I wouldn’t have morning glories in my yard (mostly because I spent too long with toddlers roaming around) but fortunately, some of my neighbors do, and I get to admire them. Especially when the color is so achingly vibrant.
Sometimes the smallest beautiful thing can save an entire day, week, month, year. Never underestimate the tiny beauties. They can even save a life.
The weekend passed in a blur, between chores and getting wordcount in on Damage. The best thing about it was the rain moving in. It is now officially autumn, and I couldn’t be happier.
I always work best when the rains settle like an inverted grey bowl, tip-tapping the roof and window, hissing between leaves beginning to turn, plopping into puddles. Maybe it’s all the negative ions being thrown up, maybe it’s the ambient white noise, maybe it’s the petrichor, maybe it’s the cleaning of the air. Maybe it’s all of them.
I also watched Wes Craven’s Dracula 2000 and its two “sequels”, the latter only loosely related to the first movie but starring Jason Scott Lee. I don’t quite uncritically love them, I’m aware of how bad all three movies are. The first one played with some extremely interesting themes and the third had the right ending1 instead of an action-movie Gary Stu vomit-fest, so all in all, they’re not bad.
Vampires are a blank screen we use to project a number of anxieties onto. I know–I’m guilty as charged, between Selene2 and the scurf in the Kismet series.3 Both had their uses, and I might be ready to write Tarquin’s story. Or even Imprint, the Beguine vampire smexy-story I’ve been adding chunks to over literal years.
But first I’ve got to finish Damage and get the Season 2 zero of HOOD out of the way. Now that I’m in the productive half of the year, that might even happen in a hurry. And of course there’s running, running with dogs, walking with dogs, parenting, and making sure my meatsack doesn’t give out under the pressure.
It feels like juggling chainsaws, complete with the risk of lopping off a hand when one grabs the wrong way. Tiger by the tail, and all that.
I should also get the monthly newsletter out of the way. Incorruptible goes on sale later this month, too, so there’s housekeeping to do for that.
It’s a good thing the rainy season’s long in these parts. I’d probably never get anything finished otherwise. Time to finish absorbing my coffee and get with the program; it might be dangerous to stay in one place.
Over and out.
These silicon disks with vents in the middle are known as “pickle pipes”, but I call them “fermentation nipples” because, along with sounding more scientific, it makes me giggle like a schoolgirl each time I say it. Or type it. Or even think about it, frankly.
They fit on any wide-mouth Mason jar, and the nipples (*snork*) allow gases created by fermentation to escape while not allow oxygen in, so you get that lovely anaerobic reaction. I have a HUGE crock for making sauerkraut, but these will do for smaller batches, leftovers from filling said huge crock, and experimenting with things like carrots, cucumbers, and other ferment-able veggies.
Singing “Like a Pickle” to the tune of “Like a Virgin” and dancing around your kitchen giggling hysterically is entirely optional, but I think it makes the results taste better.
…sorry, I can’t stop laughing. Enjoy your weekend, chickadees.
The rains have moved in. It smells like the cusp of autumn–cedars drinking deep after dusty drought, the dust itself breathing out spice before it turns to mud, summer-yellowed grass stirring and greening at the roots, leaves preparing to dry and drop. It’s one of the better olfactory landscapes, and one of my favorites.
It was an article of family catechism that I always had a runny nose; my caretakers–such as they were–dosed me with Sudafed on an almost daily basis because my sniffing irritated them. The only time I escaped it was when we lived in Wyoming; the air was so parched I couldn’t have mustered postnasal drip if I tried.
It’s strange. I can close my eyes and remember how every place my peripatetic family ever lived smelled, even when I was supposedly a sniffle-blocked child. I know smell is one of the more basic senses; often, that’s where I start when building a scene or a character.
Moving to western Washington after the dry altitude of Wyoming meant relentless, insulting “teasing” by the adults, centered on my nose. It was a comparatively small thing considering the level of other abuse I endured, but I found myself thinking about it yesterday while I stood on the deck and breathed deep of autumn.
I don’t think I had any more postnasal drip than any other child. I think that the so-called adults just picked something tiny to gaslight me about as part of a wider pattern, and medicated me with Sudafed (to the point that decongestants based on pseudoephedrine no longer work when I actually have a cold) in order to have one more reason to beat or harass me when I forgot my dose. I think that, contrary to their long-held beliefs and constant harping, I was actually quite normal but ended up getting into the habit of paying a great deal of attention to smell.
