The Right Stuff

Hello World, Happy Summer! After a long and frigid winter around here, which lingered into a chilly spring, with bracing temperatures in the 40's on an all-too-regular basis, it was a blessed relief to finally have some lovely and warm days at long last, and in fact, according to the calendar, Saturday the 21st was the official first day of summer, and not a moment too soon, I'm thinking. Our old friends the dinosaurs and I are sure we can all agree that the Druids and their ilk would all have been out in force at the time, meeting in their secret places, casting their special mystical spells and performing their arcane rituals to greet the solstice in appropriate style. Of course, the way things had been going, three weeks earlier they would have been wearing their winter overcoats and long johns while they were doing it, but you can't have everything. I would expect after 5,000 years, it would be pretty difficult to discourage a Druid at this point. The previous Saturday was Flag Day, so I had our flags flying from the upstairs and downstairs flag brackets as usual. I put them out first thing in the morning, even though the Yahoo weather forecast on my phone looked like it might be changeable, and I was hoping that it would hold up for clear flag-flying weather all day. Fortunately, it did and in fact turned into rather a nice day all around. After dinner, I took the flags back in and hung them back up in the sun porch and library where they usually are - and this is nothing to sneeze at, with The Flag Brigade the way it is, and I ought to know. I have to admit, though, that I never do understand how flags can wrap themselves up around their poles during the day, all by themselves. It seems to me that the wind would have to be blowing around in a circle, or blowing from one direction when the flag is hanging down, and the opposite direction when the flag blows over the top, in order to get the flag to wrap itself completely around the pole. I do know that if I was trying to get the flag to do that, it would never happen. I have the feeling that somewhere, Betsy Ross, Francis Scott Key, and Barbara Frietchie are all having a great big laugh. It was only the day after Flag Day that Father's Day arrived right on schedule on Sunday, a time to honor dear old dad and all the men who have shaped, guided or supported us through the years. At home, the cats are always on board with the idea that their "Daddy Cat" is the King of the Castle, and deserves to be singled out for his tireless service and uncomplaining nature. However, they would certainly prefer sharing breakfast in bed with him on his special day, if the menu choices included Seafood Supreme or Tender Mini Chunks, rather than the hum-drum fruit or brownies that Bill tends to favor instead. If left to their own devices, all of his gifts would be catnip mice and bat-a-birds, with a few jingly balls and rattly critters tossed in for good measure. Of course, if what Bill really wanted was an assortment of catnip mice and bat-a-birds over the years, he has managed to hide his disappointment remarkably well, and seemed to enjoy whatever may have come his way on the paternal holiday in question. So three cheers for dear old dads everywhere, whether biological, hypothetical, or purely imaginary. Or as the cats so eloquently put it, "Hip, Hip, Meow!" Alert readers may recall that the most recent additions to our feline family are three black cats, and two of them - the regal Nubian Princess Inky and Truffle the tuxedo dandy - are out in general population with the rest of the thundering herd, much to the delight of some and the dismay of others, I dare say. At long last, they have started to come out of their shell, and finally spreading their wings, as it were, into previously uncharted territory where they didn't dare venture earlier. This includes the windows, now that it's gotten to the point that it's warm enough to leave them open all day, and they just love it. Several of the windows feature their favorite channel, which is Bird TV, and this may be old hat to the other old-timers around the joint, but like they say at NBC, it's new to these two. That’s where the bird feeders are located, and they can certainly put on a show. We usually get house sparrows, purple finches, mourning doves, starlings, titmice, nuthatches, woodpeckers, cardinals, blue jays, chickadees and cat birds, with the (more than) occasional 4-legged gray “birds” with the long bushy tails. Apparently no one ever told these individuals that they are not technically birds at all, although because they seem to spend all of their time in my bird feeders, one must assume that this is a common misconception on their part. At night, the opossums, raccoons and skunks invite themselves to my feeders and generally make a mess of things. Early on, I had to stop hanging feeders on regular cup hooks, and use closed-eye hangers instead, because they would keep climbing up to the feeders, push them off the hooks, and let them fall to the ground so they would break open. It was costing a small fortune in replacement feeders. It’s better now, although anything plastic is fair game for them to chew on, even if they can't use the force of gravity to bust them apart like they used to. Frankly, if I had known what kind of juvenile delinquent wildlife we were going to get in our yard, I can tell you that the dinosaurs and I would have asked Sir Isaac Newton not to invent gravity in the first place, and that's not just the Druids talking, believe me. Elle