My aunt has a friend whose owl house has a resident. He’s an Eastern Screech Owl whom she calls Ollie.
My aunt arranged for me to come by and have a look at him, and so on Friday, I got to meet my first owl. He sat in his box, seemingly ignoring everything going on around him, but as I watched through my lens, it was clear he was aware of us, whether or not he cared.
I took a bunch of pictures, but this one is my favorite since he actually appears to be looking back at me. Aside from the eyes, those talons poking out from beneath his feathers keep drawing my attention. I wouldn’t want to be a small critter on the business end of those.
Until Friday, the only owl I had ever seen flew like a ghost over our driveway about 15 years ago. Ghostlike mainly because after it was gone, it was hard to believe I’d even seen it. It was nice to get a chance to really see and watch one finally.
He’s got me thinking too. The screech owl house I put up two years ago never drew any owls. I took it down when it drew rats but after seeing Ollie, maybe I’ll try another tree.
The phrase “unstuck in time” is the how Kurt Vonnegut described Billy Pilgrim’s condition in his classic antiwar novel Slaughterhouse-Five.
In Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim a young American GI serving on the German front in World War II, is taken prisoner by the Nazis. He spends most of the war living and working in a slaughterhouse (numbered 5) in Dresden where he becomes a firsthand witness to the Allied bombing in 1945, an event Vonnegut considered to be unnecessary to say the least.
But that’s not the whole story. Slaughterhouse-Five follows Billy’s life through his postwar years and even to the planet Tralfamador where he is taken to live in a zoo and breed with porn star Montana Wildhack. It’s a weird book, but brilliant too.
The events that take place in that slaughterhouse in Dresden are largely autobiographical. The parts of the story involving the Tralfamadorians… not so much.
Slaughterhouse-Five tackles many of the fate vs. free will themes with which Lost wrestles, all the while suggesting a universe is which all things are always happening simultaneously, thus allowing someone’s consciousness to ping-pong about in time, remembering the future and experiencing death, but not necessarily as the last moment of life.
The connection to Lost is made in “The Constant”, one of Lost‘s best episodes, when Farraday explains Desmond’s condition as being “unstuck in time.” Like Billy Pilgrim, Desmond’s body does not travel through time, only his consciousness does with the apparent result that he is able to remember pieces of the future.
I’ve said for some time that Lost is a show about time travel, and in the case of Desmond’s time travel (which is different from what Ben appears to do in the Season 4 finale) Slaughterhouse-Five provides a way of understanding what is happening to Desmond, as well as being a reminder that in the world of Lost, as in that of Billy Pilgrim, you (probably) can’t fight destiny.
More than anything, though, I suspect it is a nod from the writers of Lost to Vonnegut who had mined ground similar to Lost years before.
I didn’t have any new birds show up in my Project FeederWatch count this week, but I did get the highest number of different species and the highest counts so far.
The American Goldfinch and Ruby-crowned Kinglet both brought friends, and I saw a House Finch for the first time in several weeks. The Chipping Sparrows edged out the House Sparrows for greatest number of individuals seen thus far. Other than that, it was the usual suspects doing the usual things.
The count for a crisp and pleasant weekend:
House Sparrow (7)
Black-crested Titmouse (3)
Carolina Wren (2)
Bewick’s Wren (1)
Chipping Sparrow (24)
Ruby-crowned Kinglet (2)
Orange-crowned Warbler (1)
Northern Cardinal (1)
House Finch (1)
American Goldfinch (2)
Carolina Chickadee (2)
Northern Mockingbird (1)
Blue Jay (1)
White-winged Dove (3)
Mourning Dove (1)
I’m hoping the goldfinch will continue and that they turn gold before they migrate since I’ve never seen one in the gold plumage.
With only 3 days left until the premeire of Lost Season 5, I guess it’s time to round up the remaining books in The Lost Book Club. Today, we’ll take a look at Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.
On the Road is Kerouac’s most well-known book and probably the most widely read work of the beat movement. It is largely autobiographical and tells the story of a number of road trips that Keroauc made with his friend, and sometimes nemesis, Neal Cassady across the US in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Kerouac narrates as Sal Paradise and invents names for his friends: Cassady becomes Dean Moriarty, Allen Ginsburg becomes Carlo Marx and William S Burroughs appears as Old Bull Lee.
