Those Flying Teddy Bears

“All that is round invites a caress,” writes Gaston Bachelard, and the chickadee is the embodiment of caressable roundness. With its big domed head, tiny bill, and widely-spaced eyes, he is the teddy bear of the avian world. Who can resist that baby-like charm? Grown men have been known to stand for hours, hoping that a chickadee will consent to pick a seed out of their outstretched hand. 

Everything about a chickadee--including his mating call: hey sweetie!--is sweet. I, along with every other pandemic prisoner depending for company and entertainment on the goings on at the feeder, am a sucker for that sweetness, so I feed them seeds and suet, and make sure that the bird bath stays unfrozen even in sub-zero weather. If only I could know every one of their tiny hearts’ desires, I would try to fulfill them, all in the hope that in return they would think of me as their friend. 

But last week I listened to a lecture by the ornithologist  David Hof , Ph.D. about the emotional lives of these birds, and got a shock. I’m sorry to say that chickadees are, by human standards, anything but sweet. In fact, you could say that a chickadee is a wolf in bird’s clothing, except that wolves are a lot nicer. 

I learned from Dr. Hof that chickadee society is as hierarchical as the most rigid caste system. Worse, all chickadee males outrank all females, with the lowliest male able to shoo even the alpha female away from the feeder, no matter that she is married to the alpha male. Like many birds, a male chickadee sings to keep other males out of his territory and away from his mate, but he does not apply the same standards to himself: if he covets his neighbor’s wife, he sneaks into his neighbor’s tree and has his way with her. 

I was not exactly shocked by this. I knew from watching endless nature documentaries that many animals, including the most endearing, form rigid hierarchies, fight over mates and territory, and commit adultery. A lustful nature is not necessarily incompatible with sweetness. But my remaining illusions were shattered when Dr. Hof related that, after spending hundreds of hours capturing, banding, and observing a tribe of chickadees, he had found one in the act of murdering a rival-- a brutal attack in which the beta bird of the flock went on pecking savagely at the alpha long after the latter had expired (the widow fluttered off, but I shudder to think of the marriage that she was later forced to endure). 

It’s not fair, I realize, to hold chickadees to higher standards than other birds. Among eagles, the biggest chick in the nest usually kills one or more of its brethren, and female eagles have been known to kill their mates. But eagles look like frowning, angry old men, with their flat heads, deep-set eyes, and enormous, downward curving beaks, so we are not surprised to hear of eagle cruelty. But the cruelty of chickadees feels like a betrayal, their fluffy adorableness a feint designed to take advantage of our good nature. 

Of course, the chickadees can’t help it, anymore than the male lion can help killing his rival’s cubs when he takes over a pride, or the stags can help giving each other concussions in their attempts to sire the next generation of fawns. Wolves are merciless towards strange wolves who wander into their territory. Chimpanzees bicker for dominance, and kill individuals from other groups. 

But chimpanzees, wolves, stags, lions, and chickadees are nothing more than furry or feathered envelopes engineered to protect the real culprits: the implacable genes that will stop at nothing to keep themselves going. As Darwin proved, the individual is expendable; it’s the species that counts. Which, when I think about it, is beyond depressing, but at least it makes it possible for me to look more charitably on the chickadee, and find it in my heart to forgive him.

 

My Friend, the Egg Timer

 In my quest to lead a responsible life, and to acquit myself of many onerous but essential tasks, the egg timer is my tool of choice. I refer to that clockwork gizmo—predictably shaped like an egg or a broody hen--that you can set for a maximum of sixty minutes (if you’re cooking an ostrich egg). It ticks loudly as its inner mechanism unwinds, and lets out an ear-splitting buzz when the time is up. 

This humble tool keeps my life on track by fooling me into thinking that it, and not I, is responsible for deciding when I can stop working on some unpleasant task. I realize that I am the one who sets the timer, but such is the mind’s capacity for self-deception that I can trick myself, when the buzzer buzzes, into believing that a higher authority—God, my mother, the German nuns who educated me—has deemed my obligation met, at least for the present, and I am free to pick up my needlepoint or watch another episode of “Call My Agent.” 

Take, for example, the task I most dislike: preparing income tax returns. Not only does it deal with boring things like forms and numbers, but it is also scary—what if I make a mistake that sets the IRS hounds on my trail? The combination of boring and scary is conducive to procrastination, guilt, anxiety, more procrastination, and the need to file for an extension.  But I am glad to report that this morning, thanks to my egg timer, I made a start on it. 

After setting the timer for sixty minutes, I assembled my files, a pad of yellow stickies, some paper clips, a black pen, a red pen, a pencil, a stapler, last year’s calendar, and a calculator.  The timer’s cheerful ticking kept me company as I sorted and compiled medical expenses, charitable contributions, 1099s, and random bits of paper, and before I knew it the buzzer buzzed. I shoved the lot into a box to await tomorrow’s session and went for a walk with my dog  Bisou, feeling like a kid let out for recess. 

