We found this fellow in Pyrgos on the Greek island of Tinos. It was giving us the look. “Why are you interrupting my nap time?” Cats, as everyone knows, enjoy their naps— 12-16 hours a day, or even up to 20.
Unlike Ancient Egypt, where people had a cat god and mummified their pets, domestic cats weren’t around in Ancient Greece. Now it’s different. We found them everywhere we travelled this past month: Athens, the island of Tinos, Nafplio, Olympia, and Delphi. We even had temps, cats that volunteered to be our pets, to hang around and meow at us— assuming that we kept the food coming.
This skinny female didn’t mind us waking her up. She had adopted us at our Vrbo on Tinos and persuaded me to feed her while we were there for a few days. Our appearance meant the it was time to jump down and start rubbing against my leg.
From research on past posts I’ve done that included cats, I learned that the leg rubbing business is the way a cat marks you with its scent to claim ownership. Other cats need not apply. I also learned about the kneading business where the cat sinks its claws into your leg or stomach while purring. That apparently comes from when they were kittens and kneaded their mother’s teats to encourage milk flow. Even grouchy old toms seem to take comfort from this activity.
There was no leg rubbing from the cat in Pyros however. The message was “Go bother another cat. Preferably a big one.”Uh, I think we’ll let that kitty sleep. (Photo from our Southern Africa safari.)Actually, lions once roamed throughout Greece and the surrounding area with the last being recorded in Macedonia in the first century CE. I think every Greek ruin we visited had at least one sculpture of the large, scary animals. A few were chomping down on something… or someone.Ouch. Scary didn’t involve chomping in most of the sculptures, however. Looks were enough.This lion was having a hard time keeping it together. No wonder it was angry. “Where did my body go?”I introduced this kitten in my last post. She was fascinated with a bird up in the tree. We were down on the Peloponnesian Peninsula at Mycenae, which includes one the world’s most famous lion carvings. Her brother appeared to be off on an adventure. I imagined it saying, “Can I see the Lion Gate again, Mom? Please, please, please.”“If you are a good kitty,” Mom admonished.Kitty wasn’t alone in his desire to see the Lion Gate. I also promised to be good. Mycenae had been the center of Greek civilization between 1600 and 1100 BCE. I had been waiting to see it ever since I took World History in High School. While that wasn’t 3000 years ago, it was awhile. The Gate features two lionesses flanking a central pillar.A close up. The lionesses are missing their heads. It is thought that they may have been made out of metal and been facing outward to warn any potential invaders.This lioness that Peggy and I took photos of in Southern Africa would have served as a great model for the missing heads. Invaders wouldn’t have to had known that the lion was simply yawning.This lioness would have worked.Shortly after leaving Mycenae, we came to the town of Nafplio where we stayed for a week. The lion sculptures there had wings! We had seen them before. In Venice. Their presence in Nafplio was due to the fact that Venice had once occupied the city. The winged lion is the symbol for Saint Mark the Evangelist, who was the patron saint of Venice. A close up.Another example of a Venetian winged lion in Nafplio. In case you are wondering about the round things around the lions’ heads, they represent halos, a required accouterment of saints. (“Don’t forget to put on your halo, honey.”)The halo is solid here. Judging from the looks on the lion’s face, he was not having a good day. Is pissed a good word here? Sort of how one might look if you had spent your day being dragged through the streets of Alexandria, which is how St. Mark met his maker and gained his wings. But, now, back to kitties.We found this cat ensconced on its chunk of wood in Ancient Pisa, a small community about two miles away from Olympia, Greece where the Olympics were founded. To us it symbolized the fact that cats can sleep almost anywhere. Chairs are quite common in Europe but we have also found cats on the backs of motorcycles, tombstones, all sorts of stone ruins and even on the ground, if nothing else is available.The ground seemed okay to this cat outside our Vrbo in Delphi, Greece…The challenge was getting comfortable…Here’s a hint if you are looking for a little kitty companionship in Greece. Sit down at any of the innumerable outdoor tables you find throughout the country. The odds are a cat will be by to visit in minutes, if not immediately. It’s how they make their living and seems to be universally acceptable to restaurant owners. A bite of whatever you are eating, followed up by another and another will guarantee you have a companion for the whole meal. Unless someone makes a better offer. This pretty little calico had just issued an inquiring meow. It was joined by two other cats while we all had lunch.Including this handsome fellow.I’ll conclude today with one final lion sculpture. My question is does having a bad hair day make you look scary? Or does it just make you look silly?That’s embarrassing. (Photo from Peggy’s and my trip through southern Africa.)
Peggy and I have been back in Virginia for a few days, but tomorrow we head out again, this time for the Scottish Highlands and Northern Ireland. Once again, I be choosing tales from UT-OH to fill in while we are traveling.
First up: I’m going to start with bear tales from the years I lived in Alaska. This is large grizzly that was self-entertaining with the bone of a moose that it kept throwing up into the air. “Come a little closer, you will get a much better look.” Yeah, right.
Peggy and I are continuing our journey through Greece, the Scottish Highlands and Northern Ireland. Today’s tale from my WordPress blog-a-book, UT-OH!, is about the time my friend Bob Bray, got lost in a snowstorm…
There is beauty in freshly fallen snow, but there can also be danger. Avalanches, hypothermia, and getting lost are three frightening possibilities. (Photo by Peggy Mekemson.)
Over the years I’ve had a number of challenging experiences in the snow. They have ranged from being buried under three feet fresh snow in an emergency snow shelter to camping out in 30° F below zero weather in the Alaska wilderness. I know what it is like to be on the edge of hypothermia and to cross country ski through avalanche country.
Only once, however, have I been involved in a search and rescue effort during a snowstorm.
I was out hunting with my friends Bob Bray, Hunt Warner, and Phil Dunlop in the early 70s. As usual, I regarded hunting as an excuse to be out in the woods with friends, not a reason to shoot a deer.
Deer season had come down to its last weekend. Pushing the season to its limit meant risking bad weather. We were hunting north of Highway 50 in El Dorado National Forest one Saturday afternoon in late October when the snowflakes started drifting lazily out of the sky.
It wasn’t much to worry about. We zipped up our coats and continued hunting. If anything, the gently falling snow added an enjoyable element to the trip. But it kept snowing and the flakes became more serious. After a couple of hours there were six inches of the white stuff on the ground and my tracks were beginning to disappear. I decided it was time to make a judicious retreat to the T-bone steaks that were waiting for us back at the jeep. I soon ran into Hunt who was walking with Phil.
“Have you seen Bob?” I asked. He and I had parted an hour earlier at the edge of a large thicket of brush where Bob had been convinced he would jump an evasive buck.
“I haven’t seen him since it started to snow,” was Hunt’s reply. Phil hadn’t see him since lunch. Normally we wouldn’t have been overly concerned. We were used to traipsing around through the woods on our own. But evening was coming, the temperature was dropping, and the snow was continuing to accumulate.
“Maybe Bob has more sense than we do and has already returned to the jeep,” Phil suggested. That seemed logical so we made the short 15-minute walk back to it. No Bob.
“This is getting worrisome guys,” I said in a definitely worried tone. It wasn’t like Bob to be late for dinner. “Let’s go back to where I saw him last and see if we can find his tracks.” The advantage of snow is that it leaves a trail even a city slicker can follow, assuming that it hasn’t already covered the tracks. Even then, there are usually dimples in the snow.
