When your chickens eat millet and cracked corn lots of wild birds join in. I built a feeding table so I could feed the chickens underneath to keep the grain dry, and sprinkle food on top for the birds. Mostly juncos come year round, with a few sparrows and towhees. There are seasonal visitors like the gang of red-winged black birds dining at the buffet table just now. They will stay throughout the spring and summer and raise their young here. In the summer grosbeaks come for a few weeks and add a little colour. Crossbills drink from the bird bath. One year a flock of pine siskins (small gregarious finches) came for the summer. I sat by the feeder with a handful of sunflower seeds and waited. They are a fairly tame species and they put up with my slow movements as I offered them seeds. It only took a day and when some took food from my hand the others felt it was safe. For the rest of the summer every time I went outside finches would land on me. They went off to have families and brought their babies back to feed them. One time a mother and her baby were in my hand and there were sunflower seeds in my palm. The mother would give a seed to the baby, then jump around on my fingers warning other birds away, then she'd turn around and give another seed to her baby, then jump around defending the perimeter again. Slowly I brought up my other hand, stroked her back and said, "you are such a good momma," and she allowed this. I was repairing my power system batteries one day with a pine siskin on my shoulder, one on my arm, and one on the top of my head. They offered all sorts of advice (clean the contacts, top up the water, tighten the nuts.) They must have been males. A sharp shinned hawk hunts at the feeders and I get to see it swoop in after smaller birds. It usually misses, but once it caught a junco in its talons three feet away on the feeder at my window. These windows where I sit are like a big screen T.V. tuned to the nature channel. Deer and sheep wander through eating the flowers, raccoons come at night, beautiful chickens parade about by day, ravens keep an eye on us all. The yard is always animated. It's hard to stop staring. Here is a little video of the junco feeding frenzy. You can stop watching halfway, nothing new happens after that, but I left the whole video for those who are mesmerized like I am.
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The farmhouse door opens as though by a gust of cold and the mother, at the cook stove stirring porridge, turns to see the neighbour girl is there, in her hand-me-down dress and thin coat, her boots and bare legs, her sharp black eyes. "Ma said daddy might have killed himself with the gun in the shed. She wants somebody to go see."
The mother turns to her oldest boy, eleven, "You go look. Go see what happened." The boy and the girl cross the fields. The hard crust of snow holds each step briefly before they break through into the softer underbelly. The crust pushes the boy's trouser legs up and rasps against his shins. The girl's legs are already raw. "Why don't your ma go look," he says. "She don't want to." The boy breaks off a chunk of crust the size of a shovel blade and sends it skimming over the surface where it shatters against a post. He whistles lightly through his teeth a song he heard on the radio. He thinks it's called Nine Pound Hammer and he has tapped its rhythm all week, with his spoon on his porridge bowl in the morning, with a nail on the on the milk pail in the barn, with the axe handle on the lake ice where he goes each morning before light to break the new skin and draw water for the house. He snaps off a stem of teasel and holds it up. "If it was dark and we had to see we could light this for a torch. "Wouldn't burn long," says the girl. "Burn out before you got to see what you meant to see." "I'd smear it in bacon grease. It'd burn like a candle," he says. "Then the fat would melt and run down your arm and you'd get burnt." He shrugs and throws the weed into the bushes. Coming out the other side of the sumac meadow they see the house. It leans slightly. Smoke rises from the chimney. A bony mongrel barks four times, it's breath hanging over it like thoughts. "In that." The girl points to a shed across the paddock. It has a plastic window and a sheet metal roof. It has one set of tracks leading too it. He sends another disc of crust skittering across the surface. "I'll go look," and the girl waits behind, hugging her thin arms around herself. Placing his feet in the girls fathers footsteps he makes his way toward the door. His awareness circles him. He feels his raw shins burn, he feels winter in his nostrils and on the precise round surface of his eyes, the strain in his groin as he tries to match his step to this man's longer stride, the scrape of the door where the floor has heaved up, the muscles beneath his eyes pull into a squint in the dim shed. In the house the girl's mother sits with a cat in her lap. Her fingers are still and light on its fur. She stares out the window into the bones of a lilac