Happy piggy, concerned responsible dog

One of the fun things about taking bicycle rides is you never know what you will come across. Sometimes you might see turkey vultures, other times . . . a pig.

Yes, this little piggy went to market. At least, he started that direction before he was sidetracked by the tasty leaves in the neighbor’s yard.

This was one of those double-take moments. As I approached the first thing I noticed was the van stopped in the rode. Then the dog. Then the–what? Big hairy over-sized thing. The pig? It took that second for me to realize what I was seeing and for one wild fraction of a second I thought there was some wild boar loose before reason thought better of such a wild (but appealing) idea.

Then I thought, “Cool. A pig. Somebody’s pig got loose and their dog tracked it down.”

By that time I had rode on past. In the next second I realized that the somebody whose pig was on the loose might need help capturing it. So I braked and swung the bike around and pedaled back to the idling van.

“Is that your pig?” I asked.

The old man rolled down his window. “No,” he said. “I just saw it and stopped.”

“Well, somebody has a pig on the loose,” I said.

“One very happy pig,” the man said, and drove away.

He was right. The fat little porker looked very . . . content. Blissful, in some charmingly ignorant sort of way. The dog, who obviously was much more intelligent and responsible and knew the pig belonged to its owner and was not where it ought to be, was standing guard in a solemn sort of way. It seemed to be willing the pig to get back where it belonged, but the pig continued to waddled about on the yard, eating leaves, wrinkling its nose in a pleased sort of way and rubbing its back against the mailbox post with a satisfied expression.

Neither of the animals seemed the least perturb by my presence. The dog even came up and sniffed me in a friendly greeting, almost as if asking me if I could do something.

By this time I realized I had a loose pig on my hands with nobody around to claim it. I didn’t feel I could rightly turn around and leave without making a good faith effort to inform somebody. I suspected the pig–by its domesticated demeanor–hadn’t traveled very far and likely belonged to some house nearby. But which one? It was 10:00 AM Saturday morning. If I went ringing the wrong bell I could be potentially waking up the wrong person to tell them a pig was on the loose. I could see how that would play out:

“Pig? What pig? There is no pig around these parts! Get away from here, you creep!”

Or something like that. I don’t care to ring anybody’s doorbell at any time, but especially not at 10:00 AM Saturday morning to ask them if they have a pig on the loose. But there was the pig to think of, who was clearly too stupid to care about traffic on the road, or much of anything else. So I tried to take an educated guess. I first started toward the house across the street, but a brief inspection didn’t show any outdoor structure to hold a pig, and the house was rather dingy . . . the king of place where if your rung the bell you might be waking up some hairy man who had a really bad hang-over from hitting the bars Friday night. Before I went knocking on that door I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a neighbor who owned the piggy.

The next house up the street was well kept and had some type of shed out back that maybe could house a pig. The house didn’t look like the sort of place people would live who kept a pig, but then if I was wrong I’d probably be kicking some middle class couple out of a relaxing morning in bed, not somebody who might let the dogs loose on me. One needs to thinkg about these sort of things, you know.

Faced with the uncertainty, I decided to go ring the middle-class people’s door. If they didn’t own the pig maybe they would know which neighbor did and save me from knocking on another wrong door.

I rung the bell. I rung it again. Either nobody was home, or else they were hoping the hairy bicyclist on the front step would go away before they called the cops. So I left and went back to the dingy house. Bracing myself, I crossed the uncut lawn and climb the porch. There was a big cheap table set up on the porch with various odds and ends scattered about. The front door was open ajar and inside I could see junk stacked along the walls.

“Well, here it goes,” I thought, and knocked on the screen door.

The curtain twitched.

“Ya?”

“Um, do you have a pig?”

“Ya.”

“Did you know it was loose?”

“Ya.”

The answers were clipped and short. For all the information they contained the hidden speaker could be hostile, suspicious, retarded, or terrified.

“Well, okay,” I said, and started to leave. I had done my duty. I wasn’t going to stick around and wait for someone to start shooting.

“Thank you,” the disembodied voice called after me, perhaps deciding that I really had only come to relay some helpful information, not launch into a tirade.

