Creepy

The Scream!

Today I baked the last of the winter squash from my CSA allotment.  As I came into the kitchen at the end of the baking time, I heard a sound.  I heard something like a quiet scream.  I opened the oven door to look and the screaming lowered in tone but continued.  When I shut the oven door the screaming gradually increased  in tone to what it was before.  How creepy is that?  Vegetables screaming?  I suppose the liquid was leaving the squash and forcing air through the small tunnels.  I don't know but it was creepy.  It reminded me of an apple pie I made 25 years ago after reading Thinner by Stephen King.  I took the apple pie out of the oven and set it to cool on the stove.  Steam built up inside of the upper crust until the pressure of it moved some of the apple juice aside in one of the air holes and let the air out so the crust deflated.  Then the steam built up again and inflated the crust.  Inflate, deflate, the crust was pulsing just like the pie in Thinner.  I stood by the stove in utter horror, eyes wide, screaming about the pie.  My ex came in to see what all the screaming was about.  "You read too many books," he said.  How is that even possible?

Who Will Win?

After listening to a naturalist talk about bird feeders that are pest resistant, I splurged and bought a counter balance bird feeder.  The bird has to sit on the perch before the door will open.  If too much weight is on the perch, the door stays shut.  Today my new bird feeder came in the mail so I took advantage of warmer temperatures and installed it on my bird feeder pole.  To fill this feeder, I have to stand on a chair or bench, hold the perch down with one hand, and fill the feeder by holding the container of bird seed above my head and pour it blindly into the feeder.  Wow, that may not always be so easy to do.

But if this feeder is really squirrel resistant, it maybe worth the effort.  Who will win?  Me or the squirrels?

2014 Thanksgiving Turkey Page Coloring Contest Cotestants

This turkey wears a pilgrim hat.

Gobble Out Yo!

The tables are turned with this turkey who is wearing camo and has a rifle.

This page is glittery and explosive.

This artist cut the turkey out of the page and stuffed it inside of the turkey making a 3D philosophical piece of art.

This is another turkey that has hunted humans.

A Mario turkey.

The 2014 Turkey Coloring Page Winner!

This is my art work.  Lovely, no?

Realistic coloring except for the rainbow colored wattle and snood.

This turkey picture has a caption.  The caption reads "Maybe those weren't morels!"  This turkey appears to be hallucinating eyeballs in the knots of the wood fence.

This turkey is dressing up as a pink flamingo!

This turkey has real feathers but does the artist think she is the center of our solar system?

Another Mario turkey.

A patchwork turkey.

I am 100% pleased and impressed with the quality of the art work in this coloring contest.  Such creativity and effort impresses me very, very much.

Thanksgiving 2015

This year we are grateful for the following things in alphabetical order:  ammo, buffet, cookie, democracy, education, Florida, God/grand jury/grandchildren, health, imagination, job, knowledge, life, music, naps, oxygen, police officers, quiet, rain, summer, the letter s, USA, very small animals, winer, Xanadu, yelling find words, and zoos.

 

Compost Thief

I've been busy today getting ready for the holiday.  Cleaning, baking and cooking took up most of my time.  As I worked I watched the gray squirrels gathering the last of the crab apples from the trees.  The last apples are the hardest to get because they're at the very end of the branches.  As the squirrel progresses down the branch, the weight of the squirrel makes the branch hang lower and lower and lower until the squirrel is completely vertical.  This vertical position makes it hard for the squirrel to let go, grab a crab apple, cram it in it's mouth and walk backwards up the branch again. Sometimes they loose their grip and fall to the snowy ground. As I work I keep adding things to the compost bucket on my deck.  I add things like onion skins, potato peelings, celery trimmings, egg shells, and apple cores.  Suddenly I hear a knock at the deck door.  There on the deck is a squirrel peering in the deck door.  Before it leaves the squirrel grabs a honey crisp apple core from the compost bucket.  I guess that makes sense.  A honey crisp core has a lot sweeter and fresher fruit on it than some dried up crab apple hanging on the very end of the branch.  I don't think it's necessary for the squirrel to knock on my deck door though.  Was it expecting more from me?

