Nest naming

Tags

Birds, ecology, field biology, Field work, nature, outdoors, stories, storytelling

Back when I worked for an ornithologist in the swamps of northern Ohio, one of my primary jobs was nest-searching.  Bird nests are intentionally cryptic and that makes them exceptionally difficult to find.  Add to that the fact that our study organism was the American Goldfinch, which nests preferentially in brambles, and that our study site was in a swamp lush with poison ivy (up to my hips in places), and it made for a challenging task.

Wading through blackberry thorns, green briar, and multiflora rose from 8 am to 6 pm every day left my legs looking like someone had taken a lash to them.  They still have an intricate mesh work of fine white scars that stand out across my shins.

And, though I had been resistant to poison ivy at the beginning of the summer, it wasn’t long before I became sensitized to it.  At the end of the season, I was “one gigantic poison ivy blister”, according to my “hilarious” PI.

But those Goldfinch nests.  Boy were they things of beauty…composed of thistle fluff and cattail down, they shone like golden pillows in the sunlight.  And to find one was so rare…we searched every branch of every bush and tree across that nature reserve for weeks, a sweeping arc of field biologists on the hunt.

There were rewards for all of this effort and pain.  Namely*, if you were the one to find a nest, you got to name it.  It was a unique privilege, and I will tell you that when I found a nest, I glowed more than any time I received an academic award, no matter how prestigious.

Naming the nests was a game in itself.  You were under a lot of pressure to come up with something clever or cute, funny and witty.  Because every nest was such a precious resource, it just had to have the perfect name.

And the names told the story of how the nest was found, where it was located, or the personality of the parents.  There was Hole in the Wall and Diamond in the Rough.  There was Phoenix (for a nest we thought was dead that was resurrected) and A Pirate Walks into a Bar (a bad joke, because the nest was completely inaccessible).  There was Powerline and Northern Shamrock and Copper.

Isn’t it funny how the simplest things can sometimes mean the most?  A good name earned a guffaw from our team leader and the respect of the other field assistants (not an easy thing to win).  A poor name fizzled like a bad firework.  Those names were immortalized on the maps we drew out of our sites.  We followed each nest, and each family of birds for months, watching as the parents mated, laid eggs, hatched and reared their young. We spent hours in bird blinds recording every move of the mother.  (“3:12 pm  mother gets up and looks at eggs.  3:13 pm  mother sits back on eggs.  3:15 pm bird flies overhead.  mother looks up.”)

We weighed the birds and recorded the colour of their plumage.  Holding those little embryonic nestlings in our hands to keep them warm inevitably caused us to bond with them.  In the case of a happy ending, we watched the little nestlings fledge and fly for the first time, all stubby tails and clumsy wings. 

We mourned every nestling mortality as if it was our own.

*That’s a pun.  Duh.

The bowels of a Chinese airport: a travel story

Tags

adventures, airport, China, harrowing, security, stories, storytelling, travel

I enjoyed my trip to China immensely.  It was my first time on the Asian continent, and it was full of wonderful experiences: Tianenmen Square and the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, the Ming Tombs, the Olympic Stadium, the Summer Palace…Beijing was interesting and exciting and full of life.

The only thing marring my trip–the only thing that took away from my enjoyment–was when I tried to leave the country.

I arrived at the airport four hours early (I overestimated how long it would take to get there).  As I was checking in at the counter, the agent said, “Where is your visa confirmation?”  You see, I was flying from Beijing to Australia (with some crazy layovers).

“Um,” I said, “It is electronic.  It is attached to my passport.”  The Australian government’s website explicitly tells you many times not to print out the confirmation email.  “You will not need it,” the website insists, “The visa is electronically attached to your passport.”

Now, I have been to Australia three times, and although I did print out this confirmation email just in case the first time, I have never needed it before.  Thus, this time I did not print it out.

“You must have the confirmation email,” the agent insisted.

As it turned out, their computers don’t talk to the Australian computers.  Go figure.

“I don’t know what to do,” I admitted, a bit embarrassed, “I don’t have access to the internet, and I don’t have the print out.”

That was when a very sharply dressed security guard appeared at my elbow and spoke in rapid Chinese to the agent.  After a few moments, he told me to follow him and proceeded to guide me into the bowels of the airport.  Beneath the pristine and shining top floor (with its starry ceiling), the airport was grungy cement and nameless offices.

The security guard led me through the labyrinth and picked a door seemingly at random.  Inside there were featureless cubicles with computers.  I laughed nervously and thanked him as he showed me a computer with which I could access the internet.

But, as it turns out, Google is blocked in China.  And my email is google mail.

Oops.

No problem, I told myself, I will just go to the Australian government’s website and access my account through there.

No good.  That website is blocked too.

