Ravens

It seems I never came back and wrote anything about my ravens when I had a scare (one disappeared) last spring. The pair did show up and they had 3 rambunctious offspring. I think of this mainly because this morning the ravens had sex about ten feet from my window on a giant snow bank in my yard. It is a privilege to witness this stuff, seriously. I knew something seemed different from their demeanor; they both fluffed out their head feathers so it appeared to be standing straight out. It gives them a decidedly different profile. I see them create this 'big hair' expression sometimes, but never in tandem like they were and then they did a wing dance where it looked like they were pushing out elbows--it was not a wing flapping ordeal, just the small elbow movements. This all made them look very angular and festive with their big fluffy heads. He literally stood on her back (these are large, hefty birds) as she hunkered down in the snow. And then it was over. I took another sip of coffee and went back to work after writing "raven sex" on my daily calendar.

This past summer I made the mistake of interacting with their fledglings they brought to my yard daily to be fed. The past few years I just fed them and did not get involved. This time I ended up spending time letting them get used to me and one got brave enough to take stuff from my hand. They were hilarious to watch as they picked up EVERYTHING with their beaks and tasted it to see if it was food. They kept shredding the plants I had in a hanging planter and I had to keep stopping them from digging up my perennials in my garden just for fun (their fun, not mine). They were pretty destructive...but funny. I had read in Heinrich's, "Mind of the Raven" that they do not like the taste of bees and I got to witness this in action one day when I was sitting in the yard with the three young ravens all quite close to me--a bee buzzed by and to my surprise one of the raven's snapped at it and actually caught it...it was luck, not skill...anyways, I kept watching to see what would happen. He spit the bee out onto the grass, tried tasting it one more time and walked away from it. It's strange that they really "taste" their food but don't seem to have much of a sense of smell. It must be a different way of tasting than what we are familiar with.

They played like puppies. I watched them fight over a stick and one of the ravens ended up standing on the stick taking a ride while another one pulled it trying to get it for itself. They were VERY noisy, especially before their voices changed. I began to realize I had created a problem when they would stay at my place all day long and their parents would be off, probably dining on spawning salmon in the creek a couple of miles away. The three babies even ended up getting so bold as to coming on my deck rail--their parents would never dare to get that close. The male regularly perches on my car's luggage rack, that's as personal as they get. Anyways, I ended up with these three huge, immature birds standing on my deck rail a couple of feet from my living room window and basically Screaming!!! for food. I ended up having to apply tough love and put up with their very sad begging for about a week before they would leave and stop the painful (audible and heart-string) begging. I learned my lesson not to insert myself into the grand scheme of things. Each year the parents kick their fledglings to the curb and stop allowing them to come to my yard to feed. I hope my interference didn't preclude them from learning to fend for themselves. By fall, it is back to just my pair of ravens till early summer comes around and more mouths to feed, for a while.

testing testing onetwothree

Dear diary, I've not posted in almost a year, so I am just clearing off the cyber-dust (spring cleaning??) and thinking about maybe writing something other than what you are reading, which as you have figured out by now is quite boring...I didn't enter any poems for consideration in the publication I had poems printed in the last couple of years, so I don't have the suspense of that to fret about. I just couldn't get excited about any of the poems I had on hand. I do miss that 'feeling' of being entranced with a particular poem du jour--O' the masochistic joy of poetry!

I have built a wall (well half a wall). No. It's not a metaphor. Actually my friend's carpenter husband put in the wall and I textured and painted it to match the pre-existing bottom of the wall with a peek through section between my kitchen and dining room-slash-office. Turned out not bad. "Orange Peel" was the name of the canned texture I used and it pretty much looks the same except for one part where it got kind of drippy, which is now the bane of my existence each time I look at that little part of supporting column that has the 4"x16" dripperiffic faux pas.

Also I stained and poly-ed a piece of pine that serves as a shelf on the look-through between the two rooms. It turned out REALLY nice. Used an ebony stain initially and them mixed in a ground aluminum silver paint with some of the ebony stain so it looks kind of like gunmetal, but with the wood grain still visible and used a high gloss polyurethane. It looks really moderne and fits well with my black and red kitchen.

Did a little bit of painting on mamushka blanks last month. I bought the blanks years ago and finally got around to being inspired. One set of five is various modern designs that turned out pretty groovy. And the other set of five I painted bare tree branches with five different backgrounds: the largest has a clear blue sky and a few white clouds and the branches have sprinkles of snow on them. Next smaller is a dark blue night with silver stars. Next smaller is a colourful sunrise. Next smaller (about an inch and half high) is an all grey cloudy thing and the tiniest I painted black with a white branch design. The branches on all the others are black/brown. Come to think of it, I could just take a picture...but am still not on good terms with my digital camera...We'll see. Haha.

It has snowed like a bastard again this year--that's three years in a row now. I've heard global warming should actually be called global weirding, because it doesn't define mere 'warming' but more acurately causes anomolies all around. I concur. Messed up my already messed up back moving piles of snow around. Good times. Good times.

Well, I guess I've kicked up enough dust for now...ciao