THE MOREL OF THE STORY

I anticipated many wonderful experiences when we headed for the boonies, but one particular benefit never occurred to me. We had our own woods. Twenty acres of woods. What grows in the woods, children?  Think hard. Under the leaves? Around old elm trees lying on the ground? I never dreamed I would go out my own front door, walk fifty feet, and find a glorious, magical patch of morel mushrooms.

Morels must secrete pheromones. Isn't the deal with pheromones that they trigger a response in those upon whom they fall?  Well, when I see a morel, my responses are righteously triggered. Have you experienced that surge of endorphins when you spot the first morel of the season? Have you come upon a huge patch and become faint? Have you wrapped your hand around that treasure, heard the sound of them sizzling in the frying pan, smelled them browning in butter? That much pleasure is a first-order sin in the Amish country around here.

I grew up on a small lake in Michigan, and in our neighborhood, morel hunting was a no-holds-barred competition. My aunt never did reveal her secret morel spot even to her beloved brother, my dad.

One of my dad’s happiest days was the day he cut up a sponge and made a basket full of fake morels. He got up early and planted them on our neighbor’s lawn. Then he made a couple of fried eggs and some of his famous boiled coffee and sat back to watch. When the sun came up, our neighbor burst out of her house screaming with joy and ran to gather the morels. She picked up the first one and––slowly she raised her face toward our house with a feral, menacing expression. She threw down the sponge and stormed into the house. Morels were serious business. 

And that is why I experience an even deeper level of pleasure at being the mistress of morel manor; not only can I pick far more than I can possibly eat––and I am willing to eat them until I vomit­––but I also can lord that over my sisters back in Michigan. I take dozens of photographs  (including one pile that completely covered the kitchen counter,) and I send those pictures to my sisters in the Water Winter Wonderland. The first time I sent the mushroom pics, their replies hit my inbox within seconds. I have to tell you––I was not aware one could send such language into the ether. After 7 or 8 mailings, they refused to open those emails. So, I had to change my tactics; I re-titled the photos. Who could resist opening HotIowaFructoseCoveredStuds.jpg? I love thinking about them opening those attachments and getting another face full of morels.  Iowa morels. My morels.

Having a private stock of morels is awe-inspiring. My sisters not having the morels? Well, as they say in Ann Arbor––Hail to the Victors.


More on morels:
http://www.morels.com/

UNDERNEATH IT ALL

You could have broadcast a daily wildlife show from the basement of my childhood home in Michigan.  We had bats, we had raccoons, we had a rogue 3-legged cat for whom my dad made a prosthesis out of a clip-on clothespin. After that, it sounded like Captain Ahab lived down there. Trips to the basement to stoke the furnace or fetch potatoes and carrots from the root cellar were trepidatious for a kid.

But the basement of our new country home––now that’s a different story. We have no outside access–-not a window, not a door. No squeaking, no chirping, no clawing, no guano or other gridoo.

In this lovely basement, I was changing a light bulb in the ceiling.  I heard a strange sound nearby, but I couldn’t place it. Since I was up on a three-step stool, I had a good view, but nothing was out of place. No haunted canning jars were spinning on the shelves, no tools were dancing Fantasia-like on the bench. Yet, there was this soft, constant, swishing sound. If you get bored, you could recreate it by dragging a shoelace slowly over a plastic grocery bag.

The sound seemed to be coming from my sewing supplies about a yard away. I had discovered those wonderful giant plastic bags that zip shut. They are waist high so one can stuff in winter coats or pillows and zip them safely away. I use them for fabric scraps. I had two bags full, each the size of a third grader, a woven history of my failed sewing projects. The bags were dead still, their usual and expected state of being.

Or were they? Did one of the plastic bags move? Just a little? Maybe it was tipping, settling. No, the side of the bag was indeed moving, softly breathing, up and down. I wasn’t alarmed. I am not afraid of quilt squares.

The zipped edge of the bag wasn’t actually zipped all the way across. There was a 2-inch gap at one end. I noticed this because a tiny tongue was darting in and out of the gap. From inside the bag.

Then some tiny lips protruded through the gap as well. And the telltale beady eyes.

You know those screams that by-pass your voice box entirely? The ones that exit through your navel and surprise even you? Well, mine surprised both of us––me and the large fox snake winding his way out of the plastic bag. When I screamed, the little guy became quite agitated.

Did I say little guy? When he finally slithered halfway out of the bag, sliding onto the shiny, green basement floor, it appeared the first half of him was about 2 feet long. His diameter was about an inch. In town, I never once thought about snake diameters. Never. I am not afraid of snakes. When they are outdoors. When I see them coming. I need advance notice. I was not getting down off that stool.

When my husband heard his name shrieking up through the register in the floor of his den, he finished his book, made a sandwich, and came right down to see what was wrong. He was not that fond of snakes, but he grabbed the handle of our snake-removal tool—a paint roller––and approached our scaly visitor. To our surprise, he easily rolled that snake right up on the lambs wool roller. I held out a big Christmas box, and he made a deposit. I put the cover on--it had a beautiful antique painting of Santa on it. For just a moment, I was thinking of re-gifting that package to certain individuals that came to mind. My husband took him out to the field.

While they were gone, I continued fussing with the light bulb, but when I glanced at the corner of the room, something was not quite right.

This one was much bigger but had the same beautiful black and brown diamond pattern. It had wrapped itself around the corner of the room in a weird triangle clinging to two walls and the floor.

This half of the duo was not so amenable to being rolled up. When my husband approached him, he lunged forward, opened his mouth wide, and hissed. So did the snake. We did not want to hurt the snake, but with the help of the roller and the lid to my Crock Pot, we eventually got him into the Christmas box. This one was relocated out near the north fence.

