SURFING FOR CRAZY PEOPLE

On the Clallam Bay Beach (left).  There are ROCKS out there! 

Can you see the REALLY CRAZY guys out past the Slip Point Reef? (right)

Very high tides brought out the Rare Breed Surfers: they keep this up and they'll be even RARER.

But don't they make you want to learn to surf?  It looks like killer fun!

The Hick in Techo-Hick

 The morning's work, clockwise from upper left:

Frying crackers

Turnip greens (picked from the garden)

Jerusalem artichokes (ditto)

Homemade cheese ravioli

Homemade soymilk (in process).

Upper right: what's left of the peanut-butter cookies, most of which went to the Hallowe'en party last night.

Know how peanut-butter cookies are always too dry and easy to burn?  Especially if using white sugar?  Accidentally discovered how to make them tender and chewy: soak the sugar overnight in just enough water to make a paste.  Try it -- it's a whole 'nother cookie. I don't know if you need to soak brown sugar, but if white sugar is all you have, this works.  Hm.  Maybe add a little molasses to the white sugar while soaking?

The turnip greens and artichokes will go with rice, probably for tomorrow, but they need to be cooked today, because they're THERE.

Got too busy, let the mushrooms we'd picked spoil in the 'fridge.  From now on, the rule of hunter/gatherer is:  eat in season, eat when found (or prepare for the next day).  Keeps away food allergies, and it's how we're supposed to eat anyway.

Hm.   I feel like fish.  Maybe if the rain breaks today, after I get the last AFTERDEAD page colored (and maybe the second-to-the-last because it was VERY experimental, and frankly looks like crap, or did last time I saw it), I might go down and get me a greenling to fry tomorrow with bacon oil and Sechzuan pepper.  Yum.

THE MORNING'S WORK

Before I get going on the day's artwork, I need to take advantage of the wood stove's morning flare to do the cooking.

A gallon of sea water makes this much sea-salt (Fleur de Clallam).  It's collected from Clallam Bay, out by the far point in that picture. It's slightly damp, very white, and has a very faint sweetness.  Only enough is made for us, Christmas gifts for a few friends and occasionally to sell.  Up here they call it "Donna's Salt."

To keep from getting my clothes wet, I wear a knee-length sweatshirt dress and flip-flops.  Yes, it's cold, but it's never cold enough to freeze.  Two gallons are collected at a time, one for each hand.

Peanut butter cookies, made with the Day of the Dead skulls that didn't make it.  And the bowl of salt.

FISHING AGAIN

Four years ago, we lost our old cat Spuds.  All fish and seafood coming into this house went to him.  When we lost him after a long fight, to nose cancer, fishing just reminded me painfully of him.

Back on the beach, again, this time asking him to share if he wants any.  I only fish if I'm hungry for fish. Admittedly, like all fishers, the carnivore/omnivore instincts kick in, and I enjoy the fish's struggles on the line.  But if I don't don't think I will want fried fish and bone crackers the next day, I don't fish. 

I have a deal on with the fish: when I catch one, I smash up all of my mussel bait, and throw it to out to my breakfast's brethren.  No, I don't think the fish know about this deal; it just makes me feel better.

Turns out I'm good at hunting and gathering.  If I took up hunting deer, it would be for spikes or, if they ever allow it, does. Because hunting for antlers is just hunting grandpa -- and it's traditionally a practice for war, replacing the urge to kill other humans.  And bucks and bulls are in rut: YUCK.  

If I were hunting for antlers, I'd turn it into a REAL sport: tracking the same buck every year until he dropped his horns, starting when he was a spike, until he dropped his final set as an old man, and letting the tough old guy feed something that will enjoy him, like a mountain lion.  Or somebody who needs a really good, thick hide.  But collecting a life-time's horns without killing, counting a kind of coup, would really demonstrate tracking ability and courage. However:

Now for the real reason for hunting or gathering anything: putting it in our faces.

It's not necessary to fillet greenling.  Just head and cut, scraping out the bloodline with a mussel shell.  Split open.  Rinse well, salt inside, wrap in a towel and put in the 'fridge 'till breakfast time.  Rinse well, pat dry, fry skin-side down, preferably in lard of bacon grease, although any oil will do.  The best spice to sprinkle, lightly, on a greenling is Chinese Prickly Ash, also called Sichuan pepper, available at McPhee's Asian Grocery in Port Angeles, and soon to be available at Sunset West Co-op in Clallam Bay.

Dish, slip out the backbone and slip off the skin and fins.  Place them all back in the pan, to slow-crisp.  They will make the most delectable crunchy bone-crackers.

In the middle of the day's cooking, thought I'd give these a try.  Can't find 'em ANYPLACE out here:

Can't find Calaveras de azúcar.para el Día de los Muertos (November 1)? (Sugar Skulls for the Day Of The Dead) Make 'em! Here's a simple at-home recipe: 

 Beat egg whites into soft peaks, mix with granulated sugar until the consistency of soft sand (add a bit of water if too dry). Form into little skulls by hand; use kitchen utensils to form eyes, nose and teeth. Let dry 24 hours. Decorate with food coloring or frosting. They're a great holiday activity with the kids. Sugar skulls are ornamental, and not meant for consumption. 

These are my first try; only these four survived a dozen attempted.  Do NOT try to cook these; they just fry and stick to the plate!  Be patient and dry them. 

Forming them:  make a ball of sugar in your hand, and then turn it over.  You'll be amazed how little tweaking it takes to make a little bony head.

TOO MANY GOOD THINGS

Been over on Facebook, not posting here as I should.  First of all, today's haul:  a nice mess of Woodland Russalas, found in a park in Port Angeles while walking between busses.  They're simmering here in chicken-stock sauce, with homemade egg noodles, made with eggs from our hens, and green beans.  Took advantage of Terry Gross's latest interview, that was running while the mushrooms were sautéing on the woodstove.  When the dish was ready, I popped some fresh black pepper, a dash of lemon juice, and home-collected sea salt over each helping.  The acid combined with the sweet, hazelnut-like flavor of the mushrooms made the whole melange to die for.  Thanks, Terry!

Billions of gorgeous mushrooms this year; biggest chanterelles we've ever found.  Honeys, white oysters and puff balls.  

