FEEDING OTHER LIFEFORMS

 

Okay, some recent updates from the Jochild Chronicle of Critter Curiosities:

I've had a very persistent skwirrul who is cleaning out anything I put out earlier in the day. It was lean and diligent, and I eventually got irritated about how often it was showing up here -- until I noticed it was a young she with clear signs of nursing at her lower belly nipples. A first-time mother, then, trying to survive in the recently decimated woods next door. I realized I am the lifeline for her and those babies.

Well, then, I've been augmenting with pistachios, beans, peanut butter, in addition to cracked corn, sunflower seeds, and old ricecakes. Last night at 5:00 we set out an overripe banana for the possums, and damned if Mother S didn't venture back one last night in the near dark and down that entire banana. Potassium for her little ones, no doubt.

Pris the Pale (possum) shows up most nights, eats quickly and scrambles down to forage elsewhere, but Tate, less frequent, always loiters. Because the level of leftovers has gone up, we've also had irritating raids from Rambo the Raccoon. Night before last, Tate was esconsed in the birdfeeder metal tray when Rambo showed up, balanced himself on the iron fence railing, and began trying to shove Tate from his perch. Tate went wall-eyed, yawed wide his dentiferous maw, and refused to budge. Rambo violently shook the metal pole, and I thought for sure I'd see clumsy Tate once again hit the concrete like a fleshy meteor, but he managed to hang on.

Scoutie was beside herself in the window. When the night critters arrive, she will urgently swivel her head to fix on me the selfsame beckoning glance that little Lukas Haas leveled on Harrison Ford in the police station during Witness, before resuming her fur-tingling observation. Rambo eventually snaked his agile hand underneath Tate to steal a crust of bread and then vacated the premises. Tate trembled for a long while but kept that night's leftover pasta for his victorious self.

Things inside our house have taken another turn. Dinah is feeling well enough to scale a stack of storage bins near my bed, where from a lofty eight feet perch she can see into every room but is nearly invisible herself. This is typical Dinah, as she used to be. So far, Scoutie has not figured out an ascent path she feels confident of taking to the new territory. Although she clearly has out her kitteh theodolite, her bulk and lack of Dinah's antigrav boots keep her circling below in frustration: It would be a four-foot straight-up leap from a cluttered shelf below.

Once Scout's limit became clear, I began putting Dinah's wet food bowl up high with her, removing it from my surveillance with relief. This means she can stay out here with us at night. But of course, Dinah has to make this a not win-win situation. She is now refusing to eat her wet food at night, instead filling up on the (expensive, healthy, but very low-fat) W/D kibble instead and spurning the Weruva and Fancy Feast.

For the week, I'm letting her make her own choices. She visits me during the night for petting, clearly loves looking down on Scout, and (perversely) still tries to wake me early to refill a still-full bowl. Last week she held her own, neither gaining nor losing. But if she loses weight this week, I will start locking her up again to make her eat overnight. I also fear the destruction that will occur when Scoutie decides to just effin go for it and hurl herself toward Dinah's pinnacle.

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SHROOMS AND EMPTY ROOMS

(Margot doing the librarian vamp)

 

Another gourmand's lunch: Local hen-of-the-woods mushrooms (maitake) sauteed in lashings of butter, fresh angel hair pasta, sauteed mustard greens, and for me, a cod filet. When Scoutie came to lick clean our plates, she zeroed in on the mustard greens over anything else.

Jessica the nurse came and took a urine sample because the overfull Foley incident of a few days ago may have caused another infection -- some indications one has begun. I will have to monitor Debra more closely. Jessica was upset about it, but the standards (and training and pay) for attendants are not the same as those for nurses, despite patient needs being often identical.

I had nightmares last night, waking up at one point weeping because Margot is going to leave again and it is increasingly hard to bear the separation. We have no alternative, and we choose to stay fully open instead of guarded because we know the loss is the same whether you allow yourself to feel it all the way or not. M woke up enough to say "I have to go but I never leave you" which did not actually help, press herself against me which DID help, and after a few minutes I slept again.

Last night's possum was the first-year female I've called Pennines or Pennie. She looks in better shape than her putative brothers. She ate enthusiastically, washed her face, and watched us through the window. M did not approach her for a photo; I think we both suspected she would flee.

