Ducks Unlimited

Our little Farrington Lake waterfowl family has grown exponentially. There are now eight Mallard drakes, two Mallard hens, four ducklings, three goslings, and...(drum roll, please) nineteen adult Canadian geese. One particularly tame fellow, whom Shelly and I have named Bruce (after the shark in Finding Nemo), will stand at our feet and take bread right out of our hands. He can be a bit snappy with his bill; sometimes I'm grateful when Big and Igor chase him away (they apparently view me as a food source and 'protect' me from the other geese).

Alright, that's all the waterfowl news you'll have to suffer through tonight, though there will be pictures later.

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day! Shelly and I didn't go anywhere this year. Instead, we hung around the apartment, played board games (guess who won Scrabble and Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit??), read books, watched movies, and went swimming in the complex pool. We also found time to go workout on Sunday, what with bathing suit season right around the corner.

I finished The King of Lies on Sunday, which the New York Times apparently proclaimed "A seething, roiling, boiling North Carolina murder story...Grisham-style intrigue and Turow-style brooding", which apparently means something to someone, being as the publisher chose to include the quote right there on the cover. Shelly recommended it on our last trip to the bookstore, and I'm glad I listened to her! I, in turn, would recommend it to you, which is indeed what I'm doing at this very moment. True, it helps if you live in NC and know the places he's referring to in the story, but maybe you Marylanders would like it too. If you live nearby, feel free to borrow my copy, should the $6.99 prove too great a financial drain.

Also this weekend, we were treated to a visit by Law School Melissa. Shelly prepared curried chicken and rice for us, and later we watched a couple of episodes of Planet Earth. We had a great evening and she's welcome back any time. Why? Two words: Tickle Fight! Here's a representative picture, which Shelly has forced me to crop mercilessly:

Wow, what a season finale for House, wouldn't you say? All three of the doctors left, which means either they'll all implausibly be back in the first episode of next season or we'll start anew with three new actors.

Other news? Apparently my cousin Scott got bit by a dog yesterday! Now, Jen, you don't need to laugh quite so loudly!

Lamentably, no one captured this significant family moment on film.

I made the mistake of watching The Daily Show tonight. Jon Stewart took a moment to genuflect with Tim Russert about how the Bush White House doesn't make itself overly available to the press. Tim Russert bemoaned how (paraphrasing here) "they took the army to war, but didn't take the country to war, and now the American people don't support it." Yeah, Russert, and the media, which has fought tooth and nail for the last four years to turn opinion against the war, had nothing to do with that? Let's not forget that, after six months of exhaustive debate, 70% of Americans supported invading Iraq, a fact Stewart forgot when he complained that the voters were treated like 'non-sentient animals in this decision'. Hmm...open contempt, historical revisionism, liberal bias... nope, can't think of a single reason why Bush wouldn't want to go one on one with these two!

Isn't it amazing how fast animals grow? Here's a side by side comparison, showing the goslings when we first saw them on April 28th, and another taken of them last weekend.And the same for the ducklings:

In other news, Shelly's job is going very well, and she thinks she might get asked to stay on another week. Sweet! Great for the checking account! :) Also, my parents are trekking down to see us this coming weekend, so it'll be the standard 'vacuum the floors, hide the booze' drill on Thursday night! Kidding! (Or am I??)

Oh, and I finally received Brad's wedding invitation! I thought about gleefully marking 'regrets' and then writing 'Just messing with you, I'm coming" on the back, but given how stressful my own invitation experiences were last year, I decided to play it straight. So, we'll be coming up to Maryland Friday the 13th (ouch! Just realized that! No wonder they had such a great deal on the tickets!) of July.

Ok, goodnight everyone!

Father, Forgive Me, for I Have Sinned...

