Choo-ee: The Barrel's Been Moved

March 8, 2010.  Monday.

Situation:  Moi works all day today.  I also have work to do and leave the house about 11.  When I leave, I notice that Mway, up in her room, has pushed the door shut on herself, and I think “tough” and don’t bother opening it.  When I come back from work, the door is still shut, and I imagine Mway just lying in her room all day, waiting for someone to come and take her for a walk  (The Boy was asleep when I left, with plans to go down to Jazz’s and help her out since she’s broken her arm.)  I open Mway’s door as I’m walking past, and as I’m suiting up downstairs she clops down the stairs, and we go out about 4:15.

State of the Path:  As soon as I’m out the door, I look for the stick I’ve been using as a fetching stick on the bench, but don’t see it among the various sticks there.  I immediately think that yesterday Moi must have used it (or the Boy today), and now it must be lost.  But as soon as I go down the porch steps to get my walking stick, which I prop against the house near the faucet, I see the fetching stick propped up next to it.  Most of the snow is gone today; only a few patches remain: in the shadows of the house and our large spruce tree, in the old orchard, and along the ridge around bug land.  The path is muddy, pitted with paw prints, and soggy and puddled down by bug land and on the other side of the ridge in the break coming up from bug land.  I hear a chirping and a grating whistling of birds as I walk past the pig pen then turn left to walk by the old orchard.  Finally as I approach the back hedgerow, I see black birds perching high in the tree. I look for any red spots on the wings, but I can’t see anything, and as I approach the trees the birds are startled and fly away.  Still, I guess that these are red wing blackbirds.  I consider taking the side path along the skating pond, but the feed channel is filled with water and it looks too wide to hop across.  Coming through the red willows, I start to hear a bird singing “choo-ee choo-ee choo-ee” and then hear another bird, more in the distance, reply “cha-ah-cha-ah-cha.”  I look around, but I don’t see where the sounds are coming from, and of course I have no idea what sort of birds these are.

State of the Creek:  As I’m walking along the creek, noting the height and color of the water and the cow piss foam accumulating in front of the log and barrel jam, I’m suddenly startled to see that the barrel is gone.  I immediately wonder to myself what could have happened to it, then just as suddenly I see it sitting next to the path on top of some leaf and stick debris.  Apparently Moi or the Boy has seen fit to pull it out of the creek and set it there.

The Fetch:  There’s no more snow in the clearing, and I stand to the side of the soggy grass and toss the stick as far as I can, toward the electric pole, the cement rubble, back down the path.  I lose count how may fetches Mway makes today – considerably more than 3, probably less than 10.