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MARGOT'S HERE

 

(Margot about to board a plane for here, yesterday)

Doing the Margot tango. She fills this house. It's never been better.

She just interrupted me to model the new butch skivvies. Aneurysm-inducing attractive.

The kittehs are in heaven, esp Dinah. We all had a full night's sleep, rare for either of us. Fresh Tiptree's on my toast this morning, cuppa chai in Ian's mug, talking menus, marveling at her colourful turns of speech and multilingual vocabulary.

We did some serious possum-watching during the evening; I think it was Plum who showed up. Margot eventually ventured outside slowly and got some fantastic photos, will post later. He watched her warily, less than a meter away, but did not bolt. He was feasting on the trimmings from our evening fruit salad, including mango.

We had one terrifying mishap earlier. It was the time of night when kittehs are given one last meal, and I realized I'd not seen baby Ianto in a while. Margot's memory was indefinite as mine: Had we seen him since the front door had opened and closed? We could not be sure, and he was nowhere to be found. He did not appear for our increasingly frantic calls, either, though Scout raced around reminding us SHE was available. Eventually M put on trou, grabbed a flash and went out into the dark where I heard her strained calls diminishing in the distance. I was sick inside.

I don't know why, but I glanced over at M's bathrob draped over her pillow from earlier, and I reached out to move it. He popped out, a tiny blob of fluff, and blinked at me as if to say "Oh, were you calling me?" I managed to scream loud enough for M to hear and she rushed back. He swiveled his adorable tiny face toward her as she entered, and she burst into tears, scooping him up and weeping onto him "Oh and we keep saying we're giving you away, and I was so worried you'd felt unloved because we focus so much more on the girls!" He wriggled free, alarmed, and she finished her sobbing in my arms.

We cannot keep him, I really cannot handle it. But we must find him a worthy home and bring him up well until then. He does not have the disposition to be a diva like Scout. He is well-mannered and loves to be loved and is beautiful, that is his path in this world. This morning I began the three-day process of worming him. He ran from me afterward, but only briefly, returning in two minutes for reassurance and to nap on my thigh.

Margot is now arranging her clothing, reclaiming drawers and hangers. My heart exults.

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TO LOOK AT THINGS MARSUPIAL

(Photo by Y.L. Bordelon)

The appearance last night of a raccoon (named Bourland*, explanation below) alters the wildlife environment on my patio. Opossums, I have learned, carry virtually no disease, actually less than cats and dogs, and are rarely destructive for any reason. In the wild they eat mice and rats, roaches and other damaging insects, and often feed on our North American pit vipers because they are immune to the venom. Raccoons, on the other hand, are Trouble, both for humans and other animals. And do often carry rabies.

So Bourland will have to be discouraged. Toward that end, we have moved the cracked corn to the highest bird feeder with a tiny tray that is a hassle for anything not flying to reach, and no pecans tonight.

I did research during the wee hours while possum watching. From what I can deduce, this very unusual collection on my patio represents a litter likely started last January that emerged from Puddy's pouch (if indeed Puddy is the mama) around 3-4 months ago. When pickings are good and predation is low, siblings will sometimes remain together until they begin mating, usually after six months of age. By late December, our familiars will have separated or (even more likely) been picked off by cars, dogs, and owls.

Tempis fugit, especially for Didelphimorphia.

And, being a poet, I am reminded now of A.E. Housman's admonition:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

*Bourland is named for my great-great-great-grandfather, self-proclaimed "Colonel" James Bourland, a major slave-owner who arrived in Texas soon after its establishment as a Republic and set up a mini-empire along the Red River in Cooke County. He went through two wives and several armed conflicts. With his son-in-law Austin Brooks Manion, he built a trading post on the Red River in Chickasaw Territory directly across from Texas. There he became rich by selling (illegally) both firearms and whiskey to the recently dispossessed native peoples being forced into Oklahoma from all over their ancestral lands in the U.S. When eventually a group of native men proved unable to handle liquor and set out on reprisal against white encroachment, Bourland would pull together a vigilante posse to track them down, kill them, and take back the guns for resale.

Bourland is especially infamous for his role in the Great Hanging at Gainesville in 1862.