“I seem to have a bit of a problem,” I told the guard, who was watching me with extreme ennui, “I can’t access my email or the Australian website.”

“You must call someone to access your email,” he said, pulling out a cell phone.

“You want me to call a friend in America from China, on your cell phone?” I asked, incredulous.  He nodded, and gestured again to the phone.  I shook my head and typed in the country code and numbers, having absolutely no idea what time it was in the US.

My friend picked up the phone with a decidedly groggy (and confused: the number must’ve looked ridiculous), “Hello?”

“Heeeeeyyyy,” I said, “It’s standingoutinmyfield*.  I’m in a China.  Specifically, in the security office in a Chinese airport.”  *I used my real name, though.

“… You’re…wait, what?” she asked, sounding more awake by the minute.

“Yeah.  Listen, I need your help.  I need you to hack into my email and send my visa confirmation to this email address.”  And I read out the email address the security guard had given me.

“Wuh…okay,” she said.  With relief, I printed out the email she had sent and the security guard and I went back up to the check-in counter.

But the person behind the counter scanned the email and said, “Excuse me, why does this have the date 2011 on it?”

My friend had emailed my old visa confirmation to me.  The security guard (who had earlier vanished) reappeared at my elbow and we trekked back down into the bowels, and I called my friend again, apologetically, and again asked her to send the email.

During the next trek up, the person behind the counter complained that the email confirmation did not have the date I had purchased the visa.  Back down to the bowels.

The next time, the counter person complained about some other detail and I went back down to the bowels wringing my hands.  I had been very calm, even mildly amused, at the start of this process, but it had now been three and a half hours of walking back and forth from the basement, waiting at desks and counters, and having a security guard hover over me in a poorly lit room with a barely functioning computer.  Though I had been four hours early, my plane was now starting to board, and I had not even been through the security lines yet.  I was starting to get distressed.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said to the security guard, clearly desperate, “I don’t know what you want.”

He just nodded patiently, still bored.  He pointed at the computer screen to the email we had just printed and taken up to the check-in counter.  “Print this,” he said.

“We just printed that,” I protested, printing it out anyway, “They didn’t accept it!”

As it came out of the printer, he stapled it calmly and handed it to me. “This is what you need,” he said, meeting my eyes for the first time.

“A-are you sure?” I said, accepting it uncertainly.

“This is what you need,” he repeated, then he handed me the boarding pass, which he had magically acquired from the check-in desk, “Do not go back to the check-in counter.  Do not talk to anyone.  Do not stop.”

I gripped the paper in one hand, and my passport and boarding pass in the other.

I ran.

I sprinted across the airport, went through security with a white-knuckled grip on my papers, sprinted through the terminals.  I arrived at my gate toward the end of the boarding line.  I boarded the plane.  No one had asked me for the visa confirmation.  No one had looked at me twice.

I sat in my seat on the plane, wide-eyed.  My visa confirmation print-out was in my fist.  When the flight attendant approached me, I stared at her and lifted it up to her slightly.

“Would you like a pillow, miss?” she asked.

Who knew that dogs could faceplant?

Tags

adventures, bicycle, cycling, dogs, faceplant, humour, riding, stories, storytelling

Yesterday, I did my annual “underdressed October mountain ride”, which I arbitrarily decided was an annual tradition…yesterday.  Which is to say that, for three years now, I have accidentally gone for a somewhat frigid mountain ride in October.  When I finally returned to civilization and a light turned red in my path, I groaned as I peeled my frozen fingers off of the handlebars and put a stiff, involuntarily trembling, lobster-red leg on the ground.

I’m still pretty skittish after my accident in June and yesterday I was scared.  I was scared when I came around a bend at 30 mph (50 kph) and surprised a small family of deer on the road.  I was scared coming down the mountain at 40 mph (65 kph) and noticing (for the first time in the dozens of times I’ve done this ride) that there is a sheer drop-off on the other side of the road’s guard rail.  When I went over a particularly rough patch of road, my stomach flipped and I couldn’t suppress the thought, “I know what that feels like on my skin…”

And as I came around a particular bend, I remembered this underdressed-October-ride from two years ago when I came around the same bend and saw two stray dogs running down the hill opposite me, barking like crazy.

I thought, at the time, “Oh how nice!” because I love dogs and have never been afraid of them.  But dogs do not like cyclists and these dogs came straight for me with violent intent, full of blustering rage.

In the fractions of seconds that passed as I came around that bend, I watched as the first dog’s jaws snapped shut just centimeters from my ankle.  As it missed and I shot past, it’s momentum carried it forward and it faceplanted on the pavement.  It’s body swung 360 degrees in midair and it flipped off the road into the ditch.

