Watching the birds

Sunny day on the back porch. The hum of lawnmowers down the street. Me, sitting here with a cup of coffee, trying to think of something to write--because there's nothing, absolutely nothing--just watching the birds.

They wait their turns at the feeder, for the most part: the downy woodpecker, then the black-capped chickadees, and the frenetic (and upside-down-hanging) nuthatches. Later come the spectacularly yellow goldfinches. We don't get the orioles or rose-breasted grosbeaks our neighbors do, but they're still close enough for us to hear their beautiful songs (those of the birds, not the neighbors). And occasionally we get a reddish purple finch which my bird guide calls a "chunky" bird ("What, they couldn't tell about my beautiful color, or my sweet song? They need to describe me as CHUNKY?!").

And I wonder why the squirrels haven't been more relentless about converging on the feeder. They crawled up the pole, at first, until I fashioned a pathetic obstacle (in squirrel-fighting language, it's called a baffle) of a red Frisbee from the dollar store. One half of it sports the teethmarks of the first, determined squirrels, but then nothing.

I remember my dad's battles with the squirrels. They were epic. He tried home-crafted baffles; he tried greasing the pole; he even used his electrician background to provide a very mild shock (not all of these, obviously, are PETA-approved). Dad's plans often were so elaborate, I'm pretty sure NASA called him from time to time for some pointers on their engineering challenges.

But, no matter what gauntlet my dad threw down, eventually the squirrels would be sitting atop the feeder, just nibbling away. I can't be certain, but I think they were smiling.

And I used to joke with him that it was a bit disconcerting to realize I inherited the genes of a man that could be outsmarted by a squirrel.

Dad's been gone over three years now. Sometimes it seems like yesterday, but more and more it seems like forever.

So now I'm sitting here with a cup of coffee, thinking about my dad, and just watching the birds.

Oliver Boliver Butt

Writers love words. We love to stir them up, stack them on top of one another, and even let them roll around in our mouths to savor until they dissolve.

That's where Oliver Boliver Butt comes in.

One of my earliest memories of my love of words was mom reading me the stories in The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss. The story that still makes me (and even my second grade students) almost giddy is Too Many Daves, in which poor Mrs. McCave had 23 sons, and she named them all Dave.

The delicious names she wished she had named them come in rapid succession: Bodkin Van Horn, Snimm, Hot-Shot, Sunny Jim, Blinkey, Stinkey, Moon-Face, Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face. The rhythm and the silliness of the poetry is almost magical. The line that still makes me giggle is:

And one of them Sir Michael Carmichael Zutt;
And one of them Oliver Boliver Butt

(I'm sorry, but it does)

And that's the poem I cite that started my love for the written word, and for writing those words. I guess that's kind of where the blog title, Write or Die, comes from. If I don't do the former, I fear I may just do the latter.

So, I guess the moral here is, get out there and find your own "Oliver Boliver Butt."

(For a more scholarly look at--and the entire text of--Too Many Daves by Dr. Seuss, check out the Immortal Muse blog here)