Hadn't gone fishing in four years, since we lost Spuds.  At his end, I'd been fishing and gathering seafood only for him, and was missing him too much to go collecting again.  Back to picking up nice little greenling off the beach.  They were only yanking the bait off my hook, until I muttered, "First one grabs it, I stop fishing for today, smash up the rest of the bait and throw it in.  So somebody come help me feed your brethren."  BAM -- fish on.  Smashed up the bait, threw it in, took the one fish home.  Nice greenling, which provided too lovely fillets and a sweet backbone for bone crackers.  

No fishing yesterday; our neighbor brought over a couple pounds of fresh halibut.  Fried up in lard with black pepper and sea salt made of seawater collected from Clallam Bay, boiled in an old pot on the wood stove.  A gallon makes about 3 ounces of Fleur de sel.  Because of its mineral and iodine content, it's entirely cut back on our salt cravings.  It's excellent when used for Live Salt (my term for the fresh grains thrown on a dish at the last moment to spark the flavor).

Built a THIRD chicken coop and it really is a chicken tractor, now.  Easy to move, a lot easier to clean, and more accessible for eggs, while retaining security.

The people we got the hens from stuck us with a skinny gray rooster -- who has grown up into a nice, quiet, masculine silver, who only crows a little at dawn, and all the girls love him.  The neighbors say he doesn't bother them. Nice deep body on him, too -- if he sires chicks, they may be nice for egg-laying.  Dunno; will have to see.  His name is Blue.  The hens are named Red, Black, Splash, and Inky.

We are SO ready for the rains -- and getting back to some real drawing and writing.

I've had to sell my bees.  Hans Barr (not a near relative of my husband) just bought them. 

If you get an error message, just click it a few times, and it will open in YouTube.

Dead Whale

Hiked to 2nd Beach on the Olympic Peninsula yesterday. Resting against a log in the sand, I couldn't stand the pain in my back teeth any more.  Thought it might be that place that needed flossing, was delicately working at it when a ghastly smell floated by.  

At first I thought it was something old stuck in my teeth; you with deep places in your teeth know how it is when you dig out an ancient shred of meat and it's gone bad.  I dug a little more and the smell oozed by again.  Realized it wasn't me; got up and began to look around.  

About ten feet away, a five-foot long black woody-looking mass displayed the remains of baby-whale-size vertebrae.  Might have been what was left of a head.  The crows were happily bouncing about on this bounty.  I stood back, breathing through my mouth, and tried to be respectful; it's  a whale, after all.

Two guys showed up who were camping down the beach.  One of them had a shovel, and they had a very determined look.  When they found the dessicated mass, their attitude was exactly that I'd seen in a guy on the beach viewing a piece of dead whale before:  "How DARE it rot on MY beach!"

What's up with that? This is nature; stuff dies and washes up. Stuff rots.  These two testicles just glowed with a sense of righteous outrage.  Maybe they wanted a mint on their pillows.

As I walked away, I saw them covering it up, and some pretty disturbed crows.  All I could do is laugh.  And laugh.

Smoggy today; literally.  The British Columbia forest fires are combining their smoke with our August fog to provide us with our own version of a London Peculiar.

Being Stupid With Bees

Note:  just because we can trot out in our jammies at night to feed our gentle tame bees does NOT mean we can re-arrange a tower of Russian ferals in BARE FEET.

Quite sick, now.  Oh, look!  I'm allergic to bees!  Anybody wanna buy some hives?  With nice strong bees?  Rats.

A colleague says we comic book people are only good at doing comic books.  Nobody else is -- it's extremely difficult and demanding.  We're just not so good at anything else.

We'll see how long the chicken business lasts before I get some stupid infection or something.

Dead Animals So Far

So far, the dead animals of people I know who have taken on farming in forest or other wildlife areas:

1.  (Not quite a) Possum.  WOULD have been dead for trying to eat food on a goat/horse farm except a visiting friend and me took it down the road and found a place that looked like it had a lot of forage.  Are possums native to the Olympic Peninsula?  No.  But we saved it on principle, anyway.  The farm that tried it also stopped poisoning their flies around their barn to give the swallows a chance to build a population and control the flies (= bird food), so they get points for offset.  And they listened.  So far so good.

2.  Raccoon.  Mini-farmers from Colorado believe their chickens aren't secure enough, even though the fence would keep a horse out.  Nice people, but will never buy any rabbit meat from them.  Or promote it.

3.  Beavers.  Horse people trying to plant trees in a swamp bottom to help kill non-native grasses.  Logging company above cut all the trees, flooded the creek.  Beavers, taking opportunity to build a pond, which would have flooded out the grass, got trapped and killed.  Yeah, that's going to solve the problem. Humans not so much ever going to get me to visit their place again.

4.  Horse and cattle farmer trapped three young cougars in boxes.  Wildlife officer and he agreed that the animals, if hauled away and released, would die soon anyway.  So they made sure of it; the guy shot the cougars in the boxes (isn't he brave?). He did NOT use the hides or meat  because it "would have been too much trouble." Then he bragged about it to me, like I was supposed to be impressed (WTF?). These people sell chickens, eggs, hamburger and feed. Guess I'm going to have to get all those elsewhere -- and promote nothing they produce.  Oh, well.

5.  Fish:  Local woman letting her kid shoot mini plastic pellets into the water, where they can be eaten by local bottom-feeding fish, starve them, then rot out to kill ever more fish.

6.  Cougars and everything else:  Hilltop forest cut next to a neighborhood.  Young resident cougar, now starving, tries to get chickens out of a cage, snatches an attacking dog, and is shot.  Housing developer then files an environmental action statement claiming there will be no wildlife impact.  What timing.

7.  Buffalo.  In the way, and industrially useful.  A whole nation incurs traditional animal genocide karma. 

8.  Watership Down.  This novel, describing lovely English countryside, soon makes the reader aware the only remaining wildlife is songbirds and small predators.  Everything else has been wiped out.

8.  Me and my chickens: anything gets into their cages it's MY FAULT.  I at least have brain enough to know that if I decide I'm inconvenienced by wildlife, that's my fault for moving here, and that if we all decide we're slightly bothered by our neighboring life, we will wipe it out.

Conclusion:  I guess I'm just a better person.  Oh, well.

