Mimi Gentry

Flying Snakes and Naked Squirrels

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How many of you were fans of Mutual Omaha’s Wild Kingdom? For the youngsters reading this, Wild Kingdom was a TV show (originally produced from 1963 until 1988) that featured wildlife and nature. It was narrated by zoologist Marlin Perkins and displayed the circle of life in the animal kingdom – sometimes beautiful, often brutal. Perkins and his small camera crew traveled all over the world to catch the life and death drama of the Wild Kingdom. I can still remember him, dressed in his khaki safari suit, standing well out of danger’s way, describing the carnage of the scene with the greatest of elocutionary ease. Meanwhile his assistant Jim waded into crocodile infested waters to see if the reptiles really do cry saltwater tears. 

 

I loved that show more than any other and watched it weekly, fascinated by the duckbill platypus, laughing at the cavorting monkeys. But when the lions took the stage, I always left the room. Here’s the thing about Wild Kingdom lions, no matter how affectionate the pride was with each other, no matter how adorable the cubs were, before the show was over, they’d all end up making their way teeth-first through an unlucky zebra. 

 

Sure, I knew that lions had to eat something. And I knew that herd animals were always on the menu (especially the weak ones – young, sick or old). I understood the Circle of Life. I just didn’t want to watch it. 

 

Yesterday afternoon, I was behind our house, watering the shade garden. We’ve not had rain in a week or so and the ferns were looking droopy. I pulled the hose along the walkway, soaking the ground and daydreaming about everything and nothing all at once. It was unseasonably cool for late August and the crickets had replaced the cicadas with their autumn song. 

 

Suddenly, I heard sharp squeaks from overhead. There was a squirrel nest in the big oak tree and it seemed like the noise was coming from there. The squirrels around here are territorial, so it’s not unusual to see a treetop brawl. I heard the squeaks again, but didn’t see any action. The sun was right behind the nest, so I squinted my eyes, trying to see what was going on. 

 

Suddenly, there was a flurry of movement and I saw a long stick fall out of the tree. It fell about 20 feet before I saw it change shape. It was almost on top of me before I figured out it was a snake. I jumped back and the snake fell almost at my feet. Now, ordinarily, I’m not much afraid of snakes. In fact, when my friends who have chicken houses find an unwelcome reptilian visitor, they call me for relocation. 

 

So, ordinarily a king snake wouldn’t spook me. But this one had something in its mouth – a half-swallowed baby squirrel. Now, ordinarily, I’m not a fan of squirrels. Sure, they’re cute (with their glittery eyes and bushy tails), but we’ve had trouble with them getting in the attic (gnawing up the boards, infesting with fleas) so that makes me not want them around our house. But this was something different. Seeing those fur-less squirrel legs, long and almost humanlike, protruding from the mouth of the snake filled me with revulsion. I admit, I squealed like a girl. 

 

The snake was, I suspect, stunned from its 30-foot fall. It lay there perfectly still, staring at me with non-blinking eyes – the back half of the squirrel protruded like Hieronymus Bosch had painted it in the Garden of Earthly Delights. The pink squirrel wasn’t even twitching. It was already dead and even if it were alive and I killed the snake to save it, I wouldn’t be able to get it back safely into the nest. Besides, I hated to kill my yard snakes because they help keep the rodent population under control and the venomous snakes at bay around here. I stood there for a second, not knowing what to do. Then I took a picture on my cell phone, because I knew nobody would believe it. Finally, I went to look for a stick to evacuate the snake out the yard but by the time I returned, the reptile had disappeared with its mammalian snack. 

 

I was surprised at how unnerved I was. I’d seen snakes eat eggs. Even birds. It was just part of nature. But I think the nude squirrel was optically just a little close to my humanness and it was triggering some primitive reflex in me, reminding me that I am, after all, in the Circle of Life. 

