Friday, February 17, 2006
Company Picnic!
With Anchorage frozen solid in December and January, it is a good time to head to Hawaii or to daydream about a warm summer day if you can’t afford the fare. July 4 was celebrated in style in Anchorage. Delaney Park Strip was filled with giant inflatables of Uncle Sam and the Statute of Liberty, and a thousand or more people queuing up in long lines to get some halibut tacos or some more exotic Russian fare. Since our stomachs already were growling rather fiercely, we decided to skip the interminable long lines and headed across 10th Street to the shorter lines at the Baptist Church. After snagging some hot dogs, chips, chocolate cakes, and some lemonade, we learned to our amazement that everything was free. We watched the pastors and a few elders of the church get dunked time and time again in the dunking booth. There was a distance of five feet or less to the target for the younger fry so it was hard for them to miss. One woman was determined to see her spouse get a good soaking from her hands, but she could not get anywhere near the target with her balls. I discreetly told her to walk up and hit the target with her hand. She delightfully obliged.
I can remember going to the McAlester Fuel Company picnics from the time I was six or seven. Several senior employees would spend the better part of a day barbecuing and preparing baked beans. That was great eating, but not the featured attraction for the kids. There were unlimited soft drinks. Finish one bottle and get in line for another. I think that my record was seven or eight. After burping down the cokes, we eagerly awaited for the ice cream truck to set up shop. Then it was Katy bar the door. Unlimited ice cream. The vendor probably was expected to restrict the number of times we asked for one of his specialties, but he mostly was just interested in maximizing his sells. While the kids swelled their bellies to unbelievable sizes with cokes and ice cream, the adults were engaged in a variety of amusements such as sack races and singing. For the most part, these adult activities went unnoticed by the pack of kids.
Once the picnic was moved to the Municipal Airport Park, the kids found new forms of entertainment. Many were content to engage in a variety of chase games until they succumbed to the inevitable result of being stuffed to the gills and beyond with coke and sweets. The kids who had been there before knew of a special place in the park. Far removed from the prying eyes of the adults was a large pole with eight or ten chains attached to a rotating top and the chains had handles about five feet from the ground. Each participant would reach up and grab a handle and then run round and round in a merry-go-round fashion. That is until everyone was convinced that there were no adults lurking nearby. Then if as on cue, the real fun began. One special person would take his chain and step out and backwards around 4 or 5 of the others runners. The exact number of chains that you could loop around depended on how high you could reach. When the action commenced the special person started out at a normal pace, but then wham. The magic of centrifugal force flared up. As the honored person passed each person whom his chain had overlapped, he went faster and faster and higher and higher. It was not unusual to be flying horizontally eight or ten feet off the ground and for a few brief seconds about 25 or 30 miles per hour. The people he passed over had to watch out for flying feet less they get creamed royally. The flying kiddo had to hang on for dear life. Some with weak arms simply flew off the gizmo into the grass. This was Fun City. Usually more people wanted to play than could be accommodated. No problem! Remember all those bellies with stretch marks from coke and cream. Running and flying in circles reduced the playing field in a hurry.
With Anchorage frozen solid in December and January, it is a good time to head to Hawaii or to daydream about a warm summer day if you can’t afford the fare. July 4 was celebrated in style in Anchorage. Delaney Park Strip was filled with giant inflatables of Uncle Sam and the Statute of Liberty, and a thousand or more people queuing up in long lines to get some halibut tacos or some more exotic Russian fare. Since our stomachs already were growling rather fiercely, we decided to skip the interminable long lines and headed across 10th Street to the shorter lines at the Baptist Church. After snagging some hot dogs, chips, chocolate cakes, and some lemonade, we learned to our amazement that everything was free. We watched the pastors and a few elders of the church get dunked time and time again in the dunking booth. There was a distance of five feet or less to the target for the younger fry so it was hard for them to miss. One woman was determined to see her spouse get a good soaking from her hands, but she could not get anywhere near the target with her balls. I discreetly told her to walk up and hit the target with her hand. She delightfully obliged.
