A Neat Trick

Happy Halloween, when people dress in costume except when, like me, they are too much of a character already. This very fine Walking Stick I met on the door frame had its legs stockinged green to match the paint. How that happens I don't know, but it's marvelous and someday we humans will be able to do that.

Days have been wonderfully, exceptionally warm for October, and I deeply appreciate the warm weather extending until now, and perhaps until December. I've barbecued on December 6, and last December 21, the solstice, maxed out at 66 degrees (above zero), warm enough to sit by the Yule Log until long past sunset.

After we are into November, the solstice is only seven weeks away.

One Singular Sensation

All creatures here love the sun. Coming back from the mailbox I lifted my eyes and saw this, the local Walking Stick, tricked out like a hickory branch, sunning herself on the pumphouse and communing with her elegant shadow. The boyfriend I saw her with last month? I decided not to ask in case it might get emotional--or she ate him. Besides, in this coupled world, we all must understand that we really are fine when by ourselves.

The Happy Couple

The smaller one, the male, is using his special little set of pincers to clutch his female partner for a minimum of 3 hours and up to 3 weeks to make sure he and no other male is transmitting his genes to the next generation. These two walking sticks (Diapheromera femorata) were doin' the wild thing on the garage door, and so as not to disturb them I used the other door--after I took my purely scientific nature photo. They are a favorite food of wild turkeys.

Benefits of Hiking Poles

A staff I made from a broomstick -- smoothly varnished, just the right size, and marked in inches to check depths of water -- served me for years of hiking until I joined a hiking group and got teased about it, like, did I ride it on Halloween. Many of them had store-bought hiking poles--pairs, like ski poles, one for each hand. I bought cheap ones to see how they worked for me. One broke the first day. I repaired and reinforced them with electrical tape and have now used them for half a year. Advantages of hiking poles:
1. They offer a mild upper-body workout.
2. Their rubber tips or spring-loaded shocks and rubber tops reduce stress on the hands and wrists.
3. I can hike farther.
4. While climbing steep hills or descending rocky pathways I feel much more balanced and secure.
5. Increased confidence and stability when I step over obstacles such as fallen trees, or vault across puddles or creeks.
6. They weigh less than my solid wooden staff (like bikes, the more expensive they are the lighter they can be).
7. The wrist straps mean that you don't have to clutch them for dear life.
8. Especially when going downhill they save wear on the knees.
9. One can serve as a monopod for a camera.
10. They telescope; their length is adjustable.
11. Good for poking around the forest floor.

Disadvantages:
1. You can't carry anything else in your hands, so must buy or at least bring along a holster, fanny pack, or backpack.
2. You must tug the straps off and lay the poles down to take photos or swig water, and a couple of times when I laid them down or propped them against a tree I almost lost them, even though I chose red ones to make that less likely. I have also tripped on them, and had them fall into a clump of poison ivy.
3. They must be stored in the car.
4. If you don't use them in the approved fashion you get lectured on the trail.
5. They are just one more thing to buy.
6. They make you look and maybe feel a little old; they're used mostly by over-40s.
7. Useless, even burdensome, on ice or in mud. But then again, why are you hiking on ice or in mud?

I like them very much; I simply feel more secure.

My Love Life

Toads aren't often seen in broad daylight, especially just outside the gym, which is in a strip mall, so I figured this toad was looking and waiting specifically for me because he was an enchanted toad who with a kiss would turn into a handsome prince just my age, with no baggage, who shares my interests. I was game, why not, and bent down and said "Hello, little guy," and put my hand out so he could hop into it, but he hopped away, saying nothing. I tried a second time. He hopped again, toward the puddle of water in the parking lot. I pursued him with the camera. Finally he turned to me and said, "I'm a girl." She's a Bufo americanus americanus Holbrook, an Eastern American toad, found in every county in Missouri.

Oh, I said, disappointed.

That was Friday. On Saturday, clinging to the siding just outside my kitchen door making his annual appeal (often sticking to the kitchen screen door for several days), the Walking Stick appeared, trim and debonair as always, this time matching himself to the paint trim. Every year I politely refuse his proposal, telling him he's very attractive and a great guy but we are not a match.

My Faithfullest Friend

He's back...this time in a beautifully textured "wooden" coat and the loveliest green waistcoat -- my faithful (platonic) friend the Walking Stick. He's hanging on the porch door right now, head down, waiting for me to take his annual portrait -- much more colorful than last year's, when he dressed as a dry stick. I saw him a few days ago clad in chalk-white, playing part of the garage siding. Enter "walking stick" in my search box at upper  LEFT to see his previous outfits. Here you see him at his most handsome and tasteful.