On the corner of Peachtree and Paris

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Last week I found out I was going to have to work in Atlanta every day, so I called my brother to see if I could crash at their place. I discovered, much to my delight, they were going on vacation for a week and would love it if I would watch their house for them.

 

Now, I’m a country girl 300%. There’s nothing I love more than foraging through the woods and wandering amongst the cattle. But I’ve also lived in cities and loved the vibrant and varied life that I found there. So when I discovered I was going to be staying in Midtown (within walking distance from the Fox Theater) I was pretty excited.

 

Although I had worked all day, it had been pretty low impact (sitting in chairs and asking questions about hemophilia) so I was looking forward to exploring my temporary neighborhood. On my way there, I noticed there was a Publix on the corner. The green sign shone like a beacon, promising various and sundry things to eat for supper. I drove past and made my way to my brother’s place, parked and took the elevator up to the fourth floor. I changed out of my monkey suit (business casual) and into some exercise togs. Grabbing a reusable shopping bag (no self-respecting Midtown dweller would carry groceries in a plastic bag), I bounded down the stairs and out into the swirling city.

 

First thing I noticed? Lots of people wear sunglasses in the city – probably for security reasons, like tint on car windows. The second thing I noticed was music. Before I even left the building, I heard someone in apartment #1 playing gospel piano. Drifting down the stairs from an apartment above, I could hear someone practicing trumpet. The noise was far away, almost like a call to a fox hunt. Walking to the grocery store, I passed a sidewalk café where a flamenco guitarist flourished and fluttered through impossibly complex scales, filling the air with the sounds of Andalusia. Although I was tempted to tarry, a girl alone in the big city knows it’s best to keep moving.

 

I made it to the grocery store and foraged around, finding favorite foods – sushi, kale salad and golden cherries. I paid the cashier, tucked my billfold back into my bra safe (you can’t be too careful) and headed back up the hill to the apartment building. By some miracle, I remembered all the door codes and headed back up four flights of stairs. I was a little winded by the time I got to the top.

 

It had started to rain so I opened up a window and let the noises of the city trickle in. Cars whispered by, their tires shhhhushing on the wet pavement. Smoke rose from the tops of restaurants, frothy pink crepe myrtles bobbed their heads in the downpour and slab-gray marble from the building down the street shone brightly, wet with rain. Suddenly, I found myself transported back to the Paris of my youth, in my garret apartment, watching that famous city swirl below me.

 

It rained a lot when I lived in Paris. It was in the fall, the rainy season there. Paris and Atlanta had things in common. Both were filled with dog walkers (in Paris, their humans didn’t clean up after them, resulting in a plague of “sidewalk pate” that required constant vigilance). Both cities were filled with panhandlers, trying every possible angle to get money. Earlier in the evening, when I was driving through Atlanta, I’d seen a homeless man on the corner. He was the color of charcoal – his hair, his clothes, his skin. His gray rain poncho was tattered, like feathers. His beard was braided and jutting and he raved on the corner like St. John the Baptist.

 

Later in the evening, from the safety of the fourth floor window, I looked out into the rain. It was like watching a saltwater aquarium. A few hard-core joggers ran by, their clothes soaked and clinging like wet dishrags. A girl with a coral-colored umbrella teetered along in four-inch heels. A gym-rat in a sleeveless shirt carried his groceries home with his shoes shining like neon fish against the wet sidewalk.

 

While I looked out the window, I ate my supper. The sushi was fresh and the kale salad was crispy. The cherries were delicious, as you might imagine, but I discovered that it’s not a great idea for a person who lives alone to eat pitted cherries while reclined in “Queen of Sheba” style. The first few were fine, but when the stone of the third one threatened to go down the wrong way, I sat up as fast as a scalded cat, coughing my way back to safety.

 

As night fell, I stayed at the window. Headlights smeared and glowed up the road. Streetlights bounced orange off the water. The sidewalk began to empty, except for the homeless people who had no place to go. I sat and watched for what seemed like hours until from upstairs the trumpet began to play again – this time scales. The sound mingled with the honking horns below. It was a song of the city.

