Idyll Banter: Weekly Excursions to a Very Small Town Read online

  The bat in the woodstove, however, presents a (gulp) stickier problem. Given the way the little fellow clings to the door, I have a feeling I'll need either a spatula to scrape him from the side, or spaghetti tongs to yank him off it.

  I may be wrong, but I've yet to find the courage to find out.

  In any case, the arrival of Carcass the Bat in our woodstove has precipitated a lot of discussion in the house about sex-role socialization, the different responsibilities of women and men, and the proper division of labor in the modern home.

  In other words, my wife and I have had a lot of conversations that have begun, "Chris, would you please get rid of that indescribably horrible, grotesque piece of yuck in the woodstove?"

  My wife is, by any definition, a feminist. Right now her nightstand has on it--this is not column-driven hyperbole--books by Susan Faludi, Jill Ker Conway, and Kate Millett.

  It's clear, however, that in our household, disposing of dead bats remains man's work. I don't know why this is . . .

  Oh, who am I kidding, I know exactly why this is. It's because the dead bat smells like cheese at the beach in August, and looks like roadkill too repulsive for crows.

  Consequently, at some point soon I will have to overcome the fact I am dead-bat-removal-challenged. I will have to find the courage to get the spatula or the tongs or perhaps even the little fireplace shovel and murmur, "Ashes to ashes, dust to . . ."

  Or, perhaps not. It's September, the nights are chilly. Perhaps I should be grateful to the bat for choosing to die where he did.

  Perhaps it's time for the first wood fire of the year. Little bat . . . tiny flitter mouse . . . baby chiropteran . . . Can you say "cremation"?

  Chapter 3.

  TOWN'S ALL ATWITTER ABOUT ROSIE

  FOR A FEW days last month, all anyone was chirping about at the Lincoln General Store was Rosalita Poplawski's hysterectomy.

  Sometimes, if the group assembled around the coffee machine was male, the conversation would be couched in euphemism ("I think it's a woman problem"), but other times the twitter would focus on how the family was coping: "How's her sister doing? She worried? How about Teo?"

  Once, I overheard an analysis of Rosalita's methods of contraception. "I don't get it," someone observed. "If she's on birth control, why does she keep laying eggs?"

  Why indeed? Until last month, Rosalita was laying about twenty eggs a year, a total that probably wouldn't impress a chicken, but isn't half bad for a cockatiel. Her sister, Isabella, lays about the same number.

  The two birds are five years old, their coloring a combination of soft yellows and orange. Sometimes Rosalita sports a letter or two on her head, a result of descending from her perch to the bottom of the cage and burrowing under the floor made from newspaper (though never, of course, this newspaper).

  The birds are small, about six inches long exclusive of the tail feathers that trail behind them like a wedding dress train. They live in the Sparks-Poplawski household in Lincoln: Rosalita belongs to Teo, seven, and Isabella to Nicholas, eleven.

  Until recently, they were the sort of robust birds that would fly happily around the inside of the Sparks-Poplawski home, landing contentedly on the children's fingers, the parents' heads, and dropping birdie-poop smart bombs wherever they wanted.

  About three months ago, however, Nicholas and Teo's mother, Becky, noticed that Rosalita's squeaks were weak, and she was holding onto the cage with her bill.

  And so she took Rosalita to the Shelburne Veterinary Hospital, which was a relatively easy task, except for the fact it was twenty below zero, and Rosalita is a Latino cockatiel--which means she prefers a slightly warmer climate than polar tundra. Becky warmed up the car for a long time, and put Rosalita in her birdie transport, a cat carrier.

  The veterinarians, Dr. Ross Prezant and Dr. Steven Metz, diagnosed the problem right away: egg jam. A cockatiel egg is roughly as big as a good-sized marble, which isn't big at all unless you're a cockatiel and the egg is doing an internal imitation of an ice jam in March.

  Consequently, Prezant performed surgery: He broke the egg. By Christmas Day it was clear Rosalita would live, and by the Tuesday after Christmas she was home.

  In the third week of January, however, the ailment returned: Oval Ovum Entrapment. Once again, Prezant extracted the egg. In addition, this time the doctor put Rosalita on birdie birth control--a protocol that might, at first, strike anyone who isn't relentlessly optimistic as a tad unnecessary, given the fact that Rosalita's only birdie buddy is female, too.

  Ah, but these are unfertilized eggs. Hence the avis prophylactic.

  Did the contraception work? Nope. Early last month, for the third time since December 23, the veterinarian had to perform an emergency egg-in-dectomy on Rosalita. Once more the cockatiel lived, but it was clear to Rosalita's family that the little bird's eyes were, so to speak, bigger than its stomach. Something had to be done.

  And so on February 12, for the fourth time in his career, Prezant got out his teeny-tiny scalpel and his miniature clamps, and attempted a bird hysterectomy. Now, bird surgery is dicey. Not only are the organs diminutive, but a bird can only withstand anesthesia for somewhere between fifteen and thirty minutes. Consequently, a doctor has to work fast, with little room for error.

