The Most Famous Deer of All

Rudolph, letting you know it is cool to be different

'Tis the holiday season, and whether or not you celebrate Christmas specifically, no doubt you have been bombarded with Christmas music since Thanksgiving. I dabble in said holiday fare, but don't indulge so much as to ban any non-seasonal tunes, like some folks I know. And by know I mean am related to. Anyway, I was listening to the radio the other day and of course Rudolph came on, because it had been 45 minutes, and I was struck, once again, by how mean the other reindeer were. Total bitches! Even his own parents try to hide who he really is! And when Rudy finally rises to red-beaked glory and saves the day, there is never really any just recompense from those haters.

Typical. My (indirect) point is, I've been thinking about reindeer, and not just the bitchy kind. I figure you good people think about reindeer too, sometimes. But how much do you know about them? In the spirit of giving, I give you . . .

Ten! Facts! About Reindeer!:

1. Semantics
Reindeer = Caribou = Rangifer tarandus

2. Nice Rack

Caribou have the second biggest (but definitely most crazy) antlers of any Cervid, behind the moose. They are the only Cervid species that practices equal growth rights: both males and females grow antlers. Interestingly enough, older males drop their antlers in the early winter, young males lose theirs in early spring, and  females keep theirs until the summer. So all of Santa's reindeer must be ladies then, no? Not at all surprisingly, their ground up antler powder is a big hit in the aphrodisiac-centered, horned up Asian market.

3. Glow-in-the-Dark Pee?
Okay, not exactly, but it is thought that caribou are the only mammalian species that can see ultraviolet light. This megavision helps the animals to pick out useful things that might otherwise blend in with the monochrome tundra landscape. Things like urine.

4. Big Nose, Fancy Toes
Their huge, smoochable schnozes are equipped with cavernous nostrils that help to warm inhaled air before it enters their lungs. In the winter their normally spongy foot pads harden and shrivel up, exposing the sharp edges of their hooves. This helps with traction on ice, and provides a handy shovel for digging out snow in hopes of grazing. I also tend to shrivel up in the winter, although I have yet to notice a positive correlation on my traction or eating habits.

5. Walkathon
Some North American herds migrate the furthest distances of any terrestrial mammal. They can travel over 3000 miles in a season. Total badasses.

Delicious!

6. Good Eatin'
Reindeer eat a lot of lichen. Reindeer lichen, specifically. They'll also tear into some mushrooms, and rumor has it, the occasional lemming. But I don't know about that. Northerly humans love to nom on reindeer, and the animal (both wild and semi-domesticated) has been a seminal human food source for centuries. Most recently in canned meatball form. I am sure Sarah Palin loves them.

7. Where in the World?
Caribou range pretty much all over the Holarctic zone, across tundra and boreal forest habitats. Once abundant, their numbers are in decline due to habitat degradation and the biggest bummer-trump of all, climate change. Read more about hard times in reindeer land in Gretel Erhlich's fine National Geographic piece on Russia's reindeer herders.

8. I Vant Your Blood
Apparently colonial Frenchies used to mix the blood of caribou with a little hard booze and drink it down to fight off the cold. And perhaps anemia. The modern incarnation of this Caribooze substitutes red wine for blood and adds a bit of sugar or maple syrup to the existing whiskey. Naturally the Quebecois love this sort of abomination.

9. The Elite Eight
Fact: The names "Donner" and "Blitzen" are derived from Germanic words meaning Thunder and Lightening, which makes a strange kind of sense, but leaves Vixen and Cupid as the most questionably-named dudes on the crew, and possibly in reindeer history.

10. Born Free
There are lots of free-ranging, wild herds of reindeer in the world. So too are there semi-domesticated herds. Arctic and Semi-Arctic peoples have been shuffling these fuzzies around for centuries, using their hides, meat, antlers, and even milk, though such animals weren't really considered to be domesticated, and they weren't bred in captivity. Its more like they were partially tamed. Today some nomadic herders track their herds using satellite telemetry. Maybe that is how Santa keeps tabs on his during the off-season...

November Rain

Oh, November, how often you torment me. Aside from Thanksgiving, you can be a pretty harsh month. No sun for days, rain instead of snow, very little daylight. A quick search reveals November is the declared Awareness Month for Epilepsy, American Diabetes, Lung, Pancreatic, Prostate, and Stomach Cancer, Alzheimer's, Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis, Homeless Youth, and Souls in Purgatory. Is this a coincidence? I am not so sure. It is also National Novel Writing Month, which, when added to this roster of delights makes a sick sort of sense. I'd like to petition the additions of The Benefits of Ingesting Vitamin D Awareness Month, and perhaps Scotch Appreciation Month, too, as long as we're continuing with the health-awareness theme.

Witness: The Forecast. Hit Repeat, Repeat, Repeat.