...It’s been two weeks since my last blog entry!
Well, obviously, a lot has happened. I’ll try to work backwards, with the most recent and then to the ancient stuff that happened right after my last post (for any who were thrown by my use of the word ‘backwards’).
Last night, Shelly and I attended a house party for one of the senior partners of her law firm. Dressed in the invitation-specified ‘snappy-casual’ manner, we departed at 5:45 PM for Raleigh, arriving about half an hour later. There, I learned the fine art of mixing and the exact science of mingling. I also listened raptly to several attorneys describe their cases to me, pretending not to have heard all the details already from Shelly. I got an Emmy from her for my stunning performance at playing dumb, though my apt, pertinent questions may have given me away. Later, though, I put myself in mortal danger when, on the ride home, I agreed with her that her fellow summer associate was ‘attractive’. All goodwill instantly gone...sigh.
That moves us back to Sunday, when Erika came over to drop off Sunny. The last three days have decisively informed me that I’m not ready to have a pet, much less a child right now. See, I’m unwilling to cheerfully wake up 15 minutes early to walk him in the morning, nor am I overjoyed about his ‘night terrors’ (Shelly insists on calling them ‘dreams’, but has anyone else ever heard a dog growl, howl, and bark in his sleep?). So how am I supposed to deal with a year’s worth of endlessly interrupted night’s sleeps? Erika? Danielle? Want to field that one?
Saturday moves us back to the spring cleaning Shelly and I performed on the apartment. My main responsibility was the deck, still sporting the dead plants from last year and all this spring’s pollen. That took me two hours to finish. Said cleaning was done mostly to prepare the place for the party that night...mostly. Erika and Jason and Martha all showed up about 6 PM, and Matt arrived separately about 15 minutes later, discovering that there are indeed two ‘D12’ apartments in our complex! Regrettably, most of the rest of the evening is unprintable, largely due to the afore-mentioned presence of Matt!
Hmm, last work week... what to say about that?? Nothing comes to mind, beyond the fact that it was a short one at three days. I didn’t much get to enjoy Monday or Tuesday, though, due to the fact that I spent most of the former vomiting and much of the latter asleep. Food poisoning, I think, due to eating shrimp that had been in the car too long. That’s a real shame, too, because up until then I ordered shrimp every chance I got, and now the thought of eating them has roughly the same gastro-intestinal effect as picturing Rosie O’Donnell in a thong bikini.
The weekend before last, Shelly and I took a trip to Charlotte for mother’s day. Saturday, the family came over, including Aunts Mary and Linda, Uncles David and Charles, and Cousins Miiisty and Christie. Lamentably, I took no pictures of that event. But I was there, and invited, I swear! People do SO like me!
Sunday, we took Mary out to dinner at Carrabbas (where I enjoyed the ill-fated shrimp; I guess they got their revenge after all!) and went to Frank Lisk Park in Concord. Here’s a pic of Shelly and her mom-

-and here’s another of Shelly and me:(Sorry, you do need to occasionally be reminded what I look like!).
Also, we discovered that Big and Igor, while perhaps more ready to be parents than Yours Truly, didn’t really over exert themselves in the child-rearing department: At Frank Lisk, we saw two families of honkers, one with four goslings and one with five. Here’s a pic of the latter.

Oh, and it wouldn’t have been a day if I hadn’t saved yet another bird from certain disaster- I had to yank a piece of fishing line away from a hungry gosling, who was right on the verge of swallowing it. He wasn’t overly grateful.
Speaking of goslings, our own three are doing well. They’re now about as big as those ones in the picture, who were probably hatched about a week earlier. Unfortunately, we’re down to four ducklings now, although the ones we have left are growing quickly and will hopefully be beyond most local predators soon.
Well, I guess it’s about time to wrap up this post. I’ve been going about an hour now and from the sounds in the other room, American Idol is about a half hour from wrapping up. Which means we have roughly twenty-five more minutes of filler before they announce who won. Gag me with a spoon.

I guess I'll leave you with a couple of pictures Dad sent me of the old homestead in bloom. Mom really has the place looking nice, wouldn't you agree?

My patience is at it's end...

Two hours I've been sitting in front of this (word omitted) computer, trying to type out this post, and twice I've gotten far into it only to have this (multiple, hyphenated words deleted) thing crap out on me as I've tried to add pictures.

So, let's make a game of it, shall we? I'll add all the pictures I was going to, and you can all come up with your own story of my week. Most creative gets an undisclosed prize which I'll think up at a later time!

Here's a couple of links I was going to add; maybe they'll help.

Piedmont Wildlife Center- maybe an injured baby cardinal got picked up by kindly strangers and taken there?

Yates McLamb- maybe a certain someone started her summer job?

Oh, and Jen? Happy 27th Birthday! I wouldn't have bothered, certainly not three times, if I hadn't promised you a post tomorrow.

Now, I'll try to post this mess. And may the (unkind name omitted) who programmed this site get (horrible, very un-Christian death wish eliminated).

Straight Jacket, Apartment D12!!

I hope you all know how much I trust you. I'm about to recount a story which, should you relay it to anyone in the psychiatric care profession, would probably be grounds for involuntary admission.