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BEATING A PATH TO MY DOOR

 

I am short on sleep today for none of the usual holiday reasons: Last night was a THREE-POSSUM extravaganza.

Around 11, the one I've been calling Plum (I think) showed up, climbing the birdfeeder pole to eat cracked corn and the last of the old pecans. I watched intermittently, my attention also caught by the discovery on Youtube of a channel with a massive cache of 1970's-era British TV dramas, including the first Jemima Shore mysteries.

On one of my glances out the window, my pulse quickened to see a second possum on the ground below the feeder. Both were similar in size, demonstrably smaller than Puddy and without her white patches. They also lacked her, shall we say, gravitas: There was an air of not-quite-maturity about them.

After eating, the first one moved over to sit on the rectangular planter where I have succulents growing. The second one -- whom I have dubbed Tate (his full name is Prostate, a moniker chose by illiterate Puddy because it has such a regal sound to it) -- then climbed to his turn at the feeder. When Tate was done, he descended the pole and disappeared from view for a few minutes. Plum had nearly dozed off in the planter.

Then I was electrified to see Tate coming over the edge of the planter and nuzzling the back fur of Plum. Was there about to be a territorial squabble? No, it was a friendly greeting, perhaps that of siblings. They shared the planter companionably (except woe to the squashed succulents) and took turns dozing or looking around warily.

I myself kept going to sleep and then waking back up to enjoy the show. Scout had decided the best spot for her was at the head of my bed, far from the window and jammed against my shoulder, where she was grooming noisily in between surveillance. Around 4 a.m., I saw Plum crane his neck over the side of the feeder, as if watching something on the ground. I strained upward, and there was a third possum, snuffling among birdseed detritus on my patio! This one was of a size with the other two, and she stood up at one point to sniff briefly at Plum in an acknowledging manner. I have my channels open to receive her name when it is transmitted to me.

Clearly Patio de Jochild has become an after-hours joint for trendy marsupials. I didn't think they congregated in this manner; perhaps this is a litter (Puddy's?) which has not yet separated, although they are at the upper end of juvenile if so. A week from today Margot will arrive, and I am avid to share this naturalist opportunity with her.

I am now listening to "A Splendid Table" on KUT, sharing turkey confidentials from Ina Garten, Samuel Marcus, Bitty, etc. I have already sung along to "Alice's Restaurant", completely bemusing Tammi, whom I allowed to leave an hour early to join her family. All our fabulous cooking is gathered on a plate I will heat and eat at noon when I switch over to TV for the National Dog Show. Though the coconut cream pie may not last that long -- it's a mile high and calling my name.

I'm thinking leftover cornbread-pecan stuffing leftovers for tonight's possum buffet...

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WE ALSO SERVE WHO ONLY...

(Fruit fly ovaries and uterus; photo by Gunnar Newquist)

Last night Plum showed up at 11:30ish and ate very cautiously. No sign of Puddy. I am not sure what's going on in Possomville. Margot did some research yesterday, and I did more today. Some brief highlights:

• The name comes from the Powhattan word aposoum meaning white beast, and was first written in English in 1610.
• They have awn hair only, and the fur is very soft.
• Females have a bifurcated vagina and males have a bifurcated penis.
• Their jaw is unusually full of teeth, and they have a hind digit without a claw that is opposable, as well as a prehensile tail.
• They are usually solitary and nomadic, and their diet relies on carrion, though they are omnivorous. They can nurse up to 13 in their pouch, but often give birth to more because many newborns fail to find and attach to a teat.
• They reach old age quickly.
• "Playing possum", mimicking the appearance and smell of a sick or dead animal, is an involuntary act on their part but not always available to juvenile possums.

In other news, I had recertification assessments today by Andy the PT director and an RN from Gilead who chatted my head off and encouraged Scout's brattiest behavior. I answered the phone all day because I was waiting on a callback from the Star Plus Waiver worker, but she did not return my voice mail this morning. I was very cranky and antisocial by mid-afternoon.

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PLUM APPEARS

 

(A good approximation of Puddy's visage)

My friend Blue says possums don't like to share territory, so the best way to keep possums from moving into your attic, say, is to build a possum house for just one who will then keep all others away. Naturally, the day she passes on this information is when TWO possums decide to show up in succession at Casa de Jochild.

