Walking with mr. Coe: sociopath and/or werewolf edition

Jason and I started walking Roscoe together on a regular basis recently. I love the three of us walking into town together. I love waving hello to our neighbors as we pass. I love that Roscoe waits attentively for us at the door of the store, and that the owner gives him treats as we leave. I love that, like the store owner, the winos and drunks on the park benches in town are literally delighted when they see Roscoe (it's weird, we're used to it and it's harmless).* I love that I get to walk with the two of them, though I have to admit that I don't think either of them care as much about the group walks as I do. Jason, at least, does it because he knows it makes me happy, but the dog couldn't care less who's doing the walking or how many of us there are.

Look at that dog go, full speed ahead! Roscoe has this home-store-home, Glen Arbor Drive circuit memorized.

Here he is at his favorite ivy patch on Glen Arbor.

Take a look at that insanely happy face above. A walk a day keeps the neurosis at bay.

On this afternoon's walk, I was able to snap some photos of the missing cat flyers that have been popping up in Ben Lomond over the past couple of months. These are just the two on our Glen Arbor circuit; there are tons of others (of other cats) tacked up around town.

The one above has been up for quite some time -- three months. The one below is "more fresh." SAD.

Oddly, I wasn't the one to take notice of all the missing cat flyers, Jason was. It may be because I'm just not that into cats** -- and Jason is -- but, in any case, I'm jealous that Jason made the Jessica Fletcher-esque old lady detective observation and not me. 

A couple of weeks ago, Jason said that he was concerned about the amount of missing cat flyers. When I asked why (because I'm a jerk who doesn't care for cats), he told me that he suspected that there must be teenaged boys in the neighborhood abducting and killing neighborhood cats. And then I said: THAT'S CRAZY. 

Once again, I'm jealous that Jason's having the weird old lady thoughts and not me. 

Rather than blame the missing cats on burgeoning young sociopaths, I actually think that it's coyotes. OR WEREWOLVES. I CAN PLAY THIS GAME JUST AS WELL AS HE CAN. 

But, no, really, I think it's coyotes.*** Which isn't any less scary! We've been having a lot of late night/early morning coyote pack action in the neighborhood lately. Few night-scares are scarier than waking up in the dark to the sounds of a yipping coyote pack. They sound like horrible old screaming crones. SPOOKY. 

I'll keep you updated. Or, actually, Jason might. This seems to be his crusade. 

* MOUNTAIN LIVING. 

** It isn't that I actively dislike them -- except for maybe one in particular whose name starts with an H and ends in a Y SARAH T KNOWS. 

*** Or a mountain lion! It's been a while since we've had a mountain lion prowling around, though, and word travels pretty fast if there's a new one so it's unlikely.

Cuchi Time: Turkeys at Dusk

I've been waiting for weeks -- weeks! -- for the opportunity to photograph these local wild turkeys. I first heard about them in early July, when my visiting parents saw them walking up my street one morning. A couple of weeks later, Roscoe and I ran into them two blocks from the house on a walk around the neighborhood. It was creepy yet fascinating: when I first saw them, I thought they were plastic yard statues. Even though there were twenty of them. TWENTY. I stood staring for a couple of minutes before my neighbor cracked open her front door to warn me that yes, they were real, and, yes, they moved in unison like horrible feathered dinosaurs. Since then, I've occasionally glimpsed their ghostly, weird turkey silhouettes slowly passing just beyond the front yard fence, but never had enough time to grab the camera. 

Over the weekend, I finally had the opportunity to take some photos when they flew onto our roof and invaded our yard. Flew onto our roof and invaded our yard.

A few caveats:

These photos don't do the turkeys justice. One: they look a lot smaller than they really are. The males were pretty humongous, at least twenty pounds, the hens only a little smaller. Two: they blend in with the scenery all too well (I guess that's the point). Three: there were so many of them, it was impossible to capture them all in the same photograph frame.

Would you have noticed the two turkeys in the oak tree over the studio if I hadn't pointed them out?
I don't think I would have. 

Having these wild turkeys flock in the yard was simultaneously awesome -- cuchi! -- and actually kind of scary. We kept Roscoe inside the house as a precautionary measure, and tried to wait them out. They spent a good hour making their rounds through the front yard, scratching and pecking in the lawn and garden beds. I eventually started to get worried that they'd completely rip up the garden and stood at the front door clapping and yelling at them until they moseyed on over to the fence and flew over it.

