Unanswered Questions About Birds

Across the Fence #437

As I walked toward the grove of trees next to the house, carrying a jug of birdseed to feed the hungry birds, large flakes of snow were gently falling around me. It created a beautiful scene as the white flakes fell among the dark green of the pine trees. If you’ve never walked through a woods during a snowfall, you’ve got to add it to your bucket list. You’ll gain a whole new appreciation for the beauty of nature. There’s also a quiet solitude that’s hard to find in our fast-paced, noise-filled world. 

As I approached the trees, the birds began talking excitedly, probably warning each other that an intruder had entered their domain. I wonder if birds make the connection that after I leave, their bird feeder is full again and seeds are also on the ground for the ground feeders? Or does the food just magically appear as far as they’re concerned? Can birds make the connection that every time I come and go they have food to eat? 

The Chickadees seem to know I have food for them. They’re the only birds that don’t fly to a safer perch as I enter their territory. I’ll often feed them out of my hand. As the snow was falling among the trees, I decided to linger there and enjoy the beauty around me. I poured some seed into my hand and held it out. Soon the flutter of chickadee wings and their chatter, chicka-dee-dee-dee-dee, could be heard all around me. They fluttered from branch to branch checking me out. Then one after the other would land on my hand, grab a sunflower seed and fly off to a branch to enjoy it. Some took the time to look at me for a while after perching on my fingers. Then they’d select a seed and fly off to a nearby branch. There’s a feeling that borders on spiritual, having those little birds sitting in your outstretched hand and making eye contact with you.

We have a lot of birds around our place. Hundreds of them feed on the ground under the feeders every day. If we weren’t feeding them, I wonder how many would freeze to death each winter. On the frigid nights we have for months on end, birds need to expend more energy to generate body heat. Food supplies are harder to find in the winter and without people supplying them with food, many would perish. For all the money we spend on them, you’d think we could claim them as dependents on our tax return. 

Lately a big hawk has been circling overhead and sitting in the trees, checking things out. He probably heard about the plump, well-fed birds in our neighborhood. 

Which brings me to a question I’ve been struggling with for years. Where are all the dead birds? How many times have you seen a dead bird? OK, maybe a few that played Kamikaze with your picture window, but other than those, have you ever seen or found the remains of a bird… any bird!

Do birds, when they get old and feeble, just fly off to Birdie Heaven, never to be spotted again? Do they circle higher and higher on an upward draft of air until we can no longer see them and “Poof” they’re gone? Or, if we could venture into the interior of some impassable tangle of forest, would we see mounds and mounds of little white skeletons of the millions of birds who went there to die? Only if we’re hallucinating or on drugs!

So, where do all the dead birds go? When you think of just the hundreds of birds that frequent our yard each day it would be a serious ecological problem, not to mention a smelly one, if they all dropped dead at the feeders today. We’d probably need the DNR to conduct an environmental impact study to see how the disposal of dead birds would affect the quality of our water table. So, that rules out burial as a way of getting rid of dead birds.

Which brings me back to my original question, where and how do old birds die? They don’t live that many years, so there must be hundreds of them dying every day, just in our area. 

We know many birds are lost to predators looking for a meal. They become part of the food chain. That explains why no remains are found, just some feathers lying around where they met their doom.

But what about those who manage to elude the predators? What about those who survive the harsh winters and don’t freeze to death? What about those who make it to old age? What happens to them? 

I’d like to imagine them flying off to join billions of other birds in Birdie Heaven. But, can you imagine what a mess they would make? 

Somewhere tonight, as I write these words, another bird has reached the end of its life. As it falls, it completes the circle from birth to death, and enters the ultimate recycling plan that helps sustain life for others. 

I hope my providing food for them during the harsh winter months, makes their lives a little easier while they’re here. Did I help or harm my fellow travelers while I was here? In the end, that’s the only question that really matters.

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Imagination Unlocks Your Creativity

Across the Fence

I guess I don’t have to tell anyone near my age that we didn’t have computer games to play with when we were young. We didn’t have Smart Phones, iPhones, and iPads for communication either. How did we ever survive?

