AH, SWEET MYSTERY MISERY OF LIFE

My husband is allergic to strawberries. By allergic I mean if he touches the tip of his finger to strawberry yogurt and puts it near his tongue, he swells up like the Michelin man in a red body stocking. He was, however, kind enough to encourage me to put in a few strawberry plants for myself at our new home.

“No reason you can’t enjoy a fresh strawberry,” he said.

I promised never to bring a berry into the house and to keep any paroxysms of joy at a low volume.

I planted just a few berry plants, but the very next spring, a surprising number of strawberries popped out almost overnight. I quietly stepped into the garden and picked the biggest, reddest berry, turned my back to the house, and bit into it.

 

I had never had food before. I had never been happy before. If this was my last meal, I was okay with that. My friends, we have forgotten what strawberries taste like. We eat big red polystyrene berries. They look right. They may feel right. But they do not explode in your brain screaming, “STRAW-BER-RY!” People talk about the Big O only because they can’t describe the Big S.

“How are the berries?” he asked when I came in.

“Not too bad,” I said. My skin stood still but my subcutaneous parts whirled around, beat out a soft shoe, and shimmied like my sister Judy.

There is a price for such happiness. I hadn’t lived in the country for a long time, so I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten that you can’t see them––they are only 1/150^th of an inch long––but when they get together with their buddies, they will put a hurtin’ on you. Can you guess who was marching around on me looking for creases and crevices? Under the elastic? Under the leg bands? Neckbands? In the socks? Reveling in my armpits? Gleeful in my groins? The less likely you are to scratch a spot while waiting in line at Sears, the more likely these little guys are to select it for an infestation.

Did you guess an insect? You are wrong! Chiggers are the larval form of an insect, specifically of the mite. Mites are arachnids, cousins to spiders. I’d much rather have spiders in my pants than chiggers, I can tell you that. If you don’t think so, come sit in my strawberry patch and check back in the next day.

The saliva that chiggers inject is an enzyme––it doesn’t irritate your cells; it dissolves them. The itch this creates caused me to rummage like a madwoman through the basement looking for the wire brush I use to strip paint from old furniture. Scars seemed a small price to pay for relief.

After 6 or 7 years of enjoying strawberries, then spinning in bed like a wind turbine for the next two weeks, I’d had enough. I got out the Round-Up and ended that berry patch. It is a pitiful woman who revels in her triumph over a chigger. A larva. Something that isn’t even something yet.

Hey, Defense Department––think outside the Pentagon. Here’s the most cost-effective weapon ever developed. Drop chiggers on both sides, and war will cease. We will itch our way to détente.

CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, YORK TOWNSHIP, IOWA                                                                                             

Who among us doesn’t get excited about a huge, beautifully wrapped birthday present, especially one you can hardly lift? Even you fibbers who say, “Please don’t get me anything,“ would quiver at the gorgeous offering my husband placed on the table in front of me. I ripped it open and pulled out not a peignoir, not a cashmere sweater, but a chain saw.

In his defense, my husband knows I hate cute. When we were newlyweds he brought me a souvenir from New Orleans. His colleague brought his wife some glittery pasties. My husband brought me Holly Hobbie stationary. I would have hated those pasties, but there’s a lot of territory between pasties and Holly Hobbie, buster. I gave him a look he’s apparently never forgotten. In 42 years, no more cute stuff. With the bright red, petite-size chain saw, you can see how far from cute we had come.

Who else has a best friend you can call, tell her about your new chain saw, and know she will be as excited as you are? “We can trim trees! We can cut firewood! Be there in half an hour!”

Never having touched a chain saw, Pam and I actually read the directions. One in particular caught my eye. It explained that if you do not hold the chain saw just right and you hit a knot in the wood, the saw could fly back and split your forehead open. I do admire wide-set eyes, but I already have enough trouble finding glasses that fit . I started to repack the chain saw, but Pam urged me to “just give it a try.”

We selected a small tree, about 3-inches in diameter and 30’ high.  My forehead tingled in anticipation. We pulled the starter rope, and the motor roared. Hey! We were already good at this. We cut in about 2-inches, and the saw stopped. It was jammed. This on a tree so small I could make a soprano recorder out of it. We handled this little setback, however. We were, after all, woods-women! We pushed the tree over. One tree down.

We proceeded through the woods making cuts as far as 6 or 8 inches in all the dead trees in our path. None of them fell. Most pinched down on the saw and wouldn’t let go. We had philosophical discussions about starting from the uphill versus the downhill side of the tree trunk. (In addition to the saw-pinching problem, there is an issue of kick-back when a tree falls; as the top of the tree hits the ground, the cut end, newly freed, can leap up and catch you under your chin.)

We came to the creek, and I held the saw while my friend leaped across. She took off from the east bank, became airborne, and landed with her feet stuck firmly in the mud on the west bank. The rest of her didn’t quite make it that far––she sat back down in the middle of the creek, which consisted of an inch of water on a bed of black mud. So, Miss Chain Saw of 1998 wasn’t quite so enthused about our venture now. And I bet she never wore white pants on her deforestation soirées after that.