The second dog, a little farther behind, missed completely and overshot the road, landing in a pile of brush.

And then I was gone.  The whole thing took less than a few seconds, but whew boy…if that first dog had gotten its teeth around my ankle at that speed I would have hit the pavement hard and not gotten up again.

Things to think about.

Who knew dogs could faceplant?

Getting to know you…

Tags

awkward, backpacking, Colombia, hiking, iguaque, stories, storytelling, travel, traveling

A travel story for Saturday…

When we were traveling in Colombia, we wanted to hike up to Lago Iguaque, a lake at the top of a 3,600 m mountain in a national park.  (See this post for photos of the hike)

We were staying at Hostal Renacer in Villa de Lleyva (by the way, one of the nicest backpackers that I have ever stayed at…and I have stayed at a few!) that offered a guide and a ride up to the mountain.  So we crammed the five of us (a driver, our guide, and us three turistas) into a tiny Jeep and chatted as we bounced along on the rough roads for 45 minutes.

We enjoyed our lovely hike and, at the end of the day we returned to the bottom of the mountain to await our ride home.  As we waited, four other hikers desperately raced up to us.  “Help!” they pleaded, “We missed the last bus back to Villa de Lleyva, and we’ll be stuck on the mountain unless you can give us a ride back.”

My companions and I exchanged glances.  It had been crowded with only three of us in the back of that little vehicle.  How would we fit four more people?  We were even more alarmed when it arrived and we saw that the driver had brought a friend to fill the front seat.  But what could we do?  We could not leave these poor hikers on the mountain.  We had to find a way to fit eight people into a space designed for two.

On the way back, we were (all of us sweaty from hiking all day, and covered in barro (mud) from the mountain) crammed so tightly that I could move nothing but my right arm from the elbow down.  Someone I did not know was sitting rather apologetically on my left knee and was packed tightly in against my shoulder, effectively immobilising that side of my body.

Our driver, a Spaniard, rather enjoyed the groans and grunts of pain that echoed from the mass of backpacker flesh as he hit every pothole.  Of course, we were wiling to laugh at ourselves as well.  It was a ridiculous situation, after all.

After the painfully long 45 minute ride back, the driver opened the back of the car and we came spilling out in a tangle of stiff arms and legs.  As we lay in a crumpled heap on the ground, I couldn’t help but say, “I really feel, guys, that I have gotten to know you all quite well.”

My Mom-mom

Tags

family, grandmothers, Love, mom-mom, old photographs, stories, storytelling, time

My father’s mother never wanted to be called a grandmother…she said it made her feel old.  Instead, she wanted us to call her Mom-mom.

I adore these old pictures of her.  In that first one, she is twenty years old and it is 1950.  She is so beautiful.  And the second one is on her wedding day…she is standing next to my grandfather.

I know I said I wouldn’t post any photos of myself, but I am the one in the middle. My sister is on the far right and my Mom-mom on the left. This was a few years ago, haha.

Everyone always says my Mom-mom is a hard woman, and hard to get along with, but not for me!  I can get away with anything with my Mom-mom, just by cuddling her and giving her big puppy dog eyes.

I don’t know why this is true, but it is.  She does get mad at me sometimes, but she can never stay mad.

She means business. That’s her vicious dog, Cinnamon, sitting on her shoulder (and my eldest sister in the background).

My Mom-mom won’t let anyone into her kitchen except for me.  Sometimes, at family gatherings, when one of my relatives is giving me a hard time about something or another, my Mom-mom will walk up behind my silently and sling an arm around my shoulder.  Whoever was scolding me will gradually trail off and then walk away.  This is the kind of relationship my Mom-mom and I have.

Here’s another photo of me, geez!

At every single gathering, she tells the same story of me when I was three years old.  I walked into her kitchen, hands cupped and huge grin on my face.  She leaned over and said, “What do you have there in your hands?”

“It’s Rebecca!” I shouted gleefully, opening my hands to reveal an enormous wolf spider.  My Mom-mom’s hand still flutters to her heart when she tells the story.  She laughs and says, “Some things never change.”

I’m the one reading Go Dog Go

One time, she and I were baking pecan pie for Christmas day.  I was dangerously thin at the time, and as we were baking, she nudged me with an elbow and said, “Do you like pecans?”

I blinked at her and said, “Yes, of course.”

“Then you should steal one!” she whispered conspiratorially, snatching a nut out of the batter and dropping it in my hand.  I was startled into laughter because I had previously known her only to be very severe and straight-laced.

One time, I was to perform a piece (Ode to Joy, if I remember correctly) at my uncle’s wedding.  He was getting married in Washington, DC, and I was living in Colorado at the time.  Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances, I had to fly from Denver to Salt Lake City, Utah, and then from Utah to Atlanta, Georgia, before landing in DC.  I had been flying all night (red-eye), and landed with a mere hour to spare before my performance time.

