Oklahoma Dreaming: Random Thoughts
by Donna Schoenkopf
- Yesterday I saw a huge brilliant yellow-green butterfly float through the air from the southeastern corner of my house down the hill to the little oak grove just above the pond.
- There are four distinctive kinds of grasses at Chigger Lake. I can tell them by their seeds. When I used to go out every morning and evening to snip grasses for the guineas, I noticed them. Some grass is taller than I am and has huge golden tassels, shaped like Christmas trees. The guineas liked them best. Another grass type has brown/black seeds, tightly clustered, but with leaves just like the first grass. The guineas liked them second best. Then there is the grass that has the prettiest seeds of all—a spray of tiny, tiny seeds at the ends of very fine filaments. The whole array looks like stars exploding. Very beautiful. The guineas didn't even pay attention to them. And finally a grass that has a spear-like tassel that has seeds that quickly turn to feathery things that fly away when touched. Guineas didn't like them at all.
- People here don't say, “I appreciate it.” They say, “I appreciate you.” Very nice.
- The local paper is ALIVE with political discussion. Rants, responses, accusations, logical reasonings. Very fun to read every day. AND they have a call-in section called Tri-County Speaks which prints phone calls people make to the paper. The subject matter is everything from not having garbage picked up to how stupid somebody is in the the Letters to the Editor section. And the want ads are very interesting. Thomas Jefferson said that if you want to really know what a community was like, read the want ads in the paper. Also the obituaries are not like California obituaries. They talk of the deceased as going to God, the names of older people are names I've never seen or heard of before, and only once have I read of a cause of death.
- Most wildflowers wilt instantly upon being cut. I learned this when I tried to bring Jim Paul (his grown-up name ... he used to be Jimmy) a bouquet of wildflowers when I went to his dinner party. The flowers were comical. Their pathetic little heads lolled over the edge of the tin can I had them in. Jimmy was gracious and sweet and displayed them in a place of honor. I had to laugh out loud. What a nice friend. What a weird bouquet. AND what an elegant dinner party ... an Alice in Wonderland backyard, with paths and hedges and graceful trees, all nooks and crannies, with sitting areas here and there, a beautiful covered deck, backed on two sides by red walls, covered with African and Tahitian masks ... and a graceful pool with rocks and grotto ferns and elephant ears. We had scrumptious and artistic hors d'oeuvres, margaritas galore, and a fabulous cold spaghetti pasta with shrimp. Then came the blackberry soup, for dessert. It was really, really good. Jimmy goes to New York a lot, and Europe, and Mexico. He brings everything back to Shawnee, his home. Once, many years ago, he said, “There's one good thing about Shawnee ... seeing it in the rear view mirror.” I think he's changed his mind.
- My 96-year-old first ex-mother-in-law came to visit and was so much fun and was so pretty that I'm afraid I gushed rather too much. She was up on all the latest politics and is a Hillary fan. She said she thought there would be not much of a turnout due to the fact that her women friends in her apartment building are all Hillary fans and will NOT be voting for Obama. She may be right.
- I have started letting my kitten, CheGuevara, out of the house during the day. Fearfully, I might add. Fidel, my long-deceased cat, was taken by SOMETHING, which is still lurking out there waiting for another orange tabby to eat. So when CheGuevara comes skipping back on the tips of his toes because he's so happy and excited from having been boinging around through the tall grass, I breathe a sigh of relief. So far, so good.
- Cats like to be in air-conditioned houses during really hot days. 106 degrees is just too much for them to tolerate. They sleep all day on the cool concrete floor.
- I gathered enough different kinds of wildflower seeds to fill an envelope and sent them to Carole and Jim in Hermosa Beach. Those two have taught me how to think of others. I love them. Too bad I hadn't thought of it earlier, when the REALLY cool wildflowers were in bloom.
- I have learned to notice the quality of light around me during the day. Today I realized the sun was not putting out its usual death rays and looked up to see an advancing mass of dark gray/black clouds approaching from the west. I went out and covered the guinea coop and came back in and in five minutes a sweet rain fell.
- Two different reactions to a loud noise by a cat and a kitten: I have had to deal with a large cat litter box because I have a kitten that I couldn't let outside...owls and hawks and coyotes, etc. Today I put the cat litter box outside. But it's a LARGE box and so when I got to the sliding glass door I just dropped it flat on the ground. There was a huge BOOM! Rosie the Cat split instantly, no hesitation. CheGuevara the Kitten dropped instantly and flattened himself out on the ground. I mean FLATTENED. Legs akimbo. I wonder which cat would have been eaten....
- I have figs on the fig tree Helen gave me. Her neighbor cut down their fig tree and Helen rescued some leafless pieces of trunk and brought one to me. I dug a shallow hole, covered some of of it with red clay dirt and watered it when I remembered to. And last week there were clusters of figs and leaves on it. That fig tree has a hell of a life force in it.
- Supermarkets are seriously different between California and Oklahoma. Seriously. But I think I will write a whole column on this one. Something to look forward to. Trust me.
- I see a new kind of insect every day. Today I saw an insect that looked like a hybrid of a grasshopper and a spider. It was grasshopper green, that luminescent green, and the texture of its carapace was that of a grasshopper. It had a grasshopper head. But its legs were long and spindly, like a spider's, and it didn't hop, it walked. I have seen beetles that have gorgeous orange markings on their black bodies. And there are praying mantises here, too.
- There are lots of frogs. Babies. They are adorable. They hop out from under things. They bang up against the back door. They hurtle through the air to get away from the monster ... me. Why is it that when a living thing is a baby, it is automatically adorable?
- Broken asphalt is wonderful packing material for the ravines that are left in the gravel driveway after a torrential rain. You can pick it up alongside country roads. Just throw it in your trunk and take it to where you need it. Good exercise, too.
- Grasshoppers die quickly if they get soaked.
And finally, a postscript to my story about my guineas. I have one left, a little hen. She has no distinguishing marks like some of the others I had. I couldn't tell you how she differentiated herself from the others, because she didn't. But she, out of all the others, was the one who lived.
After I let the last four guineas out of the coop, the rain came. They ran into the woods for shelter. The next day there was no sign of them. I was pretty sure they had all been eaten by the coyotes. I was sad, but also relieved. Seeing them get picked off one by one was freaking me out. I couldn't get them back in the coop. They were on their own.
The second day I saw a large bird fly from the pond to the trees. It was the size and general shape and color of a guinea. But I wasn't sure.
On the third day, early in the morning, I heard the familiar kack-kack of a guinea. I jumped out of bed and ran outside, and there, walking all by herself through the tall grass, was the little hen. She looked forlorn. My heart filled with love for her. I called to her, “Little Peeper, Little Peeper,” and she ran to me. I brought feed and water to her under the coop. She gobbled it down.
It's been four days since she's come back. CheGuevara the kitten, tries to jump her, stalking her through the grass and weeds, but she eludes him with hardly a ruffled feather. It rained again for two days, a deluge so strong we were on the national news, but she survived, soaking wet, through it all.
She kack-kacks in the morning. I feed her. She looks through the sliding glass door at me when I'm watching TV. She likes to be near me. The first time she saw me in the house, she tried to get in and crashed against the glass and screen. She knows better now.
I am the last member of her tribe.
Now THAT'S bittersweet.
Post-postscript:
It is a week later. I have no more guineas. This time I heard the final sounds of my sweet little hen at 4:30 in the morning, three days ago. It had been raining so she had stayed under the tarp-covered coop. There were no feathers. Just a knocked-over water dispenser.
It's over.
Please give my little hen a round of applause.
She really tried.
donna@fourstory.org
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