On loons and cucumbers (yes, again)

Dare I say it? The weather at Pleasant Pond is lovely. Last night - though not a full moon, that is tomorrow - the moon was exceedingly bright and large, and the loons were in excellent form, calling to each other from every corner of the pond, beckoning, teasing, coaxing; it was a noisy orgy of loons out there. It would be a challenge to even the finest loon-call-imitator out there (you know who you are) to replicate the audacity of the love songs last night on the pond.

And if you have not heard enough about cucumbers this summer, and who could ever hear enough about the versatile cucumbers?
While making corn fritters on the vast wood burning stove I noted that right after the recipe for corn fritters in the 1967 edition of The Joy of Cooking is the section of cucumbers, which begins thus:

“How often the Japanese draw these decorative plants! That their formal values were missed when the cold weather came was poignantly noted by Isaiah when he said, “As desolate as a cottage in a cucumber garden abandoned in winter.””

More tidbits like that, and my book on cucumbers comes nearer and nearer to a reality.

(Lest you think we suddenly have acquired Internet at the pond, never fear, we have not. I am just now ensconced in a leather sofa at Northern Outdoors, a lodge for rafters, hunters and beer drinkers, not necessarily in that order, where there are no less than 8 stuffed deer heads, one huge moose head (2 of us could comfortably sit in the hollows of his antlers)over the stone fireplace, 1 stuffed wolf (the whole thing), 1 stuffed beaver (ditto whole) and one creature I can't identify. They also have Wi-Fi.)

Moose causes 9-car pileup on I-684 and dies

While I was cooking beets last night, a “wayward” moose stumbled onto the northbound side of I-684 and was struck by a car going about 60 mph.
The first car (from the foreign state of Connecticut) hit the moose, sent it flying up and over the roof of car, and onto the road where it was hit by more cars. For a total of nine.

(Should I point out that I can spend weeks in the moose country of northern Maine and not see a moose – this past July being a felicitous exception – and yet a highway full of people see a moose, or don’t see it until they have hit it, in northern Westchester which is most definitely not moose country?)

Presently, the head of the moose is unceremoniously wrapped in garbage bags and sitting on ice inside a 50 gallon drum at the Fire House of Goldens Bridge. The fire chief would like to see it elsewhere. He said, “I’m not a funeral home.” Which is probably fairly obvious.
The body was buried beside the highway. Near exit 6A, if you want to pay your respects.

Here is what we don’t know about the dead moose: what sex was it? I am assuming female because: 1. Antlers were not mentioned, and had a big rack been part of the picture, one assumes it would be mentioned; and 2. It is breeding season and during breeding season, moose will stray out of their usual spots.

Here is what we do know: Poor unmourned moose. Traffic was at a standstill from 7:45 (time of impact) until 10:30, and I suspect that after a traffic jam of that length there was little sympathy for the moose.