Evidence

But I'm not trying to get too morose or poetic here. No, no, why bother when someone else has said all there is to say about the melancholy of this dark month and its ubiquitous, monkey-wrenching rain? You know what I am talking about. That's right. Guns N' Roses and one of the most expensive and most glorious music videos/songs of all time. I can not recall a single time when this pathos-inducing song did not cheer me up. Maybe this is because it is a good reminder that it could be always be worse. Or maybe its because it is simply an undeniable invitation to wail on the air guitar, which, in my experience, tends to lift spirits.

If those things weren't enough, there is a lot of big hair. The video is broken into two, intercut parts--one, the band on stage, and two, the little dramatic enactment of a love story gone wrong. The concert footage features backup singers with big hair, and adulating hips, and prom-gloved arms sweeping upward in joy and agony. Then there is the biggest-haired orchestra you've ever seen, lead by the biggest-haired, mustachioed, head-banging conductor in the world. There are stadium lights, a blood-weeping crucifix, and a flute. A flute!
Slash wails atop a piano (with his own signature big hair), while Axl channels Elton. This is before the fall, and he still looks nearly wholesome, already addicted and violent, but mercifully free of botox and creepy ginger cornrows, almost normal on the cusp of his steep slide into the abyss of full-fledged assholery.

Then there is the wedding! A priest named Gianantonio! Stephanie Seymour (Axl's then on-again, off-again girlfriend) in her designer dress, all business on top, party down below! And those Sergeant Pepper Pirate jackets! And Axl's weirdo talon pinky coke ring! And that scandalous tongue kiss! And the moment where Slash nearly loses the rings before peacing out mid-ceremony into the highlight of the video...

Poor guy is feeling a little emotional. He needs a little time on his own. Time to execute a most epic shred in the perpetually windy deserted desert churchyard, with his enormous hair seductively billowing while invisible helicopters circle and swoop and zoom in on his shirtless, leather-jacket clad abs, excruciatingly tight pants, heel stomps, crotch thrusts, and incredible mega power stance in one of the greatest, most motherfucking badass melodramatic guitar solos in the history of the universe. Seriously, find me a person on this Earth who can watch that clip and not want to be Slash for even one hot minute. You can't. There is no such person. Everyone wants to be Slash in that moment.

Cut to the strange Godfather-inspired reception, featuring rustically capped Mediterranean boys, 10,000 cigarettes, and the bride's ultra-90's black velvet dress with ribbon choker. Then comes the titular, panic-inducing November Rain, which drives the guests to lose their minds, upturning tables and knocking down the enormous wedding cake that was so recently and tenderly cut, telling us that the party is seriously over. For real. By now the orchestra's conductor is headbanging as if he's being righteously electrocuted, in a way perhaps only another big-haired human (say, me) can truly fully appreciate. Dude is stone-cold rocking it. Then, Boom. Funeral. Bride is dead for reasons unknown, suicide is implied. That blasted rain even interrupts the graveside attendance. Water-phobic mourners run, again, leaving poor booze and pill-addled Axl to toss and turn in his eerily-lit sheets while that same damn relentless rain slides down his enormous windows, the very picture of his poor, broken heart, failure, and sadly, future (Chinese Democracy, anyone?) And, scene.

This is what November is all about, man!

Watch the entire original music video in all of its glory here, and the comic summary here.

Fact and/or Fiction

Remember that old fifth grade writing journal? Yeah, well it wasn't all opinion essays and seasonal poetry and Thoreauean pursuits. Oh, no. My young mind really stretched her legs in the free fiction assignments. Evidently these were not subjected to the normal litany of grammatical corrections. Sweet, sweet creative licence! Freed from the constraints of sane punctuation and responsible spelling choices, I filled pages and pages...

Ah, hello big, loopy pen(cil)menship, you old friend.

Fiction honorable mentions: the best and the worst:

"An Untitled Story set in the 'beautiful mountains of Lur'":
Here is an adventure tale about "friendship, bravery, and their rewards," starring a young, big-dreaming peacock named Farel, and his friends Skipper the otter, pheasant Spring, and badger Starling on a quest to prove themselves by rescuing a young foxed named Reese from the evil clutches of the local wood witch, an "ugly, dirty beast with red eyes and a crown of bones" named Velga. Along the way they help Potter, a frustrated bear cub retrieve a beehive, then devise a keen rescue plan clearly influenced by the Dorothy-rescue-scene in Wizard of Oz. Upon escaping, the friends run "all day and into the next without stopping or ever looking back". Naturally, a very annoyed Velga catches up eventually, but is ultimately thwarted by Potter's gang of bears, returning that earlier favor with the honey. And so one hand washes the other. The story veers into Just-So territory at the end, when the brave companions are rewarded with gifts like "a lovely white stripe down the back," "sharp white teeth," silky fur, sharp claws, yadda yadda, and, for Farel, "incredibly wonderful looking tail feathers that spread out. Annnnd a sharp beak." If that doesn't describe a modern-day peacock I don't know what does. Incidentally, my teacher asked that I read this little gem out loud to the class, though I have no recollection if I ever did, as I would have likely blocked out such a public-speaking event if I managed not to faint in the first place.