House cleaning is another task I dread. The prospect of cleaning the house, or even cleaning just one room, throws me into existential despair. How will I feel, on my death bed, about the hours of my “one and precious life” I spent cleaning? Who even knows what “cleaning” means? One might begin with dusting, then press on with wiping, polishing, sweeping, vacuuming, and disinfecting, and never be heard from again. 

Again, the trick is to think “by the hour” rather than “by the job.” If it’s a dusting day, I set my timer for sixty minutes and begin. Perhaps when the timer rings I’m still in the room where I began, in which case I must have done a thorough job. But no matter how far or how well I have dusted, the egg timer has spoken, and I obey. 

On days when the sidewalks are icy, or the snow forms huge balls on Bisou’s “feathers,” I exercise her by throwing balls for her indoors, an activity that she adores. For me, despite my love for her, throwing balls the length of our cottage until she gets tired is sheer tedium. I try to focus on the moment, to take pleasure in her pleasure, to remember that this is the least I can do for a being who brings me such comfort. But the truth is, I am bored out of my mind. How long must I do this before I can in good conscience stop? 

Here again, the egg timer saves me. I set it for fifteen minutes, and then ignore it as it ticks away. Knowing that it’s in charge lets me enter into a mindless zone in which I throw the ball, praise her as she retrieves it, throw, praise, and throw again until the buzzer jolts me out of my hypnotic state. Then I put the ball away, and Bisou collapses into blissful sleep. 

I also use a timer for meditation. If I didn’t, I would be opening one eye to check the time every two minutes. But here I use the timer on my phone, which emits a bucolic cricket sound that doesn’t make me jump out of my skin. I could use the phone timer for everything else, but I am fond of the loud, companionable ticking of the analog machine. 

What about writing? Heaven knows we writers need tricks to get us going and to make the task seem less hopeless. But I don’t use a timer for writing because, when I am in full avoidance mode, even setting it for five minutes feels overwhelming. What I do instead is take a nap, one during which I may or may not sleep, but during which I allow my mind to ramble through its various wastelands. Then I get up and go to the computer, having made a solemn promise to myself that I will write a one single solitary sentence, no more. Next thing I know, I’ve written paragraphs.

But for everything else, nothing beats the egg timer.

Bisou after chasing balls

 

Winter Rabbit

A run-of-the-mill Eastern cottontail, Sylvilagus floridanus (or “forest hare of Florida”), is spending the season under our porch. Despite his species name, he is no flatlander—like a true Vermonter, he knows how to get through the winter. He couldn’t ask for a more convenient accommodation: he only has to stick out his head to munch on the oil-rich sunflower seeds that rain down from the feeders under the eaves. When he’s feeling brave he lopes across the yard to nibble on the stalks of dormant bushes, and when he gets thirsty, he drinks out of the heated birdbath. 

I don’t have to look out the window to know his whereabouts. If my cat Telemann--who has finally, in his fourth year, learned that it’s impossible to hunt squirrels through the glass--is dashing from windowsill to windowsill, yowling and lashing his tail, I know the rabbit is out feeding. But if Telemann is lost in meditation, contemplating the endless snow of this endless winter, it means that the rabbit is under the porch. 

They are a dreary looking lot, my outdoor winter guests, rabbit and squirrels and birds in their grayish, brownish coats and plumage. Only the red head of the woodpecker and the smear of pale orange under the titmouse’s wings bring relief from the drabness, and I find myself longing for the rusty red of the fox. 

Where, come to think of it, is the fox? What’s become of last year’s family? By now the new litter should be nursing in the den across the road, and their father, the dog fox (whose spouse is not the bitch fox, but rather the vixen--don’t you love the English language?) should be coming by on his hunt, morning and evening, like he did last year. Heaven knows that my squirrels, not to mention the bunny, have reached perfect dinner size, with enough fat calories to satisfy all the fox’s dependents. 

Perhaps the foxes have left for good, in which case I will miss them, with their elegant coats, black stockings, and clever smiles. And I will also miss the life-and-death dramas that they enacted under my window, which gave me a shameful kind of thrill, not unlike what the more sensitive Romans must have felt at the circus. 

If the foxes stay away, my rabbit will probably make it to the spring, and will then get busy making more rabbits. I will not depress you with wild rabbit survival statistics, which are dismal, but the taste for rabbit is widespread in Nature.  Depending on size, not just foxes, but dogs, cats, owls, hawks, bobcats, snakes, and humans eat them. So to keep the species going, the poor things have to procreate nonstop. 

Does the rabbit under my porch know that he’s not likely to live to his first birthday? Is he anxious about food and shelter and predators? Does he feel that this winter has been going on for eons, like I do? 