Tonight, 7:15 pm. Shelly needs to take a break from her studying for her DE exam. Yesterday, I noticed a new mother duck with six babies on the lake (we saw her two weeks ago but hadn't since; we'd thought they'd met a bad end but yesterday happily proved otherwise). Shelly decides that the perfect break would be to go see/feed the baby ducks and goslings. I concur.

We travel down to the lake, spread out the grain on the shore and go to the dock to feed them bread. The ducklings and mother are nowhere to be seen.

We content ourselves to feeding the other adult ducks, but keep randomly hearing plaintive peeping emanating from somewhere nearby. Soon the mother and four babies emerge from the bushes along the shore. The peeping continues unabated.

Triangulating on the source, I get a bad feeling. The peeping has a faintly echoing sound and is coming in the direction of the shore near an overflow drain. Leaving the dock and walking around to the shore, I'm relieved to see a fifth baby racing across the grass towards the lake, where he rejoins the mother. Still no sign of baby number six.

From the shore, there's no doubt: The peeping is coming from the drain, which lies 7-8 feet off shore. Here's a picture; the drain is circled in white.

Since I had my fishing pole with me (don't ask), I tested the depth. It's only about a foot deep in between. Shelly, still on the peer, incredulously asks me what I'm going to do- I can't use the fishing pole to get the baby out?! No, I just want to look down into the drain and see what I can do.

First set of inhibitions reluctantly set aside, I kick off my sandals and wade into the water, out to the side of the drain. Immediately I see that the drain is only about five feet deep and dry on the bottom. A lonesome but healthy duckling is running in circles peeping his head off, but there's no way the mother could have gotten him out and she's apparently given up on him.

Shelly suggests I lower a bucket into the drain, coax the baby into it, and retrieve him. Having once raised ducks myself, I know the last thing that duckling will do is get anywhere near something that has anything to do with me. In fact, as soon as he sees me, looming over the side of the drain, he immediately panics and runs to the other side.

So, what's a rational, well-adjusted person to do? Probably not lower himself into the drain, complete with a dead, decomposing fish at the bottom, but that's what I do. Trying to be gentle, I slowly corner the duckling, reach towards him and...

...he darts into the overflow pipe on the drain's side, running twenty feet down this dank, dark, slimy tube before stopping and continuing to peep shrilly.

I swear creatively. Shelly, on the dock with three, highly amused Asian girls, is laughing hysterically. I look out over the side. Fortunately, only the four of them have seen what's happening, but I'm definitely the center of attention.

I take another gander at the pipe. It's maybe four feet high, and I can see light at the other side of it, about a hundred feet away, where it ends at the little creek that runs through the middle of our apartment complex. It ends in the general area of the red circle on the picture, well over that hill that cuts off the view.

What's a rational, well-adjusted, already grimy individual to do? Certainly not stoop over and stalk into the pipe after the duckling, but that's what I do. Maybe I can drive it out the other side and catch it more easily in the creek?

Ever seen Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers? Shelob's Lair? It was kind of like that. The light gets less and less. At first, the spider webs are sparse, but they get thicker and thicker as I proceed. There's a small amount of standing water at the bottom of the pipe. I can occasionally see it rippling as the duckling runs through it away from me. I keep talking to the duckling, trying to keep it in front of me.

It gets very, very dark. I'm maybe two-thirds of the way through the pipe. I'm hoping to God there's nothing else in here. I think the duckling's let me get closer, probably because he also can't see me. I'm straddling the bottom of the tube slightly because I don't want to step in the foulness that is that water and don't want to crush the duckling.

Something brushes past my foot, going the other direction. The duckling? A rat? A snake? Some unclean, noisome creature of the underworld? I hope for the former.

I turn around. The water is rippling in a hurry back towards the drain. I catch a glimpse of the duckling's profile against the light. I turn around and head back.

No more messing around. I corner the duckling, grab him, and lift him up over the side into the lake water. Shelly, watching from the pier, tells me he circles thrice, peeping crazily, before getting his bearings and making a b-line for his mother, who nudges him and gratefully welcomes him back to her flock. Shelly later tells me "You know, he thinks he just got away somehow!"

I hoist myself out of the drain and wade back to the shore. Shelly can barely speak she's laughing so hard. The Asian girls continue to smile at me knowingly. "Back in China, they shoot the mentally deficient!", their grins say to me. Shelly grooms reams of spider web off my clothes and hair, still in hysterics. I'm not able to laugh about it quite yet. Having had enough adventure for one evening, I decide that I've never needed a shower worse, and head back to the apartment.

That duckling had better go on to have a full, productive life, that's all I can say.