When I think of the many changes I’ve seen in my lifetime it boggles the mind. Things I now use on a daily basis, I couldn’t have imagined when I graduated from high school in 1962.

I don’t imagine many kids try to communicate these days using two tin cans and a long string. We thought it was great, although I can’t ever remember hearing anything when I put the tin can up to my ear and David or Sandra spoke into the tin can at the other end of the line. Maybe we were using the wrong size can or maybe the labels shouldn’t have been removed in order to get the right sound or vibration. Actually, it didn’t matter because we were always close enough to each other to hear what the other person was saying. I guess it didn’t take much to amuse us. If I told that story to kids today they would probably say, “Well that was dumb.” In my day, back in the Dark Ages, we thought it was a great adventure.

We had two large maple trees that stood side by side in our yard. They were so close together it looked like one gigantic tree. We used our high-tech tin can communication system to talk from one tree to the other. We did a lot of climbing around in those trees and never got hurt that I can remember, other than getting a few scrapes and bruises. I know that Ma told us to be careful and not fall out of the trees and get hurt, but she never tried to stop us from climbing trees and having fun. It was all part of the growing up process.

Those old trees became rotten and had blown down by the time our kids were old enough to climb a tree. Fortunately, we had helped Dad transplant several maples from our woods when we were young, and those trees were big enough for our kids to climb in. We were also able to attach a rope swing with a board notched on each end for a seat, just like we had in one of the old maple trees. Erik and Amy had fun climbing and swinging in those trees when we visited the farm.

I’m glad they were able to experience some of those simple pleasures that we had experienced. We never tried making a tin can telephone for them. They would probably have thought that was dumb too.

Airplanes also fascinated us when we were young. It was a big deal whenever an airplane flew over the farm, and we’d stop whatever we were doing, look up, and watch it until we couldn’t see it anymore. We must have been in the flight path of planes flying from La Crosse to Madison. The passenger planes were propeller-driven, not high-flying jets like they have today.

One day David and I decided we wanted to pretend we were piloting one of those planes. The upstairs, walk-in attic/closet in our house became our airplane. The closet was a small, cramped area that ran along one wall of the second floor. There was a small window in one end that was above the stairs. That window overlooking the stairs would become our cockpit window. The closet was dark and filled with stuff. I think our main passengers were mice that made their homes in the piles of clothes and boxes that occupied the closet.

You can’t have an airplane without an instrument panel, so we constructed them out of pieces of cardboard and drew various instruments on them.  The instrument panels went by the window. We cut various lengths of tobacco laths to be our controls. Then we would sit in the cramped quarters of our cockpit and fly the plane. We were the pilot and co-pilot of course. I think we even took our cousins and friends for rides in our airplane when they visited. I’m sure they were very impressed sitting in the dark among piles of old clothes and hearing mice scampering around that weren’t real happy about their home becoming an airplane. It’s probably the only airplane that had to leave the entry door open to let in more light. Of course we also had light streaming in through our cockpit window and we had a flashlight handy too.

When we cleaned out the closet after our folks died, we found the old instrument panels for our airplane still in place. We just left them where they were. They looked pretty crude to me now, but they were pretty impressive when we piloted that closet airplane and soared high above the clouds in our younger days.

Imagination can unlock your creativity. Whether climbing around in our home in the trees and communicating with tin cans, or soaring among the clouds in our land-locked airplane, we created worlds in our minds. There was a creativity there that can’t be found sitting in front of a computer or a TV screen. You can still enter that world of imagination anytime, and see what wonders you can create.

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There's Still Life After Fifty

Across the Fence #435

Welcome! Pull up a chair and have a seat. Things are pretty quiet for a Friday night here at the Coon Ridge First and Last Chance Saloon. It’s the first and last chance ‘cause it’s on the edge of town. The first place to stop on your way in, and the last place to stop on your way home. 