 

 

Bad Storm

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I’ve never been afraid of storms. I’ve never obsessively watched the weather channel as the green and red satellite blobs moved menacingly east. Never sought shelter when commanded by local television and radio stations.

This storm was different.

My first warning came not from a meteorologist, but from Big Sophie, my shepherd-lab mix. She is terrified of bad weather. Late Saturday afternoon, she began following me around like a shadow. When I went inside the house, she sat with her nose pressed to the crack of the screen door like she was trying to squeeze herself in.

I turned on the weather channel and called Pop, my resident weatherman. “Is there bad weather heading this way?” I asked. “Sophie is acting strange.” Pop has an ability to read the weather right out of the sky. And usually he’s right. Right as rain.

“I don’t think so,” he pondered. He switched his television to the weather channel. We both looked on as the well-groomed meteorologist gestured at the weather map and talked about rain heading this way, but nothing of any consequence.

But Sophie didn’t agree with the consensus. She was predicting very bad weather. At suppertime, she only ate half her bowl of food and hurried up to the house, waiting for me at the back door. She was so anxious that I brought her into the laundry room to sleep for the night. I nestled into the couch for my evening dose of old black and white movie therapy and as the evening wore on, I forgot all about Sophie and the weather.

I went to bed and listened to the whippoorwill conversing on the edge of the hayfield. Soon I dropped off to peaceful sleep.

Much later I sat up in the bed, wide-awake. The red numbers on the clock read 4:23 am.

It was raining and I could hear the emergency siren from town. Before this year’s run of bad storms, I probably would have thought, it was someone’s overdeveloped sense of caution serenading us all at zero-dark-thirty in the morning. But since January-since we’ve had two tornado storms hit Carroll County- I was paying attention to the siren that wailed from the center of town.

Then the power cut off, leaving the room completely dark. I listened. The wind rose up quickly, the force of it pelting leaves and rain against the house. I closed the window and sat on the edge of the bed, listening closer. Outside, lightning popped like a bullwhip.

There it was, sure as I was sitting there in the dark… the low rumble of a freight train. Suddenly my palms began to tingle and I felt an urge to flee. Sophie was barking as I bolted out of the bedroom and let her out of the laundry room. We all crouched together in the hallway and listened as the tornado hit.

I prayed there, earnestly. “Dear God, if its time for you to take me, please let me go quick and painless, not lingering till morning with a pine branch through my torso.” (Over-dramatic, even at the end). That’s when the tree hit the roof. It shook the house and made my heart bump loud and fast in my ears. I prayed again, “Father, when I said I was ready to go…I sort of meant that figuratively.”

Fortunately, it was not my time to depart this sad vale. The wind died down. The storm began to make its way eastward. I pulled the pillow and comforter off the bed and made a nest in the hallway, afraid of what might come next. I lay there for quite some time, surrounded by two stinky dogs and a persnickety cat, glad for the company of them. Finally, I got back in bed and went to sleep, one ear cocked toward town and the siren.

I woke around 7 am and remembered the storm. Rising, I put on warm clothes and stout shoes, just in case, then went out to survey the damage. A pine tree next to the house had fallen on the roof. I couldn’t tell how bad it was. The two biggest hardwoods in the yard lay in a tangled heap, branches holding on to each other. There were more trees down, all around, their twisted stumps still standing. The air smelled like bruised leaves.

I cried a little, out of loss of those trees and felt more than a little sorry for myself because of the tree on the roof. Then Big Sophie came frisking up, grateful to run off all the anxiety we had stored up from the night before. She was, like the lilies of the field and sparrows in the air, just glad to be alive. And suddenly, I found myself in agreement.

 

 

Mushroom Roulette

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Lately, we’ve had a lot of rain. That’s good for so many plants, but no crop loves rain better than mushrooms.

