Copperhead!

A few weeks ago, school was just not going well. Mother Auma spontaneously decided it was time for a very quiet nature walk. We wandered about the subdivision, not saying a word. Mother Auma was walking hand in hand with Cornflower just ahead of Mariel and I. As we walked past an overgrown yard with a drooping tree and a culvert leading to the creek, something stuck out.

It was not a stick.

Mariel and I froze. I wanted to scream but all I could get out was "mom". Mariel screamed - a short, gasping, awful sort of yelp. Mother Auma and Cornflower turned and saw a slender, menacing, triangular-headed brown snake.

It stared at us in defiance. We stared in horrified fascination at it. After several minutes of this standoff, it turned and slithered back into the yard. Nothing was there to show what had just taken place.

We continued our walk, shaken by the snake's sudden appearance. We discovered a picnic area and brought our schoolwork there. But that has really nothing to do with the snake.

Later Mother Auma and I looked up the snake. Goggy had told us it was some sort of poisonous pit viper - and we had seen a baby stroller on the front porch. We found out it was a Southern Copperhead.

Animal Control couldn't help - they didn't have a division for our area.

The Homeowners' Association was even less help. "We'll send a letter telling him to mow his lawn."

Mother Auma was furious. "Don't you think they should tell him there's a poisonous snake in his yard?!?!?" she demanded when telling us.

She took Cornflower for moral support and went to the house in her big tall hiking boots, intending to leave a printout of the info we found on the snake. The neighbor man was just coming to get something out of his car. Mother Auma brightened. These are the neighbors; they can give the people this information! She walked up to him. "Do you know these people next door to you?"

"Kind of."

"Well, could you tell them we saw a copperhead in their yard?"

"Are you sure it was a copperhead? I'm a herpetologist."

(For those of us who don't know what that is, a herpetologist is a snake specialist. Just think, right next door!)

He said to leave the papers in their mailbox, as the people were at work.

Thus ended our part in the "Epic of the Copperhead". We were all very happy it was over, too, although I had nightmares about it for a few days afterwards.

Musical Rabbit

Yesterday morning my little sister Mariel was busily practicing her violin. It was a beautiful day, so my rabbit was in the back yard and the windows were open.

As strains of music were wafted by the late morning wind through the window and reached Thumper's long, sensitive ears, she sat up, trying to sniff the music. Suddenly, she jumped sideways with a funny twist. Her ears shot up in the air. She ran around the back yard, twisting and leaping with her ears high and her eyes wide until she reminded me of Wilbur in Charlotte's Web where he is being radiant.

Not to mention that when I was outside, playing my harmonica, Thumper suddenly ran around and around my feet, stopping when I stopped and racing around my feet when I played. Racing around someone is a bunny way of showing love...

Birches

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
>From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

--Robert Frost

New Blog

A new blog is not poetic
It's not and that is that
A new blog is not poetic
any more than is a hat