Thursday, October 26, 2006

WHEN CATS RUN WILD



Lee had yelled a “word” about
the hairball on the rug,
so the cats were in the cattery
feeling very snug.

“I say – that’s one big cat down there,”
said a reverential Spike.
“Oh, let me look!” Fiona cried
and then she hollered, “YIKE!”

“That’s not a pussy-cat,”
said Tibbs with wisdom rare,
That is a wild bobcat –
I’m glad that we’re in here!”

It’s true. For the first time in the 15 years we have lived here, wild bobcats have shown up in the back yard and around the neighborhood. We can only assume that they are following dinner – that is, the wild turkeys that turned up recently. (See my previous entry on the turkeys.)
Bobcats can grow to about 36 inches in length and weigh in around 30 pounds. Not huge, but pretty big by housecat standards. Their prey can range from insects, frogs, and rodents to mid-sized animals such as rabbits, hares, and yes – housecats! They have been known to kill deer, usually when they are bedded down.

The danger of wild animals and street traffic is one reason that our cats are housebound. The cattery gives them 24-7 access to the second-story deck where, as you can see, they have several levels of viewing and resting platforms, catwalks, a natural branch to climb and scratch on, as well as litter boxes, cat beds, and fresh water. They have access through a cat flap cut into a piece of Plexiglas and inserted into one of the windows.

The other half of the protection angle is the birds. We have many hanging feeders and a wide range of wild birds, and we prefer not to make them cat food. The hummingbirds that hover inside the cattery from time to time are at their own risk.

Only once has a bird been caught around here. One day there was a flash of movement through the house and then a black-and-white flash through the living room and down the stairs as Spike went after whatever it was, followed by a horrified shriek from my mother who was at the bottom of the steps.

I dashed down the stairs and found Spike huddled at the bottom, a small brown bird clasped in his paws. The bird looked totally pissed off and Spike looked utterly pleased but puzzled. “What do I do with it now that I caught it?” he seemed to ask.

I eased the wee creature from between his paws and examined it. There was no damage and a quick identification explained the event – it was a Chimney Swift that had apparently entered the house through the upstairs fireplace. Spike followed as I carried it back upstairs and turned it loose from the deck, a kind of dejected expression on his face at seeing me throw away this exciting new toy.

Perhaps the event of the bobcat will convince some of my neighbors to keep their cats inside. Although some of them profess to love the birds also, they are aware that their cats prey on our songbirds. This is an ecological disaster. Here are a few facts that I gleaned from the Internet, from reliable scientific studies:

In 1987, Peter Churcher and John Lawton asked the owners of cats in a Bedforshire, England, village to keep any 'gifts' brought to them by their cats; owners of 78 house cats participated (all but 1 cat owner in the village), with the researchers extrapolating from these findings to estimate that the 5 million house cats in England were responsible for killing approximately 70 million animals each year, 20 million of which are birds. [PB Churcher and JH Lawton, 1987, "Predation by domestic cats in an English (UK) village. Journal of Zoology. (London.) 212:439-455.]

A four-year study in rural Wisconsin by Coleman and Temple confirmed the UK findings; 30 cats, radio-collared for various periods of time, led researchers to conclude that, in Wisconsin alone, cats may kill 19 million songbirds and some 140,000 game birds in a single year. [JC Mitchell, 1992. "Free-ranging domestic cat predation on native vertebrates in rural and urban Virginia." Virginia Journal of Science, Vol 43 (1B):107-207.]

Richard Stallcup of the Point Reyes Bird Observatory estimated that of the 55 million domestic cats in the US, excluding Hawaii and Alaska, some 10% never go outside, and another 10% are too old or slow to catch anything. Of the remaining 44 million, a conservative estimate is that 1 in 10 cats kills a bird a day - this would yield a daily toll of 4.4 million birds - or 1.6 billion cat-killed birds in the US each year. ["Cats take a heavy toll on songbirds / A reversible catastrophe," Observer, Spring/Summer 1991, 18-29, Point Reyes Bird Observatory; Native Species Network, Vol 1 Issue 1, Fall 1995.]


Hercules the Liger


Of course, there are much larger wild cats, even around here. We have evidence of cougars in the woods from time, and one was spotted on the street a few blocks from our house several years ago. Now, that would be a site to give a kitty pause. Although for a really big cat, you have to look for a liger! (Don’t show this to Spike – he would faint for sure.)

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Printers, Spiders, and Green Peter Part 2

Hmmm...being new to this blogging gig, I'm not sure what happened, but I couldn't post the rest of the photos for the previous blog. So here are the "visuals":

Ann's type cases:






The fossil that had Bob so ebullient:
















The Trap-Door Spider nest spotted at the base of a rotting stump:


















Green Peter Lake and Mountain:


Printers, Spiders, and Green Peter


“You have been neglecting our blog!” Spike complained.