Yeah, we've been busy -- mostly completely repainting everything and taking care of ANYTHING that frustrated us or needed fixed.

Chicken news:  Black was being so totally broody she stopped laying.  Could not convince her to stop.

In the cartoon book, Memories of a Former Kid, by Bob Artley, he describes how to de-broody a hen:  Put her in a small cage by herself and feed her naught but cracked corn and water.

So I cracked some of Dan's bulk popcorn in a blender and put Black into the little isolation cage for chicks or sick chickens.  After 3 days, I put her back into her own pen with Red -- she not only had stopped being broody, within a day she was laying again.

See?  Cartoons solve everything!

Black Gone Broody Mad, Bitch

Our black hen, Black (yes, it's a food-animal designation) is brooding her brains out.  I even had to go get her some fertile eggs to brood, so she'd get off the nest once in a while.

Now I'm having to lift her up to check she's not brooding Red's eggs, too.  

Bad news; they managed to discover eggs are edible.  I'll go have to look up something on that.

Watch Your Kids

Some idiot, while fishing in Clallam Bay, shot a pigeon guillemot; you should be able to see the bullet hole.

If they're flipping bullets around for non-sports birds, they're flipping bullets around with depraved indifference.

There's a term we used to use for kids when I ran a blockwatch in Bremerton:  bullet magnet.  They just attract 'em.  

So if your kid catches a slug fishing on Clallam Bay this weekend, you know where to look.  Let me know: I get paid for all the articles and photos I can collect.

Sunfish in the Strait

An unusual visitor from far-off seas washed up on a beach on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, north of Washington State's Olympic Peninsula, Friday, June 4.

A sunfish, or common mola, estimated as weighing around 1000 pounds, attracted attention from residents at Vista Road and local wildlife and fisheries officers. The fish lay in the incoming surf near the Hoko River estuary, to the west of Kydaka point, on the public-access beach.

The fish is usually found in the south Pacific. Bill Riedel, of Vista Road, said the fish was probably seven feet long, five feet wide and 18 inches through the body. He said that these fish weren't usually seen in the Strait except during unusual weather patterns and warmer water conditions.

Natural Resources Enforcement officer Bill "Tuna" Williams, of Neah Bay Fisheries, and Corey Peterson, of State Fish and Wildlife, dropped by to examine and photograph the fish, partly from personal interest as well as to report the sighting to the Makah Tribal Biologist.

Mahone said h'ed never seen a sunfish in the area before. There was no evidence what might have killed the fish, which showed little damage except for a few streaks of blood on the fins.

Sunfish, related to pufferfish and porcupinefish, are commonly found in the tropical and temperate oceans. They have few natural threats, but are sometimes preyed upon by sea lions, sharks and orcas.

Their diet consists mainly of jellyfish. This makes them vulnerable to choking on plastic bags, which resemble jellyfish when floating in the water.

Let's Teach The Kids!

It's not uncommon to see someone who's caught a large fish up here laughing and sniggering while beating it to death.  While I fish, too, and clubbing is one of the quickest ways to kill a fish, I don't treat these animals who die so I can live as though they're enemy humans I want to exterminate.  And I don't fish unless I'm hungry for fish.

Right now it's Catch-and-Release fishing season up here -- that's right, tormenting animals for the fun of it and teaching the kids to do it, too.

Now is the time the big cabazons (relatives of bullheads) and other fish somebody didn't want wash up, dead of stress or worse, because somebody out there was playing with them and threw them away as so much garbage (even little bullheads are delicious, by the way).  The fisherman slash Styrofoam bait flats apart and throw them in the water -- and we all know what plastics are doing.  

Dan and I keep a beach up here clean and we know when these loser fishermen are in town.  I've even seen them leave salmon in a boat to rot while they go have a beer or dinner, because catching the fish is all it's about, not eating them. How many of us know those who hunt for bones on an animal's head and not to eat it?  And hunters and fishers wonder why they're losing support -- because they won't police their own. 

Along with the Gulf Spill, I don't know how any human dares look another animal in the face right now.  I say this as a human who tries always to use less, share and damage less at all times.  It's my idiot species, and I can't say I'm not one of them.

If this planet was a test, NO humans are going to heaven....

Bar None

We have a prison here -- the Clallam Correctional Facility.

"Correctional" gives me the historical willies. How many times have we heard a word like that used in the past?

It's interesting interacting with prison people -- or "interesting," in the way that word is sometimes expressed.  The released prisoners, in their brand-new red jackets and blue slacks, ride the buses to Port Angeles or Tacoma, their possessions, in cardboard boxes, sharing the seat with them. One of them was wearing a superb line-art tattoo of a snarling panther.  He described it as a prison tattoo, and then how it was completed.  The cover is removed from a tape-deck, and a sharpened wire attached to the wheel mechanism, turning it into a tiny mechanical tattoo needle. A lighter is held to the base of a black plastic chess piece, and the resulting black soot mixed with a medium I can't recall, but which probably wouldn't be hard to figure out, given what possibly or nearly sanitary liquids are available in a prison.

At one point, the prison administration listed their zip code as 98326, without using their 4-digit individual code. Mapquest defined the entire zip code as "prison." The listing ricocheted throughout the internet.  For a while, trying to order anything possibly dangerous -- even a weed hoe -- on the internet, was refused by Amazon because the zip code belonged to a prison.  The problem is slowly being scoured out of the systems.

I almost wrote "corrected:"  $!#!! AP style poisoning my vocabulary, like Hemingway.  A recent Pulitzer winner told me that "newspapers are circling the drain." I coulda told him that; try to get one to pay you. They get torqued off if you don't fight your way past the cops on a nasty dangerous corner to get a photo, or insult the tribe by flashing away with a camera at the funeral of an important elder (like I need that -- I have to live with these people!).  For $20.00 a photo, if I'm lucky.  Clallam County Commisioner Mike Doherty made fun of me at a community meeting to a member of the sheriff's department for how little I'm paid and how hard I work for it. I've been less available for a lot of his projects and the local meetings, lately. I have books to process for real publishers who really pay me, thank you. I get more reliable money from the ads on my blogs and sales sites.

