Graveyard Dirt: Two Worlds and In-between

Deemed Worthy

Filed under: Asphalt & Entrails

Outside of this rural subdivision, past the dental practice, old berry farm and butcher stands a tiny little hamlet of a forest on a busy country road surrounded by wheat fields, industrial complexes and new housing. It's recognized woodland, protected and cared for by the government (official trails tricked out with wooden walkways, painted sign posts indicating various routes, sections actively cleared for conservation purposes) and a favorite haunt for nature-lovin' locals.

(Walking and being in the wild? Super huge big here in Scotland. I've never encountered people so passionate about land and their inherent RIGHT to access it. <- Like I said before, Scotland doesn't have any trespassing laws. You go where you want, when you want, provided it's done respectfully and within reason.)

The most active corvid rookery I know about - at least "just out the door" locally - is located there. In a tiny stretch of peninsula-shaped land between the parking lot and wheat field exists a cluster of long-needled pine trees, and those coniferous trees have provided nesting grounds for countless generations of crows.

I've always avoided this particular patch of woodland; too popular, too busy (especially being situated on a narrow country lane way too fucking small to accommodate the full-blown trucks barreling down the broken asphalt), too noisy and too fucking messy. (<- Some Scots love nature so fucking much they'll wheel their McDonald's all the way to the fucking woods to have an idyllic backdrop for lunch, but then they'll follow up their appreciation by tossing their garbage out the car window and into the grass, or parking lot, or the very fringes of the forest.)

I didn't want to get attached to it because people, over the years, have transformed the first section of the forest into a litter-specked wasteland and it's only gotten worse thanks to all of the new houses backing straight up to the woods. I didn't want to be privy to people's love-hate relationship with nature, so I went elsewhere. I spent the last several years exploring the countryside's secret places - far away from people, parking lots and padded trails - which still managed to stay hidden behind crumbling stone walls and overgrown hedges. We haunted the places where you had to slip beneath barbed wire, wade through knee-high grass and scale ancient drystane dykes.

Not this past Saturday, but the weekend before Italics and I visited the rookery in the woods. I knew from previous visits that it wasn't too uncommon to find dead crows there, and seeing how they hadn't moved to a new location it seemed like a prime spot to find the remains of expired birds who died a more natural death (as opposed to being hit by a fucking car). My hunch was right; within minutes of scouting we found one. (A black crow with two white toenails - how's that for auspicious?)

The next morning I projectile vomited all over the fucking bathroom. Italics almost immediately copycatted my ass, although his execution was a lot less spectacular than mine. Our response was so violent, so fucking immediate that there were only the crows to blame. (After finding the one at the rookery we came across a second further down the road with its head partially bashed in, so we actually came home that Saturday with TWO dead crows.) But that's a story for a different entry (because I've already tangented off my original intent).

So we got sick. "Wretchedly sick", if you remember. We couldn't eat for a whole 24 hours (I was deathly afraid to even drink water in case it set me off for a third time), and when the most extreme aspect of our illness passed our appetites only allowed us the occasional bowl of soup, or piece of plain toast. (Not that I didn't try. Italics watched in horror as I voraciously gobbled down steak, tortilla chips, vanilla ice cream and frozen Reeses Pieces. I spent the next two days regretting the binge, but, hey, the homemade DIY Blizzard was a-fucking-mazing after an entire day of not eating jack shit.)

I had several huge meals planned - homemade buffalo wings with hot sauce, gingered duck stir-fry with fresh vegetables and a hearty steak dinner complete with slow-baked potatoes - none of which either of us could stomach. I managed grilling the steak, but I couldn't save the poultry. The defrosted portions of chicken and duck pathetically sat in their protective vacuum sealed bags until I decided to haul them out as offerings for the crows (a lame "thank you for only making us sick and not killing us" gesture).

When we were finally well enough to leave the house for an extended period one of the very first things we did was make a pilgrimage to the rookery to express our gratitude for the bodies and experience they gave us. (Initiation, dear and gentle readers, has its price. In this game you rarely get shit for free; if it's worthwhile having, then it's worthwhile suffering for. Admittedly, I regret that Italics had to bear the same discomfort, but I suppose that's the ultimate price he pays for trying to tame and domesticate a half-feral witch who brings dead things into the house.)

A gift was waiting for us. (Two, actually, if you count the crow we scooped up all Navy Seal-like on the busy, narrow country road.) Beneath the towering pines a lone fledgling laid dead, still soaking wet from the torrential rain that had hammered the countryside a day before. A tiny thing, a wee thing, drenched to the bone and wide-eyed. (It's never pleasant discovering a dead animal, there's always a part of you that wishes you had come earlier as if you somehow stood the chance of saving it if you had only been motivated to go the same route an hour, a day, a week before.)

We tore open plastic bags of rotting meat and neatly piled the offerings into a stinking pyramid of poultry. While I swaddled the baby crow in Ziploc bags Italics poured out a libation of elderflower cider over the meat (which was a particularly nice touch since several bushy elder shrubs grow beneath the collection of nests) as new housing owners jumping on a trampoline with their kids suspiciously looked on. (IT'S CALLED WITCHCRAFT. LET ME SPELL THAT OUT FOR YOU, W-I-T-C-H-C-R-A-F-T. DID YOU GET THAT?)

Our original intent was to stay for a few hours to get acquainted with the place, but after a short amble on a hella easy path we found our energy reserves declining and decided it was better not to push ourselves after being so goddamn sick. I managed to find the first raspberries of the season, but only two berries (all of the others were still tight green buds despite the two having reached perfect ripeness) and on the way home we managed to pull of a roadkill retrieval stunt that surely deserved a round of applause.

(The road? The narrow, crazily busy country lane flanking the woods? The one with enormous semis tearing down patchy asphalt? Even busier than usual. They closed a major intersection that the public uses to access the only grocery store in town, and the diverted traffic is now being funneled ("funneled" because the route is bordered on either side by two massive stone walls) down that tight, dangerously claustrophobic track. Even without the pressure of added commuters the stretch of road is known for recklessly fast driving despite the twists, bends and blind spots.)

(A crow - a huge ass motherfucker of a crow - was nestled against one of the walls, seemingly unsmashed due to the protectively solid nature of the dyke it was leaning against. Italics and I had to time our actions just right, in perfect sync. We couldn't get out of the car, let alone really stop it. Like Falkor snatching Atreyu just as Gmork was closing in Italics partially opened the car door as we coasted past, never moving from his seated position in the car, and lifted the dead bird from the side of the road and into his lap. One, two, three. It was over before it began.)

July 22nd was a long ass day. It was our first full non-Saturn Return day (Saturn left Virgo on the 21st and entered Libra; as far as old man Saturn goes he's someone else's problem for the next 30 years) and, I think, the day the sun entered Leo (which is my ascent, I'm part ram, part fish and part lion). Despite just getting over a serious bout of sickness we both found ourselves pottering around outside even after our forest walk and a spot of grocery shopping. I harvested thistle and feverfew growing outside in the front yard, and then let Italics loose with the lawn mower to take down the meadow my in-laws don't want to see (they come home in two days, SIGH) while I ritually dismembered my fridge full of dead crows.

There was something special about the larger crow we picked up that day. It was a lot of things, the absolute desperation to rescue it despite its awkward (and damn near impossible) positioning, how perfectly preserved and utterly flawless it remained despite having spent several long hours at the very edges of the busiest road in town, it's eerily life-like, frozen appearance. When Italics successfully lifted it from the road I enthusiastically cheered and told him, half-joking, that for all of his effort he could keep it.

It spooked me with its beady, glossy eyes still coal black and sharp (as a roadkill scavenger I'm more used to the frosty, glassy eyes of death). Stiff, but warm, it groggily glared through half-open eyes at its surroundings, dead but very much alive, caught in a bizarre "DON'T ASK ME HOW MY FUCKING DAY'S BEEN" limbo. It must've been hit while walking, and in death it retained its fatal gait. The only obvious trauma it suffered - at least in a superficial appearance - were a few partially twisted toes, and because it wasn't mangled or broken it needed almost no coaxing to stand.

As ridiculous as it sounds, I was hesitant to dismember the crow. It was dead, it was OBVIOUSLY fucking dead, but something was there. Half-aware. Dazed. Alive. I knew it was dead, but a part of me was terrified that it'd awaken mid-decapitation and I'd only realize, after it was too late, that it had only been stunned for the 3-5 hours it remained perfectly still, perfectly stiff. I processed the oldest two first, and then the baby as the large black crow blearily looked on from its container garden roost.

When I finally severed its head from its body fresh, uncoagulated blood trickled from the decapitated bird and thickly pooled at the tips of my toes as if its heart had only just stopped beating. A gift. A truce. Acknowledgement that I had walked through fire and stayed on course, that even if I didn't follow them into death I sacrificed enough as I accompanied and comforted them as best as I could on the long, painful walk to the other side. Through sickness I was tested, they were satisfied and the blood that trickled from the beheaded crow was my initiation.

I anointed myself and wore the bloody cross with pride; I was deemed worthy.

Goddamn Lucky

Filed under: Life

Walked down to the cemetery. Ate wild cherries. Watched a raptor hunt. Passed between barbed wire fences. Waded through overgrown pastureland. Had sex in the ruined church. Freed the wild gooseberry bush. Wandered down a shady lane to the local kirkyard. Knocked on A.S.'s "grave". Sat with the graveyard rabbits. Watched Italics take pictures of graveyard rabbits. Watched families of swallows dip above overgrown pastureland. Straightened the nun's grave. Left an offering on Muriel's grave. Left offerings at the cemetery cairn. Poured Didi's ("grandfather") bottle of Heineken over his Midwinter bread at Papa's grave. Left a chocolate cigar for Papa behind his headstone. Left the Leprechaun in the cairn tree. Drank water from the kirkyard's faucet. Waved good-bye to graveyard rabbits and swallows. Walked back home, admiring shimmering wheat fields of green-gold while appreciating how goddamn lucky I am.

Anointed

Filed under: Asphalt & Entrails

"...and thou shalt anoint the tabernacle of the congregation therewith, and the ark of the testimony..." - Exodus 30:26 (King James Version)

Foster Care

Filed under: Asphalt & Entrails

So I opened up my big, fat, scavenging mouth and now everyone wants roadkill. From me. Pronto. I've spent years fantasizing about this sort've situation, but now that it's here a part of me's going WHOA, WHOA, WHOA, EASY COWBOY because I don't have anything ready. Business cards? Nuh uh. Label art? Nope. A store name? LOL, WHATEV. (Just between you and me? I'm so fucking green in this venture that if you pat me on the back you'll smudge the fresh paint.)

I think I might be rushing, but Italics hasn't told me to slow down. (<- That's a good sign, right?) I don't know so many things - how to whiten bones (I mean, I know how, I just haven't had the time to experiment), how to fix feet in specific positions (wings are hella easy, all you need is some soft cardboard, salt and a box of sewing pins), how to preserve organs (other than drying them out into shriveled bits of pemican), how to transform frozen, raw fur into soft, downy pelts (which I REALLY need to learn how to do THIS YEAR since I got more than enough rabbit skins to begin the process of piecing together my proposed wild rabbit ritual blanket) and, ultimately, how to taxidermy like a motherfucking pro.

The response has been overwhelming. Every effing time I pop open my inbox there's more email. ("HI! YOU DON'T KNOW ME, BUT I'VE BEEN READING YOUR JOURNAL FOR A LONG ASS TIME AND I'D REALLY LOVE TO GET MY HANDS ON...") I've always operated under the assumption that only two or three people - who I'm already sort've associated with - bother visiting this space, and even that's only on a totally uncommitted basis. It blows my mind that people are reading this shit and actually coming back for seconds. (Or, at least, frequently returning to watch what they think is a train wreck in perpetual progress.)

I haven't even sealed one deal yet (BTW, y'all might have to Thunderdome it out amongst yourselves re: corvid skulls, cause, like, I think I might have a whole THREE to offer, and I'm probably saving one for personal use) and I'm already worried. Will people be able to tell how much love, energy and respect (even if filtered through my bizarre sense of humor) I offer every animal that I'm privileged enough to be given? Will they be able to tell I ritualize the dismantling of a physical form to help release the spirit from the burden of flesh? Will they feel the incense? My altered state? The offerings I give and make, the funerals Italics and I hold, the continuation of life that occurs when visiting wildlife finds food and sustenance from the decomposing bodies of their deceased brethren?

I'm worried my work won't feel "alive" to anyone but myself. I'm deathly terrified that someone'll tear open their box from bonnie old Scotland, eagerly pull out the piece they've been anticipating and the entire experience suddenly flatlines because it - whatever it is - doesn't feel special, doesn't feel magic. And no amount of stories (because there's always a story attached to every animal), no amount of pictures (it's important to know and see where it came from, lived and died), no amount of spiritually feeding, nurturing and sheparding energy will be enough to create a connection between someone else and my animals.

In a bizarre way it almost feels like I'm sending my babies into foster care, and even though I can provide the metaphorical birth certificate and baby photos I can't guarantee that any of the additional information will create a meaningful bond between it and its adoptive parent. Fuck, is it weird that I'm being anxious about shit like this? Is it a GOOD sign? Will prospective buyers think I'm mental, or will they kind've sort've get what I'm doing?

Bottom fucking line? I want to be happy, I want the new caretakers to be happy, but, most importantly, I want my animals to be happy.

PS: I haven't had a chance to write about the crow and wild rabbit skull (which was found in fragments) we found about a week ago. I'm on the fence about selling any part of the crow, but I'll definitely be selling the rabbit skull pictured above (and all of its parts; I'll let the new caretaker glue the teeth back in, it'll be a good bonding exercise).

Sorry, BTW

Filed under: Life

Thanks to the monumental upheaval of our computer room (Italics unexpectedly lost his computer - including everything on his hard drive - a few days ago), Photo Studio not working on my computer (what I use to edit my photos before uploading them to Flickr) and Chooch demanding attention all morning long (that pink, hairless sack-like bulge beneath Choney? her giant mammary tumor) I never got around to writing a journal entry yesterday.

Sorry about that, by the way. (I know you'll forgive me in time.)

Unspoken Rule

Filed under: Menagerie

There's probably an unspoken rule about sharing your PAC-MAN mug of Earl Grey with your pet rat who's just finished eating carpet underlayment.

...fuck it, we all got to die sometime.

Chooch

Filed under: Menagerie

Filmed/written on April 24th: Chooch doesn't entirely know what to make of the raw butternut squash we gave them. (I'd post a picture or video of Wuzza, but she's always in motion. Choney, for reasons beyond me, seems to understand the entire camera thing and patiently sits frozen, like a model, when we're filming her.)

A Slippery Fish

Filed under: Life

I'm staring dumbly at the blank (well, not SO blank now) "CREATE A NEW ENTRY" interface because I have no fucking idea what I want to say.

(I want to say something, right? I mean, why settle your ass down to write a journal entry when you've got fuck all to say AND you've got a manila envelope stuffed full of seeds waiting to be planted on this glorious Saturday afternoon? Oh, wait. That's why - Saturday; one of TWO days I have to share the house with both in-laws simultaneously.)

("Weekend" doesn't exist when you cohabit with your in-laws and you work at home. There's no point in working because within 10 minutes someone'll start making noise you can't fucking ignore, there's no point in cleaning because within 10 minutes they'll trash the room, there's no point in engaging in a hobby because within 10 minutes they'll find a reason to bug your fucking ass.)

(Saturday and Sunday are write-off days here where I get NOTHING accomplished (SORRY, BUT FEELING FRUSTRATED DOESN'T COUNT AS AN ACCOMPLISHMENT) and chant my way ("IT'S ONLY FOR TWO DAYS, THEN IT'S MONDAY, IT'S ONLY FOR TWO DAYS, THEN IT'S MONDAY, IT'S ONLY FOR..") throughout the 48 hours to help me retain any semblance of sanity.)

(Pot, as you'd imagine, helps, but that's a tricky game that needs to be played carefully. <- See "GOOD LORD, WHY ARE YOUR EYES SO RED?" and "YOU TWO LOOK AWFULLY SLEEPY TODAY!".)

We've been so busy that it's thrown me out of whack. House busy I can handle, house busy is usual busy which I've categorized, compartmentalized and refined over the course of several years. I'm a motherfucking PRO when it comes to house busy. It's the non-house shit - appointments, interacting with people, living life to a schedule - that always rocks the fucking boat and leaves me feeling unsettled.

(Is it noticeable? I feel like it is. The past few weeks it feels like I've been wrangling with a floundering fish covered in extra slippery lube. I haven't dropped it, but restraining the goddamn thing has required some exquisite fucking acrobatics and I'm beginning to wonder what's the fucking point. <- PERHAPS "PUT THE FISH IN THE FUCKING WATER WHERE IT FUCKING BELONGS AND LEAVE IT THE FUCK ALONE, I MEAN, JESUS, YOU DON'T EVEN //LIKE// FISH IN THE FIRST PLACE!".)

I keep saying shit like IT'S BECAUSE IT'S SPRING and IT'S BECAUSE SHAKEY/WUZZA'S DIED and IT'S BECAUSE THERE'S A LOT OF FUCKING SHIT GOING DOWN but I'm beginning to wonder if I'm already sort've unconsciously panicking at the thought of what was routine, for nearly 10 years, soon coming to an end.

When Choney leaves us we'll be ratless/petless for the first time in nearly a decade. A decade. A fucking decade. That's a fucking 10 year old bringing home their math homework asking for help in fields of geometry you don't fucking remember. Ten years is a way of life; it's a significant fraction of a person's existence.

I know superficially it'll be the same - I'll still cook, still clean, I'll still hammer away in this little space of mine, I'll still masturbate before falling asleep and I'll still get stoned and watch nature programs just before bed to cut dreaded thoughts of mortality off at the pass. The motions will be the same, but it'll be emptier without that feeling of companionship.

We took Chooch to the vet the other day for surgery consultation and I got slapped in the face with an option that I didn't even bother considering: it would kill Choney to remove the massive mammary tumors clustered behind one of her front legs. They're too large to be operable, and they're growing in an awkward position (just behind the armpit) that'd open her up to serious infection.