I was so exhausted that day, and it went by in a blur.  The only concrete memory I have of the day is being enveloped in the soft warmth my Mom-mom’s huge purple faux fur coat as she hugged me when I stepped off the last plane.

A giant purple faux fur coat

I don’t have a good reason to post about my grandmother today, but I hope you’ll understand.  Some days you just need to write about things.  Sometimes, you need to write about mom-moms. 

Assertive

Tags

assertive, humor, personality, storytelling, travel, word play

NB: There is a pun in the title of this post for those brave enough to find it.  It is a little more crass than my typical word play, but so appropriate.

It is true that I cannot be described as an assertive person.  In fact, I think my personality can be perfectly captured by the fact that I was walking down a path the other day, reading a manuscript, when I accidentally bumped into a tree.  Thinking it was a person, I said rapidly, “Oh my, excuse me, I beg your pardon.”

Then I looked up and, blinking in surprise, I pushed my glasses back up on the bridge of my nose and said, “Oh, I’m so sorry, I thought you were a person.”

Then I blushed, looked around, patted the tree, and kept on walking.

But the best example of my lack of assertiveness comes from a time when I was traveling.  My flight was delayed seven hours on the tarmac, so by the time I landed in my destination city, my ride had already left.  It was the middle of the night, so I had to take a shuttle.

As I was boarding the shuttle, very tired from a long day of frustrating travel, there was a large and vociferous woman shouting on a cell phone and directing the poor driver to load some thirty bags of luggage.  I took one of the seats near the front; there were few remaining because of the luggage.

Then I leaned against the window and closed my eyes.  Within a few minutes, the woman, still on her cell phone, climbed onto the bus, and sat on me.

Which is to say, she sat half on the seat beside me and half on top of me.  I tried to speak up and say something, but she was still on her phone and I didn’t want to interrupt her call.  I bit my lip, murmured a faint protest, and she didn’t notice.

I cleared my throat once, and said, “Um, excuse me.”  But she didn’t notice.

It wasn’t that uncomfortable, actually.  She was pretty soft (being very large) and warm.  And I was so very very tired.

Ultimately, I gave up and leaned against the window and closed my eyes.

When I tell this story, my friends sigh and shake their heads, and say, “Oh, standingoutinmyfield, you definitely need to be more assertive.”

Standing out in stupidity

Tags

getting lost, kindness of strangers, running, stories, storytelling

I had something else planned for today’s post, but I had quite the adventure last night, so I thought I’d share.  It’s kind of a long story, and I apologize for that in advance.

Yesterday was a pretty typical day in that I arose around 4:30, went for a swim, biked to work, and then headed out to the field to haul water around to my plants.  In the afternoon, I helped an undergraduate with his field work, and we didn’t get back to the lab until late.  Nonetheless, I had a fairly intensive bike/run (called a “brick” in some circles) workout planned for the evening.

I tell you all this because, by the time I headed out on my bike, I had already had a long and fairly physically intensive day.  Workouts after a long field day can be tough, but I just tell myself to stick it out.

I did the bike portion of the workout, short (15 km) and high intensity.  Then I rolled off my bike and started on the run.  I had planned a 24 km run (15 mi), which is not trivial for me, but it was a beautiful evening and I was soon enjoying myself and moving along at a pretty good clip.

As the sun set, the world filled with fire beetles (I am calling them this in the attempt to dissuade people from using the misnomers of “fireflies” or “lightning bugs”, which are both technically incorrect).  As I ran through them, they landed on me all over until I flashed like a beacon.

I was daydreaming and not paying a lot of attention, so I decided to try running down a road I had never been on before.  I had looked at a map beforehand and the road seemed to connect, so I thought I would be alright.

But as I ran down the road, the sky darkened and the fire beetles vanished.  Dark walls of trees rose on both sides.  “Okay,” I thought, “I am still heading west, everything should be alright.”

Soon enough, the road I was running on turned to gravel.  Another half a mile later and the gravel disintegrated into dirt with clumps of grass.  The canopy closed overhead, blocking out the moonlight until it was black as pitch.  I stumbled to a stop, hands out in front of me.

Clearly, I couldn’t continue this way.  I knew I was going west, but in the pitch darkness and without a road, I could easily have gotten turned around in the forest.

So I took a deep breath, turned around, and ran back the way I had come.  Now, I had been running for over 2 hours at this point, and the thought of doubling back all the way was hard for me to swallow, so I decided to use one of my tricks for finding my way around a new place.  I doubled back until I hit the nearest paved intersection, and took a left, heading north.  The road took me up a long, winding road and my heart sank as it continued steadily north, instead of bearing west again.

