Gophers, Vets and Women

Gopher Mountain

War on Gophers

Honoring Vets

Todd & His Crew

Papa Sonny, WWII (Marines)

Papa Riley, Civil War (Union)

Papa Sonny and his Woman (Grandma Donna)

Sgt. Todd Mills

Scampering below ground, an army of gophers attack my yard and pastures. Diligently, they can kick up a mass of dirt that towers over lawn and stretches beneath fence-lines. During the winter, they will push dirt above drifts of snow. Anyone who tells you not to make a mountain out of a molehill has never seen one erupt.

My go-to-gopher-annihilating-man is Todd, of course. He's a combat veteran, Ranger battalion trained with weapons. He has sat early mornings, poised with a pistol for gophers to poke out a head. He's hosed numerous holes, dug up others and planted sonic beacons. The beacons have kept scoundrels out of my garden, but have merely chased the gophers from one end of the yard to another.

My only rule is no chemicals, as we have dogs, horses and migratory birds. The pond is pristine, my garden organic and frogs thrive to attract Blue Heron, osprey and mergansers. Kill a rodent with poison and it will kill golden eagles, hawks and owls. So my veteran stalks with knives, guns and water in our war on gophers. He is successful.

Today is the day I am suppose to thank him, but one day of focused praise almost seems silly. Yet gratitude for men and women who serve is serious, and honor deserved. However, I don't ask Todd what he did in the Army. I don't ask, "So did you shoot people when you jumped into Grenada?" or "What's it like seeing a friend die right before your eyes?"

But I listen when he talks. I don't question, interrupt or offer my opinion. I didn't serve in the military and I never saw combat. I pat his shoulder, hug him and wear his 30-year old Ranger fatigue jacket with pride, although neither of us can button it anymore, having grown wider and wiser. We also, "smoke and joke," something my husband has taught me from his service. It means to laugh and tell stories.

Before he died, my Papa Sonny spoke of being a Marine in WWII. He choked up, telling me about the boy he saw in the hospital who cried out in agony for his mother. He tells me the boy was an angel. I don't know why he thought that, but then again, I did not serve in the military or watch a youth who had lied about his age die in pain. I just listened.

My cousin Mitch served. His son Matt has, too. Men call our house around the anniversary of Urgent Fury and ask for "brother" Todd. I'm not sure my cousins, husband or their many brothers can say why they signed up to serve, but why they serve can found in that hint, "brother."

Saturday, I attended my second Wild Horse Trail Daughters of the American Revolution meeting in Sandpoint. Not only do we honor the original patriots in our heritage, we also honor living ones. In Papa Sonny's line we have at least seven patriots who served the Revolutionary War, including 6th-great grandfather Conrad Elrod who was a Minuteman. My 3rd-great grandfather Riley Hatley wrote in his journal that his grandfathers fought the British in Ireland, fought them in the Revolutionary War and he fought them in the Civil War.

Again, I'm not sure I understand why Papa Riley thought he was fighting Brits as a southern man who fled Tennessee to sign up for the side of the Union, but I honor that he felt strongly enough to do so. So did two of his brothers. Taking action, answering that call to duty and serving one's country in the capacity of soldier is not easily explained. It takes courage.

At the DAR meeting, three WWII vets shared their recent experiences as Honor Flight participants. How exciting for these aged vets to travel to Washington, DC to see memorials and eat "enough food to feed a Boy Scout troop." But what did they remember most about the trip? The current soldiers guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. They cried, telling us what an honor it was for them to see the changing of the guard.

And another reminder from these vets of WWII. Each one of them said it's good to thank a vet, but don't forget to thank their women.

Women sacrifice, too. Raising children as widows is as ultimate of a service as their spouses who died in action. But as the man who sat in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in China from 1941-1945 said to us on Saturday, "My wife waited."

Listen. Wait. Say thanks. Honor those who serve today, yesterday and beyond. And if you have a gopher problem, maybe a combat vet will assist you. Mine does. I love you, Sgt. Todd Mills!

Bootsy the Bobcat and Other Hidden Tails

It's a Bobcat!

