Look for Bare Area Where Turkeys May Have Been Dusting

July 9, 2010.  Friday.

Situation:  It’s 9:01.  Moi has just taken Mway out in the back yard to throw stick, before going to work.  I’ll take her out in a few minutes for a full walk.  Yesterday afternoon, when she was taking Mway for a walk, Moi said she saw a weird area of bare ground off the path on the way to the clearing.  She said it looked like a place where someone had come in and dug up the dirt.  Ezra has suggested to her that it might be a place where turkeys go to dust themselves.  I will be checking it out.

State of the Path:  Mway is still panting from her fetch with Moi, but she nevertheless lines up at the door, ready to go out.  Moi has told me it’s not suppose to be as hot today – there’s a breeze, a cloudy sky.  One of the hens, milling around the walled garden, gets trapped in the march of my foot steps, and proceeds unwillingly down the path along with us, until she finally figures out she can step to the side.  I wonder how many of the plants might bounce back into life if we get some rain soon.  Down by the wigwams, what I once called ferns, but what Moi calls bracken – these plants are completely shriveled up, and I don’t think they could be saved by a rain.  A bird roosts on the electric wire that runs across the field from the back hedgerow – I think it’s a mourning dove, and if it would coo I’d be sure, but all I hear from it is a squawk of fright and protest at my presence.  Under bushes and trees, especially, there are brown spots; I don’t know if these would ever become green again if it rained.  Coming up to the clearing, I look for the bare spot Moi has talked about, and I finally see it near one of the evergreens she got from Ezra (and which she watered yesterday).   The area looks like one of the anthills, the size of manhole covers, we see all over the place, except that it’s been flattened – perhaps, indeed, by turkeys dusting themselves, except I see no evidence of digging, unlike on the anthill I’ve mentioned before along the old orchard.  Moi and I call these things anthills – but I reflect today that I’ve never seen ants crawling around on them, and maybe they are something else.

State of the Creek:  The three puddles, amazingly, are holding their own.

The Fetch:   Two fetches from Mway – I really didn’t expect any more: she’d already worn herself out with Moi.