The problem with running is that it can get you a whole lot of nowhere fast.

At the top of the hill, the road curled in on itself in a cul-de-sac.  I stopped.  Dead end.  The thought of doubling back at this point was nearly unbearable, so when a woman walked by with two barking dogs, I couldn’t help but say, “Excuse me, I’m so sorry to bother you.”

“I’ve been running for three hours; I think I’m lost,” I blurted, trying not to sound desperate, though I was.

I told her about my plight, and although she thought it odd, she was kind.  She offered to give me a ride back to town, and I must admit I did not fight very hard when I said, “No, I couldn’t possibly…” and when she said, “No, I insist!” I gave in rather quickly.

I must have apologized forty times on the drive back.

But here is my moral dilemma.  She took me back to the lab, where I changed, got on my bike and commuted home.  By the time I had showered and gotten into bed it was near midnight.  This morning, I got up at 4:30, went for a swim, and now am about to head out to the field.

Which means that I probably could have run home last night, but I was too lazy.  I feel like a terrible person, that I took advantage of that woman’s kindness and made her go out of her way to help me because I was stupid and lazy.

I wish there was a way I could repay her kindness.

Read the books your father read

Tags

books, clasic sci fi, father, science fiction, stories, storytelling

I got my love of stories and storytelling from my father.  When my sister and I were really young, he would tuck us in at night and tell us a story.  And he wouldn’t just read some children’s book either!  Nope, he always told us 100% unique and original stories that he made up himself.

His main character was John, so we called the stories “the John stories.”  John was a fighter pilot turned astronaut who had intergalactic adventures, mainly battling a race of evil lizard people.  John was the perfect hero, but he relied on his brain and not his brawn to get out of tough situations (although he was also pretty athletic).

My father is a great storyteller.  He has a very deep and pleasant voice and he speaks quietly so that you almost have to lean toward him a little to hear properly.  (Just like Daisy Buchanan in the Great Gatsby.)

My sister and I LOVED the John stories and we begged for them every night for years, but as we grew older they became less and less frequent.  I couldn’t exactly pinpoint when my father stopped telling John stories altogether, but to fill the gap I started raiding his bookshelf.

Now everyone in my family is pretty itinerant and for that reason we don’t keep a lot of things.  Books are heavy and not easily moved, so we had very few books.  The few that my father held onto were therefore of special significance.  Mostly they are ancient magazines of sci-fi and adventure that look a little like this:

from Wikipedia.org

My father kept them from when he was 8 years old (he wasn’t eight in 1926 (or alive), but you get the picture).  I grew up reading magazines like these.

from Wikipedia.org

My father loves sci-fi, so I’m well read in all of the classics: Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury, Frederik Pohl, Heinlein, and Niven and Pournelle (they have to write together or they are horrible).

From wikipedia.org

By the time I was twelve, I had read the Foundation trilogy and almost every other thing published by Asimov (arrogant as he was).  When most people were reading Harry Potter, I was reading The Voyage of the Space Beagle published in 1950 (now that’s real sci-fi, haha).

from Wikipedia.org

One time, my father took me on a walk in the middle of the night, in the middle of the desert in order to tell me a story properly.  “It’s not dark enough,” he said, “You have to close your eyes.”

Obediently, I closed my eyes as he told me a terrifying story about a planet on the edge of the Milky Way, with no stars at night, and no moon, and of the adventurer who had to find a way home through a canyon in the pitch blackness.

Another time, after I had begged him for a story, he told me that he had written an entire universe, and made himself a character in it, with a wife and a nice family.  He had written such detail into the universe that he had become trapped in it.  “How did you escape?” I asked, eyes wide.

He looked at me, eyes sparkling, “I still haven’t!” he responded.

When I protested that I am not just a character in a story he would reply smugly that he had written me to respond that way.  And I learned that, try as you might, you can never prove to another person that you are not just a figment of their imagination.  (It’s interesting to try though, you should give it a shot sometime.)

I can’t help but love stories.

Channeling Cyrano

Tags

Cyrano de Bergerac, good deeds, Mastotermes darwiniensis, nerd, stories, storytelling, termites

Do you know the story of Cyrano de Bergerac?  I love that story…it is one of my favourites.  It is just so bittersweet and sad, so perfectly written.  And I relate to Cyrano, as I also have a nose that “precedes me by five minutes.”

An artist’s rendition (not mine), courtesy of photo.net:  “I am bombastic and timid; ugly and beautiful; brave and cowardly; poet and swordsman: all at the same time”

In the story, Cyrano falls in love with “the fairest of the fair,” but he is so sure that she could never love him back, that he chooses not to tell her.  Soon, she falls in love with a dashing, handsome character, a friend of Cyrano’s.  To help them both, Cyrano aids his handsome, but lackwitted, friend to woo the girl.

