THE SENSE GOD GAVE A GOOSE

We were cruising the countryside with an old friend, fantasizing about home sites. I was channeling Goldilocks––this one’s got trees, but it’s too flat; that one is hilly, but it doesn’t have trees; that’s a nice creek, but it’s in the flood plain. That one is the Garden of Eden but with a hog confinement for a neighbor.

And then, I saw it. Wonderful meadows. A huge, mature woods. We parked the car and walked in, no mean feat the day after an ice storm when there’s no path. We came over the hill and––it was beyond our wildest dreams. There was a large pond and beyond that, wetlands. Near as I could tell, there was only one drawback: it wasn’t for sale.

Our realtor friend said he’d snoop around and find out who owned the land––maybe they’d sell off a few acres. But next morning, I opened the Iowa City paper and there, glaring out at me from the classifieds, was a detailed description of the very same property. For sale. Just posted. Other people were going to try to buy my land!

We were looking for 5 acres––it was 47 acres. We wanted to be 5-6 miles from town––it was 18 miles out. So we bought it.

Were we impulsive, or were we shrewd and flexible? Were we impractical or just exceptionally farsighted? There’s no doubt we were impulsive and impractical, and clueless and uninformed. We could add paragraphs to Roget’s list of synonyms for immature decision-making. Or maybe we had good intuition. And lotsa luck.

And oh, what we would have missed if we’d had our feet firmly planted on the ground. Like many memorable trips, this one was impulsive and life changing.

 

All that and the goose, too.

MASTER MORPHER

Rana Catesbeiana. What a beautiful name. Sounds like someone you went to high school with, right? Or a stripper at a bar in Shueyville. Didn't Tolstoy write about Rana Karenina? Actually, Rana catesbeiana sings to me every evening, my own basso profundo. When a chorus of Bullfrogs gets going, it can wake you from a sound sleep: barumba-rumba-rumba.

~Rana~

Rana C is a big, sturdy girl. Or boy. The American Bullfrog. I know we mothers are not supposed to have favorites, but I can cruise the perimeter of the pond for hours looking at these guys. My not-exactly-camouflaged kayak used to scare them, but they have gotten used to me, and I can coast to within a few yards before they ready those big back legs.

Nice gams!

Although I grew up on (more like in) a lake, I didn’t know how big a bullfrog could get. These fellas are 12-15 inches fully stretched out. They are a beautiful shade of green with handsome spots. And those hip bones? To die for. Frogs lack ribs, but they are well supported by those fantastic hipbones.

Bullfrogs have some very cool windows in their skulls. They can retract their eyes when they swim, pulling them down into little holes in the skull.

It's a girl

Is it a girl? If the eardrum is the size of the eye, yes. If it’s bigger, it’s a boy frog. Note: it’s not a bullfrog because it’s a boy. It’s a bullfrog because of its bellowing sound. There are female bullfrogs. In fact, they are bigger than the males. So there.

It's a boy

I always figured frogs moved their chins and throats because they were revving up to croak. In fact they move the bottom of their mouth up and down to bring in air, then they absorb oxygen through the lining of the mouth. They bring in oxygen through other skin as well.

Although frogs lay and fertilize tens of thousands of eggs, those are good fish food so we are saved from a plague of Rana catesbeiana. Those baby tads can hatch in days, and then begin their metamorphosis. Development time varies depending on climate and temperature, but it can be month or even years.

Our frogs have a constant supply of dragonflies. They wait so patiently while the dragons zip back and forth in front of their frog-noses, then snap forward and claim their dinner. They can jump 5-6 feet, and their underwater swimming is powerful, too, so they are very effective food gatherers. They will eat tadpoles, snails, snakes, birds, other frogs, turtles, mice, and other animals. They use their sticky tongue and their arms to get the unfortunate prey into the mouth. There are froggy teeth on the upper jaw and palate of a frog but not on the bottom. These are handy for holding the food in place, but the frog must stuff the food down its own throat. This behavior is also seen at Iowa City student hangouts on Thursday nights. Frogs also retract their eyes downward to help squeeze dinner out of the mouth and toward the stomach. That behavior is noted in students only after a really big football game.

I guess some people think all bullfrogs look alike, but look more closely. They each have their own beauty. And those eyes! Those lovely brown periscopes. I know what they’re thinking: “Wow, you guys all look alike.”

Time to restock the pond

  GOOD DEEDS  

There are some cultures in which land and property ownership do not exist. No one owns anything, everyone owns everything. If you griped about someone stealing your leaf blower, no one would have a clue what your beef was. That philosophy has not taken root in Iowa County.

I am thrilled to own this land. Would I feel the same if I had free rein to wander it anytime but didn’t own it? I can’t say for sure.

Wetlands Interlopers

In my head I argue that at least we make sure the land isn't poisoned, that it's cared for, that developers and people towing tanks of noxious fluids are not allowed. It's a quieter, less polluted place since we moved here. We don't blast geese off the pond or trample nests by racing 4-wheelers through the wetlands. Though we try to share the wonders of nature around us, the place still "belongs" to us in the end. By the way, the law says we own it, but the law does not obligate us to care for it; the rights of property owners are absolute in Iowa County and most other places. (Except for disturbing someone who's stalking wildlife with a Howitzer or vicious trap. But I digress.)

 It didn’t take long for this ethical discussion to take up residence in my head. About two weeks after we moved in, a parade of about 8 pickup trucks and Jeeps tore down our driveway, went around the end of our garage, and ripped through the field down to the pond. I was dumbfounded.

I walked down the path toward the pond as casually as I could manage. Meanwhile, a fleet of good old boys were unloading fishing gear, chairs, and coolers.

“Hello?” To me this meant, “I am here, who the heck are you, and what do you think you’re doing?”

“Hello,” they all grunted. To them this meant, “Hello. Go away.”

“What are you doing?”

“Fishing.”

Okay, I’m quick. I figured that part out. “This is private property. See the house? We live here. This is our yard.”

“Our grandpa built this pond 15 years ago,” one of them said.

“And, yet…”

“You don’t actually mean we can’t fish here, do you?” the leader said, heaving his beer can over his shoulder and squashing the butt of his cigarette under his boot.

This was not a comfortable situation, not for someone who watched an idiot put ugly, over-sized houses on her dad’s farm some years back. I knew how they felt. On the other hand, I did not march into those homes and start running a bath. I got the picture.

I was comforted somewhat when I later found out that the Hatfields and McCoys had had a feud and lost this land because they could not settle a will for several years. A judge ordered it auctioned, and a neighbor bought it out from under them. We bought it from the neighbor. We were carpetbaggers once removed.

Some philosophers say land ownership is ethically justified if you add your labor to the land, like folding an egg into cake batter. You become part of the land and it becomes part of you. This is a really wild guess, but that dude likely was not renting his room.

I didn’t invent this ownership system, but I’ve never fought it either. It’s seems like a bit of a bear to bring down. I do know that it’s very hard to regret the time I’ve spent here, and as we prepare to turn it over to some other lucky people, I can only hope they are ready to soak up all of its delights and surprises and jaw-dropping gifts.

Mama Goose April 15 on the island in the pond
We're gonna have goslings!