Tuesday, July 25, 2006, 19:22
Crash Landing
See, now -- that's what happens when I'm in a hurry. I knew it, too, but did it stop me from hurrying? Nooooooooo. . .
There I was Monday night, at midnight, giving the horses more hay and water. Lightning flickered to the south and seemed to be coming closer. Seeing as the pasture is not growing, I am feeding as much hay now as I do in the winter. And I was interrupted in my watering earlier in the evening. So I wanted to get all of it done as quickly as possible, in case it started to storm.
Tippy, Momma Kitty, Squeak and the five kittens were all begging for something to eat, too. They had been gone all day and now they were hungry. Which added to my sense of urgency.
I picked up a full bucket of water for Isabelle, took a step, and CRASH. Down I went. Straight down. With my ankle bent under me.
I will never know for sure how I managed not to spill the full bucket of water, but what I think happened is that I went down so fast that on my way down, I simply set the bucket on the ground.
The reason I went down is that I stepped in one of the holes Isabelle gouged out of the yard when she was running around during that March snowstorm when she got out of her pasture.
I slowly, painfully got to my feet and took a step. And then another one. And another. My ankle hurt, but I figured if I had broken something, I wouldn't be taking any steps at all.
All of a sudden, I was covered in goosebumps and shivering cold. It wasn't any cooler out than it had been when I came outside five minutes ago, so I figured it was from the adrenalin rush.
I managed to hobble around to get the rest of my chores done -- with lightning flickering to the south and seeming to come closer.
As soon as I got back in the house, I ate a peanut butter sandwich and took two naproxen sodium tablets, hoping that the naproxen would help for any swelling or inflammation.
Today, it's not so much that my ankle hurts as it is that my leg above my ankle hurts. I suppose I did something to a tendon or to the muscle.
If I had been wearing my old workboots instead of those flimsy tennis shoes, my leg and ankle would probably be in much better shape today. But of course, I was wearing the tennis shoes because it was 100 degrees in the shade yesterday.
Now, if only I can remember that hurrying won't necessarily help me to get the job done faster, I'll be much better off. . .
Torrential Rain -- While I was feeding the horses Monday evening about 6 p.m., the sky was growing very dark to the south/southwest. As I carried hay and water, the sirens started going off in the town five miles to the west. It's interesting, I think, that we can hear the sirens all the way out here.
In a short time, I could see a "curtain" extending from the clouds to the ground and heading in this direction. First just a few spatters of rain fell, but in not too long, it was raining pretty hard. It rained for an hour or so, and I think all together, we got about an inch out of it.
An inch of rain!
The last time we got an inch of rain was exactly one month ago.
Points east of here, however, got anywhere from 3 to 6 inches of rain in that same one-hour time period. The city of Eau Claire experienced flash flooding, and on the news, they showed people paddling around in canoes in a flooded city park. They also showed cars that were underwater. And a furniture store with water lapping at the doors.
This is NOT the kind of rain that's going to help much! I was afraid it would do that -- torrential rain that runs off right away and doesn't get a chance to soak in.
The heavy rain will help the ponds, lakes, rivers and marshes, though.
The weather forecast is predicting that we could get more cloudbursts this afternoon or this evening.
Run! -- I took Charlie for a little walk up the dirt road this morning, and when I came back to the driveway, I could see two of my cats, the very long-haired red-and-white fluffy MaryAnne and my black tom, Rocky, in the middle of the road.
Rocky was looping back and forth, and "something" was running in front of him.
I would just as soon the cats did not play in the middle of the road.
I went to investigate, and as I got closer, I could see what Rocky found so interesting. It was a fat field mouse. A very fat field mouse.
"Run, little feller," I said. "Before Rocky gets you."
I stomped my foot -- and the field mouse jumped and almost landed on my leg.
"Not this way," I said. "Run for the woods!"
The field mouse hopped into the ditch -- with Rocky right behind him (or her? maybe it was a fat pregnant momma field mouse?).
I reached out and grabbed Rocky's tail to slow him down, which he didn't particularly appreciate.
"Run," I said. "Hide!"
The field mouse managed to jump into the bushes, with Rocky right on his trail.
Finally the mouse jumped up on the bank and down into a hole in the ground created when a tree blew over some years ago. He disappeared into the cavern by what remains of the tree roots.
When I left, Rocky was sitting on the bank, staring down into the hole, and MaryAnne was sitting behind him.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Monday, July 24, 2006, 21:06
Rare Birds (Or: When the Red, Red Robin Does NOT Come Bob-Bob-Bobbin' Along)
As I sat out in the backyard Saturday morning with a cup of coffee, a robin twittered from one of the big oak trees near the road.
And just then, it hit me: we haven't heard hardly anything out of the robins this summer.
But of course not. Robins like to sing after it rains. And we haven't been getting any rain.
Is there anything quite so lovely as the clear, trilling song of the robins after a rain when the air has been washed clean and is clear and pure?
I miss hearing the robins sing at dusk, too. The evenings have been silent, absent of the robins' song. I miss hearing them sing their praise and thanksgiving for a cool evening, thankful for the day that has passed and thankful for the promise of the day to come.
And I miss seeing the robins hopping around the yard, looking for worms. The earthworms are far from the surface now. The soil is much too dry. The earthworms have migrated deeper into the ground, or have to gone to places where there might be a tiny bit of moisture -- underneath the mulch of leaves in the woods between the yard and the road, or underneath the mulch in the garden. But they are not out in the open. They are not where the robins can find them. So the robins are not where I can find them.
It's funny how a person takes certain things for granted -- like the robins -- until one day you realize they are not around.
Charlie -- Our Springer Spaniel, Charlie, is doing much better than he was last week. He is getting up and down a lot easier. Instead of pulling himself up off the ground with the his front feet and hoping that his rear end follows, he is pushing up his rear end with his hind legs. This morning, I talked to the vet who saw him last week, and she says we should keep him on this antibiotic for two weeks, until I have given him all of the antibiotic I got last week, and then go another two weeks with the same antibiotic, and then continue with the doxycycline to clear up the Lyme disease and the Ehrlichiosis.
Committee Meeting -- I had another committee meeting today for the pictorial directory committee for our parish. The meeting lasted more than 2.5 hours. I didn't think we had that much to talk about. I didn't think it would be this involved. I'll be glad when it's over!
Heat -- Once again the temperature got up to 100 degrees in the shade this afternoon. When I arrived home from the committee meeting this afternoon, I checked on the horses and gave them more hay and water. And then Charlie wanted to go inside where it is cooler. I don't blame him!
Last week, our governor (Gov. Doyle) declared a state of emergency because of the drought. I talked to my sister-in-law this morning, and she said they had talked to someone else who knew someone whose well had gone dry. And so it begins. I figured it was only a matter of time until the wells started giving out.
LeAnn R. Ralph