The most famous, and oft-repeated scene, where Cyrano whispers the lines his friend uses to woo the girl, courtesy of photographersdirect.com

I had my own Cyrano moment not too long ago.  I had a friend (not at all lackwitted, by the way!), who was trying to woo a girl who studied termites.  We were both in Queensland at the time and, as you may or may not know, Queensland is home to the largest termite in the world, Mastotermes darwiniensis.

Mastotermes darwiniensis, the workers are pale, the soldier has big jaws and a dark head, photo courtesy of ento.csiro.au

So, there was nothing he could want more than to take home a specimen of this termite for his girl.  (Isn’t that sweet!?)  He turned to me, the bug geek, for help.

The problem was that the range of the termite didn’t extend far enough south.  We were in Brisbane, and the termite lived hundreds of kilometers to the north.  We couldn’t just walk out the door and find some termites.  Saddened, he gave up, thinking there was no chance of acquiring this gift.

That is when the gears in my brain started turning.

I started contacting local entomologists and museums to see whether they had any specimens.  I played up the nerdy entomologist card, saying how great it would be to have the largest termite in the world for my insect collection (I don’t actually keep a proper collection, shame on me!).

You cannot imagine how excited I was when a local museum replied with an email that said that they not only had M. darwiniensis in their collection, but that they had live specimens.

I set up a meeting date in an undisclosed location (it felt very undercover, haha), all the while keeping my efforts secret from my friend, who had given up on the whole idea.

I met with the entomologist, who gave me a vial with about 20 workers and soldiers.  I tried to contain a squeal of excitement.  He was very amused, but he didn’t realise that the source of my excitement was not the termite itself (although they were pretty cool), but the idea of the perfect gift.

I left a vial of termites on my friend’s desk while he was away.

When he returned…the look on his face was PRICELESS.  “B-but…h-how…” he stuttered, flabbergasted, “How did you get these?”

“Just some connections, you know,” I said smugly.

Maybe you think this was just a simple thing, but I still think it was one of the best things I have ever done.  I felt so useful, so crafty!  Aiding and abetting in a mission of love (involving termites).

courtesy of bonzasheila.com

Women of a certain age

Tags

humanity, kindness, mother, storytelling, travel

Here’s a story of my own for my mother’s week theme.

Over the years, I’ve had a number of fairy godmothers take me in when I was a mangy stray.  Looking back, I am amazed at their kindness.  And the thing that seems to unite all of these people, whom I met in vastly different circumstances, in countries around the world, was that they were all women of a certain age.  Which is to say, women of a certain maturity.

How did they know that I needed help?  I never asked for help, at least not in words.

Somehow, they knew exactly when to give, and when to accept, kindness.

Because, you see, I may be a stray, but I am a useful stray.  I am a pretty darn good cook, a competent and tidy housekeeper, and experienced in handling children and pets.  I am also fairly quiet and reserved.  The only risk you run in taking me in is that I will one day disappear quickly and quietly.

For example, there was Chris (whom I wrote about in Tom the Toad), who took me in when I came crashing out of the bush as a half-starved backpacker.   I cooked her meals, cleaned her house, and watched over her daughter as a way of thanking her for her kindness.  But I am still amazed that she took that leap of faith to trust me.

Chris

Then there was Jaimelle.  She took me in when I was very ill.  I had serious tropical ear infections in both ears and couldn’t stop vomiting.  My eyes were flicking back and forth because the room seemed to be spinning.  Instead of assuming that I was some drug addict, she took me in and nursed me back to health, even though I was a total stranger from another country.  She took me to tropical flower shows when I recovered enough to walk.

There was Christina, a friendly colombiana who, upon discovering that I like birds, took me on a special trip to a farm to show me the chickens.  “Mira!  Los pajaros!”  So sweet.  She let me stay in her house, and showed me the artwork of her children, who had long since left.

Christina

There was Kathy, a woman of the central Appalachia, who let me stay in her house when I was doing fieldwork in the middle of nowhere.  She was passionate about saving the American chestnut.  From her, I learned to brush my hair outside, so that the birds could take the shed strands for their nests.

And, of course, there was Mimi, an accomplished quilter in Florida’s panhandle.  I stayed with her and she taught me to make my own quilts on frosty January nights.

Mimi and her husband, Jim

Then there was Justine…I trained her sled dogs while she was away and she let me stay a while longer after she and her family returned to watch over her daughters.

In some of these times I was more desperate than others, but I can help but think back and wonder; what would I have done without them?  They were all different, and yet so fundamentally the same. They all had something that they loved, and they let me be a part of it, whether it was horses, chestnuts, tropical plants, sled dogs, quilts, or birds.  I have learned so much from them.  I wish I could repay them.