Speaking of newspapers, credit where credit is due -- one of them DID pay me for not doing my job, because I waited in vain outside the prison in a freezing-cold truck for two hours around midnight, waiting for my editor to get me permission to enter the place.  The important story was about a guy who  who filled up one wing of the prison with smoke after deciding it would be a good idea to roast sausages in a toilet.

The Next Chicken Step

Now we've got the egg production up and running -- 227 eggs as of today -- it's time for the next step.

Rebuilt the bigger cage to make it easier to access for cleaning, and got three nice new chicks (featherball stage)  from the Triple Nickel Farm on Highway 112.

The process now is:  buy new chicks when the older hens are cycling down (not yet, but will come soon enough), get a big rooster for the older hens and let 'em go on the hill behind us to have a few days/weeks/months of freedom.  Better than being slaughtered for soup or braise.  

The hill is the breeding home of eagles and other predators.  They don't hunt near their nesting area, and they keep down other predators.

I was perfectly willing to try slaughtering chickens, but when I was talking about the whole recycling process, Dan's face crinkled up in distress.  He was raised on a chicken farm, and had to kill a lot of them.  He just doesn't want to do the same with two hens he considers family pets.  So the girls will get an end-of-life vacation.

The new chicks are mixes; a black Arucana mix, and a couple of red/gray mottled things.  They cost two bucks apiece.  They're still scared, but they know where their compfy grass-lined nest is, as well as the food and water.

After a lifetime of not really eating eggs because Dan can't eat store eggs, we don't really eat a lot of eggs ourselves.  Most of them are now part of the swap system  with our neighbors, for cleaned, packaged salmon fillets and elk-burger and trout and ling-cod and halibut. Both sides of the swap think they've made out like fat rats and gotten the better end of the deal.

I'm going to check with the co-op and see if we can't just trade for milk, cheese, butter and  yogurt.  If you've got chickens, you've got a cow.

Why I quit working for the Census

They need to speak to their mid-level supervisors about making giggly remarks when “they” instruct a trainee to fill out pay-forms to reflect what hasn’t actually happened, just to make it line up with the state work laws. If the people in the offices back east make mistakes about mileage and time in rural areas, they need to work that out, not encourage employees to cheat on the pay-forms.

Signing up to work for the Census was me overloading myself again, when I have prior commitments (like my intern in July!), and having to back out before both jobs go to pieces. And I have these books to finish processing — and I can’t take forever on that, either.  It’s got to get done sooner rather than later.

Dan doesn’t know I’ve scheduled three more chickens for the back coop.  Sorry, but when one can trade eggs for salmon and elk-burger, and the co-op is asking for eggs, ya just gotta go for it.  He did tell me yesterday he'd never had such big, rich eggs in his life, that they were better than the ones his grandfather raised -- with the reasonable caveat that hens and feed were probably better today.  He did admit Red and Black are pretty spoiled chickens.  Pets, that's all.

Pet pigs, pet lambs... it's how they're treated and raised up here.  We're eating ground beef from Triple Nickel Farm on Highway 112, out of a bull the owner said, "He was my pet -- but his calves killed six of my heifers."  They were too big.  But he was a food animal, and they had to eat him. 

Anyway, the Census wasn't paying enough to make me cheat on my pay-forms, possibly get no pay for hours worked, or send me up dirt roads to find people with shot-guns.  Admittedly, they pay for all injury and hospital time -- but when one of their safety instructions is "Wear comfortable shoes, in case you have to run" (it's in their handbook!) it does tend to set off alarms.

And this on-line book thing is working, as money trickles in from all sides.  Not a huge amount of money, but certainly enough to take care of things.  Not spending money is the same as earning it -- and when, like yesterday, you run into a paint shop that is clearing for inventory and gives you enough paint to finish the inside of the house -- "Free!  Just get it out of here!" -- that's the same as making a lot of money.

I made more money in ten minutes getting free paint than I'd ever make on another job.  "Poverty is a full-time job" can be rephrased as "Independence is a full-time job." Depends on what you do with it.

Note:  new Census rule.  A "lot" (supervisor quote) of people up to no good have been impersonating census workers. If the Census worker is NOT wearing a bright-orange vest with green fluorescent stripes that say "Census bureau" down the front and on a green fluorescent patch on the back, CALL THE POLICE!  If you invite them in and they do -- it's not a census worker.  The new rule is:  NO going into anybody's home.  If they ask to come in -- CALL THE POLICE!

On the way home, I helped several people with census questions.  One guy in a business which -- admittedly -- a lot of folks with warrants patronize, was looking at his form and said, "I don't know if I want to fill all this out."  When I told him the punishment for a census worker who revealed anything about personal information was 5 years in jail and/or a $250,000 fine, and that a CW could be waterboarded before they'd give up that info to anybody, including the sheriff or the IRS, and that NO information could be released for 72 years to ANYBODY, he went ahead and filled it out. He can help out his more nervous customers, too, now.

For every census form filled out, a community brings in on the average $1400 of gov'ment money.  It's about cutting up the pie  we all pay into-- they can't come fix your roads if they don't think anybody's living up there.  Our library has been closed for a week at a time up here.  It's a lifeline for a lot of locals -- knowledge that we have so many people here will help with funding.

The numbers the census collects goes into a pool. They don't look like "The Hernandez family with six kids lives here."  It looks like: "This area is 15% Hispanic."  And that, by the way, is how you get listed -- the way you insisted on writing it.  Evidently people have put down race as "non-white" and "German." I put down "Vaguely Ethnic" and "American Mutt." If Obama can call himself a Mutt, so can I. 

Dan, who is 1/8 Wyandotte and living here where "American Indian" can bring in nice funding, listed himself as such.  It's not about the little box you belong in permanently -- it's about where people are in their lives for this decade's funding and numbers of representatives in the House of Representatives.

I asked, "What if a gay couple puts down 'husband or wife?' Is it based on laws or society?" and was told, "Put it down. It's what they say they are. Don't argue."

Thomas Jefferson said we have to do this if we live here, so might as well do it.  But -- if you got a problem, call the Census office.  They're actually pretty helpful. They just want to get this job done.

All Those Nasty Trees Gone

Pillar Point on Highway 112 used to be shaded by big, nasty, old trees.  As you can see, the local lumber company has opened up the other side of the road, so you don't have to look at all those horrible big-leaf maples, Douglas Fir and hemlock any more.  