I left, and who knows if I will see the pig again.

I liked the piggy, which is strange, because, while I like animals in general, I haven’t had any particular affection for any pigs I’ve met before. But this one looked cute and funny in the stupid sort of way that I find so appealing–the same kind of stupid as ducks. The kind of stupid that makes me want to say, “Ha, ha! Look at that stupid little fellow! I want one! He looks so dumb and happy!”

Maybe you understand. Maybe you don’t.

Very naughty (but happy) little piggy

Remember those neighborhood geese I wrote about previously? They have made themselves unwelcome.

I have watched with some amusement as the neighborhood has soured to the geese. I wonder how many of the local residents saw where things were headed when the geese took up residence. I’m not surprised at how it has turned out, but I think if other residents had possessed more foresight they wouldn’t have been so complacent when the geese first arrived. When the geese first moved in everyone probably thought they were a fascinating, and perhaps even cute, curiosity. But a flock of geese doesn’t really fit in with refined suburban life.

Geese eat a lot of grass. They poop in equally prodigious quantities. Geese are poop machines. They wander across your lawn, chomping on your grass with their front end and firing of green went volleys with their back end. I, having raised geese, am quite familiar with this. The other local residents were probably shocked and appalled by the invasion of manure. Just about anything else would probably have been suffered with some amount of forbearance, but among the denizens of civilized life poop in your lawn and on your driveway is an unforgivable sin.

The first to begin souring toward the geese was probably the owner of the pond. The geese, of course, enjoyed his pond. But when they got out to enjoy the grass of his spacious lawn they pooped all over his lawn and driveway. He suffered the poop invasion the worst. I’m sure he didn’t appreciate it in the beginning when the geese pooped all over his lawn, but perhaps because he had such a large lawn he thought he could put up with it. But I’m sure he really didn’t like it when they started pooping on his driveway. And it became unbearable when he decided to put his house up for sale and the geese were pooping all over everything. Geese poop doesn’t increase resale value.

It was with a mixture of amusement and sympathy that I watched him shovel the geese poop off his driveway, and attempt to evict the geese by throwing rocks at them in the pond and sending his dog in swimming after them. In the good old days one blast from a shotgun would have sent the geese out of there never to come back. But you’re not allowed to fire a gun inside the town limits, so Mr. Homeowner was left to futilely toss stones at the geese and have them swim round in circles and mock him for his impotence. No doubt passing traffic thought he was the most cruel and barbaric of men for harassing the geese. Everyone thinks you should be nice to geese–until they start pooping in your back yard.

Not content with one yard, the geese expanded their grazing grounds. They had no problem with crossing the street for what they saw as better grass. Now there were more people chasing geese out of their yards. And, since if the geese weren’t in one yard they were in another, it became some overgrown version of hot-potato where everyone tried to get the geese to stay in someone else’s yard. The geese were unperturbed. They would stroll away only to come strolling back later.

And strolling was what they did. They strolled through yards as if they owned the place, and meandered across the road as if the world would stop for them. Which it did. Some people seemed to take pleasure in stopping their cars and watching the geese slowly cross the street. Others did not, and their numbers increased as the geese began to make a habit out of sauntering across the road as if they expected traffic to stop until they were good and ready to reach the other side. There was a marked increase in impatient horn honking, and cars forcing the geese out of the road. I am actually a little surprised no geese ended up as roadside debris, but I guess motorist irritation was not such that they were willing to risk damaging their nice cars. The geese are too stupid to realize how lucky they were.

They own the road

In the end the pond owner did manage to sell his house and the geese have become less of a problem to the refined citizens of this locale. Not because the stone throwing, shouting, geese chasing, or horn honking has terrified the geese into leaving. No, they still come around. But I think with the new generation of geese grown to adulthood the flock has become much larger and they found their grazing grounds a little small.

