it’s around here somewhere…maybe in the food pantry or in the dirty laundry basket, or under the clothes that should be in the dirty laundry basket.  regardless, it’s been misplaced…all that get up and go and vim and vigor…gone…and dammit, i miss it.

but then, i know it will return as soon as the acrid taste of 600 (+) km of surveys and 500 (+) stops leaves my system. 

as i’ve mentioned numerous times, what i am experiencing is wholly cyclic and something i’ve dealt with for the last 25 owl springs.  it’ll go away.

i hope. 

it’s the owler’s version of seasonal affective disorder.

plus, i have to develop my innate sense of disdain before the tourist season begins and in order to be completely disdainful, one must not be sad.    

lupine are poking through last year’s vegetative detritus and it won’t be long before all the things that i fogot to pick up before the first snowfall will be hidden by new growth and subsequently, run over by my lawnmower.  last year, i mowed my lawn twice.  

garlic is green and growing and several pieces of kale i overwintered under straw are pushing out new growth. 

if it can’t be winter, i guess it’s okay that it’s spring. 

i don’t sound very convincing, do i?

right around 2300 last night, i had had enough.  enough of surveys for another year.  enough of weariness.  enough of reflection.  it was time to get on with the important thing in life like…i don’t know…reconciling my most recent rash of poor decisions.

i knew i should have bought chunky monkey.

actually, there are still around 10 miles i could survey, but with the rivers open and spring making its acoustic presence known, i would be fighting against the mother of all background noises.

next will be nest box checks and if the motivation returns,fixing the boxes that need fixing, all the while clamoring for the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.  

damn, that would be nice.

it was a good survey year.  only the first couple of nights were bereft of song.  it was cold, but being a nocturnal viking, i can deal with that.  i even had the unforseen experience of picking up a new boreal on friday night, the very night i wanted a spotless mind.

i need to shake things up.  i tried that yesterday, parking my car at the cascade river and riding the 10.2 miles into work.  at one point during my nefarious youth, my bicycle and i were inseparable. 30 years ago this summer, i pedaled from l.a. to st. paul, wondering the whole 2,394 miles, why i didn’t just get a ride with my brother.

feathers in the hat don’t mean as much upon reflection. 

 i think i’m at the point in life where i just need to find some new feathers.

owl feathers would be nice.

the last thing i needed to see when i woke up this morning was the 2″ of fresh snow.  that and the empty ben and jerry’s ice cream container in the garbage, both of which decried excesses; one of nature and one suggesting poor self-control. 

i can live with the snow, but because i couldn’t put the spoon down last night, i have no ice cream today.

at work, everyone was bitching.  not about my presence in the building but about the weather.  democrats and republicans, rich and poor, gays and straights, enlightened (…ahem…) and the unenlightened…all were having a hard time coming to grips with the persistence of winter.   bad weather is the great unifier, like an fdr fireside chat or the mortar in donald’s trump impressive comb-over.

there is good though.  first, i was able to watch 2, game 7 quarterfinal games in the stanley cup.  second, the weather means i don’t even have to give owling a consideration, which is sometimes when i am at my owling best.  and finally, i feel closer to everyone.  like we are all brothers and sisters under the same, thatched, meteorological roof.

it’s a good feeling, but it’s all based on something i wish would just go away.

there i was, hurriedly trying to get seeds sorted and poked into the dirt, when i heard a vehicle approach.  like the good, northern minnesota curmudgeon that i am, my first response was “who the hell is that?” 

i went to the door and in front of me, was a chevy panel van with the silhouette of a cow on the side.  it was the meat truck.

up here, we aren’t too proud to remove the tenderloins from the loser in an ungulate/vehicle collision and if there’s meat on the bone, we don’t give it to the dog, we make soup. 

the driver got out and directly asked if i had a freezer. 

“yeah, but it’s pretty small.”

“do you eat meat?”

“i prefer meat to all the other food groups, except ice cream.”

he looked at my solar panel array, and with a curious blend of befuddlement and envy said “you’re kind of living everyone’s dream here… do those things work?” 

“perfectly”, i said.

the last sales-types that came to my door were a flock of jehovah’s witnesses and they didn’t make a sale. but this guy had meat, not blind promises of eternal life so when he talked, i listened.

“look, i ran out of cash and i need to get back to the cities.  would you be interested in some meat?”

“what do you have?”

with that, he opened the van and crawled up into a chest freezer.  he opened the lid and threw 8 flat boxes onto the floor.  he opened each one, and the pride in his product was palpable.  there were ribeyes and t-bones and ground sirloin and flat iron steaks and bacon-wrapped tenderloin. 

“nice,” i said.

then the meat man began his pitch.  “look, i need gas and i’m willing to sell you some of this for cheap…for gas.”

“i don’t have much freezer space.”

“these stack easily…space saving, shrink-wrapped, grain fed beef, from pipestone minnesota.”

“which meat can i have?”

