Help Comes In All Shapes

   This past year has been a rough one in so many ways...not just for me but for people everywhere.  While others faced a world-wide pandemic, I faced more personal storms in the way of illness and, well, storms.  Generally, the year 2020 has officially been marked down as a pretty rotten year for most folks.  Still, we have to look at things in a different perspective if we ever wish to get past our troubles.  I, for one, refuse to let things linger long. 

  All along the top edge of one section of the garden fence, there are dozens of cormorant feathers tucked safely in between the wire and railing.  Why?  Well, it all started as a way of coping with the massive cleanup after Hurricane Zeta.  I had found a long, black feather in the debris.  Not thinking much about it since surely a few feathers were lost during the storm, I stuck that feather into the crevice of the bark of a pine tree.  I promptly forgot about the feather until I found another.  That, too, was stuck in the tree bark.  Then another...and another.  About this time, Son was becoming a bit confused and questioned my actions.  Flippantly, I replied that I was saving the feathers in case I came across the whole bird.  "The bird will need its feathers once I find it!"  It had already become clear that the bird had not survived.  As I worked, I kept poking feathers along the tree trunk. It was Son who first stuck one in the garden fence and I soon followed suit.  Thus, our feathered fence became a thing.

 After a few days, finding and collecting the feathers sort of blocked out the reality of the devastation around us.  We could focus our attention on retrieving the feathers and not the huge piles of debris.  Silly?  Probably to most folks but to us, it was simply an act to relieve stress.  (It still saddens me that the bird perished during the storm.)  Now, the top of the fence proudly wears the feathered crown and I am reminded to not let stress get to me.  I assume that the feathers will stay as long as Mother Nature allows them to do so.  The wind and rain have split and curled the feathers into curious shapes so that now they are more of a point of interest in the yard...a point of interest that saved a bit of my sanity.

Learning From The Critters

  It is no lie that I spend a lot of time watching the critters of the Bayou.  I learn from them.  Critters are smart.  Their whole lives totally depend upon their survival skills and they have honed those to perfection.  People, on the other hand, have become lackadaisical and soft.  There are many who could not survive a week without some assistance.  By studying the critters, I have discovered so many useful ways and have been applying them, in a lot of instances.  These are all things that have made life easier for me.

  This afternoon, the sun came out for about an hour so I took full advantage of it and stacked yet more firewood.  With the two wood-burning stoves going full tilt, the pile dwindles quickly.  Stockpiling during nice weather sure helps.  It was then that I noticed someone else stockpiling.  A beautiful Red-bellied Woodpecker was helping itself to the birdseed that I had strewn on the ground.  The bird had eaten its fill and was stashing a good number of seeds in the bark of the nearby oak tree before moving on to the hickory tree.  Red-bellied Woodpeckers are known to store up to four times as many seeds and acorns as they need to survive.  In fact, they can (and do) stash thousands of food items in nooks and crannies and have an uncanny sense of finding them again when needed.  The bird was stockpiling food for hard times.  

  People need to be more like the critters and not expect handouts.  My pantry shelves are lined with hundreds of jars of home-canned food items and the garden is producing a fine winter crop.  This is all fine and dandy as it keeps me from having to go to the store for items.  My pet peeve is to hear visitors to the Little Bayou House exclaim "We know where we are coming if things hit rock bottom!"  Nope.  Everyone has the same opportunity to fill their own pantry even if it is with "store-bought" goods.  We are not playing the "Little Red Hen" game here.  Folks, just use a bit of commonsense.  You do not have to go to extreme but having a few things on hand never hurt anyone. Or, perhaps, commonsense has gone the wayside.