The first was Puddy, massive, contemplative (assuming she has a brain), with two white patches on her left rear flank. We had set out a sample snack for her: A few baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, and very old pecans. She munched through the pecans with evident zest, took one bite of a carrot and dropped it, and after almost two hours, shambled off into the night.

Half an hour later, I was startled to see her back. But then I realized it was half Puddy's size, without the patch: a juvenile? Perhaps her offspring? I have named him Pelham, Plum for short. Either of them seem to horrify Scout equally. She watches from behind the corduroy mustard chair, buried in shadow and with a gauzy curtain concealing her further.

Plum finished off the pecans but left the baby carrots as well. Margot says perhaps possums are not concerned about night vision. From what I've observed, they jolly well ought to be: Seems like all their sensory apparatus is appallingly dim. More likely they simply don't like carrots.

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POSSUM DREAMING

("Possum Dreaming" by Bill Harney)

This weekend the commercials for late-night TV were dominated by reminders that the "Fine Art Liquidators Sales" was happened at the Embassy Suites, all paintings done in oil by hand, nothing over $59, a huge stock that were "sofa-sized" and compatible with the colors of your decor. Some as low at $7. Hurry on over.

The same weekend that American Gladiators was brought back to help fill in the gap while real writers and real television hold out for pennies. I'll confess, I used to watch American Gladiators back in its earlier inception, when I spent years trying to recover from a devastating break-up and I was so depressed I also got hooked on Party of Five. (Bailey: I was mind-melded with Bailey the Classic Codependent.) I noticed from the commercials that one of the new gladiators is named Mayhem. I'm willing to bet that there's only two dozen or so people in the viewing audience who know that the official meaning of mayhem is "the offense of willfully maiming or crippling a person" -- as in murder and mayhem. Something to aspire to, apparently.

And Huckabeast cleans up the first Republican primary. Plus -- lots of personal thangs going on here that make my life harder than I thought I could share. Until Martha proved me wrong.

Actually, the Huckabeast victory is mixed news. Bad in that anyone who voted for him likely has mental grounds for disenfranchisement, but since he's anathema to the Rethug establishment, there's blood in the water now at their camp and, well, have you read about hyenas during a battle becoming so attack-crazed that they'll chew at their own exposed entrails? Yeah, like that.

So, I could talk about how the devaluation and commodification of "art" has diminished our cultural, making political connections keep and witty. But instead, I want to talk about possums.

First of all, I'm not going to put that "o" at the beginning. They're possums.

I know a lot of people seem to find them repulsive. I've had a few encounters with them, once startling one so badly it fell backwards into a faint, and I feel only sadness for them. It seems clear that in the evolutionary order of things, they are mostly here to (a) eat bugs or carrion and (b) be meat for somewhat bigger animals. They are endowed with slow metabolisms and little brains -- one source says possums "may have the smallest brain-to-body ratio among mammals". Its main defense is feigning death, which is not volitional on their part; it appears to be an involuntary nervous collapse triggered by terror. Playing possum described as "a near coma, which can last up to four hours. It lies on its side, mouth and eyes open, tongue hanging out, emitting both a green fluid from its anus and an odor putrid to most predators. Besides discouraging animals who eat live prey, playing possum also convinces some large animals that the opossum is no threat to their young."

But it's no defense against the threats presented by human beings.


Aside from being North America's only marsupial, possums are distinctive for having bifurcate penises and vaginas (penii and vaginii?) I could only find a decent image of the penis, you'll just have to imagine the vagina. Reminds me of that old joke about the guy who had five penises. His pants fit him like a glove.
[(a) Clasper of dogfish (Squalus). Glans penis of (b) opossum, (c) ram, (d) bull, (e) short-tailed shrew, (f) man, (g) Echidna.]