I see nine turkeys in this photo. There were at least five more on the other side of the hammock.
(I took this photo through my bedroom window because I'm a SCAREDY CAT)

I would be lying if I said that were the only thing I was worried about. They made me nervous, duh. Don't laugh! If they were a hoard of raccoons or skunks, anyone would have freaked. Just because they're poultry doesn't mean they aren't a threat, especially in large numbers. Have you heard of the horrible Martha's Vineyard Tom Turkey case?* Don't you remember The Birds? (I'm only a little bit joking here) These two avian horror stories spliced and bounced around in my brain the entire time they were creepily pecking and scratching away in my yard. I was relieved that I didn't have to actually chase them out of the yard, though now I have to worry about whether or not my neighbors are feeding them -- one more thing to be a crazy old lady about!

Tippi Hedren in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963)

***
* The This American Life episode on which I originally heard the story, "Poultry Slam 2011", is fantastic and funny. Listen to it here.

Walking with Mr. Coe: Old County Road

Things have been quiet on the blog since we left Santa Cruz for (what was to be) a quick family visit at the beginning of August. As mentioned in my last post, we drove down to LA for the Mars Science Lab landing. That was two weeks ago. Jason came back up to Santa Cruz on his own a couple of days later, and Roscoe and I ended up hanging out for a week and a half longer, enjoying the perks of staying with Mom and Dad (excellent home-cooked meals, clean and comfy house, air-conditioning, LA museums and restaurants, local hiking trails, etc. etc. etc.). It was wonderful, and we very well may have stayed on for another week (and a half?) if it weren't for a surprise email offering a last-minute job interview. That got us back up here super quick. More on that later. 

Before leaving for LA, though, Roscoe and I took a final early morning walk in our little mountain town. We usually walk in our immediate neighborhood, and along our beloved Love Creek Road, but that morning I took us across the San Lorenzo River and into the neighborhood carved into the side of Ben Lomond Mountain. We walked up from highway 9 and took a left onto (the) Old County Road.

You get to walk through a pretty, little residential neighborhood for the first bit, but as the road winds around the mountain up above the river, you pass through a dense patch of vegetation. And then you get to walk over this awesome and wonderful redwood bridge, over a gully with a creek feeding into the river. It's pretty scary, actually. The bridge is old, and has enormous redwood slabs that are weathered and cracked and have big (okay, not so big) gaps between them. Because I'm an old person with old person vertigo (I know), I have to walk down the center of the bridge because if I get too close to the railing (that doesn't even come up to my waist) I feel like I'm about to lose total control of my body and throw myself head-first over the railing like an insane woman. VERTIGO. But I just walk down the center and remind myself that the people who live up Brooks Road drive their trucks and cars on the bridge daily and that, just like Lucille Two in Arrested Development, "we're okay, we're okay." 

What does that sign mean? Can you really drive an 11 ton big-rig over this bridge?
Why bother with the 6 ton limit for the smaller truck? Why why why?

Once you make it over the terrifying bridge, you're met with this lovely gate and signage. The neighborhood watch sign is new. A couple of times, Roscoe and I have walked beyond the ominous gate, but we never make it very far. Maps show that Old County Road continues, carved into Ben Lomond Mt., high above the San Lorenzo River, for a bit longer before crossing the river and meeting back up with Highway 9, still within the town limits. In reality, though, who really knows (certainly not us because I'm a rule-following, vertigo-inflicted old lady): rock and mud slides have made a mess of the old abandoned road and I always feel like I'm being watched by mountain lions and werewolves from the fallen tree trunks and boulders up above. Maybe I'll bring a friend along and really give it a try, until then, Roscoe and I turn around to go back down the mountain at this point.

The aforementioned Brooks Road continues up the mountain to the left of the ominous gate.

Re-crossing the redwood bridge on the way back home. 

In weekend update news: today is my birthday; I'm currently sitting in front of my laptop with a shower cap on over a deep-moisturizing treatment for my hair; I'm preparing for the aforementioned interview for the teaching job that I have tomorrow, Emily will be mock-interviewing me sometime this afternoon; Jason and I will go downtown for a fancy dinner of my choice this evening (don't get too excited because I'll probably end up deciding on a cheeseburger at Betty's -- but then I WILL insist on going to a movie), and then I'll go to bed nice and early so I can get up with plenty of time tomorrow morning to GET IN THE ZONE. 

I wrote Lisa an email last Thursday telling her about this interview, asking her to think woo-woo thoughts for me the day of. She replied that she was going to "woowoo all over that shit" and it made me very happy. Perhaps you'll woo-woo, too?* I JUST BROKE MY BRAIN.