This cougar track from our backyard when we were living in Oregon shows how clear tracks can be in fresh snow.
Unfortunately, no tracks or convincing trail-like dimples were to be found. I did spot the tracks of a very large deer, but they disappeared at the edge of the thicket.
“It looks like the buck stops here,” I said to Phil and elicited a weak groan. I suggested we split up and look around.
“We need to meet back here in 30 minutes,” I urged. “Don’t go far, and pay attention to where you are going. It is getting close to dark and the last thing we need is a second person missing. If you come across Bob’s tracks, fire your rifle and we will join you.” My degree of concern was reflected in my bossiness. Normally we were a very democratic, almost anarchical group.
Ten minutes later I had made my way to the other side of the thicket and found nothing. Neither had I heard any rifle shots announcing that either Hunt nor Phil had success. Discouraged, I turned around to rejoin my fellow searchers. It was then I spotted tracks leading out of the thicket. Up went my Winchester and I fired off a shot.
“Bang!” the sound of another rifle being fired resounded from the direction Bob’s track had headed. I quickly levered in another bullet and fired again. There was no response. I did hear Phil and Hunt making their way through the brush toward me, though. They sounded like a pair of large bears. We held another council. Once again, we decided to split up.
Phil would return to the road where the jeep was parked and flag down a car. His job was to get a message through to the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department that Bob was missing. Hunt would cut back through the thicket and wait on the jeep trail where the thicket began in case Bob made his way back there. He’d fire his rifle if Bob appeared. I was going to follow Bob’s tracks until dark to see if I couldn’t catch up with him. There were only about 30 minutes of daylight left so the odds were slim. My concern was that Bob had somehow injured himself and was stranded, or that he had become disoriented and become lost.
Following the tracks was a challenge. They would be clear for a few yards and then disappear under the snow. It was continuing to fall and beginning to drift, whipped on by a strong breeze. Each time I lost the tracks, I would work forward in a zigzag pattern until I found them again. It didn’t help that Bob was tending to wander or that I was tired from a full day of tramping over mountains. Dusk was rapidly approaching when I came across another set of tracks that crossed the trail I was following. They were fresher, and they were Bob’s! I yelled but the only response was the silence of the snow filled woods. It seemed to me that Bob was beginning to follow the classic lost person syndrome of wandering in circles.
I wanted to go on, needed to go on, but knew that the decision would be the wrong one. Dark had arrived to reduce an already limited visibility. I was tired, close to exhaustion, and cold. Hypothermia was a real threat. Ever so reluctantly I turned around and begin to make my way back toward Hunt, leaving Bob behind to face whatever fate the dark and snow and cold had in store for him.
The realization of how tired I was really hit me when I came to a downed tree and couldn’t persuade my leg to step over. We had quite the discussion. I reached down, grabbed my pants cuff and gave the reluctant appendage a boost. Hunt was waiting where we agreed and I filled him in on my findings as we made way back to the jeep through the ever-deepening snow.
Phil had had more luck. The vehicle he flagged down had a CB Radio and the driver was able to contact the Sheriff’s office. A team with snowmobiles would be at our jeep at first light, prepared for a full search and rescue operation. Bob, who was manager of Placerville’s newspaper, The Mountain Democrat, was well-known and liked in the community. We knew we would have lots of support in our search.
There wasn’t anything else we could do. We were too tired to set up the tent so we climbed in the jeep, grabbed a bite to eat, downed a Bud, and prepared for a long night. Hunt got the front seat—it was his jeep. Phil and I shared the back. It was beyond uncomfortable and even exhaustion couldn’t drive me to sleep. Somewhere around two I finally managed to doze off only to be awakened at 5:30 by Hunt’s cussing about how damn cold it was. And it was. Our sleeping bags hadn’t kept us warm and the doors had frozen shut. We had to kick them open.
We soon had our Coleman lantern blasting out light and our Coleman stove cooking up a mass of bacon, eggs and potatoes. We were expecting a long day and knew we would need whatever energy the food could supply. The storm had passed, leaving an absolutely clear sky filled with a million twinkling stars.
The Sheriff’s team arrived just as the sun was climbing above the Crystal Range of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, exactly on time. Introductions were made and snowmobiles unloaded. We filled the team in on our efforts of the previous day. The deputy sheriff in charge asked me to climb onto the back of his snowmobile and take them to the point where I had left Bob’s tracks the night before. It was to be my first ever snowmobile ride. Except it wasn’t.
Just as the search team was firing up their engines, a wraithlike figure wearing a plastic poncho came slowly hiking up the hill toward the jeep. He looked like a bad guy out of an early Clint Eastwood western. It was Bob. As soon as the sun provided a hint of dawn, he had managed to orient himself and start walking back toward the jeep. Yes, he was freezing, but he was alive. We knew just how alive he was when he demanded his share of breakfast. As we cooked up another mass of bacon and eggs (fortunately we hadn’t eaten everything), Bob told us his story.
He had become disoriented after coming out of the thicket and headed off in the direction he thought would take him back to the jeep. It didn’t. He fired his rifle several times to get our attention but the sound of shots is fairly common in the forest during hunting season. We just assumed a deer hunter had gotten lucky. Bob continued wandering and eventually came across his own tracks. That was when he seriously began to worry.
Knowing he was lost and knowing night was coming on, he gathered wood for a fire. The wood was wet and refused to start burning. Bob’s lighter ran out of fuel but he still had a few matches. He took his lighter apart, placing the innards under the wet wood and used his last matches to light it. The good news was that the fire started. The bad news was that the wind and snow put it out almost immediately. It was some time during this process that I had fired my rifle and Bob had used his last shot to respond. Out of options, he had dug out a packrat’s nest to provide shelter and prepared for the longest night in his life. He had survived in lodging that made Hunt’s ancient jeep seem like a five-star hotel.
“I even fell asleep once or twice,” Bob managed to get out around a mouthful of eggs.
Of course, the Mountain Democrat ran a major story on Bob and he had to take considerable ribbing in Placerville over the next several months. It was a small price to pay considering the alternatives. That Christmas, Bob received several compasses for gifts. It was years before he had tolerance for any temperature below 70.
I took this photo out my front door of our home in Oregon. And then went back inside…
Next Post: You will get to meet both ancient and modern cats of Greece. They were everywhere.
A bird had caught this kitten’s attention. It was laughing at it.
Peggy and I are presently traveling through Greece, Scotland and Northern Ireland. While we travel, I am posting stories that will be in my WordPress blog-a-book: UT-OH! Today’s tale is about a 1965 confrontation with a terrorist group on a remote road in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California.Few things get much more Ut-Oh-ish.
The Symbionese Liberation Army released this photo with its star recruit.
“Death to the fascist insect that preys on the life of the people.” —Motto of the Symbionese Liberation Army
In the spring of 1975, two friends and I went on a scouting trip. We had driven up into the Sierra Nevada Mountains early in the spring to look for likely fishing holes. Trout season was only a few weeks away. The mountains were still coated with snow. Following Highway 50 up from Sacramento toward Lake Tahoe for 60 plus miles, we took Ice House Road into the ElDorado National Forest. We carefully made our way along the ever-narrowing road until a snow bank suggested that further progress was best left up to animals with big furry feet. We stopped and got out to stretch our legs.