From that day forward, about half of the fabric scraps seemed to have brown and black spots. The other half appeared to be moving. And, it was never quite the same reaching into that bag.

More on Fox snakes:
http://www.herpnet.net/Iowa-Herpetology/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=26

                                                             photo by Bruce Gronbeck

HALLELUJAH CHORUS OUTLAWED IN IOWA!

In the past few months, we’ve all been asked to reexamine the tone of our rhetoric, to bring it down a notch, to stop labeling those with whom we disagree as the enemy. However, the sound of guns blasting along our fence line, the orange haute couture, and the beer cans and shell casings strewn all over the roadside––these can move me from mindful to completely out of my mind in minutes. My rhetoric is anything but empty. I spew, I sputter, I descend into the gutter.

My dad hunted. He let me shoot cans off the fence posts on my grandpa’s farm. I can’t recall anyone in our neighborhood who didn’t hunt.

One time my dad called me down to the basement where he was dressing out some squirrels he’d shot. “Look at this,” he said. He held a squirrel up. Apparently he’d already slit it around its “waist” because he proceeded to pull half that fur coat up and half down, skinning it in one swift move. “Pants and a shirt,” he said. I have no idea how my 9-year-old self recovered from that. I don’t recall any specific trauma.

My adult self is not so able to accept the pain and suffering imparted to innocent animals for no good reason. While these “humanitarians” cull the herd to “prevent the deer from starving,” the ones they don’t quite kill run down my driveway and die in front of the house. Or my dogs carry home the entrails after the hunters grab a few roasts and leave the rest to rot. We watch a family of deer tiptoe across our meadow and slide silently down beyond the pond. There’s a barrage of shooting, and I am sickened.

During construction, our roofer asked to hunt on our land, and I declined.

“Why not?!” he demanded.

I wasn’t up for discussing the merits of hunting with this guy so I simply said, “We have dogs. It’s too dangerous.”

He stood with his hands on his bony hips. “What if I hunt on your neighbor’s land and shoot a pheasant, and it flies into your field?” he asked. His tone dared me to deny him access to this mythical wounded bird.

“Guess you’re out of luck,” I said. He was unabashedly disgusted with me.

The next week, my friend drove out to check the progress on our nearly completed house. When she got back to town, she called me and asked if I’d given permission for someone to hunt. My blood reversed its flow.  She said a man was loading his guns into the back of a truck by our garage. She told him she was quite sure we did not allow hunting. He said, “I wasn’t hunting.” He must have had a nasty dermatological issue because my friend noticed that his feet were covered with feathers. She got his license number. Shocking who it turned out to be.

My friend probably shouldn’t have confronted a stranger with a gun. That’s what my husband seemed to think when I did the same thing. I was walking in the wetlands and saw two men constructing a deer stand in one of our trees. They kept at it as I walked up to them.

“Whatcha doing?” I asked.

The one in the tree kept hammering. The one holding the ladder in place looked very nervous. He told his buddy they’d better go.

“Whatcha doing?” I asked again.

The tree guy jumped down to the ground. Remember those kids in Deliverance? If one of them had grown up, he’d have been this guy.

“Putting up a tree stand,” he said, adding a non-verbal “dummy.”

“Got to take that down, “ I said. His friend became even more nervous and started collecting their tools and a couple of guns.

“You have frickin’ got to be kidding me,” he yelled.

“I’m frickin’ not,” I said.  He said he didn’t believe this was my property. I invited him to check out the plat sometime.

“One of us is taking that down. If you want it, take it with you,” I said, walking away, tightening the spot between my shoulder blades, waiting for the impact.

This particular tree was a good mile from any road. A neighbor told me this guy walks in along the creek so as not to be detected.

When I returned home and shared my adventure with my husband, he inquired as to whether confronting a not quite fully assembled man who had guns was to be advised. Well, of course not! That’s just what the scoundrel was counting on. And within the hour, guess who knocked at the door and asked to see the plat? I brought it outside, he read it, he left, swearing all the way to his car.

After carrying a post-hole driver along our swampy west boundary and putting No Hunting signs every 30 feet, I knew I was not going to win any county elections after that. In turn, my neighbors constructed a deer blind the size of a four-plex apartment building just outside our fence.

So, here was my reasoning: if I could alert the deer in our woods, maybe they’d lay low and not venture out where hunters could shoot them. I walked to the center of our 20-acre forest and sat on a downed tree. I placed my boombox on the tree trunk, turned the volume all the way up, and hit “Play.” The CD began to whir and within seconds, Handel’s Messiah shook the forest. "Aaaa-le-luuuuuu-yuh! Aaaa-le-luuuuuu-yuh!" It was glorious. It was so glorious.  “. .  . And He shall be redee-eeee-eeee-eeee-eeee-eeee-eeee-eeee-eeem-ed…” floated up through the treetops and echoed down through the ravine, letting the deer know something is amiss––you’d better hunker down. And then I, a happy troubadour, strolled along the fence line with my boombox still blasting––“And He shall reign forever and eh-eh-ver….”

Did you know that it’s illegal to play music for the deer during hunting season? “Get out!” you’re saying. That’s what I said when the conservation officer drove down our driveway, and joined me as I walked the dogs, long after my musical offering had ended. Yup, you cannot do anything that will interfere with hunters killing animals even if you do it on your own property, even if it presents no actual barrier to them. You cannot influence the animals to not be killed.

To enhance my disbelief, the officer handed me a pamphlet which explained that playing the Messiah in my own woods when my nearest neighbor is a mile away is against the law. There is a pamphlet for this! Apparently, this comes up often enough to warrant a pamphlet. In Iowa County. Iowa.

Really, what could be more Christian than playing the Messiah for hunters as they sit in those cold, lonely deer blinds? Ingrates. Philistines. Oh––but not the enemy.