And he’s right. It has been a time of busyness – a series of retirement parties for Gary, an annual gathering of our AAPA friends, preparing for autumn, buying books and listing them to sell, a trip to Seattle for the Antiquarian Book Fair. Blog thoughts occurred often but they have been…neglected. So have art projects, garden work, and other matters NOT including the cats, no matter what they say!

Gary worked for Eugene’s daily newspaper, the Register-Guard, for 43 years: ten as a pressman, and the last 33 as a computer programmer. With ten years before that as a pressman at the Roseburg News-Review, he has 53 years of employment at only two companies. Not many can say as much. (Of course he had the usual teenage jobs before all that.) He was royally feted by the company, his department, and even by his pals in his weekly hiking group, who turned him into a human compass in a private ritual atop their favorite butte, Baldy.

AAPA is the American Amateur Press Association. It’s a national organization for hobbyist and retired professional letterpress printers. With letterpress becoming popular again among artists and printers, I’d suggest checking out this organization if you are interested in printing. Many of the members are getting “older” and looking for younger folks to take up their presses and supplies.

The Oregon Delegation of the AAPA meets annually, the locations rotating but always featuring a potluck picnic. This year we met at the home of members Bob and Ann Rose, who live on the Santiam River. Ann is the hobby printer – Bob is a professional geologist.



I always covet Ann’s gorgeous Vandercook press – many’s the time I have suggested to Gary that we could have a press (if a smaller one) but it’s not the press that takes up the space, it’s the type cases and equipment. So mostly I contribute pieces of writing at the request of members who actually do print - although one of these days I’ll surprise them all and turn something out on the computer for one of the monthly bundles.


Gary (left) posed with our noble leader; Dean Rea – a longtime newspaperman, editor, and journalism school professor - also retired from the Register-Guard. Both are looking healthy and prosperous (not to mention fit) in their roles as retirees! Although Dean recently started doing stories and photos for a small weekly newspaper in our area since they had no one covering school sports. He maintains that it’s appropriate, since he started his journalistic career at a weekly.

Bob has been busy collecting samples of fossils of flora from our region. It’s hard to describe his enthusiasm – rapture? – when showing a tiny slab that reveals a dock-like plant structure. “Just to pick this up and know that it has been there for 40 million years, and was never before seen by human eyes,” he enthuses. Of course most of his specimens require infinite care to clean and expose, and study to determine their place in the family of plants and the Earth’s geological span.

While circled on the lawn for the annual meeting, one member spotted the web of a trap-door spider that generated a lot of attention. By the time I got to see it the spider had evidently grown tired of responding to fake alerts and it did not make an appearance, but its tunnel-like web was fascinating none-the-less.

We drove home past Green Peter Lake, with Green Peter Mountain rising behind it. Green Peter Lake was form by the.…um….erection of Green Peter Dam. We pondered the meaning of the name, and sure enough, in Oregon Geographic Names author Lewis McArthur states that the name should be interpreted at its most suggestive meaning.

Driving through Sweet Home I had a giggle at sign on a diner that indicates the intrusion of upscale ideas into small towns: “SPECIAL: biscuits with sausage gravy, and a small mocha latte.”

Monday, September 18, 2006

CIRCLES, SPIRALS, LABYRINTHS....


Now, who is that at our door? Spike wondered on Saturday morning. He took up his usual position under the hall table to get a good look at visitors as they come in the front door. Sometimes he greets them cautiously. Sometimes he has a look and heads downstairs, perhaps to return during their visit, and perhaps not. But in this case, he rolled over on the hall floor to display the lovely white diamonds on his chest and tummy - the ultimate friendly Spike greeting.


The three women – Nancy and Claudette from Ashland, and Anne from here in Eugene, are labyrinth facilitators. They create labyrinths for hospitals and other organizations and they were interested in visiting Gary’s backyard effort. After touring our garden, we drove over the Anne’s to see her more organic labyrinth – she had used Self-Heal (Dubhan ceann chòsach) or Prunella vulgaris, a tough Oregon native groundcover in her pathways, where Gary had used gravel.