We had wandered a few feet when a white van came roaring up from behind and tried to slip by the right side of our car without slowing down. Normally it wouldn’t have been more than an irritation, but the narrowness of the road combined with the snow left just enough room for one and one half cars. Not two. We watched in slow motion disbelief as the van barely missed our vehicle, slid into the snow, and became seriously stuck.
“Yes!” we said in unison, “There is justice in this world!” Right about then the side door of the van opened and disgorged a polyglot group of rough-looking characters. “Whoa,” I mumbled more quietly, “we had better keep our opinions to ourselves.” While two or three of the men bent down to look under the van, a not so rough, in fact an attractive young woman, disentangled herself from the group and came strolling over to where we were standing.
“I am in love,” Hunt mumbled. Phil and I joined the admiration society while an elusive thought began tugging at the back of my mind.
“Hi, guys,” she smiled at us, becoming even lovelier. “Do you have any guns in your car?”
My tiny elusive thought suddenly became a very large insistent nag. Attractive young women don’t normally start conversations by asking whether you are carrying weapons. Hunt, on the other hand, was beaming. He liked guns and— even more— he liked women that liked guns.
“I have a twenty-two along,” he announced proudly.
“Oh,” she replied, apparently a little disappointed at the size of Hunt’s gun. “My friends taught me how to shoot automatic weapons in the Bay Area. We are up here to practice.” It was stated with the same type of pride a new mother might talk about her child’s first steps or words. My large, insistent nag turned into a five-stage fire alert.
Meanwhile Hunt had suggested that he and his new friend take the twenty-two out for a little target practice since it was obvious that the van wasn’t going anywhere quickly. I don’t remember how I managed it, but I pulled my friends aside sans beauty for a very quick and quiet conversation.
“I am not one hundred percent sure,” I began, “but I think the young woman who likes big guns is Patty Hearst, aka Tania, and that her friends over at the van are members of the SLA. If I am right, we are in a very dangerous situation.”
The SLA, or Symbionese Liberation Army, was one of the more bizarre and misled of the radical groups to be born out of the ferment of the late 60s and early 70s. Viewing itself as an urban guerrilla movement, SLA’s first action of note had been to gun down Dr. Marcus Foster, the black Superintendent of Oakland Schools, and seriously wound his deputy, Robert Blackburn. Blackburn had earlier served as Peace Corps Director of Somalia and then gone on to work for the Philadelphia School System. He had recruited my first wife, Jo Ann, and me as teachers in Philadelphia when we left the Peace Corps. It would have been hard to find two people more committed to helping disadvantaged inner city kids in America than Foster and Blackburn.
SLA’s next major public statement was to kidnap Patty Hearst, heiress to the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearse, while she was a student at UC Berkeley. At some point, Patty switched from being an unwilling kidnap victim to willing participant in SLA and adopted the name of Tania (the name of Che Guevara’s girlfriend). The common assumptions were that Hearst was brainwashed or a victim of the Stockholm syndrome, a psychological response through which a kidnap victim comes to associate with his or her captors. Certainly, the young woman we talked with, was proud of her skill with automatic weapons and had the freedom to come over and chat with us. She was not an unwilling prisoner.
In 1974 Patty participated in a San Francisco bank robbery and then moved to Los Angeles with the SLA where several members of the group met their death in a fiery confrontation with LA police. Some 400 LAPD officers had surrounded a house occupied by SLA and emptied over 5,000 rounds into the structure. (Over kill?) Patty, who wasn’t there, watched the whole confrontation on television. She, along with William and Emily Harris, then fled to Pennsylvania for several months before making their way to Sacramento and another bank robbery.
There was enough similarity with Hearst and the SLA that I suggested we go over to the van and help the nice folks get unstuck— which we did. They drove up to the end of the road, turned around, carefully edged by our car and headed off down the mountain. We waved and smiled vigorously as they disappeared.
Was it Patty Hearst and the SLA? The timing was right, the young woman looked like Patty, and the group could have fit a description of the SLA. Patty reported later that the group had taken their van into the mountains for weapons practice. In May of 1975, the SLA robbed a bank in Sacramento (Carmichael) and a young mother, Myrna Opsahl, was shot and killed. Patty Hearst drove the get-a-way vehicle. It was one more sad and sordid event in the history of the SLA. In most ways this group of want-to-be revolutionaries was a group of losers. Their murder of Marcus Foster was regarded with disgust by most members of the radical community. It was their kidnapping of Patty Hearst and, even more so, the fiery shootout in LA that gave their organization legendary status.
As for Hearst, I have no doubt that the Stockholm syndrome played a role in her behavior. But I am also convinced there was more. The atmosphere of the time encouraged radical thinking and Patty, who was something of a rebel, was living in a cauldron of dissent at Berkeley. I suspect it wasn’t all that hard to slip into a role of radical chic.
Patty’s crime spree came to an end in the fall of 1965 when the FBI tracked her down in South San Francisco. Here she is shown with agents and in hand cuffs. (AP photo)
Wednesday’s Post: My friend Bob Bray gets lost in a snowstorm when we are out hunting. Night falls before we can find him…
Peggy and I are off journeying through Greece, Scotland and Ireland over the next several weeks, so there won’t be much time for blogging. I’ve decided to republish some of my favorite posts from the past 15 years that will eventually make it into the book I am blogging: UT-OH!.
Today’s post follows my adventure with the beaver in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming. I drove south down into NewMexico for a backpacking trip into the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico next to the Cliff Dwellings National Monument in southern New Mexico.
Peggy photographed this herd of elk near the Redwoods.
I thought I was prepared for everything when I started my backpack trip into the Gila Wilderness. Little did I know…
My pack was loaded with a week’s worth of food and six topographic maps, more than enough to let me wander wherever I wanted and hopefully avoid getting lost. I had started off up the West Fork of the Gila River in the Cliff Dwellings National Monument, but soon came across a trail jogging out of the canyon to the right.
Looks good to me, I thought to myself and started climbing. I was determined that wherever I went for the week would be based on random decisions. So much of my wilderness experience had involved leading groups or scouting out potential routes for organized trips that the sense of abandon felt delicious.
Consequently, years later, it isn’t exactly clear to me where I went. I was more than happy to hike 4 to 5 miles in one direction and then 6 or 7 in another. The only thing I tried to avoid was backtracking. I do remember wandering through Woodland Park and Lilly Park as well as climbing in and out of several canyons.
Southern New Mexico is UFO Country, so I had brought along two science fiction books for evening and early morning entertainment. I was also carrying my usual field ID book and one serious read, Aldo Leopold’s “Sand Country Almanac.” Leopold had been responsible for the creation of the Gila Wilderness in 1924, making it the first specifically designated wilderness area in the United States, and, I might add, the world. People who love wild country and understand its intrinsic value owe a great debt to the man for his vision. I had read the book before but reading it again in the Gila Wilderness added a special significance. I declared a layover day so I could savor it all at once. I was camped on a small stream located in a minor canyon and hadn’t seen a soul for four days. It was the perfect setting for getting lost in a book.
At some time in the early afternoon, a loud “Woooeee” shattered the silence.