It’s a wonderfully rambling book about seeking a greater something that eludes easy description but that could potentially be found in jazz, sex, marijuana, eastern religion, poetry, beauty, Mexico, the West, and just generally getting lost in the great American landscape. By the end, Sal is no longer certain he believes in the things he sought or that they are even attainable. It’s ultimately a tale of pursuing unattainable dreams, youthful idealism defeated by age and the unceasing encroachments of the “real world.”
I realize as I’m writing this that there are echoes of On The Road throughout Lost. The book itself does not appear, but it is referenced in the alias used by Ben Linus in “The Shape of Things to Come” and shown on his fake passport in “The Economist.” The alias is Dean Moriarty, described in On the Road as “the holy con-man with the shining mind.” If that’s not Ben Linus, I don’t know what is.
Ben’s first alias was Henry Gale (a reference to the wizard in The Wizard of Oz), a name that seemed appropriate for the mastermind behind the mysterious Others. As of Season 4, however, Ben is no longer in charge. He has lost his island and his home. He is a wanderer in an unfriendly world, and much like Kerouac’s anti-hero, Dean Moriarty, he is seemingly forever on the road. It is worth noting here, that by the end of Season 4, it is the character named Jack to whom Ben turns when he needs to return to the island, to go on the road, as it were seeking those elusive things that the island provides. I suspect Season 5 will be something of an on the road season.
It must be mentioned, especially in the context of Ben Linus, that the name Moriarty also suggests a certain character from Sherlock Holmes (via Lostpedia):
Alternatively, “Moriarty” evokes Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis and widely considered fiction’s first “supervillain,” creating the archetype of the brilliant criminal mastermind.
Brilliant criminal mastermind? That sounds like Ben Linus. Unless Ben really is the “good guy” as he has claimed since Season 2.
As I think about this, I can’t help but wonder if another Kerouac novel might show up sometime. Wouldn’t The Dharma Bums be a perfect addition to The Lost Book Club. It’s a better book than On the Road as well.
When you grow up with the Navy, you get used to certain things, particularly salty air and the cries of gulls. Things not easily come by during a typical day in central Texas. Thank goodness for the Ring-billed Gulls, then, that come to the lake near our house every winter.
My gull fix is only a short bike ride away, even if I drove the other day.
I ignored the other birds, ignored everything, focused on the mass of white specks floating on the sparkling water.
flash of white
against the blue
plunges into cold
I can watch gulls for hours. I love the way they fly, so graceful. Lazy one minute, and diving for a meal the next.
Watching gulls is watching wind come alive.
wind takes form
substance, shape
a gull streaks across
memory
Cold air riders come to spend another central Texas inland winter, they bob on the surface, cry and take flight.
The wind pushes them around a bit, but it’s all for show.
They are in control.
a cry, a soaring gull
comes up with lunch
i come back for more
I usually go walking around the building at lunch. My classroom has no windows and it’s just good to get out, breathe real air for a few minutes. I try to look for new birds as I go, and I’ll often bring some small binoculars in case something catches my eye. I’ve seen a few life birds this way, but this has been a lucky week.
On Monday, I saw a White-crowned Sparrow. Yesterday, I saw an American Kestrel. Both of those are life birds for me. In addition to those two, I also saw the usual Eastern Meadowlarks, Killdeer, and Mockingbirds.
When I got home, still feeling fortunate, I took a walk down the trail towards the little pond down the street. On the trail, I saw Black-crested Titmice and Carolina Chickadees chirping in the trees. A Ruby-crowned Kinglet darted around in a stand of cedar, and an Orange-crowned Warbler flitted about in an oak. Those last two are relatively new for me so it’s exciting to see them.
I walked to the little footbridge over the creek and watched the birds from there when a flash of something red darted out of a hole in a dead tree towards a stumpy cedar. I waited to see if it would return, but I didn’t see anything. Getting cold in the shade, I decided to get back in the sun and walk down to the pond.
Just before the pond, a pair of Ladder-backed Woodpeckers caught my attention as they drummed some avian beat poetry into a leafless tree. As if only waiting for the woodpeckers’ drumroll, a Great Egret swooped out of the reeds and away up the trail.
Around the pond, I saw a mockingbird, Eastern Phoebe, and a Yellow-rumped Warbler, my third life bird for the week. I had seen the warbler before, but never got a look good enough for an ID until today.
On the pond, Gadwalls, Ring-necked Ducks and a pair of Least Grebes swam patterns into the still water. The number of ducks surprised me. I didn’t count, but I would guess there were between 30-40.
I also saw a mystery sparrow (I think) on top of a tree. The light was as bad as my angle so I quit trying to ID, and with three new birds in two days, I didn’t want to get greedy.
