The Queen of All Conniptions

 

It all started with a garter snake ©voyager, all rights reserved

I wasn’t going to tell you about this until I got back, but I could use some encouragement. On Monday I’m off on an adventure with a friend. It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a very long time and I think (I hope!) I’m finally ready. What could it be? Well, I’m off to make peace with snakes. I’ve written once about my fear of snakes, but I didn’t tell you how I came to be so afraid.

It started as an ordinary summer day when I was about 5 or 6 years old. We were living in the country and I loved to spend my days just wandering, collecting stones and wildflowers and watching the birds and the bees and the bugs. I was restricted to the field and small woodlot behind the house, but as long as I was home for lunch and dinner there weren’t many other rules, except one…don’t bring bugs home. No caterpillars, no crickets, no bugs of any kind. My mother was not an outdoors person and bugs were one of the main reasons why. She hated them. If a spider or some other buggy creature managed to get indoors it was my job to get them back outdoors, most of the time with mom waving her arms and hollering at me to just kill the poor thing.

On this particular summer’s day I had found a great big worm with stripes and I was so excited that I ran home to show my mom. I’d never seen one of these before and mom always said that worms were good for the garden so I knew she’d pleased that I’d found a nice big one. I ran into the house with my treasure calling out “look what I found, Mom.” My mom was standing at the sink and she turned around, wiping her hands on her apron and for a moment she just stood there with her jaw hanging  down and then she started to scream. It was a blood curdling scream and I’d never heard anything like it. Mom tended to be dramatic, but nothing like this. This was the Queen of All Conniptions. She picked up the broom beside her and started waving it at me and finally there were words, “Get it out of here. Get it out. Get it out.” I was a bit stunned so it took me a moment, but I finally headed toward the door. She practically pushed me out with the broom and as I was about to set it down she hollered “Not there. Not by the house. Get it out of here. Oh God… help… help…” Like I said, mom was dramatic. I had no clue why a worm would cause a reaction like that. I mean, it seemed OK to me. A little wiggly maybe, but I was obviously missing something. So I ran down to the mailbox and throw it in the grass with my mom yelling at  me the whole time at me. When I got back in the house she made me take a bath. In the daytime and baths were only ever at night! This really was serious. For hours afterward my mom kept up the histrionics. I learned that snakes were dangerous and wanted to bite you and that this bite would hurt and it would make you sick. Also, snakes were dirty and slimy and carried disease. Oh yes, and they wanted to eat my cat. Well, I won’t ever do that again I remember thinking and I haven’t, but the story proves that I haven’t always been afraid of snakes.

Now, I want to undo that trauma and make peace with snakes so we are going to a place in Michigan with a small reptile zoo. The fellow who operates it has a you-tube channel that I started following at the beginning of this quest about 2 years ago. I wanted to desensitize myself and his channel appealed to me because he has a snake named Lucy and Lucy was the name of our first lab. This fellow is also quite personable with a great attitude toward life so it was easy to keep watching. In the process of all this watching and desensitizing, I began to trust this man as I watched him help other people get over their fear of snakes. I began to think that I could do that too, so here I am getting ready to pack myself off to meet a snake or two. My girlfriend has no fear of snakes so she’s the perfect companion for this adventure and if I can’t actually touch a snake I’ll still have fun with the other animals. I’m not afraid of Iguanas or turtles or even baby alligators.

So the big question is Will I or Won’t I conquer my fear. You’ll have to tune in on Wednesday next week to find out. Jack’s Walk will be here Monday and Tuesday, but for a change they won’t be actual photos from that day. I’m not sure what they will be yet so that’ll be a surprise too. Wish me luck. I know for sure that I won’t be touching Lucy because she’s 20 feet long and gravid so not in such a good mood right now. That’s fine, something smaller is good with me. Size doesn’t matter does it?

Jack’s Walk

A trio of beauties, ©voyager, all rights reserved

Pink! ©voyager, all rights reserved

It is a dreary, rainy day here and tomorrow is scheduled to be the same. Overall, this has been a much wetter spring than we’re used to and at this point I think the growing things would rather have sunshine. I would, too. Jack and I did manage to get to the park before the heavy rain started and we saw our first goslings of the year, but mamas and papas were closely on guard so we kept our distance. It wasn’t all doom and gloom, though. We did find these beautiful trees in blossom and they lit up my day. I’m not sure what they are. They look like cherry blossoms, but I couldn’t find anything to identify them. They were planted a few years ago and this is the first time I’ve seen flowers. To be honest, I’ve mostly ignored them until now. The light in the photos is grim, but I haven’t got the energy to play around and try to fix it. Even in bad light, though, they’re beautiful. I like the way the willows in the background accent the pink. I suppose this is what the parks department had in mind when they were planted and they just needed time to grow up a bit.

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

©voyager, all rights reserved

It’s leaf day! Around our house that means that the baby leaves are finally big enough to camouflage the highschool up the street. There’s nothing wrong with the highschool, they keep it well maintained, but I prefer to look at leaves. The city where I live plants a lot of trees free of charge. Technically they sit on city land (which is about 5 meters in from the center of the street), but they become the property and responsibility of the homeowner. About 20 years ago they planted red maples down my street and I happened to be home when they got to my house. It was near 5 pm and it had obviously been along day for the lads. There were only 2 trees left in their trailer and they were about to plant one of them in my side yard when I decided to ask if I could have them both. One fellow looked at the trees, looked at my yard, looked back at the trees again and shrugged. “Sure, why not” he said as he grabbed his shovel and started to dig. For once, I was in the right spot at the right time and was bold enough to open my mouth and ask for what I wanted. And it worked. Those 2 trees are now big and strong and shade my house all day long. Lucky me.

