Pets

Years ago, when I first dug the small pond behind the cabin, I stocked it with a few goldfish. They have thrived--reproducing and living out their little lives in peace and idleness, interrupted only by scattered moments of apparent bliss when I think to toss them some stale bread crumbs.

And almost from the very beginning the pond has also been home to a single, decorative water snake. I do not feed the snake bread crumbs. I do not feed the snake anything at all.

The snake feeds itself.

Know Your Enemy

"The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on."

Ulysses S. Grant (1822 - 1885)

Each year at about this time I begin my summer-long battle with ticks. They come in all sizes--from the almost microscopic larval ticks (that I have often confused with the equally obnoxious chiggers) to the thick grey slugs (about the size of a typical button) that drop from the hides of the pitifully-infested deer. I am generally a peaceable person, but I confess that I am continually striving to discover the best way to kill--or at least repel--ticks. And I am continually baffled in my endeavors.

This week, however, I have at least made a bit of progress at understanding the enemy. I finally decided to look closely at the battleground. I thought that if I could just see where ticks like to set their ambushes, I might be able to avoid them. As it happens, they do tend to be just where they are usually said to be--in grassy areas. But they don't like short grass and they don't seem to like thick blades of grass. The vast majority of the ticks I have observed so far have been at the very tops of the tiny, cylindrical seed stalks. They typically hang head-down with fore-polyps extended as widely as possible to each side of the seed-head, as in the picture above.

There is a certain evil intelligence in their behavior. If they were on the wide side of a blade of grass, their polyps wouldn't extend far enough to enable them to snag a ride on any unfortunate passer-by. And their anatomy doesn't enable them to cling to the narrow edge of a blade of grass--at least not with both fore-polyps extended for action.

I have seen a few ticks on stalks of lespedeza, but I may be guilty of having maligned that plant by considering it the primary haven for ticks and chiggers. It seems that lespedeza is a relatively innocent bystander, conscripted by those ticks that are unable to find suitable stalks of grass in their immediate environs.

Ron and Liz's Chickens

As a longtime vegetarian, I have occasionally felt a little twinge of conscience when I made an omelet. The hens that produced the eggs for my meal were probably living wretched lives. Since moving to Hand Cove, however, I have grown acquainted with quite a number of people who raise their own chickens. Indeed, in 1986 a chicken suddenly appeared on our doorstep (really camper step) and lived with us during our weekend visits to the lake. Some years after that we had a peacock stay with us for months. My brief experiences with poultry convinced me that I really didn't want any as pets. But our friends Ron and Liz really do view their chickens almost as pets. They actually raise them to sell the eggs locally, but Liz tells me that when a hen quits producing, Ron simply refuses to eat it--even though neither Ron nor Liz are vegetarians.

Anyway, we have started buying our eggs from these two friends--at least in part because their chickens seems to have rather spacious and comfortable digs, as seen above.

Waterfall Hunting

Last weekend twelve inches of snow fell in Fayetteville as spring formally arrived. Here in Hand Cove we had twenty-four hours of cold rain instead. By Monday morning the skies were bright blue, the day promised to be warm, and the run-off was continuously trickling down the hillsides to fill the cascading brooks. It was a perfect day for waterfall hunting.
Sue and I packed a lunch, put on hiking clothes, tossed my rescue gear into the car, and drove around the lake to the Leatherwood Wilderness Area in the Ozark National Forest.

Waterfall hunting is a rare adventure in the late winter and early spring. To get the best run-off and hence the best waterfalls, nature needs to be dormant with roots no longer sucking up moisture so eagerly. To get the best views, the old leaves should have fallen and the new leaves should not yet have fully emerged. It should be too cold for ticks and too early for poison ivy. It needs to have rained plentifully, but ideally the skies should be sunny. . . . Fortunately, all of those conditions were met on Monday morning.

