Having a Hart

photo by WizenedEye.com

How do you catch a woodchuck? I catch mice and voles with peanut butter, sunflower seeds can lure chipmunks, the two gray squirrels who terrorized the Accounting Dept. at work were suckers for Doritos, but what would interest a hedgehog?

It turned out I was able to rush him and scare him onto the front porch. Once he was cornered there, I made a lot of noise, banging my hoe on the sidewalk and shouting to keep him scared and in hiding behind a lawn chair while I dashed to the barn for the bigger Havahart trap. He was just considering making a run for it when I returned. More banging and arm waving bought time to get the trap open, set and along the porch wall, then a bit of herding with a broom, and VOILA! - I had captured Punxsutawney Phil! He now has a new home several miles from my garden.

One spring a few years ago I rounded up a large snapping turtle who had chosen my garden as her egg depository. The capture involved a metal garbage can and a shovel – dangerously close to the electric fence, I might add – and I’m here to tell you that Mrs. Terrapin was one fierce, hostile critter. In comparison, this woodchuck was sweet indeed.

But the Pesty Animal Capturer Life-time Achievement Award goes to my friend Dale who, in his 20+ years of service to the local school district, captured and relocated more than sixty skunks. Did he ever have “a problem?” Only once, when, trap full and loaded on the back of his pick-up, a friend came along and asked, “Watcha got under the tarp?” – punctuating the question with a loud thump of his fist on the truck bed...

Note: A "Havahart" is a humane, "catch alive" trap. Once captured, the animal can be taken to a suitable habitat and released.

America's Wreckage
photo by WizenedEye.com © 2006

Bling

Glistening, gleaming, in-your-face bling,
Adorning strong necks,
Trickling between breasts;
Not the diamonds of city girls
Or the gold of the Inca princess,
But the pearls of the peasant class.

Dust-decorated, smeared bling,
Salt-shed paste diluted,
Body’s cast-off beads
Born of heat, by sun shimmered;
Stranger to beach basking
Or ocean's spray.

Proud-heritaged, honest bling,
Of chores complete and fields tended;
Brown-skinned bling,
Wiped by calloused fingers,
Viewed in the well’s mirror
At the end of the long day.

On Being Jewish

As any older-than-their-son, divorced, single-parent, non-Jewish girlfriend of a young Temple-trained lad can tell you, the parents of a nice Jewish boytchik feel quite strongly about the importance of religion. That a prospective daughter-in-law is a shikse matters even if she does not bring any other unseemly baggage to the altar, and it becomes even more of an issue when the other negatives are a bit indelicate to raise.

This parental concern had always been explained to me thus: “To be Jewish, you must have a Jewish MOTHER." (Therefore, any child borne by a female non-Jew cannot be Jewish, and therefore parents of the Jewish father of such children are deprived of having Jewish grandchildren, all of which is a pretty serious shortfall - oy). I always assumed that this emphasis on having a Jewish MOTHER suggests something noble about the daughters of Israel.

My husband and I have been married for more than thirty years now, and whatever animosity his parents once felt for me seems to have dissipated long ago. His parents and I have never discussed the matter, but this afternoon over lunch, my mother-in-law commented that “to be Jewish you must have a Jewish mother because of course you can never know for sure who the father was.”

And to think I once contemplated converting...

Strawberries

Photograph by www.wizenedeye.com © 2006

Strawberries are borne on plants that are the offspring of parent plants set in the ground two years ago. For fruit to reach this pile on the kitchen counter, the weeds that invade the patch must be pulled, and in dry times the plants must be watered. As they start to ripen, the chipmunks and voles descend on them, and this gardener uses Havahart traps and an ernest relocation project... One bite of a ripe, red berry would convince you it is worth the effort.

On Blogging...

Writing a blog is a bit like planning a set of music: you start with something good, something up-tempo; something that gets the crowd's interest and promises more. Then you - well, that's the topic of another day's writing.

What follows ("Genesis") shouldn't come on the heels of "O.C.D." Today I sat down to write a humorous bit about the bank robbery, but neighborhood events brought a black curtain down on my intentions, and so you (the other reader of my blog) are faced with two pretty somber tunes - one right on the heels of the other. It's a sequence that wouldn't make for a good concert, and it probably doesn't make for a good blog, but sometimes it's the way things go.

In writing "Genesis" I never considered that it's subject matter relates to "O.C.D.," but I think there is a striking and frightening relationship between the two. How fine is the line that distinguishes deviant self-destructive behavior that harms "self" only from deviant destructive behavior that harms others?

Genesis

From parent to child the lesson was passed:
The fingers of exploring hands
Touching the forbidden; “Father knows best,”
The unspoken justification.

Gift of the guilty passes down generations,
The mute links of an unbroken chain,
Complicit in deed and denial of what is
Too shameful to speak out loud.

Stunned and disbelieving, silent at first,
The little girl withdraws in hurt and wonder,
Then suddenly runs screaming from what should have been
Bubble bath and rubber duckie grandfather fun.

Police car in the yard, statements taken,
The family shatters in shock and disbelief,
Unaware that Destiny’s child has broken
The painful sequence of perhaps a hundred years.

O.C.D.

Yes, Master? I hear you calling me again. I was on my way upstairs, but you stopped me.

I’m busy. You don’t need me right now. I will ignore you. What you want me to do is wrong – I know that – and so this time I will resist. I remind myself that I am strong, but you call again and my steps turn.

I rationalize: it will only take a second...

Master, why do you do this to me? You harm me, you shame me, and I hate you for it. Yet you satisfy me in the strange, incomprehensible way known only to your slaves.

We are the nail-biters (lucky are they), the scab-pickers, the hair-pullers, the hand-washers, the counters and so many others. Like a master puppeteer, you manage us, you direct our movements, you interrupt our lives.

Yes, Master, I will do your bidding again – but just this time. When it is done I will feel shame and anger, and I will vow that it is the last time I will bow to your demand.

Master, will you ever let me go?