No, Just Bootsy

Sneaking into a New Perch

A Hidden Perch

Is It?

Yes! It's Blue Heron!

Looking for movement. I'm in my bedroom upstairs enjoying a warm breeze at the window, scouting the overgrown north pasture for deer. Two startled my daughter, Brianna, last Labor Day weekend when she visited, and Todd has seen them since. I can't; all I see is a field of grass and weeds tawny as deer-hide.

But something moves. Quickly I sprint to my office, which is outside my bedroom. No binoculars. Of course not; I left them under the apple tree, desperately seeking Blue Heron. I just want to say goodbye to my pond bird buddy until next migration. I grab my camera instead, just in time for the movement to sit up, shape up and reveal itself to be a bobcat.

Not what I expected. I can see its mottled pattern for fur, its cat-like head, its missing tail. I snap several shots and it slinks into the grass once more. I follow its movement, marveling that I'm photo-stalking a bobcat. Then it clearly flicks its tail. A long tail. I look again and recognize Bootsy, her black coat looking bobcat-like behind brown plants. Now I see her white chin and long tail.

As if the critters and birds are snickering at my mis-identifications, even the red-tailed hawk messes with me today. His usual perch, the slanting tip of the tamarack between the south pasture and HWY 95, has been empty for days. Yet, suddenly he bursts out of the tree, circles the pasture and returns to a hidden perch. Now I see where he's hiding. I hope this also fools the gophers as they need eating.

In a final round of hide-my-tail, I see something white poke up out of the reeds on the west edge of the pond. Could it be? For the next hour I take frequent "spotting" breaks from my desk, scoping the area where I saw the white. At last, I see him, stepping out of the reeds as plain as a tail on a barn cat. It is Blue Heron! He hasn't left Elmira Pond yet.

It's very possible that Blue Heron will stay as long as there is open water. He's just elusive right now because great blue herons can be difficult to spot despite their size. They are so quiet, graceful and still. In the tall pond reeds and grasses he can easily go undetected, even by the likes of me. He's welcome to stay as long as he likes! There's plenty of frogs, yet and maybe I can convince him to join Bootsy and the red-tailed hawk in hunting for gophers.

Carnival Clouds

Carnival Arrives

Pink Like Cotton Candy

Lit Up Like Rides

Jaunty Squash Blossom

Pine Carnie or Permanent Resident?

Send Home the Clowns

Reading is Like an Every Day Carnival Attraction

Whirling as far as the dog leashes on my wrists allow, I look at the sky in every direction. It as if I cannot drink in enough of the clouds--my morning cup of well water. It's been so long, this dry spell, that I feel like a kid at the county fair not knowing were to focus my eyes first.

The thunderheads are rimmed in pink like airy cotton-candy. To the west the sky lightens and to the east the clouds look backlit like the garish signs for carnival rides. I want to ride the clouds like the birds do, to soar on thermals and dip fast toward the pond and pull up again, roller coaster-style.

Maybe I see excitement in the clouds because it might rain. Or maybe it's because I get to see so many family members within a few days. Now both my daughters are living in Montana; one a radio sound-smith and journalistic grad student and the other Coach Bug. And I get to swill Big Dipper ice cream with them both tomorrow. My parents just arrived, too and I think it's no coincidence that my first peas arrived in time to treat my Dad to his favorite garden food. My cousin, newly baptized, is getting married and I get to be there for her.

I'm as puffed up as the carnival clouds.

It is nearly August and the changes are coming quickly. I harvest and slice a full container of radishes, Erin purple and common reds. Jaunty blossoms open up to the morning air with zebra-striped zucchinis forming. One of two scarlet runners to actually germinate has red flowers and peas are young and tender despite the late planting. My tomato plants grew trunks like trees and if all that green fruit turns, I'll be harvesting like crazy soon. Already the potato plants are pushing out flowers and tiny Brussels sprouts and cauliflower have emerged for winter harvest. How did my garden grow so fast? One day it was a plot of dirt and today it's bursting with corn dogs and popcorn, ready for the fair.