Big Bird, I thought to myself. Big Bird on steroids. Aldo Leopold would have been up in a flash to discover the source. Of course, he would have had his rifle with him. He was quite the hunter. As usual, my only weapon was a three-inch pocketknife. Still, the mountain man in me demanded I get off my lazy tail and go exploring. I grabbed my binoculars and climbed out of the canyon. I was greeted by a broad, flat expanse of Ponderosa Pines but no Big Bird. “Woooeee,” I heard receding into the distance. I put on my stalking cap and begin to sneak through the forest.
“Woooeee!” Big Bird shouted behind me. I whirled around only to catch a glimpse of something disappearing behind a bush. Big Bird it wasn’t. Nor was it the ghost of Geronimo, whose territory I was wandering through. It looked suspiciously like a cow elk that had morphed from stalkee to stalker. I wasn’t sure that I liked my new role but decided to play along.
“Woooeee,” I called out and jumped behind a Ponderosa.
“Woooeee,” I heard a delayed three minutes later. I stepped into the open to discover that my female companion had come out from behind her bush and was staring intently at my tree.
“Woooeee,” I shouted at her as she once again disappeared. We had a game. A cow elk was wooing me.
Years earlier I had discovered that much of the higher animal kingdom is quite curious about humans that don’t act like humans. I once had a similar experience to my elk chat with a coyote on the American River Parkway in Sacramento. First I would hide and then he would hide. Finally, out of frustration, the coyote plopped down in the middle of the trail, raised its head, and began howling. I plopped down in the trail as well, raised my head and joined him. We had quite the discussion.
The elk and I continued our game for about 15 minutes when I changed the rules. I sat down in plain sight with my back against the tree. Instead of hiding, she stood watching me for several minutes. I could tell the wheels were grinding away in her mind.
Suddenly she charged. I didn’t move from my seat but my adrenalin cranked up several notches. She was all of 10 feet away when she slammed on her brakes, lowered her head, stared me in the eye, and woooeeed again. Half fascinated and half frightened, I didn’t budge. Several hundred pounds of frustrated female were looming over me. I had zero doubt that she could kick the stuffing out of me. She held my gaze, snorted in disgust, shook her head, and trotted off.
While smaller than the bull elk, there is nothing puny about the females. (Photo by Peggy Mekemson.)
Whatever conversation we had been having was over. I breathed a sigh of relief and returned to camp. My first chore was to get out my guidebook. Female elk, it noted, can become rather aggressive and dangerous in the spring when they have calves. I’d been both ignorant and lucky.
After dinner, I went for my evening walk following an animal path that ambled along beside the creek. I heard a snort and looked up. Five elk were standing on the canyon rim staring down at me. The old girl had recruited some buddies to check out the weird human. Unfortunately, this time I knew enough to be worried. I was an intruder in their territory, a possible threat to their precious babies.
My worry level turned to panic when all five came charging down the canyon wall. One moose had been scary; now I had the whole damn thundering herd! Running was out of the question. Think, Curtis, went dashing through my brain. The only thing I could dredge up was something I had fantasized I might do if charged by a grizzly bear in the wilds of Alaska. I started jumping up and down, scratching my armpits, pounding on my chest, and screaming ooh, ooh, ooh! It worked for great apes, why not me.
For the second time that day, I heard the screeching of elk brakes. This time there was no standing and staring, however. The herd turned as one and charged back over the canyon rim, disappearing into the night. Somewhat satisfied with myself, I returned to camp and the security of my tent.
I wandered around for another two days, keeping an eye out for UFO’s, steering clear of cow elk, and visiting sites where this or that pioneer had been killed by Apaches. The pioneers also did a pretty good job of killing off each other, not to mention the Indians. With my food running low, I finally ceased my wandering ways and hiked back to the National Monument.
NEXT BLOG: I finish my series on three of the backpack trips after my return from Alaska by going back to my first one: Backpacking into the Grand Canyon. After barely surviving my trip into the canyon, an unknown creature visits me in the night and dines on the edge of my sleeping bag.
Peggy and I are now at the site of Ancient Olympia on the Peloponnesian Peninsula where the Olympics were born in 776 BCE.. The large column is part of the Temple of Zeus completed in 456 BCE. The column was rebuilt for the Summer Olympics hosted by Greece in 2004.Peggy uses her walking stick to demonstrate how javelins were thrown at the Ancient Olympics in Greece. Women, however, were not allowed into the games. An exception was made if you were the daughter of the gods. I had my suspicions…
Bone has been in many tough situations in his life; he can handle tough questions. Here he rests on top of a saguaro cactus in Arizona looking for ICE agents. His lack of official papers, or even a birth certificate, can cause problems at times. –Curt
Q:Do you really talk? We’re speaking ethics here, Bone. Blogging is about transparency. That means honesty.
A. Are you crazy? Have you ever heard a bone talk? Of course I don’t talk. I just think out loud.
Q:Curt sometimes refers to you as he. Does this mean you are a male bone?
A. No. He makes assumptions, lots of them. He was showing me to a biologist at a writers’ conference in San Francisco and she suggested I have my DNA tested. “Just cut a small chip off of it,” she said nonchalantly. “You can determine its sex and breed.”
“Just cut a small chip off of it!” Outrageous! I am not some it to have chips cut out of. Besides, I lead a rich fantasy life and have no desire to know whether I am male or female. Call me she, he, or Bone, but never it.
Um, I think Bone is definitely a male. –Curt
Q: You have traveled all over the world and met thousands of people. How do they usually react to you?
A. With befuddlement. You should have seen the look on the face of the customs agent in New Zealand who tried to seize me as ‘animal matter.’ But emotions run the gamut. There was a Japanese man who got off a tour bus at Yellowstone National Park and wanted to hold me for good luck. Soon there were 40 other Japanese handing me around, oohing, and taking photos. I was thrilled. On the opposite side, I know a woman who refuses to touch me, like I have cooties. “I don’t know where Bone has been,” she states primly. Not surprisingly, there is also jealousy. “I want to be you and travel the world,” a good friend in Sacramento told me.
Some people act like I have cooties. This woman almost dropped me and then washed her hands! –Bone
Peggy and Curt’s niece, Christina, on the other hand, show the proper way to treat me. —Bone
Q: What is your favorite thing to do?
A. Visit graveyards; there are lots of old bones there. My favorite grave is Smokey Bear’s in Capitan, New Mexico. I once stood on his tombstone for ten minutes trying to communicate but all I could get was something about ‘growling and a prowling and a sniffing the air.’ A close second is the grave of Calamity Jane in Deadwood, South Dakota. What a woman! These are difficult choices, though, when you toss in the likes of Hemingway, Daniel Boone and Billy the Kid. On the light side I once visited Ben and Jerry’s graveyard of discarded ice cream flavors in Vermont. My spookiest experience was a visit to the Capela dos Ossos, the Chapel of Bones, in Evora, Portugal, where an estimated 5,000 corpses were dug up to decorate the walls of the chapel. Those folks definitely have a skeleton in their closet, lots of them. The skulls kept whispering, “Join us, Bone.”I ran.
Bone has a special fondness for unusual graves. Here he hangs out with Billy the Kid in New Mexico. Has he been in a gunfight? Are those bloodstains on his vest? -CurtThe camera broke when Curt tried to take a photo in the Chapel of Bones but here is my all time favorite sculpture at Burning Man, the Bone Tree. -BoneBTW, I married the lovely Bonetta at Burning Man in 2013. -Bone
Q: So, what’s your second most favorite?
