The beginning of wisdom, as the Chinese say, is calling things by their right names. (E. O. Wilson, as cited by Elizabeth J. Rosenthal, Birdwatcher: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson)

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Very Red Rabbit Pee

February 17, 2010.  Wednesday.
Situation:  Work tonight, but decide to take Mway out around 12:45 so I’m not in a rush later.  Mway is already outside sitting on the porch.  The Boy then goes out to do some chores Moi set for him, and Mway starts following him around.  Moi is on the phone with her friend, Laurie, who she hasn’t heard from in 20 years.
State of the Path:  The Boy and Mway are ready to come in by the time I set foot on the back porch, but I surprise Mway by gathering together my two sticks – no matter, she’s ready for a walk anytime.  Beyond the pig pen, I decide to take the side path along the old orchard.  It’s hard to find exactly where the path is, since the snow is deep here and no one has walked here lately, and I have to negotiate my way mainly by following the lay out of the trees and shrubs.  I walk into one of the ant hills that are along the path, and when I spot the jar candle on the tree, I know I’m going the right way.  Mway follows behind me.  Here and there I see expressways of rabbit prints.  When I come back to the main path, walking seems so much easier.  I also take, for the first time since it’s snowed, the side path along the skating pond, stumbling across the snow covered banks and ice of the feed channel.   Just before the channel, I see what I think is a spot of blood – I expect Mway to really start sniffing at it.  But she ignores it, and looking at it more closely, I conclude that it must just be some very red rabbit pee, there being plenty specimens of rabbit pee along the path.
State of the Creek:  In the middle of the path along the creek, I start tearing down some of the low hanging branches of multiflora that engulf two of the oaks there.  I take a close look at the shrubs – on the one tree the shrub goes up about half way up the tree, on the other a shrub seems to climb up two-thirds of the way.
The Fetch:  Mway only makes three fetches.  When I get back into the house, Moi is still on the phone with Laurie.

3 comments:

sisyphus gregor said...

This research – when have you been doing that?

Anonymous said...

Between jobs, and whenever you and Moi are otherwise occupied and I’m therefore not at your beck and call – often late at night when you are both asleep, so long as I can drag a book into the bedroom before Moi closes the door and traps me in. M.

sisyphus gregor said...

By HADEEL AL-SHALCHI and BARBARA SURK, Associated Press
MANAMA, Bahrain – Bahrain's leaders banned public gatherings and sent tanks into the streets Thursday, intensifying a crackdown that killed five anti-government protesters, wounded more than 200 and turned a hospital into a cauldron of anguish and rage against the monarchy.

16 February 2011 Last updated at 17:12 ET
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Source: reuters // Reuters
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February 17, 2011, 9:37 a.m.
Reporting from New York —
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By Jeff Mayers
(Reuters) - More than 10,000 union public employees and supporters packed the Capitol Square and the inside of the statehouse on Tuesday to protest Gov. Scott Walker's budget plan to strip many bargaining rights from state and local government workers.