A few years ago, I read about a fascinating study done on the life span of possums, and that's what comes to my mind when I hear the name. They tend to die during the first year of life, and a 2-year-old possum has reached extreme longevity. Twenty years ago, scientist and author Steven N. Austad "trapped healthy 18-month-old opossums, then trapped them again just a few months later, and found them lame, half blind, balding, and full of parasites. Austad decided that opossums age and breed relatively quickly because they are easy targets for predators." In his 1997 book Why We Age: What Science Is Discovering about the Body's Journey Through Life, Austad wrote "“If a predator is likely to kill you in the next few weeks or months, it makes little sense to waste resources on a long-lasting, effective immune system or an array of free-radical defenses. It is better evolutionarily to reproduce copiously, and the sooner the better.”

Planned obsolescence, in other words.

To test this theory, Austad tracked down possums who lived on some of the Georgia Sea Islands, where there are few or no natural predators and, significantly, often no vehicles. Sure enough, these Paradise Island possums lived 50% longer, had second breeding seasons with smaller litters, and their overall health was much, much better. They were happy, unstressed possums.

Austad carried these findings back to his consideration of humans. "Austad ascribes our anomalous longevity to the low-risk environment we have created for ourselves. Human beings live twice as long as captive chimpanzees, he notes, despite the fact that the two species share 99 percent of their genes: 'I think the key has been our social system—our mutual means of support and our ability to manipulate the environment.'"

Ah, yes, our mutual means of support. This should be our greatest gift to earth, don't you think?

Instead, I see the quote from Gunner Dick about how the tortured, permanent prisoners at Guantánamo "have everything they could want -- they're living in the tropics". Perhaps his envy of them is why he's building his prosecution-proof bolthole in Paraguay. Sarcasm aside, last month I signed the petition started by Representative Robert Wexler, Florida Democrat, calling for impeachment hearings against Cheney. I think impeachment is something we as a nation are lusting for in our hearts, and it would do us all good to see it "on the table" and proceeding apace. As a result of my signing the petition, I received the following e-mail from Rep. Wexler:

"As we prepare to celebrate the New Year, my resolution is to hold George Bush and Dick Cheney accountable for their abuses of power.

In the last days, we have made real progress:

The mainstream media has awakened to this movement and to the extraordinary support you have given it. Your calls, letters, and emails have clearly made a difference. Already 140,000 people have joined us in demanding impeachment hearings for Vice President Dick Cheney by signing up at WexlerWantsHearings.com.

The power of these combined voices are already shaking up the established order on Capitol Hill and throughout the mainstream media:

This week, the Miami Herald printed an article on our efforts that was syndicated in papers across the country, including the Detroit Free Press, Philadelphia Inquirer, Fort Worth Telegram, Contra Costa Times, Sacramento Bee, Houston Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, NC News & Observer, and others. (Click HERE to read the article.)

In addition, CBS4 in Miami became the first station we know of to run a television segment about the call for hearings. (Video of that can be found HERE.)

Perhaps most importantly, just this morning the Philadelphia Inquirer courageously ran the full editorial I drafted along with my fellow Judiciary Committee members Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (R-WI). (View it HERE .) Congratulations to the Inquirer for their willingness to publish a viewpoint that is so widely held by Americans – yet one that other leading national newspapers refused to publish.

We have come so far in just a few weeks. No longer can the mainstream media ignore our efforts and dismiss this cause as only part of the fringe left.

Already we are seeing tangible results from our combined effort. As you already know, Congress is well behind the American people on this issue. This is an uphill battle, but it's one that has to be fought. It should not be the whole agenda, but it needs be *on* the agenda.

When Congress reconvenes in January, I plan to present a list to my Judiciary Committee colleagues of every single person that signed up at WexlerWantsHearings.com. I will go to more of my colleagues and ask them to join a letter in support of hearings. We will build on the momentum you have given us.

Last week, I spent an hour on Blog Talk Radio outlining thoughts and answering questions in regards to this work. So many people hit their site that their servers temporarily went down. If you'd like to hear the archived audio, please click HERE.

Let's do our best to further spread the message so that list will be up to a quarter million. Please continue to blog, email friends, and insist that your family and friends sign up!

Thanks for your commitment.

Congressman Robert Wexler

P.S. I have been running online ads to make more people aware of our impeachment campaign. If you are interested in making a contribution to this effort you can click here."

The best way out of stress is to take power, take action, and foster systems of "mutual support". We're not possums. Feigning death, idolizing mayhem or looking for sofa-sized art really isn't working for us. Claro.

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