This is on the Scenic By-Way.  Merrill and Ring logging knows that "scenic" means teaching the iggernant citifolks what a Workin' Forres' looks like.  Tourism ain't got no money for the local economy, of course. The sooner all these in-the-way trees and fish are gone, the sooner the owners can sell to a developer and turn the place into someplace the citifolks can live.

Workin' For Da Man


Got a job with the census.  I'm expecting it to be pretty huge -- a lot of people don't have direct mail delivery out here.  And with the meth-heads, scammers and other run-aways, it just may get entertaining. But what the hell, every once in a while I have to get a job that will remind me why working in comics is so much BETTER.  And some extra cash for some of the house upkeep we're doing would be nice.

My bees are really cold.  They're barely moving.  But THIS gives me hope.


I'll keep providing food and water and staying out of the hive.  I don't even know if the queen is alive.  Whether she is or not, I'm getting a new monarch from these guys this summer.


Start worrying about your little insects and I'll guarantee you, you'll stop being afraid of them.  All you can think of is how to keep the Girls alive.

Too Close and Not Close Enough

Out in the garden, bent over plucking some greens, I heard a winnowing sound that I'd barely identified as wings  -- in that split second wondering if it were angry bees and then a crow -- before I had to duck out from under two hurtling bald eagles. They zipped over the fence and flew off along Bear Kill Ridge on a courtship flight.

(Nobody knows who was killed -- the bear or whoever was hunting it)

About six eagles are hanging out in the area; three adults, three immatures (nothing yet from this year).  We call one of the youngsters "Bird-Killer" because she zeroes in on and takes ducks out of the water.  We think it's a female; she's big. A month ago she rose from the reef and flew toward where we stood on the beach, rising over sea-ducks feeding near the shore. 

She hovered, then suddenly dropped and powered along the waves, targeting a buffel-head drake.  The drake took off and flew for his life, Bird-Killer like a big dark jet behind him, her great wings scything through the air, closing the gap by the moment. There was a sudden explosion of spray as the drake dived underwater in full flight.  Bird-Killer overshot, then swung around.  She wafted up, watching for where he would resurface.  He came up, but no sooner than she'd dropped through the air, he dropped back under the surface. of the water.

You could almost see her shrug, before she headed off down toward the mouth of the Clallam Bay River.  She's evidently learned what she can take or not, and doesn't waste action. She's going to be a serious competitor once she gets her white head feathers.

April Is The Cruelest Month

Rats.  Our white chicken died.  No weird foaming, green droppings, nothing.  Just laid down and died.  The poultry site says, "Sometimes chickens just drop dead."

Her eggs had been getting smaller -- I thought she was just ramping down for summer.  She SEEMED completely energetic.  Her eyes are clear and bright.  Who knows? The site recommended some Baytril, which we keep on hand.  But they also said cut grass is bad for chickens -- and I'd been giving them grass (I thought chickens ate grass!).  Maybe they meant oily lawnmower grass, not hand-pulled or hand-cut grass?

We've been keeping cats for 30 years and nearly lost one to a whole WTF? episode with asthma.

And my bees aren't looking so good today.  I SHOULD have kept them warm in the house and put them in today.  I hate saying "live and learn" when other things die.

We were also calling the hen "Steve" (McQueen, in The Great Escape) because she'd got out once by burrowing under the fence.  NEVER NAME A GOLDFISH OR A CHICKEN.

Amateur Bee Rodeo

Drove two pounds of Carnolian package bees home from Sunny Farms in Sequim today.  But of course, it was cold and wet -- it always is when I have to travel or carry something fragile, like art or insects -- with occasional spring-time flashes of sun.  By the time I got home, the bees in the box were chilled, but I couldn't bring them in the house because there were stragglers clinging to the outside of the wire box.  

At the next short sun-break, I whipped open the hives and poured 'em into the hive.  That I forgot and left two of the wax frames out and had to open the whole thing again was just first-timer jitters.  Oh, I didn't tell you I was working these bees without veil or gloves?  That's how I was taught, over 30 years ago, at Ohio State University. I won't work veil-free once the bees are established, but I needed to be able to see and manipulate everything without confusion during this ticklish operation.

The bees were so cold they were balling up and wouldn't pour out of the box.  It took several tries, and by then some of them were beginning to warm up and defend their new home.  They got me in the left wrist and elbow -- but it hardly hurt.  I guess all that working with nettles for soup and greens the last couple of years has made me more immune to stings.  

They're finally hived up humming for the evening; I hope the queen is all right.  I lost about 30-40 bees, but out of 10,000 that ain't bad. When I re-queen with the more aggressive and hardy Olympic Grey this summer, I will burqa up for those babes. And if I ever have to package again, and it's cold, I'll have to make the hard decision to brush off the stragglers in a spare wooden box and take the rest of the girls into the house to stay warm until the weather clears.  They're like the cells of a brain, not individuals.  But if you've ever let a small cold bee crawl up on your finger and carried her to safety, it's hard to think of her that way.

I must get this from mom.  When camping, she paid no attention to yellow-jackets, except to give them their own little pile of food and lids of soda away from the cooking area, or to dip them out of the stew.  She called them "Mountain Kittens."

ALMOST LOST KIKI -- file under stupid accidents

Our cats had been coughing lately, especially Kiki.  She's the cute calico we rescued up here a few years ago. After a treatment of hairball medicine, the only one still coughing was Kiki. We thought it might be worms; one of our other cats once had worms and the cough sounded like that.

In palpating her belly, our vet commented that she was tensing her lower body muscles.  He thought it might be connected to her breathing. I began to remember that she seemed to cough more when she was excited, or purring.  Could it be asthma?

We thought about what do do next.  He said we should try some cortisone for possible asthma, and it wouldn't hurt to worm a cat in a multiple-cat household.  We could x-ray.  I said we should start slow and go from there.  Our vet is funny.  He said, "Well, I can run the bill up as high as you want today."  We both laughed.

The cortisone shot caused no trouble.  She began to gag on the worm pill and then to slobber and finally to retch.  We petted her, waiting for her to keep the pill or cat it up.  Then the coughing started.  "That's it, that's the cough," I said.  Suddenly, she keeled over.  The vet's face went flat; nobody had expected that.

