Thrashers and Goats and Accents, Oh My

I went to the Fruit and Berry Patch yesterday in search of good things to eat. While the excursion warranted ample opportunity for severely lame punning as it was slim pickings and unfruitful, I did get to see some cool birds and a goat that scared me a little. What? Goats can do some damage.


I do believe this bird is a Brown Thrasher, contrary to the opinion of the woman who pointed it out. (She thought it was a pair of mockingbirds).



Her partner in berry picking called out to us at one point and said, "You sound like home. Where are you from?" And indeed, I could hear the familiar o's and flatness in her speech that is common to us northerners, but I wasn't exactly sure she was talking to me or my friend. I leaned around a blackberry bush to identify the direction of her question.

"Oh, me?" I asked. "Michigan."

"And you," she asked of the friend who was with me.

"I'm from Tajikistan," said Kat. Which is just an awesome answer, and the only true one.

Antony & the Johnsons covers Beyonce's "Crazy in Love"

The sounds houses make

The toilet is gurgling in the hall bathroom and from the vent in there comes a persistent scratching. I cannot identify the source of these noises and find them disturbing. What lives under the house in the spaces behind our deck? There is a small door accessible from the outside that leads into this underworld which my landlord tells us is an excellent place for storage. And yet, I am certain something else has dibs on the area and I prefer to cede it to them.

I don't know if it's because we live in a sparsely populated area or if our house is just one of those quirky houses with habits; It breathes, and groans, and speaks in languages I cannot interpret. It makes me feel like a foreigner here. At night, I wake to a rustling outside my bedroom window, what I believe is a not disagreeable animal sound which sounds like something small - maybe the size of a breadbox. It sounds against the siding of the house as though it brushes its matted fur directly against the house and over the milky quartz and other rocks tapered in by railroad ties in the frontyard. I am comforted by its presence because it is less foggy than the sounds the registers and vents make. I know it is some animal and I suspect it is a skunk whose fertile odor woke us all up in confusion some weeks ago.

It is an odd thing to be woken up by the sense of smell. Disorienting. It takes a few minutes to realize it is neither sound nor light that has jarred us from our sleep. Instead, on the night of the skunk, it was the rich, overpowering odor, the likes of which I had never smelled so impactfully as on this night, sitting up in bed certain that something had just struck me in a tangible way that odors do not often achieve.

But the sounds. Even if I can identify the general vicinity they come from, I cannot usually determine anything else. They remain hidden from me, the gurgling, scratching, tump-tump-tumping of a new house where I am clearly the intruder, adding to the mysterious, dense cacophony. Maybe there is a badger somewhere wondering what all this keyboarding tapping is about. Maybe he waits with his eyes open, sense alert, caught in between wonder, fear, permanence.

Addendum: Scratching from vent identified - a squirrel is gnawing at our deck. Interestingly enough, this is often done by female squirrels about to give birth. They can't eat much, but they do like to gnaw. This is the second pregnant animal (see post about the robin hatching her eggs) I've encountered during my pregnancy. I like these coincidences. I think my environment senses my own pregnancy and is harmonizing with it.

Top 5 Moments in Television History (According to Me)

1. The Cosby Show - The Cosby family performs Ray Charles' "Night and Day" for the grandparents' anniversary:

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2. The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson - The Tomahawk Incident (this moment created the longest sustained laugh in televisin history and gave Carson the opportunity for the classic line "I didn't even know you were Jewish.")



3. The Carol Burnett Show - Gone With the Wind:



4. Late Night with Conan O'Brien - Triumph the Insult Dog at the opening of a Star Wars film:


Triumph at the Opening of Star Wars Ii - The funniest videos clips are here

5. Saturday Night Live - Gilda Radner's "Judy Miller Show":

Summer and Waiting

I get that I'm lucky to so frequently have summers off and since everyone keeps reminding me how lucky I am in that "geez-you're-goddamn-lazy-and-worthless-and-not-at-all-contributing-to-society-the-way-I-am-with-my-40-hour-a-week-job" way, I try to make my days feel useful in some way. Alas, I am failing miserably.

I wake up early, which cannot be helped on account of the fact that I am just naturally an early riser. I wake up between 7:05 and 7:20am every morning for reasons I cannot explain. It also cannot be helped as I am nine months pregnant and sleeping for long stretches is simply out of the question.

So I'm up around 7am which leaves me with at 15 hours of a day to fill and I just can't do it. I get up, check e-mail, have some breakfast, maybe send out some bills, catch up on correspondence and if I'm lucky, this will take me to 9am. Then the dark veil of uselessness falls upon me. What can I do?