I went in for a miracle (that I thought was a sure thing), and instead I got handed a death sentence. I had a hormonal moment in the consultation room and cried. It was HELLA embarrassing; the vet had to tear off a handful of paper towels for me. Italics went quiet and held onto my forearm. In our silence we thought the same thing: we're going to lose her because of those fucking tumors.

We just lost Denny's because of mammary tumors (which are totally benign, believe it or not, it's just that they inevitably get in the way of living after a certain point of growth) and I'm plagued with horrendous, soul crushing guilt because if we could've afforded it and had them removed early on she'd still be with us. How many months did those fucking tumors steal from Wuzza? How many months will Choo-Choo's tumors steal from her?

All I've heard from the vet, friends and in-laws is "BUT YOU GUYS DO YOUR VERY BEST AND IT'S OBVIOUS THAT YOU GUYS REALLY, REALLY CARE FOR YOUR RATS" and I want to scream "THAT'S BULLSHIT, BECAUSE IF THAT WAS THE CASE I WOULD'VE BEEN SELLING BLOWJOBS LEFT AND RIGHT TO AFFORD SURGICALLY REMOVING THEIR MAMMARY TUMORS" but I politely thank them, offer a weak, forced smile and shuffle away to quietly spend time with my morbid thoughts.

Anyway. So.

A slippery fish. An end of things; some major Death, some minor Death. A semi-recent passing of a pet, a very recent passing of a pet and an eventual passing of a pet. Possibly a friendship (I'm a shit friend, anyway), possibly a husband (although I've been quietly working on that one), possibly a way of life. So many changes, so much upheaval, it's no fucking wonder why I feel unsettled and antsy.

Slippery fish that I've desperately been clinging onto, if I let you go will you be Boadicea's hare for me?

Denny's Dumpster

Filed under: Rituals

When we first saw her - when she was an impossibly small baby - Italics said "she looks like a rat who'd live in a dumpster behind a Denny's" and the name just sort've suck. To celebrate her life with us we built Wuzza her very own Denny's dumpster to rest in during last night's wake.

RIP, Denny's

Filed under: Menagerie

Wuzza passed away last night while we slept. It was totally unexpected, and I'm still reeling from shock. (Pictured above: Denny's first day home with us, about three years ago.)

I swear I heard her shuffle around in their sleeping box when I called her out for breakfast, but when she didn't appear - all dazed and confused - I had to peek into the covered bookshelf. She didn't look like she was breathing, but it was hard to tell because I had only JUST gotten up and was peeking through a sliver of a hole with a fucking flashlight.

I told myself I was being fucking retarded and seeing things (or, uh, NOT seeing things). After cleaning the cage and bookshelf last night I threw in a ragged piece of old, black sweatpants to give her some soft bedding; a flap of fuzzy black covered her entire face. I couldn't see a damn thing.

I had to put down the flashlight, let the cardboard covering snap back into place, shove my arm through their little rat hole and fish around blindly to find and pull back the material. Once I pulled out, pulled open and peeked back in I could see her dead, frosty eyes (not even glossy dead; frosty dead) which had been hidden by her sweatpants death shroud.

That's when the crying began. That's when the grief began. That's when the "BUT I DON'T UNDERSTAND, SHE WAS GETTING SO MUCH BETTER - YESTERDAY SHE LOOKED //SO GOOD// AND WAS BACK TO CHASING PAPER TOWELS AGAIN!" began. That's when the guilty feeling of negligence set in.

(If one could be condemned "negligent" despite feeding their sickly rat smoked ham, rice pudding, homemade Kentucky Butter Cake, honeydew melon and blue Gatorade before saying goodnight and tucking her into her just cleaned cage and bookshelf. I suppose you could book me on the bath she didn't get last night, but was supposed to. <- We spent 4-5 hours harvesting beech leaves yesterday so we were both hella tired and left that one job "until tomorrow".)

In all of our rat years (which, by this point, is MANY) we've never, ever been greeted by death first thing in the morning. Death almost always came from our own hands (by nitrous/laughing gas) when living became too much to bear (i.e., when their respiratory systems would shut down, leaving them gasping for breath which couldn't be drawn into the lungs).

I've always wished and prayed for ONE insistence of "passed away in her sleep" ("her" because we exclusively keep females); for ONE insistence where blood wouldn't be directly on our hands. Now that I finally got it I feel nothing except guilt. (What happened? How did it happen? Did she struggle? Was it easy? Was she alone? Was Shoney's/Choochie with her? Was it because of something I did? Was it because of something I DIDN'T do?)

The most amazingly fucked up thing? Yesterday? For the first time in weeks Wuzza was her old self again. In the past few days I discovered that she could handle more heavy duty food - i.e., chunks of soft fruit, tender pieces of meat, soft bread, crumbly cake - so I began feeding her less and less baby food and more and more "people" food. She looked so much brighter, more healthy, more alert.

Yesterday she chased, caught and victoriously fucked up a piece of paper towel. (Something she hadn't done since getting sick.) Yesterday she bit my fucking hand when I reached in to haul her ass out of the bookshelf. (Wuzza would often engage in sit down strikes when it came time to clean out their enclosed living quarters. Sometimes, when I had to physically MOVE HER FUCKING ASS to clean out the space, she'd nip my fucking hand to try and dissuade me from tossing all of her "stuff" in the trash.) Yesterday, after finishing every fucking course of dinner, she looked up at me with her patented "MORE, PLZ?" face.

And then? And then she PASSES AWAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING NIGHT WHILE WE'RE SLEEPING in a move that was totally unexpected, totally unanticipated and totally Wooch in every single effing way. Jesus, Gary Balls Wuzza, what the fuck? (NO, SERIOUSLY WHOOSH, WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?)

(The worst/best/most significant part? We spent most of yesterday collecting beech leaves from various graveyards to make a gin-based spirit. At every cemetery I left an offering of Kentucky Butter Cake, water and gin asking everyone and everything to make the sake-like homemade hooch "as potent as possible". Within 12 hours of coming home Denny's died despite her recent upswing.)

(As a rule I try not to view things old testament negative (i.e., our pet was killed in exchange for services rendered), because that's a loaded way to live. Instead, I just try and accept things as being "significant" rather than GOOD or BAD. Yesterday we had an awesome day. We caught a wedding party in the kirkyard of the first cemetery we were going to hit (auspicious or what?), collected leaves at mindbogglingly beautiful surroundings, ate lunch on top of a neolithic monument and created our first bottle of Beech Tree Noyau deliberately using leaves from ancient (and some not-so-ancient, but still pretty damn old) graveyards.)

So.

So as Miz Deniz sits wrapped up in tea towels in a Tupperware container in the fridge (<- THE IN-LAWS ARE HOME; DON'T WANT TO FREAK OUT THE NATIVES) I have to come up with some sort of Wuzza specific death altar. (How the FUCK do I find/make a rat-sized dumpster? WOOSHU, DAMMIT, YOU'RE EVEN DIFFICULT IN DEATH.)

Unsettled House

Filed under: Menagerie

We've been going through varying stages of "unsettled" in the house since Shakey's passing. With Shakey Bear gone the remaining bears (Denny's aka Wuzza & Shoney's aka Choney) are having to cope with the disintegration of a social hierarchy.

Wuzza, who once was top rat (she came into the house first, and then was later joined by Shakey and Choney who were/are sisters), is having treats and food stolen straight out of her hands by an aggressive Choney. Last night she was kicked out of the house by Choochie (CHONEY DOES, IN FACT, HAVE A BILLION AND TWO NICKNAMES) and poor Gary Balls (<- STICK WITH ME, IT'LL ALL GET EXPLAINED) sat alone in miserable exile on top of a skanky shoe box.

When Shakey first died there was obvious confusion. Both surviving rats had time with her dead body; Choney went as far as nipping Shakey's cold nose to revive her. "Gone", though, didn't sink in until nearly a week later. When both realized Shakey wasn't returning they became depressed, lethargic and remained cloistered in their bookshelf rat house.

My Choney Choo-Choo lost her spark which broke my heart (Wuzza, however, having always been a weird rat didn't really lose much of her personality), but I got increasingly worried when they both flat out refused to interact with us. They must've spent a solid week in confinement grieving, wondering and mistrusting.

Part of that time was spent perpetually spooked. Since both are now hindered by large mammary tumours (benign, but insanely cumbersome) we don't need to keep them locked up when we're not in the room. (Their mischievous days of crawling up radiators, using dresser handles as ladders and being driven by the insatiable need to explore desktops are long gone.)

You'd THINK that the sudden freedom would've been met with enthusiasm, but they became hella suspicious of us and our motives. Whenever we breezed into the computer room/office they'd bolt into their bookshelf home like their little rat lives depended on it. For about a half a week we lived with ghosts and I began pessimistically wondering if our relationship with them would ever revert to some sense of familiarity.

Eventually they crawled out of their shells and began interacting with us once again. Chooch, very recently, took up playing chase again. (CHONEY = THE ONLY RAT WE'VE EVER OWNED WHO LOVES TO PLAY CHASE.) Wuzza, well, Wuzza was-is Wuzza. (Denny's is what you get when you pick a rat because "SHE LOOKS LIKE A RAT WHO'D LIVE BEHIND A DENNY'S DUMPSTER!")

Life, though, has slowed down because of their tumours. Choney has a cluster behind one of her front paws, but they aren't large enough to really impact her life negatively. Wuzza, however, lives with the equivalent of a giant pair of truck nuts attached to her body and she's having an increasingly difficult time fending off a food-crazed Shoney.

Denny's is now burdened with two fatty tumours the size of large eggs on either side of her body. She can't climb; she can't jump. By this point of their growth she can barely scamper, but when she does she has to hop like a rabbit to keep a quickened pace. The skin covering the lumps is beginning to grow thin, and she's developed tiny scabs from either overgrooming or chaffing since there isn't a lot of fur to act as a buffer.

Due to financial reasons we had to wait until after my birthday (April 11th) to take Wuzza to the vet. We knew that the surgery itself was pretty straightforward and not crazily risky, it was keeping the rat (and rat roommates) from pulling out the fucking stitches that was the real problem. (We honest to fucking God spent nearly $500.00 USD on getting one of our previous rats restitched several times before supergluing her body ourselves.)

We took her in under the pretence of having her looked at and booking surgery immediately to have the tumours removed. We left the vet, horrified, clutching Wuzza's travel box protectively with a non-committal "WE'LL KEEP IN TOUCH, THANKS". The doctor took one look at Denny's and said "YEAH, WE CAN REMOVE THOSE, BUT IF WE DO SHE MIGHT NOT HAVE ENOUGH SKIN TO CLOSE THE INCISIONS AND IF THAT'S THE CASE WE'D HAVE TO GAS HER ON THE SPOT".

With an exception of the bumps Wuzza is happy, healthy and living comfortably. If she had them cut out I know she'd be even happier and MORE comfortable, but that'd require accepting the fact that there's a chance we might get a call from the vet - during surgery - that there's not enough Denny's to stitch shut. I don't know if I could deal with that scenario, especially since her mammary tumours aren't a life or death deal (at least not yet).

It's a decision we really don't want to make. Both Choney and Wuzza are in their twilight years. This Midsummer will mark their third year with us, and rats have an average lifespan of 2-3 years. I know their time is coming, and I know it's probably going to be this year. (2010? Will be the year of heartbreak.)

Even if there's enough rat - in both their cases (Choochie's cluster might still be small enough to not pose a problem) - will the recovery time steal a significant percentage of their remaining life? Is it better to give them the ability to jump-leap-climb again, or is it better to allow them to live the rest of their lives without the stress of surgery and recovery (even if it means they can't be as active as they'd like)?

I joked on Twitter it was a "rat-themed Sophie's Choice", and even though we've made a decision (to not take either of them in for surgery) I'm still haunted by the thought "but is it the RIGHT one?".

Vaccum Seal Embalming

Filed under: Menagerie

Shakey Bear, vacuum sealed with her Flump (a UK marshmallow treat) offering and her picture of Reggie Rat (Shakey's boyfriend).

We spent all of yesterday forgetting she was lying in wake in the fridge (which made each rediscovery a happy surprise whenever we opened the door to grab the butter or a beer), but by the evening we knew we had to seal Shakey to keep her body in optimum condition.

(As if I couldn't get any weirder, right? Vacuum sealing beloved pets so I can later defrost them, skin them and preserve their bodies to allow us to physically interact with them once again.)

(AS IF PUTTING MY NAKED ASS ON NEOLITHIC SACRED SITES, ENGAGING IN GOLDEN SHOWERS, FORCING ITALICS TO FUCK - AND EJACULATE INTO - MY RESURRECTION DOUGH AND BAREBACKING RAW ROASTS WASN'T ENOUGH, I ALSO WANT TO PERSONALLY TAXIDERMY MY OWN PETS BECAUSE IT MAKES ME HAPPY TO STROKE THEIR FURRY LITTLE BODIES.)

(IT SORT'VE MAKES YOU THINK TWICE ABOUT INTERACTING WITH ME, DOESN'T IT?)

No Tattling

Filed under: Menagerie

If YOU don't tell my mother-in-law and I don't tell my mother-in-law SHE'LL NEVER FIND OUT. (Yes we ARE having a hard time letting go, why do you ask?)

RIP, Shakey Bear

Filed under: Menagerie

Rest in peace, Shakey Bear. (Easter, Soupie (Bear), is a V. good day to die.) Come back home to us quick; we'll keep your share of prawn crackers safe until you do.

PS: We promise to make you a chef hat and a shakey-shank soon.

Still a Happy Bear

Filed under: Menagerie

Nearly blindly, severely congested and dying; but, still, a happy bear. (<- Her breathing's so loud (due to her blocked nose) you can't hear her bruxing beneath the noise.)

We've been waiting for death to take Shakey naturally, but the Reaper hasn't come calling. In the past 48 hours her quality of life's quickly deteriorated to the point where both of us feel obligated to intervene. If she doesn't improve in the next day or two I'm going to have to consider the one thing I've been avoiding.

Easter, Peeps and Resurrection

Filed under: Menagerie

I keep mentioning to Shakey Bear that Holy Week's a terrific awesome amazing time to die hint, hint (with Easter and Peeps and all of that Resurrection stuff), but I don't think she's completely sold on the idea. (<- Maybe she's Jewish? HEY, IT COULD HAPPEN! HEZBOLLAH WAS OBVIOUSLY - OBVIOUSLY! - MUSLIM, SO IT'S NOT *COMPLETELY* UNHEARD OF.)

House of Cards

Filed under: Life

I just want to wake up from this Groundhog Day nightmare and get the next day started, but I've been stuck on the same day - the same routine - for nearly two months. Some days it doesn't feel like there's any meaning or purpose (so there's nothing worth fighting for), other days I wake up screaming like a Valkyrie, ready to crawl across a cosmic minefield if it means victory.

I feel the boot bearing down on me, but I'm throwing both shoulders into it and pushing against what feels like a brick wall because I know, eventually, it'll collapse like a house of cards.

(2010, I WILL BREAK YOU. I WILL CRUSH YOU BENEATH MY CALLOUSED, BARE FEET. I WILL STRETCH OUT MY SCARRED FINGERS AND BRING DOWN BIBLICAL SHIT YOU HAVEN'T SEEN SINCE FUCKING MOSES AND HIS PLAGUES. I MIGHT BE BLOODIED AND BROKEN, BUT BY DECEMBER FUCKING 31ST I'LL BE WEARING YOUR FUCKING BATTERED SKIN LIKE A MOTHERFUCKING FUR COAT GIVEN TO ME BY GOD HIM-FUCKING-SELF.)

(AND YOU KNOW THAT AIN'T AN IDLE THREAT BECAUSE A WOMAN DOESN'T DISH THAT SORT'VE SHIT OUT LIGHTLY.)

January, 2009

Filed under: Forgotten Stories

I usually manage to upload and write about 70% of the photos I take, but occasionally an adventure or two manages to slip through my fingers. To give the forgotten images and stories their chance to shine I decided I'd gather all of the loose ends and consolidate them in a monthly entry.

Smooth, creamy and melt-in-your mouth golden.

(Pssst! It's goose fat, you know.)

First full moon of the new year (Cold Moon) welcomed by THE NOTHING. (I love the tiny star way above the expanding darkness.)

I appropriated an otherwise abandoned plum tree in the backyard and named it THE SHANGO TREE. To freak out the natives (aka MY IN-LAWS) I've begun wedging oversized bones in the branches so they'll get white and weather beaten. (WE'LL SEE HOW LONG IT LASTS UNTIL MY FATHER-IN-LAW DECIDES TO UNDECORATE MY BONE TREE.)

When Beh was alive she's sit and stare blankly for hours at a time and neither Italics nor I knew what the fuck she was up to. It wasn't until recently - very, very recently - that Italics discovered that "fixed staring" was a symptom of a brain tumor. (Beh was diagnosed with "a brain thing" around May and passed quite suddenly in early June.)

We found this incense burning frog in the local health food store when Christmas shopping on Winter Solstice and couldn't resist its Bok Chek stare.

(BEH WAS ALWAYS CHEWING UP THE FUCKING CARPET, HENCE ALL OF THE CHEWED UP FUCKING CARPET.)

Chark Park eating part of a buttermilk oatmeal muffin.

How I spent sick day number three. (I MEAN, SERIOUSLY, HOW DOES THIS SHIT HAPPEN IN A HOUSEHOLD OF FOUR ADULTS AND GO TOTALLY UNNOTICED AND UNCLEANED UNTIL I DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?)

Shakey Bear testing every pea to ensure they're all top quality.

Shakey and Shoney looking like pea gremlins.

It's an hour of back and forth, and constantly changing positions.

Sun rising through the trees leading to the disturbed children's home.

Hezbollah contemplates the garden.

Graffiti on the door of the disturbed children's home. (I'M GOING BACK WITH A RED MARKER AND TEACHING THOSE ASBO KIDS A LESSON. <- LOL, IN GRAMMAR AND SPELLING, ANYWAY.)