These are women of culture, women of wisdom.  These women have reached an age of pure beauty and grace.  They have dignity and confidence in their identity, so much so that they have faith in the uncertain, and hope in the goodness of man.  And they are very much to be admired.

I can’t help but feel that I have had so many mothers.

How I got my Aboriginal name

Tags

aboriginal tribe, Aborigine, Australia, Bush Stone Curlew, Dreamtime, folklore, Guyibara, legends, myths, storytelling, travel, tribal names

And the story of the Bush Stone Curlew’s cry.

A while back, I spent a few weeks with an Aboriginal tribe a few hours west of Townsville.  The ecotype was desert scrub (what I like to call “soft outback”), and it was very dry except for a small creek trickling close by.  It was an amazing experience, and one I’d readily repeat.

The tribal elder who spent the most time with us, would tell us stories every night in his amazing, melodic voice.  I would lie on my back and watch the star-filled sky and let his stories take me away to the dreamtime.

Over the course of our stay, he gave each of us a tribal name as he became familiar with our personalities.  One by one he named my friends, and each name was perfect.  Our gruff and hairy academic director became Koala, one of the students who bobbed and swam like a fish was Padeoboy (Platypus), the tall and willowy Jenna was Guyur (Brolga), my quiet and peaceful friend was Gurugu (Peaceful Dove).

Our trip was coming to an end, and I was starting to become anxious.  I was the last to receive a name.  On the last night before we left, I sat staring into the fire as everyone ate dinner.  I hadn’t received a name at all!  I was devastated.

When everyone gathered for storytime, the elder called me over.  He wanted to know why I was upset.  I told him shyly that he hadn’t named me yet.

He grunted in surprise and sat back, then rubbed his chin thoughtfully and peered up at the stars.  “Guyibara,” he said after a moment.

“Guyibara,” I repeated, rolling the unfamiliar name off my tongue.  “What does it mean?”

“It is the name of the Bush Stone Curlew,” he answered.

I blushed and he said, “You don’t like your name?”

“No, I do!  It’s just…the call of the Bush Stone Curlew is so annoying.  Did you name me that because I am also annoying?” I wondered.

He laughed a big belly laugh.  Then, his eyes twinkling, he started his story:

“The cry of a Bush Stone Curlew is one you won’t soon forget,” he began, “It is a heart-wrenching wail.

“But there is a very good reason why the Curlew cries this way.  Back in the dreamtime, Owl and Curlew were very good friends.  They both lived happy lives and soon both had full nests.

“It wasn’t long before the dry season came, and soon it was hard to feed all of the new mouths.  Curlew was skilled at finding small beetles and grubs for her young, but Owl needed meat for hers.  As meat became scarce, Owl watched Curlew’s chicks grow fatter and fatter, while her own became skinny and weak, and her jealousy grew.

“Curlew went to visit Owl one day.  She called and called, but Owl would not speak to her.  Finally, in desperation, Curlew cried, “Owl, why won’t you speak to me!  We are good friends, what have I done?”

“Owl finally came out of her tree hollow, “Curlew, your babies grow fat while mine starve to death.  If we are true friends, tonight you will go to find meat for my babies.”

“Curlew bowed her head, for she could see the truth in Owl’s words, “Yes, Owl!  Tonight I will find food for your young!  Don’t give up hope.”  And she ran off.

“Curlew spent the whole night searching for food that owl babies could eat.  Meanwhile, Owl was brooding in her nest, “What good is that Curlew anyway?  What has she done for me?”  And then she thought about Curlew’s fat babies, and she knew that Curlew was away, hunting, and she had an idea.

“Curlew came back the next morning after hunting through the night.  She called to Owl, but there was no response, so she left her meagre catch at the base of Owl’s tree, and returned in exhaustion to her own nest, only to find it empty of all but a few feathers.  She realised at once what had happened, and threw her head back to let loose the most heart broken wail.

“Now, ever since that time, the Curlew has wailed her despair at her friend’s betrayal.  Now Curlew disguises herself so that she is hard to find.  Curlew is always on guard, and always watching.  She sees and analyzes everything.”

There was a brief silence, then he said, “I named you Guyibara because you stand to one side, alone, and watch everything that happens.  You see every insect and bird, and every lizard.”

That night, as I lay awake, listening to the calls of the Curlews, I realised that this name fit me as well as the names of my friends fit them.  So that is me, Guyibara, Bush Stone Curlew.