Summer is waning late and they are preparing to head south and until then the flock often splits up smaller groups for more distributed foraging. Rather than the entire group taking up the pond there usually is only one of the geese families hanging about, and they often will move on after a few hours. The new owners of the pond at first valiantly attempted to keep the geese away, (standing guard all one evening and shouting to chase them away any time the geese flew in to land,) but now seem to have given up, and only chase them off the driveway and back into the pond. With the goslings grown and the geese now flying to forage over a greatly expanded domain the local residents have been delivered from the need of chasing geese off their lawns. Only rarely do the geese stick around long enough to cross the road and interrupt traffic.

Perhaps everyone thinks they have survived the worst and their geese troubles are over. But with a little more thought they might rest uneasy. I wonder what will happen when the geese come back next year to hatch more offspring. Can anyone say, “Double the trouble?”

We’ll see.

There is that saying, “Stop and smell the roses,” but even if some of us do slow down and enjoy the flowers occasionally, how many of us stop to notice the little dramas in life? I mean the very small dramas in life. So caught up in our hustle, we don’t notice the birds, bees, or bugs toiling, living, and dying. But if you do stop to look, to really look, sometimes you see things that are interesting and even strange. Sometimes you see things that make you wonder.

I was walking up the steps to the back deck when I noticed a katydid(*). I had my camera with me, and my first thought was to get a close-up picture of a katydid. The initial fleeting impression was of a live katydid, but as I stooped closer that impression changed. Dead. The poor fellow had expired.

Stricken Katydid

At this point the mundane observation of a katydid sitting on a step turned into something more. A little drama, a small mystery. How did he(or she) get here, and how did he die? My first thought was that someone had squashed him, but a close examination revealed no smashed body parts. In fact, the katydid seemed quite whole and intact and appeared as if he had simply collapsed.

A continuing examination revealed more facts, and mystery. The ailment of the katydid clearly had something to do with the liquid seeping out of its mouth. A rather gruesome way to go. Was it something the katydid had ate, or had it been infected with some horrible parasite that had burst open inside it and was slowly digesting the katydid’s insides? Or was the material seeping out of its mouth actually something on the steps it had stopped to eat, only to find itself caught or sickened?

Hungry Ant

As if this weren’t enough, I soon discovered the katydid wasn’t quite dead, not yet. A lone ant had discovered the ailing katydid and was futilely trying to haul the creature off to its ant hive for devouring. As the ant tugged at the katydid’s leg the katydid waved a small leg feebly, as if to say, “Go away and leave me in peace.” But the katydid was so far gone as to be unable to move any more then one small leg. It’s body was slouched and unmoving, so the ant kept at its attempted efforts.

I suppose someone might come up with some great analogy for all of this–the dying katydid and the single small ant trying to haul him off as a meal. Perhaps something about the shortness of life, or the suddenness of death. But I just wondered what the katydid had eaten, or if whatever it had was catching. It’s not every day you see a katydid collapsed, internal juices leaking out of its mouth.

Ug. Looking right at you

—-
(*)This story wouldn’t be complete without mentioning that at the time I thought I was looking at a grasshopper, not a katydid. But as it happened, two days after I took my pictures of the dying katydid aSeamstress had a picture of a katydid on her blog, seeking identification of the bug. Those more knowledgeable than myself identified it as a katydid and thus I was educated. In some quick googling I tried to determine how one distinguishes a katydid from a grasshopper and what species my dying katydid was. On one website it was mentioned that katydid’s can be distinguished by the great length of their antennae–I’m not sure if this is the only or most correct method of distinguishing. And as to exactly which species this is . . . good luck. There are a lot of varieties of katydids, and in my quick googling I didn’t find one that looked exactly like mine. If anyone has more information, I’d appreciate hearing it.

Here are three links on katydids:

1# Wikipedia article
2# Whatsthatbug.com
3# North American Katydids

I have added a photo section to the silverwarethief website. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I desire to create a true photo blog. But this addition to the silverwarethief website is not that. I’m not entirely sure what this addition to the silverwarethief domain is . . . an experiment, I guess, as are all things on this website.

Apparently, I like to make things complicated for myself. Being something of a perfectionist I wanted this website addition to be perfect, but not knowing exactly how I wanted it to function, that was hard. You can’t really combine an artistic photo blog and a general photo dumping location. I finally decided this would be a photo dumping location where the sublime and mundane would mix. But I didn’t want to simply dump the photos, I wanted to organize them. Which led to my nemesis and obsession–organizing. How should I organize my photos? Under what categories? The questions and considerations multiplied, and no perfect filing system came to me. So that is still an experimentation in progress.