The Last Talk with Lola Faye

I wasn't expecting to get drawn into The Last Talk with Lola Faye by Thomas H. Cook as much as I did.  I grabbed the book from the library shelf because it was displayed directly on the shelf (instead of lined up straight with all the boring books) and because I was thinking of Captain Cook and the Great Barrier Reef.  So even though I picked up the book for not the best reasons, this was a page turner of a book.  It's just a conversation between a guy and a woman who used to work in his father's store but the conversation is fascinating!  There are two sides to every story and Lola's story is much different than Lucas' story.  Lucas thinks he's so smart because he went to Harvard while Lola stayed in a small town in Alabama.  As the conversation progresses, Lucas realizes there is more to Lola than he thought. Her comments and her thought provoking questions  lead him to realize she's got a lot more going on than he thought she did AND his assumptions about her were all wrong.  I wondered what Lola had in mind when she began this conversation because it's very clear she is leading the discussion down a premeditated path.  Who is Lola?  A boring small town store clerk or a dark woman with a checkered past?  And who is Lucas?  A published PhD in town on a book tour or a selfish man/child who has a lot of growing up to do?  This was a great book that I read quickly in two sittings.

Buck Norris

I finally caught the third (and I hope final) mouse.  His name, I think was Chuck; Chuck Norris the mouse.  Well, since I caught him, maybe he wasn't Chuck Norris but his close cousin Buck Norris.  This mouse was tricky.  I put peanut butter down in the center of a glue trap and when I look the next morning, I find the peanut butter gone.  How did it do that?  Did the mouse suspend himself from the top of the drawer and hang down to eat the peanut butter?  Because all the peanut butter was gone but no mouse was stuck in the glue.  I rigged up some wooden snap mouse traps with peanut butter. I know these mouse traps work because I accidentally snapped myself and I have a bruise on the knuckle of my right pointer finger.  Three mornings in a row I find the mouse trap unsnapped but free of peanut butter. What the heck?  Am I feeding the mice now?  Are they living large on extra portions of commercial peanut butter? So I bought newer snap mouse traps at the hardware store because I am sick and tired of feeding mice peanut butter and failing to catch them.  That and I am sick and tired of washing ALL my silverware over and over and over again.  I can't stand the thought of mouse turds in my silverware.  I must have the cleanest silverware in town.  I put a new glue trap loaded with peanut butter in the empty silverware drawer.  I add a new mouse snap trap loaded with Jiffy Extra Crunchy.  I sit down to watch television.  I hear a SNAP!  I hear some rustling in the silverware drawer.  Dreading a gory scene, I wince as I open the silver ware drawer.  What do I find?  I find a horrible scene.  Horrible!! Both the snap trap and the glue trap are clear of peanut butter but no mouse in the freaking drawer.  How does this happen?  Is this mouse a ninja?  Now I am really teed off.  I figure the mouse live downstairs and come up into the kitchen at night through the walls and into the cabinets under the kitchen sink, behind the dishwasher, and under the silverware drawer.  I buy 4 more mouse traps.  I load all four of them with more Jiffy Extra Chunky.  I set 3 of them on the washing machine downstairs and the last one in the silverware drawer with another glue trap, also loaded with peanut butter.  This morning I found the mouse stuck to the glue trap.  I'm sad that a creature had to die this horrible way but I'm glad to get this pest out of the house.  Now I can sanitize the silverware drawer again.  I'll shake out the turds, wash it with soap and water, let it dry, and spray it with Lysol.  I think I'll give it a few days before I put the silverware back in the drawer just to make sure.  I hope this war is over.

Moving to Winter HQ

Something is missing!

Our coop?  Where is it?

WTH?

It's a good thing the human carried us over here to the winter headquarters.

Nice and cozy in here.

So glad to have a coop again.

Noah

A family member gave me this book to read.  "Take it," he said, "It's not that good."  Confused and torn between taking and leaving the book, I took it.  I read Noah  by Mark Morris and I liked it.  This exploration of the biblical story of Noah and his wife and three sons was pretty good.  Noah likes animals.  He and his family are vegetarians.  The birds, animals and reptiles go into a hibernation state while they're on the ark.  Not all of the animals make the trip.  Some are killed when the ark rolls back and forth in the first waves of water.  Others are killed when the ark strikes a mountain top at the end of the voyage.  Noah is a difficult man to live with and he alienates all of his family.  This was a good book and it kept my interest.