bush. The boy says, "It's a real mess, missus. There's blood and stuff all over the walls and floor. He done a real sure job of it." He doesn't know how else to say it. She looks slowly through the room as if fingering through fog - the upper edge of wainscoting, dusty jars of plum preserves and pickles on a shelf, the map-like edges of a water stain on the wallpaper, coming to rest on a blow up punching bag with foolish painted features and weighted in the bottom to keep it popping upright with every blow. It was the only gift for the children that Christmas. "His last breaths are in that dummy," she says. Returning home across the fields the boy retraces his footsteps, gathers them in, cancels them. (This piece was written some years ago for our local Arts Festival. After seeing a number of psychiatrists of varying abilities over the years for treatment of depression and bipolar disorder I felt I had the experience to offer some helpful hints to others seeking help.) **************** If your psychiatrist's name is Dr. Gonnorago do not call him Dr. Gonorrhea. When your psychiatrist asks you to chart your moods for a week, do not draw a line graph that includes outlines of duckies, piggies and cows. If you mostly wear pyjama bottoms for pants, do not wear them to your appointments, even if they are your "going out for good" pair. Ditto the mismatched socks. When you are hiking into town along a highway for an appointment and find a stuffed grouse nailed to a perch on the side of the road, by all means put it in your knapsack to add to your home decor. Do not, however, respond to your shrink's inquiry into the efficacy of your medication by reaching into your pack, retrieving the grouse, and saying, "I keep giving him the anti-psychotics like you said, but he still won't admit he's stuffed." When you are at home chopping wood and find three gigantic grub worms the size of cocktail weenies, put them in the unused stool sample container you've been saving for a rainy day. Punch a hole in the lid for air. Put the container in a large envelope and leave it at your doctor's office with a note that says, "I figured out what's wrong with me. See enclosed stool sample." It's worth it. When the only time we hear about schizophrenics and manic depressives in the media is when one kills somebody, remind the general public about the millions of us who would do no such thing. If you're in the psych ward and find a copy of the "Buy, Sell and Trade" in the garbage, read the ads in the livestock section, but don't keep calling the guy in Bowser and ordering homing pigeons. He won't deliver. Should you have the strange fortune to watch your psychiatrist go insane before your very eyes, and she's sitting on the floor in front of you yelling, "YOU ARE TURNING PEOPLE AGAINST ME. YOU TURN PEOPLE AGAINST ME. I DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY. I DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY," step out onto the hot, dusty sidewalk in the blazing noonday sun like a gunslinger in a Western. Blow across the barrel of your finger pistol. Say, "My work is done here." When you've tamed a flock of finches that land on you whenever you are outside, don't tell your shrink that you sit in the yard, head in hands, weeping, and covered in songbirds. He won't buy it. Clear up common misconceptions about clinical depression and bipolar disorder. Severe clinical depression is not "the blues." It is not like grief. You cannot pull up your socks and snap out of it if you would only try. You cannot think your way out of a severe episode any more than you could think your way out of schizophrenia, a stroke, or a seizure. It is not rational. You may no longer see in colour. You may become unable to speak or move. It is a severe and terrifying brain disorder often involving misfirings of neurons and neurotransmitters and blah blah blah blah until you finally kill yourself. Or worse yet, live. You'll drink chamomile tea and St. John's wort tincture by the gallon. You'll try high dose vitamin therapy and essential oils. You'll go to naturopaths, homeopaths, and even a few psychopaths. You'll meditate and exercise. You'll go off wheat, sugar, dairy. You'd eat slug slime and dung beetles if it would help. But if nothing provides enough relief and a decent psychiatrist finds just the right drugs to balance your brain chemicals to give you some peace, take the goddam things. Send that psychiatrist a thank you note on a homemade card with a photograph of dead mice you stuffed into a tiny Volkswagen. But don't add, "P.S. Mice will do anything I say." Always remember you get by with a little help from your friends. Okay, a LOT of help from amazing friends. They'll sweep up your smashed dishes, launder your filthy clothes, make you bathe. They'll build your chicken coop, your house, your rain catchment, your life. They'll give you land, buy you a trailer, build your road. They'll feed you, house you, massage you, include you. They'll save your life again and again and may not even know they are doing it.