Besides the two of us, the only other people in the bar are Tiny Olson and Tom Tollakson, and of course, the best and only bartender in Coon Ridge, Harry Fieldhouse. Harry is old. Real old. No one knows his age, but most people in Coon Ridge figure Harry must be pushing a hundred and still going strong. Harry has heard it all during his many years of listening to his patrons unload their troubles on him. He’s also full of wisdom, which he dishes out in big doses to those same complaining patrons. People ‘round here say he’s mostly full of crap. You ask Harry a question and he’ll most likely have an answer for you, and usually not a short one. He’s about as close to a philosopher or psychiatrist as you’re going to find around Coon Ridge, and a whole lot cheaper too, unless you tend to drink a lot. Then listening to Harry’s advice is like having the meter running in one of them fancy taxis they have in big cities. The longer you ride that bar stool the more expensive the trip gets.

As I said it’s pretty quiet tonight; just the three of them. Tiny, who is far from being tiny, is nursing a Brandy Old Fashion. Tiny can stretch a drink longer than anyone in Coon Ridge. He also takes up two stools as he sits at the bar, which don’t much matter when there’ so few customers.

Tom Tollackson is having a hard time tonight. As far as he’s concerned, his life is ending. Tomorrow he turns fifty. He’s sure that he has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. He hasn’t been nursing his drinks. He’s been knocking them down like there’s no tomorrow. There’s no future as far as he’s concerned. Let’s listen in and see how things are goin’.

“You seem pretty down tonight,” said Harry. “Must be something I can say to perk you up.”

“Ain’t nothin nobody can say to perk me up,” Tom said as he killed another Old Style. “Tomorrow’s my birthday. The big 5-0. It’s all over. I’m too old to do anything any more, and I haven’t done half the things I thought I was gonna’ do by this time in my life. I’ve been looking, and even the women don’t give me one of them side-glances like they used to do when they thought I wasn’t looking. Man, it’s all over. Crank up Amazing Grace on the jukebox and contact the firing squad over at the Einer Hoverson VFW Post.”  

“Now nothin’s ever as bad as it seems,” said the good bartender. “Over the years I’ve lost track of all the 50 year-olds crying in their beer to me about life bein’ over. Let me tell you a thing or two young feller’, you’re just a pup. I got underwear older than you are!  Tomorrow’s not the end, just ‘cause you’re turnin’ 50.” He crushed out his cigarette in an overflowing ash tray, leaned his elbows on the bar, and in his low, raspy, smoker’s voice began to impart his great wisdom. Anyone who’s spent much time at the Coon Ridge First and Last Chance Saloon has heard it all before.   

“Life’s a journey,” he continued. “It begins with birth and ends with death. Between that beginning and the end, if you live to be 100, fifty years is the half-way point. The trail we each take and what we’ve done along the way determines what kind of life we’ll have after fifty. No two roads or trails are the same and that adds to the mystery and enjoyment, or lack of enjoyment of the journey. I’ve always liked Robert Frost’s lines, ‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.’ Now, if you want to look at life like a road, and use the number 100 as the target you’re shooting for, then 50 is halfway, which means it’s all downhill from here brother! That can be good or bad depending on how you look at it. So tell me Tom, what kind of road do you see as you sit where you are now and look behind and ahead of you?

Tom drained the last of the Old Style he was working on and lined it up with the other empty bottles in front of him. He took a long drag on his cigarette and crushed it out in the overloaded ashtray. 

“You know Harry, you’re usually full of bull, but what you just said made sense to me. I know one thing, if I keep drinking and smoking like I’ve done in the past, the road I’m on is gonna’ be a short, dead end road. If I wanna’ live to be a hundred, I better clean up my act or I won’t even see 60. Thanks Harry. No more self-pity for me. Tomorrow I turn 50, but it’s also the first day of the rest of my life.”

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Try To Enjoy the White Stuff

Across the Fence #434

I’m ready to go looking for that mangy groundhog that predicted an early spring, drag him out of his hole, and let him experience this wonderful snow we’re still getting pummeled with.  Seems to me that since Groundhog’s Day when he didn’t see his shadow, we’ve had more snow than the rest of the winter months combined.