I used to love Vermont winters—the cold, the snow, the bare woods, the silence. It felt good to take a break from warm-weather chores and hibernate along with the chipmunks and the bears. But now I, along with the rest of (responsible) humanity, have been hibernating for twelve months straight, and it’s getting old. 

Unlike my rabbit and too many of my fellow citizens, I am not anxious about food, shelter, or predators (except for the merciless invisible spherical one). The sources of entertainment at my fingertips—Kindle, computer, TV—offer way more than I can even begin to consume. As for human contact, I have a spouse at my fingertips, plus zoom, phone, and masked walks with friends. And it’s not as if in normal times I was an avid shopper/hiker/concert goer/restaurant diner/traveler. So what is lacking in my life? 

Perhaps during the last twelve months I have contracted the equivalent of a spiritual virus that has left me unable to even imagine things to want. The color of my mood is not blue, but rather dun: gray with touches of brown and occasional white—a lot like the coloring of my friend the cottontail. I wouldn’t say I’m depressed. I’m just…meh. 

But I know one thing that will make me and most living things in this hemisphere feel better. A couple of days ago I was out in below 20 F weather, getting some fresh air before the next snow storm, when up in a Bradford pear tree I heard a bird singing--the first one in, like, forever. Not just a couple of random tweets, either, but a full-throated, full-hearted aria that was then answered from the top of another Bradford pear by another singer. I stood transfixed, as if Saint Cecilia herself had descended from heaven with her harp. And while I was looking up into the branches, trying to find the source of that passionate rivulet of sound, I felt the warmth of the sun touch the exposed skin between my hat and my mask. 

So never mind the woodchuck’s forecast. Spring is on the way.

 

 

Artichoke on My Face

“And then God sent an angel to pick blackberries,” my mother says, tucking me in. “He chose the two biggest, darkest ones and gave them to you for eyes. Another angel brought two roses for your cheeks, and he then flew to one of heaven’s cherry trees and brought down the ripest cherry for your lips." 

My eyes are starting to close, but she goes on. “But then God sent a younger angel, one that didn’t have a lot of experience, to look for something to make your nose. And that silly angel went to the vegetable garden and picked an artichoke, and God plopped it in the middle of your face.” As I nod off the Catalan word for artichoke, carxofa, seems to perfectly recreate the sound and feel of God plopping the artichoke on my face. 

But I am no more worried about having a carxofa on my face than I am flattered by the blackberry and cherry clichés. What sticks in my mind is the miraculous care and attention—all because of my specialness--that my creation story presupposes on the part of God, the angels, and my mother. 

It is only when I am a few years older that I realize what the artichoke metaphor is all about: I have inherited the Benejam nose. According to my mother, that nose, which my father got, along with his musical talent, from his mother, is disproportionately broad. The Benejam nose sits in the middle of our faces like an artichoke among the fruits and blossoms of an otherwise pleasing still-life. 

I don’t perceive any meanness in my mother’s tone when she critiques the Benejam nose. Heaven knows she loves my father and me to death. I have to grow a little older before I realize that, coming from someone with a narrow, more classically correct nose, her talk about the noses of her beloveds carries a whiff of schadenfreude. 

Oddly enough, this does not give me a nose complex. Even at the nadir of my adolescence, when I deplore most aspects of my anatomy (too much hair, not thin enough, etc.), my nose ranks low among my concerns. Rather, in my longing to draw close to my father, I like to think that the resemblance of our noses is an outward sign of the deep bond between us.

If my mother does not stint her observations about my nose, she is equally unsparing of her own perceived shortcomings. The chief one among these, according to her, is her legs, which are slightly bowed—something I would never have noticed if she hadn’t brought it up. And she in turn heaps praise on my legs, which she says are straight and perfect as Greek columns. 

Neither my artichoke nose nor my columnar legs have much emotional impact on me as a child. What does put an indelible mark on my psyche is my mother’s preoccupation with physical beauty. Hearing her analyze other women’s appearance in clinical detail—eyes too small and close together, nice long neck, pity about those short arms—I learn to pay close attention to looks, mine and everyone else’s. 

Now I am in tenth grade, and my mother is concerned about my teeth. It seems that my jaws are too small, or my teeth too big, and she takes me to the orthodontist because, as she explains to a friend, “nobody is likely to marry this child for her money, so we need to make sure she looks as good as possible.” Braces are only the latest in her list of improvements, following years of orthotics for my supposedly flat feet, and surgery to correct my errant left eye. 

I am grateful to my mother for her proactive attitude towards my appearance. Thanks to her my eyes and teeth are reasonably straight, my feet well arched. But I’m glad that she left my carxofa nose alone. These days I am often startled, when passing in front of a mirror, by what looks like the ghost of my mother. When did I grow to be so like her? But if I stop and look closer, there in the middle of my face is my nose, in all its Benejam splendor, to remind me that I am also my father’s daughter.