THE GEEZER AND THE COOT

You should not settle near wetlands if you suffer from anatadaephobia. You're presuming that’s a fear of ducks, aren't you? Oh, it’s so much better than that. It’s the fear that ducks are looking at you. My advice would be, if you are ever in the presence of an anatadaephobe, you should not raise your glass and say, “Here’s looking at you, ducky.”

We have a huge variety of ducks stop by our pond for a swim and a little bluegill sushi on summer evenings. So many ducks, so hard to tell apart. You’ve got your crested, your mallards, your teals; your ring necked, your shovelers, and your buffleheads. You can add in some whistlers and widgeons, too.

What we seldom see is a lonesome duck. Commonly there are 3-4 pairs paddling around together, at the very least one pair. This is why I was interested to see an unusually large black and white duck with red eyes making a solo cruise around the pond.

I became concerned when he dove under water and didn’t resurface. Not for a long, long time. I was in my boat; if he had come back up, I’d have seen him.

He did surface eventually, and when he saw me, he got up and ran across the water. He hobbled along, finally becoming airborne. Usually ducks can get up and away in seconds; they’re very skittish. This fellow labored into the air like a foundering DC3, and it took him half the length of the pond to lift off. Once he was in the air, I could see why he was having trouble lifting off––he had huge, lobed feet. This was a duck in mukluks.

Turns out our visitor wasn’t an odd duck or any other kind, either. He was an American Coot, a member of the rail family. And their feet are big and fat like Big Bird’s. Because it’s too hard for experts to keep saying “big fat feet like mukluks,” they describe these lobed feet as fissipalmate.

Coots have a white marking on their faces. (If you know the card game Indian Poker in which you hold a card against your forehead, you get the picture.) Their eyes are red and look like amber glass. 

Ms. Coot

They may have trouble getting off the ground, but Coots can fly long distances. Long as in overseas. They’re quite territorial, so it’s no surprise I saw just one.




I've seen one female in 15 years. If you are lucky enough to see a group of these birds, it’s called a Raft of Coots, and really, what more could you ask for? Well, perhaps to get glimpse of a baby Coot––a little yellow pompom with a red beak (see link below).

So go ahead––call me a Coot.

I’d be pleased to be so cute.

For more about Coots:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Coot/id

To buy acrylic Coot eyes:

http://eyeconicstore.com/product.php?ProductID=17

To see a BABY COOT and you really must, cut and paste this address:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://i1.treknature.com/photos/1482/coot.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.treknature.com/gallery/North_America/United_States/photo11028.htm&h=436&w=509&sz=128&tbnid=0WKXDWlH0Yj_oM:&tbnh=112&tbnw=131&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbaby%2Bcoot&zoom=1&q=baby+coot&usg=__yIjnQtcUjKZbH2ZglmBkPAXQs6k=&sa=X&ei=UvVfTaDhF4OgtwfenamADA&ved=0CBoQ9QEwAA

 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII     DON’T FENCE ME IN     IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

My  friends in town think they have rabbit problems. Out here, our rabbits take a number and wait in line to shop in our garden. To keep the beasts out of the peas and asparagus, we made raised beds that stand about 18 inches high. The first night, we could hear them laughing as they squeezed between the 4x4s.

One morning I discovered my beautiful broccoli was gone, and I had become caretaker to a row of one-inch stumps. I headed for the lumberyard. Enough of these miserable rodents––bunny, schmunny. Stick a powder puff on the rear end of a rat and you get a rabbit. They're not that cute.  

I dug a trough along the inside of the raised bed and sunk the bottom of a wire fence a good foot below ground level. Then I staked the upper part of the fence with posts one could use to contain rhinos at the zoo. The fence rose 4 feet above ground. A rabbit can’t climb that high, and it can’t dig that low. I had them unless they were going to call in some little hare-a-troopers.

I was collecting my tools, when I noticed something in the lettuce patch.There was a small indentation in the ground, and it was fur-lined. I got down and moved some straw. Awww––a nest of bunnies, newborn bunnies. I picked one up. It was adorable––but oh, no! These would be tasty hors d'oœvres for my dogs! Or a ravenous hawk. Or fox.

So I cut another fence, made more posts, and made a barrier around and over the nest. Now I had a bunny preserve inside my rabbit-proof fence. Even as I did this, I knew it was not rational.

I brought them shredded carrots, but I swear––I did not name them. Well, just Harley, because he kept kicking out his back foot like he was starting a little motorcycle.


After a few days, mom rabbit moved them out of the garden––I truly hope she moved them. I was left with the bill from the lumberyard, no broccoli, and a bad case of empty-nest syndrome.