Back home, my husband had been hearing that chain saw make its way through the forest for nearly 3 hours. He figured we'd be able to farm that land the next spring. 

We, by gum, were going to succeed in felling at least one tree before we gave up. Our final victim was a good-sized dead locust. We made it darn near 9 inches in but once again could not finish that last inch. Now we had a 50’ tree that was cut 9/10ths of the way through. And 13-years later, we still do.

Since 1998, we’ve had 2 tornados and one hurricane-force wind go through our place and plenty of winter storms with gusts up to 50 mph. Even though Pam and I had created a 20-acre Pick-Up-Stix game, those trees still have not budged. I’m feeling pretty good about the future of our woods. 

TOUR de IOWA,  RAINBOW EDITION

Some people peer down at Iowa's rectangular fields from 30,000-feet in the air and feel pity for us prairie dwellers.  It's possible those flyover-folk are missing a few details as they tear across the country in their big flying thermoses. At 600 mph it’s tough to see the emerald Green Heron poke a beak through her beautiful blue egg, at least from the aisle seat.

So, today let's drop down a few thousand feet, and view the true colors of The Land Between Two Rivers. 

The Prairie Reds

The Prairie Blues

The Prairie Greens

The Prairie Purples

The Prairie Yellows

The Prairie Oranges

The Prairie Pinks

The Prairie Browns

The Prairie Whites

The Prairie Grays

The Prairie Blacks

A small sampling of the prairie's rainbow, 
available every day 
in Ioway.

WOODY

One morning the log on the very top of our woodpile rolled over, but I wasn’t concerned. To me the world is a freak show until I put my glasses on. Seeing a log roll over is no weirder than seeing a giraffe who turns out to be a grain elevator. It’s an easy mistake.

grain elevator                                      giraffe

Someday I will donate these eyes to a medical school. They demonstrate farsightedness, astigmatism, and misalignment all in one package. My glasses are trifocals with prisms added to urge my eyes to peer at the same object at the same time.

But I don’t need sharp focus to get through breakfast, so I was going au naturale, optically speaking. When the log sat up and stretched, however, I ran for my specs. Sitting on the woodpile was a long haired cat, the color of a fresh apricot. 

The countryside is overrun with feral cats. As you drive along, hundreds of little green sparkles light up the ditches. If you slow down, they flee into the fields, scurrying down the cornrows. Most are in very poor condition, their eyes drippy, their coats mangy. Farm cats and feral cats are not like those prissy cats in television ads. They live on what they catch, and they breed mercilessly. Most end up wild and desperate. Believe what you read about not being able to tame a feral cat––you don’t have time or immunizations enough to make them love you.

But Woody was gorgeous and unusually calm. Maybe he wasn’t a true feral cat, just a lost cat. He was a big, beautiful specimen, and I was pretty sure my husband’s cat allergies could be managed with medication. I opened the door and tiptoed onto the porch, waving a slice of prosciutto in front of me. The cat leaped into the woods and disappeared.

I left a bowl of cat food by the woodpile every evening for a week. It’s not true that I used our best china, just a little bowl that had belonged to my mother-in-law.

There was a tarp over part of the woodpile, and Woody spent his nights underneath it. Every morning he climbed onto the tractor and surveyed the world. He always ate the food, but I couldn’t crack the door without him bolting.

Woody

I read all about feral cats. Undeterred, I borrowed a live trap. It was winter, and I didn’t see how he could withstand the sub-zero temperatures and blizzards. For several days, the food disappeared from the cage, but the cage was always empty, the door not sprung.

One morning Woody didn’t appear on the woodpile, so I suited up and trudged out in the snow. He was in the cage, trapped. As I approached, he reared up and growled at me. It wasn't a low "don't mess with my catnip mouse" growl; it was an "I'll rip your arm out by the roots" growl.

I carried the caterwauling cage into the house, past my stunned husband, past the horrified dogs, and down to the basement. Woody was warm and safe at last. I spoke softly to him, reassuring him he was going to be loved and cared for. He responded to this, yes he did––by repeatedly throwing himself at the walls of the cage, screaming, and flashing his canine teeth at me. I went upstairs to give him time to ponder his options.

Next morning, Woody was quiet and calm when I approached. That warm bed and good breakfast did the trick. Ha! I’m good at this. Those pessimists on the Internet should be ashamed of themselves. The trick is to do everything gradually.

I put a finger between the slats and gently stroked Woody’s toe. He remained calm––a good sign––so I stroked his  paw. I withdrew my shredded, bloody fingertip and made a mental note to find some recorder music without any C-sharps in it for next week's quartets.

So Woody went free, disappearing from the woodpile and the neighborhood. I did see him one more time, but I shall spare you the details. It’s so much worse than you are imagining. (see entry for February 13, reference coyote incident)

The important thing is that Woody gave me a lesson in acceptance. Let nature be. Que sera, sera. 

Tuesday when I was leaving for the airport, there appeared in our field a sleek black cat. In view of the Woody episode, I drove right past him. On the other hand, when I slowed down, he didn’t exactly run away. Maybe little Midnight isn't really a feral cat––the future’s not ours to see.

For information on the Feral Cat Coalition:

http://www.feralcat.com/taming.html