"Stone into Gold"
A heart-warming, if not cliched, tale about Draken the alchemist and his (male) apprentice Sarise. I have since wondered if there is a Johnny Cash-like song playing on the radio stations of Lur entitled Boy Named Sarise. Yeah, super manly. Anyway, naturally the pair's objective is to get paid, and it seems Sarise keeps messing up the secret gold-making recipe by adding too many drops of the golden frog's spit. The story features typical teen angst: "...at least there is something I can do," Sarise mumbles as he goes falconing for dinner, probably kicking a dandelion on his way out the door. When the boy returns in triumph with "three scrawny rabbits and a few field mice," there are culinary delights to be had: "While Sarise was out, Draken collected an assortment of magic herbs. (Though they were not truly magic, he had nicknamed them that because when mixed with oil, then rubbed on to meat it gave an irresistible flavor that tasted as if a magic spell had been cast on it.)" Move over Wolfgang, we've got herbed-oil on field mouse! Prepare to have your tiny mind blown. And because I liked a success story, you can rest assured that by the end young Sarise was clutching a small lump of gold in a victorious hand.

"The Eclipse"
A cautionary tale about the dangers of dabbling with drugs. DRUGS! I think this may have been my singular attempt at a genre other than fantasy. Alright, I co-wrote this story with my best friend Annie at the height of the anti-drug-barrage that was shoved down every elementary and middle schooler's throat in the 80s/90s cusp years. I confess that this particular story is not in my writing journal as I believe we wrote it in Annie's book, but I felt the need to mention it nonetheless. A group of friends try to stage an intervention when one of them finds "bags of drugs, including cocaine!" in her now ornery and despondent friend's locker. The reader will find herself on the edge of her seat as we ratchet up the suspense. Alas, the tale remains unfinished. Perhaps things just got too real.


"A Night's Howl"
The classic eleven page, two part saga about a pack of wolves, heavily influenced by my obsession with the wolf-riding-badass-forest-elves featured in my favorite comic book, Elfquest. Part one is a daring tale of rescue and vengeance. An evil human tribe has captured, and are on the verge of sacrificing, Quickpaw when his girlfriend and pack-mates storm in to save him. "The wolves caught the humans by surprise. Silk-ear let out a thundering howl and slayed two of the men in a fury." In the end they save Quickpaw amidst a bloodbath and conveniently take him to the pack's healer. When he is well enough to be reprimanded, the chief lectures him on the dangers of hunting alone. Strangely, the story then veers with an inexplicable "two months later" segue into a totally different plot line. A romance. 

Wendy and Richard Pini, we salute you!

"She had perky and aware ears, lovely, large eyes, a silky tail, and a graceful paws. She was slim, but muscular." Woo! Hot stuff! The unexpected romance between orphaned loner Moondancer and pack Lothario, Starjumper ignites the page as it brightly, if not painfully, illuminates my young brain's deepest desires. Naturally there is a bit of confusion amidst the hunting, pack introductions, and "festival of the seasons" dance invitation, but all ends well as the pair ultimately become life-mates, (canid equivalent of married with babies). ''...Since the two were both fascinated by the sky, especially the stars, they spent most nights on a large hill together, star-gazing..." I mean, they were named Starjumper and Moondancer.

I then essentially re-told nearly the same story with elf characters, in what I now clearly see as straight-up fanfic, though at the time I had no idea such a thing existed. Here again we witness the first encounter between orphaned loner Stardrop (who had been living in a cave with her wolf friend for God knows how long) and pack Lothario, Skywise. Ahem. Here's some soul-bearing: What you have to understand is that for several years (and arguably yet today) I wanted to be a wolf-riding, bow-shooting, leather-wearing, tree-climbing, human-killing, telepathic, sexy forest elf. I'd stop at the comic shop on the way home from school and stare lovingly at the Elfquest books on the shelf, almost afraid to touch them until I'd saved up the twenty dollars to bring the latest one home with me. Because these elves had only four fingers, I would actually tape my pinky under my hand to see what I would like with elf hands. I spent hours sketching out my intended outfits made of soft, tanned hides. I mean, I had it bad. Stargazing bachelor Skywise is an actual character in Elquest, and in the great fantasyland of my young mind, I wanted to be the object of his affection. Namely, a beautiful, mysterious, elf named Stardrop. I needed to create a story to arrange their introductions, and so I did.

My sappy yet earnest story ends with a to be continued... and reading it again, so many years later, I couldn't help but wonder what those crazy elves were up to these days. Because you know, I actually do miss them. And in the end, that is the great power of fiction. Whether you're reading it or writing it, it allows you to suspend your disbelief, flex your imagination, slip into the skin of a wolf, or peacock, or unfortunately named apprentice. In paging through this old writing journal its like I am actually witnessing my personality form. Though I was a cautious and shy kid, I think I must have felt fairly fearless when writing. I didn't worry what anyone else thought, I wrote for myself, freely. It opened my mind up. Rediscovering this has been a gift. Okay, a slightly embarrassing one.

Content A, Mechanics C

Yep, here she is. Check it, there is even
 a unicorn on the cover. Wide-ruled, baby.

