Furry scoundrels!

We got confirmation last night – it really is a raccoon in our
ceiling. But that's not all: there are likely THREE of them! A whole
raccoon family. We've been hearing them chirping to each other and
what sounds like fighting among them. Yesterday evening I climbed up
the ladder to the ceiling and peeked inside. All the way on the other
side of the ceiling, in a pool of light that must come up from our
light fixtures over our kitchen, I saw a large raccoon grooming
itself. I watched it for a few minutes and even though I had made lots
of noise getting up the ladder, it didn't even look in my direction. I
went to get a camera in the apartment and returned to my spot, and
spent a while trying to focus on the raccoon, which turned out not to
be possible. But at one point I saw something moving in the dark in my
peripheral vision and I realized it was another raccoon within just a
few feet of me and moving closer to investigate! I nearly fell down
the ladder, I was so startled. I hissed and jumped down to the floor.
Standing in the hallway outside our apartment, I noticed a movement up
near the ceiling by a skylight in our hallway – another raccoon was
peeking down at me through a space between the skylight and the
ceiling space it lives in! It was making curious and/or/ irritated
snorting sounds. I managed to get a picture of it, not a great one,
but good enough to prove to our superintendant that there are raccoons
up there, not squirrels, as he persists in thinking (for some reason
he seems to think saying they're squirrels gets him off the hook for
doing anything about it, but now that they're clearly raccoons, maybe
we can mobilize him).

I had bought some ammonia and sponges from the hardware store earlier
in the evening thinking I would soak the sponges in the ammonia and
then toss them frisbee-style into the recesses of the ceiling to drive
off the raccoons. Unlike mothballs, the other option, the ammonia
would eventuallly evaporate so we wouldn't be stuck with a smelly
thing we couldn't remove if we ended up being able to smell it inside
our apartment. But it turned out that the opening into the ceiling is
much to small and awkward for me to get my hand into, let alone
effectively toss anything into. The raccoons managed to get into the
hallway (when they ate our trash) through a larger opening, but it
faces a brick wall, so I couldn't use that. Instead, I got an
extension cord and strung up a radio alarm clock we don't use and put
it in the ceiling. I turned it to a mariachi station and turned the
volume low enough that we can't hear it in our bedroom when we're
sleeping (nor can our neighbors downstairs hear it, though we can hear
it faintly in our kitchen – not enough to be annoying though) but loud
enough that creatures with sensitive hearing (raccoons) can surely
hear it throughout the ceiling space. We played it all last night and
didn't hear nearly as much of the raccoons, though they may spend a
lot of their time outside at night anyway. Before I left this morning
I turned the radio way up to roust out any raccoons that decide to
while away the day sleeping in our ceiling, and I left notes outside
our door and our neighbors' door explaining why it's on and saying
they can unplug it from the wall if it drives them crazy.

While all this has been going on, we have also acquired a mouse
problem in our apartment, which isn't too suprising since a) it's
freezing cold outside, b) we aren't as careful as we should be about
dropping crumbs on our floor and wiping down our counters, and c) this
is New York, after all – could be worse, eg rats and roaches! I placed
some snap-traps yesterday and caught one! But it appears we have
another b/c I found some more poop this morning. I moved the traps
around a bit and hopefully we'll get another, but I realized as I was
leaving that while the mice usually venture forth into trap-land
during the day when no one's home (apparently Elise isn't much of a
deterrent; thanks a lot, dog), with our radio blasting into our
ceiling and walls, the mice may stay hidden all day thinking someone's
home. We'll see tonight – it may be one or the other, mice or
raccoons, and we'll have to decide which is a better roommate.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dear friends,

It is with the deepest regret that I inform you of the demise of six
our happy bunch, each of whom has met his or her end in a deliciously
baited mousetrap. We can only hope that this deadly war of attrition
will conclude with the crippling depletion of the 7th Avenue grocery
and hardware stores' supplies of Victor and D-Con products.

We find it troubling that our "friends" the Procyonidae, who have
lived upstairs for several weeks now, do not share in our mourning by
maintaining a respectful silence. Quite to the contrary, for four days
and nights now they have blasted a horrendous racket out of some sort
of sound machine. We have paid numerous visits to their residence, but
on no occasion has anyone been home. Indeed, it would appear that they
have simply moved out and left this infernal sonic maelstrom behind as
a bitter reminder of their tenancy! Alas, we are unable to disable the
machine ourselves, owing both to the unapproachable screechings that
it emits and our unfortunate lack of opposable thumbs.