I’d always been fascinated by mushrooms, but my elders wouldn’t eat them, so I didn’t know a thing about them either. Over the years, I had heard tell of mushrooms that made you see things if you eat them. They grew on cow-pies. I’m of the mind that eating things that grow out of cow-pies is always bad idea.

I know other cultures that consider mushrooms a delicacy. But I also know some are deadly poison (I watch British murder mysteries, so I’m pretty much an expert on those). So, I decided I needed to learn something about them.

First I turned to the inter-webs. There were lots of helpful videos about mushroom identification, lots of articles written on the subject. But when it came to life-or-death dietary decisions, I prefer to learn hands on. I decided to begin with Chanterelles. They’re called “the chicken of the woods” because they have a rich protein flavor. They’re also easy to find (because of their vibrant gold color) and easy to identify (because of their broccoli-like trunks).

On my first trip out, I picked several Chanterelles and then took them to the experts for positive identification – Jonathan Stober, the Biologist who works in Talladega National Forest and Bernie Wong (Carroll County’s Martha Stewart) who is knowledgeable about exotic edibles. Both verified that the mushrooms were Chanterelles – safe and edible. Then the harvest began.

When picking wild mushrooms, I discovered there were essential tools needed. Often the mushrooms grow on hilly areas, so a flat-bottomed basket is best. I needed a pair of sheers because it’s best to snip them off and leave the roots behind (to grow more). Lastly, I needed a couple of snake sniffing dogs to help me keep tabs on our reptilian friends.

Before I go any further, let me offer this warning. This is not an invitation to stroll into the woods and eat mushrooms that you find there. If you want to try wild mushrooms, find someone who can teach you first. If you can’t find somebody to teach you, best to stick to the store-bought variety. Because eating the wrong mushrooms can leave you as dead as a hammer.

PRO TIP: Go hunting in the morning. If you go later, the gnats will eat you alive.

When I went hunting, the first thing I noticed was how cool it was in the woods. Overhead, a breeze sifted through the leaves, making a different noise than wind through the pines. Even the birds sounded strange in that humid place, like I was hearing them from under water. They tracked the dogs and me through the woods, flitting from low branch to low branch and fussing all the while. Otherwise, It was quiet with last winter’s leaves lying damp and silent beneath our feet.

I picked mushrooms for a while and in pretty short order had gathered a basket full. All that stooping and bending got me a little out of breath so I hopped up on an old moss-backed log to sit and “blow a little” (as my great-grandmother used to say). Dangling my feet like a child, I looked around.

Close to the stream, the bamboo-like grass softened the ground and sprays of fern burst up like fireworks. After resting for a minute, I saw a likely patch that drew me from my perch. I made my way across the stream to reach them and knelt down to the ones growing at the base of a tree. As I put my hand down to pick, I was surprised to find a box terrapin there too. It gave me a little start. I’d been so focused on filling my basket, I had stopped being careful. I slowed down and started paying attention to where I put my hands.

PRO TIP: Coat yourself with bug spray and take a bath immediately after you pick. If you don’t, the chiggers will enjoy their own harvest.

I topped off my basket, whistled for the dogs and headed for home. In the pasture, next to the woods, a rain-crow moaned sorrowfully. I was overcome by the peacefulness of the place and how it felt so far away from everything. Drifting through the woods with the dogs, harvesting the uncultivated bounty, made me feel Neolithic – existing in the most basic of states. I felt thankful for the beauty of the woods and for the golden treasure of the mushrooms.

 

 

 

 

guineas don’t remember

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The ticks are bad this year. I’ve already picked two off the dogs and one off of me. I hear everybody’s got them. It makes me miss having Guineas. They great tick eaters. It must be instinct, because Guineas have a hard time keeping their minds on anything for very long.