Then, as if all of these problems weren’t enough, there came the technical difficulties. For some reason (which I might know why, but not yet how to fix) the links to my full size images go 404 when the content is most certainly there. Perplexity and aggravation. I think it has something to do with how Wordpress is handling things, but haven’t had the free time to investigate and resolve the issue.

Rather than waiting until I make the time to resolve the technical issues and find equanimity in my artistic vision, I’ve decided to unveil the new photo section now. Take a trip on over and enjoy the Siberian Irises. Just remember the links to the full size images don’t work. And things may change.

As is the case with everything around here.

Wild geese reproduce at a prolific rate. I have read about how wild Canadian geese populations have become a problem in some areas, their numbers have grown so large.

We don’t have that problem in this neighborhood.

Yet.

But, watching the wild geese that live in this area, I see how it does happen in other areas.

Geese Grazing

Directly across the street is a large pond which serves as the summer residence for a flock of Canadian geese. When they came back this spring I would say it was a small flock. I did no official count, but the number of geese was approximately thirteen. Apparently, they promptly began the process of making sure another generation would follow as by early May I saw little goslings in tow behind parents swimming around the pond.

The speed with which the geese hatched goslings was surprising (they must have started sitting in early April when the weather was still far from entirely pleasant), but even more surprising was the number they had hatched. These aren’t domesticated animals. These are wild creatures living by their wits. One might think the strain of self-sufficiency would keep the reproduction rate somewhat lower than domesticated animals, but the number of young produced by this flock of wild geese was better than anything I’ve personally seen among domesticated geese.

Of the thirteen geese, ten of them matched up to form five pairs. The remaining three were either all male, all female, or not romantically inclined, I presume. I didn’t perform a precise count of goslings, but a close visual estimate showed that two of the pairs had produced five goslings each, two pairs had produced four goslings each, and the last pair had produced three goslings. Thus, if nobody perishes over the summer the departing flock will have grown from thirteen to thirty-four! Even allowing for a few deaths, the possibility for exponential growth is staggering.

The practical part of me sees some interesting opportunities. The geese are self-sufficient and eco-friendly, as they eat only grass. Further, they reproduce in large amounts yet are effectively no cost to raise. Ergo, there seems a great opportunity here to take up low cost geese farming or, if more philanthropically inclined, deal with some world hunger. There are geese flocks all over the United States that are reproducing at a vigorous rate. Some judicious thinning of those thousands of flocks ought to provide meat for many meals.

That is the practical side. But I’m not a very practical guy.

The other side of me thinks the goslings look awful cute trundling around out on the grassy banks of the pond. So I just watch them, and marvel at how fast they grow.

Goslings Resting

The geese are not the only wildlife that appreciates the pond. One day I was down in the garage and happened to glance out the window and saw down the street a dark . . . thing crossing the road. My first thought was, Whoa, that is the largest lizard I’ve ever seen! Then my mind made a little better sense of what I was seeing and I realized it was a snapping turtle crossing the road.

Why did the turtle cross the road? To get to the pond.

I raced to grab my camera and ran out of the house, barefoot, to get pictures.

Snapping Turtle

I think turtles are cool. The bigger they are, the better. They appeal to the little boy in me that likes anything with armor, spikes, or any such gear. They have a majestic, ancient, and crusty air. They look to me like the last remaining dinosaurs. The turtle I found was not the biggest turtle I’ve ever seen, but with the serrated edge of his shell and the spikes on his tail he did look like a little dinosaur.

Crabby Turtle

He was also shy and rather crabby. As soon as I started to approach he went into a defensive posture, pulling back into his shell. But, whenever I touched him, he would scramble to turn around to face me, looking for any opportunity where he might bite. A snapping turtle’s bite is not pleasant.

If you’re less than adventuresome, the first sight of a large snapping turtle will have you scared to enter streams or ponds ever again. Just imagine one of those boys going for your toes.