SEX IN THE CITY COUNTRY

We have a beautiful 4-acre pond. When the weather is halfway bearable, I am in my kayak spying on and photographing pond dwellers for an embarrassing number of hours a day. I have photographed microscopic beasts that live inside the surface of the pond. Not below it, not above it. Inside it! I have snuck up on herons and been chased across the water by a muskrat. I will never feel like an expert because every visit brings some new bird, animal, or plant for my viewing pleasure. But I know enough to tell you this: that pond can best be described as Copulation Station.

Dragonflies and damselflies don’t live very long so they don’t waste any time checking things off their bucket lists. Their first five “to do” items are mate, mate, mate, mate, and mate. It’s an Odonata Orgy every summer. And they are very kinky beings––you can find threesomes, foursomes, etc.—depends on how much room to line up on the leaf.

Ducks. If you were not a feminist before, you’d shape up after watching ducks mate. After pulling the feathers on her neck, he stands on her back and forces her head under water. You get 20 ducks mating on your pond and it’s like the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre if it had occurred at a water park. Splashing, screaming, flapping. 

One June afternoon I was privy to an event that made all others not just pale by comparison but completely disappear. On the western edge of our woods is a wetlands area. You have to walk through some difficult forest to get there, climbing over logs, sliding down stream banks, prying yourself loose from the greenbriers that grab your clothing. I tried so hard not to make any noise while walking through the woods, slipping my toes under the leaves, avoiding twigs, stifling sneezes until my sinuses nearly ruptured. I had placed an old wooden chair in a spot behind a huge oak in the wetland, so that I wouldn’t be spotted as I watched and photographed water birds. I wore brown and green clothing to blend in with the leaves, but to the herons and eagles, my quiet approach looked as though I’d arrived in a rainbow-striped hot air balloon while playing the bagpipes and tap dancing. They seldom stuck around. I had to sit quietly for hours until they returned to the swamp, if they returned.

That’s just what I was doing one day when I heard a mournful sound, a groan from the edge of the water maybe a hundred feet away. I couldn’t spot anything. Rising as slowly as possible, camera at the ready, I moved a few yards closer and hunkered down. Something was breathing with great effort. Loudly. Frequently. Oh, lord, I hoped it wasn’t an injured deer dying in pain. The prudent thing to do would have been to move away from, not toward, this sound. As I moved closer, I saw movement in the water right at the shoreline. 
Turns out, this was not a case where a big sound was coming from something surprisingly small. No, no. It was coming from something surprisingly huge. Maybe 15 inches across, just under the surface of the murky water. 

And then it rose up out of the water and crawled onto the shore. Just it’s two front feet––the rest stayed under water. Those two front feet had long nails. Over an inch. I moved closer because he didn’t seem to notice me crouching there.

Now he stood up, rising to a height of perhaps 9 inches. I trained my telephoto lens on him, turned the focus ring, and stifled a scream. Though this is a wild area with no human traffic other than me, I had not expected to find a prehistoric creature. I moved to within 20 feet.

This was a turtle, the biggest and ugliest turtle I’d ever seen. I grew up on a lake, so I’d seen big old snappers. This one was at least 16 inches across, but more impressively, he was massive in bulk. From carapace to plastron (upper to lower shell) he was 6 or 7 inches. Between the shells he was all muscle––there was likely 20 pounds of meat in there.
His nose had three pointed prongs. And something you never want to see––his tongue was a horrid pink snake that would have made Gene Simmons quiver with envy. 4 out of 5 of my relatives have dogs smaller than this turtle. And because I knew no one would believe what I had seen, I took picture after picture of this writhing, snorting, heaving beast. I went through 2 rolls of 36 shots each and ran out of film. I figured he’d be gone by the time I went back for more film, but I made the difficult trek home and back, running, tripping, sliding. It took about 30 minutes. And wonder of wonders, he was still there when I returned.

I assumed the position and readied my camera once more. And then he began to rise up off the earth. That’s because his mate––on top of whom he was clamped, it turns out–– was rising up from under the water, a place I’m pretty sure she was sick of being. It would seem, it did appear, I do believe that I had just shot 2-1/2 rolls of film filled entirely with snapping turtle porn. It was like a dream come true.

I didn’t initially identify what was going on in those photos when I emailed them to everyone I knew. They all commented on how ugly that turtle was, how big. When I did ask them to look more closely, my inbox went silent. 

If you look up all the definitions of horny*––having horns or hornlike projections, being tough and calloused, desirous of sexual activity––I think you will agree that that guy owns them all.

* From the Free Online Dictionary

More on giant snappers:


http://www.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en&oe=UTF-8&q=giant+snapping+turtles&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=Ru9WTd_JNoG4twfFnvGVDQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CDwQsAQwAw&biw=1417&bih=690

KNOTTY PROBLEMS

The thing that has been most consistent in our long marriage is that when my husband is out of town, especially when he’s overseas,  certain "events" occur.

