In the Kitchen

Earthy Realities about Food (and People)

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:14:00 +0000

Maybe you remember how my three girls were waiting eagerly for their quail to lay eggs. Well, they waited and waited and waited and then.... Then Evelyn came to me and said, "Mom, we have eight males and one female." They mail ordered their quail and had asked for chicks too young to sex, but the quail they got were a) not very cute anymore and b) plenty old enough to sex, except for the smallest and fluffiest which grew up to be the only female.

Now, they needn't, we discovered, have ordered these birds from across the country, when they are available all over the Bay Area. Local quail farmers don't have much of a web presence, but you can find plenty of them on Craigslist.

So I'm talking to a guy who is selling some quail and he says, "How do you know they are all males?"

Me: Kids, how do you know they are males?

Evelyn: We vent sexed them.

Me: Uh, they vent sexed them.

Guy: How did they do it?

Me: Yeah, how did you do it?

Evelyn: Well, you turn them over and squeeze the abdomen gently. If foam comes out of their vent, they're a male.

I repeat what she said.

Guy: Well, that is how you do it.

I am raising some self-made farm girls!

But we have a problem. We have too many males. One morning Evelyn comes running in--Comma's head is all bloody. The other quail have torn out all his head feathers and pecked a deep hole in his head. We separate him. It bleeds for the whole day. His eye swells shut.

We keep him in the house. After two days of recovery his wounds are scabbed over and he is starting to open the eye. And to crow. All day. And then, all night. We bring the female in. And get a good night's sleep. But then the girls put her back out in the bachelor pad and in the ensuing frenzy they pluck her head, leaving a bald patch. Attempts to reintroduce Comma are even more disastrous. Our quail run is a gladiatorial arena.

It slowly dawns on the girls that they will have to get rid of some of the males. I look on Craigslist and find that many people are trying to get rid of males. And I find this:

Good home only. They are for pets only. It is OK that you eat quail eggs. But the quails are not for food or dog training purpose.

Dog training? Yikes. Slowly the realities of farming are coming home to roost. Males are not wanted. Males are a problem. If you sell them you cannot be sure what will happen to them. We powwow and decide to ask a friend if she will give them a humane death and enjoy them for dinner. She says yes, and we are grateful.

When one of the quail, early in this process, was accidentally crushed we tried mouth to beak resuscitation and mourned with loud lamentation and buried it in the backyard. Now, we're going to be packing up several for a friend's dinner, and grateful to have a friend brave enough to do the deed.

Meanwhile, Pastel, our one female, is dutifully laying one beautiful, speckled egg each day. Clementine, our in-house food stylist, set up this miniature tableau. The plate is a saucer, and the silverware and cup are from a doll's set. It is so neat and wholesome looking. There is a lot of earthy reality behind it.

Day 1: Went to the Beach--Creative Writing on Vacation

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 18:35:00 +0000

We're back from Maui. We were supposed to go trekking through Northern California in search of mammals but, well, it was chilly, and er I'm embarrassed to admit it, I just turned tail and bolted for the tropics.

We always try to keep journals when we are on vacation, but they so often end up like this:

In case you're having trouble making it out, it says:

Day 1: Went to the beach.

Day 2: Went to the beach.

Day 3: Went to the beach.

Ok, I should say that this is Greta's idea of an awesome joke. She loves this joke so much that she can't wait to write the next day into her journal.

But journal writing does tend to devolve into catalog. Though lovely pictures go a long way.

I brought this book along for inspiration:

The subtitle is Writing Exercises That are Not Personal, Not Introspective and Not Boring. I think the point of traveling is outrospection, not introspection, so I hoped it would help us get creative with our observations. It did, and it also helped us drive away boredom on long drives. That was why I opened the book the first time--to direct the three kids in the backseat to something other than whose elbow was where.

The first exercise I didn't find promising: 1. Write a paragraph about a girl named Dot, but use no letters with dots. I think I'd rather try to use lots of letters with dots, but not very much.

I flipped through and we settled on 114: Write 4 sentences made up of 4 four-letter words. We modified it to 5 sentences with five five-letter words because there are five of us.

Water moves along coral reefs.

Waves crash sandy beach tower.

Pines stand along windy roads.

Snail lives where water blows.

Trade wind's sweep dries suits.

Later we were waiting for the check at The Pineapple Grill and there was some flopping over in the chairs happening. So I whipped out the book and found:

169: Describe a place to eat using every letter of the alphabet at least once.

The Pineapple Grill
Clem's french toast with macadamia nuts happily filled her stomach. The Shirley Temple quenched her thirst. Mynah birds zoomed around screeching. Evelyn's juice smoothie was bland. The kids played with the sugar box.

I think it is curious that even so small a push as using each letter of the alphabet has interesting results. It was only the need to get the z in there that prompted "Mynah birds zoomed around screeching." But that is the most interesting and memorable part of the paragraph (and the lunch).

A few days later Evelyn had given up trying to net fish in a tidepool and was hunting sparrows, luring them with Greta's snack. She was still basking in the glow of having caught one a few days earlier. I guess I was the one who was bored this time. I flipped open Unjournaling and landed on

17. Create a much more interesting version of this sentence:
The dog barked.
What kind of dog was it? Where was it? Why was it barking? How would you describe the barking? Make the sentence as interesting as possible by choosing your words and details carefully.

This is not at all an original exercise, but a good one nonetheless. We modified the exercise to suit our needs.

The sparrow ate.

Everyone threw out ideas (as Evelyn threw out her bait) and I took dictation:

The young house sparrow gobbled pieces of pirate booty, gulping down the little chips as fast as it could, hopping away and coming back for more, stretching its neck up to see where the best pieces were and sometimes even hopping very high and turning its head to eye the pieces.

Greta did this one:

She began with: We sit on the beach.
And ended up with: Mom and I sit and talk on the fine yellowy-tanny sand of Ka'anapali beach.

Doesn't that tell a better story than Day 4: Went to the beach?

I think so. But if you want to know why Greta thinks Went to the beach is so funny, scroll through the pics below.

Swinging bridge.

Shave ice.

Greta's first time snorkeling.

Parasailing.

Above the clouds at Haleakala.

Sunset at Haleakala.

Trying out the water bounce house.

Hiking the Pipiwai trail.

Climbing banyan trees.

On the trail to the red sand beach I was too terrified to take pics, so here is the pic of the warning sign I took after we made it back.

Catching geckos.

Visiting waterfalls.

Climbing bridge supports.

Exploring a lava tube.

Sliding down the roots of a banyan tree into a lava tube cave.