I can remember going to the McAlester Fuel Company picnics from the time I was six or seven. Several senior employees would spend the better part of a day barbecuing and preparing baked beans. That was great eating, but not the featured attraction for the kids. There were unlimited soft drinks. Finish one bottle and get in line for another. I think that my record was seven or eight. After burping down the cokes, we eagerly awaited for the ice cream truck to set up shop. Then it was Katy bar the door. Unlimited ice cream. The vendor probably was expected to restrict the number of times we asked for one of his specialties, but he mostly was just interested in maximizing his sells. While the kids swelled their bellies to unbelievable sizes with cokes and ice cream, the adults were engaged in a variety of amusements such as sack races and singing. For the most part, these adult activities went unnoticed by the pack of kids.
Once the picnic was moved to the Municipal Airport Park, the kids found new forms of entertainment. Many were content to engage in a variety of chase games until they succumbed to the inevitable result of being stuffed to the gills and beyond with coke and sweets. The kids who had been there before knew of a special place in the park. Far removed from the prying eyes of the adults was a large pole with eight or ten chains attached to a rotating top and the chains had handles about five feet from the ground. Each participant would reach up and grab a handle and then run round and round in a merry-go-round fashion. That is until everyone was convinced that there were no adults lurking nearby. Then if as on cue, the real fun began. One special person would take his chain and step out and backwards around 4 or 5 of the others runners. The exact number of chains that you could loop around depended on how high you could reach. When the action commenced the special person started out at a normal pace, but then wham. The magic of centrifugal force flared up. As the honored person passed each person whom his chain had overlapped, he went faster and faster and higher and higher. It was not unusual to be flying horizontally eight or ten feet off the ground and for a few brief seconds about 25 or 30 miles per hour. The people he passed over had to watch out for flying feet less they get creamed royally. The flying kiddo had to hang on for dear life. Some with weak arms simply flew off the gizmo into the grass. This was Fun City. Usually more people wanted to play than could be accommodated. No problem! Remember all those bellies with stretch marks from coke and cream. Running and flying in circles reduced the playing field in a hurry.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
The Bluebird of Happiness!
A few weeks ago as we were driving down from Hillside, we spotted a bald eagle perched atop a small spruce. He was a small eaglet showing some signs of distress from the January cold. His feathers were coated with snow and he appeared to be shivering. I wondered if he had some type of injury that had prevented him from migrating to a warmer winter abode. When we came back an hour later, he was nowhere to be seen. I could not help wondering if some misguided soul had enticed him to stay the winter in Anchorage by feeding him.
It brought back memories of a baby bluebird my youngest child had rescued. It was floundering on the ground in a neighborhood filled with cats since a vet lived there and had adopted a host of orphaned kittens. There were also lots of snakes about. In a different locale I would have suggested leaving the bird alone, but this one had fallen to the ground at the wrong time in the wrong place. As dangerous as the cats were, the snakes may have posed a greater danger. When Harvey Couch, who was the Sam Walton of the early twentieth century, was a young teenager he contracted with the local grocer to provide him a daily quota of eggs. One day when he went to the henhouse to gather his eggs, there was none to be found. He looked at the ground and saw the slithering track of a large chicken snake. He was furious. He wanted revenge. Since the snake was very large and filled with eggs, Harvey knew he could not have gone very far. He tracked it down a couple hundred yards away. The snake was lethargic and had numerous egg-size bulges up and down his body. He not only killed the snake, he was determined to retrieve his eggs as well. He carefully slit open the belly of the snake and delicately removed each egg. He washed them and took them to the grocer. Right then everyone knew he has going to be a successful entrepreneur. Since then I have watched several snakes coil themselves around small trees and climb up to a nest or nesting box and have a gourmet meal.
