Use a Small Stick

September 23, 2010.  Thursday.

Situation:  This morning I wake up to a bird singing.  I can best transcribe its song as “choogeta-choogeta-choogeta-chooo.”   I’ve heard this song many times, and I wish I knew what kind of bird sings it.  Last night at work I sang “Happy Birthday” to myself.  Sounds odd, but it’s part of the job.  There was a wild downpour at the workplace for a short while, but Moi tells me it hardly rained here, a brief isolated sprinkle.  I have to work today and plan to take Mway for her walk when I get home this afternoon.  I get home shortly after 4.  Mway’s pacing around, and I put on my newly washed walking clothes, which feel stiff and tight.

State of the Path:  I can’t find the birch branch, so I pick up one of the small sticks that Moi has told me she prefers to use for fetch (I could call it, I suppose, an “amateur” stick, in contrast to what Moi deemed the “pro-quality” stick, or, analogously to the products manufactured with gender distinctions in mind, a “ladies’” stick or “girl’s” stick).  I also bring my walking stick.  Out on the side path, a faint musty odor arises from the leaves that have recently fallen.  When I round the bend at the back hedgerow, a single New York or New England aster pokes up from the surrounding weeds, the first time I’ve seen one of these flowers in the upper part of the field (and down farther, these flowers are still continuing to spread).  Walking through the goldenrod back toward the main path, I also smell, again just faintly, the decay of the goldenrod stalks that I cut down some weeks ago.  Here in the sun, on what’s turned out to be a very warm day, I feel hot in my newly washed walking clothes, and I get the longing to take a dip in the pool after the walk (which I would do, except I still have this cold in my chest).  Many of the “chokeberry” bushes have lost their berries; the berries that remain are shriveling up.  Down by the creek, as I’m casually looking at things -- the ladies thumb, the plastic barrel, the fuzzy Canadian thistle I still have to walk carefully around – I suddenly stumble upon another “green-sepaled” plant, on the opposite side of the creek, just before the big locust trees.  I never noticed it before.  This looks exactly like the plant I’ve been seeing at the crest of the skating pond (the green sepals, the paint-brush-like flowers that don’t open), and it looks like it’s been there awhile.  It’s a little bigger than the other plant, it seems to be sitting in more sun, and some of its serrated leaves have turned purple.  I’m excited about seeing this, and maybe tonight or tomorrow morning I can google this plant, although I’m not sure what kind of key words I would use: “green sepals”?  “paint-brush-like flowers that don’t open”?

State of the Creek:  Unbelievably, the two little puddles at the narrows are still there.

The Fetch:  On the way to the clearing, the fleshless leg bone of some small animal lies in the path (actually I first noticed this weeks ago, but I haven’t remembered to mention it until today).  It matters little to Mway that I’m tossing a girl’s stick, except one time when I toss it down into the taller goldenrod, and the little stick gets easily hidden.  I guess it doesn’t even matter then; Mway overshoots it when she runs after it, but she backtracks and finds it within seconds.