I think we set a record around here with 20 days of snow in a row. That was in February. Now we’re into March and a huge snowstorm is in progress. They predict that we may get up to 12 inches. Just what everyone wants this time of year when the majority of us have had enough of this white sh… I mean stuff, and want to see green grass again. Why is it that I never see a groundhog above ground during a snowstorm? Imagine they’re curled up all warm and cozy in their burrows below ground, dreaming of warm, sunny days, while we humanoids are shoveling and snowblowing our driveways, for the thousandth time this winter, and pushing cars that are stuck in snow drifts. 

All this talk of snow makes me question the mental stability of my Norwegian ancestors who had this whole country to settle in and decided to stake their claim in the frozen tundra. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, since they arrived in this area during the summer or early fall when the countryside was warm, gorgeous, and must have looked like a paradise to them. I wonder if they had thoughts of returning to Norway after that first tough winter when temperatures plunged way below zero and the snow howled across the prairie? In their defense, they were used to snow and cold weather in Norway, but the mountainous, fjord area along the southwestern coast where my Sherpe and Ostrem ancestors lived, had milder weather because of their proximity to the North Sea.

I sure wish some of them had written down their experiences and thoughts about those days, but I suspect they were too busy trying to stay alive than worry about leaving their stories for later generations. Fortunately, Norwegian historians have recorded the history and stories that go back to some of my early ancestors so I have some idea of what they did and what life was like for them. As I watched the new Viking series on the History Channel on Sunday night, I wondered if my ancestor, Gaut på Ænes (Urnes) was as ruthless as the Viking Chieftain on the Viking show? Grandpa Gaut was a Viking Chieftain in the 1100s. Historians say he was from one of the most powerful families in Norway at the time, so I imagine ruthlessness went along with being powerful. That’s why this Viking series interests me. It gives me a glimpse into the historical roots of my ancestors, the good, bad, and the ugly. As they say, you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.

I guess I better quit complaining and wimping about the winter weather, or my Viking ancestors will disown me. Think on the positive side, it’s better to have a lot of snow in March than in November. March snow will soon melt. November snow could be our companion for five months. Plus, this will make for some great snowshoeing and skiing until it melts. 

Snow this time of year also makes for some great snowmen, snowforts, snowcaves, and tunnels. Over the weekend we went through Madison on our way to see our grandson, who is now crawling and pulling up on furniture. We did a drive-by of our old house in Madison, and snow was piled high on the curbs and in the yard. It reminded me of when Erik and Amy, along with neighborhood friends, would build snowforts with connecting trenches and tunnels. They had hours of fun building and playing in those structures and having snowball fights. One time I helped build a large Viking ship out of snow, complete with a Viking snowman in the boat. Those are things you can’t do if you don’t have lots of snow to work with. 

If you get a lemon, make lemonade. If you get dumped on with a lot of snow, pretend you’re a kid again and help build a snowman or a snowcave. Or grab some snowshoes and explore the white wonderland around you. You’ll be surprised at all the things you discover that you never noticed before. If you take some trails through wooded areas you may even surprise a deer drinking in a creek or see a red fox searching for a meal against a white background of snow-covered evergreens.

In winter we need to get in touch with our inner child again and get out and enjoy the snow and explore nature. Remember what it was like when you were young and snow didn’t bother you? If snowmen and snowforts don’t interest you, make a snow angel or stomp down the snow in a large circle with connecting links and play fox and geese. Remember when you used to play that during recess in school? If you’re really adventurous, get your family together and build a Viking ship out of snow. All these activities make winter much more bearable until the groundhog’s prediction of an early spring finally arrives.

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Where Did the Time go?

Across the Fence #434

It’s been an interesting week. Three conversations this week brought back memories of my days in Vietnam. In many ways it seems like yesterday, but it’s been 47 years since the ramp went down on our landing craft and we splashed ashore. 