A. Too hard; I am a dilettante dabbler, but here are a few.
Wandering, of course, anywhere and everywhere and by all modes: bikes, kayaks, rafts, skis, backpacks, sailboats, planes, helicopters, trains, cars, RVs, etc. I’ve been to all 50 states in the US and to over 50 countries worldwide.
Visiting wild, remote and beautiful natural areas. I started life wandering the Sierra Nevada Mountains, John Muir’s Range of Light.I’ve been to the majority of National Parks.
Seeking out the strange such as ghosts and aliens (I’ve been to Roswell four times and Area 51 once).
Attending unique events like Burning Man.
Meeting weird people.
Bone backpacking on the John Muir Trail. -Curt
Bone, Curt and Tom Lovering at 10th and R Street Fox and Goose Restaurant in Sacramento. Tom owned the Alpine West backpacking and wilderness specialty store at this location when he and Curt discovered Bone in 1977. (Photo by Peggy Mekemson.)
Q:Tom Lovering and Curt ‘discovered’ you in 1977 when backpacking south of Lake Tahoe. You have wandered extensively with both. Which do you like best?
A. Eeyore, the jackass who can’t keep track of his tail. We’re traveling companions and he saved me from being strung up and buried on Boothill in Tombstone, Arizona. I’d robbed a bank, cheated at cards and hung out with women of questionable character. (This is what I mean by having a rich fantasy life. It’s also known as evasion.)
I was in deep trouble in Tombstone. Wyatt Earp had arrested me for robbing a bank and Doc Holiday was checking me for weapons. -Bone
My life as Bone was in serious jeopardy. -Bone
Odds were I was going to end up on Boothill, along with Billy Clanton. -Bone
But then, the ever brave Eeyore came to my rescue! I hopped on his back and we went riding off into the sunset while leaping over large rocks.
Q:Which of your journeys has been most memorable?
A. I would have to say traveling the length of Africa in the back of a truck from the Sahara Desert in the north to Cape Town in the south with Tom. Almost falling off the back of a riverboat into a piranha infested section of the Amazon River would have to be a close second. I was perched on the back railing doing a photo shoot with Peggy. And then, of course, there was the 10,000-mile bike trip with Curt in 1989 and hiking 750 miles down the Pacific Crest Trail with him to celebrate his 75th Birthday in 2018.
Bone on photo shoot barely escapes falling off the edge into the piranha infested waters of the Amazon. “I was falling off when Curt leapt across the boat and grabbed me.”
I was much smarter when I rafted down the Colorado. I wore a life jacket! -Bone
That didn’t protect me from pirates. The dreaded pirate Steve held a knife to my throat and demanded to know where I buried my treasure. -Bone
Q:You are often seen scrambling over rocks in remote sections of the Southwestern United States. What’s that all about?
A. I’ve developed a fondness for Native American rock art. It resonates with my bone-like nature. It’s also another excuse to go wandering around in the outdoors. Plus, some of those places might be haunted and it is a great place to look for UFOs. A number of petroglyphs look amazingly like aliens. Finally, wandering in the desert is known to be good for the soul. Ask the Prophets of yore.
How can this guy and his strange dog not be aliens? -Curt
Q:Ah, being a born-again bone, do you have any insights into the great unknown?
A. Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Q:Finally, and this may be a little sensitive, but do you always run around naked?
A. What kind of a question is that? Do you think I am uncivilized? For shame. I am the epitome of haute couture! A bow and arrow toting, card-carrying NRA member in Montana has designed and made me two leather vests. What’s more, a 90 plus year old woman in Kansas going on 20 with a crush on Johnny Depp and a room devoted to the Egyptian gods, has made me a kilt and several other outfits. Face it; I am hot stuff, clothed or naked. I may take up a modeling career.
My Bahamian/Canadian friend makes me a new vest in the wilds of Montana. –Bone
Bone, wearing his newly made kilt, fights off a ferocious sea monster in a scene straight out of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’ –Curt
Next post I’ll do a wrap on the many places Bone has been in his 49 years of wandering the world.
Bone, feeling a little low, in Death Valley National Park. It is one of the numerous stops he made with Curt on his 10,000 mile bicycle ride through the US and Canada.Peggy and I are presently in the Greek city of Nafplio on the Peloponnesian Pininsula. On our way down from Athens yesterday, we stopped at several Ancient Greek sites, one of which was Mycenae (where Helen of Troy originally came from). I was going to show you the gate to the city until Peggy pointed out this kitten on the trail up to it.
Catarata Los Murcielagos is a steep but easily reachable waterfall found in the heart of Monteverde, Costa Rica. It took about 20 minutes for Peggy and me to hike to it. Catarata translates to cataract and Murcielagos to bats. So we have a cascading waterfall with bats. We didn’t see any bats but the person-wide, shaky bridge and the gaping mouth of the ficus tree roots made up for it. Bright sun overwhelmed the bridge and made the ficus tree root tunnel look pitch black. The tunnel jogged to the left and deposited us close to the base of the waterfall where we enjoyed the water and took more photos.This is another bridge over the small creek that we crossed before reaching the waterfalls. I’m not sure whether the green, plastic walls were to protect people from falling off or to provide a sense of security! Probably a bit of both. The wall was flimsy enough that I wouldn’t have wanted to fall into it.Peggy provides a good perspective on how flimsy the narrow the bridge was. Between the bridges and the Ficus tree, it felt like we had ended up in an Indiana Jones or Lara Croft movie. Peggy is maneuvering a bit more carefully than Indiana or Lara would have, however. (I did too.)The top of the waterfall.And bottom. Peggy had been to the waterfall before with our son Tony, his wife Cammie and their three boys. The waterfalls provides a small but enjoyable swim. She had waded out to the waist-high middle.Top, bottom, in-between and pool. The whole shebang!
While I was wandering around taking bird photos and exploring jungle trails near our VRBO in Monteverde, Peggy went out on another waterfall hike with our son and his family. Know as El Tigre Waterfalls, it was an up and down 5-mile self-guided walk through a cloud forest that included more rustic bridges and four waterfalls. I urged Peggy to take good photos. And she did! Following are the results.
Tony, Cammie and one of the four waterfalls.A narrower but still gorgeous waterfall.A close up catching the right side of the waterfall.Peggy with our grandson Chris.Trees provided an interesting screen for the waterfall from another perspective. A smaller waterfall can be seen in the background.This was a first. A zipline for bicycles. Our grandson Connor is making his way across, looking quite serious.“Look, Mom, no hands.” Our grandson Cooper at the beginning of the zipline.When I think of a waterfall cascading down a mountain, this is what I picture.Photo of Tony with some really big leaves!I’ll conclude with this photo. I think of Cammie saying, “Another photo, really?” It was a steep uphill. Peggy may have been taking photos as an excuse to stop. Either that or to fulfill her responsibility as a mother/grandmother— not to mention my request to bring back lots of photos!
Peggy and I are off journeying through Greece, Scotland and Ireland over the next several weeks, so there won’t be much time for blogging. Initially, I decided to put the blog on hold, but I’ve decided to republish some of my favorite posts that may eventually make it into UT-OH!.
On Wednesday my dog Socrates and I head off into the wilderness on a guy’s trip. It’s the 70s, so I am carrying a book by Carlos Castaneda and meditating while Socrates digs holes and downs Milk Bones. Strange things happen.