Jack’s Walk

Can you find Jack? ©voyager, all rights reserved

For you, rq. ©voyager, all rights reserved

The trout lilies are open! Everywhere you look the forest floor is speckled with their bright and cheerful yellow flowers. I’m sorry to report, though, that the white trilliums are still not open. There are lots of them around, but I couldn’t find a single one with an open bloom. Just out of curiosity I looked back to last year’s spring photos and on May 7 (a year ago today) I shot quite a few open white trilliums. I hope that means that this year’s flowers will present themselves soon.

Flowers and Aliens

First, remember the not black tulips? Seems like the package contained two varieties, with the pink ones being earlier and the almost black ones being later. Here they finally are:

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Next one is true kingcups that grow along our little creek. I wanted to get closer but then chose dry feet…

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Dungbeetles are no aliens, Sorry to disappoint you. But I quite like them.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

This, OTOH, is aliens. I guess at some point they are replaced every year by ordinary fern plants, but this is  not something that just grows, it’s the result of extraterrestrial mingling.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

It’s been an absolutely glorious day here, full of sunshine and flowers and bees. The tulips around our neighbourhood are opening up in a riot of colour and down the street hyacinths are in full deep purple bloom. We’ve had a day and a half of sunshine and it seems that’s exactly what was needed to kick spring into gear. Yesterday morning the trees were only just a bit fuzzy, but this afternoon there are actual leaves popping out all over. It isn’t quite leaf day yet, but I think it might be tomorrow. Everything is growing so quickly. Overnight my hydrangeas sprouted leaves and I swear my grass has put on 2 or 3 inches of growth since yesterday morning. It’s like someone waved a magic wand and said ‘go, hurry.’ So imagine my surprise to arrive at the park this afternoon and find all of the tulips there still tightly closed.  Oh well, it obviously isn’t their day yet.

It’s my day! ©voyager, all rights reserved

Let’s Play 9: Goodbye!

This concludes our series with some more animals from the wait line for the wild water ride, in which #1 learned an important lesson about agency, autonomy, consent and respect.

On our second day we went straight for that attraction since it tends to have the longest waiting times. We still needed almost an hour, which #1 used for bickering about how it was a stupid ride and she didn’t want to go anyway. We told her that of course she didn’t have to, but we wouldn’t leave the line since the rest of the family wanted to go on the ride, so she decided to come along.

When we were all seated, properly belted in and the boat started to move she said “I don’t want to!”. Mr yelled for them to stop the boat, they let her out and we took the ride without her, which was exactly not what she wanted as evidenced by the 2 hours that she kept complaining about how it had been unnecessary for us to stop the ride and that she would have been OK to go with us.

Well, kid, no means no, and if you actually mean “yes”, you need to say that.

Her little sister, who is usually the kindest person on earth and too often the target of her older sister’s cruelties, frustration and meanness, couldn’t keep herself from talking about how that was the coolest ride in the whole park for two straight days and we only had half a heart to stop her…

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

My absolute favourite, as hippos are my favourites. Mr. wants to email Lego about whether this can be bought as a set and put it inthe front yard (so it can become a Pokestop. Yes. he’s serious).

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Anyway, the design of that ride is mean. What you can see from the outside is the boats disappear around the corner, emerge at the top and then go down the steep ride. What you cannot see is that they first haul you up and then you don’t go forward to the steep ride but are turned 90° and go down a different ride backwards. You then travel the hidden dinosaur valley (obviously no pics here) before you go up again for the final ride.

It was fun.

All in all, the whole trip was fun even though it was exhausting. We were absolutely lucky with the weather as t was summer temperatures, making all the water attractions enjoyable. Now we have some arctic air with snowfall on Saturday…

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack and I went to the park this morning instead of the woods so we could check the progress of the tulips, but there’s been very little progress since the last time we checked a few days ago. A bit of sunshine might  help, but there hasn’t been much of that in the past few weeks and if the forecast is to be believed 7 of the next 10 days are going to be rainy. Sigh. We really don’t need any rain. The river and creeks are running high with localized areas of flooding and the ground is soggy just about everywhere. I know it’s the season of mud, but does it have to be muddy every single bloody day? Oh well, rain or shine the flowers will bloom eventually and just to prove that point we did find heaps of open daffodils all around the duck pond. They’re making their own sunshine.

Jack’s Walk

The first trillium of the year, ©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack and I searched the forest today looking for open trilliums and we could only find one. It’s a red one which isn’t surprising because the red trilliums always show up first in our woods and it was in perfect condition which is surprising because the red ones seem to wither almost as soon as they bloom. There are masses of trilliums this year, but it’s been cold and damp and they’re slow to open. Last year many of them didn’t open for much the same reason so I’ve got  my fingers crossed for better this year.

I did try using a mirror to take this photo, but I couldn’t make it work. It reflected too much sky and looked awful. Instead, I got down on my hands and knees as usual (hence the shaking blur) and pretended I didn’t hear those noises I made getting back up.

Let’s Play: At Legoland 6

My favourite part is probably the mini world, where they rebuild cities and places in Lego. I could have spent hours there.

Also a whiptail found that a balcony in Venice is the perfect place for its nest.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved
The huge dinosaurs are the best thing anyway.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Roo

A stately specimen from Lofty.

This picture is of a well built male kangaroo that I saw out of the window right on dusk, complete with a “Wot U Lookin At?” expression on its face. It’s still very dry hereabouts and the slight runoff from our driveway grew a little green grass for it to munch. Fortunately it paused just long enough for me to reach around and fire off this shot. A few seconds later it bounded out of sight.

Roo, ©Lofty, all rights reserved