Soon after we moved into our new home in the country, he sailed off to Finland. That was a safe distance since I was writing day and night on my master’s thesis. One night at 3 a.m., I was staring at the computer screen in the only enclosed room in our home––my husband’s den. My tired brain was parsing out the delicate relationship between pain and suffering when a bat flew between my face and the computer screen. I hit the floor and the dogs went wild. Luckily, the creature flew out of the den into the main part house, and I slammed the door. “Gotcha!” I said to two blank-faced Aussies.

Of course, the bat had me. I was in a little room, a very cold room, and he had the entire rest of the house. I thought about my situation until 4 a.m. when I could no longer stay awake. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? So I opened the door, and not having a HazMat suit handy, grabbed a small hand towel from the bathroom and placed it on my head. I was not about to offer up a landing strip of my hair for the beast to land on.

The house is wide open––living room, dining room, kitchen, lofted bedroom and TV room, two small third-level lofts. No walls. The state park building, my husband calls it. I took quiet, slow steps through every inch of the place looking for that little Velociraptor. Unfortunately, the walls, beams, and ceiling are knotty pine, and the floors are knotty cyprus. Every one of those thousands of knots had wings.  By 5 a.m., I figured he could just have at me; I was falling asleep. So I climbed into bed and pulled everything I could reach over my face, leaving one tiny slit to breath through. Oddly, I slept.

In the morning, there was no sign of him, so I figured he had exited the house by whatever means he had entered it. I stood at the kitchen sink running water for tea, peering out at the Baltimore Oriole on our feeder. When my near-focus kicked in, I noticed the bat 16 inches in front of my face, wings splayed, clinging to the window over the sink. I grabbed a 13 X 9 inch cake pan from the counter and slammed it against the window over the beast. Ha! Gotcha for real this time!

It’s amazing how hard it is to hold your arm straight out in front of you for long periods of time. Actually, within about 4 minutes, my arm and shoulder were spasming. What I needed was something to slide up between the window and the bat, trapping it in the cake pan so I could humanely return him to the wild. What I needed was a cookie sheet!

The cookie sheets were in the bottom stove drawer about a yard and a half to my left, but I had to hold that pan against the window. I do, however, have a secret weapon––long toes that function like Swiss Army knives. I stretched as far as possible with my left leg and pulled the stove drawer open with my toes. It was a bit tougher to reach down to the bottom of the drawer without letting the cake pan slip. I stretched as far as I could. The cartilage between my ribs was snapping like the elastic on old underpants, however I did reach the cookie sheet. Cookie sheets are much heavier than one notices when lifting them by hand.

I placed the cookie sheet flat against the window right below the cake pan and began to slide it upwards. I truly didn’t want to hurt the bat’s little feet. I went slowly so that it had time to let go of the window and adjust its position in the pan. Somehow I slid the cookie sheet all the way up, and it formed a fine cover for the pan. I could carry the bat safely outside, well contained. I was feeling triumphant or at least a little smug.

Onto the deck we went. Heck, he was just being a bat, acting like a bat should. I held no grudge. I stood on the deck and opened the pan to the sky so that he could return to the wild unharmed. Unfortunately, he clung to the inside of the cake pan. I gave a little shake. I gave a big shake. I smacked the bottom of the pan.

How could I encourage the bat to let go? While I was wondering, he fell out and landed at my feet. And there he sat. The phrase that seeped into my mind at this point was aberrant bat behavior. I do respect nature and the right of all living things to be left alone, but I had no intention of experiencing weeks of rabies shots for this little jerk.

I placed the broom bristles gently against the bat. He was about 6 inches from the railing, and I hoped to urge him through the rails and out of my life. I was very careful to be gentle in case there was some kind of coating on bat wings that might affect flight if it were disturbed. I gave a little nudge, whereupon that filthy sky-rat stood up, spread his wings and growled at me. Even as I raced backwards, I could see that his jaws were open 180 degrees, and he had sabers for teeth.

I grew up on a golf course, so my next move came naturally. I placed the broom squarely in front of me, shoulders even, head down, and swung back keeping my left elbow straight. I drove that sucker right off the deck. And much like golf balls that simply dribble off the tee, he simply fell off the deck and landed in the garden right below me, hissing and growling as he went.

At least he was gone. I turned to go back in the house and looked into the faces of my two dogs. Soon we’d be going for our morning walk. And soon they’d be rounding the house looking for the bat who was still screeching. For a fleeting moment, I thought––hey, they've had rabies shots––.  We hadn’t fully settled into the house. Maybe we could just move. 

I walked out front to the little garden wall I’d built and took the biggest, heaviest rock from the pile. It took all I had to lift it over the deck rail and align it with the still growling bat below me. I let it go. It was a horrible, sickening thud. Horrible and yet at some level, quite satisfying. As far as I know that bat still lines the indentation under the rock, but I’m not checking, even after 15 years.

More on bats:
http://www.defenders.org/wildlife_and_habitat/wildlife/bats.php

BEFORE YOU THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX, MAKE SURE YOU KNOW 
WHAT'S OUT THERE

When our house was being built, we used to drive out in the evenings to see what progress had been made. It is a post and beam home––all wood beams, glass, and stone. There were no interior walls yet, so we’d put a ladder up to the second level, climb up and look at the beautiful yellow pine everywhere.