During the visit to Anne’s she shared some photo albums of visits that she and her husband, Ron, had made to places like Carnac and Gavrinis. Gavrinis is a place I have always wanted to visit – so much so that I included it in a poem titled MAZES:
(See the end of this blog for the poem)

Later, Gary and I talked about spirals and labyrinths, and the fact the circles (and spirals) are found in the cave and rock art of earliest cultures all over the world. And as usual, I was plunged into contemplation about the origins of things and found myself asking: was the spiral conceived as a concept before people tried to draw it, or did various cultures imbue it with mystical properties after discovering it? Because a spiral is a very easy thing to draw, even though the creation of it seems a little magical. All you need is a fat round stick, a skinny pointed stick, a length of string (or vine or leather thong), and some smooth soft earth or sand. Tie one end of the string to the fat stick so that it doesn’t slip around, and poke the stick firmly into the earth. Tie the other end of the string to the skinny pointed stick and then, keeping the string fully extended, start drawing a circle using the center stick as a pivot point. If you have attached the string to the fat stick so that it doesn’t slip, it will start winding as you go around, and almost magically you will be describing a perfect spiral.

Of course spirals occur frequently in Nature, from small snail shells and the Nautilus, from plant tendrils and seed heads (such as the sunflower), from cobwebs and snake coils and the flight of hawks, from whirlpools and hurricanes, to the shape of galaxies. And it takes no feat of imagination to transfer this mathematical beauty to images of both inward and outward spiritual journeys.

Even Spike has some affection for this topic. When he throws himself down on the smooth hall floor like that, it’s an invitation to “spin” him in circles. He does seem to like it, although he wobbles when he walks after a good whirl. Whether or not he achieves any mystical connections from such a journey, he doesn’t say.

MAZES
by Lee Kirk

Six thousand years ago
the artisan of Gavr’inis
carved these joyous spirals
in this great slab of stone.
Superb as art, they still must be
regarded as inspired sentinels
guarding the tunnel
to that most ancient tomb;
mazes to lead the seeker
into the heart of infinity.

We are not surprised to find
that maze, that symbol, repeated
at every place and time that
humankind has pondered
the greatest mystery: Life,
and Death, and Life Beyond.

Petroglyph and pictograph,
carved or painted on the stone;
channels opened in the Earth,
or earth heaped up in sinuous mounds;
design on pots and leather,
or woven into cloth;
pathways and plantings
of boxwood or yew:
the message is the same.

I once read the clue:
make all your turnings to the left.

Or was it to the right?
I recall the words of the woman
(who would be startled by
the appellation “old”):
“If you’re being chased
by an elephant, make two
right-hand turns. The animal
will fall over, because elephants
are all left-footed.” Is that
some kind of key
to this amazing business?

Was it some archetypal cue
that prevented the patrol cop
(this related by his friend)
from ever making a left-hand turn?
“Even on an emergency
Code-4 call, he’d make three
right turns to avoid a left.”

In our darkest dreams, we run
through mazes with far too many
turns, and never any exit.
Our minds are riddled like the burrows of moles,
filled with tunnels
whose tall-tale threads
are tabled in our memory.

On Iron Mountain we discovered
inscrutable etchings in cold, damp earth.
Some ancient map? Ah, yes and no!
the tunnels of pocket gophers,
bottoms left, the tops dissolved
with the melting of the snow.

Animals and humans; we use
these labyrinths to confound
our enemies, to confront our fears.
What comes next we have yet
to learn, nor can we know
if the path of the maze
leads truly to the core.

The artist of Gavr’inis
carved his faith
in these ebullient sworls:
the joy of being alive,
in site of living in doubt.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

The Tails of Two Kitties



"Look," said Fiona. "What is that in our front yard?"

What indeed thought Spike, peering through the window. His spirit sagged a bit. Since Fiona had joined the household at the age of 5 months, Spike had been the Wise Big Uncle. Hadn't he taught her the fine arts of grooming, polishing her fur and even licking inside her ears and between her toes? Hadn't he coached her on the etiquette of wrestling - when to submit and when to assume power? (Admittedly, this game had changed somewhat as she grew older - and larger!) Hadn't he taught her what was allowed in the house and what was not - and how to get out of trouble if you did what was not?

But now, here he was being asked to tell her what those creatures in the front yard were, and he was mystified. They were like nothing he had seen before.

"Well," he said finally. "They walk on two legs and they appear to have feathers. So I assume that they are some sort of birds."

"Oh," Fiona said dubiously. "But they are so much larger than any birds I have seen. They are quite a lot larger than the Crows."

Spike agreed, noting privately that even if they were birds, he was glad that he was a housecat and not out there confronting these giants. Crows were intimidating enough, even when one was protected by the netting on the cattery out back.

Here is what had the attention of the two tuxedo cats:



There were at least 15 of these wild turkey in the front yard. This is the first year in anyone's memory that they have appeared in our neighborhood. Most likely they have been driven out by the logging on the 80-acre woods behind us. Now they appear somewhat regularly, each time in larger numbers. They seem quite casual about it, strolling down the sidewalks, picking through landscaping, and crossing the streets as though they have done it for years. Nor are they particularly wary, and a patient photographer can easily become part of their ignored landscape by just standing still for a while.


They can still be traffic stoppers, though!