Dodging Bites and Branches

This came from the Hastings police 3 days ago:
Hastings-on-Hudson Police Department: currently tracking a wild coyote that maybe rabid and attacked two people and their dogs this evening. Please Stay out of all wooded areas in particular Hillside Woods.
HASTINGS-ON-HUDSON POLICE DEPARTMENT

The next day this came:
The Hastings-on-Hudson Police Department is currently tracking a wild coyote that maybe rabid and attacked two people and their dogs this evening. One incident occurred on Kent Ave. The second occured in Hillside Woods. The injured parties were taken to the hospital.

And for a change in what to worry about:
NOR'EASTER UPDATE: NUMEROUS FALLEN TREES AND DEBRIS PLEASE STAY OFF THE ROADS. CALL 1-800-752-6633 TO REPORT POWER OUTAGES. HIGH WINDS FORECAST TO CONTINUE

But we haven't forgotten the coyotes:
Message from the Mayor: Coyote attacks in Village
Last night, between 6:30 and 8:00PM, three people were attacked and bitten by a coyote and a small dog was killed. Two of these attacks occurred on Kent and on Overlook, and one in Clarewood Village. All attacks occurred on the street. The three victims have been treated at hospital and released. The animal also charged a number of other residents (and, in several cases, their pet dogs) though did not inflict any injury. The coyote has not been located and destroyed. It was last seen running toward Hillside Woods.

Hastings-on-Hudson Police Department: Coyote Information & Safety Tips
HASTINGS-ON-HUDSON POLICE DEPARTMENT
On February 28, 2018 at approximately 3:50 PM the Village of Hastings on Hudson Police Department received a call from a resident who reported being involved in an auto accident with a coyote on Broadway near Burnside Drive. Patrols were detailed along with the Greenburgh Animal Warden. It was determined the coyote suffered fatal wounds. The animal was transported by the Greenburgh Animal Patrol to the Westchester County Health Department for testing.

https://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/westchester/greenburgh/2018/03/01/hastings-coyote-kills-dog/384133002/


How many coyotes were there? Are they all dead now? At least one is still at large, licking its chops in anticipation of munching a lapdog.

Tristram was bitten by a rabid dog on his honeymoon, at a Temple outside Hanoi. He got a series of rabies shots, in Vietnam and back in the US, and hasn't thought about it since. (Unlike his mother.)

One small dog was killed, and at least 4 people have been attacked. I am pretty sure the dead deer I saw on the Aqueduct on Tuesday was killed by a coyote. I didn't think about it at at the time, which doesn't say much for my powers of deduction.

One coyote was captured and killed on Dunwoodie Golf Course. It was a scratch golfer.

Yesterday afternoon my mother's caregiver, Ava, called me from the Red House. I don't want to say she was hysterical. She was in a tizzy. Ava is somewhat zoophobic. Insects freak her out. When we set mousetraps in Mom's house, one of us has to go check on it early in the morning, before Ava can even see it. So it follows logically that Ava would be rendered quasi-hysterical by the coyote alert in our village.

The local police had knocked on the Red House door and told Ava and Mom to stay inside, because the coyote had been spotted in our backyard. I reassured Ava that coyotes cannot open doors, so that as long as they stayed inside, all would be well. I read in the paper this morning that a few minutes after that call, a car killed a coyote across the street on Broadway and Burnside, saving the sharpshooters from Albany the trouble. I never saw the police, or the coyote. Not this time.

I thought the coyotes were going to be the scariest thing to contend with today. And the most troublesome thing to contend with would be the leak in the bathroom ceiling. The ceiling leaks whenever there is heavy rain, and today there was heavy rain, and so much else. Then the sink upstairs started leaking, or just oozing water onto the floor. And since the stand is encased in porcelain, I cannot turn off the water valves, which I am capable of doing when such things are accessible. At the same time, the toilet in the powder room next to the kitchen started leaking, but CSB was able to shut of the water valve.
Coyotes were looking like a minor blip in the day. The chickens were safely locked inside. And as I told Ava, coyotes cannot turn door knobs.

The wind keeps blowing. In the kitchen the wind generates a high pitched squeal that has something to do with the weather vane atop the cupola. Upstairs the wind sounds like whistling, particularly like the whistling of someone with a missing front tooth.