He picked her up and rushed her into the operation room.  I got out of the way.  I felt my heart turn over when I saw her carry her across a hall wrapped in a towel, but he was only taking her for x-rays. He put her back on oxygen, and then leaving her with a technician, called me in to see her x-rays.  They showed an airway no larger than a straw, and a small pool of vomit in the lungs. She'd inhaled vomit, then the muscles around her lungs had cramped hard, locking her lungs closed.

Each time she was taken off oxygen, the vet said, "She keeps trying to die."  As she lay there, her chest and belly muscles roiling, I put my face down close to hers and spoke to her.  Her wide black pupils shrunk, and her eyes focused on me. Each time the tech touched her, the pupils flared again.  Apologizing to the tech, I asked her if she couldn't take her hands away, in case a stranger was stressing her.  She did so, and Kiki focused on me again.  A cat down the hall began to complain, and her attention flicked toward the sound; there was a cat she was going to have to beat up.  Perhaps the distraction began to allow her muscles to relax. After about a half hour, the vet tried to take her off oxygen. She continued to struggle to breath, but the vet said it was much better.

When he thought she was "critical but stable," we placed her in a kennel, dark and quiet, and I called Dan.  Ever tear somebody's heart out over the phone?  To give her a chance to calm, I went and got the rest of my errands done, with my cell phone on (we live far away from town, and the chickens needed food and the house needed things).  When I came back, she was much better. The vet gave her a shot of antibiotics, to give her lungs a chance against the vomit, and sent her home.

She's much better today, but we're watching her.   She'll probably need cortisone once a month, but from now on everything she gets will be topical; we can't risk another vomiting episode. I told the vet's receptionist they were lucky I'd had a lot of cats and knew this was caused by accident and DNA, or I'd be going ballistic.  "Broken heart, small soul," as my character Lt. Winzig once told me.

Damn dropping oxygen levels on the planet.  Well, you know what they say:  "Cure asthma -- shoot a logger."

WATCH YOUR MOUTH!

After the liquor store was robbed and I sent in the article, the store owner said she was mad at me because the article said the store had a safe and a computer. Wtf? Did she think we all thought she'd been carrying the store funds around in her pocket or recording inventory on a piece of bark? 

She should be mad at the employees who led me around the store, pointing things out and describing what was there and what was missing or not. They made jokes about my reporting in town and watched me writing down quotes and waited while I got 'em right -- which I thank them for, because it was very helpful. 

Now about the security -- even though i didn't have to -- Freedom of the Press -- I stopped writing when the cop requested it, as "an ongoing investigation."  I e-mailed the editor when the local informer asked to to have its name left out, and he did so.  So where was the store owner watching her employees' mouths?  Why did she not make her store security policy clear to them?  I've told these people repeatedly "You're talking to a reporter" and tried to 'splain FotP.

Journalists -- which I'm pretending to be -- have no souls.  We'll send in anything that we can put quote marks around, mostly because editors hassle for it. So watch your mouth around a reporter, especially a freelancer only doing it because nobody else will bother, because it's all meat. WHAT have I said about writers??

Anyway, I just said, "Yeah, you're right, it was an editorial call," and then bought the bottle of wine Dan wanted.  That's another thing a reporter will do -- just nod and agree.  You never know if they'll say something you can use in details for a later article....

EATING PETS

Well, it might as well be eating pets, these hogs were so pampered.

Photo in our mini-fridge (left to right): Pulled pork, home-made soymilk, bacon, home-made hummus, rough-cut sausage.

Latest co-op goodie;  fresh home-raised pork.  The woman who owned the pigs was going to keep the shoulder for herself, but sold it to me instead, out of the stack of paper-wrapped meat at Sunsets West Co-op.  $4.00 a pound is NOT pricey for home-grown, boneless, clean pork.  Chopped and cut and spiced it into three dishes (about six meals each): 

• pulled pork:  end third slow simmered with red wine, apple juice and sausage mix (see below)

• bacon: center third thin-sliced with an ulu knife while partly frozen, packed in glass jar with kosher salt, brown sugar.  Chunky hard meat cures quickly to tender, flattened bacon.

• sausage:  rough-chopped with the ulu knife, mixed with kosher salt, fresh chopped oregano-rosemary-alpine mint, dried garlic-black pepper-nettles, packed in glass jar.

Meals so far:  yesterday, one home-laid egg each, one half slice of bacon.  Today, sausage red-eye gravy over home-made whole wheat biscuits.

I got the idea for storing food to be used soon in glass jars in the fridge from the letters column of Mother Earth Magazine.  Well, where the hell else?

No, we're not filling up a freezer with food.  We raise a few eggs, will soon add honey and fresh veg, to trade with those who DO have freezers full.  Just swapped a dozen eggs for a huge fillet of silver salmon; three days worth of meals and a big chunk just for the cats.  Yes we share -- no sharing, no sense of abundance.  Both sides of the swap thought we made out better over the other guy.  I don't mind cleaning the hen cage once a month, the guy doesn't mind hanging out in the cold water and gutting fish, but both parties got food that was fully cleaned and neat and ready for the pan.  We're having so much fun swapping stuff, we don't care.

"Not us!  Not us!"  

That's what the other militias are saying after these guys got caught.

We have a bunch who run around up here with the same kind of ideas, if not methods.  They're very proud of themselves because they have an email list.  One of them pointed me out and said, "She knows!  She knows about Adolf!"  Hitler or Menjou, dear?

Hopefully this will quiet them down, now, too.  And their swastika-painting friend.

     God, I hate some religious people.
     I won't go into the whole discussion about slavery, tribal history, yada yada, but at one point, one of the people involved said:
     "That's why that tribe is all gone -- God got them."
      After I picked my jaw back up:  "What?"
     "For taking slaves.  He sent a tsunami.  The tide went out and all the women and men went down to gather clams and -- ."
     "You do know that's what tsunamis do?  The tide goes out?"
     "Yes, and it left only the old people and the children --."
     "I would be pretty careful about saying god got somebody for being bad, considering where we live.  You don't want to ask why he got you if a tsunami came in.  And as Americans, I don't think we should be pointing fingers about slavery."
     Let's just leave it at that.  I'm beginning to think we're living in the 1880's.  Wasn't that time for one of the Afghan wars, too? And the American South running amock trying to turn the clock back?  With the help of the nuttier of the religious orders?  It's hard to keep track sometimes.