What Is An Athlete?

I know this woman casually from talking to her at the gym.  We've chatted for years off and on when we run into each other in the locker room.  We don't know each other well.  In fact, I don't even know her name.  I do know she works out frequently and has competed in 33 triathalons (swim/bike/run).  She's not going to do any more triathalons because she doesn't like the way people push her under water at the beginning of the swimming segment.  She is very talkative and tonight, when she was talking, she called me athletic.  I demurred and said something like, "Well, I try."  She said women discount themselves more than men when it comes to being an athlete.  She said I should consider myself an athlete.  I told her the only time I feel nimble is when I am swimming but she continued to insist that I was athletic.  I consider her athletic because she works out frequently and has competed in 33 triathalons.  I've never done any kind of "athalons" much less a triathalon.  I exercise a lot and I am more physically fit that some people but less physically fit than others who are older than me. I guess I think team members are certainly athletes.  I guess I don't really know what makes an athlete.  What I do know for sure is that this other woman's opinion of me as an athlete made me feel really great.

For The Birds

Last night I went to a chapter meeting of the Master Naturalists.  Our speaker was the former naturalist from Wild River State Park.  I've heard him speak before and he's really good.  This time he spoke about feeding the birds and various pests that bother your bird feeders.  His premise is that bird feeding is for the enjoyment of the humans who provide the feed.  To that end, reducing the seed taken by other pests adds to the enjoyment by humans.  At the state park he set out bird feeders for the enjoyment of the public who came to the visitor center.  Squirrels would come and empty the bird feeders.  So he tried various solutions to the squirrel problem.  "It was like an arms race," he said about his battle with the squirrels.  I knew exactly what he meant.  I myself was in an arms race when I tried to have a platform feeder suspended on a cord between a tree and a a post on my deck.  I strung pie plates, empty 2 liter bottles, and all kinds of sundry recycling material on that cord to keep the squirrels off the platform feeder. It looked like a bunch of trash in the air over my yard.  And the squirrels still got to the food by leaping over all my barriers.  Squirrels may not be smart but they are determined.  They try and try and try.  They can leap 8 or more feet through the air to reach a platform feeder.  One time he moved a feeder 6 feet away from a tree.  The squirrel made it on the first try.  He moved the feeder 7 feet away from the tree.  The squirrel made the 7 foot leap on the first try.  He moved the feeder 8 feet away.  The squirrel made a 8 foot leap on the first try.  He moved the platform feeder 81/2 feet from the tree (which was only 6 feet away from another tree).  The squirrel leaped 8 1/2 feet from the farther tree.  He tried domed covers.  Squirrels ate around the edge of the cover to get a grip with their teeth so they could throw feed to the ground with their hands.  He put a hem of glue around the bottom of the dome and dusted it with cayenne pepper.  That did deter the squirrels.  But at this state park raccoons were also a problem.  A racoon can reach over the top of a baffle with one arm while hanging on below the baffle at the same time.  For raccoons a cone shaped baffle works better.  At least it works for a time until a black bear comes and flattens the cone shaped baffle.  This naturalist had photos to illustrate all of these events.  The funniest picture was a 300 pound black bear balanced on top of a 12 inch square platform 7 feet up in the air.  Who ever installed that pole did a really good job.  Several years ago my struggle with the squirrels over the platform feeder made me get rid of it for my own state of mind.  The arms race with the squirrels was too upsetting for me.  But this naturalist said that a counter balance bird feeder is usually effective against squirrels if it has a bar on it.  On these feeders the access to the seed is closed when the heavy weight of a squirrel (4 pounds) is put on the perch.  I think I might get one.  Audobon sells one and they call it squirrel resistant.  The talk was absolutely fascinating and I enjoyed all the photos and the discussions.  That night I had dreams about black bears so that proves it was a good class when the information infiltrates your dreams.