It was originally used as a home for disturbed children, but also had a stint of being an orphanage, I'm told.

"Wank" has been scribbled on the lower left window, and "wanker" on the lower right.

Through the trees you can see how the windows and doors have been boarded up.

When we amble down to the semi-local cemetery (it's about a miles walk, or so) we pass a now abandoned (but still kept) home for disturbed children.

Pac-Burger at T.G.I. Friday's (in Scotland).

A piece of streusel topped summer fruits buttermilk coffeecake (with orange flower water!) discreetly drizzled with a Cointreau & summer fruits happy ending (LOLOLOLOL) made for my mother-in-law's birthday.

A piece of streusel topped summer fruits buttermilk coffeecake (with orange flower water!) made for my mother-in-law's birthday.

An impromptu dinner:

A thick cut, boneless pork chop stuffed with a feta cheese, cream cheese, sundried tomato, fresh basil and black pepper filling. Flavored with generic Italian seasoning before wrapping up in three slices of Oscar Meyer bacon. Pan fried, and then quickly roasted in the oven with a bit of white wine, mushrooms and vine-ripe tomatoes.

Verdict? Worth remembering.

(Picture snapped after dinner. (No time for arty photographs!))

We started off the weekend on the right foot.

(And he even rolled up his Oscar Meyer bacon in a pancake.) (Maybe in another 10 years I'll be able to convince him to drench it all with maple syrup.)

...even classier? I went to the movies the day after wearing a ripped Punisher t-shirt and a wrench necklace. (SO...DAMN...CLASSY.)

A cock to ride in T.G.I. Friday's (in Scotland).

Fuck, what a nightmare. This is a photo of the manometry monitor that I had to carry around last year for twenty-four hours when I was undergoing a battery of medical tests to figure out what was wrong with my stomach. (The short version? Hiatal hernia, weak stomach muscles, GERD, acid reflux and a broken stomach valve. They don't know how it happened, or how to fix it.)

It's not pictured in this photo, but a spaghetti-sized tube/wire had been fed up my nose, down my throat and into my stomach so the monitor could record my gut's activity. (I had to eat, sleep, bathe and live with the chord for an entire day - every fucking time I swallowed the wire yanked like a motherfucker causing the tube to jerk, jump and tighten in my body.)

LOL SIDE NOTE: They had to postpone this particular test because I admitted to the doctor that I was partially stoned. (She claimed the data would be "inconclusive" since I was under the influence of a relaxing drug. Pfft.) Thankfully, she thought I was cute and/or funny and simply rescheduled the monitor insertion without any sort of lecture. (Thank fucking God I didn't mention I was high to the medical stuff who performed my endoscopy because that's SERIOUSLY an experience I can totally live without undergoing again.)

Shakey Bear

Filed under: Menagerie

One of our pet rats is sick. She's been acting off for a week now, but there weren't many symptoms past "she looks sort've stiff", "she looks a little dopey" and "she just doesn't seem /right/". I was hoping it was just a sore back leg, or a lingering cold, but she seems weaker every day. It's Sunday today which means it'll be another whole day before we can even take her to the vet. (The very thought makes me want to throw up.)

I spent most of my morning sitting on the floor with her wedged between my thigh and flannel (we've never had any lap rats - we've had shoulder rats and head rats and cradling-in-the arm rats and rats who love snuggling in the small space between pants and overlapping shirts), too worried to leave her in case she's uncomfortable.

I hate these moments that potentially spell out the beginning of the end. Shakey's nearly three, for a rat bought at a garden centre that's already a long life. (Especially since the majority of them are infected with a fatal lung condition.) I've already cried once this morning with Shakey pressed against my chest. She seemed confused when I told her that I loved her V. much, and that I'd do everything humanly possible to -

Scratch this shit. I'm not going to start grieving for a pet that isn't dead. (The LAST thing Shakey needs is for be to be sobbing every fucking time I pick her up or check on her.) I need to yank my morbid panties off and worry about the inevitable when it's impending. If pot and leftover fajitas for breakfast doesn't help me shrug off unnecessary worry, then nothing will.

Ms. Graveyard Dirt Baiting

Filed under: Menagerie

Not yesterday morning, but the morning before, I found myself trudging overripe pumpkins outside to the Shango Tree/Phallic Worship altar just before bed (<- WE'RE CURRENTLY SLEEPING DAYS AND WORKING NIGHTS) and in doing so I stumbled over this scene of carnage and desecration:

"SOMETHING'S DUG UP THE FUCKING SHANGO ALTAR OUTSIDE AND I'M PRETTY SURE IT WASN'T ONE OF THE FUCKING CATS," I announced in caps lock. Italics, knowing it's always best to drop whatever he's doing when I begin speaking in caps, joined me in the backroom as we stared in the direction of the disturbed altar.

These weren't makeshift toilet holes that the neighborhood cats make in my line of beets (STOP SHITTING ON AND DIGGING UP MY FUCKING BEETS, CATS), they were deep gouges that reached into the very bottom of the raised dirt bed. My (VERY HEAVY, VERY DENSE, VERY SOLID, VERY ERECT) stone cock was knocked asunder, and its two black balls unceremoniously kicked off the surface of the altar.

Something BIG plundered my recently cleaned altar space, going directly to where my eight rabbit heads where buried within. Weirdly enough, it DIDN'T take the huge ass soup bone I left as an offering on the bricks (in fact, it hadn't even MOVED despite the severe disturbance surrounding it) and it DIDN'T bother fucking with the eight rabbit carcasses decomposing beneath a black plastic bucket just a yard or two away.

Whatever IT was it WASN'T a cat, dog or hedgehog - so what the fuck was IT? What the fuck would be large enough to RIP THROUGH BUCKETS OF DIRT and play soccer with dubiously shaped rocks? What the fuck would just IGNORE DECAYING RABBIT CARCASSES and A MOTHER OF A SOUP BONE SITTING OUTSIDE LIKE A COOLING PIE ON A WINDOW LEDGE?

"FOX," Italics hypothesized. In a deliberate attempt to not feel disappointed I didn't believe him. (<- LONG STORY SHORT? A PAIR OF FOXES CAME TO US LAST YEAR IN OCTOBER, BUT THE NEIGHBORS DIDN'T SHARE OUR JOY. AFTER ONE TOO MANY "SOMEONE NEEDS TO KILL THOSE VERMIN" COMMENTS WE HAD TO ASK THE FOXES TO LEAVE. IT BROKE MY HEART SENDING AWAY SOMETHING THAT CAME TO US (THEY CAME FOR OUR OUTSIDE OFFERINGS, AND THEN STAYED WHEN THEY REALIZED THEY WERE WELCOME HERE), AND I'VE SPENT EVERY DAY SINCE LOOKING OUT WINDOWS HOPING THAT, ONE DAY, I'D SEE THE FAMILIAR RUSTY STREAKS OF ORANGE AND BLACK JOGGING ACROSS THE YARD.)

The thing is, there was a sort've kind've maybe chance that it was a fox - just a wee chance, though, and not enough evidence to have me busting out smoked polish sausage. (I DO NOT DEFROST MY BELOVED KIELBASA FOR ANY OLD REASON.) Several nights back, just after midnight, I glanced up from doing the dishes and saw some sort of animal bolting across the street towards the house.

"OHMYGODBADGER!" I gasped, gloriously high and reeling in shock. My brain somersaulted as I tried to piece together what I had just seen. The sighting was a blur - it was dark and raining heavily, I was high and absentmindedly doing the dishes. All I could really remember was a bushy tail, squat body and narrow - but long - face.

"I SAW A BADGER!" I excitedly whispered to Italics, who came racing when he heard my first exclamation of shock and disbelief. "OR, WAIT, MAYBE IT WASN'T A BADGER," doubt had already sunk in. "IT HAD A LONG CONE-LIKE BADGER FACE, BUT I THINK IT HAD A BUSHY TAIL. BUT I DON'T THINK THAT BADGERS HAVE BUSHY TAILS..."

I knew what it WASN'T - a cat. Regardless of how stoned my ass is I know, even on a subconscious level, I'm never going to mistake a cat for something else. ("BADGER!" LITERALLY CAME OUT OF NO WHERE. BEFORE I EVEN PROCESSED THE IMAGE THE WORD TUMBLED OUT.) The body and face just wasn't cat-like despite the tail that I thought I saw. So maybe it was a fox, but wouldn't a fox take a soup bone? The pair of foxes before made off with whatever they could get their little paws on, including old remains of chicken carcasses.

(No, no, not a fox. Don't even consider it because you'll just be disappointed and heartsick.)

Last night was a nocturnal wildlife stakeout. To entice a nighttime visitor an offering of leftovers (venison sausages and homemade yorkshire pudding) were placed at the foot of the sycamore tree (the large tree just outside the office/computer room window). And then? And then we waited, and I spent several hours gingerly peeking over the ledge of the window at any sound of rustling or movement outside.

It happened after midnight. Bitching about the internet's slow ass uploading speed I casually glanced towards the sycamore out of habit only to return my full attention to complaining about our broadband's dial-up speed a few seconds later. That's when it hit me, and I did a classic Scooby Doo double take. Something with white-ish, silvery, gray hair was outside (NOT. A. CAT.), partially obscured by a bag of leaves Mr. Awesome never bothered to dispose of.

"OHMYGODISTHATSOMETHING?" I asked Italics. We squinted, side by side, our faces pressed up against the cold glass. A shape - a robust, squat backside - was jutting out from behind the white bag of fallen leaves. With the room's light off you could see it more clearly amongst the fall foliage, but the identifying majority was, frustrating enough, still hidden behind the sack.

"I'LL GO OUTSIDE," Italics offered, speaking in caps lock because staking out nocturnal Scottish wildlife in your office is V. SRS BUSINESS. I stood in the darkness of the computer room, glasses on and eyes squinting, willing the animal to stay involved in whatever it was doing (EATING) to give Italics enough time to catch a glimpse of our mysterious visitor.

He said it was nasty dirty. As in, dirtballs and leaves stuck to its ass, its wet fur was peppered with organic debris. Its snout was discolored from mud, and its feet caked with damp earth. "HOLY SHIT, OH MY FUCKING GOD," I exclaimed when the startled animal barreled itself towards the side of the house, giving me an excellent view of a miniature black and white striped grizzly bear launching itself into a furious speed that would leave any (mere mortal) human weak in the knees.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have crows, rooks, magpies, and blackbirds, we have European robins (Hezbollah's friend), sparrows, martins, finches, starlings and tits. We have deer running in front of the house around midsummer, and once in autumn we had a pair of foxes eating Burger King and kielbasa out of Chippy's patio offering dishes. We have itsy tiny little Scottish mice, and crazily laid back hedgehogs who don't grudge me too much when I bring them indoors to pull out ticks and fly egg sacs while checking for any obvious wounds.

And now? And now we have a new member to our subdivision wildlife menagerie: Eurasian Badger.

Earthworms, apparently, make up at least 50% of a badger's diet, which explains the altar desecration (ripe with worms due to deliberately adding worm casts to the raised bed to help with the decomposition of the decapitated rabbit heads) and ALSO explains why it didn't actually TAKE any of the half-decayed heads (several were left just lying on the grass without so much as a mark), disturb the plastic bucket of rotting carcasses or bother nudging the hollowed out soup bone.

I straightened up what I could, using Shango's half coconut shell to "ladle" the partially rotted heads back into their altar grave, covering them with what little earth was leftover from the badger's foraging. The pumpkins - with still some structure - were placed onto the surface of the newly patted down space, positioned to at least partially cover a mound of two or three heads.

(A wasted, futile effort since the Shango Tree/Phallic Worship altar is a delectable buffet of worms, insects and maggots for visiting wildlife, but I was SO not up to burying rabbit heads in buckets of dirt at seven in the fucking morning when I was originally getting ready for bed when taking the collapsing pumpkins outside.)

JESUS EFFING CHRIST, WHY CAN'T I HAVE A DIVINE MALE ALTAR SPACE WITHOUT IT GETTING FUCKED UP, TRASHED OR RUINED? (I JUST FUCKING CLEANED THE SPACE UP, GODDAMMIT! {LOOK HOW FUCKING CLEAN IT WAS!} HOW LONG DID IT TAKE BEFORE IT WAS DECIMATED? TWO WEEKS? THREE?) IT'S LIKE GARBAGE, CHAOS AND AN AVALANCHE OF MESS IS ATTRACTED TO ANYTHING WITH A FUCKING DICK (EVEN IF IT'S A COSMIC ONE).

Opportunistic Neighborhood Cats

Filed under: LOL!

Too sore to make an offering of the bodies immediately after skinning, beheading and defooting them (SEVEN RABBITS + TWO HOURS OF INTENSE WORK SITTING ON A CONCRETE STEP = A V. UNHAPPY ASS) I decided to briefly lay the carcasses to rest in a black plastic bucket which I covered with a lid and left outside in the (back)yard to "air".

When I woke up the next morning I found the lid lying on the grass next to the bucket of exposed rabbits. "THAT'S WEIRD," I said, fitting the top back on, "IT'S NOT LIKE WE HAD WIND OR EVEN A BREEZE LAST NIGHT." Despite wanting to ritually dispose of the bodies ASAP I couldn't, so the rabbits spent another night in the yard with the lid firmly covering the bucket.

There was no wind or breeze that night, but the lid was, once again, on the ground the next morning. "THE FUCK? I'M MOVING THIS SHIT INTO THE BONSAI HOUSE," I declared, still working under the assumption of PHANTOM, MAGIC WIND. So the rabbits were moved outdoor-indoors and the lid was fitted - AGAIN - and the bucket'o'rabbits were left in a more secure place until I had the time to offer them properly.

(YOU TOTALLY KNOW WHERE THIS IS GOING, RIGHT?)

The next morning? I discover the top partially flipped off. "SOMETHING'S GETTING TO THE RABBITS," I announced, "BECAUSE I'VE MOVED THE BUCKET INDOORS INTO THE BONSAI HOUSE SO IT'S NOT THE WIND THAT'S BLOWING OFF THE LID." The rabbits, by this point, had a ripe bouquet, and the bloated, blackening bodies had begun oozing juices.

For nearly a week I played the bucket lid game, getting no closer to the mystery. And then? And then, on a day I went outside to do some serious gardening I caught one of the neighborhood cats - ONE OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD CATS WHO SHITS IN MY FUCKING BEETS AND TRAMPLES OVER THE SEEDLINGS, ONE OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD CATS WHO STALKS MY FUCKING SONGBIRDS AND KILLS THEM - with its head fully submerged in the black plastic bucket CHEWING ON A FUCKING RABBIT LEG (THE OPPORTUNISTIC BASTARD).

GODDAMMIT, CATS, I KNOW I'M //THE ONLY WITCH IN THE VICINITY// BUT THAT DOESN'T GIVE YOU LICENSE TO TREAT MY HOUSE AND YARD AS A PUBLIC FUCKING BATHROOM AND AN ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT BUFFET.

Catch and Release

Filed under: One A Day

They stealthily creep into the house late at night through open windows around this time of year. We watch them spin their webs in corners of room in the warmth of modern living, and eventually, after days weeks and months, the perfect gossamer threads become heavy with dust and debris and sag like old Halloween decorations turning our office/computer room into a Hammer horror movie.

Lammas 2009

Filed under: Life

This year's Lammas celebration in 54 pictures. (<- WITH EXPLANATIONS TO FOLLOW!)

Wild Raspberries & Blackbirds

Filed under: Menagerie

Hiking to the wild raspberries I found her on the gray asphalt, her body still warm and fluid. I held her limp form next to my heart, against my dead mother's flannel and stroked her downy head.

Construction workers paused to glance out car windows at the woman in the plaid flannel holding an empty wooden basket and a dead female blackbird against her chest, wandering down a slightly misty country lane by herself at six in the morning.

Buff-Tailed Bumblebee

Filed under: One A Day

A (worker) Buff-Tailed bumblebee visits my courgette flowers.

Nocturnal Teddy Bear

Filed under: One A Day

"OH, JESUS, SHE'S DRAGGING ME INTO THE HOUSE AGAIN." (<- You can tell he's male by his outie "belly button".)

A Tailor Made Hole

Filed under: Life

Across the street in the Murder House a family of tiny cheap-cheap birds have made their home behind an air vent leading into the attic. Through evergreen boughs I can see the hole the parents created in the lower right corner of the grate where they swoop out in sharp nosedives and fledglings, unsure, loiter around the opening, curious and wary of the world on the other side of slotted bars.

(The BLESS THIS HOME image's framed by feathery fronds of eternal summer, bobbing, bowing and trembling in the breeze, moving but never obscuring, shaking but never distracting. Alive, perfect, a living, breathing point of focus, funneling attention to the blemish in the horizontal pattern, a literal "hole in the wall" that's not always perfectly centered in nature's changing picture, but close enough to make a point - LOOK, WATCH, SEE, UNDERSTAND.)

Yesterday there was a frantic explosion of feathers and wings which fought against the damaged air vent. A fat puffball of down hovered an inch below the hole, beating its wings against the immovable barrier. After several long seconds of struggling it dropped - free falling from exhaustion - before finding the strength to spread its wings and fly to safety.

Sometimes it'd rest on the ceramic tiles of the roof. Sometimes it'd rest on the ceramic tiles of the porch. Sometimes it rest in neighboring trees. Sometimes it'd rest just inches below the hole to its home, clinging to the grooves and protrusions of the concrete and pebble siding. Despite the variants of sometimes, despite the recurring failure there was only one poignant "always" - it always tried again, despite all of the "sometimes".

"COME ON, BABY, YOU CAN DO IT, YOU CAN DO IT," I breathed into the office/computer room's window, fogging up the glass with my vocalized encouragement. I stood and offered imaginary hands for it to perch on. I stood and gently wrapped my hands around its desperate, fighting body to guide it into the hole. I stood and worried; wishing, guiding, encouraging, pushing and goading the baby bird. The only thing more relentless than its driven nature to survive was my will for it to succeed.