The baby bluebird that Cindy had rescued now had a safe refuge. However, it needed to be taught to eat and fly. It showed its survival skills by quickly adapting to a diet of hamburger meat, which was proffered up on a toothpick. After a few days it was able to fly two or three feet at a time. It needed a name. He was christened Slimer after a character in Ghostbusters, for obvious reasons. Slimer soon found a home away from his cage—a ceiling fan that we prudently covered with an old towel. When anyone reached up to put him back in his cage for the night, he started shrieking, spitting out a slew of expletives and little bird profanities to let us know that he was big enough to stay up past our bedtime. We knew that if he could only learn to catch his own food, we would feel safe to release him back into the wilds. Since his diet consisted solely of raw hamburger served up on a toothpick skewer, we knew that our work was cut out for us. I took him out to the compost pile and racked back the leaves, exposing hundreds of earthworms. I set his cage down and removed the bottom. He was face to face with a wiggling smorgasbord of earthworms. Slimer showed no interest whatsoever. I speared one with a toothpick and held it up to his beak. All I received in return was a severe tongue-lashing peppered with some more of his bird profanities. After repeating the routine for several days, he still showed zero interest in his proposed new diet. I was beginning to despair that he would ever learn to fend for himself. Just then a small moth flew into his cage. He went into frenzy. He grabbed it out of mid-air and devoured it in less than two seconds. He was now ready for his big day. We put him in his cage and covered it with a towel and drove to Logoly State Park. We parked his cage beneath a small gum tree and removed the bottom. Then we set the cage to one side. He flew up and perched on a branch of the gum—just about ceiling fan high and started serenading us with a few well chosen bluebird notes. Then he looked up and there was no ceiling. He flew a few feet higher. Then he looked up and saw only blue sky. As he flew away never to return, we all shed a few tears hoping that we had done enough to return him safely to his rightful home. Somewhere there's a bluebird of happiness.
A few weeks ago as we were driving down from Hillside, we spotted a bald eagle perched atop a small spruce. He was a small eaglet showing some signs of distress from the January cold. His feathers were coated with snow and he appeared to be shivering. I wondered if he had some type of injury that had prevented him from migrating to a warmer winter abode. When we came back an hour later, he was nowhere to be seen. I could not help wondering if some misguided soul had enticed him to stay the winter in Anchorage by feeding him.
It brought back memories of a baby bluebird my youngest child had rescued. It was floundering on the ground in a neighborhood filled with cats since a vet lived there and had adopted a host of orphaned kittens. There were also lots of snakes about. In a different locale I would have suggested leaving the bird alone, but this one had fallen to the ground at the wrong time in the wrong place. As dangerous as the cats were, the snakes may have posed a greater danger. When Harvey Couch, who was the Sam Walton of the early twentieth century, was a young teenager he contracted with the local grocer to provide him a daily quota of eggs. One day when he went to the henhouse to gather his eggs, there was none to be found. He looked at the ground and saw the slithering track of a large chicken snake. He was furious. He wanted revenge. Since the snake was very large and filled with eggs, Harvey knew he could not have gone very far. He tracked it down a couple hundred yards away. The snake was lethargic and had numerous egg-size bulges up and down his body. He not only killed the snake, he was determined to retrieve his eggs as well. He carefully slit open the belly of the snake and delicately removed each egg. He washed them and took them to the grocer. Right then everyone knew he has going to be a successful entrepreneur. Since then I have watched several snakes coil themselves around small trees and climb up to a nest or nesting box and have a gourmet meal.
The baby bluebird that Cindy had rescued now had a safe refuge. However, it needed to be taught to eat and fly. It showed its survival skills by quickly adapting to a diet of hamburger meat, which was proffered up on a toothpick. After a few days it was able to fly two or three feet at a time. It needed a name. He was christened Slimer after a character in Ghostbusters, for obvious reasons. Slimer soon found a home away from his cage—a ceiling fan that we prudently covered with an old towel. When anyone reached up to put him back in his cage for the night, he started shrieking, spitting out a slew of expletives and little bird profanities to let us know that he was big enough to stay up past our bedtime. We knew that if he could only learn to catch his own food, we would feel safe to release him back into the wilds. Since his diet consisted solely of raw hamburger served up on a toothpick skewer, we knew that our work was cut out for us. I took him out to the compost pile and racked back the leaves, exposing hundreds of earthworms. I set his cage down and removed the bottom. He was face to face with a wiggling smorgasbord of earthworms. Slimer showed no interest whatsoever. I speared one with a toothpick and held it up to his beak. All I received in return was a severe tongue-lashing peppered with some more of his bird profanities. After repeating the routine for several days, he still showed zero interest in his proposed new diet. I was beginning to despair that he would ever learn to fend for himself. Just then a small moth flew into his cage. He went into frenzy. He grabbed it out of mid-air and devoured it in less than two seconds. He was now ready for his big day. We put him in his cage and covered it with a towel and drove to Logoly State Park. We parked his cage beneath a small gum tree and removed the bottom. Then we set the cage to one side. He flew up and perched on a branch of the gum—just about ceiling fan high and started serenading us with a few well chosen bluebird notes. Then he looked up and there was no ceiling. He flew a few feet higher. Then he looked up and saw only blue sky. As he flew away never to return, we all shed a few tears hoping that we had done enough to return him safely to his rightful home. Somewhere there's a bluebird of happiness.