Since the popular tourist town of La Fortuna was only 30 miles away from Nuevo Arenal where we were staying, we decided to drive over and check it out. La Fortuna had avoided being destroyed by the violent eruption of Mt. Arenal in 1968 and used the continuing volcanic action over the following 40 years to draw tourists from around the world. While the volcano ceased its activity in 2010, its smoking top still provides a popular attraction for visitors.
Mt. Arenal looms above the Costa Rica town of La Fortuna, a mere 6 miles away. It was cloudy when we visited so we couldn’t see the smoke that that escapes from the top. The red sign on the right proclaims Vulcan Arenal and points toward the mountain. A fan palm reaches out from the right. We were on the Big Island of Hawaii last year when Kīlauea was erupting, so we understand the attraction of a live volcano— as long as it is behaving itself.This photo from Wikimedia Commons of Mt. Arenal during its active but non-destructive phase shows why millions of tourists would have made their way to La Fortuna.Signs along the road advertised different ways tourists might want to enjoy the mountain. Options here included on the back of a horse, from a zip-line, or on your feet. The unreadable sign down on the right pushed using ATVs. For more laidback tourists, several hot springs— created by underground water’s close proximity to lava— demanded a visit. Numerous storefront operations along the streets of La Fortuna were eager to sign up visitors for these, and other tours. For example, one could repel down a waterfall, hike on hanging bridges, tour chocolate and coffee farms, or go on wildlife tours. The latter included seeing sloths.Good views of Mt. Arenal can be seen from anywhere in the town, including behind Iglesia de La Fortuna de San Carlos, the town’s Catholic Church.A small but attractive town park in front of the church featured Costa Rica’s flag…A large heart where visitors could have a photo taken. Peggy decided that I should be in one. And…Bunches of Cana lilies. These beauties, which can be found in flower gardens around the world, are actually native to Costa Rica.A block away, we found a mural featuring a jaguar and a woman. The thrush seems to be whispering something in the girl’s ear while its cousin, a robin, looks on.For lunch, we decided that eating in the lava lounge (on the right) was appropriate.A painting inside displayed an exploding Mt. Arenal. Peggy insisted on taking a photo, a challenge since the glass covering it reflected light coming in from the windows.
We thought the message was clear. An exploding volcano might be a mind boggling sight, but it isn’t something you would want in your backyard. The name of the town reminded me of the Roman Goddess, Fortuna. She was the goddess of fate, and could be rather fickle, bringing both good and bad luck. La Fortuna was on the good luck side. The nearby villages of Tabacón, Pueblo Nuevo, and San Luís were on the other. They had been completely destroyed by pyroclastic flows in 1968. The explosion had been so powerful that it had tossed up massive lava bombs weighing several tons. The giant boulders had been thrown a distance of a half mile traveling at speeds of 1300 miles per hour. If volcanos played baseball, I’d want Arenal on my team!When I went to use the men’s restroom in the restaurant, I found a kitty litter box right next to it, complete with a kitty taking care of business. How appropriate! Peggy and I laughed. We had to take a photo. The Lava Lounge is known for its rescue work with stray dogs and cats roaming the streets of La Fortuna.A sign on the wall declared “Love for all living creatures is the most notable human attribute,” a sentiment we agree with.After lunch, Peggy and I wandered around the small town checking out various shops. Peggy, whose love of chocolate is legendary, had to buy a dark chocolate bar. It came with this interesting wrapper. The label on top declared it as Nahua Costa Rican Chocolate. The Nahuas are an indigenous tribe of Mexico and Central America, ancestors of the Aztecs. They would have used chocolate extensively, consuming it as a bitter, frothy beverage known as xocolātl. Cocoa beans were also used for money. If you are familia with the movie Chocolat, Vianne would likely have been a descendant of the Nahua.On our way out of town we passed an artist’s studio with this statue. A carved sloth is climbing on the tree behind. A primitive monster posed above Earth. Was it going to gobble up the planet? And why did my mind jump to politics?Our trip to and from La Fortuna from Nuevo Arenal produced several interesting sights. This large truck demonstrated the width of the road. Passing wasn’t much of an option. When two large trucks met each other they slowed to a crawl, almost stopping to get by. Bridges along the road narrowed even further, with room for one vehicle at a time. While there were rules about who went first, using them felt like Russian Roulette to us, especially on a blind curve. We wondered why a number of cars had pulled off the road. We discovered that it was to watch a band of coatis foraging for food. They have long sharp claws for digging and a tough nose for ferreting out food.This guy had a dirty nose to prove it. We read that their diet ranged from insects to fruit. Tarantulas and scorpions were downed with the same enthusiasm they used for other items on the menu.Costa Rica is a ‘grow your own fence’ kind of place. Shove a stick into the ground, wait for it to root and grow limbs, connect the trees with barbed wire, and voila! you have a fence.The fences can be quite impressive once they grow out. And they don’t rot, which is a real problem in Costa Rica with standard wood posts. When Costa Ricans do choose to use fence posts, they are made out of cement.Restaurants ranging from a roof on poles to more elaborate establishments were found along the road. Each providing an adventure in eating. This Toucan Lane restaurant came with its own toucan out front There was a good chance it also came with a bird-feeding station that attracted toucans in the back. The sign in the background declared “That’s how fairy tales taste.” I’m not sure what the ‘taste’ referred to. Toucans?We passed over the Lake Arenal Dam coming and going.And were also treated to several views of the lake. That’s it for today. Next on UT-OH, I will take you to Sierra College where my conservative upbringing was put to test. President Harold Weaver and College Trustees review plans for the soon to be finished Sierra College in 1961. It was brand new when I arrived in that fall. While I would go on to UC Berkeley for my Junior and Senior years, many of my views of the world were developed in my time at Sierra. I’ll use Wednesday’s and Friday’s post to summarize the four most important.
A note on you never know who is going to read your blogs. I got an Email this week from Emily Bell, a producer for the Discovery Channel. The channel is doing a Revolutionary War feature on Brandywine, Fort Mifflin, and the Pennsylvania Navy as part of the Nation’s 250 Anniversary celebration. In doing her research she had read my post on Fort Mifflin and wanted to know if I would be available to participate. Here’s what she had to say:
The story of the Mekemson brothers is truly remarkable. We are focusing on the Battle of Brandywine, the siege of Fort Mifflin, and the heroic, often overlooked role of the Pennsylvania Navy. Because all four brothers fought together at Brandywine before splitting up, with Andrew and James heading to Fort Mifflin while Thomas and William joined the PA Navy, their journey offers a deeply heartfelt thread that ties these massive historical events together.
Unfortunately, I’ll be in Greece when the Discovery Channel is doing its filming at Fort Mifflin. I will be talking with Emily this week with more background information on the family before the war, however.
Lakeview Gardens, the VRBO we stayed at for our first two weeks in Nuevo Arenal, provided this view of Lake Arenal. The photo also provides a look at the jungle-like growth surrounding our villa.
The first place we stayed on our monthlong trip to Costa Rica was in the small town of Nuevo Arenal on the shore of Lake Arenal. It’s called Nuevo (new) because old Arenal, the town of Tronadora, and a huge cattle ranch are now buried deep under water.
