The Common Cold

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I read about an interesting study last night. Apparently, if doctors told their patients that they had a "chest cold" the patients would be content with a course of treatment that did not involve the use of antibiotics. If the patients were told that they had "acute bronchitis" (which is exactly the same thing as a chest cold), they were likely to be unhappy unless given antibiotics.

Antibiotics, according to this other study, have no efficacy in treating chest colds. And, while most doctors believe that chest colds will get better in about a week, they actually hang on for much longer, usually about three weeks, and often as long as eight.

Can you guess that I'm still sick?

I've been calling this a "chest cold" all along. I refuse to believe that this is anything particularly serious. Certainly not Swine Flu. I'm exhausted, and have lungs that feel like they're filled with Elmer's white glue. And I'm feeling incredibly stupid.

Stupid is one thing. Crazy is another. Robb's last post makes me sound more than a little demented. I'm going to ask blog readers to guess why I was asking him to make a remote-control feral cat feeder.

Any thoughts?

Up, Up and Away

The only thing I remember about waking up this morning was Lisa asking me, on her way out the door, if I could think of a way of feeding our neighborhood stray cats by remote control.

Several hours later, there I was in the garden with a cat food dispenser, some wire, eye screws and a few yards of kite string. I had just finished rigging up a food dish that could be levitated away into the branches of our big lemon tree.

I had loaded up the bowl with food and was standing around the corner from the bowl in the middle of testing the rig when I saw two panicked cats go streaking by. They didn't stop until they reached the roof of the neighbor's garage.

Apparently, unseen by me, our two regular backyard visitors were already at the bowl and eating when I started making their dinner fly away. The result: a cruel, cruel prank ... or a Samuel Beckett play.

Bounty

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When we first looked at our little house, the backyard was an overgrown tangle, in which some non-gardener had tried to clear a path. The fruit trees had been brutally butchered.

Nevertheless, Robb and I were really excited at the prospect of buying a house with a (tiny) mature orchard. The thought of eating home-grown fruit seemed utterly delightful.

As I said, the garden itself had been terribly neglected. The persimmon tree was very unhealthy, and dropped unripe fruit pretty much every day. I wasn't sure there would be anything left on the tree to ripen. Robb and I cobbled together some scaffold, for the weirdly over-laden branches, hoping that they wouldn't snap under the weight of the fruit.

And now, we're harvesting persimmons. Yesterday, we had a very windy rainstorm, and most of the leaves blew off the tree, leaving behind the gleaming persimmons. These are beautiful trees in the winter, leafless with uncanny orange fruits.




We have a Fuyu persimmon, which has the texture of a ripe apple. This is not one of the types that has to ripen to the consistency of mush, in order to be palatable. We like to eat this one sliced, with a bit of lemon juice squeezed on it. We baked a persimmon-date upside cake last night, and although we both thought it was way too sweet, and lacked "brightness," we'll try the recipe again with some adjustments. (We're interested in what blog readers do with this fruit.)

Clearly, we're not the only ones who enjoy persimmons. Last week, I found a half-eaten persimmon, stashed by a squirrel on a branch of our mulberry tree. And over the last few days, I've enjoyed watching Yellow-Rumped Warblers eating persimmons. Since we have more fruit than we know what to do with, and since the animals don't have the bad habit of taking one bite out of each persimmon, we are happy to share.

Wild Robitussin Orgies (or not ... )

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The last few weeks have been Useless Lost Weeks. I took the week of my birthday off from work, with the idea that I would get a lot of house painting done. And I promptly over-exerted myself, and screwed up my neck, so that I couldn't look up, or sleep comfortably.

I could and did help out with the sea birds that had been affected by the algae bloom, and even got to release some back to their wild life. (This was a beautiful experience.)

But mostly, I've been stupidly sick with a dismal chest cold. I spent the better part of one week, conked out in a Robitussin haze. Weeks into this cold, I still wake up with totally congested lungs. I hack like a Career Smoker, for most of the morning. And by about six o'clock, I'm headed to bed.

On Sunday, I was invited to a party with Green Day, and what did I do?

I stayed home.







Sad.

Really sad.

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Bouncing Back

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I've been sick with some brain-numbing, happiness-sucking, chest-congested cold.

I've been feeling very grim, and while I do know that this is the illness speaking, I somehow managed to muster the energy to treat Robb to a full-on rant about how I fear that our country has gotten into the habit of thinking very selfishly. It seems to me, in my unhealthy state of mind, that we've lost our capacity for compassion, for imagining ourselves in another person's circumstances. Instead, it seems, we've taught ourselves to say, "What's in this for me? If I don't benefit, then screw the other guy."

Does anyone but me know about the banning of the insecticide DDT? DDT was a synthetic insecticide that was hugely popular in the middle of the 20th Century, and which was shown to travel up the food chain, and destroy the eggs of larger birds. It was banned in 1972, at the birth of the environmental movement.

I was wondering aloud to Robb whether in today's America, anyone would give a shit about a bunch of stupid useless birds, or if we would just keep dumping this highly effective pesticide on the crops, because it was cheap and easy. I really had my doubts.

And then, today, I read that the Brown Pelican made such a successful recovery, that it was going to be removed from the Federal Endangered Species List.

These magnificent pterodactyl-like birds had almost been destroyed by humans who filled their diets with egg-ruining poisons, who hunted them for their feathers, and who changed the shorelines so drastically that there was nowhere for pelicans to breed.

Over the past thirty-some years, thanks to the work of some humans, these birds have bounced back.




There's hope, after all.

A hive of activity

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We've been thinking and planning for a backyard beehive this spring. Here's a very inspirational little slideshow we just came across.

A bird in the hand ...

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So, just how does one move a sea bird out of a swimming pool?

Very, very carefully.

I wanted to share some photographs I took of one of the volunteers at the International Bird Rescue Research Center. I was incredibly impressed by his technique, working with these wild animals. Every move this man made was done with deliberation and care. Assisting him was really an honor.




The birds have to be taken out of their pools, so that they can have medical exams.

I had the job of standing at the opposite side of this pool, and slowly waving a net above the water, in order to "herd" the birds toward the submerged net of the catcher. The trick was to dissuade the birds from swimming out of the reach of the catching net, without completely freaking them out. Birds can literally die of fright.




Once the bird is caught, a towel is placed over the net, so that the bird cannot fly out, and the net is stabilized. The net doesn't tip over, and nobody trips on the net.

Then the bird is inspected, to ascertain if it is tangled in the net in any way.




The catcher then gently places a hand under the bird, lifting it away from the net. The bird is now supported, not dangling into the net.




Gently, the bird is lifted toward the towel.




An interesting fact about birds is that if their eyes are covered, they will become quite docile. So, the towels are used to shield the bird from visual stressors. (You can see the bird's head as a small bulge in the top of the towel.) Covering a bird's head also puts a barrier between beak and handler, which is good for all parties involved.

The birds are firmly and gently wrapped in towels (a sort of Birdie Burrito), to immobilise their wings and legs. A flailing, flapping bird is at risk of injury. By restraining the animal, there is less chance that it may hurt itself.

There's quite an art to wrapping up a bird, so that the towel can be selectively peeled back for examinations of the different parts of the animal.

When I first started doing this, I found the process frightening. What if I hurt the bird? What if it got loose? What if I got bitten? (It hurts. Sea birds are strong.) I think what I'm starting to learn is that you have to put fear aside, and work with deliberation. I don't know if animals can or cannot "smell fear" but I do think that keeping a calm mind in a stressful work environment is always something to strive for.