her to die. What I had not expected was for her to continue to cling to her nest even in that death. Her essence is gone but her empty husk remains as a testimony to her will and her heart. Three days later and she's there yet with her babies lying still in her arms; now and forever. It would be the picture perfect definition of hubris to believe that the human species is the only one to cherish their offspring beyond life itself.

 

It’s dark now. Here and there out in the yard. They aren’t alone though and they never will be.

 

God bless the good mother.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The floor of the foyer is a warm maple, the wallpaper a soft cream that matches the newel post of the sage stained stairs that lead to the second floor hallway. The rainfall of carpet that covers the stairs mutes your steps as you climb to the second story. The hallway is lined with cream coloured doors accented by black iron square locks and knobs. Several of the doors have brass knockers too small to really be of any use but picturesque nonetheless. There is a door two thirds of the way down the hallway that divides the front and the back of the house. Behind that door is a small bedroom, a white and black hex tiled bathroom and another set of stairs that lead to the kitchen below.

At one time the bedroom might have been home to the household help but today it is the private fortress of my long suffering stepdaughter. An occasional resident, when here, she spends most of her days in the role of Janet Leigh of Psycho fame as her brother and stepbrother take great delight in trying to scare her half to death. Some of their more intricate escapades have included fake figures made out of pillows under blankets, plastic swords, remote control helicopters and double attacks from inside and outside of the room simultaneously.

Janet Leigh, as we'll continue to call her, does not sleep alone in her room. Her space is also occupied by a grey and orange zebra finch called Petry. Of all the things in that room that one might find frightening, Petry gives me the most cause for concern.

Petry seems quite content in his solitude and is living far beyond the time predicted by the pet store experts. Oddly, he is vocal only when alone. On the occasion of another presence in the room he is still and eerily quiet.

Petry has not always been a lone bird. When he first came to live with us he had a companion that shared his cage. This is a common practice as zebra finches are said to be communal birds and will live longer when paired with a companion. There was trouble right from the start. Petria was white with the very smallest brush of grey across her wings and the same bright orange beak as Petry. That is where the similarities ended. The two couldn't be more different in temperament. Petria was loud and aggressive where Petry was quiet and meek.  At first it was just small squabbles between the two. Nothing too serious, some wing flapping and twittering. Night would find the two finches huddled together asleep. Time passed and we began to notice that Petry was beginning to look a bit ragged. The squabbles began to turn into fights and Petry seemed to be on the losing end as bald patches could be seen growing on the back of his head.

The pet store advised us that the best course of action would be to divide the birds for several days and then slowly reintroduce them to each other. It seemed to work. The two birds sat side by side in separate cages for several days. We moved the cages closer to each other until they touched. Finally we open the doors between the two cages and the birds were together again. Peace, so we thought, had been restored.

Zebra finches are rarely silent and greet the day with great volume at a great volume. An eerie silence greeted me the next morning as I approached the birdcage. Petry sat huddled up on the wooden perch. He was in the grip of some strong emotion, shaking with the intensity of it. I thought at the time that he seemed terrified.  A bright white patch that had somehow appeared over night now marred his once smooth grey head. It was so quiet in the room. Where was Petria? I stepped closer to the cage and then I saw her. Birds have a very quick metabolism and illness has been known to overtake them in a matter of days but last night she had been fine. There was not a mark on her, no indication of any reason she should be lying so still on the bottom of the cage.

I looked at Petry and I swear he looked right back at me. His body was shaking but his gaze was steady. I opened the door of the cage and carefully lifted Petria's body out. Normally a hand in the cage would cause Petry to flutter about energetically, that morning he didn't even move.

I gave Petria the burial that all birds get in the winter. The garbage man never even knew she was in the bag. I checked on Petry after I was done and he seemed fine, perky even. The pet store didn't expect him to last much longer given the loss of his companion but obviously he's still here and frankly he has lived an abnormally long time.

I can hear Petry singing as I come up the back stairs. Silence falls as I enter the room. It’s always this way now, ever since that day. Sometimes when I'm moving through the room I feel him watching me, his eyes black and bright under that strange white patch. I'm not sure if it's his longevity or that silent speculative look that makes me reconsider but I have a growing conviction that I was mistaken so many years ago. You see lately I’ve begun to think that maybe it wasn’t fear that whitened Petry's head and shook him to his core. Maybe, just maybe, it was a murderous rage. You probably think that seems silly. I know it sounds strange but something in that heavy silence, present since Petria's death, speaks to me... Something in those eyes makes me think that Petry’s not afraid of anything anymore. You know, Hitchcock might have been onto something. Maybe I should stop calling my stepdaughter Janet Leigh. The weighty silence in her room makes me think that I should change that to Tippi Hedren instead. 

The sun warms the earth and the days lengthen as we head toward the summer solstice. The garden has begun to give up its bounty. Mulberries, raspberries and currants hang heavy from the branches, laden with sunkissed sweetness. Every morning I head out, basket in hand, to compete with the other denizens of the garden for an equal share of the good stuff. I'm fighting a losing battle for the mulberries; between the husband and the birds we're lucky if any actually reach the kitchen. Raspberries are a better bet. There's enough for both the birds and the house, share and share alike. Currants are another matter entirely as no one can be persuaded to eat those fresh.

 

Currants are strictly for the birds (literally) and for making jelly. The currant bushes are heavy with red and white berries. A month ago I didn't even know that they were there. The 3 day hedge marathon led to the discovery of the bushes nestled under the hedge and a lonely pine at the back of the driveway. Several days later I found 2 more bushes at the back of our acre, so 5 bushes in all makes a lot of berries. The bushes under the hedge are the most prolific, some of the berries are huge (for currants). The largest of those is absolutley dripping with red currants. The branches are so heavy that they've drooped to the ground creating a shady hollow beneath. The berries hang below and the branches have to be lifted to reach them. 

 

The day was already warm as I worked my way around the currant bush. I had already picked the ripe berries from the top of the bush and had begun to harvest the branches hanging on the ground. I lifted the last branch to see a medium sized heap of feathers piled against the base of the bush. On closer examination I could see that it was not a heap of feathers but a dead black bird. It must have crawled away to die under the cool branches of the currant bush. I don't know what led to its death. There were no obvious marks on it...no one appeared to have been dining on it (which is usually the case around a house with 2 cats). It was so lovely and cool under the branches of the currant bush. I like to think that maybe the bird found some small respite or easement of pain as it lay under those branches. I realize that it's a subjective assessment but I thought the bird seemed to be at peace. I decided to leave it there. As far as I know it's still there in the cool hollows underneath the branches; laying still, surrounded by busy beetles and slowly ripening currants.