Could It Be a Grouse?

November 10, 2010.  Wednesday.

Situation:  I work tonight and decide to take Mway out a little before 2, so I’m not in a rush later.  As I’m putting on my helmet, gloves, and boots, she’s lying on the floor, and I have to tell we’re going for a walk a couple times before she stands up.  She looks up at me with bug eyes, seemingly surprised we’re going for a walk at this hour, before she and Moi have taken their naps.  I mention this to Moi, who has walked into the kitchen, and, in a quivering, schoolmarmish voice, she gives vent to her anthropomorphic imitation of Mway’s thoughts: “Oooh, this is not the way we do things.  Oooh, this is different.   Oooh, I don’t know about this.”

State of the Path:  The sun is shining, and except for shadows from large objects here and there, the fields and path are brightly lit.  My long shadow follows along the way, flitting from here to there, from one side of me to the next.  See a couple cardinals near the old orchard – one of my favorite birds, not just because of the color, but because I can identify it.  In the hedgerow, one of the trunks of a double-trunked tree leans over, projecting toward the path, its nearest branches forking through two smaller trees – this may have been like this for some time, and I just never noticed it before.  Just before the maples, Mway scares a fairly large bird up out of the ground.  It flies close to the ground just beyond a tarp lying near the frame of Moi’s new wigwam.  It has spots of white on its back – I don’t know what it is: could it be a grouse?  I walk along the creek, over the swale, then across the plank.  In the skating pond, some of the catty-nine-tails have exploded with white fuzz.  Occasionally I knock some fuzz off the goldenrod, and it flies away in the breeze.  It starts to feel too hot in my denim jacket.  Here and there, little insects flit about in the sun: not the all-wing insects, but some kind of all-wing-like insect.

State of the Creek:  At the tree stand, I look at the – I don’t know whether to call it a shrub or a tree – directly on the other side of the creek.  It has many trunks, and still has some of its green, oval leaves.  I must have known that this shrub or tree was there, but usually at this point I’m looking at the water or watching Mway go into the water, which she doesn’t do today.  I guess I notice it today because it still have some leaves.

The Fetch:  I toss the stick pretty much just within the clearing.  On a couple tosses, Mway runs on one side of the “chokeberry,” but the stick lands on the other side; Mway hears where it lands, immediately corrects herself, and zeroes in on the stick in no time.  After I start to get bored and hot, I make a couple tosses deeper into the goldenrod, knowing that the fuzz will start to irritate Mway’s nose and throat.  When Mway brings the stick back and just stands there chomping on it, I decide we’ve had enough.