Work on my quilt?
Watch last night's late night shows my husband taped for me?
Cook something?
Reorder the already well-ordered nursery?
Clean a house that remains pretty immaculate as a rule?
Draw? Paint?
Start a rock band?
Go for a walk?
Attempt some very awkward lawn maintenance in 90+ degree weather?

I do all these things (except the rock band part) and then it's maybe 11am. My husband is likely still sleeping and then I get hostile with this stagnant life. I know there are zillions of people who would like all this time off. I get that. I respect it. I sympathize with their plight. But boredom and lack of utility is a plight as well and I'm sick of hearing things like, "boy, you must have a lot of time on your hands" in that tone. It's not all it's cracked up to be.

I'm slowly working my way through my husband's Souther Lit reading list for fall, but even that, because it is not required of me, feels purposeless.

Taking Up Serpents

Snakes and human are not wonderful companions. Nobody would call a snake "man's best friend." Don't get me wrong. I'm no snake hater and I'm not even particularly herpetologically-phobic. I just think snakes belong where they belong and I belong somewhere else. So imagine my displeasure when the following sibilant creature showed up in my dining room this week:

Yes, displeasure. That's what I'm going to call it now that the event is a few days past. Who would not be displeased to find a three-foot snake in their home, a snake that was foreign to a girl from Michigan who can only identify the common garter snake or the occasional harmless corn snake? So, yes, I was displeased, and I calmly called to my husband to let him know there was a freaking enormous snake IN OUR HOUSE! And yes, would he please remove it. Thankfully, my father-in-law was visiting and between these two brave, brave men, the snake was removed and sent back away where it belongs, away from my house. I took a picture beforehand (as evidenced, of course, by the above photo), and calmly (read: in a panic, fingers trembling, breathing shallow, mindful of potential snakes slithering across my feet) got online to send the picture to any person who could assure me I did not just have one of Tennessee's four venemous snakes in my house. A very, very, very kind man - the director of the herpetology department at the university - responded quickly.

Black Rat Snake, he said. Not venemous, but liable to attack if cornered. Thankfully, while the snake threateningly showed its fangs, no attack occurred.

And here are other comments I received from those I sent the image to:

"Great photo, btw!"
"Nice photo"

Yes, who doesn't want to be complimented on their photographic skills when the fear of death by snake is upon them? But this is Appalachia and silly me for finding these responses inappropriate.

This is snake-handling country which is no sideshow but a religious tradition of proving ones faith in accordance with the following bible verse from Mark 16:17-18:

"And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."

This is it - the justification for taking up snakes and drinking strychnine (which is a fabulous word, onomotopaedic with its hard k and somber n's).

And there are plenty of dangerous snakes to choose from here - four venemous snakes in all: the northern and southern copperhead, the timber rattlesnake, the western cottonmouth, and the western pygmy rattlesnake. Want to take up a serpent? Take your pick! Behold the wondrous variety available to you!


Michigan has one venemous snake, the Eastern Massasagua Rattlesnake, an increasingly rare breed only found in the lower peninsula of Michigan. 'Just the one and there are no holiness churches calling for its members to pick it up. No sir. We Michiganders leave that snake alone. It likes it that way. We like it that way.

But I'm stuck in Tennessee for a couple more years where snakes forget their rightful place, or maybe it's us humans who have. Either way, I move around my house differently now. I have no desire to prove my faith with any snake-handling encounters, but I will say, with all the prayers of protection I've got going up, that snake may have done its work in bringing me a little closer to God.

(Sidenote: "Salvation on Sand Mountain" by Denis Covington - a smart, personalized, journalistic foray into snake-handling. Read it. Damn. It's good.)

The Myth of Rain and Pregnancy

There are some things so socially accepted as to be indisputable and yet, I dispute.

Here are two widely propagated myths that need dispelling:

Fact or Myth?

Myth: Pregnancy is nine months.

Fact: Pregnancy is actually ten months.

Fact or Myth?

Myth: Seattle gets more rain than any other city in the U.S.

Fact: Seattle receives a mere 37.1 inches of rain annually on average. Knoxville, Tennessee, on the other hand, receives 47.29 inches of rain annually on average. That's more than ten inches over Seattle.

Why are these fallacies continually reinforced? I'm thinking about looking into the origins of hot dogs. Maybe they're really quite good for us and made of vegetables.