The mental healthcare system is crazy in itself and can be harmful. But if you educate yourself and define your expectations, it can be useful. If you can't stand up for yourself, and who can during the worst times, you'll need an advocate. Mine is my friend, Kathy. She'll never let them drag me off and lock me away. She prefers to do that herself. Nobel prize winner Alice Munro is my favourite author. In 2002, when I finished reading another collection of her stories, I was moved to write her a card of appreciation. It read: Dear Alice (may I call you Alice?), Regarding the collection "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" - Unbe-fucking-lievable. You are the master and you can put that on your dust jacket and smoke it. Alice wrote back. Read the card below to see her reply in her own handwriting. I'll wait... So my words were on Alice's refrigerator. I was thrilled. I showed the card to everyone and joked that I wished I had a fridge to stick hers on, or at least a fridge door. Someone took that seriously and word went out in our little community that I needed a fridge door and there were several offers. I was afraid people would start leaving their broken down appliances in my yard. I put a note on the gate, "No fridge doors today, please."
Later in the year I felt compelled to write to Alice again when a robin I was caring for pooped upon a book of hers. I took a picture of the robin with the book and mailed it to her with some dumb caption about a book worth shitting on. I meant it as a compliment but sometimes only I get my jokes. The way it was worded it could only be taken as a criticism, and a rude one at that, but I noticed too late. I have always felt bad about that. Maybe it's time to write Alice another letter - we have unfinished business. Now that Alice is a Nobel Prize winner I've pulled out her card from where it lives between the pages of the Oxford Canadian Dictionary under M and I'm showing it off once more. No fridge doors please. People of a certain vintage remember where they were and what they were doing when President Kennedy was assassinated. I remember the moment I heard Saturday mail would no longer be delivered in Canada. It was summer and I was a kid in the garden eating peas from the pod. Someone in the house heard it on the radio and conveyed the information. It was sad news. I was afraid we'd lose rural mail delivery altogether. I loved walking out the lane to open the creaking metal door and maybe there would be treasure: a parcel, a postcard, a favourite magazine. There you are out in the sunshine on a country road in your cut off jeans and bare feet, cicada buzz threading the air, and you reach into this magic box and retrieve a surprise. Sometimes in mailboxes with ill fitting doors the surprise you found was a nest full of starlings. My neighbour's mailbox contained a nest so the mail lady tucked the letters carefully beside it each day and the starlings hatched, grew up and fledged. My friend and I would take turns reaching in and the baby birds would swallow our fingers. This is what we did for entertainment in the country.
I love it when people get creative with their mailboxes and spotting one that is attractive or unusual is always fun. So this year I made my own. I kept with a simple design because it works best for packages (hint hint) but had some fun with the painting. It has magnets for a closure and four coats of paint. I will plant daffodils around the base. Nowadays there aren't many letters. Movies from the library's excellent 'Books By Mail' service are my main thrill, plus the occasional internet shopping item, but half the fun is the 12 minute hike through the forest anticipating the surprises that might be waiting in the magic box. One of my fortes is making scenes with dead mice and photographing them. These mice were killed by friend's cats and left cosmetically perfect. They'd be frozen until their debut. I screwed the camera to a tripod and documented the process of making the picture "the Bath" from beginning to end and here is that photo essay. A small garden had to be planted. I transferred tiny flowering plants from the bluff and woods and made a garden of different mosses with a backdrop of mint and sweet woodruff. Everything had to bloom on the same day so timing was critical. I nestled the porcelain bathtub into the garden on four smooth stones from the beach and let the plants grow up around it for a couple of weeks so the scene would look natural and lived in. Then I waited for it to bloom. In the meantime a ladder had to be crafted from an arbutus branch and lashed together. Luckily I am a Girl Guide and can do these things. The little garden had to be watered every other day by dipping the watering can into the swamp and carrying it up the hill. The mouse was glued to the ladder and clamped with clothes pins and bulldog clips until the glue set. Much hand washing was done throughout the whole process. Pollywogs were caught to populate the bathtub. Millipedes were wrangled to crawl up a leaf and curl in the moss. The millipedes behaved admirably during the shoot. The pollywogs, however, failed to surface at the required time. When the garden bloomed there would be two days when it was at its peak. Then I had to wait for the light, so the mouse went into the freezer on her ladder until the right sunbeam came along. Throughout the day I tried different light, each time transferring the mouse and ladder back to the freezer to await the next opportunity. Finally in the evening the sun came through the branches to illuminate the scene perfectly. I clicked the shutter for a minute or two and then the sunbeam was gone and so were the millipedes.
