HAY, THERE!

For several years after we moved to the country, we let our neighbor cut hay in our meadow. As long as he didn’t use fertilizer or pesticides to increase the yield, this arrangement benefited everyone. He got 50 bales of hay; we thought the annual mowing would help control weeds.

What we hadn’t counted on was the beauty of the hay bales scattered over the field. The sunlight on the golden mounds, the shadows in the evening, birds perched on top––we looked forward to having the bales around and missed them when our neighbor collected them for the winter.

One fall, our neighbor hired a young man to help with the baling. He gave him one instruction: make sure the round side of the bale does not face down the hill. If I had two hours and a cup of liver snaps, I could train my dog to face a hay bale in a particular direction, so we didn’t expect any problems.

If you are not familiar with bales, here’s the deal. The farmer cuts the hay, then rakes it up and presses it into a rectangular or circular bale. It might be wrapped with twine, netting, plastic, or wire. A bale weighs about a ton, is 7 feet high and about 5 feet across. If she had a good run at it, Obe could scamper up a bale and sit on top of it. I did that once, too, with the help of a ladder; it was a great view.

Husband Bruce and his friend, Aaron, were standing on the near edge of our pond casting for bass. It was a lovely evening full of that dense, golden light you get when the sun is low. I stood up on the hill and watched the boys drown a bucket of worms. At least they were enjoying a good chat.

When I glanced sideways, I thought I saw a bale move. Nah. Must have been one of those asteroids that circulate in old eyes, floaters that make you think a mouse just scurried past you. Even a tractor with a long spear on the front struggles to move a bale, so it’s unlikely one would shift its position independently.

But it did move. Just a little at first, groaning as it crunched against the dry field. And it kept moving, ever so slowly. That’s when I noticed: the round side was facing down the hill. Toward the pond. And the fishermen.

The bale was soft, so I figured it would just settle into an indentation and stop. I was wrong. It gained momentum. “Hay bale,” I yelled. The guys squinted at me. “Bale! Moving!” I yelled louder. They looked puzzled, then resumed casting their lines.

The bale was about to crest the hill, so I ran over and tried to block it. It didn’t take long to squelch that idea before it squelched me. The bale picked up speed until it was flying down the hill, occasionally taking to the air when it hit a rough spot.

The pond is a hundred yards wide, but that bale headed for the only spot it could do any harm. “Bale!” I screamed once more.

Just before it reached the pond, Bruce and Aaron turned around. One dove south and one dove north. It was a 7-10 split, the old bedpost, the toughest spare a bowler can face.

Moving a hay bale is hard work. Moving an underwater hay bale is much, much harder. And quite a bit more entertaining.

WEIRD WORLD

PART 2

More entries from the Weird File:

√ When I see my dog doing this in the front yard, I’m almost afraid to look up. In this case, there was a ground hog 15’ up in the tree. Makes one wonder about the name ground hog; I don’t think there are tree hogs, even in Iowa County. These guys are famous for digging burrows, not climbing trees. Dogs are one of their primary predators, so this one was not being an alarmist.

These stocky little marmots are also known as woodchucks or land beavers. (So I guess we have to stop teasing my niece about shouting, “Look, a chuck beaver.”) Just like us, ground hogs give birth to helpless, hairless babies, but theirs are ready to set out on their own at age 5 weeks, so maybe we could learn something from them.

√ We all know what causes crop circles in the fields. Less is known about pond circles.

√ String algae is one of the strangest and most wonderful things found on the pond. It’s considered a pest, but come one––one long cell? Amazing.

√ Baby painted turtle yawning. What exactly tired her out? Must be all that racing around––up on the log in the morning, back in the pond in the evening. Whew. (And yes, this did make me yawn; it's a cross-species phenomenon.)

√ Snails that take up residence on turtle shells. Does this get them there faster?

√ Catfish in trees. Do you call firemen to get them down?

√   Ice-skating geese get a 5.9 from the Scottish judge.

A klutz doing a triple-lutz

The Weird File is never fully closed. Stay tuned for more weirdness, coming soon to a blogspot near you.

WEIRD WORLD

PART 1

There are plenty of times in the country when you see something, but you have no idea what you’re looking at. After a while you learn––just give it a second or two, longer if you have rogue eyes like mine. It’s good for you to encounter things you can’t understand––it’s humbling. How boring to go through a day full of the familiar.

Here are some entries from our Weird File:

√  One day a Coot dove into the pond and completely disappeared. Coots can swim quite a distance under water. I stared at the spot where he had gone under for a good five minutes. All the time that old coot was treading water behind me and thinking “That old coot can’t see.” (see February 24th entry for a Coot photo) 

 √  I once saw a black kettle cruising around the pond. It was a black fungus that broke loose and went for an evening sail.

√ More alarming was the clenched fist that rose up out of the water in front of my kayak. I paddled backwards toward––and right up onto––the shore. I’d always wondered if there were old hunters and fishermen in that pond and when they’d surface. This isn’t as farfetched as it may sound; there was a promenade of shell casings and beer cans around the pond when we bought the land. Luckily, it was not a fist, just the head of a giant snapper.

√ It was a special day when I opened our front door and found a kidney on the porch. This wasn’t the usual macerated mouse kidney one expects to find on the top step. No, this was a full-sized, human-sized kidney. The neat thing was it was clean as a whistle, dry and intact, not in any way disgusting. I mention that because yes, I did pick it up. I turned it over and examined it, looking for a clue as to how it arrived on my porch. Not a prank, for sure, not in an isolated location like ours. Or anywhere else, I suppose. We’re guessing Stella performed the first half of a transplant on a dead deer left by a hunter. We hope.

√ We had several dead trees at the end of our pond, really tall trees. They served as excellent perches for eagles eyeing our crappies and bluegills. One morning there were three basketballs perching on a branch. I stared, then reached for the binoculars. There were three baby owls, recently pushed from the nest, fluffed up to keep warm .

√ Last fall I approached the pond and saw that it was raining. Raining hard. That is, rain drops were pounding the surface of the pond so hard that water was splashing into the air. Except––it wasn’t raining. I wasn’t getting wet, nor did I feel any raindrops when I looked up at the perfectly clear sky. 

This was not a weather phenomenon––it was an animal phenomenon. Our pond had lost its fish last summer, so there was no one to feed on the frog eggs and tadpoles. When I reached the shore and made a closer examination, I saw that there was not a ¼ inch of our pond without a tadpole in it. And they were all doing the hokey-pokey to beat the band. In some places they were piled on top of one another. The pond was writhing with tadpoles.

Maybe it was all those ambient substances I inhaled walking across the Michigan campus in the 60s. Timothy Leary probably saw tadpole invasions a couple of times a day. For the rest of us, if you can’t believe your eyes, you probably shouldn’t.

Tomorrow: Weird World Part 2