The roses are nearly cycled. Only five buds remain on two plants. I will miss their vibrant color and await another long season for their scent to linger on the air. It's like the clowns have removed their red-noses and big shoes, trunking the costumes for next year's performance. I will try my luck at transplanting rose cuttings into potatoes to see if they will grow elsewhere on the ranch.

Blue Heron flaps across the log and I've not seen nary a goose or merganser all day. These migratory birds, the traveling carnies, will soon be gone. I expect crowds of southern bound birds to flush through here before it all ends in rain and snow. But today, the clouds still plow over the ridge at the peak of summer. The red-tailed hawk favors the tamarack perch along highway 95 and I wonder if he'll stay in our valley.

Unrelated to blooms and birds, I've read my final paperback. My new Kindle E-reader arrived from Amazon last week, just in time for the final chapter in book three of Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series. Book four was easily downloaded and reading will become pleasurable again. I love books, love, love. love them. But my stiff gardening hands have struggled with holding them open. No more pain, and the pages are easier to read. I can even download a women's study bible, and research books that cost so much in print, but not so much at the Kindle store.

Ah, the Kindle store. Somebody just let my inner child loose at the carnival with no limit on cotton-candy or tickets for rides. The things I will read under the apple tree, along the reedy shore of Elmira Pond.

Pipping and Peeping

Morning Summer Mist

Rise of the Summer Yellow Jackets

Non-Toxic Trap to Guard the House

Red-Tail Hawk Hunting From Tamarack Perch

The Dive Begins

Attacking a Gopher Mound

Harassed Hawk

More mist rises from the pond this morning shrouding the burst of summer growth. Reeds grow upward like inverted beaded curtains that allow a peek, but not enough. Knapweed blooms and I'm done digging at their roots. I dream instead of ripping the ground to seed rye-grass or grains. Anyone have a tractor I can borrow?

The afternoon is raucous with pipping and peeping. I step outside with my roast beef and Munster cheese sandwich on a sourdough roll. A mistake. I set down my nibbled lunch on the log I've rolled over to my chair under the apple tree as an outdoor patio table of sorts. Within 30 seconds yellow jackets--or perhaps they are paper wasps--have girded my beef, stabbing at it with venomous tail spikes.

Last week they chased my off the south porch, testing my coffee for interest. I've hung non-poisonous wasp traps on the porch and Todd has destroyed two colonies growing in the abandoned swallow nests. Yellow jackets are aggressive wasps whose numbers grow alarmingly large as summer progresses. Early spring they contend themselves with eating insects--and they still do in July--but as food grows scarce, they can grow more fierce.

We are monitoring their presence near the house and garden for safety measures. They are not honey bees, though I am grateful it was a honey bee that stung me and not a wasp. Once stung by a wasp, the venom secretes a chemical scent that target you for more attacks. Experts say to flee the area once stung. But it is only my sandwich attacked.

The noise around the pond continues. A western kingbird pips, perched on my garden fence, finally giving me a visual identification of the maker of that alarm call. I hear it every time the hawk lands in a pine by the house, road or pond. I thought it was the siskins, but now I know it is the kingbirds. Why are all the late July residents turning out to be aggressors? Kingbirds are called "tyrant" fly-catchers who ferociously defend their territories with what Cornell Ornithology Labs describes as a "kip." I say "pip."

And all the pipping is over the red-tailed hawk who has taken up a perch in the towering tamarack along highway 95. He is peeping at the pond. I'm a bit concerned that he's peeping at the pond because the ring-necked duck might have a nest and the merganser chicks are not up to flight yet. Scoping the pond I spy one of the young mergansers and he seems unconcerned that a large predator is staring his direction.

Peeping, pipping and I feel like drama is ready to burst like a bad batch of fireworks.

Attacker Under Attack

When it comes, the hawk dives. I hold my breath until he lands, talons first upon a large gopher mound. Then I cheer! Go hawk, go! The kingbirds react as if the red-tail has plummeted through the roof of their nests. An aerial attack on the hawk drives him from the gopher mound, across the pond and into the western stand of pines where the osprey like to perch when fishing. The flight of the birds is like watching a WWII dog-fight with Messerschmitts attacking a B-17 bomber.