Afterward many hours were spent in post processing on the computer to tweak the colours, crop, and bring light to the parts of the picture I want to emphasize. The picture came out of the camera rather dull but I brought back the colours and the warmth of the light in a program called Lightroom. To see more mouse scenes look on this site under http://www.raineyroost.com/mice.html My name is Jay and I caused global warming.
It was the winter of 1996. This was back before we used ominous words like 'global warming' and 'climate change.' We called it greenhouse gasses then but that sounded like a good thing. Who doesn't love a greenhouse? And gas? We loved gas. Gas was good. I was in my cabin cleaning the kitchen when I found, by smell, a plastic bag that contained the raw bloody juices of a salmon I had cooked a week earlier. I stabbed this nasty fish bag with a fork, held it at arms length, and said, "I am not going to wash this." I walked over to the wood stove, opened the door - and here's where it happened - I threw the stinking plastic fish bag into the flames. Within the week I began hearing the terms global warming and climate change in the news. No more with the cozy greenhouse gasses, now it was the the real thing, the beginning of the end. It was no longer just a theory, it was happening. What had tipped the scale I wondered. What had been the last straw? Then the hairs on the back of my neck bristled. I remember it so clearly. I was sitting in my green easy chair eating buckwheat pancakes when the answer came to me like a bright and shining bolt of absolute, indisputable truth that I felt to the very marrow of my bones. It was the fish bag. Obviously I can't take all the blame for global warming. I know that within a trillasecond it would have been someone else who tipped the scale. Global warming was going to happen whether or not I burned a stinking fish bag, but because it was this act that was the final straw I became the unwilling poster child for climate change. Of course, only I knew this and I kept quiet. Still though, imagine how I felt. I'd turn on the CBC and hear the headlines: Polar bear habitat threatened by global warming. "Oh no," I'd say. "Not the bears." Penguin colonies dying off due to global warming. "But I love the penguins," I'd cry. I felt so bad. I took on all the guilt and shame and sadness. I was global warming's poster child and it was my cross to bear. It had to be someone. The newspapers never let up. I'd turn on 'As It Happens' on the radio and listen to the horrible things I do to hammerhead sharks and monarch butterflies, the three toed sloth (it got slower), and the lesser-crested jibblywink of Greater Zambozia. The list went on and on and on. I'd even effected the California wine industry. "Oh no," I'd yelp. "Not the grapes, too." I was so sad. Look at what I'd done to all these poor creatures. I'd filled their good lives with fear and cancer and death. Eventually the news was too much for me. I stopped being sad and instead became irritated. "Enough already," I snapped at the radio. "Stop harping at me. You're always harping at me." There's nothing more I can do to atone. I live in a tiny cabin, I catch rainwater for the house, I use a solar panel, I don't drive, I eat roots and berries. I can't live more simply. I even compost my own shit, for god's sake. I thought about coming out then. I needed people to know what a blow this had been to my sense of self and maybe they would have a little compassion for the position I was in. I didn't want this job but now that I have it everyone hates me. My self esteem was in the gutter as you can well imagine. There are no support groups for the poster children of global disasters. But I didn't come out then. I was too scared. I imagined revealing my secret at a press conference in Ottawa. Immediately after I'd be whisked away for an exclusive interview with Peter Mansbridge. He'd smile warmly and say, "I'd like to thank you for coming in to the studio today to talk with me, Ms. Warming. Or may I call you Global?" And, of course, I'd want to be friendly so I'd say, "Just call me Glo', Peter. All my friends call me that." Then Peter Mansbridge, who had seemed so warm and friendly in the green room, would