"Maybe it's too big to fit through the hole now," Italics wondered as we watched it struggle and fight, attempt and rest, the cycle never ending and never breaking.

Maybe it's too big to fit through the hole now never occurred to me. I spent an entire afternoon pacing and watching, worrying and "helping" and it never occurred to me, once, that I was forcibly pushing it into a hole that it just wouldn't fit through. All that time spent cheering was cheering for something futile, something that wasn't going to happen. (And if it DID happen - or even partially happened - it'd happen to the very possible detriment of the fledgling; and there I was forcing, pushing, jamming it on.)

Sometimes things just don't fit, and the solution isn't struggling and fighting under the pretense of "maybe, eventually" - it's creating a new hole, a tailor made hole, that fits //exactly//.

May 27th Walk

Filed under: Trespassing

It seems criminal to be sitting here, hammering out an entry when there's a perfect (bordering near FLAW-FUCKING-LESS) Friday evening outside with a robin egg colored sky and a warm-but-still breeze that breathes across the hairs of your arm.

(Soon - SOON! - will be the time for sunglasses and amphetamines, the bottom half of string bikinis (<- NO SHOULDER STRAP TAN LINES, THANKS, I'LL FORGO THE TOP AND BARE MY TITS TO THE NEIGHBORS) and Dire Strait LPs, hammocks, inflatable pools, barbecues, bonfires and sex beneath the The Shango (Bone) Tree - provided, of course, my father-in-law doesn't manage to kill ALL OF THE FUCKING GRASS again this year.)

I meant to keep the momentum of writing going, but then I got hit by my period and all of those wonderful intentions wrapped up in satiny bows got misplaced (or stolen and sold on the black market). I'm probably the last girl you'll ever hear complaining about her period (NO "I WISH I WAS A GUY" OR "STUPID FUCKING UTERUS, WHAT ARE YOU GOOD FOR, ANYWAY?"; LONG STORY SHORT? I DIG BEING FEMALE, I DIG HAVING MY SEXUAL REPRODUCTION ORGANS SHAPED LIKE A RAM'S HEAD, I DIG THE POWER, THE HORMONES, THE ENERGY, THE BLOOD - I TOTALLY DIG BEING FEMALE, PERIOD, THE END, THANK YOU) but this one - thanks to two previously light ones - was like being hit by a steam powered STRIPPING UTERINE LINING TRAIN.

I bled for five days non-stop, changing menstrual rags twice a day. I bled and cramped while curled up next to Catfish sleeping (our giant six foot Wal-Mart catfish pillow brought home to Scotland during our last trip to the States), I bled and cramped while standing in the shower washing my hair, I bled and cramped while cooking dinner, marching while standing still, lifting each foot just enough to trick my body into thinking I was actually walking. (<- WALKING = BEST THING TO DO WHILE WAITING FOR PAIN MEDICATION TO KICK IN TO COMBAT CRAMPS.)

INTERNETS, I AM WIPED OUT (AND, HOPEFULLY, SO IS MY WOMB). Physically and...well, actually, only physically, because everything else is pretty awesome-okay (or, at least, somewhere in between "awesome" and "okay"). For instance - FRESH, HOMEMADE RHUBARB PIE WITH SUMMER FRUITS (BLUEBERRIES, RASPBERRIES, BLACKBERRIES, RED AND BLACK CURRANTS) AND ORANGE FLOWER WATER? AWESOME! Having to share said FRESH, HOMEMADE RHUBARB PIE WITH SUMMER FRUITS (BLUEBERRIES, RASPBERRIES, BLACKBERRIES, RED AND BLACK CURRANTS) AND ORANGE FLOWER WATER with my in-laws? Just "okay".

Yesterday I spent three hours hard core gardening (hard core = continuing work in the first trench in the dirtyard; I've got permission to plant vegetables there this year, but I have to physically sift all debris, stones, pebbles and boulders from the dirt by hand and cut-break-snap tree roots in my way, otherwise my chthonic vegetables don't stand a chance). Just as I was about to retire - all dirted up and sun-kissed across the bridge of my nose and cheeks (A FACE TAN TO FINALLY MATCH MY CRESCENT MOON ASS TAN) - I figured I better check all of my seedlings and plants to make sure nothing needed to get watered.

And, OH SNAP, shit needed to get watered so the garlic was dowsed and the lilies of the valley were drenched and I offered water ("BEAR ME FRUIT, BEAR ME FRUIT, BEAR ME FRUIT") to The Shango (Bone) Tree and the two other fruit trees (an apple and another plum, I think). The peach tree and tobacco was checked, the peas prodded, and everything inside the bonsai house and outside on the patio was loved, touched and watered. (YOU NEED TO BE V. HANDS ON WITH PLANTS; THEY NEED TO KNOW THEY'RE LOVED!)

While watering my witch's garlic I noticed how overgrown the narrow stretch of dirt had become (we toss rat food leftovers out the office/computer room window so the birds are fed; unfortunately, since a lot of the leftovers are in seed form they happily root themselves below the window giving us a lush patch of rat food seed grass - LOL, THE ONLY HEALTHY GRASS IN THE ENTIRE YARD, SRSLY) so, fuck, since I was ALREADY muddy and sore and tired and damp it didn't matter if I got anymore muddy and sore and tired and damp and went to work on weeding the garlic bed.

(And it was still and cool and beautiful. Hidden in the shade of nearing twilight I knelt on damp earth and turned it up with my bare hands, the only sounds accompanying the tearing sound of plants-from-soil were the metallic pings from the freshly filled bird feeders as the cheep-cheeps came back for one last meal, and the bumbling, stumbling sound of a fattened bumblebee (BEH!) investigating everything but me as the heavy load of its body hugged the ground.)

That moment - with the pinging and the buzzing and the overwhelming smell of saturated, living earth - was Church, the sycamore's growing umbrella of green a breathing Byzantine cathedral. I prayed and didn't even know it, but there was something about that steady, contented silence that felt simultaneously like thanksgiving and hope. (And I wasn't even high! NOT EVEN, DEAR AND GENTLE READERS!)

"AGAIN!" tends to be my motto; experience taking precedent over thinking. (Thinking's for later, in winter, when I'm locked up indoors and have nothing better to do than be intro and retrospective.) But, SIGH, no, not again, because Saturday morning (tomorrow) is the farmer's market and I'm waking up in the evening (today was around 7:30 PM) which means I need to reserve energy to be able to spring out of the house in roughly twelve hours.

So, instead of gardening, instead of thinking (LOL, THINKING? BUT IT'S NEARLY SUMMER!), instead of writing I give you...

...

...

...

...another one of our patented early morning walks. (OKAY, OKAY, CALM DOWN, DON'T GET OVEREXCITED.) After being awake at night for about a week you begin getting itchy and the super awesome thing about living here in Scotland (at least where we're located) is that dawn begins to break around 2:30 AM in summer. So, by 3 AM - especially near the solstice - there's more than enough light to let you explore the countryside while the rest of the (local Scottish) world sleeps.

Italics celebrated his 29th birthday on Sunday (HE'S CAUGHT UP, I'M NO LONGER A CRADLE ROBBER! <- WE'RE BOTH MONKEYS, BUT I WAS BORN A MONTH EARLIER) and due to a retarded mix-up ("retarded mix-up" = I forgot to include the portions in the care packages of home baked goods I recently sent) there were five defrosted chunks of Ukrainian angel food cake (vanilla almond) that needed to be used and a 40oz bottle of cider that neither of us could bare to drink (way too acidic and carbonated; it set off both of our acid reflux issues just after one swig).

Unwanted cake and cider? Sounds like a perfect excuse to go leave celebratory offerings...

Something was DIFFERENT, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was. And then, right in mid-sentence, it hit me - LOL, WAIT, I DIDN'T PUT THAT MOTH ON MY ANTIQUE CRESCENT NECKLACE! (SAVE THE SILK!)

My mom's Elizabeth Arden "Treasures of the Pharaohs" hippo figure was the seed that sparked SEX PIG 2K; I worshiped the glossy white porcelain figure from afar as a kid (translation: IN THE CHINA CABINET, BUT NEVER TOUCHED OR HELD IN FEAR OF BREAKING IT). It was one of several things I managed to "inherit" when my mother died unexpectedly a few years ago.

Not only does it spiritually resonate with me (the entire hippo thang; which perfectly compliments Italics's crocodile thang), but, in a weird way, it makes me love my mother even more when I see it. (It's hard to remember the crazy, the angry, the everything when you're looking at something so simple, white and pure - it's like seeing the best of my mom.)

I couldn't find any indigenous folklore about Brimstone moths, but they apparently love rowan and we have a single rowan tree that marks our side of the crossroads we live on. (I've been hacking either rowan or sycamore roots; all of the pieces have been kept since I figure you can do something MAGIC with roots the width of bean poles - CHTHONIC ROWAN BROOM, ANYONE?)

I've only worn the crescent necklace once; it was one of those split second, spontaneous decisions. It was worn with the rest of my ritual jewelry, my favorite ass-hugging jeans, my magic grey long sleeve shirt, my wedding dress (a Scottish apron that I wore when we performed last years GREAT RITE / SACRED MARRIAGE / HIEROS GAMOS ritual) and my black leather jacket when we went reaping last year during Harvest's lunar eclipse. (MORE ON THAT LATER!)

"LET'S GO FOR A WALK," I suggested, out of no where, staring at the Brimstone moth. It was still dark - inky black with a faint crack of cerulean blue where the sun would rise in a few hours - perfect for catching some wildlife still out and about before early commuters began their weekly cycle of wake-work-sleep.

When the rural town we live in began seriously encroaching on the countryside the occupants of the new houses began using abandoned fields to walk their dogs. After several years walkers have beaten in a path that loops around a cairn and several fields passing hillsides that were once filled with endless gorse bushes and giant foxgloves.

Sections of old stone walls have been removed and two corners of the field - the two split by a gravel road leading up to a farm - have been disturbed. There are piles of gravel and stacks of plastic irrigation pipes and the beaten path has been flanked with flags on wooden stakes; looks like the council has finally decided to make a permanent path for walkers and their dogs and create two small parking lots to discourage people from parking on the side of the road.

My father-in-law, Mr. Awesome, believes himself to be an expert bullshit artist. We feign ignorance and play along, only because it's easier to go "YEAH, RIGHT, UH HUH" absently while periodically nodding your head in faux agreement. (NO, SERIOUSLY. I'VE WITNESSED A "CONVERSATION" BETWEEN ITALICS AND HIS FATHER THAT LASTED TEN MINUTES AND THE ONLY THING ITALICS EVER SAID - THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE DURATION OF THE ONE-SIDED INTERACTION - WAS A DISMISSIVE "UH HUH".)

Mr. Awesome alerted us to the fact that a new building scheme was going up, that they were going to put houses where people walk their dogs. You know, the place where the council's outlined the beaten track with flags - like they do with every other path they create and pave in the shire - and carved out two small parking lot sized plots right next to the street. The same two fields were rocks have been deliberately removed from the stone wall to provide access into the carved out plots of land, where piles of gravel are sitting (to use instead of asphalt or concrete) next to a handful of pipes to irrigate the to-be flattened, graveled patch of land.

"Uh huh," we said, in unison, his father speaking to both of our backs as we pretended to be inordinately interested in the dinner we were preparing. "Uh huh," we said, a day earlier having seen an official posting at the community hall saying that the building scheme that had been planned - something I was personally angsting about - was withdrawn and not to be pushed forward (thank you, recession, thank you!).

"Uh huh," we said, thinking "what a fucking oblivious retard."

Just as we began passing the disturbed children's home (boarded up and no longer in use, but still being maintained in the hopes that one day it can be reopened for the benefit of children) I caught a flash of white bobbing in our wheat field ("our wheat field" = the wheat field where we performed the Reaping ritual last year).

It was, honest to all that's fucking holy, the first deer I've seen locally since first moving here in 2001. (I now LOLOLOL! at my memories of white tailed deer eating so non-chalantly next to O'hare airport when driving in to pick Italics up from the airport or drop him off.)(OH, THE OLD DAYS WHERE EVERY FEW MONTHS THERE'D BE A TEARFUL DEPARTING, WAITING AND DREAMING ABOUT THE DAY WE'D FINALLY BE TOGETHER WITH NO ATLANTIC OCEAN BETWEEN US.)

Deer are sacred to The Old Woman (the Cailleach), and I think I've read that the ancient, primitive deer priestess cults were somehow connected to Her. (WORKS FOR ME, YO. GIVE ME SOME DRUGS, A WEAPON, AND I'LL HAPPILY GO RITUALLY HUNTING SO I CAN KILL, WEEP, SKIN AND THROW A FLAYED, STILL WARM HIDE OVER MY NAKED BODY WHILE ROLLING ON THE GROUND ALL EXORCIST-STYLE. <- Oh honey, yes, I'm THAT sort've witch.)

"I wonder if it'll run through the threshold," I mused, the "threshold" being a cleared section of a stone wall running through the middle of the wheat field - the place where, a few months ago, I declared we should finish our WEDDING RITE. (I mean, JESUS, what could be MORE MAGIC than having ritual fertility sex IN THE THRESHOLD OF A "DOOR"? PRETTY DAMN MAGIC.)

A minute or two later - just long enough to be comical - it darted through the gap, racing up the incline of the field towards Rabbit Hill. (YEAH, YEAH, I GET IT, I GET IT. NIGHTTIME MOTH ON MY CRESCENT REAPING NECKLACE, A DEER RACING THROUGH OUR PROPOSED MARTIAL BED - "FOR FUCK'S SAKE! GET IT ON, GET IT OVER WITH!" DEMANDS THE UNIVERSE. <- We still haven't had "proper" sex; we've been saving that for SEX IN THE FIELD, so Hieros Gamos / the Great Rite has been only half finished since Easter Sunday - ASS FINISHED!)

The local cemetery at dawn. The new section's contained behind the wall; everything in front is much, much older. The row of trees in the background - the super huge ones in the distance - are the ancient beech trees that create the hedgerow where the stone "stove" is. Just behind the trees is our wheat field.

The flat, risen grave is our makeshift bench and cemetery sex bed. Unfortunately, it's too dark to see, but there's a weathered skull and crossbones carved into the stone beneath the top. (IF YOU CLICK ON THE IMAGE ABOVE I'VE HIGHLIGHTED WHERE IT IS; YOU CAN JUST MAKE OUT SOME OF THE CROSSBONES.)

Sister Mary Cabrini's still holding on to her resurrection egg. (For the full story hit up my previous journal entry 2009 PYSANKY which explains the entire egg thing a lot better.) I wonder what visiting relatives or fellow sisters must've thought the first time they saw the hard boiled egg sitting at the foot of the cross. (Which reminds me - I've still got a wee lavender that I've been meaning to plant at her grave for the past two years, BETTER GET THAT SHIT DONE, DUDE.)

No one there except for us, birds, rabbits and the recently (and not so recently) deceased. It's a beautiful, still quiet that's shared between us and the wildlife - Scotland at dawn, twenty-two days before the summer solstice.

Wild rabbits in the cemetery. (REINCARNATION, RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE DEATH CYCLE, ANYONE?) If the birds don't get to our graveyard offerings first, the rabbits have a picnic. (The shot's so blurred because Italics had to zoom in super crazy to be able to get a picture of the rabbit cutting through the rows of graves.)

OH HEY, AS IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY GOTTEN YOUR FILL OF BLURRED RABBIT IMAGES! This one was taken on the way back as we passed the beech hedge. Next time we go out for one of our morning walks I'll staple my detached rabbit tail so I can blend in with the locals. ("I AM YOUR RABBIT MESSIAH, THROUGH ME I WILL BRING YOU AND YOUR LAGOMORPHA BRETHREN EVERLASTING LIFE!")

While Italics was having a slash behind the disturbed children's home I made friendly with the neighboring cows until I was scolded for arousing suspicion.

(Some people aren't as respectful as we are of the home; recently it's been broken into several times by kids who get drunk (OH LOOK, ANOTHER BROKEN BOOZE BOTTLE, AWESOME!), wrench the boards off windows and smash whatever they can get their hands on. For obvious reasons we don't want people thinking that we're the vandalism culprits so we try to keep our presence under the radar.)

(IF WE DIDN'T LEAVE CANDY AT HALLOWEEN AND PRESENTS AT CHRISTMAS FOR THE KIDS, WHO WOULD?)

I don't have kids and don't have any experience with them, but if they're anything like wildlife then I know they can be bribed with food. (WHO WOULDN'T WANT A DEAD ARMY OF DISTURBED CHILDREN TO DO THEIR BIDDING?) Every once in a while we visit the home to leave offerings of food and water for the girls and boys.

Pictured above is a piece of Ukrainian angel food cake moistened with flat alcoholic cider. (RIGHT, OKAY, I KNOW THAT MAYBE GIVING DISTURBED CHILDREN ALCOHOL ISN'T EXACTLY KOSHER, BUT, FUCK, IT'S NOT LIKE I GAVE THEM A PACK OF MATCHES, OR SOMETHING.) Papa's bird (blackbirds), the ever ready opportunist, has already found the cake sitting on the door step. (I'VE SAID IT ONCE, AND I'LL SAY IT AGAIN - WHERE THERE'S FOOD, THERE'S PAPA.)

Clearer images of the whole house can be found on my Flickr photostream here, here and here.

Why waste words on something that doesn't need any? EXACTLY. (All photos within this entry were taken by Italics; if it isn't at a weird, close-up artsy angle than you know it's him behind the camera.)

NOTES TO SELF: Carried back two recently cut logs from children's home for solstice bonfire. Italics found a denim kid's hat near the dog walking fields with a crocodile on the label. (<- OOO, MAGIC SPECIAL!)

Cycle of the Sycamore

Filed under: Menagerie

It's official, we're parents! Well, okay, maybe adopted parents, or, uh, legal guardians, or something. ("Or something" = "suckers who fill up three separate bird feeders every other day providing an all-you-can-eat 24/7 buffet for pint-sized cheep-cheep birds"; yeah, we're pushovers - even the crows know how to get table scraps out of me.)