All is Quiet Once Again

Feathers and sound disappear into the pines and all is silent as thunderheads build to the northwest and knapweed silently continues to blooms.

Pinkest Flower in the Field

Bridge Over Grouse Creek

Elk Herd

A Cool, Pink Morning

A Dino Fly-by

Flapping Away

Zippy King-fisher

Mama Merganser?

Young Hooded Mergansers

Merganser Family

New Arrivals

Cedar Wax-wings, For Now

Red-Tailed Hawk

Soaring, Hunting

Dragonfly #1

Dragonfly #2

Dragonfly #3

Red Tail

July 25 Omission:

Hot...in need of cool...mountain...stream...

Yesterday's pond report was omitted in favor of seeking cooler climes along Grouse Creek. We nearly made it to the falls, but were beat to the spot by a family with nine children. And a dog. Our dogs barked at their dog, and leashing ensued. I fell in a mud-hole, had to wash off in the creek, lost my husband and had to wait for him at the truck. Not my ideal situation, but he reminded me that he had hero-status for at least another week. And even a bad day along Grouse Creek is a good day.

On the way home we ate tuna-fish sandwiches on sourdough rolls and slices of orange-flesh melon that dripped down our chins. Just a few miles from home we saw a herd of elk grazing on ranch pasture. A beautiful excuse not to write...filling the well.

Morning Pond Report:

Mist rises off the pond like steam from hot summer sidewalks. Ah, but this is no urban setting along Elmira Pond. A crisp night promises a cooler day than those of this past week. The sky is pinking later; no more 4 a.m. dawns.

Elmira Pond has touched my pink side. Pink mist, pink skies, pink flowers, why not. Not normally a woman of that shade, I bought my very first pink t-shirt in what feels like a million years. And today I am wearing it, my hot-pink t-shirt with a white silhouette of a German Short-haired Pointer (GSP), and the back that proclaims, "Keep calm; point on." This comes into play later.

And speaking of a million years or so, that is how old Blue Heron's drivers license would read, if he needed one to fly. He doesn't grace the pond today, but flies by low, a pterodactyl shadow of blue-gray against the dark green pines and trees. Flap. Flap. Silent as he is, he looks like a flapping dinosaur seeking giant pond frogs. Bull-frogs seems to suffice, and I realize it's been a while since I've heard a sonorous croak from that group. I'm not complaining. But the grasshoppers need to learn a new tune or two.

Another blue-gray bird flits fast around the pond, up to the sky, across the trees, back to the pond and over the power lines. All in about 10 seconds. If only coffee would course through me that way. The most hyper bird I know upon this pond is the belted king-fisher. I actually snap a few shots of him so maybe the coffee is working after all. Big head, long dark beak and crisply tailored-white neck. But no fishing for him today. Who knows where king-fisher go.

A single Lady Merganser holds court on the log. It's been several weeks now since I've seen the female ring-necked duck. Maybe she is shrouded in reeds, secluded on the cup of a nest, incubating eggs. Or maybe she has simply flown elsewhere. I don't see the other three mergansers, but splashes on the far south-east side hint at their presence.

Finally I scope the splash-makers. They look sort of like mergansers, but smaller and the coloring is different. Scrutiny is tough at a distance. If they are babies, they are juveniles. Do you mean I missed the cuteness and back-packing of merganser chickhood? These awkward younglings are trying to walk on water, probably practicing for flight. Between two of them I think I see a turtle. If so, it is my first pond turtle sighting.

Two of the three merganser brood hang out with the Lady on the Log. Is she mama or auntie? She doesn't seem real interested in them, perhaps preparing for an empty nest. It's interesting how many trinities of birds I seem to see upon this pond. Migratory wanderers, passing through.

Another bird group is noticeably absent--the metallic-blue tree swallows who used to make ferry-rings upon the pond. Their nestlings fledged and now they are all gone. The barn swallows are still in residence, but are not in great numbers. Yet another bird has appeared, soaring more so than flitting, yet acrobatic all the same. They seem to be after insects but their shape and whistle is different from swallows and their color different from sparrows and siskins. Nor are they as big as robins, but close.