say, "But do you have any friends, Ms. Warming?" I imagined looking down at my shoes, my lower lip would tremble. "Well, no," I'd mutter. "I'm Global Warming. Nobody likes me." The very first question and Peter had come out on the attack. I was so naive. There was also my own physical safety to think of. If I came out how would the world treat me? Would I be tarred and feathered? That was a good old fashioned punishment. But of course the tar would be an issue, being a product of oil and carcinogenic. You couldn't champion the environment and then use toxins to do it. Molasses, that may be the solution. Organic Blackstrap Molasses and feathers. But the feathers would likely come from a factory farm and molasses isn't local. Honey, then. Honey and thumb tacks. But the vegans would come out against honey. And the tacks, well, nobody likes taxes. Another committee would be formed, and another, and another, and there would never be consensus. I knew I would be safe. Environmentalists can't make decisions. They're too sensitive. So I'm coming out now. To hell with all your stupid penguins and polar bears, screw your B.O. emissions or whatever the hell they're called. If the world thinks I'm bad then, dammit, I'll be bad. "Oh but what about the tree frogs?" you breathy environmentalist flakes will say. I don't give a rat's patoot about the tree frogs. Get away from me with all your flapdoodle and hoo haa. You can't hurt me anymore. I can burn you all to crispy bits of long pork and your David Suzuki can't help you now. Where's the DDT, wheres the agent orange? Everyone has a bottle of Round-Up or Draino or Killex in the back of the cupboard under the sink. It's the guilty secret that has been tucked behind the unbleached paper towels and the biodegradable dish soap and the rusty SOS pads for 20 years because you don't know where it should go. Give them to me and I'll spread them hither and yon like a toxic, modern day Johnny Apple Seed. And that moldy foam mattress that's been been taking up space in my shed for 18 years because it's not allowed at the dump? Burn baby burn. When I go to the outhouse I'll drive. And I won't even carpool to get there. I'll burn coal. I'll harpoon whales. I'll squash bees. And I will always, always choose plastic over paper bags. My name is Jay and I am global warming. Wayne Rainey - April 15, 1994 - November 3, 2006 Wayne was an incredible cat and he deserves an obituary. In the spring of 1994, in my bed at a float house in Cocktail Cove, he burst from the loins of his mother the stray, who showed up one day all charm and good intentions, but failed to tell me she was in the family way. Two days after the kittens eyes opened the mama went hunting. Later I looked in the box where the kittens were crowded into one corner, frightened and hissing their tiny hisses. In the other corner (kitty corner you might say) was a huge dead vole. They barely had teeth yet and their mama was bringing them fresh kills. I thought they'd all be in therapy when they were older. My mother left dead things in my bed, too, and look how I turned out. Although Wayne was more of a mouser, in his early days he caught some birds. So when he felt like hunting I would go out and sit with him. I'd say, "I will always give you good food, I will never abandon you, and the birds just want to be free like you and me." I put the pictures in my mind and reinforced this daily. I let him see my sadness when he killed a bird. Eventually I would find him asleep under a blooming lilac that was abuzz with hummingbirds. When a day-old, orphaned hooded merganser duckling joined our home, Wayne went against instinct and joined the journey. I have no pictures of them together because every time he extended his gentle nose to her she'd go for his eyes. I learned I could trust Wayne implicitly, and together we raised many chicks and foundling wild birds. He allowed Beedoop, the baby robin, to share his window shelf, no cage, and they would sit together for hours watching the bluff. One morning I awoke to Wayne sleeping beside my head with Beedoop asleep on top of him. A baby flycatcher came to us one spring, and when I let it out of its enclosure for the day it flew out and landed between Wayne's paws on