Jumping into a freshwater pool in a cave.

Swimming in tidepools. Turned out the kids were sharing one with the world's most venomous fish, but hey, it was fun anyway.

Clem and Greta conspired to paint their dad's toenails when he was distracted.

Snorkeling with sea turtles.

Red dirt shirts again!

Ev jumping off Black Rock.

Mike and Greta just before that big wave turned their tidepool into a jacuzzi.

Nakalele blowhole.

After a couple days like this, particularly the harrowing red sand beach trail, I was ready for a day worthy of no more mention than went to the beach.

Dinosaurs Still Rule the Day

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Fri, 20 May 2011 03:35:00 +0000

So we've had this yearlong project to see all of California's native mammals. In the sidebar you can see photos of the furry friends we've bagged so far. Out of 197, the tally stands at 31, or 15%. Not a great showing, but the year is not over yet, by golly.

I don't know about you, but I bought that story about how dinosaurs ruled the day while mammals skulked around under cover of darkness. But then an asteroid strike wiped out the lizard giants and (cue triumphant music) mammals were free to come out proud, into the sunshine. Well, we have discovered that these are just about the only California mammals that you'll see out in the daytime.

And even they like some shade. And will scurry if scared. Read on.

Dinosaur descendants (birds),on the other hand, and their squamate (snake & lizard) and testudinidate (turtle) relatives are abundant in the daytime. In case you didn't get the memo, the term reptile is now obsolete. It's polyphyletic. And we don't engage in polyphyly around here.

We took a trip recently to Joshua Tree National Park. Joshua Tree is as alien a place as anything you will find on any continent. Friends had seen bighorn sheep there, and so we went to see bighorn sheep. We rose before dawn on two consecutive mornings and hiked to Barker Dam to look for sheep with big horns.

Beautiful vistas abounded, but we saw no sheep.

There were also plenty of dinosaur relatives.

A friend stumbled on this nest with two baby birds and two eggs.

Afterwards the kids were on the lookout. They checked nearly every cholla cactus we passed.

In all they found six nests. All had four eggs. Some pink, some blue. One had babies and one had a mother who would not quit her nest.

The cholla cactus are vicious. Some are called jumping chollas because they seem to go after you.

They are also beautiful and strange.

We saw a tour bus disgorge a load of foreign tourists at the cholla garden. They couldn't read the signs telling you to stay on the path and beware of the sharp chollas with their barbed hooks. Soon the place was littered with wounded.

Even one of our own, who could read the sign, fell prey.

The birds are not the only ones to use chollas to defend themselves.

The desert wood rat covers its nest in piles of cholla. It is a nocturnal skulker, like most mammals, and we did not get to see it.

We did get to see something endangered. Not a bighorn sheep, but this desert tortoise.

The truth is we were much more excited to see the desert tortoise than the mammal below, the antelope squirrel. Which does come out in the day, though it scurries away into its hole pretty quick.

It was a great time to be in the desert.

And though we didn't see bighorn sheep in their native habitat, we did get to see one mammal we really wanted to see.

On the last day, I walked into the bathroom at our campsite and found this:

A kangaroo rat! We are counting this fellow as being in his native habitat because when we tried to free him from the women's bathroom he ran along the building and squeezed under the door into the men's bathroom.

Our reptile and bird count far outstripped our mammal count, though. I now understand why birdwatching is popular and mammalwatching, not so much. We even saw frogs in the desert.

And we were very grateful to have heard one reptile, er squamate. Yes, we were grateful, when hiking in a rocky canyon, that the rattlesnake gave us plenty of warning. Judging by the way we scurried, dinosaur relatives still rule the day.

Quivering with Eggsitement

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Mon, 09 May 2011 05:18:00 +0000

Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries; -Wallace Stevens

We haven't seen so many deer lately, or wild turkeys, either. But we are hearing the spontaneous cries of quail all the time. Not the Chi-CA-go of wild California quail from the underbrush. These are my girls' long wished for pet coturnix quail. According to this blog it has been more than two years since my girls got the idea into their heads to raise quail for eggs.

I'm not really into pets. The only pets we have that are my idea are 3 goldfish. Nevertheless our pets number in the tens of thousands. (The girls always count their bees among the pets). And then there are the ever-reproducing guppies. And the mice. Wait a minute, I think those were my idea. And now nine quail.

Definitely not my idea.

Last fall Evelyn said, "We're never going to get quail, are we?"
I said, "You do the research, design a coop and save the money to build it and buy the quail and you can have quail."

They saved the money. Clementine proved the truth of the old saw that a bird in the hand is worth a Wii in the living room when she won a Wii and sold it to raise money.

Evelyn and Clementine both put birthday and allowance money toward it. They shed some tears over the design of the coop before we all decided it was beyond our skill to build it and they asked Dru at Happy Coops to modify a chicken coop for our quail. He is a true craftsman. The girls have been putting the quail outside each day for a few hours to peck and scratch and take dust baths. They have drawn the attention of a ginger cat and a redtail hawk, but nothing can get through the hardware cloth. I hope. Yes, I really hope.

Now the girls are waiting for the first egg.
Quail don't have to be hardboiled before they start laying--I'm told they start at just 6 weeks old.

Living History at Sutter's Fort

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:43:00 +0000

June 14th, 1846 dawned unseasonably cool at Sutter's Fort in what would one day be Sacramento.
Among those present at the fort was trapper, tracker and teller of tall tales James Bridger:

The fort was also graced by a visit from Francisca Benicia Carrillo Vallejo, wife of Mariano Vallejo, who held the highest military position in Mexican California. By the end of the day he would be a prisoner at the fort.

Kit Carson was also there. Very shortly he would become the only man to kill another man in the Bear Flag Revolt.

They arrived in wagons.

They examined furs for sale.

And, feeling the need for some exertion, they stepped in for the Indian children--who work the mill day and night--and gave the grist mill a few turns.

The postman distributed letters at noon.

And then the plotters of the Bear Flag Revolt discussed plans.

After the revolt there was tug of war, general rabble rousing and reel and circle dancing.

A doctor arrived to tend the sick and injured. She applied leaches and performed brain surgery and an amputation. The chances of survival from the last were no better than 50/50.

Yes, we had it all, from bloody revolts to revolting bloodletting.
I've shown it here in sepia, but really it was history in living color.

Greta's Gruesome Dreams

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 15:19:00 +0000

Greta: Every night my dreams get more scary and gruesome.
Me: Do you want to tell me about your dream?
Greta: Well, there was this teacher and she was yelling at me and she was SO MEAN.