  Teo remembers spending a long chunk of that day simply murmuring to herself over and over, "Please-please-please-please-please."

  Her pleas were answered. Rosalita came out of surgery just fine, and today the family is, understandably, all atwitter. Especially Isabella.

  And the patrons at the Lincoln General Store learned once again that, if you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs.

  Chapter 4.

  IT'S NOT MIND OVER MATTER--IT'S MIND OVER MANURE

  THIS AUTUMN I fell off a horse for the first time. I've been riding for three years, and so I was due.

  I was cantering in a rutted field dotted with spindly apple trees and a few boulders the size of Volkswagens, and one second the horse and I were paralleling a fence by a road, and the next I was on the ground looking up at him as he snitched leaves off a tree beside us. I was--and this seems all too appropriate--directly beside a fresh pile of poop left by one of his pals from the stable where I ride.

  Falling was a humbling experience, though not because I have ever deluded myself for even a nanosecond that I have the slightest idea what I'm doing when I'm on a horse. I only started riding because I was researching the experience for a book, and because it struck me as one more hobby I could share with my daughter as she grew up. We ride together once a week. Over time, however, I discovered how much pleasure I, too, was deriving from riding: the sense of power and speed, the feeling of accomplishment, the reality that here was another way to indulge the mid-life demons that besiege a man once he is forty.

  No, falling was troubling for the simple reason that it revealed to me just how in thrall our bodies are to our minds. (As Yogi Berra is alleged to have said about baseball, "It's ninety percent mental. The other half is physical.")

  Without wanting to subject anyone--least of all myself--to some completely ill-advised and uninformed armchair psychotherapy, I believe I fell in part because on the way to the stable I'd been listening on the car radio to actor Christopher Reeve discuss his new book, Nothing Is Impossible, on Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

  It is difficult to think of Reeve without recalling the tragic equestrian accident in 1995 that left him a quadriplegic. This was especially true that afternoon because he and Gross were discussing both what he cannot do and the small but astonishing strides he has made as a result of vigorous physical therapy.

  And so as I tacked up the horse I kept imagining that moment years ago when Reeve was thrown from his mount. And then I saw over and over in my mind the loop of film from Gone With the Wind when little Bonnie Blue Butler takes a header off her small but energetic pony and dies.

  I was riding alone that day on a stallion named J.T. I like J.T. a lot, and not simply because
he's the only male at the stable who is--and I will try to be delicate about this--intact. J.T. is an aging Morgan show horse, whose moniker is short for "Justin Time." I think the world of this animal because he has a kind disposition with inept riders like me, and because he still loves to run. I've ridden him almost exclusively this year.

  And then out of the blue I fell. I won't say I was thrown because that would imply J.T. was culpable, and it's clear this was my fault--not his. He stayed right beside me, a further indication that he hadn't meant to rocket me into space.

  But topple I did, and my back and neck were sore for a week. When I climbed back upon J.T. that day, I did so with the grace and agility of a very old man.

  I don't view riding as any more dangerous than skiing, snowmobiling, or most of the myriad ways we humans entertain ourselves. I wouldn't encourage my daughter to ride if I did. Moreover, I've had a splendid afternoon every time I've ridden J.T. since that tumble. Nevertheless, I remain struck by the way a small quiver of fear in the back of my mind sent me over the top of a horse. Apparently riding, too, is ninety percent mental. The other half's physical.

  Chapter 5.

  THE CASE OF THE CURIOUS CRUSTACEAN

  NO ONE LIKES roadkill. No one likes seeing it, driving by it, eating it, and--especially--causing it.

  And while even a PETA-dues-paying vegetarian weenie like me understands that roadkill is one of those undeniable harbingers of spring, I am careful to focus my seasonal reveries of rebirth upon the bluebird, the dandelion, and the sugarhouse steam.

  Let's face it: There is little poetry in roadkill.

  There is probably a message lurking somewhere here, but to be frank, it was neither moral outrage nor a yen for a tofu substitute for opossum pudding that inspired it.

  Rather, it was a lobster.

  Last month I was returning to Vermont from Boston. Midmorning, in the wooded stretch of Interstate 89 that rolls like waves between Concord and West Lebanon, in the breakdown lane to my right, I saw my first road-killed crustacean.

  At first I thought it was a plastic toy by the way the sun bounced off its shell, or perhaps a "happy meal" lunch box from Red Lobster.

  I slowed down to study it more closely, although I don't usually find my daughter her new toys along the side of the road--unless, of course, what happens to be lurking there is a sandbox with a big "Make me an offer!" sign.

  What led me to stop? Well, one reason was the fact my car windows were up: Had my windows been down, the smell from the roadside attraction alone would have kept me speeding along at a steady sixty-five.

  In any case, I climbed from the car, tried to breathe solely through my mouth, and stood for a moment in awe: It was a lobster all right, probably a good one-and-a-half to two pounds of shellfish.

  And, I'm sorry to say, the stench was a pretty fair indication that its heart was beating-challenged, its pincers were gripper-challenged, and its legs were movement-challenged.