50 Year Grudge

I've been reading to a discussion on facebook about school lunches.  One person claims that school lunches today are all processed foods whereas years ago school lunches had homemade food.  Thinking back to my school lunches, I imagine we had home made (or school made) foods.  I think the foods we had were pretty good.  I wasn't a big fan of the beets we were served but otherwise it was good food with one exception.  I'm still upset about it too.  For dessert we were served, on a monthly basis, prune whip.  Prune Whip!  For dessert?  I am a dessert loving person.  I have dessert 7 nights a week.  And prune whip is not dessert.  Prune whip looked bad (like dirty whipped cream).  Prune whip tasted bad (like dirty whipped cream).  Prune whip sounded bad - prune (yuck) whip (ouch!).  How dare they claim prune whip was dessert?  False advertising!  I believe it is time for me to let this grudge go. I can forgive my school lunch lady for serving prune whip and calling it dessert.  Some of the kids (I can't remember a single one) might have liked the taste or medicinal properties of prune whip.  Whereas I liked the goulash and garlic bread, they may have liked the prune whip.  No one food can be eaten and enjoyed by every kid in a school.  There, I've given up on a 50 year old grudge.  I'm a bigger person now.  But, with God as my witness, I will never, ever allow a spoon full of prune whip to pass these lips.  No thank you.

Crown Me

See this girl riding in the back of a convertible?  This is how I felt today at the dentist's office while getting my crown.  Only my nose and face are numb but otherwise I was feeling great.  Love that gas!  I felt no pain in my mouth or anywhere else in my body.  All the world's problems disappeared temporarily.

Trial Run

I am getting excited for the Thanksgiving holiday.  This year I will be serving home made French bread instead of the rolls I've made for the past several years.  So I had  a trial run this weekend.  I ended up with two delicious loaves of French bread and a house that smelled heavenly all dang day.  Plus kneading the dough for five minutes gave my pipes a good work out.  The trial run was a success.  Thick crust, chewy center, the bread tasted great with the split pea soup I made this weekend.

Had A Song Stuck In My Head So I'm Sharing It With You

  Until now I never realized this old song was a stripper song.  This version is performed by Mary Martin who also played Peter Pan.

Evidence

One thing I DO like about the snow on the ground is the evidence it leaves of who has been walking around in my yard.  Some bird hops back and forth, back and forth, between the black spruce tree and the space under the gutter on the corner of my house.  One of the feral cats that roam my neighborhood uses my footsteps to travel from my front door around the side of my house next to the chicken coop and from there it heads over toward the compost pile.  A deer steps on my front sidewalk and travels through the sumac towards the woods.  Another deer goes up my driveway and walks on the mown path toward the house. The squirrel tracks between the crab apple tree and other spots in the yard make the tree look like the center of a wagon wheel. These four creatures have left evidence and I haven't even been out looking for them.  I have avoided the outside world as much as possible because it's so cold outside.  I have to take care of my chickens and that forces me to go outside.  This weekend I will do more exploring for evidence of creatures.  Maybe I'll find some Sasquatch prints!

I Am Malala

I listened to I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up For Education And Was Shot By The Taliban  by Malala Yousafzai.  Malala is 17 now and she wrote an autobiography. She had help from a cowriter.  I had heard about Malala.  I believe she and another girl were given the latest Nobel Prize for Peace.  What I didn't know was that Malala was a well known advocate for education before she was shot.  She had won prizes and received national recognition for her efforts prior to the attack on her life where a bullet went into her left eye socket and came to rest in her shoulder.  She was strongly influenced by her father who ran a school for boys and girls.  When the Taliban entered her valley in Pakistan, girls were encouraged to stay home from school, to wear the burqa, and to stay home.  Malala's father didn't agree with that and kept his school open for both boys and girls.  He tried to compromise by building a separate entrance for each gender but the Taliban were not satisfied.  Malala herself read the prologue to the book and it was so fascinating to hear her little voice I listened to that part twice.  She writes very fondly of Pakistan and the beautiful Swat valley.  She writes honestly about her faults.  She is stubborn and selfish and argumentative at times.  Malala is not a saint.  But she is a strong advocate for female education.  Right now she is still recovering and living in England. She hopes to get back to Pakistan some day.  Just yesterday I read an article about her in the newspaper.  Some people in Pakistan claim she wasn't shot by the Taliban but always wanted to emigrate to England.  A group of educators claim she is a supporter of Salmon Rushdie.  She does mention Rushdie in her book.  She mentions that any religion ought to be strong enough to survive a book that is critical.  This group of educators is holding an "I am not Malala Day."  Malala said in her book that the people of Pakistan are prone to believing in conspiracy theories.  I guess they have proven her right.  Malala wrote a fascinating book. 