To A Cabin

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 04:54:00 +0000

Here is
a different state of being
where a morning cobweb becomes a fairy handkerchief
where I can lie against sand and stone
Face the rim of the globe
Feel waves wash over me
and crisp breezes refresh my skin
Listen to children's laughter like blowing bells
Watch dogs race the beach with numb joy
Know "freezing quiet" (Anne says)
Smell the spices of the season
(it is early spring now)

I awaken
by the ocean
in a cabin
gazing seaward

To A Cabin II
Margaretta K. Mitchell

Happy 6th Birthday Greta!

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:19:00 +0000

Today is Greta's 6th birthday. A few days ago we had this conversation:

Me: What do you want for your birthday?
Greta: A surprise. (Witheringly) That is why you wrap presents. So it is a surprise.

She never fails to surprise me.

A Sometimes Civil War

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 16:42:00 +0000

The war over what we listen to in the car is a simmering conflict that flares up from time to time and is sometimes civil, and sometimes not.

We've been working our way through a stack of Jim Weiss CDs that I picked up at a storytelling workshop with him. Greta is particularly taken with Queen Elizabeth and Sir Francis Drake and we listened to it end to end at least four times. Three of the four of us were tired of it, however, so I had put in Abraham Lincoln the day before to listen to while driving. I was enjoying it, Clementine was enjoying it, Evelyn was tuning it out and reading her own book, but I thought it was mostly going over Greta's soon-to-be-six head. When we got in the car for another morning of driving I hit the CD button.

Greta: Oh, not Abe Lincoln! I want Queen Elizabeth and the Queen's Pirate.
Me: (exaggerating) You've listened to that 10 times. Let's finish Abraham Lincoln.
Greta: It is boring.
Me: I don't think it is boring. Sometimes you have to listen to things more than once to really understand what they are about. Give it a chance.
Greta: I do understand it and it's boring. Son of a farmer grows up to president and has a big war. So what?
Me: (bursts out laughing)
Greta: (indignant) What? If you leave out the details, that is basically it.

Well, that cleared up my misunderstanding. Her campaign against Abe was not founded on ignorance.

Thankful

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 16:41:00 +0000

I don't think I needed a wakeup call to remind me that I am thankful. But I got one anyway.

It came in the form of a pain in Clementine's abdomen. Right at McBurney's point. You know, the point that is one-third of the distance from the anterior superior iliac spine to the umbilicus. The point where the appendix is often found. Pain at this point is known as McBurney's sign and it says, "this thing could blow."

I didn't know that at the time. But I did get an inkling that she was really not well when we left the doctor's office en route to the ER and Clementine had to lie down in a curb-edged weed patch in the parking lot, and she lay there retching as I told Mike I had to go, could he come home and stay with Evelyn and Greta while I took Clem to the ER? I went by the house to drop off a turkey I had in the trunk of the car and to pick up a Kindle with audio books for Clem to listen to. I am not sure this showed awesome judgment, but The Dark Is Rising distracted Clem quite a bit during the 7 hours from when we arrived at the hospital until they wheeled her off into the operating room.

My mom was in town for Thanksgiving so she came and picked up the girls and took them off to my sister's house to play with their cousins while Mike joined us at the hospital.

The worst part of Clem's ordeal was the ultrasound. When that was over Clem got her own tiny room in the ER with a huge mural full of hidden pictures. My girl is so tough she said, "This mural really keeps my mind off the pain." The pain was getting worse, though. The first doc we saw at the ER came by and said, "How is Clementine doing?"

"Her pain is a lot worse in the last 15 minutes."

Now, you are probably expecting her to say, "I'll get her some medication," or perhaps, "She'll be going to surgery soon," or even "Poor girl." What she actually said was "Awesome!"

Which, I have to say, cracked me up. I don't know whether she was happy to have her diagnosis confirmed or whether she was happy that it still hurt which meant it hadn't ruptured.

The nurse came by with a shot of morphine (I am grateful for heparin locks, for the people who painted the murals, for all of the nurses and doctors at Children's Hospital, for morphine, for unexpected laughter).

Clem had an open appendectomy. Initially I hoped she'd have a laproscopic one, but I'm cured of that now. Yay open appendectomy.

The day after her surgery Clem had so many visitors they couldn't all come to her room. I am so grateful for all our friends and family--so many offered to help with Ev and Greta, came by to see Clem or emailed her with good wishes. She felt very loved. Our queen for the day had to receive her visitors in the cafeteria. Her gran popped over to the gift shop and came back with puzzles and origami paper and other entertainments and Clem spent a couple hours enjoying the company of friends and cousins.

Clem was on a ward with 8 beds separated by curtains. On the other side of those curtains was all kinds of pain and sorrow. A boy screaming from the pain of a procedure, a baby who cried and cried--the parents were so exhausted they left, the girl next to Clem whom no one ever visited, who bellowed "Nurse!" all night long, the unbearably cute and chatty toddler with a brain tumor.

Clem got to go home on Wednesday, before Thanksgiving. As we were packing up a boy staggered by screaming from the pain of the gas in his stomach from the laproscopic surgery. I heard the girl next to Clem tell nurses she couldn't go to her grandmother's for a day or two while she recovered. She'd have to go back to her group home. The toddler with the brain tumor was riding a Little Tykes car around the nurse's station.

How thankful I am for family and friends and a home and even acute appendicitis. Clem will be none the worse for the wear in a few weeks. And we'll go on, forgetting, thankfully, how thin is the curtain separating us from the world's woes.

Home of Good Crawly Toys

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 16:44:00 +0000

Evelyn was joyfully holding a darkling beetle (what mealworms grow up to be). This was 8 years ago and she was four. Overcome with her enthusiasm she blurted out, "Life is just so much of a good crawly toy!"

Since that day I have tried to instill a respect for living things and encourage the children to see themselves as stewards of nature. But deep down they still think living things are the best crawly toys ever.

On our second day at Lassen I was hot to get to bubbly volcanic sulfurous things. But my friend Judith, newly arrived (with salad!), suggested we walk from our campsite to and around Manzanita Lake. We were awaiting more friends who would want to see the lavaworks, so why not? Manzanita Lake turned out to be a hot spot. Not geothermally, but for good crawly toys.

And it was stunningly scenic.

Yay! Friends!

The kids adored the ephemeral ecosystems on floating logs below.

And I loved the views.

And then began the parade of wildlife.

Some things stayed out of our reach.

But not this handful of baby lizards that Evelyn caught.

Or this long garter snake.

We did not try to touch this Douglas squirrel. He's put on his winter coat and the squirrel equivalent of a hat with a pom pom--his darling ear tufts.