I also think, my gods, what a stupid, stupid thing to fixate on as a parent. I’m just glad it didn’t develop into Munchausen-by-proxy. Instead, they were far more prone to neglect when it came to my actual medical needs, which I never thought I’d be grateful for.
Anyway, I stood on the back deck for a while last night between rain squalls, inhaling deeply, and I thought about Wyoming. I thought about long grass, about dry membranes, about the taste of pseudoephedrine pills, about the niggling penny-ante parts of abuse, about rain and leaves and lightning.
My nose always told me the truth, unlike so-called parents. And I find myself, at forty-plus blessed years old, untangling yet another lie I was told so often I half believed it, and appreciating my faithful, wonderful sense of smell.
Freedom smells like a dry wind roaring through car windows when I was finally eighteen and driving away. It smells like the books I can leave wherever I like in my own damn house without fear of their being shredded or tossed in the rubbish, like the shampoo I can buy myself and use without fear of being screamed at for using too much, like my own bed in the middle of the night when I wake and realize there will be no heavy, stealthy footsteps creeping into my room while I lie rigid and anticipating pain.
And I realized a deep truth, painful like lancing a boil: Of all the varied smells that have passed through my life, I like freedom the best. And I wish you, my friends, a deep draft of whatever means “freedom” to you.
No turkeys were harmed in the course of this entire thing. Inconvenienced, maybe, but that’s it.
I know you guys are wondering what happened on my last turkey-wrangling day, but it’s entirely anticlimactic. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The Princess, a little concerned for my safety (or maybe my sanity, since I was returning home almost prostrate with heat and muttering about turkeys), decided to go with me on the last day. “I could hold the shovel,” she suggested, with a glint in her eye.1
“No way,” I said, immediately. “If that fucking turkey comes at you I’m going to have to kill it, and I want to avoid killing *friend name*’s turkey if it’s at all possible. You can stand outside the coop. With Shirley.”
“You’re a good friend.” She hopped off to get ready for the expedition.
I suppose I should add that my children are well used to Shirley, since she sits in the dining room most days, keeping an eye on the dogs while they’re at their bowls.
Anyway, we got there–I did not have to wrangle goats that day, thank the heavens–a little earlier than usual, and after dealing with all the other livestock we headed down to the coop. It was a bright, very hot morning, promising a tar-softening scorcher of an afternoon.
The Princess had seen Heloise and the chickens before, but never a turkey. “That’s… a really big bird,” she said, clutching Shirley to her chest.
“Just keep his attention.” I cast a critical glance at the coop fencing, which appeared to be holding up. “Wave Shirley around or something.”
“Yes ma’am.” She set to with a will, performing what I can only describe as a very slow interpretative penguin dance.
I tossed in scratch, glanced nervously at Turkey Boy, who was strutting back and forth with his tail high and his wings down, and backed cautiously out of sight.
I got in and out of the egg room, blocking the opening with the shovel, and found a paltry three eggs for our trouble. I did not, however, heave a sigh of relief until I was out of the egg room, the door firmly shut, and further firmly out of the coop itself, with the antechamber door closed as well.
“He’s really quite stunning,” the Princess said when I rejoined her at the fence. She had ceased her dance and was staring in rapt amazement. “And he looks calm.”
“Uh, not really. See the way his wings are down? That’s part of the mating dance. He’s not stomping, but he’s close. Plus, see how his snood’s getting red, and his throat too? He–“
I might have continued to lecture, but Turkey Boy made a short dash for the fence. Both the Princess and I stepped back in a hurry, and I almost turned my ankle in a rathole. Shirley swayed, and Turkey Boy stopped dead.
He might have leapt for the fence, but I think he saw Shirley and the Princess as an unholy cryptid of some sort, a terrifying amalgamation of young woman and flightless bird. He stopped, staring at us, and his throat vibrated with loud gobbles. Goose Girl had already nipped into the egg room to get at the kibble before her midmorning bath.
“Let’s not push it.” I grabbed the Princess’s sleeve and all but hauled her away.
I’m glad of two things: that someone else saw the sheer size of the bird, and that Turkey Boy didn’t come through the fence. If he’d gone after my child, she might have had to fend him off with Shirley before I arrived with a shovel–or before I grabbed him with my bare hands. Those spurs are deadly and only God knows what the resultant wounds might have been infected by, but I’d wring that bastard’s neck if he came at my baby.
We locked everything up and got in the car, and I didn’t quite spin out of the gravel driveway.2
We drove in silence for a short while, and finally the Princess turned to me from the window, her eyes gleaming with mischief. “Are you feeling relieved?”
