Monday, November 08, 2010

Cautionary Tales and Tails:Quicksilver Nabs the Butter Dish, I find the Knife Sharpener, and Four Deer Can't Decide


Our first cautionary tale involves those black feathers overlapping Silver's red tail and peeking out from under his grey secondaries. Those dear readers are his flight feathers.

Also involved is the top of the butter dish which is not overlapping the bottom of the butter dish in the ordinary recommended way. I wonder how that happened? Note the look of complete innocence on Silver's part.

Plus if you look very very carefully at the top edge of the lower portion of Silver's beak you will see a tiny dab of yellow. Could that be butter? I'd wager it certainly is.

The moral of this tale is, if you don't want your butter dish in a similar condition, or if left to his own devices an African Grey Parrot with butter wicking up to his eyeballs, be constantly vigilant when those black feathers peek out from under the grey ones.

The second cautionary tale involves my finally finding the knife sharpener in this house. I was ecstatic, most of the knives had become so dull it was rather like shoving a wedge through a potato rather than slicing one.

Now we all know that after having used dull knives over time, you become used to dull knives which take more force to cut than a sharp one. Accidents can happen. And that was exactly what I was thinking about while sliding the knife through the sharpening crevice of the nifty little sharpening tool I'd found. I must be extra careful when I go to use this knife again.

Then I began to look at that new sharp silvery edge the sharpener was creating. and reminded myself again, remember to be extra careful when you use this.


Wait! In the handle of the sharpener I notice molded into the plastic the word CAUTION, but can't quite read the rest in the shadow of my hand so I shift my hand to read the caution and zip--I've cut a divot out of my finger. YES! I did notice it happened-- immediately.

I then spent the next 2 1/2 hours attempting to get it to stop bleeding. I considered the emergency room but upon scrutiny, decided that there really wasn't any skin left to sew together. If I could get it to stop bleeding, pressure and more pressure plus ice, I simply was going to have to grow a new patch.

(Pardon the lag in the blog the last few days. Every time I tried to type the uncooperative divot went and bleed on the keyboard. Tsk.)

The moral of this cautionary tale? Don't attempt to read the Caution statement on a knife sharpener while sharpening a knife at the same time.

The upside? We can observe over time how skin regenerates (or doesn't) in a spot where the dermis, epidermis, and a section of lower tissue have been cut off. The photo below is of the divot today, two days after the fact.

Don't mind the whitened skin around the divot. My bandage had gotten wet and that skin was doing the white shriveled thing one's fingers and toes do after being in the bathtub too long.

Note that the knife entered at an angle at the bottom, see the tapered edge of skin? And then traveled abruptly, no kidding, up and away.

Watching the progression could be interesting.

The third cautionary tale is really not so much about a moral caution but rather about a true cautionary tail, that of a White-tailed Deer.

A bit of back story-- I'd been asked to be one of the photographers for the Edgerton Book and Film Festival and on Friday there was a post festival party at the home of one of the patrons. The house overlooks a very well attended bird feeder and a golf course.

Now I'm always a bit ill at ease around people I don't know well, plus completely fascinated by the attendees of a bird feeder, especially one a foot from a glass patio door.

Therefore where was I standing? No contest.

I was standing looking through the glass at the feeder, of course, pondering why this feeder, about 10 miles from my feeder, only had Red-bellied Nuthatches, at least at that moment, and my feeder usually only attracted White-bellied Nuthatches-- when hippity hoppity, four does skipped their way across the fairway behind the house.



Their white cautionary tails flipping, they scampered over to the rough, and paused for a few minutes looking around. They then headed back onto the fairway hippity hoppity into the distance. And stopped dead looking at something or was it someone?

I peered with them. Is that a man? A scarecrow? What? The five of us peered some more. Two does in particular flipped their white flags of tails up and down. Then their decision made they trotted easily out of sight.

It wasn't until I brought the photographs up on the computer that I realized, what they'd seen long before I had, we'd all been looking at, well, a tree trunk.

FROM KAREN ANNE KOLLING OF LONG ISLAND, a link to a dancing Cockatoo, and let me say, the bird really really goes for it-

Hi, Everyone,

I find rap incomprehensible and actually painful to listen to, but this cockatoo does not share my opinion. Hang in there past the commercial and the first 15 seconds:

www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/bird-dances-to-willow-smiths-whip-my-hair/1jrxtaa3x


Donna Browne

3 comments:

Karen Anne said...

"From Karen Anne Kolling of Long Island" That would be Rhode Island, but people have been known to say, "Rhode Island, that's in New York, isn't it?" :-)

I cut a divot out of my finger a couple of months ago, but it was still attached at one end, so I slathered antibiotic ointment on it and pressed it down and covered it with a band-aid, thinking it would be temporary protection. It reattached itself. I wonder if one cut completely out would do that.

Karen Anne said...

p.s. Holding the pertinent body part up in the air is good at stopping bleeding/reducing bruising. I do that now as a matter of course when I whack an appendage on something.

Donegal Browne said...

Sorry Karen, and how many times have I typed Rhode Island for your contributions to the blog and suddenly I type Long Island. Where did that come from?

This divot had a teeny shred of skin attachment toward the top that connected the bigger piece that covered the divet, but at one point the bandage stuck to the wound and the skin ripped off. The divet has definitely shrunk at this point so I suspect I'm growing some new skin around the edges.