We could probably have touched these very tame foraging deer.
Evelyn snapped these deer photos.

We wondered what they were eating. There wasn't anything green around except pine needles. So when they moved on, we investigated.

Mushrooms! In this photo you can just make out that the mother deer has a big mushroom cap in her mouth.

I wondered if that meant those mushrooms would be edible for people, but did not try my luck.

Evelyn discovered in our mammal guide that deer aren't the only mammals to eat fungi. Chipmunks are connoisseurs of truffles. We wondered if you could train a pet chipmunk as a truffler. Chipmunks also like forbs the book told us. What, you ask, are forbs? The question bothered us throughout our internet-less stay at Lassen. But you can just click on the word forbs.

Look at the tiny snake head between Evelyn's fingers. It must have been reptile hatching day at Manzanita Lake.

Ok, which one is cuter, snake or girl?

We watched this dipper playing in the rapids.

See his little head below?

Next up, bubbly volcanic sulfurous things. And cuddly extremophilic bacteria.

If you already knew what forbs were (or have anything else to say) leave a comment.

Tasty Meat

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 16:57:00 +0000

Two women and six children on the road for two weeks--and we never stopped at a grocery store. I owe part of that to my friend Martha who gave me a little booklet called Camp Cooking Without Coolers by Lacey Anderson.

I didn't put Anderson's Fruity Breakfast Rice on the menu because no matter how delicious instant rice with dried apples and butter flavored Crisco might be, my kids are unlikely to try it even without the optional chia seeds.

But I did get some key tips from this book. One was soup. "Soup is an excellent appetizer because it helps to ensure group members stay hydrated," Anderson writes. "I like to serve soup as an appetizer...."

Can I say that on a chill evening soup seems like man's highest achievement? Quick and satisfying--delightful to cradle in your numbed hands. When it was cold, when everyone came down with colds, a lunch of hot tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches hit the spot. And butternut squash soup as an appetizer when we arrived back at camp late, after a long hike, cold and hungry, was a balm to the soul as well as the stomach.

We were lucky the foraging was good. I didn't have to worry about fresh fruit intake as it was all around. Blackberries, blue huckleberries, red huckleberries, salal berries. We saw thimbleberry plants but no fruit.

Evelyn identified berries with the help of a dichotomous key.

We had so many berries we stewed them with sugar.

After a very rainy night--look at our accidental rain gauge!--

a breakfast of crepes with huckleberry blackberry syrup gave everyone the energy to break a soggy camp and hit the road.

Below, in the hat, is Yakov, our crepe chef extraordinaire. Sadly I didn't get out the camera until the crepes were gone. On the table you can see the beer bottles from the beer that, the night before, went into me...ok, just a little...most of the oatmeal lager went into the Trader Joes beer bread batter.

I wish I had brought more of that! Just add a bottle of beer, stir and pour into a greased cast iron skillet and cover. I put an extra cast iron pan under the skillet to distribute the heat better. The kids fell upon the hot fresh bread like wolves.

I don't want to sound like a Trader Joe's advertisement, but my friend Marina brought a coolerful of premarinated meat from TJ's which became known as tasty meat. We would whip out the camp stove and have a hot lunch of tasty meat anywhere.

On the drive from Shasta to Lassen I saw a sign that said "Wildlife Viewing" with an arrow pointing right. On an impulse I hung a hard right because, hey, we want to view wildlife. The wildlife at this place turned out to be golden mantled ground squirrels.

But it was a spectacular spot on a river near Lake McCloud in Shasta National Forest. It was so spectacular that the parking lot suddenly filled up and a flock of painters with easels swarmed the rocky riverbank.

You can see them on the bottom left of the photo below.

The children walked around them loudly critiquing while we set up our stove in a light drizzle and offered up tasty meat for lunch. A group of teen girls wandered by and one said, "These people have some good food going."

As we were packing up the artists swarmed away leaving us in an empty parking lot. A game warden pulled up and I asked him what wildlife we could view.
"Ospreys, but they left."

After admiring the scenery...

...we got back on the road. Our plan, since it was still raining, was to get a motel. But we never saw a place to stop and then, with dark coming on, we were at Lassen. In the rain. With wet sleeping bags. Ok, there were some cute cabins fifteen miles back. I used my only quarters on the pay phone--no cell coverage. It was the first week of hunting season. No room for us.

I stood in front of the pay phone wondering what we could do. I spent $60 on 3 phone calls to my husband. Ouch. Watch out for those pay by credit card pay phones. They are pure evil. Mike found us a motel room in Burney 40 miles away. Wasn't there anything closer? What on earth does one do without the internet and cell phones? How do you find out about things? It would be nice if they had some list of local places. You know, a sort of book with listings in it. Lightbulb. I looked down and there was the slim plastic cover. And inside it. A phone book. I had forgotten all about them.

But we decided to stick it out. There was a 24 hour laundry there by the store at Lassen. I dried our sleeping bags, burning huge holes in one in the process--it had been Greta's but it became mine. The rain turned to drizzle, then cleared. We set up camp and went to bed.

The next day we would be joined by more friends. It would be great to see friends we were missing, for Marina and me to share our stories, to hear news from back home. For the kids to have different playmates.

And another great thing. They brought salad.

Caught!

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 04:13:00 +0000

So we took a long camping trip to see California mammals and also--back off uncharismatic microfauna antidefamation league!--bacteria. We were armed with a Game Spy Camera, a rodent trap, a guide to California mammals and, true story, A Field Guide to Bacteria.

The mammal our game camera caught most often was ourselves. Here is Clementine getting ready for a predawn mammal walk. We got up close and personal with some viruses, so a few kids who really wanted to go on this walk had to remain huddled in the tent. The few, the intrepid, those of us without fevers, did spot tracks by Smith river, but my camera battery had died. We couldn't be sure, but we hold out the possibility that they were otter tracks.

We were also all for seeing interesting plants. Our campsite, surrounded by old growth redwoods, was the best one of the trip. A really great thing about redwoods is that they don't hide from you.

Evelyn, looking over the brochure for Jedediah Smith Redwoods Park, remarked that the conditions were perfect for the California pitcher plant, Darlingtonia californica, California's only native carnivorous plant. She set off to ask the rangers if there were Darlingtonias in the park.

She came back beaming.

A short drive and a very short path brought us to this:

We soon wished that the Darlingtonias were not such passive carnivores as a whole swarm of insects began practicing carnivory on us. Mosquitoes.

We high-tailed it, pausing only to give this coyote hole left by the miner 49'ers a glance.