Mussel Chowder
Just felt like wandering down to the reef and picking up a few small mussels for chowder. The big ones are too coarse; they're best for bait for greenling or lingcod.  Oddly enough, Dan doesn't like the mussels.  I find them rather yummy. This chowder also had onions, potatoes, golden beets, garlic, butter and soymilk (a bit sweeter than milk for cooking). You can see the little mussels in the broth.

Sorry, Loggers

     The girls on the Crescent Lake Loggers basketball team didn't get named in the photo I sent to the Forks Forum, and it's not even really their coach's fault.

     I'm a bonobo.  We're different than the chimps of the human race.  We don't like noise and team sports.  We don't scream in groups. We don't follow.  We love sex and we get a lot of it but we don't like to watch; we're the ones during the extended sex-scenes in Sundance films who finally yell, "More plot!"

     I managed to stick around at the game long enough to get a photo of the girls, including a shot of one of the Clallam Bay Lady Bruins  reaching for the flying ball while pelting through a gang of Loggers.  It was easy to identify the Bruin -- she was on the home team -- but I couldn't get the Loggers' coach's attention.

      I'm not going to say he was rude; he's a coach for a sports team, after all, and they're like soldiers: too much maturity and brains and the job isn't getting done.  I'm not blaming him for acting like a snotty 16-year-old, because otherwise his girls don't win (well, they weren't winning anyway, but it was the Bruin home court).  It's how the older men men try to talk to women up here; it's like it's 1955 in their own minds.

     But -- people -- here's the rules when working with a journalist, even a small-paper nothing job-trained stringer like me:

      1.  If you want to be in a paper for something good, you have to push your own agenda.  You have to stand still and get your names spelled right.  Those kids are your little bags of DNA and if you don't have time for me as the deadline clicks closer, they'll end up being "unidentified" rather than mis-identified.  They're not my kids, I don't care about 'em further than the bucks I'll get for the photo  and/or article.  My editors know this is only my day job.  They'll pay more attention to the passionate local than the payment-driven free-lancer.

     2.  If you want to be in a paper for something bad, just bleed or do something stupid or very illegal. You don't have to try.

     3.  Nobody "promised" they'd get what you gave them in the paper.  A car wreck can knock the inches that you think might have belonged to your community meeting right off the page.  The only way to put a meeting on the front page is to shoot somebody at it.

     4.  If you buy an ad, don't expect extra coverage in your area unless it's newsworthy.  Buying an ad is like buying a male prostitute -- you get the inches you pay for, and no love.
     5.  Don't ask the reporter, "What paper are you with?" if you're making it a condition for information.  Neither the Paris Match nor the New York Times is going to come cover your piddly little game. You're lucky I showed up.  You and your town are NOT the vortex of the universe, especially when you are complaining and demanding to be treated like the local high-school cheerleader queen.

     6.  If you want to find out just how nice newspaper people are, get a copy of His Girl Friday.  It's still not that far off. 

     That said, thanks so much to the very cooperative people who helped me get the right names for the K-3 kids hand-signing the "Star-Spangled Banner."  And to the folks who called me about the game and the signing in the first place.  They promoted what was important to them, and I showed up and took the photos and got them to the paper that evening.

      Thanks god and their good manners and thoughtfulness that  they sent the stats in for the games; if I had to stay around all that shrieking and running much longer I would have crawled under the bleachers and strangled myself on my camera-strap.
     Front-page coverage!

    

Now I know how the rooster feels.
     E.B. White may have waxed romantical about hens, but when our hen White is standing outside yelling just to hear her head funnel sound, it's hard to think about anything but braised chicken (yeah, that's right, birdbrain, I'm thinking recipes when I look at you).
     She does these fertility dances with her throat out there whenever anybody lays eggs.  Black doesn't say much, and Red just drops 'em in the pen. But White talks her brains out the whole time like she's responsible for all the production around here.
     We figure all this noise was originally about letting the roosters in the original jungle-fowl flock know there was an egg, and to get him revv'd up to fight off anything under the trees. 
     I'm not using "brain like a chicken" to describe stupidity any more. I don't care what our antique sciences (read: religions) say about animals not thinking, the modern sciences are finding out how wrong that was. Chickens think, and it's mostly about how we're Not Doing It Right.

Land of Eggs and Honey

     We have a problem; too many eggs.

     We can't eat more than one a day each, in whatever form -- they're just too rich -- and the girls are out-laying us.  We'll have to take the excess to the folks who give us salmon.  Poor us.

     The eggs are color coded; the two pale yellow-green (bottom left, top right) are from White.  The large pale brown (lower right) is Black's.  Red lays the dark red with white speckles (upper left).  Black's eggs are the richest -- but she's by far the fattest.  Lift her up and feel the rolls of blubber and all you'll think of is duck-style-roasted chicken.

      After feeding them for a year, was thinking of just buying grown layers next time, but now realizing the rich feeding while they're growing up is what's making them good layers, despite their youth and the season of winter.  We've discovered a source of great calcium; dried-out sea-urchin and crab shells from the beach.  It's where we get the good grit, too, with the addition of sea minerals.  Fat hen + loads of calcium = loads of fat eggs.  Well, d'uh.

     Speaking of feeding animals right to get a return: after years of thinking and research, finally bought a beehive from Sunny Farms.  It has two fully-framed brood bodies and a honey body.  All the amateur -- and I do mean "WTF are we doing?" amateur -- beekeepers up here are listening to me when I tell 'em NOT to feed the bees crappy sugar and corn-syrup to get them through the winter.  Hello?  Colony Collapse Syndrome?  The bees are having enough trouble without being given crummy ersatz food.  Or, to quote, "Thou shall not muzzle the ox that treads the corn," if you need something from that antique-science book. The local Olympic Grays ("Pioneer" bees from Caucasian stock brought in by white settlers over a century ago and gone feral) are pumping out honey and white wax -- from the Douglas Firs, would you believe! -- like little machines.   One keeper has over 100 pounds of honey on one hive. Imagine what fir honey tastes like.  If you like pine-nuts....  At least I'm imagining it; nobody's tasted it yet.  