Content A, Mechanics C was pretty much the standard grade subtitle to all my early middle school writing assignments. Coming from Mrs. Boschulte and her perfectly coiffed shoulder-curl hairdo, this meant I had good style, but sucked at spelling and punctuation. Huh. I was recently reminded of this fact when I uncovered my fifth-grade creative writing  notebook, in all its big, penciled cursive glory. Given that this was a legit class notebook, and I have been spared the horrors of revisiting my personal hide-under-the-mattress journal of said pre-adolescence, I thought I'd share some of the gestalt of young Katie. Weirdly, it seems I remain eerily the same...only now I get to do and think half of this stuff professionally. Okay, semi-professionally, like a casual Friday. I don't know if that means my soul settled early on, or that I'm just boring.


Non-fiction honorable mentions:

"What I am Thankful For" (Thanksgiving pre-game warm-up)
Poetic Highlights:
"I am thankful for the stars and the moon and the joy that rainbows and sunsets bring. I am thankful for the smell of autumn, for a burning fire, and for snow-covered trees. I say thank you for my dreams..."

"It's Not Just a Monster Anymore" (an essay about personal fear)
Choice highlights:
"Now I am more afraid of things like war and nuclear missiles and powerful yet evil leaders (like Saddam Hussein.) I also fear poverty and pollution. Endangered animals are always on my mind, along with the destruction of the environment, ozone layer, ocean, etc..."

"Proud to be Fit" (in preparation for a visit from Arnold Schwarzenegger)
Highlights include:
"Exercise should be an important part of our lives, especially for over-weight people. If you are planning to start skiing, stretching, biking, dancing, swimming, jogging, walking, or aerobics, here's some advice. Start slow, don't over-work yourself at first, it can really give you a muscle ache."

"Autumn"
High point:
"The leaves have beautiful colors, their loveliness matches the dusty painted sunsets. Autumn feels cozy and comfortable, the earth seems so peaceful, like a baby sleeping in a bed or like a downy owlet."

The Main Event. This is my eleven-year-old self vibrating at her true frequency.
An essay about New Year's Resolutions (with footnotes):

"In the past I have not made a New Year's resolution, but this year something came up*, (I was asked to write some resolutions of mine.) So here they are.

First I resolve to spend more quality time with my family. I believe that families and love from families are one of the greatest treasures on earth. Therefore I will extend my relationship with my family further.**

I will make it a point to take my interests and desires more seriously, such as spending time alone and letting  my mind ponder in silence. Learning, thinking, and imaging about animals, stars, the ocean, trees, flowers, nature, unicorns, elves, trolls, etc... Do more quiet and relaxing things like for an example, reading a book under a tree in the cool shade.*** I intend to absorb wildlife and its' ways silently.

I intend to begin to write more, and sketch pictures, then hopefully begin to write a book. In the time I'm writing the book I will be open to more ideas.**** I shall study things that might prove useful topics in my book: animals, elves, unicorns, trolls, fairies, sprites, magic and such things.

Those are my resolutions. Now just one question remains. Will I keep them? Well I'll tell you I will try with all my might!"

* It is as if even then I was rolling my eyes at the assignment. 

** One might wonder what other things my fifth-grade self might have been doing other than mostly hanging out with family. My favorite part about this paragraph is when I move past the greeting card propaganda and consciously decide to renew the familial contract for another year.

*** Isn't this fantastic? I want to ponder. Alone. In silence. And when I've had my fill of that, I'll move on to more relaxing things, like book-reading in the shade, birdwatching, and knitting a death shroud. It sounds like I am planning on moving into a nursing home. Still, this is when I most love the young me. I want to hang out with this kid, stalk the local deer, pick berries, count stars and get weird.

**** Really, I am totally open to any ideas you might have on troll genealogy, functional elf fashion, animal behavior, the physics of fairy flight, what exactly did happen to the unicorns. And such things.

But you know, all joking aside, that final question still remains, and it is kind of like the ghost of journal past is poking me in the ribs. Hard. She still needs to be reminded and encouraged to take her interests and desires more seriously sometimes. And it is both validating and unnerving how similar my resolutions today are to those written two decades ago. Well, minus the trolls.

Hunting Season is Upon Us

Bad News Bears

As you may or may not know, I am spending another season collecting bear hair in Northwestern Montana. Every so often, whilst we are burgling the fur clumps left on our rub trees, a park visitor pops around the corner and asks if we can tell what kind of bear left that hair? The honest answer is no, not really. Black bears can be any number of colors, and at the end of the day, it is hard to tell for certain their fur from any shade of grizzly, unless it is that deep blue-black hue. That said, we can (more or less) safely say what kind of bear hair we are not collecting. In keeping with a series, here is:

A (partial) Guide to Recognizing Your Bears


 


Brown Bear:
Range: Northern North America, Europe, Asia, Wall Street.
Diet: Lots of vegetation, berries, fruit, carcasses, fish, grubs. Mammals great and small, if it feels like a chase. Grizz eats whatever the hell it wants.

American 

Black Bear:  

Range: Behind you!

