Warning: I need to vent, and this could get ugly.
My line of work seems lately to mean getting hit by many firehoses simultaneously from several directions. I get about a minute to observe the hummingbirds daily, and I am clinging to that minute. I've given up the at-least-a-chapter-from-a-novel-a-night routine that generally makes me feel human, but I will NOT give up my daily hummingbird observation minute no matter how many assessment matrices need to be revised, course proposals need to be drafted, grant proposals need to be worked on with excruciating exactness, publicity releases need to be generated and distributed, curriculum committee proposals need to be analyzed, grad student exams need to be read and assessed... every now and again I get to teach or do some research. So there.
I like a lot about what I do, or I wouldn't be doing it. But lately it just seems particularly scratchy. Fantasies about having a lunch pail and walking down the levee to work at the petrochemical plant. Yeah, like that would be my life.
But this blog is NOT about work. It's an escape from that often-grey garden.
The hums are thinning out a little. Maybe I have too many feeders (we're up to 6 now). But, I think they are going to Mexico. It will be time. One day there will be a nip in the air. That will feel lovely, but it will be a loveliness rimmed with melancholy, because it might mean no more hums for awhile. I try and try but I can will no roufous or calliope or anything that warrants filling out a HUMNET report to appear. In my fantasies one or two of them over-winter here and I post all kinds of wonderful photos of them. But I like our humble ruby-throats. If any of them stay, I will be grateful. If they don't, I will understand. They like to travel. It is so hard to imagine something so fragile and small flying over the gulf. They need to escape Grey Gardens, too.
We might seriously need to go to Mexico in the winter break. Follow the hums.
A man from some sort of federal wildlife agency is coming to GGLA tomorrow to assess our coyote situation. Every night now, they yodel and yip in chorus, quite close. the cane field immediately downriver was cut for seed this year, so it's not all full up with tall cane, and the coyotes seem to be out in it nightly, doing and killing who-knows-what. They can take the sugar rats with my blessings. Their nightly serenade is eerie, but not alarming--the alarming part is the morning they circled up our Scoutie and we're pretty sure meant to hunt him down. I would go to the mat for that poor sweet dog, so we need the coyotes to move on.
Scout is a golden, a runt, and he's all heart and soul. He chose us, showing up one day. Beckett, our lab mix, also a former stray, is too crafty to let a pack of anything get him, but Scout is not so quick, maybe not so smart. He has his own fine points, but I don't think they are the kind that could stand up to a pack. I will make rules about this coyote thinning: no cruel traps, no poison. I plan to hear the man out. Gary has arranged this, spoken to the guy, says he was quite nice. We will see.
The next escape from GG looks like a conference in Chicago, in November. My old home. When I'm there, there is always the feeling I could go back to one of the apartments I lived in there, open the door and walk back into a former life, before I ever dreamed I would live in the deep south and witness hummingbirds and bother over coyotes and hear armadillos whumping into pipes under the house and every now and again hear myself saying, without irony, "y'all." 10 minutes into Chicago my speech will revert to what it really is: west side, ugly flat vowels. I will NOT look at a Cubs game or actively seek out a score because I want them to win so badly and ever since 1969 I have become deeply superstitious.
Memory of foolishness: first year in the deep south, I am watching the Bulls play in the last game of the NBA finals on TV, alone and frankly kind of lonely and homesick. Beckett is a puppy and is sitting on my lap, irritated because I keep jumping up and down. We win! It's like the 5 peat, I can't remember, and I jump up really high and run to the front door and out into the yard! and there is deathly, echoing, silence. What on earth was I thinking? Back in Chicago, everyone was going crazy--the streets full of noise and cheering and celebrating (and alas, gunshots and that kind of junk). I stood out in the yard for a minute wondering what in the heck was I thinking--of course nobody here cared. I go back inside, and Beckett is sitting there with this puppy expression he used to have most of the time. He would sit very compactly and just stare daggers at me. So I returned the look and said, "I don't think we're in Kansas any more, Toto."
To put it mildly.