 

Back in the saddle

Tags

bicycle, blue roan, dragon, falling, gallop, horseback riding, horses, overcoming fears, riding, saddles, stories, storytelling, thoroughbreds

My aunt taught me to ride on a Thoroughbred blue roan named Yankee Blue.  He was a retired racer, a gentleman who had mellowed out with age to a fairly calm disposition.  He was wonderful to learn on.  Over a few weeks, I gradually improved, learning to walk, trot, and canter.  I was in charge of cleaning the stalls every day and cleaning old Blue after rides.  It was a good summer.

This is not Yankee Blue (I didn't own a camera then), but it looks pretty similar. photo courtesy of stable.com

Finally, I was learning to gallop.  I took Yankee Blue out after practising in the ring for a while.  We were at a full gallop when he spotted something that startled him (I never knew what it was).

He bucked hard (man, that hurts in special places), which freed my feet from the stirrups.

He jerked his head sharply to the left, which tore the reins from my fingers.

Then, he bolted, recalling his past as a racer.  We rocketed like a bullet across the field.

At that moment, with no points of contact except my poor rump bouncing in the saddle, I planned how I would fall.  I would tuck and roll, pushing away from the horse, to avoid the flashing hooves and protect my fragile bits.

Then I remembered my aunt’s first tip for riding a horse, which is that they have an emergency brake.

I flung my arms around Blue’s neck because no horse can run with that much weight around his neck.  He came to an abrupt halt.  Trembling, I dismounted and limped around to stroke his nose.  He was trembling too.

We took a few minutes to calm down.  I took a few deep breaths.  No choice but to get back in that saddle!  My aunt says that you have to get back on right away because otherwise the horse will learn that it can get rid of you that way AND because you will start to get too scared to get back on.

We rode at a slow walk back to the stables.  I told my aunt the story, and she was proud that I had remembered her trick.  She told me, “There are only two kinds of riders: those who have fallen, and those who will.”

Well, I’ve had a few accidents in the past few months and now that I am finally healing enough to get back into gear (hahaha, pun intended), I find that I am a little afraid.  I think the blogger Btweenblinks describes it so perfectly in this post.

Recovery is slow, and getting over fears related to falls is difficult, but I am overwhelmingly grateful to be back on my Dragon.

See those hills? Yeah, those are our hills.

The best Dragon.

A Fairy Tale

Tags

Australia, bird banding, fairy wren, Mist-netting, storytelling, tall tales

Once upon a humid summer, I worked with an ornithologist from Arkansas. He was quite the character…he had a strong southern accent, but he could put it on and take it off like his old rumpled cowboy hat.  He could play the banjo and the ukelele.  We drove to the field sites every day in his tiny Toyota Corolla, and let me tell you, packing five sweaty field biologists and a whole slew of mist netting and banding gear into a Toyota Corolla is no small feat, especially without air conditioning.

He would play true blue Arkansas music in that thing.  The only song I remember, though, is Cool, Clear Water.  This’ll give you an idea of his personality.

On top of being a very clever field biologist, he loved telling stories.  Often, the stories would begin in a completely logical and credible fashion, but slowly little red flags would go up as he spoke, and they would gradually accumulate until my rapt listening gaze was transformed into a skeptical frown.  So believe what you will, and I won’t be responsible.

For example, he spent some time working in Australia, looking at extra pair paternity in fairy wrens. (That’s promiscuity in the females, when there is more than one male parent of the offspring.)

Wait, do you know about fairy wrens?  If you live in the UK, most of your bird names are boring, but in Oz, they have a lot of fun naming birds.  There is a Lovely fairy wren, a Splendid fairy wren, a Magnificent fairy wren, a Superb fairy wren…I could go on.

It really is a splendid fairy wren. Stolen from the internet because I never could catch a photo of one: animalworld.tumblr.com

Well, this Arkansasian told us that it is difficult to mist net fairy wrens.  They travel about in big groups, close to the ground.  They like thick brambly bush, with lots of thorns.  They are both shy and smart.  All of these factors make them very difficult to catch and band.

Well, since there are a lot of invasive rabbits in Australia, they’ve been leaving these gaping rabbit holes everywhere.  The kangaroos and wallabies aren’t used to them, so while hopping about, they accidentally step in them and break off their legs.  Then they die, because they can’t hop away (I’m making sad cooing noises by now).

But in their skeletons, they leave these foot and ankle bones broken off perfectly, just like a boomerang, right?  So we would collect these bones, and hurl them like boomerangs, and use them to shoo the flocks into the nets.

A roorang? (NB: no kangaroos were harmed in the making of this image)

At this point, my mouth hanging slightly ajar, I would stare at him for a moment.  He was completely deadpan the whole time, never batted an eyelash.  He would meet my gaze, nod, and say, “Whelp, better get back to work!  Them goldfinches won’t catch themselves and I have a mean hankering for a Mint Julep.”