Sadly,

The Muridae.

P.S. Hey, it's 1:22:36 – time to go forage again! Anyone seen Blackie?
He was here this morning...

A cold morning in the park

I jumped out of bed at 7am this morning and sped off to the park on my bike. I was all bundled up against the cold: long underwear, a scarf, fleece mittens and a wool hat C knitted for me.

I walked my bike across the meadow and joined up with the footpath on the other side, which winds through the woods. I stopped to watch some white-throated sparrows and european starlings along the way, and a couple downy woodpeckers – one a male.

When I reached the Nethermead, I turned left and made my way along the lullwater near the Audubon center. There I happened upon a great gathering of all sorts of birds, flitting about in the trees above my head and scouring the underbrush and dry leaves for nibbles. I saw more sparrows, including fox sparrows, some sort of nuthatch, dark-eyed juncos, more downy woodpeckers, something resembling a tufted titmouse that flew away before I could get a better look, and a couple others I couldn't identify in the dim morning light. Turning toward the pond on my left, I saw a female hooded merganser, all on her own save for a few mallards skirting the other bank. She twirled in the center of the pond for a while and didn't look in much of a hurry to get anywhere.

Next I headed over to the bird feeders but I was distracted halfway there by the trees at the edge of the footbridge, which some people call "red-tail buffet." I peered around in the leafless branches for hawks, but didn't see any at first – until I spied a grey form nestled in one of the branches off to my left. I walked closer and observed a good-sized hawk, sitting open-eyed and alert, and turning its head to any sound it detected below. I assumed it was a red-tail, though I couldn't tell whether it was male or female. However, glancing in an identification book later, I remembered that it had a black "hood" and black back, so it appears to have been a peregrine falcon; though I thought it looked a little large for that. The chest, also, wasn't as mottled as the chest of the falcon in my book. Maybe a Cooper's hawk? Dunno. I'll go back tomorrow to get a better look.

My first day "birding"

Those are some neat photos from our neighborhood:


In Prospect Park – it was great! I lost a little patience near the end, but overall it was great "first."

Birds we saw (that I can remember):

-Northern Cardinal
-American Coot
-Common Grackle (I didn't see this, but my guide did)
-Black-billed Gull
-Herring Gull (not sure, actually)
-Mute Swan
-Mallard
-Canada Goose
-Great Blue Heron (the only one in the park; I'd seen him before)
-Red-tailed Hawk (I saw this after I left my guide; apparently there are young ones here too)
-Pine Warbler
-Black-capped Chickadee
-Downy Woodpecker
-Shoveler (not the full name; kind of a duck)
-some other kind of waterfowl that starts with "r"
-Dark-eyed Junco
-White-throated Sparrow
-Rock Pigeon
-Tufted Titmouse
-some kind of nuthatch, I think
-Fox Sparrow
-Red-winged Blackbird
-American Goldfinch
-Belted Kingfisher
-Red-bellied Woodpecker

that may have been all, though there may have been more

Mute button

Today on the subway a large group of teenage schoolchildren boarded and stayed on for about five stops. They were very loud, screaming and giggling when the train lurched forward, complaining flirtatiously to each other that someone was squishing against them, and stepping on each other's toes. The entire car was nearly bursting at the seams with noise, which you don't often hear in silent commuter trains. Then they got off in a chattering herd, the car doors closed, and silence once again enveloped the car's interior. People continued to bury their noses in books and newspapers, as if nothing had ever happened, as if no tempest of bouncing decibels had invaded the car and then vanished into thin air.

A mystery solved

More than a year ago, Christina bought a Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk
cheese from Star Grocery.  She brought it back to her apartment for us
to eat.  Even before we opened the package, we smelled a ripe,
sour-milk odor emanating from it.  We opened the package and the
cheese had turned an orangey color, and a slimy liquid had leeched out
of the wheel and had smeared all over the inside of the wax paper.
The smell quickly filled the whole apartment.  Christina tried to cut
off the stinky, soggy, orange rind, but it became clear the cheese was
too far gone even to salvage the very center, so we threw it out –
outside.  We were going to return to Star to ask for a replacement,
but never got around to it.

