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January 19, 2000 |
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how about if i just move in |
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Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society Today's Bird Sightings: Today's Mammal Sightings: Today's Reading: Winter from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau edited by H.G.O. Blake, Beach Grass by Charles Wendell Townsend
Copyright © 2000, Janet I. Egan |
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The sink was a mess with food particles and litter and globs of hair. I fished enough cat hair out of the strainer and the drain itself to form a cat the size of Buddy. And that was before I even started on the dishes. Bob had already emptied out the trap before I got there, which turned out to be a good thing later on when the trap overflowed again. OK, I guess I am way too obsessed with the sink. Giggle Girl complained that it was too quiet today. Since
Lucky got Kendra asked me to let Bonnie wash Cubbie's butt in the sink after I finished the food dishes and before I started on the litter boxes. That was OK by me because Roy is still out sick so I have to dry and put away the food dishes to make room to stack litter boxes anyway. I was still putting away dishes on shelves I can't reach when Bonnie was done with Cubbie and decided to give Max a bath. Some day in our dream shelter we'll not only have three sinks, but we'll even have the right kind of sprayer for grooming and everything. It's nice to dream.
When I finally got everything washed I kept picking at
the drain and talking to it. Everybody knows the sink drains
better if you talk to it. It finally drained. I kept
wondering where all the hair came from. Then it finally
dawned The guy who usually folds laundry on Wednesday afternoon came and Kendra had him wipe the clean litter boxes and put them away while I loaded a zillion pounds of wet clean laundry into my car for a run to the laundromat. Said laundromat was really crowded but I managed to get three of the big dryers and several handfuls of quarters from the change machine. I gave each load 56 minutes ($2.00) on hot and walked over to Fowle's.
My 56 minutes were ticking away, so I walked back to the
laundromat and arrived with 7 minutes left on the dryers. A
woman asked me if I watched the soap opera that was
currently on the tv. I told her I don't and I couldn't seem
to Even with help from Kendra and Leslie, the final basket of clean towels just did me in. I felt like I wouldn't make it up the stairs one last time. I was breathing hard at the top of the stairs. The dream shelter will not be on the second floor. As I was catching my breath, Mary Ann from Brigham Manor called with more questions about Buddy. She'd already called once this morning while I was doing dishes. With the last questions answered we set up a time on Friday for me to deliver Buddy and his belongings to his new home. Stacy commented that it's been an MRFRS week for me. I said "I feel like I'm here all the time, oh wait, I am." Maybe I should just move in. We'll have some space when Buddy's gone.
The marsh is frozen. In fact it kind of looks like
Antarctica or like Antarctica would look if it had huge
tufts of beach grass and spartina sticking out of the ice.
There wasn't a whole lot of open water except right by the
boat ramp. That concentrated the ducks into a fairly small
area. A whole bunch of goldeneyes and red-breasted
mergansers were diving like crazy. They seemed
Further along I spotted a short eared owl, probably the same one I've seen there lately, hunting over the frozen marsh. The voles don't stand a chance with all this ice. Where can they hide from the owl? The sighting of the day has to be the northern shrike, which was obligingly perched on what I've begun to call the northern shrike tree. I was hoping to find one but didn't expect it to be so easy. It's a fine looking bird for a Vlad the Impaler style predator. Shopping for pants that won't get me a bad case of hypothermia was quite a letdown after all the cat and bird action of the day, but it had to be done. I ended up with regular old polyester pants - the kind I wouldn't be caught dead wearing under normal circumstances - but they're better than cotton for possible cold wet weather. I bought a couple of flannel shirts to wear on board the boat too - nice and big so they hang nicely over the embarrassing polyester pants. I struck out on polypro underwear though, so the shopping is not finished. With the way the weather is shaping up here, I'll get more wear out of all my warm winter gear than I might've thought. |
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Chloe
was crouched on the counter next to the sink waiting for me
when I came in this morning. At least I'm not the only one
obsessed with the sink. After sharing some of my coffee,
Chloe jumped onto the edge of the sink and begged for a
drink from the tap. I obliged her with warm water out of the
tap. Hmm, maybe she shares JoJo's obsession with hot
beverages as well as mine with the sink.
adopted he's not there starting fights that trigger other
fights so there's not a lot of snarling and hissing going
on. She kept complaining about how quiet it was so I started
singing Rolling Stones songs, which got Bob and me into a
discussion of vinyl records and turntables. Giggle Girl had
never heard of a vinyl record - she thought we meant like
swimming pool vinyl - and the only turntable (once we
described it to her) she'd ever seen was in a Tom and Jerry
cartoon. The kid is entirely post-vinyl! 
I
was washing the litter boxes, making steady progress, when
Kendra noticed the trap was overflowing. I hadn't noticed it
because it wasn't dripping on my feet or anything. I had
made sure the big galvanized bucket was underneath it before
I started. Soap suds were oozing out of it. The cover of the
trap was on crooked. It gets harder and harder to put it on
right because the threads get more and more stripped every
time we take it off. Anyway, Kendra takes the top off and
pulls the trap out. It's full of black hair. Enough to make
a litter of kittens out of at least. I pick it out with my
gloved hands (no way do I do it barehanded). I pick yet more
out of the drain now that I can see it since the water went
down. Black hairy goop.
on me: Max!
I
was looking forward to potato leek soup in a bread bowl with
my coffee, but alas they ran out of potato leek before I got
there. I didn't want beef barley or turkey something or
other so I settled for a vegetable pizza. It had green
peppers, red peppers, and yellow peppers on it so it was
esthetically pleasing as well as edible. I savored my coffee
and read both the Boston Globe and the Newburyport
Daily News while I eavesdropped on some kids talking
about how a friend of theirs was "totally raved out". They
described her wardrobe and music preferences in amazing
detail.
follow what was going on. She couldn't follow it either. I
guess you have to watch those things every day to understand
them. People were waiting for the dryers so I dumped what I
hadn't folded yet back into laundry baskets and plastic bags
for the return trip.
Despite
the fact that I have tons of packing to do, I had to go look
for birds. It's part of my Wednesday routine. I know I'll
see plenty of birds in Antarctica but that's not the same
thing as seeing what birds are here. In the interests of
shaking up routine a little bit, I went to Salisbury Beach
first. The first animal I spotted was a cat in the dunes. I
hope it's not a stray because it's wicked cold and getting
colder. 
to be set on high speed. As I was watching them dive I
noticed what looked like a Barrow's goldeneye, so I got out
of the car and started walking down the boat ramp toward the
river with my binoculars riveted on the goldeneye. I was
startled when a flock of horned larks burst from the piles
of grass right in front of me. I practically stepped on
them. I started laughing and lost sight of the Barrow's
goldeneye. I took me awhile to find it again but I was
pretty sure of it when it surfaced closer to the boat ramp
and I got a better look. 
There
was a savannah sparrow perched on the juniper bush in front
of the Salisbury State Reservation entrance sign when I
left. It was a sparrow kind of day with all this ice driving
them closer to the road. At Plum Island I saw a flock of
song sparrows right inside the refuge entrance the minute I
got there. Just past the Hellcat parking lot, I saw a flock
of tree sparrows foraging by the side of the road. They were
a little bolder than the song sparrows. I actually had to
stop because the tree sparrows landed in the middle of the
road in front of the car. They were very active flying back
and forth across the road.