Monday, February 13, 2006
Valentine Requests!
Fishing boats in Alaska have been having a hard time. It seems that Sperm Whales have come to recognize the sound of the engines, which they equate to a dinner bell and make a beeline to the ships, gobbling up significant numbers of halibut and sablefish as they really chow down. To haul in their catches the crews must maneuver to and fro with the engines at different speeds, which creates an unusual, but distinctively recognizable sound pattern, which has been described as erratic bubbling noises. It is dinner music. Scientists have long known that the whale family can blurp out courtship songs that can travel a thousand miles or more. There is a fourteen-second pause between the notes of the fin whales. In a span of eight to ten minutes, the males can manage about 36 to 40 notes. Just enough to say I love you in whale talk. The pitch and rhythm can be picked up by the human ear only when it is speeded up to about 60 times the actual speed, but whales could care less about human shortcomings. Blue whale songs generally consist of about ten notes over a twenty-minute time span. Just about right for a big guy who doesn’t have much to say but just wants to cuddle. The songs of the humpbacks, however, only travel about six miles. Scientists have also discovered that sonar can drive whales crazy. That slow pinging noise can cause the whales to surface prematurely, giving them a bad case of the bends. In really bad situations the whales will try to beach themselves to get away from the noise which they probably attribute to a bad karaoke singer. It is definitely not what the whales want to hear, especially on Valentine’s day.
An animal whose courtship music can drive humans to distraction is the common housecat. Its caterwauling may be music to another feline, but to most people it is just a nerve-wracking nuisance, worse than a bad karaoke singer—much worse. Most people prefer to hear a car purr. A cat also has an odd way of showing affection—it either licks you with its raspy tongue or deposits some wiggling morsel of food at your feet. If a person can’t stand a cat, it will immediately adopt you as its best friend. Throw it out of your lap and it will come back again and again. A person can own a dog, but a cat thinks it owns you.
I once had an unusual Siamese named Zita after the last Austrian Empress. She thought she was human because her mother went to the Vet soon after she was born and I was impressed into service as a surrogate mother in the absence of her owners. She was bottle fed and had her bottom wiped with a wash cloth. Because she bonded with me for about two weeks, she grew up thinking I was her mother. The owners thought I looked like a good mother and made it official by giving her to me. Like the whales, she did not like certain noises—especially the sound of an electric ice cream motor. Unfortunately, while she was still a little kitten, I happened to be holding her when someone in our household plugged in the ice cream maker. Whew! I survived, but my body bore scratch marks up one side and down the other for several weeks. She was a scholarly cat. While I was working on my dissertation, I would occasionally become frustrated and rip a sheet of paper out of my typewriter, wad it up and throw it toward the paper basket. She would leap up in hot pursuit of the paper wad and bring it back to me. I later discovered that if I just wadded it up and drew my arm back she would run in the direction my arm was pointing. At which point I would throw it and she would leap into the air and grab it with her front paws and bring it back to me. Catch was a whole lot more fun than writing the dissertation. She became a food critic as well. When she would use her sandbox, she would use her paw to cover up the mess. When you gave her some food and she did not like the smell of it, she would use her paw to mimic her sandbox routine. The worse the food the more she tried to cover it up. She did not like canned food so she never learned to respond to the sound of an electric can opener. However, if you picked up a box or packet of dry food, she was under your feet immediately. Sensing that I was onto something, I put the dry food into a jar and would shake it before mealtime. Later I started whistling along with shaking the jar. Soon I could just whistle and she would come running. She was a well-trained cat. Once we flew to Seattle and left Zita with my mother. The cat started pouting and would not eat. Mother called to tell us that unless something were done Zita was going to starve to death. Would I please talk to the cat over the phone? I was two thousand miles away but what the heck. It was a request that I could not refuse. But what do you tell a starving cat? Bingo! I whistled. She was happy to hear that sound and starting eating again. She just wanted to know that I still loved her.
