Suburban Ninja Turtle Cops

Several years ago, a friend and I were on our way home from Syracuse to Cazenovia when we came upon an odd site: a girl was standing in the middle of a side road, talking on a cordless phone.

As far as I was concerned, there were only two possible reasons for the scenario: 1) Freddy, Jason or Michael was about to attack from an unknown direction and she was trying to maintain her visibility, or 2) she was trying to protect something in the road from being run over.

Since I was sort of busy watching the road in front of me, I hadn’t paid much attention to the pavement at the girl’s feet.
“I’ll bet it was a turtle,” I said authoritatively to my friend. “We’re going back.”

“Okay…”

What was she going to say? I was driving.

Sure enough, there this girl stood, terrified, guarding a reptile of unknown origin. She was afraid to get within six feet of it, but she was determined not to let it be a statistic in this town where everyone looks like they fell off an L. L. Bean truck as it drove across a postcard photo.

I wanted to hug her for being so smart on two fronts: First of all, many turtles’ populations are in trouble due to human “development” and traffic running through their habitat. Second, distance was very wise, as this beauty, about 14 inches across, was a snapper. Her mouth was big enough to have been of permanent consequence to any adult digits and probably entire hands of young children. I say ‘her’ for a number of reasons, the first of which is that the male of the species, like other species, need not leave the comforts of home for the purpose of procreation. It is almost always the ladyfolk you find in the roads.

As I explained all this to the young lady, the police arrived to save the day. A man came out of a nearby business to see how he could help.

“We need something for her to grab onto or a big box we can use to move her to the pond,” I said.

“Just stand back,” said Officer Friendly.

“You’re not going to try picking her up, are you? This is a snapping turtle.”

“I’ve got it under control,” he said, ignoring me.

Got it. This guy graduated from Girls Don’t Know Nuthin’ School. I graduated from You Have to Try and Protect People From Themselves.

“Listen,” I pleaded. “I’ve raised turtles since I was a toddler. This one can do some serious damage…”

Leather fingertipless driving gloves do little for a 6-foot-2-inch 250-pound man when a 25-pound ancient ball of rage whips around and chomps down on his unprotected wrist.

I watched in fascinated horror as Friendly danced in pain and fear in the middle of the street, trying not to scream (like a girl). Mama Snapper just held on for dear life like an involuntary carnival ride patron.

While my eyes were taking all of this in, the businessman-bystander ran and came back with a snow shovel, and my head was thinking, “I am not seeing this.” Friendly finally came to his senses and bent over, about crying, to encourage the savage beast to let go. When the ride came to a halt, the passenger stepped calmly away from the red-faced ride and onto the waiting snow shovel where she enjoyed a labor-free ride back to the pond.

I dragged my friend back to the car where we doubled over laughing. We got out of Postcard Land before we got a ticket for obnoxious enjoyment of “I told you so.”

Well, Life’s School of Hard Knocks may be a remedial college, but almost everyone walks out educated. It’s not like I wasn’t summa cum laude myself…but I haven’t lost any body parts over it yet. I’ve come close, but that’s another story.

Reprinted courtesy Eagle Newspapers, Syracuse, New York.

You’re never too old to be immature

If you’ve ever lived with a houseful of kids, you are undoubtedly quite familiar with a number of phrases which seem to proliferate families from generation to generation:

“Don’t you have homework to do?”

“Keep both hands on the wheel.”

“Turn that music down.”

“Pay attention in class.”

“Keep your tongue in your mouth.”

“See you after school.”

“You are so immature.”

“You really need to get to bed now.”

The deviation in my home is that these things were said…by my children…to me. (Except the last one, which came from my husband. To me. “Yes, Dad,” I replied.)

I know it’s been said that, as we age, children’s and parents’ roles reverse. I just never thought it would be this soon. Worse, the older I grow, the more juvenile I become.

Now, I’m still very responsible. I dutifully carry out all the obligations I’ve undertaken (and even some that were foisted upon me), and I have a pretty strict value system to which I adhere; however, I am powerless to behave if there is fun to be had.