We hopped back in our vans headed for Oregon Caves, home to stromatolites, formations created by cyanobacteria. These bacteria, also known as blue-green algae, once covered large parts of the earth in mats.

At the visitor center I asked the woman at the desk if we'd hear about stromatolites on the tour. "Oh yes," she said, "They'll tell you all about them. The uppy thingies and the downy thingies. I can never remember what they are called. We've got 'em all."

The kids got no end of amusement out of this, but I think she was trying to spare my feelings as I'd clearly got the name wrong.

As it turned out, there were, indeed, plenty of stalactites and stalagmites, but no stromatolites on the tour. They are in parts of the cave not accessible to the public.

But, we did get to see the endearing moon milk formation below which is believed to be caused by the bacteria Macromonus bipunctata.

And guess what swooped right over our heads.
A Townsend's Big-eared Bat.

The kids enjoyed themselves thoroughly on the tour and I thought they were really well behaved, but when the ranger swore them in for their Junior Ranger badges he appended "I will always obey my mother" to the oath.

After two hours winding through a half mile tunnel we came out to this:

The next day we were cruising down the I-5 headed for Lassen Volcanic Park when I spotted a coyote loping along a hill. I called to the kids to look, but they missed it. Then, on the next rise, there was another coyote, in the same place on the hill running the same direction. Everyone saw it.

I've been blogging about this trip for much, much longer than the trip actually took. One day I hope to catch up with real time, but there is still more to tell.

If I don't get it down I'll forget it ever happened.

In a related note...I hadn't posted in two weeks but my stats showed a big jump in visits. I investigated and it turns out some kind soul nominated my blog for an award! Whoever it was, thank you. It is always nice to have your little corner of the blogosphere get noticed.

It turns out I was nominated for Best Super Homeschooler. I'm a little sheepish about that because I don't feel all that super. Before I started blogging I thought we did nothing at all. We have done some big trips lately, but we've also had amazing experiences just walking around our block and in our backyard, paying attention to the little things.

If the spirit moves you, you can vote here, before Friday.

Going on a Gem Hunt

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 17:40:00 +0000

It was a good thing that my friend and traveling companion, Marina, did a bit of internet research at the motel on our day's destination. We were looking for an old copper mine on bureau of land management land near Mt. Shasta. We hoped to take home some pretty blue green copper ore called chrysocolla.

Her research clued us in to be on the lookout for the shot up old RV. We went too far past it the first time and, after scraping our vans through scrub, found an enticingly wide and well-traveled dirt road. With signposts! This road led to a working mine with imposing KEEP OUT signs.

We circled back, enjoying the views of Mt. Shasta.

In our search, full of exploratory sorties from our vans, we struck pay dirt--not the kind we expected, though.

Clementine shouted, "Mom! Look! Bear tracks!"

Sure enough.

A bear had walked all over this spot. We found front pawprints (above) and hindprints (below). Clem suggested we put a dollar bill in for size. Pretty big!

I can't remember who discovered the little balls of pumice. Greta is cleaning one with a wire brush with Mt. Shasta in the background.

The kids investigated many dumped items. Good old fashioned fun with a tire.

At last we found the slag heap we were looking for.

And plenty of chrysocolla.

Bucketloads...

Shirtsful....

And even more treasures.

Broken bones.

Rabbit scat!

We all recalled the story Susan Labiste told us about friends who thought they had found pine nuts on the ground but who instead had fried up and were eating rabbit scat in butter and cinnamon.

This was supposed to be a gem hunt, a departure from our mammal search, but it turned into a bear hunt. And a rabbit hunt, and a bone hunt, and a pumice hunt. What I like about this mammal hunt is that it keeps our eyes open. It is amazing what you find if you think to look.

But please, don't mistake the rabbit scat for pine nuts.

Going Nuts

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 05:53:00 +0000

We got back from our September trip and plunged into activities. Why is it that I am never able to keep an open schedule? Two weeks have gone by during which I had planned to post every day about our mammal sightings on our trip. Instead I've been teaching classes and overseeing deskwork. I'm starting to think that we're not eclectic homeschoolers--we're suffering from multiple homeschooling personality disorder.

A couple days ago I decided to do an experiment with my science class on what happens to fish if you cool the water they are in. We were supposed to do this with goldfish, and they were supposed to open their mouths less often. Instead we did it with guppies, because we have a lot of guppies, and well, they did open their mouths less often as the water they were in approached 10 degrees Celsius. They opened their mouths less often because they rolled over and sank to the bottom, dead. Actually, they were only apparently dead. We quick bathed their jars in hot water and they all revived. Phew.

You just never know what will happen when you try things out in the real world.

Back to our mammals. This fellow is a douglas squirrel, commonly known as a chickaree. This was the easiest squirrel ID ever. There are tons of them running all over the campsites at Jedediah Smith Redwoods. They'll obediently sit on a picnic table and let you take photos.

Chipmunks are another story. They aren't too hard to photograph, but the identification is terrible! There are at least a dozen species that live in California. Some are browner, some are grayer, some have a brown stripe as their outermost stripe.

And others have a white stripe on the outside.

This is a lodgepole chipmunk. The one above it is a Siskiyou, I think. We were trying to figure out why the rangers were saying Townsend's Chipmunk when a brochure claimed the area had Siskiyou chipmunks. Then Evelyn cleared it up for us. She read in the guidebook that Townsend's chipmunks had been recently split into four species based on differing penis bones. Right then I realized that I am just not committed enough to kill a chipmunk and inspect its os penis. That's another name for penis bone. And if that wasn't enough, here's another: baculum. In researching this I found a place where you can buy raccoon penis bones. In bulk. Yes you can buy a "Bag o' Raccoon Bacula". But careful, these are second quality raccoon penis bones, suitable for "art and craft purposes". Not first quality ones, used for....I have no idea. Anyway, luckily it turns out that chipmunks species usually do not live in the same area, so you can ID them without dissection.

This guy really drove us nuts. Evelyn spent a long time with the guidebook and eventually shouted with glee. It is not a chipmunk at all. Chipmunks have stripes on their faces. This golden mantled ground squirrel "superficially resembles a chipmunk" our guidebook taunted. We were chastised.

Later at Lassen park these guys were running around everywhere. A woman asked Greta if she had seen the chipmunks. She said, "That is not a chipmunk, that is a golden mantled ground squirrel." "Well if you say so," the woman replied, "but in Georgia we call 'em chipmunks."

So we're not the only people to be fooled by this superficial resemblance!

Not So Steller

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 14:45:00 +0000

I was hoping, when we visited the Northcoast Marine Mammal Center in Crescent City, to see a Steller's sea lion, so that if we ever saw one in the wild we'd know what we were seeing.