Diet: Mostly vegetation, berries, roots, grubs, fruit, honey. Also, carrion, trash, dog food, baking supplies, anything they can get their paws clawed on.

 
                             
  Polar Bear:
Range: The Arctic.
Diet: Ringed, harbor, bearded, harp, and hooded seals, other blubbery marine mammals, including the occasional beluga whale. I said whale! 
Random fact: The biggest in the family, polar bears are so well insulated their body heat does not register on an infrared devise. This makes them excellent spies.

Asiatic Black Bear:

Range: Mountain and tropical forests of Southern Asia, Northeast India, etc.

Diet: See American Black Bear.

Random Fact: These guys are largely nocturnal, and are called Moon Bears because of that crescent-shaped chest bling they sport. Dandies.

Get it together, Sun!. You look like a Shar Pei with heat stroke.

Sun Bear:

Range: Rain forests in various Southeast Asian countries.

Diet: Typical jungle fare: honey, insects, veg, fruit, rodents.

Random Fact: Rarest. Smallest. Most ornery. Sun bears love slurping up honey and termites with their  crazy long, skinny, semi-creepy tongue.

  ~ ~ ~Intermission~ ~ ~

Hello, is it me you're looking for?

  Sloth Bear:
  Range: Forest and grasslands of India,
  Nepal, Bangladesh, etc.
  Diet: Mostly termites and ants (check out
  that schnoz), but anything will do.
  Random Fact: The Sloth Bear's Lionel
  Ritchie-esque   shaggy faux-mullet ear/neck
  fur help keep little insects away. And that
  ain't the half of it. They have long tongues,
  can close their nostrils and curl their lips
  over their noses, and lose their front top
  canines,  all to better suck up insects.
  Apparently their aggressive hoovering
  can be heard 300 meters away.

                                      Not amused

  Spectacled Bear:
  Range: Northern and Western South
   America.
  Diet: Fallen fruits, palm nuts, orchid
  roots, honey, sugarcane, cactus.
  Random Fact: Closest living relatives
  of the epic Short-Faced Bear of
  Pleistocene fame. Named for face
  markings vaguely reminiscent of
  corrective eye wear.

Ready for my close-up

  









  Panda Bear:  
   Range: Southeast China. 
   Diet: Bamboooooo! Only bamboo.
   International poster bear for adorable.
   

Care Bear:   
Range: Kingdom of Caring, Care-A-Lot, the Forest of Feelings, my first-grade birthday cake.                               Diet: Sugared cloud cones, the hopes and dreams of young children, mainlined love.

                                                     Bear Grass:                Range:Western North America                   Diet: Water, sunlight.

  



Bear Grylls:
Range: Atop Mount Everest, north-Atlantic icebergs, jungle ditches, free falling through mid-air, under piles of leaves, up in trees, on book stands everywhere.  
Diet: Raw organs, insects great and small, urine, deer shit, real vowels, and basically whatever it takes to SURVIVE!








 


Gummi Bear:  
Range: Happy bellies and cavity-ridden mouths worldwide.  
Diet: You're not on one if you're eating these bears.


 



  

The Gay Man's Bear: 

Range: San Fransisco, Miami, D.C., New York,  Seattle, worldwide. 
Diet: Listen, what a bear eats in the privacy of his own home is no body's business but his own. 









 





Chicago Bear:  
Range: Chicago and fields away. 
Diet: Coors Old Style, chicken wings, deepdish, haters. Just check The Fridge. Ha! Then please, watch this! 

Yeah Baby She's Got It

There's a little black spot on the sun today

In keeping with recent tradition, I was thwarted yet again today in my attempts to witness another rare celestial phenomena, the Transit of Venus. June in Montana. I should have known better than to hope for anything more than watching pods of clouds flush from gray to grayer. And so alas, I did not gaze up between the lodgepoles too watch this amiable planet zip across the path of our sun, a small beauty mark on a bright face. Disappointing as this was, I did get to thinking that while the planet is cool and all, there is more than one Venus out there. So be on the look out! But first, please click here.

A Guide to Recognizing Your Venuses

(1) Miss Venus of Willendorf, coming in at 4.3 inches of sweet, solid oolitic limestone. Promoting baby-making for over 24,000 years in a cave near you. (See also Barry White.) 

(2) Venus aka Aphrodite aka Goddess of Love, Sex, and Beauty. With moniker like that is it any wonder that one of her creation stories reports she sprang forth from the frothy, seafoamy result of Uranus's castration in the sea, and not as a baby, but rather as a voluptuous and nubile woman? In truth, I always found her a little slutty, relentlessly cuckholidng poor workingman Hephaestus like that. But who am I to judge?

(3) Oh, Snap! The fly-trap! Aahhhhh! Audrey II...Feed me Seymour... the horror, the horror. This Venus needs no introduction. She is a total, total badass. Turning the tables on nature's traditions, this carnivorous plant has been exacting revenge on the insect world one fly at a time. Let her get big enough, she just might mow a dentist. Rick Moranis, I'm looking at you.