I first discovered waterfall hunting a year or so before retiring by browsing through a book on the subject by Tim Ernst, the dean of Arkansas's hikers and nature photographers. Sue and I generally only visit the waterfalls in the Leatherwood Wilderness Area--and because it is a wilderness area, there are no formal trails. Some of the falls that are closest to the road have developed an informal path, but generally-speaking bushwacking is the name of the game. Since the great ice storm of 2009, that has become much more challenging.

Now there are huge tree trunks and large limbs everywhere, turning parts of the forest floor into a giant jungle gym. We visited only three waterfalls on Monday, and each of them was within a quarter mile (as the crow flies) of a gravel road. But two of the three were very challenging hikes. That quarter-mile hike always takes one down a steep hill to the top of the waterfall. Then it can be another quarter-mile--or farther--before one can make one's way to the base of the falls. Since a waterfall inevitably implies a rocky ledge, one usually has to consider some rock climbing . . . and there is always the remote risk of slipping, rolling, and tumbling off a cliff.

Waterfall hunting is an adventure that stokes a bit of adrenalin and rewards one with beautiful views . . . and aching muscles.

Icycle? Isicle? Ice-icle? Icicle?

Icycle? Isicle? Ice-icle? Icicle? . . . I can't even spell the blasted word, but I've certainly had enough of it in the past ten days. Low temperature records have been shattered all across the northern hemisphere. Gainesville, Florida, dropped to 17 degrees; Pensacola suffered through eight straight freezing nights; Tampa broke a city record with a low of 26; and Key West, the southern-most city in the US recorded a low of 42, only one degree higher than its all-time record. (Oddly, folks in Fairbanks, Alaska, were noting that it hadn't even hit 40-below this winter!) Meanwhile on Wall Street, futures contracts for orange juice soared by more than 15%.

The last time it was this cold was back in 1980's when a picture of Jan and me  ice-skating on the pond at ASU graced the front page of the Jonesboro Sun. The result this year has been a record crop of icicles. The lovely snapshot at the top is of icicles hanging from a bush near the water's edge. I suspect that fog rising from the warmer lake water condenses on these branches and the drips gradually form the icicles seen here. Perhaps the most interesting manifestation of lake-effect icicles is seen in the snapshot at right. I'm puzzled to explain the physics behind the creation of those double-bulbed icicles. What could cause the thinning at the center and the thickening at the bottom?

The most ominous of all the icicles I've seen, however, are those in the big batch at left. If they look like they are descending from the cabin, that's because they are! When I built the cabin, I was thinking primarily of its occupancy in spring, fall, and summer--though I always contemplated some winter residency. The post-and-beam construction technique I used creates a structure raised on posts a bit above ground level. The crawl space beneath could be enclosed for winter warmth, but that would create a haven for bugs and mice while making it harder to get under there for any subsequent repairs to the pipes and plumbing. Thus, our water pipes and drain pipes are exposed to the air. I've insulated the water pipes, but even insulation cannot protect them from freezing during long cold-spells. 

In the past I've solved that problem by switching off the hot-water heater at night and allowing all the taps to drip a little. Running water won't freeze--at least not readily. Those dripping taps, however, create even slower drips in the larger drain pipes, and this year unseen icicles formed in--and eventually blocked--some of the drain pipes. That happened first in the old bathroom. I realized what was going on when the sink began to fill with water. 

Subsequently, the drain to the new bathroom sink also froze, creating a mini-flood, which produced the nice assortment of icicles dangling from the bottom of the cabin. Fortunately, all of the frozen pipes have thawed and there was no lasting damage. I'm beginning to be a big believer in PCV plumbing pipes since they have so far survived several episodes of freezing without harm.

While I may not have enjoyed the lengthy freeze we have had in Arkansas, I think I may have finally learned how to spell the word icicle. It is not like bicycle without the b. In fact there is almost no point of connection between an icicle and a bicycle . .  . as I know to my sorrow. I have not ridden my bicycle in Arkansas since the first day of December.