After much pondering about how this could have happened, I think I have identified the source of my decline.

When my son, my first, was just two-and-a-half years old, I decided to take a cross-country drive to my parents’ home in Oregon. A friend, much more experienced in traveling-with-a-child-induced-neurosis said I was out of my mind. For those readers who have missed some of my earlier columns, I have never denied this.

Anyway, in her attempts to prepare me for the hell known as “Long Car Trips with Toddlers,” she told me, “…for example, every time they see a cow, they’ll moo. After a while, when you’re tired and have gotten off track for the twentieth time, it gets a little abrasive.”

My mother once said something about how when adults act like children, it surprises the children into behaving…I think it was something like that, but I really wasn’t giving her my full attention, and I was never having children, anyway, so the joke was on her.

Ha.

Ha.

So, I decided to beat him to the punch. Since May of 1983, I have mooed at nearly ever cow I’ve ever seen. The child was a saint, but I think my husband and brother wanted to murder me.
I found out it was kind of fun, and I liked it.

So I started teaching all the kids at the family holiday dinners how to do train-wrecks with their mashed potatoes. Or have water fights with my kids while we are doing the dishes. Or tell kids how to blow bubbles into the vents in their parents’ cars just right, so that the whole car gets filled with bubbles (why should Lawrence Welk have all the fun?). I am also known for ambushing the unexpecting individual with a squirt gun.

The list goes on and on. It’s all in good fun and nobody gets hurt. And when my kids groan with embarrassment, I warn them: just wait ‘til I’m 90.

Of course, things won’t be one iota different then, except people will whisper behind my back: “Just ignore her. She’s 90, you know.”

In the meantime, I’ll be grabbing all the hilarity I can get, because life is far too short to worry about being staid all the time.

Despite their protests, I know my kids love me. In fact, they were all fighting over me the other day.

“She’s not ever living with me.”

“I’m not taking her.”

“No. YOU take her.”

They are probably picking out just the right nursing home even as I speak.

Reprinted courtesy Eagle Newspapers, Syracuse, New York.

The eastern bluebird: the New York State conspiracy?

You can’t move more than three inches anywhere in Madison County without running into an event centered around bluebirds. Where you find bluebird activities, the wily John Rogers of Brewerton is not far behind.

Rogers is a “bluebird expert” from Oswego County, and he travels all over Central New York teaching people about “bluebird habitat” and how to build “bluebird nesting boxes.”

Rogers was also fundamental in establishing the North American Bluebird Society. He is an unbelievably kind gentleman who patiently works with people of all ages, repeatedly answering the same questions over and over again.

The operative word is ‘unbelievable.’

I have lived in Upstate New York a few days shy of 26 years now, and have heard “New York state bird” this and “bluebird” that. Yet, in all that time, and despite my REALLY looking for them, I have never, ever actually laid eyes on a bluebird. I stopped alongside the road at every little wooden box for years, some of which even bear a New York State seal beneath them, to find NOTHING.

This can only mean one thing: it’s a conspiracy. Only after launching an exhaustive investigation into the matter did I find out how deep this thing goes.

First there are the workshops. For a small, uniform fee, workshop participants can build a bluebird house. These events usually are free, to lure unwary environmentally conscious individuals into listening to the free information. Once there, they almost always go along with the crowd, shell over their money and start hammering.

But the houses weren’t bringing in enough dough, and our green-friendly consumers were getting suspicious when blue flying objects failed to appear around birdie condos. THEY brought in reinforcements.

Landscape architects were brought in to convince the bluebird-less box-builders that the homes, though lovely as they were, couldn’t attract the birds on their own. Special botanical support was required, and the landscape architects were only too happy to develop a list of bountiful bushes, scrumptious shrubs and tasty trees on which the little blue guys could feast.
Still they didn’t show.

Enter the “society.” Actually, now there are several.

These societies have come up with bluebird nesting box instructions that would make explosives-handlers cringe. The architectural renderings for these structures make those for the Sears Tower pale by comparison.