(4) V.E.N.U.S. Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea. Basically like seaQuest, but stationary. And without linchpin Darwin, the talking dolphin. 

(5) Mz. Williams, genetically-engineered cyborgian sister, tennis champ.

Physical characteristics: Arms and thighs of steel. Flashy outfits.

Habitat: High-class tennis courts of the world.

Diet: Trophies, mostly. Jamba Juice, blood of Serena, the odd tennis ball. 

That's One Way To Say Hello

Captain So-Glad-To-See-You

I've got a house guest this week. She's a four-legged, non-verbal, haimish redhead. She likes lazy Sundays, long walks on the beach, fishing, and retrieving projectiles. She may be named after a crusty old Bluegrass legend, but she is quite the lady. One of the best things about Monroe is how she shows her excitement. It's a rather complicated, choreographed process, really, but it serves well in getting the message across.

She is like the superhero of hellos.
Check it:

Step One: Whine.
It starts softly, with an eye twinkle. Maybe a cock of the head, a lazy tail flop. As the volume increases, the sound becomes more high-pitched, more....robust. The tempo varies. There is some tremolo action.

Step Two: Wag.
In time with her vocalizations, Monroe begins to wag her tail, casually at first, then more in earnest. Soon the tail is thrashing about, a flurry of fur, back and forth, back and forth, backandforthandbackandforth...until it seems to take on a life of its own, a life which is hell bent on moving to the left, and only the left, and so...

Step Three: Wiggle.
The wiggling begins. If the tail favors the left, so must the rump follow. Soon the whining, wagging, and wiggling morph into a sort of crab-like side winding. It is as if her back end is trying to take over for her front and lead the way. She constantly corrects herself though, so rather than shimmy around in endless circles, she ends up sidestepping forward, in full, tap-dancing convulsion.

Step Four: Grin.
Typically steps three and four begin simultaneously. Monroe is an astute observer, and knows that people often express their pleasure through smiling. And so she dutifully scrunches her nose, curls back her upper lip and bares a long row of teeth, perhaps momentarily forgetting how most other animals interpret this behavior.

Step Five: Sneeze, of course.
You know this convulsive frenzy reaches its climax when the sneezing begins. Something about the lip curl must agitate her nose, for as soon as you see teeth, you hear the first sneeze. These continue at a rate of about one sneeze per second, until she feels she has issued a sufficient good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or hey, look, it's you again greeting.

heyitsyouyou'reherehellohelloyou'reheresogoodtoseeyoui'vemissedyousomuchtheselastfew
hoursanditsmorningandilovemorningandiloveyouiloveyouiloveyouhellohellohelloooooo!!! 


And I have to say, at the end of that performance, I do feel pretty good about myself. Like, get-me-to-the-river-so-I-can-walk-on-some-water-all-hail-the-conquering-hero good. By comparison my head nod yo greeting is pretty weak, to say nothing of the incomprehensible groan that sounds like a lot like nooo with which I typically greet each dawn. (Or, okay, nine o'clock hour.) Even a genuine smile and solid hug seem weak next to Monroe's rumpus parade of good cheer. So I intend to replicate it for loved ones in upcoming days and document the effects once all seizure/poisoning concerns are put to rest. Get ready to feel super special, yo.

Your Sweetness Is My Weakness

With the new summer field season creeping in on us, I've been thinking about our bear friends again. You know we tramp all over the place collecting the hair they leave behind when they rub on tree trunks, power poles, sign posts, and wooden bridges. You know we do this to get genetic samples to monitor population and distribution and such. But why do they do it? Why do the bears rub? Well, we still aren't totally sure, but here is a little evidence that may bode well for the because it feels awesome camp.

Last year my co-worker Brad put up a remote camera near an old bridge positively fuzzy with bear fur. He collected the gear several weeks later, and we were all pretty impressed by the images it caught. The following video is just one sequence. This one is of an adult male, with a, well, with a kind of bare ass. We also caught a mama and two little cubs rubbing, and a black bear, and some other animals sniffing around.

If I were a technological wizard, I'd find a way to sync up this visual with some sweet, sensual tunes. And when you're talking about a big, sexy bear, in the privacy of this own forest, expressing himself to the object of his love and affection, no one gets it done* like The Barry White (RIP). Dude had a voice. Unfortunately, you'll have to settle for playing this ditty in the background while you watch.

Disclaimer: It's all night-vision up in here. You may feel pretty voyeuristic. The footage is dark and fuzzy. There are glowing eyes. Sometimes it is hard to see exactly what is happening. One thing is for damn sure though--that bear is really, really enjoying himself. If he could talk, I am quite certain his voice would sound exactly like the deep smoove groove of Mr. White.


*Seriously.
The man knew what he was he was doing.
Just look at some of the best slow jams from his epic roster:

- I'm Qualified To Satisfy You
- It's Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next To Me
- Beware
- Passion
- Sho' You Right
- Never, Never Gonna Give You Up
- You're My First, My Last, My Everything
- I'll Do For You Anything You Want Me To
- Love Makin' Music
- Super Lover
- I Wanna Do It Good To Ya
- I'm Gonna Love You Just A Little More Baby

Be You Blithe and Bonny

Time to dust off your ribbons and pick some dandelions!
May Day is tomorrow, are you prepared?