The Return of the Walking Stick

The Walking Stick hung around yesterday, this time on the porch screen, and he put on yellow hosiery, and you really can't see it in this photo but he striped and checkered his underside so he looked like a windowscreen from inside the porch, where I'd been sitting and reading. Today, however, a good 30 degrees colder, no sign of him.

The Stick Who Loved Me

Let me put to rest all your doubts about my suitor, the Walking Stick, hangin' on my kitchen storm door trying to impress me, this time for three straight days. He's really sweet but not my type. One year he had a girlfriend, and maybe just to be spiteful he and she did you-know-what on the window screen all day. I do mean all day. Enough time for me to call people, ask them to drive over and see it. Very tantric, just joined and didn't move a muscle. But when the Walking Stick is single again, who does he call on? Not his ex, but old reliable me. I like how he automatically ASSUMES I am single and available. He does the fop thing, changing colors, and I just smile kindly, say a few admiring words, tell him the right female Walking Stick is somewhere out there waiting for him, he just has to join a church or the Beginner Aerobics class down at the community center.

Open House

The kitchen door and screen here aren't flush with the doorjamb. Underneath and through those doors have slunk and marched and flown all sorts of creatures, right into my house like they owned the place. In October, spiders creep in to take refuge for the winter. I once had a Halloween dinner for family and it was as if I had ordered spiders to walk across the room every minute as a party favor.

Mouse settled in and stashed an ounce or two of cracked corn in the toe of a boot I don't often wear. That same year a mouse (the same frugal mouse?) made a silo in the ring-binding of my Betty Crocker cookbook. During a really hard winter when all food is secured against mice, they scratch at and eat my Ivory soap. In the pantry closet, just last month, a mouse chewed a stack of 250 table napkins to shreds and built a fabulous nest of them.

Wasps buzz indoors and sleep or build nests all winter up in a window frame. I found one who drowned in a jar of honey (I'd lost the cap and topped it with saran wrap and a rubber band; the wasp broke its way through). They sleep all winter in window frames, and in spring wake up trapped behind the plastic window insulation. The question is, how do I free them and direct them out of the house without getting stung? (I'd squash them, but they get really aggressive when I try!!)

During the drought of 2006, a lizard in search of water came in beneath the door and spent two weeks residing in the laundry room. I grew fond of him and named him Harrison.

Moths flutter in starting in August, planning to eat my clothes and blankets, and I chase 'em but rarely catch 'em. Once, though, I was boiling some sugar water for hummingbird nectar, and a moth flew right into it and boiled to death. I said to it, "What were you thinking?"

Woke up on a very rainy night, and there in the bathroom was a foot-long blacksnake in who probably came in under the kitchen door so he/she would not be drowned. Night crawlers, plain earthworms, fuzzy caterpillars and large centipedes do this also. These I pick up and throw outside.

Every year a "walking stick" comes and hangs on the screen door at eye level. Clearly he wants my attention. I tell him thanks, but he's not my type. Then he changes his color, comes back and looks hopeful: "Is this more your type?"

Somebody cut the kitchen door wrong long ago -- looks as if it was done with a handsaw -- just about a half-inch too high, and curved -- and it can't be fixed.

Wednesday Walking Club

Three inches of rain last night, so at 10 a.m. only two other members of the Wednesday Walking Club were present; nonetheless, we hiked three miles, looking at swollen streams the color of chocolate milk, surrounded by thick greenery and strange prairie plants, under the gray sky which is the blue sky having thoughts. Saw a heron, a pair of bluebirds guarding their box, swifts, red-winged blackbirds, a warbler, a pileated woodpecker high in a dead treetop; they and the frogs together made wild music. We soaked in it and then returned to the world, which then looked and felt very different.

Meet Bugs and Amphibians Online!

Meet the friends that came by one morning during this warm dry week. Mister "Walking Stick" (Diaphomera femorata, related to the grasshopper) had applied himself to the screen on the eastern window, and stuck there a good long time. I've seen him, other years, in green and yellow, but this year he was armored in bronze. And, same morning, this baby turtle got caught up in a corner between walls and had to be picked up by her still-translucent three-inch shell, and set face forward. And then -- she (or he) ran! I do mean she high-tailed it! She fled! I barely got the photo!