 

They don’t seem to remember anything. Ever. You could go out and chase them around with a stick, hide behind the goat barn, and come out three minutes later with a can of corn- all would be forgiven. “Forget and Forgive.”  That’s a guinea’s motto.

 

Years ago, I raised guineas from hatchlings. When I first released the teenage guineas from the safety of their pen to roost in the wide, cruel world, I lost two of them because they wouldn’t fly up into a tree. Sleeping on the ground doesn’t sound like a big deal, but to the varmints in my neighborhood it was a midnight, blue-plate special. If I were a little bird, and I’d seen my brother/sister get munched the night before, you can bet your bottom dollar I’d be flopping my wings off to try and get up to one of those branches. But the guineas forgot.

 

So, to prevent further casualties, I had to devise a learning program for the birds. It went something like this. “Walk around at dusk. If the guineas are roosting in a stupid place, scare them off and make them find a better one.”  The program was mostly successful, and the birds were starting to roost up in the gnarled branches of a big oak tree that separated the yard from the wildness of the woods.

 

One fine evening, around dusk, I meandered down, feeding the dogs and penning up the chickens. All the time, I watched the guineas out of the corner of my eye. Finally, Big Daddy (the guinea patriarch) flew up to the top of the chicken coop. He called down to the teenagers. They began fly up, joining him one by one.

 

I pulled back into the woods, out of sight. If the guineas were distracted from their roosting, they’d forget why they were in the tree in the first place and fly down. So I stayed hidden as they settled in on top of the chicken pen. Not the smartest place to sleep, considering a raccoon could scale it like a ladder and help himself to an “all-you-can-eat-buffet.”

 

So I had to run them off. I grabbed up a big, scary stick and made monster noises, running at them and hitting the top of the chicken wire like a caveman. The guineas flew for their lives, away from the chicken pen and out into the grass. I hid immediately in the goat barn. As I predicted, they forgot me in about two minutes. When I came out shaking a can of corn, they were actually glad to see me. They fell in line behind me and we all walked slowly up the hill toward the roosting oak. I sprinkled corn right beneath their sleeping spot and continued toward the house.

 

When I got as far as the wellhouse, I ducked behind it and watched them. They pecked at the ground, “chuck-chucking” until all the corn was gone. Then Big Daddy noticed it was getting dark. He looked around for a roost, finding one “conveniently located” just overhead. Then beating gray-spotted wings, he lifted himself up into the lowest branch of the oak. You’d think that it would have been safe for me to go inside at this point, believing that the rest of the young guineas would be smart enough to fly up as well. But it didn’t work that way. All four of them had to remember that they could fly, and that was going to take a while.

 

I consoled myself with a strawberry, plucked from unruly flowerbed that grew beside the wellhouse. I bit into the fruit. It was warm on the outside, still warm from the day. The crunch of the tiny seeds turned into sweetness. I polished it off slowly, dropping the stem on the ground at my feet. I sat then, my back against the well house. It was cool there, cool like clay. I peered around the wall, through the curtain of late-blooming honeysuckles.

 

The white guinea made the first branch. Big Daddy shrilled proudly. But the other three guineas, Larry, Moe, and Curly were still not very interested in roosting. I had to wait some more. A movement caught my eye. A big garden spider was dropping down a dry leaf fastened to the end of a strand of silk. Tacking onto the center of the strand, the black and yellow spider darted back and forth. The bugs would be out soon and the web would be ready.

 

By now, Mo and Larry had flown to safety. Curly was the only one left on the ground and he ran back and forth, cheeping piteously. Behind the wellhouse, the mosquitoes had discovered me, making me wish for long sleeves. Looking over my shoulder at the darkening house, I saw the yellow light spilling out of the window, calling me inside. Finally Curly fluttered himself up into the tree.

 

My vigil was finished. All five guineas were safe. I turned to make my way up the shadowy path towards the house, leaving the spider to her nightly work. Reaching down, I took a final strawberry.