I had an appointment this morning with the water company meter reader. For many months they have been sending my mother (me) estimated bills because no one was reading the meter. The Suez service guy arrived. Ava wouldn't let him wait in the house, so he sat in his truck and I walked over to meet him. He drove down the driveway and I walked through the trees to the far northeast corner, where the property abuts our neighbor's property and Broadway. I noticed that the new owners of the Forge Cottage had installed a large wooden compost pile on our property, on our side of the fence. That seemed odd. I was thinking about how to address this issue, in a neighborly way. I haven't even met these new neighbors, and I didn't want the first thing I said to them to be: Please put your compost onto your side of the fence. And welcome to the neighborhood. Meanwhile, the water meter was right where CSB said it was. Then the young man headed back to his truck to get his tools, and I was still in the wooded area checking out the snow drops when there was ominous cracking, and then more ominous cracking and then an enormous limb came down, snapping off more limbs on its way down. I started running away from the falling tree, when I heard more and louder cracking, and an even bigger tree came down. I kept running to get out of the trees. The meter guy quickly departed, leaned out the window of his van and said they would call to make another appointment.

In the grand Darwinian tradition of idiots going for walks in swampy woods during a wind storm, I was almost flattened by a tree.

Afterward,I stopped in to see Mom and Ava (still all agog about the coyote). I did not mention the near miss by the descending tree.Going home I kep far away from any trees.

Just a few minutes ago I was having yogurt and berries in the dining room (the kitchen table can't go back until tomorrow) when I heard another loud crack and watched as the biggest of the birch trees went crashing down. Away from the house. That is two trees I've dodged today. I am feeling superstitious.


The birch is iconic to this house and this property. Something inside my head cracked with it.

PS: This was written yesterday, but I I couldn't post it as we had no internet. We still don't. I am getting creative.

Turn Right at the Lamb of God

You think you could move south, where it is all stories, all the time. At dinner there are Gothic tales of mistresses in the low country, violent death, and graveside hysterics clutching James Joyce. You imagine the fruits with Gullah names could bleed under your skin, and then you too would be related to both sides of the eternal conflict. The hellebores and their generations inhabit the woodlands and daily engage in mortal battle with the voles. Kudzu goes unmentioned. Broken crockery cannot stop the drama of lovers escaped to an endangered swamp where a Choctaw grandmother was last seen. Minutes before the wrecking ball shatters the bullet glass and splinters the wooden beams, a trunk full of a century’s journals is rescued. And inside you find: a braided hank of hair that reached her knees, and this notation for April 15, 1911: “The engineer tossed oranges to me from the train again. He wants to court me, and maybe he will.” There is a discussion of the perils and merits of hunting coyotes. Never at night.
You get lost on your way, and then you get the directions that will get you there: Turn right at the Lamb of God.

Learning to love a wood splitter

And how did we spend Palm Sunday? I would like to tell you we rode donkeys and waved palms, or even that we braided palms and walked beside donkeys, or even that we fed palms to the donkeys and took a walk. Or,given that we are fast approaching the end of Seagrass Awareness Month I would like to say we planted seagrass. But that would not be true. (It is also almost the end of Vulval Health Awareness Month and you probably don't need to know what we think about that.)
What is true: I saw a large loping coyote on the driveway in the morning. Coyotes and donkeys share a common class (Mammalia) but the grass eating donkeys belong to the order of Perissodactyla (odd-toed ungulates) while the carnivorous coyotes belong to Carnivora. It has been several millennia since donkeys and coyotes had much in common.

We chipped wood.

I learned to love a Wood Chipper. I am already a fan of hydraulic wood splitters, and at the end of the day I think the wood splitter is still a more entertaining tool. But chippers have their merits.They are voracious and mesmerizing.
We fed a couple of tons (no exaggeration - consider we've had two major storms alight and do their damage) of brush and branches and trees into the wood chipper and then watched it spit out tons of wood chips. Into the maw of the wood chipper (CSB referred to it fondly as The Eager Beaver) we fed an entire blue spruce that snapped off about a foot off the ground, more hemlock limbs than I can count, a pile of white pine branches twice the height of CSB. And that was just before lunch.

One of the cool things about a wood splitter is that you can aim the chute and therefore get the wood chips wherever you want them, and spread them around.

In other news, today would be the 181st birthday of Ritta and Christina, the Sardinian Siamese twins. (Think fusion cuisine.) And 162 years ago Niagara Falls stopped flowing for 30 hours because of an ice jam. We can't be sure if this was the first time that ever happened, but we know it was the last time.