Traditionally called Beltane by the Gaelic, this spring festival falls on a cross-quarter day, the mid-point between spring equinox and summer solstice. It is exactly six months from Samhain, or All Hollows Eve, another debaucherous badass pagan festival (see Twelfth Night) that modern collegiate society has parlayed into men dressing as women, and women dressing as slutty nurses, slutty witches, and slutty cops. But this is May Day, when we plant, not harvest, and herald in the Spring. Common theme descriptions of these holiday celebrations involve fires, flowers, feasting, and fertility.

And of course, dancing. And drinking.

Lots of folks in central and northern Europe still flail around enormous bonfires in celebration of Walpurgis Night, or as those eloquent Germans call it, Walpurgisnacht. Seriously guys. Way to make something steeped in flowers, flames, and amorous lagamorphs sound like walrus barf. But then again, next to the Swedish Valborgsmassoafton, Walpurgisnacht rings like the sound of dainty elves tip-toeing over rosebuds at sunset. The Finnish call the day Vappu, and commemorate it by sipping sima, a sweet homemade mead punctuated with swollen raisins, eating funnel cakes, and hanging pom poms from their hats. Hmm. 


Anyway, as is the fate of so many good ol' fashioned pagan holidays, May Day has lost more than a little of its ancient bite (boozy raisins and hat bling, anyone?). Thanks, Christians. Still, as a dyed-in-the-wool treehugger, I say it is never too late to vamp up your seasonal Earth-worshiping, in ways subtle or extreme.

Suggestions on how to celebrate this May Day: 

- Stay up all night and wash your face in the morning dew. This will apparently allow you to retain lifelong beauty.

- Weave a crown of flowers. Wear it. Get your floral on.

- Find or make a Maypole. Dance around it. Wrap it up.

- Hug a Morris dancer. Or, better yet, strap on some ribbons and bells and be a Morris dancer. Wave handkerchiefs, smack sticks together, prance and hop and jig.

- Channel old Jack-in-the-Green by dressing up like a conical bush.

- Drive your sheep herds to their summer pastures. Drive! Drive!

- Eat an oatcake. Jump over burning coals. Get smoke in your eyes. For luck.

- Run into the North Sea. Naked.

- Burn something. Preferably outside.

- Ding-dong-ditch a friend. Leave a basket of flowers, sweets, and sundries on a doorstep, and ring the bell. If the recipient manages to chase you down, you should expect a smooch. That's just how we do on May Day. Incidentally, if you can find my remote house in the Montana woods, know that I do have a doorbell...

- And if you're feeling especially freaky and Celtic, you can always grab your sweetie and reenact the um, ritual union of the May Lord and Lady. Antlers optional.

Other notable references/interpretations of the day:

In the United States, May first is also commemorated as Law Day. This must be about as fun as it sounds. Litigate! It is also International Worker's Day. I appreciate the leftist agenda and honor workers far and wide... but when has a solemn solidarity parade ever featured the fun of green face paint and pan flutes?

Please also note that May Day bares no relation to that famous distress call mayday! mayday! Which derives from the French venez m'aider, meaning "come help me" find this bonfire beach party, mon ami!
                   
                        

And be you blithe and bonny, converting all your sounds of woe into hey, nonny, nonny.

Happy May Day!

The Most Astounding Fact

Peep this beautiful little astro-video replete with wisdom bombs from that big, badass astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. We are, all of us, made of stardust and guts, sewn up with the double-twined, shining umbilical threads of the universe. 

Sipping on Sun Eggs

The day pretty much began like this: me, contemplating a golden fruit.

Elsa Beskow's rendering of a Sun Egg

Last month I spent a week in Arizona, visiting my grandma with some of my lovely siblings. My grandparents moved south several years ago, and while I deeply miss their old lakeside home in Madison, the new roost does have something I like very much. A grapefruit tree. Fully laden. Just outside the window. Needless to say, one day we filled a bucket, and got to work.

Confession: I am grapefruit junkie. In high school, my book bag clinked and clanked with the sound of glass knocking against glass. I tell you, it wasn't because I was a boozer stealing the dregs from dusty misfit bottles of my parents' Ouzo, Sherry, or Frangelica. It was the tell-tale sound of my three-a-day habit. Yes, I juiced.

And if that was not enough, I liked to smell like the sour citrus fruit, too. Yes, on my teen rovings downtown on State Street, I'd often find myself drawn into The Soap Opera, a beloved old apothecary of fragrant hippie delights. I liked to hang out around the sample dram display, sniffing various essential oils. Possibly muttering to myself in a British accent.

Contrary to popular belief (ahem), I did NOT wear patchouli. Much. But I did have more than one little dram-bottle of Forest Pine essence to complement my stash of Grapefruit oil, which I went through quick enough.