We sidled quietly up to the enclosures and got to see this very cute harbor seal pup.

No Steller's sea lions, however. There had been one there earlier in the year, but they released her and she died.

Steller's sea lions are named for Georg Wilhelm Steller, a German naturalist who set sail in 1741 with Danish navigator Vitus Bering on a mission of exploration. They left Russia's far east for Alaska, crossing the strait that would later bear Bering's name. It was a lucky trip for Steller. On the return voyage they were shipwrecked on this island, one of a chain known as the Commander Islands. Doesn't it look cozy?

Treeless, foggy, prone to severe storms, it also has frequent earthquakes. Bering got his name slapped on it but he also died there. As did much of his crew, from scurvy. They were forced to overwinter and were reportedly "plagued by arctic foxes". Steller, however, set about describing the wildlife in detail. It was here that he described the Steller sea lion and the Steller sea cow.

Boy would I like to see a Steller's sea cow, whose range did once include California.

When Steller made this sketch in 1741 Steller sea cows had already been extirpated in all their range except for the cold, inhospitable Commander Islands. These gentle, herbivorous 30 foot long manatee relatives went the way of the dinosaur in 1768, just 27 years after Steller first laid eyes on them. They were slow moving, they could not dive, and they were tasty. End of story.

Theirs, anyway. Ours will continue with more mammal sightings at beautiful Jedediah Smith Redwoods Park.

Slug Kisses

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:16:00 +0000

A project makes you think of doing things you never thought of doing before. Not kissing banana slugs. The kids do that all the time. Though never before have the slugs puckered up so nicely.

No, it was something else. Something bigger. Taller. We waylaid a ranger on our hike along the Brown Creek Trail in Prairie Creek Redwoods Park and asked what mammals there might be here in this deep and muffled wood.

Full of trees that can swallow a kid whole.

"Well," the ranger said, "At the top of Douglas fir trees lives the red tree vole. It spends its entire life there. Multiple generations live in one tree."

So I thought...hmm...if we want to see a red tree vole we're going to have to climb a Douglas fir. I'd been planning to bring the audio version of The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring on our trip about the folks who first climbed giant redwoods and rappelled down into them.

I asked Evelyn what she thought of learning to climb big trees. She jumped around saying "boing boing boing." I've found a tree climbing school in Atlanta, and a tree climbing adventure outfit in Oregon, but nothing closer to home so far. Very disappointing. Like a big ol' slug kiss on our dreams. Going to keep trying.

17th Category

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 05:52:00 +0000

I just had to create a new category (see previous post): Live in My Bedroom
It is a very hot night here and we have all the doors and windows open hoping for a breeze.
Instead we got a bat. Live in My Bedroom.

I just spent half an hour with a field guide and I have no idea what species this bat is.
Anybody?

I grabbed my camera and snapped these shots and then we turned on the outside light and turned off the inside light. And I am secretly relieved that this bat is now Live in Native Habitat. But I am even more pleased that I got a couple of good shots. And that the girls ran from their beds--too hot to sleep--and got to see it. This project would be a whole lot easier if all of California's mammals would just troop through our bedrooms. You hear that mountain beaver? And you bighorn sheep? And you fisher? Open invitation. Oh and as a matter of courtesy a nametag would be nice.

Cervus elaphus roosevelti

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:59:00 +0000

Prairie Creek Redwoods Park is home to the largest surviving subspecies of elk: the Roosevelt elk, named after its savior, Teddy Roosevelt. We pulled up to elk prairie where we found many signs warning us to stay back from these wild animals. But no elk.

Inside the visitor center we got to see some elusive mammals.

The American beaver

The mountain beaver

A weasel with cobwebs all over its head.

Evelyn has created a hierarchy for our animal sightings. The gold standard is Live in Native Habitat.
15 categories below that, far below Roadkill and Scat, is Dead in Museum. We are not counting Dead in Museum. Though I am happy to see things Dead in Museum because it gives me a chance of recognizing them when I see them Live in Native Habitat.

It was not at all hard to identify the elk when we did see them. They are big!

See Clementine in the background leaning out of our friends' car.

This fellow lost an antler.

After seeing elk we went on to a hike recommended by my friend and fellow blogger at West Vista Urban Farm. It was as fabulous as promised.

And we didn't know it until we returned from our trip, but as we slept that night our GameSpy caught a nocturnal visit from Mephitis mephitis, the striped skunk.

Now that was a mammal day that didn't stink.

From Krummholz to the Pygmy Forest

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 02:58:00 +0000

We began at the sea, on a cliff dotted with seaside daisies. We walked along the cliff, skirting a prairie of sweet vernal grass and velvet grass. Thence we traveled to Krummholz, called The Goblin Fortress by the wee people. From Krummholz we climbed the Ecological Staircase to the Pygmy Forest, stuffing ourselves with blue and red huckleberries on the way.

It sounds like a passage from a fantasy novel, but it was the first and longest hike we took. And the most varied and exciting. A little over five miles round trip. The hike begins in Jug Handle State Park.

The Ecological Staircase is a series of 5 terraces uplifted from the sea. As you climb, each terrace is 100,000 years older than the one before.

We began at the headlands, on the first terrace, or rather, the second, as the first is now being formed just beneath the sea, where the water is lighter and greener.

Just beyond the coastal prairie you find trees twisted and bent by salt winds, giving them a quality known as krummholz, German for bentwood. Our kids dubbed these trees The Goblin Fortress. It was the best natural playground I have ever seen.

On the next step of the staircase you find the same Grand firs and Douglas firs growing tall and true.

Or fallen over and hollowed by fire, making an irresistible, if sooty, tunnel.

Greta found this mushroom, with the volva, the remains of the universal veil, still visible at its base. The volva is evidence that this mushroom is in the Amanita family and may be deadly poisonous.

If there are mushroom experts among my readers, tell us what you know about this mushroom.

The trees also fell between other trees, great for climbing. See Evelyn leaning against the trunk.

Anyone know what this powdery yellow stuff is?

These are red huckleberries.

And these are our old friends, blue huckleberries.

We picked enough to make huckleberry syrup to drizzle over our breakfast crepes.

The trail rose up through a grove of coastal redwoods and on up again to the pygmy forest.

Evelyn looked like a giant walking among these trees bonsaied by too much water and soil depleted of minerals.

Greta caught a snake on the way down.

But we saw no mammals, not so much as a squirrel, on the Ecological Staircase.

Procyon lotor

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 05:07:00 +0000

Today was full of thrills.