Unbroken

Yesterday was Veteran's Day and it was the perfect day for my book club to read Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.  This is the same author who wrote a book about another fast runner, Seabiscuit.  In this story the fast runner is Louis Zamperini, an Olypic champion runner from California who served in the armed forces during World War Two.  It's a true story.  Louis' life is a complicated one. He goes through spells of great achievement and juvenile delinquency.  His is one stubborn man.  The kind of thinking that got him into trouble with the law is also the kind of thinking that helps him survive the war.  Where other men would have died in the plane crash into the ocean, he survived.  Where other men did die in the subsequent weeks adrift in a life boat in the Pacific Ocean, he survived.  He grabbed ocean birds who stopped to rest on his raft.  He even grabbed sharks by the tail, hauled them in, and ate their livers.  Some parts of this book were tough to read.  We have no idea what it is like to serve in the armed forces.  I feel it is my duty as a citizen to read war stories and to learn from our veterans.  Louis has it tough being at sea.  But that wasn't the hardest part.  Surviving life in a Japanese prisoner of war camp was worse.  As an officer and a former Olympic champion, these achievements only make it worse for Louis.  The thing about Japanese prisoner of war camps is not only the lack of sanitation and starvation; it is the shameful degradation that makes it intolerable.  What Louis went through was horrible and although he was unbroken, he was temporarily in need of repair.  He is heartbreakingly honest about his problems adjusting to life as a civilian.  This is a great story.  As it was my turn to bring treats, I decided to bring, on top of butternut squash bars with cream cheese frosting, some Japanese rice balls.  I'm sure my recipe for rice balls (via Martha Stewart) were delicious in comparison to the rice balls Louis ate. Mine, for example, did not have maggots wriggling in them.  But offering the rice balls was my way of saying to all veterans, "Thank you for your service." I suspect that when Angelina Jolie's movie production of this story comes out on Christmas Day, many more people will know of and want to honor Louis Zamperini.

Slam!

Winter is here. Winter just slammed the door on fall like BLAMO!  We didn't start with a light dusting of scenic snow.  We didn't start with a picturesque snow globe snowfall of several inches.  We were hit with 10 solid inches of the heavy, wet stuff.  Traffic on Monday was difficult. As I idled along with all the other south bound cars on Highway 47, just south of Sunwood Drive, where sound barrier walls line both sides of the road and a grassy meridian divides us from the north bound lane, I was surprised as heck to see, though the falling snow, three white tailed deer galloping up the highway.  Galloping deer?  My first thought was reindeer.  I looked again.  Three white tailed deer were panicked and could not escape this road with high wooden walls on both sides.  A very slow going van followed them heading north.  Suddenly my commute, which was twice as long as usual, wasn't as bad in comparison to what the deer were going through.  Coming home was about the same length until I got to my driveway.  My road wasn't plowed and I was good as long as I stayed in the tracks of the cars who came down the road before me.  As soon as I turned off the tracks I was stuck.  I had a shovel with me in the car.  Twenty minutes of shoveling gave me enough room to move my car out of the road and into the driveway.  Another three hours of shoveling got a skinny path to the garage.  Shoveling wasn't difficult but any activity that long gets hard.  I thought it would be easier if my shovel had an digital readout on it with my heart rate, time elapsed, calories expended, mets, inches moved and pounds lifted. I should work on my snow shovel patent now.  I think soon our culture will change from using fossil fuels to complete every single chore around the house to going green.  I am not the only person who doesn't want to use gasoline on the snow.  So what should I call this new and improved snow shovel?  The shovelizer?  I will have to come up with a better name than that for this to work.  I should have plenty of time because I talked to a snow plow operator today.  After last night, I'm done shoveling.