Are they brown? Gray? Their tails seem lined in yellow. Is it really yellow? The kingbird has a stripe like that, but boldly white. A few pause in a tree and there is something about the eyes...the head. I am so engrossed in the binoculars that I am ignoring bees. They bounce from clover head to tree tops, yet I am unafraid. I'm birding. If you know of my recent woes with a bee, it's an amazing feat--to ignore the humming of bees.

This bee is now so close to my ear, it is the loudest thrumming I've ever heard from an insect. Cautiously, I set down the binos, prepare to swat with my right hand until I turn and actually glimpse the bee. It is no bee. A hummingbird has taken tremendous interest in my pink t-shirt, zoning in to my shoulder as if I am full of nectar; the pinkest flower in the field. Now it is my turn to surprise him as I leap from my chair, squealing like no flower has ever squealed. I never did wear pink well.

But as my shirt reads, I stay calm, twittering just a bit, and bird on. I'm fairly, mostly, pretty certain that the newest pond arrivals are cedar wax-wings. In fact, one photo shows the brown and gray coloring and the distinctly yellow tail stripe. Until I prove myself wrong, I'm going with cedar wax-wing. While they are known to devour berries, they seem more interested in insects. Go for the protein wax-wings.

Ah, and here comes the red-tailed hawk, soaring high on the thermals. In total, the hawk sweeps over  the pond valley north to south and then south again at least five times. He's hunting the fields and meadows. Any time he nears the pond, birds harass him and he dives, trying to escape their nagging advance. I waffle between thinking maybe he's an immature bald eagle or red-tailed hawk. But several photos clearly show the stripes and red tail of the latter although the head and chest pattern could be young eagle-like.

If it is that difficult to identify such a big beast of the blue skies, I don't even try to tag the dragonflies flitting by and clinging to dead limbs and fence line. But I can assure you, that none of them are as pink as the pinkest flower in the field.

Wings of Change

Setting Off Bird Alarms

New King of the Pond--Kingbird

Barn Swallow Among the Knapweed

Evolution in Progress

Sporty Red Dragon Fly

Eating A Rabbit at My Garden Gate

The alarm wakes me. Not an alarm clock, but the persistent whistles of the tree birds, alarming the presence of a predator. The predator is a red-tailed hawk. Todd and I debate his age. I say he's newly fledged and lonely, hungry and harassed by pine siskins and a crazy cat bird that used to attack my window.

What remains constant on Elmira Pond are the wings of change. Migratory birds come and go like guests of a bed and breakfast. Like an inn-keeper I have my favorite guests--Blue Heron, the trio of osprey and now a red-tailed hawk.

But he is not the only new set of wings to show up. A kingbird has taken to circling the pond, and pausing on the fence or dead tree limb long enough to pose for my camera. As official pond paparazzi, I like the new arrival decked in black, gray and white. But I  notice a decline in tree swallows. Since fledging their nest boxes around my berries and garden, I see fewer hitting the pond in the evenings, leaving a wake of ferrie rings. Barn swallows have taken up residence among the knapweed I've been digging to no avail. Their nests are in the barns.

Damsel flies and dragon flies scurry in flight with such a sense of purpose like commuters on a subway. I almost expect to see them carrying little briefcases. They are too speedy for my lens, defying documentation until I glance a mating couple dangling from the leafy canopy of the apple tree. I have no idea how sexually combative these winged creatures are until I read the fascinating Dragonfly Mating Game. Evidently, winged evolution is unfolding all around me.

A brilliant red dragon fly with black iridescent wings pauses on a spent dandelion long enough for me to snap a shot. His wings seem mythical, something out of an elaborate storybook for children. I can understand why artists over the years have continued to capture these winged creatures in oils and stained glass. I feel surrounded by living art.

So the red-tailed hawk returns and I cannot worry that he is a hungry fledgling any more. He's sitting on the garden fencepost eating a rabbit. Turns out he is a garden guard. If only he could nab the buck eating my strawberry plants.

Another day, another drama as wings of change unfurl over Elmira Pond.