We're home after two wonderful weeks of camping. It was great, but it had its hardships. Rain filled our mugs with two inches of water one night. Skim ice coated our dishwashing water several mornings. I'm finding all the little things I take for granted thrilling: a bathroom (with warm water for handwashing!) steps from the bed, an ambient temperature that doesn't freeze my toes all night, a kitchen stove I don't need matches to light, my morning cappuccino.

The biggest thrill, though, came when I uploaded photos from our GameSpy. We caught something the very first night we camped.

We had seen the pawprints on the picnic table and hoped this photo might be there, of Procyon lotor, the common raccoon. Recent evidence suggests that P. lotor is not solitary, but social. Groups of females or groups of males share the same territory. They hunt alone, but use a common latrine and gather for eating, sleeping and playing.

Back to School

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 14:42:00 +0000

Greta kicked off kindergarten with the time honored tradition of losing her first tooth.

I didn't believe that her tooth was really loose so it came as a surprise when my littlest's smile was changed forever.

We're starting our school year in earnest today. As soon as I am done with this post the bags go in the car and we are off for 2 weeks traveling up the California coast to Oregon and then down to Lassen Volcanic Park. We're hoping to see some mammals...I hear that the Roosevelt elk will be roaming our campground at Prairie Redwood State Park.

The Sierra Red Fox, one of North America's rarest mammals, hides itself in Lassen. In addition to charismatic megafauna we're hoping to see some charismatic microfauna. Armed with A Field Guide to Bacteria we're hoping to see evidence of stromatolites in Oregon Caves and extremophilic bacteria at Lassen.

So far we are definitely amateur trappers. We caught a fox squirrel just in time for our class with naturalist Susan Labiste. Fox squirrels were introduced to California by civil war veterans.

They are now displacing native Western gray squirrels.

With Susan the kids molded tootsie rolls into various kinds of scat. Blunt edges for cats, twisted end for dogs, tiny rounded hershey's kisses for deer.

Then we went out in our backyard and found more scat there than I ever would have believed. Fox, raccoon, squirrel, deer.

Last weekend while camping we set up our camera traps and were on the lookout for mammals. This decomposing deer tempted me to take it home and have a nearly complete skeleton. But it stank. Oh boy did it stink.

Our night camera captured a feral cat.

Our live trap caught nothing. We saw a lot of quail, a cormorant, a kingfisher, woodpeckers, mergansers and lizards. Mike mused that people like to say that in the time of the dinosaurs, dinosaurs ruled the day and mammals slunk around in the night. But it is still true. Aside from us people, you mostly see birds and lizards in the day. And the mammals come out at night.

This black-tailed deer settled down in our yard for a good day's snooze. Black-tailed deer were classified as a subspecies of mule deer until recent genetic analysis revealed that they are a separate species.

We'll be back here in two weeks or so, I hope with many photos of mammals. And bacteria.

Mouse Spanker 3000

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:31:00 +0000

California mammals are, by and large, a nocturnal lot. To find out what is lurking in our backyard--and around our campsites--while we sleep we picked up a game camera. These are chiefly used by hunters to find bucks with the big racks. I surfed some hunting forums looking for camera reviews where I enjoyed dot sigs like this: Beer nuts--$1.89. Deer nuts--still under a buck.

In the end I settled on a relatively cheap camera (to test out the idea) with infrared flash (so as not to scare the animals away)--the Moultrie Game Spy I-40 Infrared Flash Game Camera. The night before last Ev and Greta and I walked the deer trail behind the house and set the camera up on a tree facing the trail.

In addition to ourselves, this is what we caught:

Ev suggested hopefully that it might be a feral dog, and suggested we check for a collar--which, as it turns out, is clearly visible. At least we now have proof that the camera works.

Mammals of California suggested that we construct our own live trap for rodents. I am quite skeptical about both the safety and efficacy of this trap, but we had fun rigging it up (and naming it).

Today a naturalist is coming to the house to teach us how to best set up our camera, what baits to use, and how to identify various rodent nests. She'll also talk about the ethics of live traps.

In a few days we'll be camping and setting up our camera at night. This will be at a crowded campground, but with luck it will help us refine our techniques so that we'll be ready when we head up the coast to Jedediah Smith Redwoods later this month.

Lookout

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 20:39:00 +0000

Isn't it funny how a project changes your outlook?

I have a not very secret fear of bears visiting me at night when I am camping. But as we crawled up the Sierra foothills behind a sluggish RV on the way to Berkeley Tuolumne Camp I could see a silver lining: we'd get to add black bear to the list of California mammals we've seen.

At camp I sat on the shady deck of our cabin, enjoying the rush of the South Fork of the Tuolumne, and browsed through Mammals of California and A nature guide to Berkeley Tuolumne Camp looking for mammals we might spot. The latter was UCSC alum Phil Coffin's senior project. We should be so lucky to find such a guide to all the places we go a-mammal-hunting.

With its help we saw the pallid bat and the California myotis. You see, the Mammals of California book has a handy dichotomous key with which it is simple and pleasant to identify a bat. Why, first you simply determine whether your bat has one or two pairs of upper incisors. And then you check whether it has a furred or nude interfemoral membrane. I don't know about you, but little old rabiesophobic me is not about to check out the number of incisors a bat has even if I could catch one, which actually was pretty likely as one night they were flying all around our heads in clouds.

Woman playing pingpong with cloud of bats around her head: "Did someone say bats? Are there bats around here?" Looks up, screams, clutches head.

Here is my best photo. Can you make out the incisors?

I'll need to fiddle with my camera or maybe even take a class to improve my night photography. I was trying to shoot on automatic settings and it wouldn't flash because nothing was in focus. Darned bats move too fast to focus on. However, you know what doesn't move fast? Bat guano!

Under the Hardin Road bridge, as promised in our guide. How exciting! There it is again, that way that a project changes your outlook. As part of a project bat guano=exciting! After finding the guano we settled down to wait for nightfall. Well, I settled down. The kids swung on the rope swing.

The Mammals of California book also suggested we attach cyalume capsules to sleeping bats we might find in caves which would allow us to track their movements after dark. I wish I could say I had done this. With gloves on. And a respirator. Because I do not want to get rabies just because I think it would be a real knee-slapper to watch a bat fly with a glowstick glued to its fur.

But the beloved and practical Nature Guide to Berkeley Tuolumne Camp told us that pallid bats roost under the Hardin street bridge and fly out in the evening to catch insects.

We waited, they flew out. Check. The California Myotis, it told us, scoops water from the river. Stroll out, it says, and watch them after dinner. Done.