***
* I think it's hilarious that Deepak Chopra wrote a snarky little article defending woo-woo for the Huffington Post in 2009. Yes, I just found it when I googled woo-woo, IT'S MY BIRTHDAY. 

Shulie Photographs Love Creek

My (good-natured) passive aggressive berating in my last post inspired Shulie to finally go through all the photos she took on our excursion up Love Creek from a couple of weeks ago, and she's posted a select few on her photography blog.

Photograph by Shulamit Seidler-Feller, source.

I've made mention of a certain memorial up Love Creek Road in the past. I want to write about it myself in the (near!) future, but Shulie's beat me to the punch, and has some really lovely things to say about it in her own post that are worth reading. I highly recommend that you go check out Shulie's post on Love Creek -- and the rest of her blog, too!

Thank you, Shulie, the photos are beautiful!

Fourth Postcard of the Summer

So this completely terrifying mondo-postcard came in the mail today. 

Why doesn't the Virgin have eyebrows? WHY?? (Isn't it terrible that
the Virgin and Roscoe are looking at you at the same time? )

It was sent by my friend Shulie, you see. She drove up from LA with a friend for a super quick visit a couple of weeks ago, which was wonderful. We ate tacos and drank kosher Spanish wine, and then had brunch the next morning and napped and took a quick drive down Love Creek Road, the most famous road in Ben Lomond.*

Wasn't Jean Paul Gaultier the one who had the super embarrassing drunken, anti-Semitic meltdown at a Paris café?
And was fired from his fashion house and had to go to French court? And looks like a pirate? EXCELLENT. 
UPDATE 8/01/12: NO! It was John Galliano -- thanks for spoiling my fantasy, Shulie! 

Shulie took some photos** at the toy box memorial I alluded to in a previous post, and a couple more further down the creek. She's promised to share them with me (HINT HINT SHULIE), and I'm just dying of curiosity and anticipation.

Thanks for the monstrous Virgin, Shulie! It's already up on the fridge, right next to Eva Perón and Ché!

***

* I'm seriously starting to think that Love Creek Road needs its own tag. Okay, done.
** Did you know that Shulie is a very talented photographer? And that she has a photo blog? Go and see!

Walking with Mr. Coe: Roadside Blackberries

The early mornings have been cool and misty in the Santa Cruz mountains over the past 5 or 6 days, long-sleeves and knit hat weather -- welcome relief from the mega-heat blast we got last Saturday: high 90's, no wind. It was like being in an oven. I prefer this week's weather much more. Roscoe and I have been taking advantage of the morning cool, taking our walks through the neighborhood before the mist and gloom burns off mid-day. 

Ben Lomond is covered in blackberry bushes -- they grow wild along the backroads and even on highway 9 -- and the berries are just now starting to ripen. EXCITIIIING.

Here's an extra enormous blackberry bush along good old Love Creek Road. It's more of a hedge, and runs along the road for quite a bit. Roscoe likes it.

Oh yeah, that's a happy dog.

Mr. Coe has lots of favorite stops he insists that we make throughout town. They're all generally pee-mail stops, of course.

Roscoe, checking his pee-mail at one of his favorite telephone poles.
Note hidden sign in the background.

And now for some more weird and wonderful signage. Above and below, "No Trespassing: Keep Out" signs. 

"Private Property: Keep Out" JUST STATING THE OBVIOUS.

And here's a sad one:

She whistles like: tweet tweew.

I really hope they find their lost cockatiel. Whoever made this sign (and the tens more I found posted all around town) did a great job of covering all pertinent information: Sily doesn't talk, but she does have a distinctive whistle. That's good to know. I hope they find her.

Point of Contention: Squirrel's Nest

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been forced into some unsavory "arguments" in my front yard with a squirrel. The scene is always set in the same way: I'm lying in my hammock (see photo here), enjoying the stupendous outdoors, and a squirrel comes and sits high up in one of the oak tree's trunks and starts barking at me. 

And barking. And barking. 

And I stare at it. And it barks some more. And I stare. And it eventually moves further up the oak tree trunk (as it continues to bark at me), and we stare at each other until it finally shoots up the tree and jumps across to another and leaves. 

And for the longest time I thought: "What an jerk." Because, really, what was I doing to him/her/it? I was just lying in my hammock, minding my own business, reading my books or perusing the web on my laptop. Innocuous, innocent, unobtrusive. 