In 1979, Costa Rica decided to create a major hydroelectricity project by damming the lake as part of its modernization efforts. Arrangements were made to move the inhabitants of Arenal and Tronadora to new communities. They had new homes, but their farms, ranches, and jobs were left behind. Hacienda la Rosita, the cattle ranch that covered much of the land now occupied by Lake Arenal, was expropriated by the Costa Rican Government, i.e. taken without compensation. I assume that the owner of the property, P. Eckrich & Sons, a subsidiary of the U.S. based Beatrice Foods, at least got a lot of steaks. Or maybe the cattle learned how to swim.
The new dam tripled the size of the lake to 33 square miles (85 square kilometers), making it the largest lake in Costa Rica. Its depth ranges between 98 feet in the dry season to 198 feet in the rainy season (30 and 60 meters). Initially, it was responsible for creating 50%-70% of the country’s electricity. Now it’s closer to 12%-17%, but still significant. 95-98 % of Costa Rica’s electricity comes from renewable sources, making it one of the top countries in the world for clean power. The US is around 24%.
Today, recreational activities ranging from fishing to windsurfing to kayaking and paddle boarding draw tourists from around the world, providing an important source of revenue for the local economy and country. The pages and pages of VRBOs, Air B&Bs, and tour companies listed on Google is an indication of this!
Lake Arenal is known for its windsurfing. A strong wind has this person flying across the lake!
The area is part of the Central America Volcanic Arc created by plate tectonics as portions of the ocean plate dive under Central America. There are several active volcanos in Costa Rica. Mt. Arenal, located a few miles away from the lake, erupted on July 29, 1968 with a major explosion that destroyed the town of Tabacón and killed 87 people. It can seen from Lake Arenal and is still smoking. Hot springs, geothermal power, and a tourist attraction are positive aspects of the volcanic action. Earthquakes and the possibility of Mt. Arenal erupting, again, are on the negative side of the ledger. I wondered how the dam would behave in a major earthquake. The mountain has been quiet since 2010.
A map of active volcanos in Northern Costa Rica from costarica.org. Arenal is the middle volcano. Lake Arenal is just to the north. This is a great example of the lava created when an oceanic plate scrapes off against a continental plate. The result is the volcanoes seen here.A view of Mt. Arenal. It was cloudy the day we drove to the town of Fortuna at its base, so we couldn’t see the smoke coming out of the top.
Next… photos of Lake Arenal that Peggy and I took.
It was cloudy on the day we went for a hike along the lake’s shore at a park on the edge of Nuevo Arenal. We thought the clouds added to the beauty of the lake.A peninsula jutted out into the lake.The sun breaking through provided an interesting contrast to the dark skies. The trail led us out onto the peninsula. An inlet leading back toward our VRBO was on the opposite side of the peninsula.Another perspective. The attractive inlet with its calm water had us wishing we had our kayaks along. The white caps and the wind out on the open lake: Not so much.Shooting toward the sun gave trees a shadowy look.Another peninsula and several small islands were visible looking down the lake. Tinajas Restaurant is located just over the hill on the right and provides a great view of the lake.This is the view out from the Tinajas Restaurant. We went there with our next door VRBO neighbors, Paul and Gabe, who were from Canada. Paul had managed a steel mill before his retirement. Gabe still ran an online school teaching Spanish speakers English. They were a delight. See the speck on the upper left. It wasn’t a bird. It was a spider building a web.Paul ordered a hamburger. It was humongous. I wondered if it had been donated by one of the ancestors of the cattle that once roamed through the valley below. Even more, I wondered how Paul could possible get it in his mouth. He demonstrated! And looked quite happy doing so. That’s it for today. Join us on Wednesday as I continue with my blog-a-book tales and…Win a large stuffed dog to impress a date at the California State Fair. By cheating. 😳 (Thanks AI for the photo.)
It’s the look. The odds are high that you recognize it. Parents give it to children, teachers to students, bosses to employees, wives to husbands. Etc. It’s behave or else, with a multitude of possibilities if you don’t. Peggy, as a retired elementary school principal, has a potent one. I don’t get it often, but when I do… The look is particularly imposing on the Montezuma Oropendola (Psarocolius montezuma). The slightly protruding eyes, set off by the white patches and pink wattles, are backed up by an imposing beak. The pink circle at top emphasizes length. The orange tip means business. If one giving you the look is worrisome, think of two. I wouldn’t want to tangle with the feet, either. Courting among the large males (they have twice the mass of the females) is one big brawl. The winner gets the girl, usually several of them!This Montezuma Oropendola was feasting on pineapple found in the bird feeding table that was located in front of our Villa in Nuevo Arenal. I imagine that his namesake, Montezuma, the last of the Aztec rulers, would have been pleased to have this large, distinctive bird given his name. The Oropendola fits as well, given how much gold the Aztecs had gathered and how Cortez lusted after it. Oro means gold in Spanish. Pendola means feather. It refers to the gold tail feathers found on the bird.The Masked Tityra (Tityra semifasciata) also had a unique, but not so threatening look. This bird is easily identified by a pinkish ‘mask’ around its eyes. I found it hanging out on the eaves of our house in Monteverde.The Tityra appeared as interested in me as I was it in. Actually, he was looking for a female that he had been trying to impress. When I spotted him, he was running back and forth on the eave with his wings drooping and sounding like a constipated frog. Apparently it was his mating dance.On the other side of our house in Monteverde, we found this woodpecker carved hole that would make an excellent home for a bird.A Streak-headed Woodcreeper (Lepidocolaptes souleyetii) seemed to agree. Its usual choice for a nest is a hole in a tree pecked out by a woodpecker, or natural. There seemed to be a problem. It would climb up the tree, peak in the hole and immediately fly back down the trunk to repeat the process. It wasn’t creeping; it was scrambling. I watched it check out the hole several times in the same way. I was beginning to wonder if the pecker was present.Suddenly, this little head peeked out to see what was going on.It was a Golden-olive Woodpecker (Colaptes rubiginosus). And yes, it probably had pecked the hole out of the dead tree. The creeper could go find a vacant hole for its home. Next time he/she showed up (male and female Streak-headed Woodcreepers have the same plumage), more than the hole might be pecked.Here’s another creeper, the Red-legged Honeycreeper. It isn’t, however, related to the Streak-headed Woodcreeper that makes its living off of crawling up trunks and eating insects. It’s related to tanagers instead. The Honeycreeper gets the honey part of his name because its passion is for sipping nectar out of flowers. Creeper comes from creeping through treetops and vines foraging for the flowers. This is a female. The male is an electric light and dark blue.Here’s another bird known for its love of nectar, a hummingbird. In this case a Green-crowned Brilliant (Heliodoxa jacula). We took its photo at a hummingbird feeding station in Monteverde with several feeders. Hummers were buzzing everywhere. The only thing more numerous than the birds were the people oohing and aahing over them. It was hard for Peggy and me to capture photos of hummers without tourists (Turista numeroso) in them. I’m not sure what the photo-bombing bug was.A fun shot of the Green-crowned Brilliant looking up. Note the yellow at the tip of its beak. That’s its tongue sticking out, a rather specialized appendage that can extend up to twice the length of its beak for obtaining nectar. It doesn’t sip the nectar like we would with a straw, however. It’s more like capturing the nectar. Researchers at the University of Connecticut have discovered that the tongue is a “dynamic, shape-shifting, and active pump. As it shoots out, the tongue reaches nectar and splits at the tip. The two grooves/tips open, and tiny, hair-like structures (lamellae) unfurl, trapping the nectar. Upon returning to the mouth, the flaps close, sealing in the liquid.” It can repeat this process up to 20 times a second, thousands of times a day, whether it is getting its nectar from a flower, or your hummingbird feeder. It’s also used for drinking water. I’ll conclude today with a handsome Great Kiskadee (Pitangus sulphuratus), a member of the tyrant flycatcher family.Peggy swore it was posing for her. We had a lamp post in front of our villa in Nuevo Arenal that it liked to hang out on. It would fly off its perch, return, and assume a different pose! It was zipping out to catch flying insects out of the air, an important part of its diet. The Great Kiskadee is omnivorous, however. It won’t pass up small snakes, frogs, lizards, or chicks and has even been known to fish for tadpoles. On bird feeders it’s been seen eating bread, peanut butter, bananas, and dog food. Woof! It’s known for being monogamous, hanging out with the same partner year around. I was beginning to think that it had a thing for Peggy. UT-OH! And that brings me to my next chapter in the book I am blogging.Founded during the Gold Rush, Placerville was once known as Hangtown for its harsh treatment of outlaws. On the day I was supposed to graduate from high school, I made the innocent* mistake of cussing out the city’s chief of police. He couldn’t hang me, fortunately, but he did give me a choice: I could spend my evening in jail cell or graduate. The former was an UT-OH! of gigantic proportions. *I didn’t recognize him.