Two of the people I had contact with this week were friends that I served with. Ken Lee, “Big Lee,” now lives in California and Kurt “Doc” Nagl is from Maryland. We were all in basic training together with the 4^th Infantry at Fort Lewis, Washington, and Doc Nagle and I went through medical training together after basic. I’m still Doc Sherpe to them. 

The first communication came from Doc Nagl. In Vietnam we were on Operation Hancock I together in April and May of 1967, working with the 3/8 Infantry battalion of the 4^th Infantry. The majority of us medics on that operation had trained together and were friends. We first got back in contact several years ago. He had recently posted a lot of photos on the 3/8 website from our days together in Vietnam. He had also posted photos of a 3/8 reunion from a year ago. Time passes and as I looked at the photos, I had to admit we have definitely aged. I still recognized all the guys in the photos from 1966-67. We were lean, mean fighting machines back then. But, who were all those much heavier, old duffers in the reunion photos? It hit me like a roundhouse kick to the gut. We had all grown older.

Doc Nagl seated in foreground, taking a break.

In my mind they were still the young guys I had trained and fought with. But 47 years has fogged those memories. Now it’s like looking through the haze and fog rising lazily from the steaming jungle floor and seeing ghostly images emerging slowly through the fog. This time they aren’t the NVA, they’re a bunch of old vets. Where did the time go? How did we grow so old? I answered my own questions. At least we had the opportunity to age and grow old. There’s a saying I read somewhere, “Do not regret growing older. It’s a privilege denied to many people.” Many of our friends weren’t given the gift of all these extra years that we’ve had.

The second communication came from The Highground, a 140-acre veteran’s memorial park near Neillsville, Wisconsin. They wanted me to know that they’re planning a ceremony on September 14 to commemorate the 25^th anniversary of the dedication of the Wisconsin Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. That memorial remembers our 1,244 Wisconsin brothers who gave their lives in that war, a war that most people in this country wanted to forget. I couldn’t believe it had been 25 years since that September dedication back in 1988. Where did the time go?

They asked if I would be the speaker at the 25^th anniversary celebration. I wrote back and told them I’d be honored. I was also a speaker during the dedication ceremony in 1988 when we unveiled the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial sculpture. 

Looking back, our struggles during the planning and building of that memorial, and making it go from a dream to a reality, were just as painful as the Vietnam experience. At the time, Vietnam veterans were looked down on as losers, and despised by many people in this country. Many veterans, including me, had been in the “Vietnam Closet” for close to twenty years. Even some veteran’s organizations wouldn’t give us the time of day when we started trying to build a memorial. A big city editor told one of our board members, “Why don’t you guys forget it. The war is over.” Another person told me, “How do you guys think you’re going to build a memorial? You Vietnam vets would screw up a one-car funeral.” That statement brought out my “Hothead Sven” gene.

Despite all the obstacles, we didn’t give up. We had a core group of hard-working, dedicated board of directors, all veterans, who turned that one-car funeral into one of the finest veteran’s memorial parks in the entire country. It has become a sacred ground for veterans of all wars, and a place of spiritual and emotional healing for many. It will be good to get together in September and visit with old friends. I wonder if anyone has changed? I guess I know the answer to that question too.

The third communication was from Big Lee. “Hi Doc, how you doing?” He said he and his wife, Nancy, would be visiting her family in Michigan in mid-June and hoped to swing by Westby on their way back to California. I told him we’d have a mini-reunion here with several other guys from Wisconsin that we served with if he comes. He said he’d love to sit in the woods and talk one on one together, just like we used to do in the bush in Vietnam. Maybe we can take a trip to The Highground, take a walk on one of the hiking trails, and find a quiet spot in the woods where we can sit and discuss this journey we’ve been on.

Where did the time go? Time marches on and we’ve been lucky enough to be along on the march. We all may have changed in appearance, but the connection and closeness between those of us who served together will never change. I’ll always be Doc Sherpe to them.

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