Up at Sea Ranch this past weekend, we all smelled a ripe, sour-milk
odor whenever we opened the refrigerator door.  We assumed that it was
the result of Mr. Gilbert's poor housekeeping.  But on Sunday morning,
as I was putting the unopened Red Hawk cheese into my bag to take back
to New York, I noticed a ripe, sour-milk odor emanating from it.  It
wasn't an altogether unpleasant smell, but it was noticeable.  Several
hours later, as Christina and I were waiting for our bags at the La
Guardia airport carousel, I smelled the same odor and realized my bag
was coming by.  It wasn't until we got home and put the smelly cheese
in the fridge that I put the two things – cheese and fridge –
together, and solved the mystery.

The moral? Maybe buy Red Hawk at Whole Foods or Village Market rather
than Star.  Christina thinks some things sit on the shelf a long time
there, and this would probably explain the reduced price on the
cheese; it had probably been there longer than the other two, more
expensive ones.  One time we had Red Hawk that wasn't spoiled, we'd
bought it at Whole Foods.  Turned out Elise really liked it, too.

Just a photo

Here's my cool West Village Art Deco building where I work! There's even a neat old-fashioned glass mail chute that goes through all the floors by the elevators, and you can see mail slip down it if you watch long enough.

A walk in the park

We walked through Prospect Park this morning with Elise. She got to enjoy about half an hour off her leash, about five minutes of which she spent chasing her red rubber ball. Then I threw it off to the right of our little group and didn't watch its trajectory, and apparently she didn't either because she came back to us a couple seconds later without the ball. We walked over to where we'd thought it landed and looked everywhere for it, but it had apparently disappeared down some rabbit hole, or been snatched by another dog, or been swooped down upon by this neat hawk I keep seeing flying over the park during my morning runs. I only ever see it from underneath, and it appears to be about three and a half feet from wingtip to wingtip and has mostly white underwings with black spots on them. I looked up the types of raptors that inhabit the park this time of year, and several are listed, but all are described as being very, very rare in this season. Christina and I wonder if global warming has confused him and he's stayed behind when all the other birds have migrated. Then again, we're not sure if hawks migrate; we can easily imagine them plucking little rodents from snowy meadows.

Once off-leash hours ended, we hooked up Elise to her lead and walked her towards the tennis courts to look for a replacement ball. Neither of us had ever seen the courts before, and they turned out to be in a huge indoor complex, covered by temporary winter walls, across the street from one side of the park. No balls were therefore accessible. But the weather was cool and breezy, the sun was shining off all the yellow and red and orange leaves on the gingko, oak, and maple trees (among others, I'm sure, only I don't know which), and it was lovely just to walk alongside the lake and watch all the joggers and road bikers swish by us on our right. Eventually we reached the Audubon building and boat house, where there's a small bird exhibition, we think, on weekends from noon to five pm. We couldn't go inside because it was only about 9:30 in the morning, but we made a mental note to return to figure out what that hawk is doing here. We saw him again right about at this point.

From the Audubon center, there are a number of trails that cross through the center of the park, which is mostly wooded. Several, mostly man-made, waterfalls cascade over boulders and into large pools, where boats sometimes cut the water (in the case of the boat house pond), oxidized copper-plated bridges span the waterways, and the occasional fisherperson can be seen casting silvery lures. I wished I'd brought a flyrod out here, but then noticed all the low-hanging trees hugging the banks and reconsidered. Fishing is definitely allowed in both Central and Prospect Parks, though, which surprised both of us when we first learned it. We chose the waterfall path rather than the tall trees path, and walked through dense woods of yellow leaves and nary another person. We couldn't see or hear the city from inside our little forest. Elise was released from her leash in the absence of other people and she loped off into the woods, probably to eat smelly things in the underbrush. We passed a few signs indicating that this area "used to be part of a forest," and wondered why they said "used to," because it still looked a lot like a forest to us. Then we finally emerged onto East Park Drive, which crosses the park and exits into Grand Army Plaza, which has an enormous arch much like the Arc du Triumph (or whatever) in Paris (...or whatever). This one has bronze statues crusted all over it and probably represents something Revolutionary War-related. We should probably find out. Before we began our walk back to our apartment, we tiptoed through a little corner of the park, currently under repair, called the "Vale of Cashmere," where a fountain burbles into a leaf-strewn pool, creating speckled patterns on the surface. We considered pushing Elise in but didn't.

At this point Christina noticed something most interesting about how leaves change color. Look at the two photographs below: they're mostly the same, but some yellow and red leaves near the center are slightly rearranged in the second photo to show that where they'd previously overlapped (and where they'd also overlapped on the tree we picked them from), they'd remained yellow. So leaf-turning has something to do with exposure to light or other elements, presumeably. There's probably an easy answer to this, too, but we don't know it.