We heard its screech before we saw it. “Jay,” I announced to Peggy. Its call is unmistakeable unless it is modified because of its situation. Or mood. At our property in Oregon, I even heard them make the sound of a hawk— to amuse themselves, I’m sure. It scares the heck out of other birds and small mammals. Their personality, intelligence, and possible warped sense of humor, makes them one of my all time favorite birds. These handsome birds with their Groucho Marx eyebrows are known as a Brown Jays (Psilorhinus morio). Their range reaches from the Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas to northwestern Panama. The white under-belly on this one marks it is a member of the southern subspecies. As for their diet, they are omnivorous: Insects, lizards, fruit: It’s all good. They were regular visitors to the bird feeding table in front of our villa in Nuevo Arenal and happily downed the fruit of the day, whatever it was. But do they eat chicken? We had to travel to Monteverde, Costa Rica to answer this question.We were in Monteverde when I spotted a Brown Jay carrying nest building materials. I grabbed my camera and went hunting. This one was actually wearing an identification band. The birds work together to build a nest. The female then sits on the eggs until they are ready to hatch. The male feeds her during the process. Offspring from a previous season will sometimes help in the feeding of the chicks, but they transfer the food to mom and dad for the actual process. I couldn’t find the nest, but I noted something else about this Jay beyond its band.It had found the bone of a discarded chicken leg and was pecking the marrow out of it. As I noted, they’re omnivorous. The one-eyed look was fun.A Clay-Colored Thrush, (Turdus grayi) or Yigüirro, as they are known in Costa Rica, is the national bird of the country. The bird originally gained its popularity in the country’s folklore by singing a beautiful song just before the beginning of rainy season. The natives thought that the yigüirro brought the welcome and necessary rain. Actually, the male who sang the song, wasn’t trying to bring the rainy season. He was busily courting a female before the rainy season started. It’s when they mate, build nests and raise families. But it makes a great story and the male still has a beautiful song.
It appears that this Thrush has caught a worm that wasn’t interested in being swallowed. As we watched it hop around on the lawn searching for such delicacies, we were reminded of its cousin, the Robin. Thrushes share a lot in common. I doubt you would find a Robin following a foraging mass of army ants to feast on the insects that are fleeing to escape, however, which is what the Clay-Colored Thrushes do. I immediately thought of the army ants that invaded my house when I was living in West Africa. We discovered their attack when numerous small bugs came hopping, running, and crawling under our screen door in an effort to escape. The Thrush would have been quite happy to scarf them up. I’m sure the Robin would have as well. But it might not have had the Thrush’s sense to fly off before the ants arrive. We saw a mouse make that mistake. It was his last. Not wanting to end up like the mouse, we went to war. I’ll tell the story in UT-OH!.Here a Clay Colored Thrush and a Palm Tanager check each other out. It’s likely that they are having a discussion over who gets the fruit. Alternatively, I like to think that the thrush is saying, “Wow! You are really beautiful.”“Can I offer you a piece of Pineapple?”A fluffed up view of the palm tanager. They often nest and hang out in palm trees, which is how they get their names.Another dining table discussion? Here, a Buff-Throated Saltator is checking out an appropriately named Scarlet-Rumped Tanager. These, along with several other of the smaller birds I am featuring here, often flock together for feeding purposes. (Safety in numbers?) The Tanager is chowing down on a bite of pineapple. It’s hard to find a more easily identified bird than this Scarlet-Rumped Tanager (Ramphocelus passerinii), unless you are looking for the female of the species.I was surprised when my bird ID app, Merlin, told me that these were Scarlet Rumped Tanagers. I double and then triple checked it! The name for when the male and female birds of the same species look so dramatically different, btw, is sexual dimorphism.I like this head-on photo of the female Scarlet Rumped Tanager. Landing gears down!A Buff-throated Saltator (Saltator maximus) gives me the look. Originally classified with cardinals and grosbeaks (given its beak), recent DNA research has shown that they are instead related to Tanagers. I like the soft look of the feathers.This frontal view gives the reason for the Buff-throated Saltator’s name.The long view! The head of the Saltator looked metallic in this photo.It was nest building time for the Blue and White Swallow (Pygochelidon cyanoleuca) of Monteverde. I’d watched this one pick up and reject several small straws until it arrived at this large piece that it flew away with. I’m always impressed with their streamlined look. It serves them well when they are practicing their insect-catching aerobatics in the air. Peggy and I enjoyed watching them whiz about from our porch in the evening. They would often land, and possibly had a nest on the roof beam above the porch. The bright evening sky gave their blue a black look. We weren’t sure whether it was chirping at us or its fellow flyers.I’ll conclude my collection today with the Muscuvy duck (Cairina moschata) that has both feral and domesticated versions. The duck was first domesticated in the tropical Americas during preColumbian times. You’ve may have seen the domesticated version, like this one, swimming around in park ponds. If so, you probably haven’t forgotten it.It has a very unique look!Head shot! That’s it for today. On Wednesday I’ll be featuring Earth Day. It’s worth saving. Our survival— as well as that of numerous other plants and animals— depends up on it.One would think that the Giant Saguaro cacti of the Sonoran Desert would welcome Global Warming with open arms, but the truth is, it is one of numerous species that are threatened today. The increased drought and extreme heat of global warming prevent seedling survival, cause structural collapse of adult plants, and encourage wildfires capable of wiping out wide swaths of these majestic plants. Another species threatened by Global Warming is the Eastern Box Turtle. The increasing heat disrupts their reproductive cycles and sex ratios. Once found often, they are now rarely seen. Peggy found this one crawling down our driveway yesterday, heading toward the traffic clogged highway that runs in front of our apartment. She saved it, at least temporarily, by taking it down to the creek that flows through the property and turning it loose, far from the road. She set it down and away it zoomed (with zoom defined in turtle speed).
Wandering through Time and Place 