Other than those, the only birds I saw on my walk were vultures, both Turkey and Black, circling endlessly over the pond.
Today, I took my usual lunch walk and saw the kestrel again in the same place at about the same time. Like me, he must a schedule that brings us together around noon. This time I got an even better look, and since I knew what he was, I was able to really watch him without the buzz of “whatbirdisthishwhatbirdisthis?” running through my mind. The knowing enables the seeing.
After work, wondering how well the pond birds keep a schedule and wanting another crack at that mystery sparrow, I went back to the pond. One of the ladder-backs was working the same tree as yesterday, keeping his appointments, obviously. I didn’t see the sparrow, but the rest of the birds from yesterday were there as were a few Northern Shovelers and an American Goldfinch. I got a better look at the Yellow-rumped Warbler, and I saw a fourth new bird, an American Wigeon, preening out on the pond.
This time I took a rough count of the Gadwalls and got 45. Then I just sat down in the cool blue evening and watched while the egret hunted along the far shore, his feathers glowing bright in the fading sun, while ducks swam through the shadows of the trees. Couting and keeping lists of birds in fun and, when entering the data into ebird, scientifically useful, but it’s just the sitting and watching them be birds that’s really magical.
It’s the birdwatching, more than the birding, that makes for the perfect end to a day.
I watched the guy behind the counter make my sandwich. His head bobbed up and down to the rhythm of some obscure punk tune recorded fifteen years ago. It doesn’t matter the year, Thundercloud always just seems like fifteen years earlier.
He glanced up. “Mayo?”
I nodded. “A little.”
He squirted the mayo on the sandwich, wrapped it and said, “Chips and soda?”
“Yeah.”
“Seven fifty, bud.”
I handed him a credit card and watched him ring up the order. He came back holding up the receipt. “You need this?”
“Nope.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re probably not going to have to prove you bought a sandwich,” he said, laughing at his joke as he started to drop the receipt in the trash.
I smiled too, trying to imagine the absurdity of such a situation.
“Unless,” he said, stopping his movement and looking again at the receipt, “you need an alibi.”
I looked from him to the receipt in his hand.
“You never know,” he said offering the receipt.
“Maybe I should take it.”
He nodded as he handed me my sandwich. “I’m just saying. You never know, y’know?”
This was another good weekend of feeder watching. The titmice thought so too, especially since they finally noticed the pinecone feeder.
Black-crested Titmouse on the pinecone feeder
I’ve been trying for a couple of years to attract American Goldfinches to the yard. They’re only here in winter and I’ve seen them along the trail by the creek, but never in the yard. I’ve moved my nyjer feeder from place to place with no luck until this weekend when a lone American Goldfinch graced my yard, though he preferred the regular tube feeder over the nyjer feeder. He showed up on both count days so I’m hoping he’ll tell his friends and come back. Hopefully, I’ll get a picture.
Chipping Sparrow
The Chipping Sparrows showed up in record numbers for the year. I counted 19 at one point. I know that in late March and early April they’ll flock up and I’ll see 60 or 70 at a time in the weeks before they head north, but 19 is more than I expected at this point.
A Northern Mockingbird eyes the suet feeder
The suet feeder continues to be one of the most interesting feeders in terms of what it draws. Last summer it was dominated by Blue Jays and a Golden-fronted Woodpecker, but those don’t seem interested anymore, happily surrendering it to the mocker and the smaller birds.
A Ruby-crowned Kinglet considers the suet feeder
The Orange-crowned Warbler and Ruby-crowned Kinglet also returned, which was expected since I had seen them most days since my last count. The above shot of the kinglet was taken through a dirty window, but I was surprised to have gotten anything considering how jumpy they are.
And, now, the official count for Week 9, which is probably my highest count at least in terms of number of species:
I jogged on the treadmill in front of the big window at the gym, watching cars pull in and out of the lot, people coming and going, little brown parking lot birds flitting from tree to tree.
A sports car pulled up and a middle-aged woman emerged with a cigarette in her mouth. She adjusted her ponytail, fighting the hair that had been sneaking out since she tied it before work that morning. She stared up at the sky for a few minutes taking deep drags on her cigarette like someone about to go underwater, and she watched the smoke swirl away into the trees.
She glared at the gym with a sour look on her face, flicked her butt onto the concrete and marched toward the door, her face a yin yang of determination and premeditated defeat that clearly said, “Here we go again.”