Word

Tackle

I've been thinking about the word tackle lately.  Not the fishing tackle or trying hard to deal with a problem.  I've been thinking about the tackle where you physically stop someone from running by grabbing their body and forcing them down.  At my age, I do believe I am past the tackling stage of life. Just like back flips I'm past the age for tackling. For sure I'm beyond tackling anyone my size or larger.  I could still tackle a toddler I think.  Grabbing children from running in the street doesn't really qualify as tackling is my mind.  In fact, in reviewing all the years I've lived on this planet, I can only remember one incident where I tackled another adult.  When I was about 26 years old I was working at an institution on the east side of Saint Paul.  This was an honest to God institution where 150 men with mental disabilities lived.  My job was helping the men get through their day.  One gentle guy was about my age.  He was pleasant and he loved the Doobie Brothers.  So did I.  He loved them more than I did.  He would listen to the song "It Keeps You Running" over and over and over again.  While he listened to the refrain he would jog in place and the look on his face made me think he was in a state of ecstasy.  He was a really cool guy.  One day I came into his room and he wasn't listening to the Doobie Brothers.  He looked upset. He had broken his bedroom window. He held a piece of broken window glass in his hand.  He moved his hand toward his wrist.  He was about to cut himself on purpose.  I walked into the room and saw this.  Here is a crisis!  So what did I do?  I tackled him.  I leaped at him and we both landed on his bed.  No doubt he was very surprised.  I grabbed the hand that held the glass and he dropped the broken glass.  Later my supervisor asked me, "Did you think about safety before you acted?"  I did not.  I acted without thinking.  She didn't admonish me or praise me.  She just explained that this poor fellow had a strange family dynamic going where his relatives only visited him after suicide attempts.  His family ignores him on his birthday, ignores him on all holidays, but comes to visit him after suicide attempts.  To this day I think of him whenever I hear "It Keeps You Running."    

Hunting

Today marks the beginning of deer hunting season.  I almost got one myself even though I didn't buy a deer tag and I don't own a rifle.  Coming back from a wonderful day in St. Cloud, I was driving the back roads between Elk River and home. The two lane road was curvy and hilly cutting through fields and forests and swamps.  I was traveling below the speed limit and with my bright lights on.  The deer stepped out onto the road from the right and I slammed on the brakes.  I looked into the rear view mirror.  Lucky for us the car behind me traveled as a safe distance.  The deer walked (not ran) across the road and I could see that it had a fine rack of antlers.  My car swerved a little as I braked but by then the deer was off the road and I could accelerate again.  Whew!  Too close for comfort.

The Smell Of Power

While I was at work today a friend brought her big Harley Davidson motorcycle over to my garage to store it for the winter.  When I got home, 6 hours later, I opened my garage door.  Before I could see the big machine I knew it was there.  The air in the garage was charged with a smell that I don't usually have in my garage - the smell of raw Harley Davidson power - a mixture of gasoline, of oil, and of gun powder.  I could tell by the lingering smell that something loud and powerful happened here in this garage.  Maybe this winter, when the long, cold nights, bitter winds, and bone chilling cold get to me, I'll dress warm and sit on one of the two motorcycles and try to remember those days on the road.  Those warm days when I had to lift my face shield at red lights to breathe some cooler air. Those wonderful days in August when I partially unzipped my jacket so the air could get inside and puff it out and dry the sweat on my back.  That one day in July when the heat from the pavement reflected up toward the bottoms of my boots and made my feet hot.  Riding a motorcycle is only sweeter because of these long, cold winters.  I doubt I'd like it as much if I could indulge 12 months of the year.

Joey The Mysterious Cat

I've been helping a neighbor while they're on vacation.  Every three days I go to their house and take care of Joey, the mysterious cat.  I've been there 4 times so far and I haven't seen hide nor, well, actually, I have seen the hair of him on one corner of the couch.  If it wasn't for the tan hair on the couch cushion I wouldn't know what color he was.  He refuses to show himself to me.  I give him fresh water.  I give him fresh dry food.  He never eats all his food but he likes it "fresh" so I have to mix the leftovers with the new food and give it back to him.  I clean out both of his cat boxes. As cat sitting jobs go, this is perfect for me as I am not a fan of cats.  I like Joey!  He's the best cat I never met.