MADONNA

We have a friend, a boy we met when he was 7-years–old. Being a townie, he loves tramping in the woods, finding disgusting souvenirs to take home. If he finds something so repulsive that it flips my breakfast over in my gut, you can bet he’s going to stick it in his pocket. He’s almost 18 now, and over the past 11 years, he has cajoled us into some adventures we might otherwise have missed.

When he was 10, he and I were walking on the edge of a bog on our south fence line. We came to a spot filled with something akin to chocolate pudding, so he reached right in and extracted a cow skull. A gold brick would not have been greeted with more delight.

He handed me the skull and dug a little deeper. Walla! Ribs. Lots of ribs. WooHoo! A femur. Hot dog! An iliac crest. We both ended up knee deep in that black brew and exhumed an impressive pile of bones.

Soon he had me hiking home in 90˚ heat to get shovels, a tarp, and a wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow could only go half way to the site of the dig because the field was so rough, so we carried everything the rest of the way.

Hours later, we had a pit any anthropologist would be proud of, and we had harvested several wheelbarrows full of bones. You simply have no idea how many bones it takes to make a cow. Apparently it’s in the neighborhood of 220. We were up to our coccyges in bones.

By evening, we were ready to go home, so we dragged the last tarp-full back to the wheelbarrow. We were impressed with the weight of those bones; suffice it to say,  I will not be taking up cow tipping any time soon. We were covered with black bog juice and red welts from head-to-toe mosquito bites. The wheelbarrow was piled high and hard to navigate through the mounds and divots of the field. Every few feet we’d stop to pick up a radius or patella that had slid off Mt. Osseus.

My husband was home from work and stood on the deck, peering into the field like someone in the desert pondering a mirage.

Over the next few months, we washed those bones, bleached those bones, read about those bones. We even bought the Visible Cow Kit to practice. Turned out that was much harder to assemble than an actual cow.

We hauled 12 big boxes of bones across the state to Iowa State University. At the large animal hospital, they graciously allowed us to take over a hallway, spreading our bones all over the floor. They had a cow skeleton in a glass case and we took pictures, made notes, and numbered our bones. You may think you can identify bones, but when the tendons and cartilage are gone, it’s not that easy. Bones don’t articulate as neatly as freight cars coupling together, not without the cartilage. But we made good progress in Ames, and we left only one Hawkeye sticker for the Iowa State folks to find.

After about 6 weeks, it was clear we had a bigger project on our hands than we’d anticipated. NASA big. And then our task was complicated by a discovery: there was a 3^rd scapula. Nobody, truly nobody, has 3 scapulae. (If you have more than 2 shoulder blades, please leave a comment below.) It was clear that this cow had wandered into the bog following its calf, possibly trying to rescue its sinking baby.

When we discovered the 5^th scapula, we were in trouble. 5 divided by 2 is more than 2. And this one was soft and very small. We had ourselves a fetal calf, folks. A pregnant cow with a small calf––what else could we possibly name her but Madonna?

It took drills, screws, wires, electrical ties (which can solve any problem), and E6000 glue. And it took all summer. We found we were missing two bones. Our farmer neighbor said he’d buried a bunch of cows in his pasture, but that seemed like a bit of a crapshoot. Sure enough, our little friend dug about an inch deep and on his first try, he hauled out the femur and the rib we were missing. That will never happen again.

We had a grand unveiling. Madonna was hanging on our deck, suspended on heavy chains from the upper deck. She wore a string of pearls and 4 baby tennis shoes. A white sheet hid her from our small but enthusiastic audience. We played a tape of the Olympic Fanfare and at the climax, with trumpets blasting and drums rolling, we dropped the curtain. The audience jumped to its feet, cheering, laughing, and more than a little frightened. Our neighbor, who had hoped to take Madonna to market some day, shook his head. What is it with these people from the city?

Madonna enjoying an Iowa sunrise.

Madonna still hangs on the deck, the world’s wackiest wind chime. Every summer she hosts nests of baby sparrows in her eye sockets, sinuses, and pelvic girdle. So far no Cowbirds have felt the call, which truly would make my life complete.

She had to go in for repairs this year, which meant a death-defying trip to the basement. She is extremely heavy and doesn’t go around those corners in our stairway very well. But after a little orthopedic work and a good bath, she is one boss bossy.

As we prepare to move, we face a difficult issue: who gets custody of Madonna? Not too many bidders so far. Our backup plan is to hang her in the woods and always wonder how long it took for the new owners to discover her.

Meanwhile, building Madonna will go into that file called “Glad I did it, but never again,” right between surfing and getting a tattoo.

For more on cow skeletons:

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/950700/cow-skeletal-system