“No more turkey,” I muttered, with feeling. “Thank gods.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “They’ll go on vacation again next year. By then you’ll have forgotten all about this.”
“Oh, fuck,” I muttered, knowing she was right.
It took a good hour before she stopped giggling.
ANYWAY, that was the last day I had to wrangle a turkey, and it passed without incident. Except for the rats, of course.
But that’s (say it with me) another story…
So there I was, amid scurrying rats with an upside-down plastic penguin and a galloping heart, gasping for breath.
…maybe I should back up.
So, I was taking care of livestock for two separate out-of-town friends. This particular day I’d already whistled a bunch of goats into behaving and had a flock of geese very curious about me and whatever snacks I might be carrying. Then it was another half-hour in the car to get to my second livestock babysitting job, and I was about to face Turkey Boy once more.
It’s not that I dislike him. It’s just that I had a job to do, and he seemed very determined to interfere. And really, I was the source of fowl kibble, and it was in his best interests to leave me be while I filled the trough–but good luck explaining that to a puffed-up, very angry turkey just entering his first mating season.
Anyway, I carried Shirley down to the coop, braced myself, and went around the side to prop her on a yellow rain bucket. I was greeted by the chickens, who had figured out my arrival meant food of one type or another and were very excited, and Goose Girl, whose honking started pretty much the moment I opened my friend’s back door to go down the coop hill.
And, of course, Turkey Boy strutted into the covered yard, gobbling once or twice and eyeing me with beady impatience.
Now, the day before had brought an unwelcome development or two. First, Turkey Boy had figured out that I had to remove the shovel from the egg room entrance as I retreated; he was bound and determined to keep my rearguard engaged, hoping to force a battle upon familiar ground. It’s no secret that the hardest maneuver to pull off is a fighting retreat, but so far I’d managed. And if the gods were willing and the two-foot plastic penguin could distract Turkey Boy for long enough, I could be in and out in short order, and retire safely.
I’d been doing some thinking, and instead of putting Shirley on a concrete stepping stone, I decided some altitude was necessary. (She is, after all, a flightless bird.) Fortunately there was a yellow rain bucket at the far end of the covered yard, so I propped her there, careful to point her beak away so she would appear to be eyeing the yard sidelong.
It seemed to work–Goose Girl and Turkey Boy took turns yelling at the interloper, while the chickens, almost unconcerned, watched me for any sign of scratch grain. I tossed in their daily ration and tried not to scream when I saw a flicker of tail and beady eye well across the yard. The rats were keeping a low profile, since Schrodinger Roy had followed me down the hill.
Roy’s an interesting case. He’s actually two smoke-grey cats who could be twins, or, like Olsen Twins, one cat vibrating so quickly he appears to be in two places at once. If I hadn’t been possessed of absolute proof, both photographic and direct, that they were a pair, I’d’ve thought my friend had a teleporting cat outside as well as in. (Long story.) Anyway, Schrodinger Roy does a great deal of ratting down at the coop, and I am sure pickings are quite good.
Anyway, I gathered the kibble, got the trusty shovel, and managed to get in the egg room and block the door as usual. I think the chickens had pecked an importunate rat to death, since I had to also use the shovel to get a rag of fur and bones out of the egg room and one of the fresh-laid eggs had been destroyed, poor thing.
Turkey Boy was gobbling loudly, letting everyone know that there was an observer he didn’t care for. And then, as I dumped the kibble and began loading the can with unsmashed hen fruit, a deadly quiet descended.
Uh-oh, I thought, but had to finish my work. It was another feat of agility and flexibility to gather the eggs while keeping the door blocked, and suddenly the shovel was almost wrenched out of my hand again.
Turkey Boy had decided on a surprise attack.
Once more, I retreated with shovel in one hand and a coffee can of eggs in the other. Once more, Turkey Boy threw himself at the egg room door, and I heard his claws scrape wood suspiciously near where my head would be.
Did I mention turkeys fly for short distances, since they like to roost above the forest floor? Yeah, I found that out.
I braced the egg room door and had to outright tell my fingers to turn loose of the shovel. Then there was tidying the small antechamber with the galvanized bins of kibble and scratch, as well as transferring the eggs to a plastic bag for carrying up the hill. When I was done, I closed the coop door with a sigh of relief, and almost jumped out of my skin as Schrodinger (or Roy, who can tell, although Roy is usually the more vocal of the two) mewed slightly to let me know backup had arrived.