“anything you want.  two packages for 40 bucks worth of gas, and a little food money.”

perhaps the sound i heard in the distance wasn’t the roar of the mighty superior but instead, it was the sound of the turnip truck moving on to pay a visit to another clueless, north shore male. 

“hmmm….” i thought while performing a cerebral price check of similar product in the local grocery store…”that’s a pretty good deal” and with that, the meatman didn’t make a sale, i did.

i grabbed a flat pack of ribeyes and ground sirloin and followed the van with the cow into tofte where i pumped gas into his tank, shook hands, then departed to admire my bounty.

i opened the boxes and like he said, they fit smartly into the freezer.  nice, red meat that doesn’t look anything like roadkill.  and to make things even better, i now know what the meat truck looks like.

okay…okay…enough of that sensitivity shit.  i mean, it wasn’t like i was going to stop ordering the double cheeseburger with bacon basket at culvers.  it was simply a matter of exercising my right as a biologist/human being to show that what sets us apart from the predator and the prey is our ability to empathize.  we can observe and emote, but that doesn’t mean i am going to go out and defibrillate a dying raccoon. 

there.  i feel better now.

tangled brown of summers’ past….

just kidding.  

the coolest thing i have seen in my backyard in a while occurred shortly after the raccoon took his sorry striped tail and sauntered to his demise (please note: owlman’s callous disregard for a dying creature). 

as anyone who has read this or knows me knows, i love my stand of decadent old forest aspen.  half the trees have fallen or been snapped like matchsticks, and it’s kind of a mess…like the boreal forest’s version of male pattern baldness (whimsical aside:  is there a “rogaine for aspen”?), but it is a dynamic feature in the landscape. 

in my time here i have had owls and woodpeckers and marten and squirrels and fisher and a host of other species that utilize the trees for eating or hiding or resting or singing or digesting or observing the dashing biologist below them.    

one cavity tree in particular, with its 5 cavities,  is especially familiar because i can see it from my favorite chair, where i can sit and eat raw cookie dough without having to do a thing.   the pileateds excavated a hole 4 years ago and subsequently, used it to raise their brood.  this winter, they (the species…not necessarily the same birds) used the nest hole for roosting, which meant most evenings right around 1700 (5 pm), the male came in and disappeared down the hole for the night. 

with spring here, breeding is moving to the forefront in the woodpecker community.  there is drumming and calling and courtship galore.  yesterday, with great fanfare, the male pileated arrived with surging hormones and breeding season attitude, and started drumming on a rotten aspen (talk about percussion).  he then moved to the cavity, looked around, poked his head in and disappeared.  immediately, a flicker flew out of the same hole to a nearby branch and started squawking at the pileated, who paid the flicker no nevermind, and went back down the hole for a good night’s sleep.  

30 seconds of intrigue and thereafter, my yard was brown and drab and silent.

after an evening of owling last night,  i too tried to get a good night’s sleep, but once the male saw-whet started in, i was drawn to the aspen yet again.

no sooner had i typed about the lamentable trio of skunks and raccoons and owlers, when lo and behold, i found a raccoon scavenging in my back yard after work today.  my first reaction was “you bastard!” because that is what happens when doctor nature taps me in the knee with his reflex hammer.  i mobilized and was about to send the coon scurrying, when i noticed that his back leg wasn’t functioning as the intelligent designers intended and so, i sat.

he moved about 40 feet and lay in a swatch of lifeless bluejoint grass, where his head sunk.  my disdain turned to empathy.  life and death, but death in a context where i can see it and understand that despite survival and getting to this point on the march to summer, it wasn’t enough.  perhaps it is old or diseased or injured.  perhaps it will recover, but to do that, it must avoid the predators who saunter through my property in search of an easy meal.  whatever occurs, the humanist in me was able to see that indifference and disdain are always eager to give way to compassion and recognition that i was able to watch an animal crawl into the alder,  knowing i will never see it again, but that i was able to say good-bye.

no sooner had the pumpkin-colored moon raised its head above the sawtooth mountain (lol…mountains…) range when the woodcock started in with their prurient peenting.  like last week, they were in open areas of young forest or…as the moon got brighter…on the road; the point being that when wildlife are trying to get busy, it doesn’t matter where they get busy. 

lucky bastards.

most of the rivers and streams are open, but with the recent cold (10 degrees last night) much of the moisture-bearing snow has yet to meet its demise.  the combination of sound and pressure and displaced air near the larger open rivers is an overwhelming experience that, like my frequent pondering of the stars and galaxies and planets, makes me recognize how completely trivial i am.   

if there are owls singing, one would never know.  

i surveyed till 1 this morning and slept fitfully, then was up at 7 to stumble into work.  stumbling defines nearly 4 months of my owling life, but the stumbling has definitely increased now that i have to balance my daytime and nighttime shifts.  i can tell you this though, if i don’t go out, i will miss something that will make me say to myself “if i hadn’t been here, i never would have _________ (insert tactile sense) that.  

as often happens though, the winds are streaming off the lake and i will get a nocturnal reprieve for an evening.  no telling though, what i might miss.