Journal of a Sabbatical

June 9, 1999

since when is cat shit pink?

June 9, 1999
Plum Island
1 great egret
6 house sparrows
5 common grackles
4 starlings
3 herring gulls
14 purple martins
1 song sparrow
2 great black backed gull
2 eastern kingbirds
1 redwing blackbird
2 gadwalls
2 Wilson's phalaropes
2 common terns
1 snowy egret
7 mallards
8 semipalmated sandpipers
1 robin
1 killdeer
10 Canada geese

Cats from top to bottom:
Joey
Chloe
Midgee
Tyler
Whiskers
Wendy

To adopt them, or any of the other cats waiting for nice homes, contact the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society 

Reading: Before the Dawn by Shimazaki Toson

Giggle Girl is going to the prom tonight. In her excitement she's cleaning cages at top speed. You'd think this would take her mind off me and my bleach shirt. But no. She wants to know if I know any good dance moves. Me? Dance moves? She splashes bleachy water on my shirt, which I am wearing backwards in order to get some bleach spots on the back. I am wet to the skin by the time Roy gets there to dry dishes. He doesn't know any dance moves either. Nor does Bob.

I brought my digital camera to the shelter this morning in the hopes of getting a few cute shots of Joey and Jazzpurr and the other mischief makers. While I was washing litterboxes, I let Giggle Girl use the camera. Her pictures of some of the cats were so good that I left the floppy with Bonnie for her web page. Giggle Girl's job coach was pretty impressed with her photos. I told her to suggest the school get one of these cameras.

I'm getting tired of pretending the food dishes are the Titanic. How many Titanics can the kid sink in the dishwater? She never tires of my pretending the floating globs of wet food are Leonardo DiCaprio though.

So, I'm washing the litter boxes and two in a row have pink stains in them. Pink? I blurt out, forgetting to watch my tongue in front of the kid: "Since when is cat shit pink?" This cracked her up. She got at least 5 minutes of giggle fits out of that. The only thing I can think of that's pink around here is amoxicillin and I don't think any of the cats are on that right now. It came out with a little extra bleach and scrubbing, so whatever it was it's gone now.

Bonnie took the door off the laundry room. The whole place seems so much more spacious now. We never used the door anyway. Why would you quarantine anyone in the laundry room? And it was in the way all the time now that the mops and brooms are stored on a rack behind it. So, it's much more convenient and efficient without the door too. Gives us some room for the wet laundry too. What a difference a small change makes.

I left Giggle Girl with best wishes for a good time at the prom and the usual advice: "Don't do anything I wouldn't do... that gives you plenty of leeway."

Spinach pie and too much coffee for lunch. The too much coffee part cut my drive-by birding a little short 'cause I had to hightail it back to the visitor center ...

But I did finally get to see the two Wilson's phalaropes that everybody and their brother sister aunt cousin has been telling me are at the salt pannes. There they were. At the salt pannes.  Just like everybody said.

Wired from the coffee and cold from the wet shirt and the 56 degree temperatures - I don't recommend birding in a wet T-shirt when it's 56 degrees and drizzling out - I decided home was the place to be. At least the clothes there are dry.

Could I just kick back and read? Nope. Had to work on the yard. The expletive bittersweet is growing back already. I knew if I didn't get the roots out , it would grow new leaves. Grrr. I dug and pulled and raked and finally got in the car, drove to the hardware store, purchased herbicide, drove home, applied herbicide, and sat on the back steps feeling guilty.