“You missed the party,” I told him, sotto voce, and his tail flicked. Then I realized something that made my heart plummet into my guts with an almost audible splash.
It was, again, quiet. Too quiet.
I rounded the corner and hurried along the coop wall, reached the fence, and stopped, somewhat confused. At first I thought the damn turkey had exploded out of sheer spite, and then I thought he had melted like hot wax.
Apparently, Turkey Boy had figured out I wasn’t in the egg room to punish, so he chose the next best thing, the tuxedo-clad interloper. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but…
Apparently Goose Girl had been attempting to snake her neck through the fencing and get to Shirley. She might have succeeded, being a creature with no little cunning and quite a bit of persistence, if not for Turkey Boy catching sight of this and deciding, in truly male fashion, that he could do it better.
Especially if he stood on a goose.
“Oh shit,” I said, and Roy mewed again, taking off at an angle along the coop fence. Now, the cat was supremely unconcerned about Shirley or me. What he was really interested in was a rat, and I suppose he’d seen one.
Feathers flew. Goose Girl honked like a bagpipe in the squeezing arms of a murderous clown, and Turkey Boy attempted to climb her in order to reach Shirley, who floated serenely above the fray.
Or, she appeared to, because she was teetering on the rain barrel. Motion communicated through the fencing couldn’t tip over the small barrel, but Shirley, though large, is also hollow.
I am almost certain I teleported across the intervening space, because if I had moved in the usual manner I’m sure I would have punted a cat. I had the hazy idea that Shirley might be injured if she fell from that height, but also, the fencing was beginning to look a little like it might not hold up under Turkey Boy’s assault, and poor Goose Girl, stunned but not yet down for the count, still had her neck through it.
Things happened very quickly.
I got there just as Shirley toppled, grabbed her head–look, it was the only handle I could be sure of–and raised her aloft. Turkey Boy beat his wings, gobbling and making a noise I can only describe as a rattle, and Goose Girl began to curse him with the fervor of a Roman matron warning an entire temple about the approach of the Gauls. Chickens scattered, Roy leapt on a hole–just missing a long naked tail–and, true to form, I was swearing.
At the top of my lungs.
I finished by holding Shirley aloft like a war club and screaming, “GODDAMN YOU, [turkey name], THAT IS E-NOUGH!”
It was the same tone I’d take with a bus full of misbehaving third-graders, and while it didn’t dent Turkey Boy’s enthusiasm, it startled Goose Girl into retracting her head through the fence, clearly grasping this was a higher priority than getting the dumbass Meleagris off her back. Which was, frankly, all to the good. But if the damn fence came down, I was going to have to fight a pitched battle with the fucking turkey.
So that was how I came to be swearing at top volume, waving a plastic penguin at a turkey while rats fled a teleporting cat.
At least I was wearing shoes. (Small mercies.)
Goose Girl reared, spreading her snow-white wings, and I would have been lost in artistic appreciation if the situation hadn’t been so dire. Turkey Boy sailed backwards, since he had not–thank the gods–been clutching with his spurs, and he landed with a feathery oof that would have been funny if I hadn’t been so, well, out of sorts is the only way I can describe it.
I checked the fence, left Roy stalking around and waiting for some quiet to entice his prey back out, and hoped Goose Girl hadn’t been injured. (She’s fine, don’t worry.) I carried Shirley up the hill, cradling her somewhat tenderly, and I realized halfway that not only was I apologizing (aloud and repeatedly) to a plastic penguin…
…but I had dropped the eggs. Fortunately, I was able to scurry back downhill and grab the plastic bag without incident, since Turkey Boy had decided to nurse his grudges and look for scratch in the wider, fenced, but uncovered yard on the other side of the coop.
That was my second-to-last day of turkey wrangling. And you know what? I hadn’t cracked a single egg.
Goddamn turkey. But at least Shirley–and Goose Girl–were uninjured.
And I still had one more day of turkey wrangling to go.
Hey guys, you can get the first six chapters of my upcoming September release, Incorruptible, for free right here. Enjoy!
Well, I’m awake.1 The good thing about taking time off is that even a half-day lets me recharge. The bad thing? I get itchy, and resentful that recovery is taking so long, so I do silly things like go for a run, push myself, and get injured. Or read true crime for a few days straight and freak myself out.
So, when I left the story last week, I had resorted to bringing a two-foot plastic penguin to the coop. I propped Shirley on the concrete stepping-stones along one side of the coop, and Turkey Boy was so incensed at this new arrival he forgot all about me. I was able to fill chicken kibble and collect a few eggs unmolested, and was quite cheerful at the thought that the problem had been solved.