Just as I was getting ready for bed (I'm currently up at night and going to sleep around eight in the morning) I saw it - all puffed up with baby fluff and giving every bird that passed it a narrowed look of MAJOR CRANKYPANTS. ("Are you my Mommy? No? Are you going to feed me, anyway? No? FUCK YOU, THEN! Are you my...")

A baby! A round ball of feathers and fat! A BABY! A teeny tiny beak that cranked open whenever another bird - regardless of species, although they were all small since it was breakfast time for the little cheep-cheeps - came in close proximity. (OUR baby! Fed and nurtured with food we've provided all year long.) I nearly melted into a sleepy pool of "awwww!" (so much for my title of QUEEN BITCH DESTROYER, right?).

There's a sycamore outside our office window which I've been fighting to keep. (When Mr. Awesome gets bored with something he chops it down; there isn't any REAL reason why he wants to kill the tree outside our office/computer room window other than sheer boredom, and I'm not about to let someone who's otherwise abandoned and ignored the garden for 10+ years make major decisions that'll affect me and the local wildlife I've worked on attracting. IT AIN'T HAPPENING, YO, THE CRAZY BITCH DAUGHTER-IN-LAW HAS SPOKEN.)

In Fall I listen to the howl of The Old Woman as her breath tears through dozing branches and rips withered leaves from stems. In Fall I watch the whirlwind of crackling leaves sweep off the ground and into the air, tumbling across asphalt and concrete and covering the ground below; a forecast, a premonition of what's to come.

(Sparrows and Wren flutter on the ground like animated leaves, partially camouflaged in the new layer of wizened foliage from the sycamore, looking, hunting and finding the last of the insects before easy, free food disappears for a season and a half.)

In Winter I stand breathless at the window altar in the middle of the night, watching a black sky turn violet as the first reflective flakes of frozen lace drift aimlessly in the sharp air. In Winter I kneel at the holy altar of Death and Sleep, the sycamore barren and bony, fiberglass snow tracing branches and stems outlining a skeletal mirage on the living and sleeping.

(Robins, with their red breasts, flutter from branch to branch, singing and calling on still mornings, when the only sound beside their territorial calls is the steady, static crunch of snow falling.)

In Spring I celebrate the tight buds of growth - crowns of leaves shrink wrapped into tight, little bullets, waiting for the trigger pull and explosion of cordite. In Spring the world celebrates as the warming breeze rustles through waking branches, rain and wind stimulating tiny, oval clitoral buds as crocuses and snowdrops blanket the ground in a living, breathing carpet of wedding flowers as The Old Woman regresses and becomes The Virgin Bride.

(Blackbirds, with their dipping tails, jump from branch to branch excitedly, replacing the Robin's fragile hope of Spring with a robust and optimistic promise of Spring as they race along the tender shoots of my witch's garlic looking for moss to pad their nests-in-progress.)

In Summer...well, in Summer I take the season off because, Jesus, I've already spent three quarters of the year celebrating something. (A GIRL NEEDS SOME TIME OFF, ESPECIALLY WHEN "DEATH" AND "WINTER" IS SORT'VE HER THING.) In Summer the sycamore opens like an umbrella, obscuring everything within behind a thick cloak of green and I forget about the bird feeder hidden behind the downy cover of leaves but rediscover it, later on, when the leaves begin to thin and curl, exposing, once again, the endless cycle of the sycamore - a home, an altar, a church, a symbol.

(...HE IS SO TOTALLY NOT CUTTING IT DOWN. EVER.)

Arctic River

Filed under: Life

This Spring's been an arctic river overflowing with winter run-off. Fast moving, non-negotiable waters thunder past my legs pushing, pulling and sweeping me away with the charging current. There's no use fighting the tidal wave of lightening movement, so I haven't tried. (No struggling means freedom, even when lost amongst the tumbling chaos, and with my attention undistracted I can almost catch all of the beautiful, awe inducing gems the season's hidden away just for me.)

(IN OTHER WORDS, I'VE BEEN SO GODDAMN BUSY FOR THE PAST THREE WEEKS DUE TO SPRING RELATED ACTIVITIES THAT I'VE HAD TO RELY ON MY BRAND NEW BIRTHDAY CAMERA AS A DIARY.)

Late last year I stole a narrow stretch of waste ground where I loosened the earth and haphazardly planted over three heads of garlic. (I didn't think it'd work, but it DID.) Very early in February there were suspicious shoots popping up in a semi-neat row, and now, at the very end of April, this is what it looks like. Next year? Next year I'll try even //harder//. (Any more effort than I originally expended would already be an improvement. Srsly.)

No signs of scrapes yet. (Once the garlic is ready to flower it grows out a tentacle - the scrape - which'll eventually blossom. To encourage bulb growth you need to cut the scrape before it flowers so the energy is diverted below.) But, baby, once those fuckers pop up it'll be garlic scrape pesto time...

Sections of Aberdeen were built on a hill, so a part of it slopes down at a slow angle and is only disturbed by stairs and old buildings. Wild city rabbits live in any patch of green (along roadsides, next to towering blocks of apartments and in cemeteries) and as we were cutting through lanes and streets and alleys to get to our dinner reservation, we saw that the rabbits had already beaten us to Sunday dinner.

I always feel stupidly disappointed when wild animals don't respond to my ANIMAL SPEAK. (ANIMAL SPEAK = PURSING LIPS TOGETHER AND SUCKING AIR IN JUST A LITTLE TO MAKE A SQUEAKING SOUND.) Italics and I have spent years developing ANIMAL SPEAK since our first pair of rats, Ann and Nancy (after Heart, although Nancy was the one who got fat out of the pair).

Animal Speak gets used when I want to attract the attention of the rats (they know it's my COME HERE RIGHT NOW or FOOD PEOPLE HAS FOOD or I WANT TO SEE YOUR LITTLE RAT FACES voice), but it'll also work on wild animals - they cock their head, blink and then give you a straight up WHAT THE FUCK? expression.

Last year we celebrated the winter solstice by renting a hotel room and staying in town overnight. (Aberdeen's roughly 15 minutes away from us; we're in a subdivision in the shire where it's mostly rural.) Even though we were running late we took a few minutes in the privacy of the alley to take some pictures.

(AND WHEN I SAY "TAKE SOME PICTURES" I MEAN, "GET HIGH BEFORE EATING A RIDICULOUS AMOUNT OF CHINESE FOOD AND, ALSO, TAKE SOME PICTURES".)

The above picture was taken mid-April (spring!), and THIS HERE PICTURE was taken mid-December (winter!); both show Marischal College's tower erupting in the background.

In the few instances we've used the stairs as a shortcut we were always on schedule for something. This past trip, however, we were running early so we were able to loiter more leisurely around ancient brick and stone.

While Italics was trying to get our pipe working (JOINTS ARE NICE IN A SUPERFICIAL VISUAL WAY, BUT WASTEFUL - AND, ALSO, I DON'T LIKE MY FINGER SMELLING LIKE CIGARETTES) I noticed, for the first time, that there was writing on the wall.

(I have NO idea what it means, but Aberdeen's known for keeping crazy ass insane records, so it should be easy to find out the history behind the engravings.)

I don't know anything about this church other than it's OLD, OLD, OLD (you can tell by the structure of the buildings attached to it, and the look of the building materials) and IT'S ANOTHER ABERDEEN CHURCH (you guys would not believe how many fucking churches there are in the city). I haven't made my way up to visit it, but I do intend to...eventually. (To see the church at night in winter click on THIS HERE LINK.)

I chose this little Italian cafe place for my belated birthday dinner. Despite being absolutely desperate for a pizza (I'VE TOLD ITALICS V. BLATANTLY AND WITHOUT ANY SUBTLETY THAT I'M WILLING TO PROVIDE SEXUAL FAVORS FOR A REALLY FUCKING GOOD PIZZA; YOU JUST CAN'T GET THE PIZZA I WANT HERE IN SCOTLAND) I saw that they served veal Marsala and my Evil Queen heart (I ALSO WEAR FUR. THAT'S RIGHT - I EAT VEAL AND WEAR FUR AND ADMIT TO BOTH; CRUCIFY OR WORSHIP ME AS YOU PLEASE.) skipped a beat and all notion of pizza was gone.

Italics, either up for the challenge or hoping to fill the pizza void in my Chicago-born heart, ordered a calzone. The picture above does absolutely no justice to the sheer size of the fucking monster; that plate could fit a decapitated head on it easily - EASILY. My veal? A little tough due to being overcooked, but the Marsala sauce was exquisite. Their cured meats (our starter) were terrific, but the Tiramisu was only so-so (they put a layer of jam, or something, through the dessert, but it tasted like apricot-flavored petroleum jelly at best, and apricot-flavored toothpaste gel at worst).

The coffee? To fucking die for. (It was seriously the star of the evening.)

By the time we saw a movie, walked up from the beach, had dinner and returned back to the hotel it was edging just past nine in the evening. I had to keep a straight face while gnawing on a inner cheek when I noticed that our hotel neighbors opposite of us, despite having two trash cans in the room, decided to discard their take-away garbage in the hall.

(LOL, CLASSY! I ESPECIALLY LOVE HOW THEY HUNG THE "DO NOT DISTURB" SIGN. OH, POOR PEOPLE, YOU'RE AN ENDLESS SOURCE OF DISGUSTED AMUSEMENT FOR ME. PS: THIS PICTURE'S BLURRED BECAUSE I FORCED ITALICS TO GO BACK OUTSIDE AND TAKE A PICTURE AND AS HE WAS DOING SO ONE OF THE OCCUPANTS BEGAN OPENING THEIR ROOM DOOR.)

Italics didn't know that I packed away my blond wig, a pair of knee high socks and my cheerleader outfit for fun later that night. I posed, for a second, in his semi-new sort've Indiana Jones BUT NOT REALLY jacket, and the whole cheerleader thing went out the window. (FIGURATIVELY, I MEAN. DO YOU KNOW HOW EXPENSIVE NICE WIGS ARE? JESUS.)

After dinner entertainment was wearing my husband's jacket and nothing else (WAIT, I TAKE THAT BACK - I WAS STILL WEARING A BRA!) and the "movie" mode on our recently retired digital camera. (I was feeling the affects of the coffee - even though it had been a decaf - so I needed a visit from THE FIREMEN to soothe the affects of GERD. <- LAUGH NOW, BUT WAIT UNTIL YOUR OVERLY ACIDIC STOMACH IS IN DIRE NEED OF A SHOT OF SOMETHING ALKALINE TO CALM IRRITATION.)

This is a shot of Union Street running down into Castlegate (the smaller, secondary looking castle in the middle of the picture) in downtown Aberdeen taken by Italics the morning after our belated birthday celebrations. (IT STARTED WITH HIS JACKET, AND ENDED WITH A CHIPPER AND A BAG OF MALTEASERS IN BED.)

Aberdeen, to the naked eye, appears to have been built around a church (St. Nicholas) and its graveyard. This is a picture of the more formal entrance to the kirkyard which is used as a thoroughfare and public park. (I've never seen people so happily sit on green cemetery grass like they were visiting a botanic garden until St. Nicholas.)

"Marischal College is a building in the Scottish city of Aberdeen belonging to the University of Aberdeen. It was formerly an independent university in its own right. A significant portion of the building is currently leased on a long-term basis to Aberdeen City Council for office space. As well as being the tallest building in Aberdeen, it is also the second largest granite building in the world."

Oh, Wiki, you're a blessing to this lazy shell of a human being! (View right outside the newest Starbucks in town.)

Since the St. Nicholas kirkyard is in the center of the city, it's one of the best semi-private places to have a joint before galloping off to diner. Our preferred spot is near Mr. Alex Fullerton, Druggist, which is wonderfully aged and picturesque on gloriously sunny days. (LOLOLOL, I KNOW. WE ONLY REALIZED THE "DRUGGIST" PART SORT'VE RECENTLY.)

When a friend who's involved in medicine and health care requested some graveyard dirt I immediately knew whose grave the dirt was coming off of. (NOTE TO SELF: In return you left one of the red-dyed Easter eggs (Ukrainians, in the olden days, left red eggs at the graves of ancestors and friends to encourage reincarnation and resurrection) and a gold foiled chocolate coin.)

This is the infamous dirtyard, post-crocus season. (IT HAS SERIOUSLY SAT LIKE THIS FOR OVER THREE YEARS NOW.) I took this picture just before I went to work with a flattened box of cereal and a spade to mark the strip where I intended to plant carrots and beets. Unfortunately, the street extends too far beneath the soil so some of the chthonic vegetables I wanted to grow in the dirtyard (carrots!) will have to be planted elsewhere.

Last year my father-in-law, Mr. Awesome, threw away all of my spring bulbs that Italics had given me as a gift. (IN THIS HOUSE, HE GETS TO DECIDE WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR THINGS.) He never apologized or acknowledged that he had thrown away another gift (or ashes that belonged to my mother, or an anniversary gift I was making for Italics, or...) so Italics stepped in and bought me another round of bulbs.

"Richly coloured tulip of burnt orange-red with petal edges of yellow-gold."

One of my favorite parts of Spring is watching the giant, almost unbelievable changes that seem to happen overnight. One day tulips are tight, pursed buds; the next they've unfurled with a gasp for fresh air. Transformations always seem so immediate during the season of renewal.

Oh, nasty ass Starlings, I love how you don't give a fuck about me even if I'm outside doing gardening work next to your bird food. (Nothing comes between you and the food I put out for you guys, NOTHING.)

When planting out CASTLE PIE ADVENTURE Spring flowers last fall (grape hyacinths, dwarf irises, dwarf tulips, tulips and daffodils) I discovered a handful of mysterious bulbs hidden deep within a dirt filled container. I rescued them (they were buried too deep to properly sprout, Christ only knows how long they've just sat in that plastic bucket) and relocated them to the container with my Finnish poppies. This Spring solved the mystery; they're Narcissus, and they smell like heaven.

Whenever I cook with Italics there's always a fifty percent chance of ass.

(This is our third batch of Cowboy Bread (sort've like a flour tortilla meets pita bread) - THE BEST YET! - after its first rise. Italics is dividing the dough into eight smaller portions so after the second rise we can roll them out and "bake" them in a skillet.)

The Cowboy Bread's risen twice, rolled out and then pan-fried in olive oil until golden spots appear. (We made two super huge ones - the size the recipe suggests - and then halved the other portions so they were more pita than giant, fluffy flour tortillas.)

Once cooked-baked-fried you shove the flat bread(s) into a ziploc bag, or cover them with a damp towel, so the steam keeps them soft and pliable. (We never got around to artfully arranging them on a plate for SRS FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY because all we wanted to do was tear into the fuckers and shovel hummus into our mouths.)

Shango blossoms on the Shango (Bone) Tree. (Technically, Mr. Awesome (my father-in-law) owns the tree, but I adopted it a few years back and have been gradually and systematically exerting control over it.)

Two years ago - the first REAL year I started getting V. serious about all of this magic business - the Shango Tree (a plum tree), bore fruit. Thanks to everyone's complete disinterest in the the garden I was able to secretly reap the reward and ritually consumed the tree-ripened plums without having to share.

I was so swept up in foraging hedonism that I didn't occur to me to KEEP THE FUCKING PITS SO I COULD GROW NEW SHANGO (BONE) TREES FROM SEED. I kicked myself for fucking MONTHS for discarding the pits and anxiously waited for the next growing season to roll around. And what did the tree do last year? NOT FLOWER, OBVIOUSLY. (No flowers = no fruit; no fruit = no seeds; no seeds = no new Shango (Bone) Trees.)

I spent all of last year coaxing it to flower (everything from leaving offerings of food, watering it by hand almost every other day, laying my hands on the tree and giving it some Barry White vocal love) this year, and all of that effort paid off. (Although it would've been A LOT MORE AWESOME if the Shango (Bone) Tree hadn't decided to stick out the ONE FLOWERING BRANCH IT PRODUCED like a fucking flasher with an erection. <- WAY TO ATTRACT MR. AWESOME'S ATTENTION, S(B)T! WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SUBTLE MAGIC? JESUS.)

I can't remember a time when Scotland wasn't washed with some sort of green. Even in winter the wild azaleas and mosses and lichen and holly trees retain their vibrant colors. It takes late Spring to alter my perception of "green".

We're on route to the cemetery and stove to leave belated Easter offerings, passing pasture land, green wheat fields and weathered stone walls. With every new walk to the kirkyard the landscape gets more green and alive.

There's a hedge of ancient beeches that outline an entire side of pasture which touches the crumbling wall that runs in front of the ruined church (with the abandoned walled garden in the background) and the back of the local cemetery. Discarded in the line of trees is this old water trough (or at least that's what I //think// it is) which we call "the stove".

Even though the metal's rusted and old the hinge and latch work perfectly, which allowed me to safely hide roadkill (a rabbit, fresh and in near pristine condition) last autumn when we were stealing potatoes out of a local potato field. (I didn't want to bang up the rabbit while we scrambled over walls and frantically dug up potatoes from an agricultural field at six in the morning.)

There comes a point, every year around Spring, where non-perishable food offerings begin taking over the house. When we begin feeling claustrophobic we know it's time to visit "the stove" and leave the offerings to their Fate*; we've been doing that for two or three years now.

(* IN OTHER WORDS - WE LEAVE IT FOR OUR ANCESTORS, BUT KNOW THAT THE INDIGENOUS WILDLIFE WILL ALSO BE ENJOYING THE SPREAD.)

This Easter season, while I was flipping through one of my Ukrainian cookbooks, I stumbled across a passage explaining several ancient customs Ukies observed around Easter. Apparently, long ago, food was deliberately left IN A STOVE as an offering to feed and sustain ancestors, relatives and friends who have passed on. (WE ARE SO ON THE BALL WITH SOME OF THIS SHIT THAT SOMETIMES IT SCARES ME.)

(NOTE TO SELF: This is the first year you put individual Paska/Babka for loved ones who died since last Easter (i.e., Hezbollah, Beh and Didi) in the stove rather than at the cairn in the cemetery.)