Oldest and Newest Meet For The First Time In History

Yesterday, aboard Offspring #1's ship,the newest stealth fighter landed via tail hook for the very first time in military history.  The USS Nimitz is the oldest working carrier in the fleet.  I know from my experience as a tiger (visitor), that each cable is calibrated for the weight and the speed and the velocity of the plane.  Get the full story here:  

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/04/us/f-35-fighter-carrier-landing/index.html?iref=allsearch

Lone Wolf

I was pleasantly surprised to see a copy of Lone Wolf sitting on the shelf at the library right there out in the open. A Jodi Picoult book can be hard to come by.  She is such a popular writer.  This, like all her other books, was well written.  Like the others it contained a long courtroom scene about a conflict in society - this one was about organ donation and end of life wishes.  In this story a wolf scientist named Luke has a traumatic brain injury in a traffic accident.  The question is when is it appropriate to turn off the ventilator on a man in a vegetative state to harvest his organs?  What if his relatives disagree on whether it is appropriate to pull the plug?  Mixed in with that story is information about wolves.  Honestly, I question the wolf information in this book.  Is it true, as Picoult claims, that various members of the wolf pack are  restricted to different sections of meat?  Some are allowed to eat the movement muscle, others the stomach contents, and the alpha members of the pack get the heart and the liver.  Picoult claims that the chemicals in the various parts of the meal affect the behavior of the wolves.  Alpha wolves stay alpha wolves because of the meals they eat. She says that wolves who, due to starvation, are forced to eat salmon, loose all social structure.  The wolf pack societal structure falls apart and the wolves stop acting as an organized pack.  The author also stated that the alpha female, before she conceives, knows how many pups she will have, what gender they will be, and what rank in the wolf pack each will have.  Seriously? I find that hard to believe.  How can any of us know what is in the mind of a wolf?  I have a few friends who know wolves quite well because they volunteer longs hours at the Wildlife Science Center.  I plan to run these wolf ideas past them and get their opinion.  I am doubtful of some of the wolf information in this book but it was an entertaining read. 

Something Happened At Work Today

Something happened at work today.  Word spread from person to person; slowly at first but gaining momentum.  People dropped what they were doing to have a look.  Phone calls were delayed.  Work was put on hold.  Conversations were interrupted.  As people found out about it they expressed their gratitude on being told of the news.  "Have you seen it?"  "Did you know?"  "Thank you for showing me."  "Are these the same ones we saw before?"  Excitement and joy was abundant.  Two bald eagles perched in a tree on the side of our 300 car capacity parking lot.  What a joyous sight!  The eagles kindly stayed long enough for everybody to get a good long look at the majesty of our national symbol.  It's not only bird watchers that get a thrill from seeing two bald eagles talking together so close to us.

I Thought I Was Immune

I have bronchitis.  (cough,cough)  I thought I was immune from bronchitis but I was wrong.  I used to get bronchitis all the time.  During one bad string of years in my 30's I got bronchitis 8 years in a row and two of those years I had pneumonia too. Raising two germy children didn't help.  But all that changed when I started working out.  I exercise.  I, as they say, make love to my heart and lungs many times a week.  And that is why I thought I wouldn't get bronchitis anymore.  I was wrong.  (cough, cough).  No worries though; bronchitis is treatable.  I'm taking antibiotics, drinking lots of fluids, and getting rest.  I haven't left the house all day except to take the garbage out to the road once the sun went down.  Although these gold leggings and stained sweatshirt feel comfy I wouldn't want to be seen in public in them.  (cough, cough)

Mice

I don't like mice in my house.  I'm okay if they're in the yard or a field. I don't kill the mice in my garage but I make sure all the bird seed and chicken feed is out of their reach. Inside my house mice change into nasty vermin.  I've had one mouse in my laundry room lately who has been nibbling on a bar of Irish spring hand soap.  This mouse has eaten enough soap to be blowing soapy farts.  "Manly, yes, but I like it too."  Last night I saw a mouse on my kitchen counter walk AROUND two humane mouse traps.  This morning I discovered that mouse had the bald faced audacity to unwrap a Bliss dark chocolate piece of candy and chew off the end.  I have had enough.  I will not allow vermin in my house anymore.  I bought some glue traps and set them out in the two places I've seen the vermin.  The mice have a choice.  They can leave, die in the humane trap, or stick to the glue trap.  One way or another they are leaving.