Until the afternoon that I chanced to gaze straight up from my supine position in the hammock.

Take a look: 

 Look closer...

 Now look closest.

That tree trunk you see is directly next to my hammock (in fact, it is the very trunk from which one of my hammock's ends hangs). That tangled knot of twigs and leaves and who knows what else that you see in the background of the photo(s) is a squirrel's nest. And, gathering from all the barking and glaring and staring and "arguments", is the squirrel nest of my little rodent foe.

I feel bad.

Said trunk is the the one from which said squirrel must climb to reach it's home.

I feel bad, but clearly not so bad that I abandon the hammock. And that makes me feel worse -- like some kind of horrible stealer of territory, a colonialist of front yard space, a neighborhood conquistador... But, you know what?

Whatever. It's a squirrel. It's an oak tree. It's a hammock. Let's all just get along.

Noche de San Juan

I've been looking at photographs from last night's celebrations in Spain on "El Huffington Post" (crazy that The Huffington Post is taking over the world... do check out the photos, though) and it sure looked like fun. I celebrated quietly here at home, lit a couple of candles and washed my face after midnight with ritualistic deliberation. Small stuff. 

     

Apart from the fire and water rituals, I did some "gathering of midsummer herbs". And rather than go tromping around in the surrounding hills and hollows up here in the mountains in the middle of the night, risking poison oak, mountain lion attack*, and wolf spider terrors**, just so I could come home with a handful of California sagebrush that, now that I think of it, grows in my own yard, I decided to plant my own batch of cooking herbs. I didn't get a chance to start up the veggie patch this spring, so this little herb collection will have to do for now. The symbolism isn't quite right, but we tend to have long Indian summers and annuals generally thrive with occasional bud pinching through the New Year, no need to start drying herbs now. 

Damn, I forgot to buy the sage!!!

I'm a lazy person, so I haven't transplanted them to the pots next to the kitchen door yet. Tomorrow. I've never grown/eaten/cooked with Cuban basil before; it's supposed to be similar to any sweet basil, but with a spicy flavor. Intriguing! Even better, it's a perennial.

And just in case you thought that I didn't end up having any St. John's magic come my way (or just a stroke of ordinary good luck), I stopped by my next door neighbors' yard sale on the way back from the farm & feed, and ended up leaving with a little treasure:

FANCYYY

Howard gave me a ridiculously good deal. As I gave him the cash for the typewriter, I blurted out, "Up in the Mission District in San Francisco, you wouldn't be able to find one of these for under $100!" SUCH A DUMB THING TO SAY. It needs a new ribbon, but all the keys and doodads seem to work, and it's really just beautiful. I'll post some proper photos once I'm finally able to test it out.

Addendum: I mixed up the two thymes in the photo identifying the midsummer herbs. The Orange Thyme is top center, and the French Thyme is bottom left. OOPSIES.

* There have been sightings of a lone adolescent mountain lion roaming around the neighborhood in the past week -- at dusk and at night, but sometimes during the day. We're hoping s/he's just passing through on the way to discovering new territories.
** Don't even dare do a Google image search -- DON'T YOU DO IT IT'S TOO TERRIBLE. 

Cuchi Time: Little Stinker

What should I spy with my little eye in the backyard this morning? 

A skunk baby. 

An adorable little skunk baby, sniffing around my backyard. Look at how super cuchi that little guy is. I couldn't get a clear shot because it was raining and I was simultaneously trying to photograph it from far away,* using my camera's digital zoom, and keep the dog Mr. Coe from seeing it and barking and spooking it.

It's a case of the cuchi tinged with the bittersweet though: where there's a skunk baby there's a skunk mama, and that's the last thing we need around here.** I'm going to have to throw a handful of mothballs under the deck and the shed at the bottom of the driveway (the last places skunks have tried nesting in). The babies are adorable, but I'd rather they be raised in somebody else's yard. 

* Skunks, apparently, are not born with stinking capabilities, but I wasn't about to take any chances. 

** It took over a month for the smell of burning rubber and household electronics to dissipate from Mr. Coe's coat after the great skunking of the winter of 2010. We tried the tomato juice, the vinegar, and even the expensive Nature's Miracle, nothing stopped Roscoe from smelling like a chemical-ly garbage can.

Walking with Mr. Coe

Roscoe and I went on a nice, long walk through the neighborhood early this morning. We decided to turn up Love Creek Road in order to stay cool as the morning got warmer, and stuck with it until the road narrowed to a single lane. The Santa Cruz Mountains are full of weird little nooks and crannies -- hollows and gulches -- full of strange tales, abandoned camps, ghosts, memories. Love Creek may be one of the most storied of them all. 