Fishing boats in Alaska have been having a hard time. It seems that Sperm Whales have come to recognize the sound of the engines, which they equate to a dinner bell and make a beeline to the ships, gobbling up significant numbers of halibut and sablefish as they really chow down. To haul in their catches the crews must maneuver to and fro with the engines at different speeds, which creates an unusual, but distinctively recognizable sound pattern, which has been described as erratic bubbling noises. It is dinner music. Scientists have long known that the whale family can blurp out courtship songs that can travel a thousand miles or more. There is a fourteen-second pause between the notes of the fin whales. In a span of eight to ten minutes, the males can manage about 36 to 40 notes. Just enough to say I love you in whale talk. The pitch and rhythm can be picked up by the human ear only when it is speeded up to about 60 times the actual speed, but whales could care less about human shortcomings. Blue whale songs generally consist of about ten notes over a twenty-minute time span. Just about right for a big guy who doesn’t have much to say but just wants to cuddle. The songs of the humpbacks, however, only travel about six miles. Scientists have also discovered that sonar can drive whales crazy. That slow pinging noise can cause the whales to surface prematurely, giving them a bad case of the bends. In really bad situations the whales will try to beach themselves to get away from the noise which they probably attribute to a bad karaoke singer. It is definitely not what the whales want to hear, especially on Valentine’s day.
An animal whose courtship music can drive humans to distraction is the common housecat. Its caterwauling may be music to another feline, but to most people it is just a nerve-wracking nuisance, worse than a bad karaoke singer—much worse. Most people prefer to hear a car purr. A cat also has an odd way of showing affection—it either licks you with its raspy tongue or deposits some wiggling morsel of food at your feet. If a person can’t stand a cat, it will immediately adopt you as its best friend. Throw it out of your lap and it will come back again and again. A person can own a dog, but a cat thinks it owns you.
I once had an unusual Siamese named Zita after the last Austrian Empress. She thought she was human because her mother went to the Vet soon after she was born and I was impressed into service as a surrogate mother in the absence of her owners. She was bottle fed and had her bottom wiped with a wash cloth. Because she bonded with me for about two weeks, she grew up thinking I was her mother. The owners thought I looked like a good mother and made it official by giving her to me. Like the whales, she did not like certain noises—especially the sound of an electric ice cream motor. Unfortunately, while she was still a little kitten, I happened to be holding her when someone in our household plugged in the ice cream maker. Whew! I survived, but my body bore scratch marks up one side and down the other for several weeks. She was a scholarly cat. While I was working on my dissertation, I would occasionally become frustrated and rip a sheet of paper out of my typewriter, wad it up and throw it toward the paper basket. She would leap up in hot pursuit of the paper wad and bring it back to me. I later discovered that if I just wadded it up and drew my arm back she would run in the direction my arm was pointing. At which point I would throw it and she would leap into the air and grab it with her front paws and bring it back to me. Catch was a whole lot more fun than writing the dissertation. She became a food critic as well. When she would use her sandbox, she would use her paw to cover up the mess. When you gave her some food and she did not like the smell of it, she would use her paw to mimic her sandbox routine. The worse the food the more she tried to cover it up. She did not like canned food so she never learned to respond to the sound of an electric can opener. However, if you picked up a box or packet of dry food, she was under your feet immediately. Sensing that I was onto something, I put the dry food into a jar and would shake it before mealtime. Later I started whistling along with shaking the jar. Soon I could just whistle and she would come running. She was a well-trained cat. Once we flew to Seattle and left Zita with my mother. The cat started pouting and would not eat. Mother called to tell us that unless something were done Zita was going to starve to death. Would I please talk to the cat over the phone? I was two thousand miles away but what the heck. It was a request that I could not refuse. But what do you tell a starving cat? Bingo! I whistled. She was happy to hear that sound and starting eating again. She just wanted to know that I still loved her.