It took until LAST FUCKING YEAR for me to even notice there was a wild gooseberry bush growing in the ruins of the church. By the time I realized what the shrub was the berries were the size of quail eggs. (I AM SO NOT JOKING IN THE SLIGHTEST; THIS BUSH HAS GOT SOME SERIOUS JUNK ON IT.)

Unfortunately, I was hella, hella sick last year (bedridden due to symptoms and ailments that's baffled the medical community and put me in the very familiar category of "atypical") so by the time I was well enough to leave the house the animals had enjoyed every ball-sized gooseberry and left none for me, SIGH.

(Behind the bush you can see one of the walls and doors of the abandoned wall garden directly behind the ruins of the small church.)

When I was a kid and running naked through Midwestern waste fields and woodlands I could name almost every flowering plant I ran across. Finding something totally new felt like discovering new species of previously unidentified vegetated life.

That excitement and drive totally disappeared around the time I started high school, but resurfaced recently (just over ten years later) the deeper I got into indigenous folklore. If I haven't misidentified it, this is Green Alkanet (in the same family as good ole Borage) and it grows rampant in the space between the NEW OLD CRUMBLING WALL and the OLD OLD NOT SO CRUMBING WALL.

Until last year it was an absolute mystery where they were burying the majority of the recently deceased. As it turns out, what I thought was a community football pitch was the new section of the cemetery. (There aren't a lot of headstones, and they're way, way in the far corner of the very long stretch of land. Until you're physically in the open space it's difficult to tell there are bodies actually buried there.)

This was post-stove and pre-cairn, just before we hopped over the road and had lunch in an open meadow beneath an oak tree. Two fields and a line of trees over you can see a man-made loch created a very long time ago.

The stone wall neatly bordering the graves in the background is the wall that separates the cemetery from the pasture field which touches the hedge of beech trees and ruined church. This is the new portion of the old cemetery, where Muriel and the nun are buried.

Our visit to the kirkyard had to be quick on this occasion because hired help were mowing the lawn. (HOW AWESOME OF A JOB IS THAT? MOWING THE VELVETY SOFT LAWN OF AN ANCIENT SCOTTISH CEMETERY ON A GLORIOUS SPRING DAY? HOLY SHIT, DUDE, WHERE DO //I// SIGN UP FOR THAT GIG?)

I HAVE NOT HAD "NORMAL" SEX SINCE FUCKING MARDI GRAS. When the GREAT RITE was celebrated it was celebrated IN MY ASS, so since Easter Sunday we've been joking that I'm only half married (OR PERHAPS "ASS MARRIED"?) and that I'll remain only partially married until ACTUAL VAGINAL PENETRATION IS MADE.

Because I'm so good at making things difficult I suggested we wait to have "normal" sex until we can have sex in the same wheat field where we reaped last year for the first time. (IT MAKES SENSE, RIGHT? IF I'M REAPING AND HARVESTING THE FRUIT, I BETTER BE FERTILIZING THE LAND TOO, YO.)

Content with the half he married (THE ASS HALF, IN CASE YOU'VE FORGOTTEN) he agreed, so we're now just waiting for the right moment (i.e., WHEN WE HAVE POT, WHEN IT'S DRY AND WHEN IT'S DARK ENOUGH) to finish the rite we started on April 12th.

(My idea is to have sex in the space between the two wooden posts, effectively performing Hieros Gamos on and in the threshold of a "door". If not there there's always an unused water trough right next to it...)

The very first local Spring lambs we saw were a pair of black kids. (Ever since Imbolc I've been meaning to leave an offering of oats to the lactating sheep but I never got a chance.) (LAMBS HAVE A PECULIAR AVERSION TO FACTORY PRODUCED STRAWBERRY-FLAVORED MARSHMALLOWS. I, UH, READ THAT SOMEWHERE ON THE NET, OR SOMETHING.)

OH, SKELETON ZOMBIE I WANTED TO TAKE YOU HOME WITH ME, OR AT LEAST TAKE YOU TO SEE A MOVIE. (BUT IT'S PROBABLY GOOD THAT I DIDN'T SINCE MONSTERS VERSUS ALIENS, EVEN IN 3-D, WAS SHOCKINGLY SHIT, EVEN WHEN REALLY, REALLY HIGH.)

I think they must've recently painted and decorated the Haunted Mansion because I don't remember it ever looking so fresh and new. (ONE OF THESE DAYS I'LL FORCE ITALICS TO BUY SIX TOKENS SO I CAN SEE WHAT THE HAUNTED MANSION'S ALL ABOUT.)

I wish I could remember more of this day. I know we saw two movies (I Love You Man and Monsters Versus Aliens), I know we went out to eat (Jack Daniel's Monterey Burger at TGI Friday's) and I know we visited the shoreline twice to get high (once before eating and once again before the second movie).

I also know that I realized something, or said something, or Italics said something - THERE WAS SOMETHING THAT SEEMED OBVIOUS - but now I can't remember what IT was. ("Zoe" was scribbled into the sand, which, if I remember right, means "life" in Greek, and seeing the name/word and even being able to translate it somehow felt significant.)

I poured fresh water on wet, salty sand as an offering, and it left the impression of a dick with balls. Cruelly, the camera's battery died just before I was able to secure a picture of my sand cock. (OH, MAGIC, SOMETIMES YOU JUST DON'T WANT TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED.)

This is my fat little bizza bear, Shoney, who's pretty sure that my camera might be food. (DON'T TELL HER IT ISN'T, OTHERWISE SHE MIGHT NOT BOTHER SITTING STILL THE NEXT TIME I SHOVE IT IN HER FACE.)

OH, BEGGAR RAT SISTERS, LOOKING FOR A FOOD HANDOUT WHILE LOITERING IN MY COMPUTER DESK. (My lap's the bridge between two hollowed out spaces in my desk so there's constant rat traffic streaming back and forth when there's a suspicion of food.)

The trio of rats we have now - Wuzza (Denny's), Choney (Shoney's) and Shakey (Shakey's Pizza) - are damn near impossible to take pictures of. All the other generations of rat roommates we had managed to sit still longer than three seconds which allowed us to build a library of photos. These guys? They've been restricted to "movie" mode on the camera because they're always just a blur of motion in anything remotely resembling a picture.

Within a day of noticing that I turned over earth in the dirtyard to possibly plant some carrots and beets Mr. Awesome drove through the dirt with a car leaving two very distinct tire marks across the strip of land I had marked in the soil.

We've had the dirtyard for years. (AND WHEN I MEAN "YEARS" I MEAN "AT LEAST THREE, PROBABLY FOUR".) After several years of no obvious intent I decided if I can't plant grass I might as well make use of the available dirt and grow some vegetables. After several years of no obvious intent my father-in-law suddenly DROVE OVER THE EXACT SPOT WHERE I HAD BEGUN MAKING A ROW FOR BEETS. (Should I take that as a hint?)

The thing about this NEW DRIVEWAY he's created is that UP UNTIL THIS POINT - THE POINT WHERE I MADE AN OBVIOUS MOVE TO CLAIM SOME UNUSED DIRT - HE'S NEVER, EVER DRIVEN OVER WHAT IS, EFFECTIVELY, THE FRONT YARD.

I don't know what's changed, if he's acting out or if it was a honest necessity when he found he couldn't maneuver any other way out of the driveway. At any rate, it isn't exactly an auspicious start to my adventure into creating a dirtyard vegetable patch.

You know to expect some MAN BEHAVIOR when your husband helps you with the Spring gardening. I was instructed to sit still as Italics ran for the camera to document how perfectly he dropped a Sharpie down my pants on his first try. (OH HEY, I'M WEARING UNDERWEAR FOR ONCE! EVEN IF IT IS A PAIR OF BOXERS.)

Oh, we do horrible, awful things to our Lindt Easter bunnies. This white chocolate one, for instance, graced our Easter basket this year which was blessed at a special church service on Holy Saturday. Even divine intervention couldn't save him (her?) from the melting pot when it came time to make Chex Muddy Buddies. (The giant dark chocolate rabbit? Oh, his (her?) fate's already been determined - dark chocolate brownies.)

My inside outside vegetable garden post-growing closet and pre-bonsai house. (Once the plants get too big in the confined space of the closet they get repotted and moved to the backroom where they'll sit for a few weeks to bulk up before being relocated to the bonsai house to become acclimated to outside temperatures.)

There are two other fruit trees other than the Shango (Bone) Tree trained against a wooden fence in the backyard. One of them is an apple tree, but I can't remember what the other one - the one pictured above - is. It might be another apple, or it might be another plum. Either way, it's getting some extra love this year to encourage the flowers to fruit.

(In the background you can see all of Mr. Awesome's bonsai trees and shrubs that he said would only sit in the backyard for a few weeks. That? That was last year. And on top of that, he killed off all the grass in the backyard - after digging it all up in the front yard - so we literally had NO LAWN to sit on last year during summer.)

WHOOPS, I FORGOT I HAD ALREADY TAKEN A PICTURE OF THE SHANGO BLOSSOMS ON THE SHANGO (BONE) TREE! (This one was taken about a week after the first one. Nearly a week after THAT the petals of the plum blossoms are almost gone, and whatever remains is hidden behind leafy buds that get bigger every day.)

BEAR ME FRUIT, DAMMIT, I'VE MASSAGED YOU LIKE A PAMPERED COW, FED YOU LIKE A HUNGRY HUSBAND AND WATERED YOU LIKE...UHM...A CAR (OR SOMETHING).

The backyard's become a bird sanctuary due to the high ratio of bushes, shrubs and trees to gravel and concrete. (FOR SOME REASON SOME SCOTTISH FOLK LOVE TO TEAR EVERYTHING GREEN OUT OF THEIR YARD, FILL IT WITH GRAVEL AND DUMP A CONTAINER OR TWO OF TULIPS AMONGST THE ROCKS.) It helps that their natural predators - the neighborhood cats - are too busy scarfing down (people) food offerings to be bothered with them.

(That feed container? Yesterday, on May Day, I decided to refill all bird seed containers no matter how full they were in honor of the day. Just before twilight I filled that exact feeder until it was spitting seeds, this afternoon - just after three - it was virtually empty. THESE BIRDS ARE GOING TO PUT ME IN THE POOR HOUSE.)

I first began wedging bones into tree branches as a joke (on my father-in-law, who's forever getting in trouble for TOUCHING THINGS THAT AREN'T HIS), but then the joke grew and before I knew it the Shango Tree had become the Shango Bone Tree. (Winter's a much better time for the S(B)T, with the onset of Spring all of the whitened and weather-stripped decorations get lost behind a canopy of green.)

(I can't believe that A.) that the Christmas goose carcass is still hanging off the truck and B.) Mr. Awesome hasn't touched ANY of the bones dangling off the plum tree I stole from him.)

HOLY HELL OH MY GOD MY ABU HASSAN TULIPS HAVE FINALLY BLOOMED! (OOPS for thinking they were dwarf! WTF gave me //THAT// idea?)

What was it the internet said about the appearance of these tulips? WAIT, HOLD ON, I MENTIONED IT EARLIER IN THIS ENTRY: "Richly coloured tulip of burnt orange-red with petal edges of yellow-gold." OH, NATURE, YOU DO DELIVER, DON'T YOU?

Italics bought these Flava tulips for himself (although I'm taking care of them for him), and they're the very last bulbs to flower from the bags'o'bulbs he bought me on our CASTLE PIE ADVENTURE last year. (I swore they were an early dwarf bloomer, but I also swore that about all of the Abu Hassans I planted.)

The amazing two-headed Bull Heart tomato plant from Ukraine. (OH, GREAT APIS/BA'AL MAY YOU BE EXALTED IN FUTURE TOMATO SAUCES!) I might just keep this one indoors since it refused to grow outside last year. (You can see part of Chippy as he inspects the inside outside garden; he's a very keen gardener, you know.)

What our backroom "lounge" looks like when a witch is hard at work.

(The plastic skull bowl is the ritual bowl I use when I'm doing something a little more heavy duty than baking bread or soaking menstrual rags. The scattered wheat sheaths inside is the last bit of the didukhy that I've systematically picked apart so every wheat kernel from every sheath got saved for growing or ritual use.)

(The eggs are our version of Sharpie pysanky, some especially decorated for pets, relatives, friends and others who've passed on since last Easter. When it's time to leave our Easter offerings at the stove and cairn we leave the decorated eggs amongst the food for the dead.

Beh's bee egg is sitting in a carton as the glue attaching the wings to the egg dries. There's a handmade miniature hat that Italics created for another egg, a bowl of partially shucked wheat (the kernel's still attached to the long, skewer-like spikes), Papa's skull planter with some of his dried tobacco leaves and a Jack Daniels gift set that Italics had given me earlier in the day.

From a tiny, withered peanut to a vibrant, lush plant. Only two of the five peanuts I bought germinated; I can't decide if I want to buy and plant more, or just stick with the two healthy plants I already have. OH, DECISIONS, DECISIONS...

OH, IT'S ALL SUPER CUTE, NOW, WITH ITS BLACK AND WHITE TUXEDO AND LITTLE SMILING BEGGING FACE BUT ONE DAY, DAMMIT, ONE DAY NEAR THE SUMMER SOLSTICE WHEN IT GETS LIGHT HERE AT THREE IN THE FUCKING MORNING THAT FUCKER WILL BE ON MY GODDAMN BEDROOM WINDOWSILL SCREAMING THROUGH THE OPEN WINDOW FOR BREAKFAST. (HOW THE FUCK DOES A MAGPIE KNOW WHICH ROOM IS OUR BEDROOM? I DON'T KNOW, TRY //MAGIC//.)

That's one of the four (five?) aubergines (eggplants) that I've grown from seed. One of these days I'll have to relocate them outside to the bonsai house, but until then they get a chance to flourish in better-than-green-house conditions.

One of my Sub-Arctic tomatoes which will most definitely be moved outside since they were deliberately bought for their "sub-arctic" nature. (GROWING TOMATOES IN SCOTLAND WITHOUT A PROPER GREEN HOUSE CAN BE HELL. I'M SO DESPERATE I'M GROWING THE EQUIVALENT OF SIBERIAN TOMATOES.)

One of my thriving courgettes (zucchini) on the verge of blossoming. (Which is EXACTLY why I kicked that very nearly flowering plant out of this house - the second I let ONE plant mature, flower and fruit in the house is the second I breakdown and let ALL of the damn plants mature, flower and fruit in the house and we don't have the room for that sort've Eden.)

Little Spiny Friend

Filed under: Menagerie

So when I was excavating the protruding ruins of the detached room outside for any evidence of PAAS and relics of celebrations past (those stuffed animal Peeps command a mind-blowing price in the Easter antiquities black market) I flipped the light on.

(I KNOW, I KNOW, "SO I WENT TO GET OUR EASTER AND GREAT RITE BOXES OUTSIDE AND TURNED THE LIGHTS ON" DOESN'T SOUND MUCH LIKE A LEAD INTO A STORY BUT TRUST ME ON THIS, OKAY? THERE ARE PICTURES OF ADORABLE INDIGENOUS WILDLIFE TO FOLLOW, JUST STICK WITH ME HERE.)

Right, so, I TURNED ON THE LIGHT. In the outside room. During the day. (YES, THIS STORY IS GOING SOMEWHERE.) The thing is, I didn't mean to flip the switch because there was sufficient ambient light from DAY-FUCKING-LIGHT. (I'M ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE, FOR THE MOST PART, WHO DON'T REQUIRE MORE ILLUMINATION THAN OTHERS. IF THE SUN'S OUT I'M PROBABLY GOING TO BE OKAY WITHOUT THE DESK LAMPS AND CEILING FAN AND SPOTLIGHTS. BUT DON'T YOU DARE FUCKING TOUCH THE LIGHTS - ESPECIALLY IF YOU DON'T ASK ME FIRST - WHEN I'M IN THE FUCKING KITCHEN COOKING. NEVER ASSUME APPROPRIATE LIGHT LEVELS FOR SOMEONE HOLDING A FILLET KNIFE WHO HATES PEOPLE ASSUMING APPROPRIATE LEVELS OF ANYTHING ON HER BEHALF.)

That absentminded folly didn't come to proper fruition until it was cold and dark and late AND DID I MENTION COLD ALREADY? YES? WELL, I'M IN SCOTLAND SO IT'S JUSTIFIED. (<- That'll fleece at least half of you, AT LEAST! I've never endured sissy weather until I moved from the Midwest of the US (WINDCHILL FACTORS AHOY!) to northeast Scotland. There've been days in fucking December where all I needed was a fucking sweater while romping in the countryside. TEXAS, PERHAPS YOU'D BE WILLING TO GIVE UP SOME OF YOUR EXTREME WEATHER TO GIVE NE SCOTLAND JUST A TEENY TINY EDGE? Y/Y?)

Minutes before midnight I noticed the stark light emanating from sloppily closed, homemade curtains. And I inwardly groaned, because I knew it was MY fault, and I couldn't REALLY expect Italics to go galloping outside for me because what's worse than having to put on socks and shoes and a jacket and find a flashlight that works and locate the outside room key and go out in the dark and cold and late to turn off a light in a detached room? PUTTING ON SOCKS AND SHOES AND A JACKET AND FINDING A FLASHLIGHT THAT WORKS AND LOCATING THE OUTSIDE KEY AND GOING OUT IN THE DARK AND COLD AND LATE TO TURN OFF A LIGHT IN A DETACHED ROOM THAT YOU DIDN'T EVEN TURN ON IN THE FIRST PLACE.

(See? I can be perfectly reasonable, mature and understanding during these unimportant obstacles and events in life.)