They must be exactly this size, this shape, this thickness and this color. The entrance must be X far from the floor and precisely Y in diameter. Failure to comply with any of these specifications will result in bluebird absentia.

As if all this isn’t enough to scare off the faint-of-heart, now come the monitoring instructions.
Basically, nesting box builders are to build these absolutely flawless dwellings and place them in remote areas where it is near impossible to see them. Then they are ordered to monitor them.
Monitoring involves weekly bird-home invasions to make sure no interlopers have usurped the residence. Of course there are interlopers, because there’s no such thing as the Eastern bluebird.

These societies have gone to great lengths in describing the characteristics of bluebird nests against those of the potential invaders. “Box monitors” have to physically open each bluebird abode and make sure what they see is evidence of bluebird inhabitation and not another evil flying object.

Finally, the bluebird home developer is supposed to build trails of these tweetie-townhouses that need to be meticulously cared for at least weekly.

There’s no point in trying to get the state involved in any kind of investigation, because they have given the conspiracy their stamp of approval.

Great Swamp Conservancy Executive Director Michael Patane swears he has bluebirds living on the GSC property, and he is so emphatic, I believe he’s really convinced himself it’s true. I’m sure the “societies” must be throwing some greenbacks his way to keep him hosting these box-building workshops.

Well, the Spring Migration Festival at the GSC is coming up soon, and I plan to put up a camera and put an end to all this nonsense once and for all. In the meantime, the emperors should all get dressed because I’m onto them.

Reprinted courtesy Eagle Newspapers, Syracuse, New York.

Birds, bees pale by comparison

Almost from the time their children are born, parents start sweating the day they will have to have the dreaded talk. THE TALK. The OHMIGOD, S/HE WANTS TO KNOW ABOUT THE BIRDS AND THE BEES talk.

I’ve got a news flash for you, Mom and Dad: I’d rather answer sex questions until my eyes bleed than to address some of the scenarios that have spewn forth from my darlings’ mouths. Here, I offer a sampling of things no parent ever wants to hear, especially over the telephone 30 miles miles from home.

“The light on the aquarium kept going out, so I kept turning up the temperature.”

Boiled neon tetras for dinner, anyone?

“You said don’t call unless it’s an emergency.” (Upon arriving home to find two inches of standing water in the dining and living rooms, after defining an emergency as “…if it’s bleeding, not breathing or on fire.” My bad.)

“Mrs. X next door thinks it needs stitches.”

When Mrs. X is a former M*A*S*H nurse and the queen of understatement, this may indicate an amputation.

“A tree fell on the house, and there’s a family of chipmunks hanging out on the kitchen table.” (Anyone who’s ever complained of a mouse or two has never had the pleasure of sharing their abode with a family of displaced chipmunks. To add insult to injury, Satan the Cat goes hunting and rescues and brings into the house, uninjured, several of their friends and members of their extended family.)

“Why is there spaghetti on the ceiling?” (Why IS there spaghetti on the ceiling, indeed? Incompetent sitter refused to let 4-year-old child eat until she could properly pronounce ‘spaghetti.’ Frustrated and hungry child threw plate. Straight up. Mom must have been heavily sedated after arriving home to discharge said sitter from her duties, as she has no recollection of how the cleaning task was accomplished.)

“This is the school. Your child is running a fever and vomiting. Please come get him/her immediately.” (You’re joking, right? I drop off a perfectly good child in the morning, and the school makes them ill. Everyone there is already exposed to the bubonic plague, so I think they should keep them. Besides, who wants to deal with that mess?)

“Did you hear about my accident?” (Nope. And I don’t want to hear about it now. In fact, maybe not ever.)

“Is it normal for a hamster to sleep on her back without moving all day?” (Yessirree, Bob. Right up to the time of the little rodent funeral.)

But my all-time favorite heart attack had to have been, “Don’t worry, Mom. I put the fire out.” (What’s to worry about? My boss peeled me off the ceiling.)

Reprinted courtesy Eagle Newspapers, Syracuse, New York.