  The animal, in short, was living-challenged.

  It's no mystery how a raccoon winds up inside-out by the side of the road.

  But a lobster? This was a mystery. Its claws were not rubber-banded as if it were a grocery lobster cavalierly tossed from a speeding car window. And its eyes, though lifeless, didn't look like they'd ever had that death-row gaze lobsters get after days in a holding tank.

  And so I made some inquiries. I began with Vermont's Department of Fish and Wildlife, asking law-enforcement assistant Maureen Allen how she thought the lobster had arrived on I-89.

  Her theory? First of all, she convinced me it didn't swim there, pointing out that lobsters need more salt in their water than even a highway department drops on a road.

  Then she suggested the lobster had either been left there accidentally by someone selling the animal's lobster friends by the side of the road, or someone had left the creature on the hood of his car and then sped off, leaving the shellfish in the dust.

  "You wouldn't think anyone would put a lobster on the hood of his car, but you wouldn't think anyone would put a purse there either. But people do that all the time," she said.

  Then I called the Net Result, a Burlington seafood store. Heather Wyman actually deepened the mystery when she explained that lobsters don't generally swim, they crawl--meaning the fact I was inland didn't matter!

  And, she said, lobsters can live up to three days from the ocean, if they're properly wrapped in moist seaweed or newspaper.

  So, is it conceivable this lobster had a reason for crawling north, and somewhere along the way lost its seaweed slicker? As they say on Unsolved Mysteries, "No one knows for sure."

  I think, however, my favorite theory belongs to my wife, who has spent many hours lately with her nose buried in children's books: "A great but greedy bird scooped the lobster from the sea and carried him over land until he grew too heavy. And so the bird had to drop him, despite his days and days of effort."

  Chapter 6.

  AN OLD CAT'S NAME ALONE CONJURED WONDROUS MEMORIES

  EARLIER THIS SUMMER, my wife, my daughter, and I said good-bye to one of our cats, an animal who lived exactly one season shy of seventeen years. Merlin--a male with dime-a-dozen black-and-white tuxedo markings--was named by my wife and me for the minister who married us, Leslie Merlin, because he was found on our wedding day.

  For the past four years, we were giving Merlin two shots a day for diabetes, and for the past eighteen months we were insisting that he swallow a half tablet of children's Benadryl in the morning and then another half in the evening so he could breathe without wheezing like a fireplace bellows.

  Merlin was one of four cats in our house, but he was my wife's and my first together, and he outlasted enough feline sisters and brothers to fill a small wall of cages at an animal shelter. He lived longer than Cassandra, who we will remember for many things, not the least of which was the time she hid for a weekend on the top shelf of my closet when my wife and I were away and--unwilling to come down--sprinkled urine like rain down upon all my blazers and suits.

  He saw B.K.--a.k.a. Barn Kitty--come and go, the first of many cats who discovered that the couple who lived in Lincoln in the yellow house with the yellow barn next to the church could be counted on for free food and medical care, and just maybe a spot by the woodstove. When I recall B.K., I think of a Tuesday before Thanksgiving, when my wife came home from the supermarket and left a good-sized turkey on the front porch along with a couple of bags of groceries. B.K. had both the strength and the brazen self-confidence to nose the rock-hard bird down the porch steps and then try to drag it back to the barn.

  Merlin outlived his closest feline friend, Clinton. Clinton, another stray, was named for the Brooklyn street on which we found him, not our former president. On the other hand, there were evenings when--not unlike the junior U.S. senator from New York--I did imagine standing outside and yelling for Clinton to stop tomcatting around the neighborhood and come home.

  Merlin saw Ranger, another barn cat, come and go (and, truly, we do not know where that great wanderer finally went), and he lived longer by far than Matilda.

  He outlasted the dogs in the nearby houses who occasionally chased him--Fred and Alice and Barney--as well as my mother and my father-in-law, and the grandparents who attended my wife's and my wedding.

  Merlin leaves behind three feline siblings, all younger things whom he tolerated with varying degrees of haughtiness and magisterial indifference. He was, without question, the smartest cat we have had, as well as the most persnickety: He demanded a pristine litter box and then, in his later years, his very own litter box. Unlike his less-entitled peers who migrated into our home from the barn, he would actually turn up his nose at select brands and flavors of cat food. And he always took the warmest spot on the porch or the shadiest spot under the irises.

  It might be wrong to have favorites among our pets, especially since our pets are in large measure what we make of them: They represent parts of our lives, iconic shorthands and Rorschach test
s, and their names alone often conjure who we were when we first took them in.

  Nevertheless, that is precisely the reason why I will miss seeing Merlin and saying his name. He was my wife's and my first cat together, and the one who could remind us both of our wedding day. Even when he was a very old man, when we would pet him or feed him or hold him in our lap while giving him his twice-a-day Benadryl, he could remind us both of what it was like to be young.

  *

  PART V

  THE GREEN--AND THEN SPECTACULARLY

  YELLOW AND RED--MOUNTAINS