NO, NO, I'LL DO IT, IT WAS MY MISTAKE, I offered all magnanimously but kind've sort've waited for a second, more earnest offer from Italics that never materialized. (HELL, I DON'T BLAME HIM.) And just as I'm about to wrench the patio door open, just as I'm about to brace all of my weight to move the goddamn thing (it's warped off the track and you can see some of OUTSIDE from INSIDE so we know EXACTLY where heat's escaping in winter but it doesn't seem to bother my in-laws, so...), just as the flashlight goes on, just as the flip-flops begin stamping in the floor mat I see this and shout "OH MY GOD ITALICS! HURRY, HURRY! COME QUICK!":

For those of you who CAN'T READ MY MIND or USE CONTEXT CLUES TO INTERPRET THE IMAGE YOU'VE JUST SEEN that's a hedgehog - THE FIRST OF THE SEASON! - parked in one of Chippy's stainless steel dog bowls on the patio chowing down on some homemade yogurt soup with root vegetables. Normally our first contact with THE GREAT CHTHONIC WILD PIGS OF SCOTLAND is around June, so an early April visit was a bit of a shock (they traditionally begin to emerge from hibernation around this time).

(I GOT SCOLDED, BTW. MY "OH MY GOD, COME QUICK!" (BECAUSE A HEDGEHOG IS HERE) APPARENTLY SOUNDS MORE LIKE "OH MY GOD, COME QUICK!" (BECAUSE I'VE JUST INJURED, MAIMED, AND AMPUTATED MYSELF) AND IT'S HARD TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE IF I INSIST ON USING BRACKETS TO DENOTE MY REASONING FOR "OH MY GOD, COME QUICK!" USAGE.)

We already had the tripod set up so Italics quickly positioned shit to snap a few pictures from inside the backroom (see above). Plagued by a constant need of closeups I tip-toed back outside, sans jacket but with flip-flops and light, and found our first visitor curled in a hidden corner of the patio. (NOTE TO SELF: Measure the corner to fit a hedgehog box beneath the plant beams! Better to have their house next to the patio door than under a bush next to the road.)

Usually hedgehog visitations include a quick house call (they're brought into the bathroom so we check them over for any visible wounds or injuries, dislodge ticks and fly larvae sacs and then give them a quick rinse beneath a stream of clean water before releasing them back on the patio) but this little guy (girl? I can't tell, I normally have to do the "belly button" check) looked a bit shell-shocked and scared so it got a free pass.

But next time? NEXT TIME YOU GET THE HEDGEHOG LUSH BATH, MY LITTLE SPINY FRIEND.

Bok Chek Stare

Filed under: Inventory

When Beh was alive she's sit and stare blankly for hours at a time and neither Italics nor I knew what the fuck she was up to. It wasn't until recently - very, very recently - that Italics discovered that "fixed staring" was a symptom of a brain tumor. (Beh was diagnosed with "a brain thing" around May of 2008 and passed quite suddenly in early June.)

We found this incense burning frog in the local health food store when Christmas shopping on Winter Solstice and couldn't resist its Bok Chek stare. (BEH WAS ALWAYS CHEWING UP THE FUCKING CARPET, HENCE ALL OF THE CHEWED UP FUCKING CARPET.)

Black Magic Cat

Filed under: Menagerie

Mr. Mistoffoless, my elusive, mysterious, two-booted black magic cat, only visits on V. special nights. In total - over the course of nearly two years - I think I've see him (HER? I'LL TELL YOU ONE THING, IF IT //IS// A "HER" THEN SHE'S -STILL- "MR. MISTOFFOLESS") five or six times, while we see the OTHER cats on a nearly daily basis.

("OTHER cats" = CATS THAT ARE SIGNIFICANTLY LESS MAGIC AND INTRIGUING AND FUCKING USE MY GARLIC PATCH AS A FUCKING PORT-O-POTTY AND I SWEAR TO ALL THAT IS HOLY, NEIGHBORHOOD CATS, YOU BETTER CHOOSE YOUR OUTHOUSE SPOT IN A NEW FUCKING PLACE BECAUSE I AM //NOT// A CAT WITCH - I'M A CAT FERTILIZER WITCH, IF YOU CATCH MY NOT-SUBTLE-IN-THE-SLIGHTEST DRIFT, AND IT'S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE ONE OF YOU FAT ASSES CHOKES ON A BBQ CHICKEN WING OFFERING AND I HAVE TO BURY YOUR FUCKING ASS IN THE GARDEN.)

The two skin-and-bone orange tabbies live next door and across the street, and pitifully coming running the second we establish eye contact through the kitchen window. I've learned, dear and gentle readers, how to do kitchen work without a single, escapist glance out the window least the moment of distraction - the moment of weakness - is caught and capitalized by these nefarious felines.

(THAT'S RIGHT, I HAVE TO DELIBERATELY IGNORE THE NEIGHBORS' CATS BECAUSE IF I VERIFY THEIR EXISTENCE THROUGH EYE CONTACT IT'S AN INVITATION TO COME RACING OVER LIKE I'M GOING TO THROW OPEN THE DOOR TO MY HOUSE, INVITE THEM IN, AND HAND FEED THEM FOIE GRAS.)

(IF THE RACING OVER PART WASN'T BAD ENOUGH THEY FUCKING START MEOWING LIKE THEY'RE FUCKING DYING BEFORE THEY EVEN BEGIN RUNNING TOWARDS THE HOUSE AND I CAN ACTUALLY HEAR THOSE WAILING NOISES THROUGH THE DAMN CLOSED WINDOW AND, REALLY, WORLD, I'M NOT AS HEARTLESS AS I MAY SEEM, EVEN IF THEY'RE DIGGING UP AND SHITTING ON MY GARLIC.)

Behind us, several houses down, lives a walrus of a cat whose massive, Marlon Brando physique can be traced back to the offerings he's pillaged for the past several years. (LIKE I'M GOING TO STOP MAKING OUTSIDE OFFERINGS BECAUSE SOMEBODY ELSE'S "OUT ALL NIGHT DOING WHATEVER THE FUCK IT WANTS" CAT CAN'T CONTROL ITSELF AROUND FOOD.) I only ever see this cat running - running TO our fucking house ("FOODFOODFOOD!") and running AWAY from our fucking house ("OHSHITCRAZYWITCH!").

This past winter? I caught tubby doing lightening speed at three in the fucking morning outside a window while we were cleaning the house, his excess folds jiggling and crashing into one another in a collision of fat, skin and momentum. "HEY, FAT ASS, WHERE'S THE FIRE?" I shouted through the window, but he was in the ZONE, yo, and completely ignored me - finger tapping on the fogged over glass and all.

Since seeing WALRUS MARLON BRANDO CAT hauling ass wasn't out of the ordinary we - Italics and I - returned to housework, not giving it, or its motives, a second thought. Until - THAT'S RIGHT, THAT INFAMOUS WORD "UNTIL"! - I found myself in the backroom, dropping Mr. Mistoffoless's magic stone (STORY AT 11!) on the coffee table.

AND WHAT, I'M SURE YOU'RE ASKING YOURSELF, HAPPENED, MS. GRAVEYARD DIRT? WHAT HAPPENED AFTER YOU DROPPED MR. MISTOFFOLESS'S MAGIC STONE ON THE COFFEE TABLE? WELL, I'LL TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENED - Behemoth straddling the patio pillar, barely able to balance while scarfing The Old Woman's offerings of homemade bread and chilli fucking BBQ wings IS WHAT HAPPENED.

"IF YOU'RE EATING THE OLD WOMAN'S BREAD AND CHICKEN WINGS YOU BETTER BE DRINKING HER FUCKING WHISKEY TOO," I warned it through the patio door. Like any gluttonous creature caught mid-binge it paused in that OH SHIT, BUSTED! way, mouth full of food and stunned, half-pretending that the desire to return to its previous, not-yet-disturbed action wasn't the prevailing, dominant urge.

It only took a fleeting glimpse of eye contact for WALRUS MARLON BRANDO CAT to dig how serious I was, and, with some resentful reluctancy, Jabba slithered off the pillar, nearly knocking over the shot glass HE DID NOT DRINK FROM EVEN ONCE (NOT EVEN ONCE!) with a couple of chicken wings for the road.

(THIS CAT? THIS JABBA BEHEMOTH WALRUS MARLON BRANDO CAT? THIS CAT WHO WOULD SURELY LEAVE A DENT IN THE HOOD OF YOUR CAR IF YOU WERE UNFORTUNATE ENOUGH TO OWN THE CAR THAT IT WANTED TO SUN ITSELF ON? HE WASN'T ALWAYS FAT. IN FACT, LONG, LONG AGO, WAY BEFORE I BECAME A RIGHT PROPER WITCH, WAY BEFORE HE BEGAN MISAPPROPRIATING OFFERINGS HE WAS THIN, LITHE AND AGILE.)

(AND, REALLY, I HAVE TO LOL - WE'VE ALREADY LOLED, AND HAVE LOLED ABOUT THIS FOR SOME TIME, ACTUALLY - SOMEWHERE IN THIS REGION THERE'S A VETERINARY CLINIC. AND, SOMEWHERE IN THIS VETERINARY CLINIC THERE'S A DOCTOR WHO, ALONG WITH DUMBFOUNDED, SPEECHLESS AND PUZZLED OWNERS, HAS NO IDEA WHY THIS PARTICULAR CAT CONTINUES TO PUT ON STAGGERING AMOUNTS OF WEIGHT. TO THEM IT'S AN X-FILES MYSTERY, TO ME IT'S CONTINUOUS OFFERING THEFT.)

All the cats I see on a day-to-day basis are normal cats; house pets without a spark. They're either running to or running from, or they're lazily stretched across cars and windowsills. When you look at them and interact with them there just isn't anything there. There's a void of connection, of being. They seem robotic, driven by the most basic animal instincts but nothing else. (AN ANIMAL ACTING LIKE AN ANIMAL? SHOCKING AND DISTURBING, I KNOW.)

Mr. Mistoffoless, though, has something going on. I always catch him mid-action or mid-thought, and just as my sight begins to adjust to the darkness our eyes meet for one long second and, before I know it, he's GONE GONE GONE. In that momentary pause, in that heartbeat of connection, I feel self-awareness. I feel a conscious, sentient being, interacting with his surroundings on a level that makes the other neighborhood cats seem educationally subnormal.

Mr. M, he's got some magic in him, and when he stops mid-action or mid-thought and cranes his head in my direction, he's asking if I saw, or noticed, or understood, or managed to follow along with his train of thought. And because I CAN'T TELEPATHICALLY READ A FUCKING CAT (or any other living, breathing, existing thing - I GUESS I'M NOT ONE OF THOSE LUCKY WITCHES WHO'S BEEN BLESSED WITH MUTANT SUPERPOWERS) I'm always left feeling like I've just been mentally dwarfed by a sophisticated, intellectual giant.

"...AND WHAT DO //YOU// THINK?" Sometimes he'll ask, both yellow eyes intensively fixed on me. The question just hangs the air, suspended by a deafening urge to answer with a cerebral, profound response worthy of the company I unexpectedly found myself in. "UHMMMMMM..." is always my astounding reply which, unsurprisingly, doesn't blow him out of the water.

Dilated eyes flicker away from contact as his haunches tense, the night rolling off the black of his fur as we stand perfectly still in the silence, "YES, THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT." And without another word he's gone, again, for a month, for two months, for almost a year. Mysteriously appearing, mysteriously disappearing, untraceable and elusive - that's my black magic cat, Mr. Mistoffoless.

Hardened Dope Criminals

Filed under: BFF

SO, LIKE, I HEAR THE RATS SCAMPERING BACK AND FORTH IN THEIR EXCITED "HOLY SHIT LET'S TAKE ALL OF THIS SHIT AND HIDE IT SOMEWHERE FOR LATER" WAY AND I'M ALL "WTF ARE THEY EFFING UP TO?" BECAUSE IT'S THE FUCKING //DRESSERS// AND NOTHING'S ON THE DRESSER TO GET THEM THAT WORKED UP EXCEPT FOR MY SEX PIG PLUG-IN TAIL (THEY DON'T COME IN PINK, WTF?!) AND THE BONG BUCKET. BUT! BUT BUT BUT! BUT THERE //WAS// SOMETHING ON THE DRESSER THAT I FORGOT TO MOVE BEFORE I LET THE BEARS OUT OF THEIR CAGE -- OUR CURING POT.

(OH, WE HAVE GROWN AND HARVESTED MY DARLINGS. 2008 SAW THE FIRST OF THREE PLANTS FLOURISH IN OUR LITTLE CLOSET GROWING SPACE AND ITALICS HAS JUST PLUCKED THE LAST TUFTS FROM OUR LITTLE JIMMY PLANT. <- JIMMY TURNED OUT TO BE FEMALE BUT S/HE'S STILL "JIMMY"...IN OUR HEART.)

THE NEXT THING I SEE, ONCE TURNING AROUND, ARE TWO RATS RACING TO THEIR CARDBOARD BOX WITH HUGE ASS DRY BUDS HANGING OUT OF THEIR MOUTH AND A THIRD SITTING IN THE BOX PACKING THE SHIT AWAY IN A CORNER. AND I EXPERIENCE A SOUL SPLITTING "ZOMGWTFLOLOLOLOLCAMERAAAAAAAAAAA!" AND "ZOMGWTFSAVETHEPOTOMGRAAAAAAATS!" BECAUSE IT WAS REALLY, REALLY FUNNY BUT ALSO, WELL, NO, ACTUALLY, IT WAS PRETTY MUCH FUNNY ALL AROUND WITH A TINY FRACTION OF PANIC ("NOT THE POT! NEVER THE POT! SAVE THE POT!") AND I REALLY WISH YOU GUYS COULD HAVE SEEN THEIR FACES AS THEY TURNED THE BUDS IN THEIR LITTLE RAT PAWS LIKE A RUBIK'S CUBE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW THE FUCK YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO EAT IT.

BAD, BAD RATS. BUT, MY GOD, SO CUTE. (I ACTUALLY REACHED FOR THE CAMERA TO TRY AND VIDEO THEM RUNNING AROUND WITH THE BUDS AND SQUIRRELING THEM AWAY BUT THAT MEANT //EVEN MORE PRECIOUS THC WOULD'VE BEEN LOST// SO I HAD TO MAKE AN EXECUTIVE DECISION, AND ALL THAT I TOOK AWAY FROM THE EXPERIENCE WAS THIS STORY. SIGH.)

(SERIOUSLY, YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE HOW MUCH POT THESE RATS, OVER THE COURSE OF THEIR LITTLE RAT LIVES, HAVE INGESTED. WHEN WUZZA IS BEING SUPER BAD AND TRYING TO GET ONTO ITALICS'S DESKTOP SHE'S AFTER TWO THINGS - WHATEVER FOOD HE HAS SITTING AROUND IN CRUMB FORM AND POT. (YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE HOW MANY TIMES WE'VE HAD TO YANK A DIME BAG OR WHATEVER OUT OF HER MOUTH. MIZ DENIZE, I DON'T THINK WE CAN IGNORE YOUR SELF-DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR ANY LONG. YOU ARE ON THE VERGE OF AN //INTERVENTION//.))

In the Beginning

Filed under: Menagerie

In the beginning there were birds. Small birds; "cheep-cheep" birds. Nameless, faceless little birds that came in small gypsy groups. Then came the blackbirds and magpies and wood pigeons. Then came the rooks and crows. (And the seagulls, but we'll pretend like they don't exist since they always crash and ruin the party. AND THAT'S WHY, FOLKS, THERE ARE TWO SEPARATE BIRD MALLS - THE SEAGULL MALL, AND THE NON-SEAGULL MALL WHOSE PATRONS HOPE, WISH AND PRAY THAT SEAGULLS VISITING THE NON-SEAGULL MALL ARE NOT //REAL// SEAGULLS, BUT ED-YOU-MAH-CATED SEAGULLS WHO ARE TURNING THEIR BACK ON THEIR PARTICULAR BIRD SPECIES TO EMBRACE THE CULTURE AND LIFESTYLE OF THEIR FORMER BIRD OPPRESSORS.)

Slugs and snails arrived and decimated my container vegetable garden. And when I say "slugs and snails" I mean GIANT RADIO-FUCKING-ACTIVE MONSTERS FROM A FORGOTTEN HELL DIMENSION IN SPACE INTENT ON TAKING OVER THE WORLD STARTING WITH MY DWARF EGGPLANTS. (You may think I'm exaggerating for the LULZ but, truly, honestly, I am not. In the slightest. The size of these fuckers would make you think twice about eating escargot; it's completely unnatural and not of God.) And so I lamented, and I despaired, and I wailed and keened like an honorary banshee as my potted garden slowly crumbled to ruin, one slimy, hole-infested leaf at a time.

On Chippy's first "birthday" with us he was collared (it wasn't a ritual of ownership as much as it was a promise to love and take care of him; that he now had an "owner" and a home and I was prepared to undertake the responsibility of helping turn the wild, junkyard dog into a member of our family) and we presented him with a leash and a set of stainless steel dog bowls engraved with his better known name. ("Pazuzu" - you've seen the Exorcist, right?) Chippy was treated like any other member of our spiritual menagerie but also as the family dog, which meant he always had a fresh bowl of water out, and his offerings'n'treats were placed in his food bowl.

Chippy's method of incorporation came through a keen interest to be involved in whatever we were doing. When planting time came around and I began Papa's chilli peppers Chippy was at my heels requesting responsibility over his own personal slice of vegetation. (I KNOW, I KNOW - LOLOLOLOLOL DEMON OF PLAGUE AND FAMINE WANTS TO GARDEN!) I had visions of locusts swarming over already slimy, hole-infested leaves thanks to our resident slugs and snails and the mental image did, for real serious, make me internally wince. But, BUT! But I placated him and told him he could have the cherry tomatoes and carrots, but he was responsible for their well-being.

Gastropods fear nothing - even ancient demons of plagues, famines and almost all means of a very uncomfortable death. In time Chippy joined the honorary banshee movement and was howling with me as death personified crawled through our bucket garden and left its slimy trail of destruction in its wake. Despite gardening and vegetable growing not being his forte I officially enlisted his help to combat the infestation. (And when I mean "enlisted his help" I mean "got some Burger King and threw it in his food dish outside and explained to him that snails and slugs were V. V. V. bad and he had to get rid of them because they were killing our plants".)