Now, a dog might be intelligent, but turkeys are downright crafty. Turkey Boy, despite being fine and feathered, could not stand the interloper at the coop even though she stood quietly outside the fence, turned in profile so she was regarding them mildly in the manner of another prey animal. Of course, distracting him was the whole point, but I’d forgotten about one thing.
Namely, the Goose Girl.
I’ve dealt with geese in flocks and singles, and they’re filthy but wonderful beasts. They’re stubborn, smart, bad-tempered, and sacred to Juno–what’s not to love? Plus, they can only pinch you with their beaks and have no spurs. They’re loud and nasty-tempered, but relatively harmless. Relatively.
And they have very long necks. But that comes later.
One hot, bright morning2 I set Shirley down in a slightly different spot, changing it up to keep Turkey Boy interested. I wasn’t sure whether his gobbling was akin to Tormund seeing Brienne for the first time or a string of raging obscenities, so I nipped into the egg room to perform my tasks at high speed and ignore the rats at the same time.
What? The rats? Don’t ask, just know that when you have chickens, you’ve got rodents, too. The scratch grain takes care of that.
Anyway, I had just gathered most of the henfruit when the entrance to the coop yard darkened. I glanced in that direction and saw a familiar snood poking through, but I got the shovel-head over the opening in time.
Which just meant, really, that Turkey Boy finally had something within reach to vent his feelings upon, and he appeared to need it.
In short, he flung himself at the shovel-head blocking the entrance so hard he almost ripped the handle out of my fingers, and I may have let out a Graham Chapman-worthy “Jesus CHRIST.” It was a trick of both stretching and agility to get the remaining henfruit into the kibble can, and if a rat had come along then it would have found me seriously distracted. Thankfully, one did not, but I was faced with a quandary.
You see, I had the kibble can in my left hand, loaded with eggs. I had the shovel-head blocking the entrance to the coop-yard, the handle clasped firmly in my right, and the door was behind me.
Quite a bit behind me, as a matter of fact. Now, the coop is basically a medium-sized shed, but that’s still a lot of territory to cover when one is being pursued by a maddened, spur-crazy Meleagris.
I had no choice but to conduct a fighting retreat. The threat of the shovel kept Turkey Boy mostly at bay, and I managed to get the door flung closed and braced with the bucket of oyster shell.3
He hit the door twice, not bothering to gobble. Turkey Boy meant business, and he had discerned that Shirley’s presence might mean that I was sneaking about, gathering eggs, and daring to feed him and his cohort.
That, apparently, could not be borne.
It occurred to me that I could place Shirley on some stacked wood or a yellow rain barrel, and the novelty of altitude might overcome Turkey Boy’s native cunning for a short while. Of course, it occurred to me standing in a dark antechamber amid cans of chicken feed, while the eggs in the kibble can rattled a bit. Whether they were settling from my recent burst of motion or my hands were shaking, I shall leave you to imagine as pleases you.
So I loaded the eggs in plastic bags for transport to the house–where they would be washed, dried, and put in cartons for anyone I could unload them onto4–and closed up the coop annex, then came around the corner to collect Shirley.
I rounded said corner, in fact, just in time to see Goose Girl stretching her neck through the fencing, determined to get her beak close to this new interloper. I whisked Shirley into a saving embrace and sighed, while Goose Girl retracted her sinuous neck and honked a few mad words at me. She visibly realized my presence outside the annex meant the trough inside was full of kibble, though, and hurried away to take advantage of that before her midmorning bath.5
Turkey Boy, however, had scurried through the tiny coop-yard door once more, and came at the fence meaning business. The thought that I was either going to have to fend him off with a plastic bag of eggs or Shirley herself crossed my mind in a flash, and I dropped my center of gravity slightly, prepared for whatever may come.
But Turkey Boy stopped short of the fence, knowing from other attempts that it would resist his foul (ha ha) plans. He regarded me sideways with one beady little eye, wings held down, not stomping or gobbling, his tail fan-high and his snood turning crimson at its tip.
He wasn’t angry, that posture said. Rather, he was thinking.
“Uh-oh,” I told Shirley on our way up the hill. “Maybe we should get you some tinfoil armor.”
I forgot about the suggestion almost as soon as it was made, but it might have been better if I hadn’t. Because the next day, the goddamn turkey used a goose as a tool.
To be continued…