The best tip was this: a ringtail lives in the dining hall and comes out in the evening. If you are like many people at camp you are saying a ringtail what? A ringtail lemur? No, no. They were once called Ring-tailed cats, but the same folks who took the fish out of starfish took away their cat. These raccoon cousins are now known simply as ringtails. Gold miners loved ringtails we are told, because they eat vermin.

Since ringtails are, according to Wikipedia, "nocturnal, solitary, timid, and rarely seen" we expected it to be a challenge to see one. But the Nature Guide told us, "Some nights in the D-Hall, you may see a shape dart across one of the rafters, and it may even stop and stare at you with huge, curious eyes." So we began, with great anticipation, to stake out the dining hall in the evenings.

Ok, so this is how we staked out the dining hall. We would pass through it several times in the evening and look up hopefully. No luck. One morning as I made my coffee with my Clever Coffee Dripper (thanks, Moira!) I overheard people talking about having seen the ringtail the night before. We realized that we weren't going to catch something that darts along the rafters by passing through from time to time. We'd have to have a real stakeout.

We entered the dining hall at 9pm. Here is Evelyn staring up at the rafters.

The rafters, in case you were wondering.

And Clementine, demonstrating that we fueled this stakeout with hot cocoa, hot apple cider and Apples to Apples.

Yes, we set our minds to it this time. But by 10pm the kids were flopped on the table and moaning, "I'm sooooo tired." We went to bed. No ringtail.

The next night was Table Night, aka the camp talent show. And the night after that would be Bingo Night in the dining hall. It seemed unlikely that a timid and rarely seen critter would come out on Bingo Night. I resolved to slip off after the first act (coincidentally my kids' skit) and stake out the D-Hall.

But it turns out that I'm the sort of person who doesn't miss her friend's son's performance on the chance that I might spot a ringtail.

And wouldn't you know it, after listening to Solomon I even stick around for the staff performance of Stand By Me instead of running straight off to the stakeout. And Evelyn spots me and says Greta is falling asleep.

I'm about to take her off to bed when I decide to just go by the dining hall. And I ask the first person I see. And she says she did see the ringtail. It was just there not more than three minutes ago. I slumped onto bench with dejection and self-recrimination. I could have just skipped the Stand By Me. I lack the grit required for this project.

Sure, I managed to spot this ground squirrel living up to his new genus name Spermophilus (seed lover). But anyone can see a ground squirrel. In fact you have to drive them off. One ate Clementine's deodorant. And my chocolate stash.

It is going to take persistence and dedication to see a lot of these mammals. Do we have it? I missed the ringtail by three minutes and the kids opted not to try at all and stay at Table Night. Greta is here only because I dragged her here when she wanted to go to bed.

But, I told myself, at least our trip did not pass without some sign of a black bear. Scat! Not only did we examine the scat twice but we went back to photograph it later. Lots of manzanita berries in there and a

long piece of plastic wrap twisting through and holding the whole thing together.

I cheered myself up a little bit with the memory of the bats and the bear scat and the ground squirrel. And then I looked up. To see a ringtail staring down with huge, curious eyes.

Greta was thrilled. It was the cutest thing ever. I left her in the hall and ran to the amphitheater for Ev and Clem.

When I got back the ringtail was hiding in the firewood by the huge stone fireplace. Everyone gave it a little space and it escaped the firewood stack and streaked to the cup racks near the dishwashing station. It hid in there, peeping out from time to time. It was acting cornered, so I moved some trashcans to give it space to slip behind them and up the cupboard that it had descended from.

We all backed up. But to our surprise it struck out straight across the floor. It paused at Evelyn's foot and looked up at her. I thought it might run up her leg. Then it scampered beneath the tables and benches and squeezed into a bench seat at the far side.

We decided to leave it alone and retreated. Table Night had ended and the dining room was flooding with people. We sat down to talk over the unbearable cuteness of the ringtail and the possibility of owning a pet ringtail. Clementine decreed that the ringtail had been 100 times better than any of the Table Night acts. And then he was spotted climbing up the stacks of games in a corner cupboard, over the stereo, and up to the rafters.

He darted along the rafters, and back to his hole. I got to have my cake and eat it, too. I got to watch Solomon, sway to Stand By Me, and see the ringtail. And all my kids got to see it and so did Solomon and his siblings and parents. Life is good.

Another thrill from camp was Evelyn's first fish. A 13 inch rainbow trout. She caught it, she killed it.

Back home she gutted it, she cooked it (with some help), and she ate it.

Clem made the owl that perches in the pic below on the railing above our cabin number.

Greta was seldom without face paint.

I hoped the owl would scare away the squirrels.

It didn't. They must have heard me vowing to spend less time on the computer when we got back to civilization and decided to help. Because when I was packing up look what I found.

My laptop power cord chewed into 4 pieces. I was annoyed at first, but I perked up when I realized I could view it as a sign of mammalian life.

Coming soon: We have a trail camera. We plan to set it up in the backyard and see what's there when we are not.

A Whale of a Project

noreply@blogger.com (Susan) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:55:00 +0000

How's that for a dorky title? A friend cornered me at park day and said, "So what is the big project? Are you going to buy an RV and travel the country for a year?"

Um. No. It isn't that big or life changing. But I hope it will be fun. We're going to try to see every one of California's 197 native mammals.

I knew that if I didn't take matters in hand the first mammal we bagged would be a ho hum squirrel or a deer. Or that roadkill skunk.

I heard there were blue whales in Monterey Bay and thought how great it would be to kick off the project by seeing the largest animal that has ever lived. So we booked a whale watching tour with a naturalist.

We bagged California sea lions

and harbor seals before we even made it to the boat.

We went through a pod of 3000 Risso's dolphins. These dolphins have flat faces, no beak. See the baby behind his mother with his blunt little noggin?

Northern right whale dolphins--which have no dorsal fin--

and pacific white sided dolphins

rode our boat's bow wave.

A baby humpback popped up to have a look at us. We saw many humpbacks, perhaps 30. Evelyn kept track but she's off at camp.

But the blue whales stayed hidden.

Until, at the very end, we saw a high spout on the horizon. Our boat gave chase. Not really. It slowly approached the whales until we could sorta see them from a respectful distance.

We saw was their long backs--so much longer than the humpbacks--glistening in the setting sun, their occasional spouts, and...

...a tail.

It was enough.

A lot of the creatures we are out to see will be even more elusive--flying squirrels!--bats! And all of them will be a lot smaller. We've got our stacks of books, we've called in some experts, and an infrared camera is on its way.

I hope you'll join us for our adventure.