the bed. I left them there, nose to beak, and went to the kitchen to blanch the morning mealworms. In my magical backyard I feed dozens of wild birds, and Wayne would sit among them. They knew he was on their side and fed around him on the ground, but if another cat came by they would fly into the trees and tick angrily. They differentiated. Wayne was my best friend (sorry Kathy, you're just my second best friend), my significant other (though not in the biblical sense - he was neutered), and the one who showed me that humans and non humans can communicate on a more complex level. It just requires respect, attention, and curiosity. After Wayne died I spent the next two days building the meowsoleum. I schlepped heavy boulders to make the walls for the new garden. I lugged huge flat rocks for the stairs leading up to it. I made dirt. I used to think a labour of love was something you did not because you had to, but because you wanted to. Now I know it is much more. It is hard work that drives you up through sadness. It's a way to spend grief. Wayne was sick for a month, though only really uncomfortable on his last day. The night before his death I wrote about his incredible bird spirit, and that I would bury him with feathers. By 4:00am he was gone and I placed him on his window shelf. With only a candle lit, I went to my stereo to play the song I'd been singing lately and associated with our experience together. On top of the stereo there was a wren. We watched each other, and after a moment I said, "Little wren, I have to put you out." I reached forward and it flew to the desk. I went to get it there and it flew to the shelves, and finally came to rest on Wayne's body. I stood before it, now knowing why it had come. I reached out and it let me hold it. I nudged the door open with my foot, opened my hands, and the wren flew up into the starry, predawn sky. Wayne is survived by Gumby and Pokey (the rescued African pygmy hedgehogs), Little-Chicken-Who-Loves-Me, Pearl (who spent a month trying to hatch an oyster shell), Flabbergastia, Little Black Jewell, Spot, Speck, Sam, Our-Lady-of-the-Outhouse, Big Bertha, and Tiny - chickens all. Also Dead-Eye Dick, One-Eyed Wanda, and Tail-Free Freddy - damaged raccoons that feed alongside the chickens by day, though I wouldn't trust them for a minute after dark, the deer I raised and my many grandfawns, Sable the llama, Beedoop the robin, herds upon herds of wild birds, me, and these two magnificent ravens who watch over us all. Twizzler is a frizzle chick. A frizzle chicken has feathers that curl outward. They can come in many types - it is not actually a breed but a type of feather. It is best to breed one with a smooth feathered bird to get durable feathers. Twizzler is possibly a silkie frizzle, also known as a sizzle. At nine weeks old it is starting to look like a male and is pushing out a feather duster tail. I really, really want to keep him so I hope he is gentle and gets along with Gregory Peck.
The egg came from a breeder in town and was hatched by L'il Lulu, the silkie mama pictured below on her chicks. She hatched three others of different breeds, including one that will lay blue eggs. I don't let my hens hatch their own eggs because I like purebred heritage breeds. My rooster doesn't match anyone but his sister so sometimes I buy eggs from 4-H kids or breeders who raise chickens for show, and put them under my broody hens. My chickens live about 12 years. My oldest was 13. I never get to go away because I have to look after them. Everything wants to kill a chicken. I've been wanting to get out of the poultry business and be free so I planned to have no more young ones but now with these new chicks I won't be free until I'm 62. It was a moment of weakness that has caused 12 more years of bondage. But I love all 14 in my flock and they make the yard so lively and beautiful. They enjoy their little lives - dust bathing, digging for bugs, lounging in the sun, sipping water - whatever they do they do it whole -heartedly. They live in the moment. So I'll try to keep them safe and see them through. |
AuthorJay Rainey is an artist living on an island in British Columbia, Canada. Archives
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