     My hive is actually painted; I found some neutral base, so the hive can have that nice raw-wood look and still be protected.  I'm not going to buy bees; I'm going to ask one of the local keepers if I can put one of my hive bodies next to his until we get a swam to inhabit it.  Maybe offer him some eggs.

Final Goodbye
     Went back and dug down a bit into Hector's grave, and placed a large butter-clam shell containing a slice each of butter and margarine into the little hole, then poured milk into it until it overflowed.  Covered it back up, replaced the big square beach-tile back on top after scratching "Hector '92-'10" on the surface.
     My brother's cat Holly died the same day. He and I had better have our ducks in a row when we go, or the Old Basement Cats will GET us.  Purr with Bast, guys.
     Dan and I keep looking at the sofa where Hector lay, to check if he's hungry, or comfortable, or needs washing.  Exhausted, emotionally and physically. Now I have a bad case of the 'flu that is turning into bronchitis; will have to have some Skookum tobacco (age-controlled site) on the beach today and actually -- YUCK -- lung-suck it, to kill the germs and clean out the phlegm.

You Can't Keep A Good Cat Down

     First, a poem from Kate Murray:

God bless all pussycats
And keep them safe and warm
Especially those who are in heaven.
Give them a safe path to the Rainbow Bridge
And if they have no human friend help them to find one.
And today especially bless Hector
who showed us that even Basement Cats are full of love
(especially for those who give him smoked rabbit).
Give him lots of prey to chase and subjects to rule with a firm yet gentle paw
and salmon to fress, Amen.

     Thanks to the gods for a hideous head cold/'flu that showed up yesterday morning.  We are much less torn by grief when we're dripping snot out of our skulls.  Digging a deep hole through rocky soil is no fun with aching muscles and a fever, but it's a lot better than trying to do it bawling the eyeballs out of the head.

      Hector was washed down one last time, then formed into a comfortable position on a towel in the cold back-bedroom shelf.  When he'd cooled down (putting any warm cells into a cold hole gives me the willies), his fur looked like it had as a young cat, thick, dark and rich, with only a few grey hairs.  He was wrapped in an old quilt I'd made years ago, and then into an old tatami.  He was given his bowl and plate and bits of nice food, including smoked rabbit, cheddar and milk. Unfortunately, I think I gave him the soymilk.  I will have to go pour real milk on the grave (the cat equivalent of the human bottle of whisky).  I also forgot the margarine and butter.  I'll have to do something about that.  We've dedicated the spirits of all protein we'll eat to him and the other cats.  Or he will be back stomping on my pillow with dirty feet: "WTF??? Fake milk?  Are you high?"

      His grave was planted with white Dutch clover and dark red and pink Columbines.

      Yeah, yeah, he can't feel a thing.  Funerals are for the survivors; ritual is like medicine.  Such as Gratefulness Candles.  Try 'em; they work.
     Then the whole of Sunday was thrown away watching Dead Like Me DVDs. That's another thing that works.

Hector's leaving
     These notes aren't really for you.  They're for us.
     He had a good dinner last night, then began to fade.  Last night he couldn't move any more, but he was breathing quietly.
     This morning, his heart rate is going up and down.  When I tried to re-adjust his head, he told me to stop it, that he was doing this himself.  He has begun to take the final deep gasps.
     19 years, doing whatever he wanted to do, and the last few being Top Cat with all the purr-ogatives.  He'll be buried in the back yard with Lina and Treat, lying together just as in this 1989 photo (Hector's the black guy, Treat the calico kitten, Lina the striped).  A fruit tree will be planted in the middle of their circle.
     We should all go so well. 
     He just left.  I've bathed him and the fancy funeral is later on, as soon as I dig the hole.  I'm the daughter and granddaughter of grave-diggers.  Explains my shoveling skills....

The Hector Report

    Hector's still here!  We think we've found the secret for turning around the don't-eat, don't-drink phenomenon at the end of a cat's life:  bathing.

     We'd given him meds, hydrated him, worked on his bad stomach.  Nothing really seemed to make him feel better.  Then I began, morning and evening, to scrub him rather briskly all over with a washcloth.  This was originally because it's becoming hard for him to walk and he's had some toilet accidents.  He's easily exhausted.  After the first head-to-tail scrub, he seemed better.  I remembered how I'd scrubbed our cat Lina as a tiny kitten when she'd gotten crusty from her food bowl.  So I started regular baths and bed changes for Hector.

      It seemed to turn him completely around.  He's purring, alert, and eating readily, even hungrily. No, he's not getting better, but he's enjoying himself, or at least sleeping, watching us and his food.  As long as Grampa can do that, he's not going anywhere.  It's not hard to keep up, either.  His brain and his heart are still good, so the rest can be supported a bit.
     Oh, and if a cat won't drink water, heat it up.  They come from desert areas and what little water they drank was probably from the hot edges of the oasis. When they weren't just getting it from the meat they ate (Don't feed your cats dry catfood if you can afford it -- they'll die of kidney failure for sure. Well, don't they?).

Hoko River Shake Mill
     Ever seen a sawmill saw sharpened by machine? 
     Tim van Ripper runs the cedar shake mill at the Hoko River sawmill.  Even when he doesn't run into the rare rock, he has to regularly pull the big saw out of his shake cutter and sharpen the massive teeth (in the film, you can see the swoop of the metal rim that contains the saw as the camera swings back into the sawmill after showing the Hoko River and the old sawdust burner).

     Sharpening is a three-step process. The first two steps, which usually take from five to fifteen minutes each, true the teeth.  The final process (shown) normally takes about three complete revolutions of the saw in the sharpener.  If the cedar chunk contains a rock grown into its wood, it can chip a sliver out of a tooth and then re-grinding the teeth and final sharpening can take as long as three hours.

     This is van Ripper's newest saw.  He has two others; the oldest is marked 1899. These big circular saws have been sharpened by machine since they were invented, by devices orginally powered by steam and then by electricity. They required machine-grinding to keep them true, or lined up absolutely flat to their cutting surface. The sharpeners take surprisingly little power.  All that's required is a 1-horsepower motor to turn the saw and lift and apply the grindstone.  The grindstones are replaced every couple of years.
     Note to art welders:  Tim's got some old saws over ten feet in diameter and piles of massive old gears and parts. Think of those in your next installation.