One evening we were peering up at the tongue-and-groove ceilings two-and-a-half stories up, and we both came to the same conclusion: lose the walls. Why cover up all this wood? We’d tell the contractor to just skip the interior walls entirely. There's just the two of us. We could have a wide open house

We can sit in our first floor living room and look up over the rail at our bedroom and even farther up at another little loft with my writing desk, keyboard, and my dad’s rocking chair. We can throw dirty dishrags up over the balcony toward the laundry area. We can drop a sweater down for whoever is cold. Strings of Christmas lights start 30 feet up in the tiny sky loft and swing all the way down through the bedroom and farther down to the living and dining rooms. It is gorgeous.

On the other hand, the house does present some cleaning challenges. And this is not a small thing in the country. In town, we’d have some faint footprints on the floor from 3 dogs who went in and out all day. Here, the land is clay; if it’s wet outside, you get taller and taller as you walk. Our four feet and the dogs’ eight paws bring in clods and smears of nasty grey clay. In town, we cleaned the windows a couple of times a year with a few paper towels. Out here, when the farmer plows the field south of us, we have black out conditions that would have made Winston Churchill proud. And the grain dust and aerosolized soil blows in through every crevice, coating everything.

I did get one of those 15-foot extension poles to attack the beams three stories up. Sadly, no matter how strong the steel or how much you pay for the industrial kind of pole, when it gets that long, it will bend. And whip around banging into things because it’s also very heavy and you cannot control it. A little dust rag on the end of a steel pole is no match for a towering combine that throws up a rooster tail of dirt or a biplane that sprays god-knows-what that drifts our way.

The one thing I have not conquered is the stone fireplace. It sits in the center of our house, rising through all the “rooms.” And it is huge. 32-feet tall, about 12-feet wide and 4-feet deep. Remember Tennessee Ernie Ford? 16 tons? That’s what we got. 16 tons of Wisconsin fieldstone crafted into a beautiful structure. And you’ve no doubt heard that Iowa has lost its precious topsoil? I know where it is. It’s all on that fireplace.  The rocks stick out all over creating hundreds of little shelves. No normal dusting device can handle it. The stones are rough, so if you use the lambs wool or feather dusters (duct taped onto the giant handle device), bits of feather or fabric cling to the stone. That does not look better than dust. Truthfully, others probably can’t see the dust, but I know it’s there. Blow on the fireplace. You’ll see.

One day I was determined to give it a really good dusting, just for once. Then it came to me. It would take a little sacrifice because at first, the dust situation might get a bit worse before it got better. I went to the garage to get my favorite appliance. I have a nice little leaf blower. Electric. Quiet. I thought it was worth a try.

I took the leaf blower up to the second floor––our bedroom in the balcony. I plugged in a long orange extension cord, aimed the blower at the top of the chimney far above me and turned that baby on at the “Hi” setting. Out here in the boonies, there’s no room for hesitation. One must take action.

Clearly, I had underestimated the power of the leaf blower when it is used in a contained space. I believe they should put that information on the box. In my defense, the immense cloud of dust that exploded throughout the second level of our home impeded my view of the events that took place over the next few minutes so I could not react effectively. Furthermore––and I know you’re wondering––no, I could not simply turn it off. I was holding one hand over my eyes and nose and was blinded by dust so I had to hold the blower with just one hand. I couldn’t let go to find the on-off button. I couldn’t unplug it because I had used a 30 ft. extension cord and pulling on that did no good. The location of the outlet was but a distant memory. One hand was not enough hands, so the leaf blower was whirling around in all directions.

It ended in about a minute. When I could open my scratched and burning eyes just a slit, and when the dust began to thin, I was able to assess the situation.

This technique had not only freed up all the dirt from 6 months of plowing and harvesting, it had done a pretty fair job of pruning our ficus tree, too. Dead leaves were on all 3 levels of our home. Furthermore, I could look over the balcony and see my husband’s underwear in the dining room and one of my bras draped over a lamp in the living room. Frames on the walls were still rocking back and forth. I do have to say, if you’re one of those people who has a messy desk, this really is the solution. All of my papers, pens, and small books were strewn throughout the house, and my desk was clean as a whistle.

There really was much less dirt on the fireplace, but every piece of furniture, the walls, the insides of windows, the plants, the terrified dogs, me––everything was now breaded in dust.

Not to make excuses, but people in such stressful circumstances sometimes make even more bad decisions. Here was my reasoning as I decided on my next move: can this get any worse? So I opened the double doors in our living room and tried to blow everything out onto the deck. I aimed at the doors, but everything simply became airborne once again. This time, when the dust settled, there stood my husband. Of course, I had not heard his car pull up. He was in the hall, immobilized, simply looking at me.

“Would you want a boring wife?” I asked. For a fleeting moment, for the first time ever, I think I saw him consider that possibility.