Category Archives: Nature

Painted turtles basking in the sun across the swamp on a mat of downed reeds. Their black backs shine. One of these days they’ll come wandering over our driveway to lay their eggs. We found one scrabbling in the dirt last year, digging her her personal birthing hole. Oliver the pit-hound went into the swamp and brought back a painted in his jaws, holding it gingerly, but he dropped it on command. It probably didn’t taste too good anyway.

Another day a snapping turtle found the cabin, a monster of a reptile, standing there frozen when we approached and disappearing magically when we came back to check on it later. It could have been a geezer, as old as thirty.

Common Snapping Turtle

This is a quiet time for me too, between efforts to get the word out about Love, Fiercely and The Orphanmaster, taking a break from Savage Girl. The sun shines hot on Cabinworld and it’s a lush life out on the patio, keeping an eye on those turtles.

Turkeys gobbling wildly on the hill above the cabin.

They’ve taken up residence just this year. A turkey explosion has hit the greater metropolitan area of New York. There’s even a female down at Battery Park, waddling her way across streets, turning heads and stopping traffic. Is the bald eagle the most American of birds, or is the turkey the true icon?

And what in fact is a wattle? A fleshy dewlap or caruncle, it is  mating catnip, apparently. A large wattle has been linked to high testosterone levels. When the tom is excited, its wattles and a fleshy flap over the beak, called a snood, can enlarge to the extent that they obscure the eyes. Its head turns blue.

But you’ve heard enough about the turkey’s secondary sex characteristics, I suppose. What about the gobble? The sound can carry for up to a mile, but toms also yelp, purr, spit, cackle and whine. The females I guess sit placidly by, foraging for acorns, amused by their ridiculous turkey suitors. Waiting for them to fan their tails: yeah, go on, impress me.

A draft nipped at my ankles as I crossed the living room. A friend found the reason for the increased ventilation — a hole that went clear through from the inside to outside the house at ankle level. Chinks are a way of life in the cabin, and we compensate for drafts with great roaring fires in the grate. We cleaned out the ashes the other day and I thought of the people on Downton who have the responsibility to keep the hearth spit shined. Luckily ours can remain as ashy as we want. “Then we’ll sweep out the ashes in the morning” — Emmylou Harris.

Nibbler

Chinks mean critters. We knew the mice had returned when we found a big, slimy chipotle pepper pulled out of an open can and dragged halfway across the counter, where consultations were held and the vegetable was rejected. Rather than learning not to leave food there I put a plate of shortbread overnight near what seemed to be their entrance/egress. Next morning, crumbs abounded, thrown around as if during a party. Rodents of course make no distinction between our home and theirs — aside from believing that ours is preferable because here they are safe from hungry hawks.

The birds are flummoxed by the warm spell. A cardinal hops quizzically across the yellow grass. A blue jay climbs the tallest branches of the magnolia. Chickadees hop around, and a whole flock of red wings comes soaring over the marsh, well before their time. The red wings swarmed the bird feeder until they realized they were too heavy to stay aboard. All the seeds are just about gone anyway.

Stormer of Bird Feeders

The feeder is set up as a bird house also. Unoccupied as of yet. Made me wonder what would happen if we all had to share a common house/market, dropping in suddenly and foisting off the others. I guess we do, sort of.

A family of hawks lives on the ridge beyond the cabin. When we walk out the dirt road to get the mail, Oliver, my pit bull mix, never seems to notice, even when they zoom above our heads. Does the hawk see the dog? Would it like to grab him? He would be quite a mouthful.