Not long after we began hearing strange noises outside. Alien, not-of-this-world noises. Noises that convinced me, 100%, that we were being visited by a monster and it was very, very important that I never, ever let the monster know that I was aware of its recurring presence. The heavy, stainless steel dishes got pushed around on the concrete slabs of the patio. (A CAT DOESN'T DO THAT SHIT.) Weird grunting and heavy breathing and loud, pig-like eating sounds emanated from beneath our window - OUR OPEN WINDOW - in the middle of the night and I'd lie in bed, petrified, breathing shallowly until the slithering, wet sounds scuttled further and further away.

A strange but not-so-strange thing happened (STRANGE BECAUSE I COULDNAE FIGURE OUT THE SOURCE, BUT NOT-SO-STRANGE BECAUSE I DID ASK FOR SOME SORT OF INTERVENTION SO I WASN'T SURPRISED THAT SOMETHING WAS ACTUALLY HAPPENING) - the gastropod population suffered an apocalyptic decline. The multitude of intersecting, gossamer trails disappeared. Like the ocean's tide the glistening sea of vegetative death withdrew, and suddenly you could actually walk across the patio at night without invertebrates exploding beneath your bare feet.

So there was an unseen, but definitely heard, monster roaming our small subdivision garden in the middle of the night eradicating our snail and slug problem. And we lived with this phantom monster, sacrificing the night to its devilish deeds while keeping our eyes turned away so we never had to witness the unspeakable horror that moved, thrived and killed in the darkness. It was a silent, unspoken pact made with the Devil. It was a grotesque monstrosity created out of the very worst of man's heart. It was...well, it was a hedgehog, actually. Multiple hedgehogs, in fact, that would get rowdy as fuck and bang on Chippy's empty, stainless steel food bowl, moving it around the patio in the hopes that, somehow, it'd magically fill with MORE FOOD.

Chippy, rather than fighting fire-with-fire, enlisted the help of nature's indigenous gastropod killer - the hedgehog. (OH, THAT CHIPPY. HE ALWAYS GOES FOR THE CUTE, THE SOFTIE.) Within weeks the heaving, plant-destroying population plummeted, and we had very happy, very well fed nightly visitors who came for the treats in Chippy's bowl but stayed for the slime coated angels of death. And, in time, Italics and I were able to pick up our little prickly visitors and take them indoors, briefly, to pull out any tics or fly larvae with tweezers, check for wounds and give them a very quick bath in the bathroom sink before releasing them into the wild.

Once the hedgehogs came they brought Scotland's wildlife with them. The "cheep-cheep" birds turned into blackbirds, magpies and wood pigeons and the blackbirds, magpies and wood pigeons turned into rooks and crows and then the rooks and crows turned into field mice and hedgehogs and bats and the field mice and hedgehogs and bats turned into neighborhood cats and a pair of foxes that very nearly ate out of my hand and the neighborhood cats and a pair of foxes that very nearly ate out of my hand turned into deer.

And to think that it all started with just a simple set of stainless steel dog dishes given out of love to something that desperately wanted to come in from the cold and bask in the warmth of belonging.

Winter Robin

Filed under: Menagerie

So Hezbollah's special little friend (THAT WOULD BE THE EUROPEAN ROBIN) was singing his little heart out (I HEARD HIM THROUGH A CLOSED WINDOW AND ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE ROOM) and since he was singing so fine, and since he was singing so lovely I came over to the window to tell him how beautiful he sounded. It was only after I cupped my fingers against the glass to find him in the darkness I understood why he was serenading me...

...She's come back home, again.

(I've been waiting all day and night hoping She'd come back. Waiting and wanting to see the white down, wanting to see the violet skies, wanting to feel the snow under my skin to give me a reason to pull up our coffin/casket cover further up the bed until I'm sleeping beneath a blanket of other people's eternity.)

I asked the Old Woman, Whisky and Wangs night, to teach me Her magic and bring me snow that would make my tired, old heart happy. (I guess the wangs worked, then.)

(THE SECRET TO WEATHER WITCHERY DOES INVOLVE SPIRITS, BUT THE KIND YOU CAN MEASURE BY THE DRAM.) (I BET I'D GET EVEN BETTER RESULTS IF I LEFT AN OFFERING OF HEROIN. I MEAN, SHE IS //SCOTTISH//, AFTER ALL.)

Chef Shakey's Specials

Filed under: Menagerie

ME: OH THAT'S CUTE, SHAKEY BEAR FOUND A PRAWN CRACKER.

*STOPS TYPING TO WATCH CHEF SHAKEY WADDLE ACROSS OFFICE / COMPUTER ROOM FLOOR INTO THE CAGE WITH A PRAWN CRACKER*

APPROXIMATELY TWO MINUTES LATER:

ME: OH, THAT'S CUTE, SHAKEY BEAR FOUND ANOTHER PRAWN CRACKER.

*STOPS TYPING TO WATCH CHEF SHAKEY WADDLE ACROSS OFFICE / COMPUTER ROOM FLOOR INTO THE CAGE WITH A PRAWN CRACKER*

A MINUTE LATER:

ME: WHERE THE FUCK IS SHAKEY BEAR GETTING ALL OF THESE GODDAMN CRACKERS?

*STOPS TYPING TO WATCH CHEF SHAKEY WADDLE ACROSS OFFICE / COMPUTER ROOM FLOOR INTO THE CAGE WITH A PRAWN CRACKER*

ANOTHER MINUTE ALMOST PASSES:

ME: EW, JESUS, FUCK, SHAKEY BEAR, DON'T EAT THOSE, THAT'S CORN STARCH, JESUS.

*SOLVES THE MYSTERY OF THE CORNUCOPIA OF PRAWN CRACKERS AFTER WATCHING CHEF SHAKEY GLANCE LEFT TO RIGHT SEVERAL TIMES BEFORE LEAPING ONTO THE SIDE OF THE TRASH CAN TO REMOVE ANOTHER ECO-FRIENDLY CORNSTARCH PACKING PEANUT THING*

Chef Shakey taking part in a pea diving expedition. (Both Dennys (semi-pictured, left) and Shakey have matching bald patches. BFF?) One thing we've learned with this trio of rats? RATS LOVE PEAS.

PS: The house isn't a scary skanky RAT HOUSE, but they did manage to make it look that way in the picture, didn't they?)

Fox and the Hound

Filed under: Menagerie

THE NEIGHBORS WILL BE DELIGHTED IN KNOWING THAT FOXY IS BEING FED HIS VERY OWN FOXY CASSEROLE EVERY NIGHT OUT OF CHIPPY'S* DISH, AND HE IS ENJOYING IT IMMENSELY, THANK YOU. ("FUCK YOUR CHICKENS, NIGGA!")

ON A MORE SERIOUS NOTE, IT APPEARS THAT FOXY HAS SOME BUGZ ON HIS NUGZ, BUT HOW DO I TEMPT HIM INSIDE FOR A LUSH BUBBLE BATH? HMM...

(I'm still worried about the overly tame one of the two; I don't think I've seen him since we've come back.)

* SEE? OLD - VERY, VERY, VERY OLD - DOGS CAN LEARN NEW TRICKS, LIKE -SHARING- WITH HIS FELLOW (INDIGENOUS) SCAVENGERS!

Fox and the Hound

Filed under: Menagerie

SCOTTISH JACKALS HAVE COME TO FEED.

(I'VE ALWAYS BEEN GOOD AT PICKING UP STRAYS WITHOUT TRYING.)

Rat Party

Filed under: LOL!

I have to save this for a (much) later LOL:

RATS ESCAPED CAGE THREE NIGHTS AGO.

HAD RAT PARTY IN COMPUTER ROOM.

HAD RAT PARTY IN TRASH CAN.

HAD RAT PARTY ON DESKS.

(ATE MORNING DOSE OF SELENIUM, KELP, AND PRESCRIPTION ANTACID.)

(ATE WALRUS'S PRAWN CRACKER TRIPOD HAT.)

(ATE PIECE OF ASS (SHAPED) BREAD.)

HAD RAT PARTY BEHIND COMPUTERS.

(ATE COMPUTER CABLES.)

(ATE EXTENSION CORD CONNECTING ALL PLUGS TO WALL.)

RAT PARTY MOVED TO EXCLUSIVE -CAGE- LOCATION.

CONTINUED RAT PARTY INDOORS, LOCKED.

HIRED CLEANERS STILL TRYING TO PICK UP PIECES.

(ONE OF TWO HIRED CLEANERS NOW HAS WORKING COMPUTER AGAIN.)

DAMN RAT PARTY.

Things to remember: August 7, 2008. Tower (literally!). All computer room altars torn down, rebuilt. 42 soul card @ bucket. Even chose "tower" from Aldi before incident.

Manchet Bread, Small Beer

Filed under: Menagerie

I SWEAR TO EFFING GOD THAT IF THAT MAGPIE KEEPS THIS SHIT UP I AM GOING TO GO MEDIEVAL ON ITS ASS AND STICK IT IN A FUCKING PIE AND SEASON THE CARNAGE WITH GODDAMN NUTMEG AND/OR MACE. (ISN’T THAT A DAINTY DISH TO SET BEFORE A KING?)

The Long Walk

Filed under: Menagerie

When Bee was younger and her Bok-Bok self I used to say to her “BOK-BOK! YOUR FACE IS SO CUTE THAT I’M GOING TO RIP IT OFF, BEE! I’M GOING TO RIP IT OFF, YES I AM! AND THEN, AFTERWARDS, I’M GOING TO BEAT IT WITH A HAMMER, BOK! WE’RE GOING TO BEAT IT WITH A HAMMER AND FLATTEN IT OUT AND MAKE IT INTO A MASK THAT I CAN WEAR LIKE MICHAEL MYERS, BEE-BEE! I’M GOING TO RIP OFF YOUR FACE TO MAKE A MASK!” and she LOVED it, and would give me THAT LOOK (that satisfied and proud look you get from pets when they realize that you’re sweet talking them) and chuff and look right pleased with the attention. (WELL, HOW MANY RATS DO YOU KNOW THAT HAVE BEEN TOLD THAT THEY’RE SO CUTE THAT YOU HAD TO RESTRAIN YOURSELF FROM PEELING OFF THEIR SKIN AND WEARING IT LIKE A MASK? EXACTLY.)

It’s harder to do that now. (I tried the other day, but it wouldn’t stick.) Bee, caught somewhere between living and sleeping, is very nearly comatose now and almost too weak to breathe. Not long after Hezbollah’s death (Bee’s former roommate, aka Crazy Rat, her BFF) she went blind in one eye. I knew something was up, but couldn’t put my finger on it. (YOU KNOW HOW YOU JUST KNOW THESE THINGS WHEN YOU HAVE PETS. YOU JUST KNOW.) That uneasy feeling only became more concrete when “WOMAN, BEE SICK!” boomed (OH, WHEN YOUR SUMERIAN DEMON DOG WHO SOUNDS LIKE ANIMAL FROM THE MUPPETS DECIDES TO CONVERSE WITH YOU WHEN YOU’RE SUSPENDED IN A CONSCIOUS-BARELY CONSCIOUS-ALMOST SUBCONSCIOUS STATE YOU WILL FIND THAT HE HAS A TENDENCY TO BE ALL...BOOMY) through my flashing (HIGH, BUT NOT THAT HIGH, WHICH MADE ME PAUSE AND GO “WOW, I DIDN’T EVEN THINK I WAS HIGH ENOUGH FOR THIS SORT OF THING”) thoughts.

It was so left field, so unexpected, such a non-fucking-sequitur that I automatically knew it was one of two things – I was either really fucking high and making shit up (A PARANOID, OVERREACTING PESSIMIST EVEN SUBCONSCIOUSLY? SWEET!) or it was true, and Bee was a lot sicker than I had imagined. (At the time I had forgotten, but Italics pointed out that both she and Hezbollah had been on antibiotics for a significant time for colds they couldn’t seem to shake, but when you’re not the person administering the medication you have a tendency to sort’ve forget.) I guess, really, it sounded so fucking crazy that it could be true. And, as it turned out nearly a week later, it was true. Bee had gone blind in one eye with no explanation as to how it happened since there weren’t any wounds. The vet told Italics “it could be a brain thing” and when I heard that my stomach dropped to the floor because I knew it WAS instead of IT COULD BE and to know that we’d be back at the same place we were a month ago (with Hezbollah) and have to witness the rapid decline of our last remaining pet…Christ, we had just barely gotten over the Crazy Rat ordeal, you know?

I lost my Bok-Bok Baby (WHO, IN FACT, WAS A GREAT AND TERRIBLE SPACE PIRATE, FEARED FOR HER BRUTAL SAVAGERY AND FOR HER INEXPLICABLE LOVE OF DIRE STRAITS) when she lost her Bok-Bok spring. (It wasn’t a change in disposition or personality, she just lost that gleam that made her BOK-BOK, and it was a very sad thing to witness and realize.) In her place I got my Special Little Flower, my BEE-ZEE-BEE, my Sexy Bumblebee, my Bee. And Bee seemed happy and content, and got to live on the floor ALL OF THE TIME (no other rat we’ve ever had has had the freedom she did) and was let out of the room several times a day for a “walk” (she was allowed supervised expeditions into other areas of the house) and seemed, for the most part, not entirely bothered she was blind in one eye.

But, as the weeks went by, it became more and more obvious that it was, in fact, “a brain thing” and there was nothing we could do other than watch our BEE-ZEE-BEE fade because she’s a rat, and rats have two medical options – take antibiotics (and if they don’t work, they don’t work, the end), or go under the knife (there’s always a good chance they won’t survive the anesthetic). Bee didn’t get either, because there’s no medication for “a brain thing” and neurosurgery hasn’t really advanced in the rodent world.

Our only option with Bee was to make her as comfortable as possible, and to prepare ourselves for the inevitable – the wasting away, the loss of personality, the sleep deprivation, the constant, around-the-clock administration of antibiotics, and pain and allergy medication, the cleaning, the fussing, the preparation of special food that can be easily eaten, the worry, the grief, the angst, and, also, the burst of almost overwhelming resentment knowing that there’s a good possibility that we’ll have to euthanize something that’s become a member of our family by ourselves with our own hands.

(We use nitrous (aka laughing gas) when it’s necessary. When you’re faced with the prospect of watching a beloved pet suffocate to death in front of your own eyes – complete with self-conscious awareness which means they’re panicking while gasping and withering around, and the sounds, Jesus, the sounds they make as their lungs shut down and they can’t breathe, and the looks they give you because they know that in the past you’ve always been able to fix things for them or help them, that you’ve always, always been able to make things better and THEY KNOW THAT and THEY LOOK AT YOU WITH THOSE BEGGING, PLEADING EYES AND FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THEIR LIFE YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING TO MAKE IT BETTER OR MAKE IT STOP (EXCEPT FOR ONE THING) – you harden your heart, cling tightly to something deep, down inside of you (“I KNOW THIS IS RIGHT, I KNOW THIS IS RIGHT, I KNOW THIS IS RIGHT..”) and get on with being Death.)

So it’s harder, now, launching into the entire “BOK-BOK! YOUR FACE IS SO CUTE THAT I’M GOING TO RIP IT OFF, BEE! I’M GOING TO RIP IT OFF, YES I AM! AND THEN, AFTERWARDS, I’M GOING TO BEAT IT WITH A HAMMER, BOK! WE’RE GOING TO BEAT IT WITH A HAMMER AND FLATTEN IT OUT AND MAKE IT INTO A MASK THAT I CAN WEAR LIKE MICHAEL MYERS, BEE-BEE! I’M GOING TO RIP OFF YOUR FACE TO MAKE A MASK!” thing, because reality is hitting home today (we’ve both already agreed that if she didn’t pass on her own accord today, that we would have to finally help her along) and I know the long walk from the computer room to the bedroom is going to be very long, and, inevitably, I’ll feel like I betrayed her, somehow, by ending something that’s already half-done.

(BEE, I JUST WANT YOU TO UNDERSTAND, IF YOU CAN, THAT I REALLY HATE DOING THIS, AND I FEEL LIKE A PART OF ME DIES EVERY TIME WE HAVE TO “HELP” YOU GUYS. I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I AM VERY ANGRY AND SAD THAT THIS HAD TO HAPPEN, AND I’M ALREADY RESENTFUL THAT YOUR TIME WITH US WAS A LOT SHORTER THAN IMAGINED. (THERE WERE SO MANY CHAPTERS LEFT TO ADD TO YOUR STORY, BEE!) AND THAT I LOVED YOU VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY MUCH, BEEBEE, AND YOU’RE THE ONLY ANIMAL I’VE SHARED MY LIFE WITH THAT GOT TO REMAIN BEING MY “BABY” LONG AFTER YOU BECAME MORBIDLY OBESE AND GROWN-UP. BEE-ZEE-BEE, PLEASE DON’T HOLD WHAT I HAVE TO DO AGAINST ME, OKAY? I’LL MAKE YOU A HOMEMADE BOWL OF GRAVY AFTER, I PROMISE.)

The other thing I heard when Chippy told me that Bee was really sick? Papa chimed in and informed me that I’m not going to be happy with what they find when I get diagnostics done. (I finally got a referral to see a specialist regarding the “condition” I’ve been living with for 15+ months, so I’m now waiting for an appointment to get all of the necessary testing done.) At the time I dismissed it, along with the Bee being sick thing, because, seriously, how fucking unfoundedly pessimistic is THAT shit? I finally had to confess about a week back to Italics (I mean, how couldn’t I after the entire Chippy premonition thing?) but followed it up with “BUT THAT COULD MEAN ANYTHING, YOU KNOW? THAT COULD MEAN THAT IT’S VERY, VERY OBVIOUSLY A HERNIA (LIKE WE SAID), AND I’LL JUST GET PISSED OFF WHEN I FINALLY HAVE UNDENIABLE X-RAY PROOF TO STAPLE TO MY GP’S FUCKING FOREHEAD (HE’S NOT ENTIRELY CONVINCED IT IS BECAUSE, STATISTICALLY, I’M TOO “YOUNG”)” because, honestly? I don’t even want to think about it.