My bedroom then was at the end of a long hallway on a less insulated addition to our original ranch house. For some reason when we ripped out the hideous and diseased shag carpet, I got to pick my own carpet color. Silvery white. I then proceeded to leave my windows cracked in winter, and hang strings of glass icicles from the panes. My furniture was old, dark, antique oak, my bedding light blue and white...my posters of snowshoe hares, arctic foxes, and wolf packs. (Okay, and ultimately a six-foot-banner of Daniel Day-Lewis, the crown of my Last of the Mohicans shrine.) It is entirely possible I set a low base-temperature in there just to help entice the cats and dogs to cuddle with me more.

 My point is, Forest Pine is a pretty logical scent for a room that was meant to look like winter, and certainly felt like winter... so why the Grapefruit? Why the crisp, pucker-inducing scent of summery citrus, sun-bright and bee-kissed? Why here, in the white winter room?

I don't actually have an answer to this, folks. Why does a teenager wear moccasins to school, get obsessed with Neil Young, guzzle Chocola, and dream of being an elf who rides wolves? (Or was that just me?) Because she likes to.

I really, really love grapefruits. I love watching my aunt peel them every year for the Christmas fruit salad. I love using that crazy jagged little spoon to root out their triangular segments. I love heating up the juice with hot water in the winter (really, try it), and mixing it with ice and Patron in the summer. And I really, really love drinking the fresh-squeezed juice.

Lest we not forget our namesake

Recent little Orion blog entry by my delightful author-friend Brian Doyle. A brief ode to otters.

In the Hall of North American Mammals

March 13, 2012, by Brian Doyle

Recently I was standing in the delicious dim of a museum I had not savored since I was a small boy, many years ago, when the dinosaurs were young; I was staring at the otters in a sort of trance, remembering being in this exact reverie nearly fifty years ago, and thinking Manhattanish thoughts of salted pretzels bigger than your hand, and slightly burnt, and roasted chestnuts, and taxicab drivers cursing in Urdu, and drifts of straw near the horse carriages, and the whistle of hotel guys flagging cabs in their long gray cossack coats, when I noticed a small girl gaping at the otters also, and an eternity went by like a meditative freight train, and we have been absorbed by otters for many thousands of years, right?

Certainly thousands of us have stared at them thinking meat thoughts, and how to steal their excellent coats, and how to persuade them to harvest fish for us, perhaps, but I’d bet far more millions of hours we gawked at them in sheer wonder, a quiet crush, a sort of yearning astonishment, as if they are our smaller cousins, easier in the world, muddy and playful, water-addled, never still for a moment, until they’re stuffed and frozen in time in the Hall of North American Mammals.

After a while an uncle or dad comes to reclaim the small girl, and she leaves reluctantly, and she is me, and it is my father saying do you want to spend your whole day with the otters?

Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, and the author of ten books, including, most recently, the novel Mink River.

Ubiquity

Upon further reflection, I can safely say there are many things that are ubiquitous to the whole of Belize, from the coast to the inland borders. Here is, in no particular order, a short, non-inclusive list of said normalcy:

1. Undecipherable conversations in Kriol. 
Technically a version of English, (a really awesome, raucous, super-rasta version), Belizean Kriol uses no past tense. It is similar to what vocal spawn might spring forth from a union between a sassy French Creole voice and a laid-back Jamacian accent. Here is a sample of some useful phraseology:

Weh taim yu gat? = what time is it?
Yu da lamp up. = You are lazy.
Dis meet ya haaf raa. = This meat isn't done.
Stap you rass! = shut up
Please lef yo ugly raas dog home. = No dogs allowed. (And good luck with that!)


2. Colorful plywood houses on stilts, lines of laundry strung up beneath. 
Makes a lot of sense, building houses on stilts. Might help to deter some reptilian and insect creepers from scurrying in, while at the same time providing an expanse of cool shade to lounge under and a rain-safe place to air your laundry out.

3. Coconut palm trees.
Want some coconut water? Just reach out your hand. But watch your head.

4. Lizards. 
Big, small, everywhere. The definition of creeper.

5. Marie Sharp's hot sauce. 
Seriously, it is on every single table in the country. Queen of the sauce.

6. Street dogs.
Everywhere. Skinny dogs, mangy dogs, healthy dogs, three-legged dogs, nursing mothers, big-balled males, puppies, muppets.

7. Rum. Belikin Beer.
The local One Barrel variety is the best. This sweet spirit is cheaper than water and is in every mixed drink. We kept seeing a cocktail called The Panty Ripper on menus, but after some debate on what that name might imply, declined to order it. Belikin is brewed in Ladyville (how you doin'?) Belize, and is often the only beer sold. Comes in lager and stout.

8. Rice and Beans.
We ate some version of this literally every day. Coconut rice and red beans were my favorite.

9. Thatched roofs.
They're, um, thatched.

10. Birds
Grackles, grackles, grackles. Frigatebirds, pelicans, parrots. Orioles, kingfishers, egrets. Herons, kingbirds, and a species I have forgotten the name of now, but through some sort of deductive alliteration, called Count Chocula when I said good morning every day.