Approaching Love Creek Road, in Ben Lomond.

 It's a beautiful walk. The steep gulch walls provide near-constant shade for redwoods, moss, and ferns to grow, the road crosses the creek a handful of times, and there are quite a few nice little (and not so little) cabins to ogle at along the way.

Mr. Coe likes this walk especially, I think mainly because it's as close as he can get to going on a hike without hopping in the car and going to a local state park or wildlife reserve. No sidewalk to stick to, lots of stinky spots and bugs and bushes and undergrowth to tromp through right at the edge of the road. 

Roscoe, mountain scout

Though he does have to stay on leash.

"EXCUSE ME, CAN WE CONTINUE PLEASE?"

Love Creek, like most of the San Lorenzo Valley, is full of weird and wonderful signage. Especially "No Trespassing" signs. Like, everywhere. The last house up before the road narrows has an amazing road sign nailed up to a pole in the yard that reads "15 MPH ASSHOLE". I really wanted to take a picture, but was too scared to actually pull out my camera and do so lest I infuriate these people with such aggressive taste in yard decor. 

Love Creek residents like to clearly mark their PRIVATE PROPERTY. 

I didn't notice the sign below until we passed it for the second time on our way back down the creek towards town. I stood there looking at it for a long time, and just couldn't figure it out. What was there to witness? Had the evidence of the (maybe) witnessed event/thing been taken away? Was it the sand bags? Was there a slide? Was there a lot of water? Was it something else entirely? Was it an accident? Was it vandalism? Did it happen at night? Are they mad? Are they sad? Is there a reward?

So many questions.

I'd like to write more about Love Creek in the future; I think it's a super interesting place with a lot of valuable stories to tell. In the mean time, I'll leave a final photo of Roscoe checking out the toy box in the clearing right where the road narrows to pique your interest. 

Septic Woes

Oh, so sad. The house's septic system is troubled. There's a blockage between the septic tank and the leach fields, and we need to find it. Here's Jason digging a trench to nowhere. This picture was taken pretty early on. He dug another five feet after this was taken, which took another day and a half due to the insane network of ancient oak tree roots that he had to cut up and take out. All for nought, we subsequently learned that the pipe we were trying to expose had been abandoned nearly 20 years ago. We had to find the new pipe. So we started digging in the opposite direction. 

See that terrible cave underneath the concrete that we dug out? I had to crawl in there to search for the elusive new pipe. Just me, a trowel, and a tiny flashlight. And dirt and roots and dirt. But I found it. Guess which direction it was going in? 

That's right, it's going directly for the center of the cement patio, right where I've marked with blue chalk. A construction crew's coming tomorrow to cut a hole into the patio and search for the mythical distribution box that we think has been taken over by oak tree roots. Hopefully, everything will be fixed by tomorrow afternoon and we can get back to normal water/toilet/shower usage.

If you ever want to really come face-to-face with your finite resource consumption (specifically that of water for household use), try living in a mountain home with an out-of-commission septic system. We generally try to conserve water -- and gas, and electricity -- at home on a day-to-day basis, but this is ridiculous. Because we need for the pipe between the tank and the leach field to be empty in order to fix the system, we emptied the tank a week ago, and we need to keep it from filling up all the way to the pipe-line in the mean time. We're using as little water as possible when we do dishes, flushing infrequently (GROSS), and not using the shower at all. I've been showering at the gym, Jason's even resorted to "showering" in the yard with the garden house (don't laugh it wasn't funny yes it was okay I laughed). It's a good thing our washing machine is hooked up to a grey water system, if not I'd be washing laundry in a bucket in the yard. MOUNTAIN LIVING. 


If we're to look on the bright side, it's so far been an incredible learning experience. I know all kinds of things about double-chamber septic tanks and distribution boxes and leach fields and aerobic vs. anaerobic systems and etc. etc. etc. One evening, as I was gazing down on the sinister cement hatch covering the septic tank's output from the kitchen, I had a single, perfect Murder She Wrote realization:

The best place to rid oneself of a dead body? A septic tank. A terrible, stinky, watery grave, with loads of anaerobic bacteria to speedily reduce the corpse to sludge. You're welcome. And, of course, the best time to dump a body in a septic tank is when the outlet's already been dug up for maintenance reasons. It's the only way to not arouse suspicions. Jason is not amused.

Wish us luck.