Catch the Feather

I live in a small town in west-central Missouri, U.S.A. The terrain is gently rolling to flat; we are less than an hour away from the Missouri River. My little town is one down-ramp from Interstate 70 between Columbia and Kansas City, a great place to dehydrate and re-hydrate, a potty break town. Now that you know where I live, I want to tell you about my surroundings and tiny black fighter jets.

A menagerie of creatures lives on my ten acres. There is me, my high school daughter, my traveling husband, a traveling, researcher son, a college student son, two dogs, Schwartzie and Fritz, a miniature goat, one little red hen, three Embden geese, and a dozen fancy show rabbits. Schwartzie started out as a 4-H project, she and my daughter had to take obedience training for 4- H competition. Fritz is a black labrador retriever. One of the “neighbors” dumped him on our driveway when he was about three months old; his right eye is naturally blind, according to the vet.

 The miniature goat was just a strange decision that I am not going to talk about. The little red hen, Mrs. Chicken, is an escapee from a leftover 4-H project from the college son. The geese are the remainders of eight that my husband gave me as a gift, which I requested. Embden geese are the great big white geese that like to act like watch dogs or at least make that much noise. Some of the geese were given to my sister and her family, some made the fox and coyote population healthier, some begat others and also helped the fox and coyote population and some stood on the road too long and the “man things” found them.

So, I only have three geese now. A dozen fancy show rabbits might seem a little extravagant, but we are a 4-H family. My daughter shows her rabbits at many shows, county and state fair and national competitions throughout the year. The rabbits travel frequently; too bad they do not get frequent flyer miles. Most of my menagerie lives in the backyard.

My backyard is like a cereal bowl. I think of it that way because the erosion from the berm is like the sugar falling off of the cereal and sinking through the milk to the bottom of the bowl. I occasionally have standing water at the bottom of the bowl and the geese like to muddle it; which makes it look like milk. The glass sliding door faces south into the backyard and opens onto a big deck. The deck is oddly shaped to accommodate the shed, the shaded deck, where the rabbits live, and the steps down to the earth.

The fenced garden is next to the deck allowing the composting of rabbit droppings during the winter. The garden is not big; it fits in this niche very nicely. I like a garden that is manageable. If I cannot reach to the center and pull weeds easily then it is too big for me, no one else enjoys gardening at my house, so I keep it simple. The west side of the backyard is a huge berm that leads up to the highest part of the ten acres. It is high to accommodate a shallow pond. The berm sweeps around from west to south making a corner of the backyard, encircling it to make the cereal bowl part. The sloping part of the berm is clay as is most of the soil in the ten acres, and it tends to erode to the bottom of the bowl by silting into crumbs and not growing anything. I sow pounds and pounds of seeds on it to no avail. Currently, I am trying native prairie grass, which takes two whole summers to establish. I am told that it should not be mown during this establishment time. Wow, is it ugly but the erosion is slowing! Sowing seeds is a chore that leads to more chores such as mowing, eventually. Chores are the little things we do to get through the day a little easier and to prevent doing twice as much tomorrow.

Outside chores are weeding the garden, and feeding the dogs, the goat, the chicken, the geese, and the rabbits. My daughter cares for the rabbits and I care for the geese and chicken, goat and dogs. The animals are well fed. Sometimes the geese do not eat all the feed at once, due to their grazing and meandering nature; therefore, wild creatures are attracted. Wild rabbits and many species of birds seem to know about the feed dish.

When chores are complete its time to go inside, wash up and get busy on the kitchen chores. I have a very nice picture window over my kitchen sink that frames the view of the back yard. This is my wildlife spy window. The curtains shade the afternoon heat away in summer and provide camouflage for the wildlife spy, that’s me. There is one little cottontail that likes to sneak over to the feed dish at dusk.

This wild rabbit enjoys the cracked corn as much as the geese and Mrs. Chicken. Little cottontail is a bunny by age and likes to sit in the middle of the dish to eat. He will stay there as long as no one “notices” him or pushes him out. During the daytime the starlings, occasional pigeon or woodpecker, red wing black birds, house wrens and the ever-popular bug eating barn swallows enter the feeding domain.

The barn swallows rarely stop at the cracked corn feed dish but when they do the commotion begins. They start calling to each other with their shrill “pic-vic” or “sic-vic” sounds. I think they are calling for their pals to fly around them for protection or warning. The rest of the group of barn swallows will swoop and dive overhead while the individual swallow hops in the feed dish for a piece of cracked corn. Since the geese also eat at this feed dish, their molted downy feathers are on the ground all around the feeder. So after a mouth full of corn, the temporarily grounded swallow grabs a mouth full of down and takes off for the airspace above my cereal bowl backyard. The maneuvers begin as the sleek black and dusty orange little fighter jet swallow ascends.

It is at first hard to say if the shiny little birds are racing as if they were in their very own hippodrome or if they are showing off in an air show event. As they continue in the never-ending circle of speed and agility the maneuvers become more difficult. They seem to dare each other in a “follow-me game” to see which one of them is top gun for the day. Changing directions and dipping a wing to the left or right is not even a challenge to them, their flying skills are superb, a pilot and fighter jet all in one. Occasionally, they fly straight for the picture window just so they can pull up before smacking into it at the last second.

A flash of underbelly is the only thing in view. It’s all very purposeful. The longer they fly in the formation, taunting each other with their shrill “pic-vic”, the sound gets to be a one syllable noise like the spray of tracer fire. The longer I watch the more I want to see and suddenly I realize that one of the team members has that feather in its mouth. I incorrectly presumed that the feather was going into a nest. The feather is the game piece upon which the entire team waited. They had been flying reconnaissance and cover while the grounded team member clandestinely upgraded their tactical equipment.

Now the real game is “on”, it is time to play Catch-the Feather!

The be-feathered swallow gains altitude above the team’s airspace and at the strategic moment drops the feather to see which team member is fast enough to race forward plucking it from the air. One of them has to retrieve the feather before it floats too close to earth. The swooping and diving is nothing less than miraculous as the next swallow grabs that piece of fluff in mid-air, continuing on his round in the race. The daring antics become stronger and closeness to earth seems to be the ultimate goal of tactics. Thank goodness the team understands that it is only a game, the downy feather sometimes lands on earth and must be retrieved if the game is to go on. I cannot tell if the punishment for not grabbing the feather is to pick it up or if the dropper has to retrieve it, but the noise level gets to be piercing when the feather is no longer in play. They do not seem to be angry but they want to continue to play and urge their team member on. The game will continue for quite a while or until there is an intruder. Sometimes the team will dive at the intruder to see if they will go away. Each team member will dip down in an amazing maneuver to threaten the intruder and then return to formation. Deterring the intruder is sometimes unsuccessful.

Intruders, like Fritz, being larger than the barn swallows and perhaps taking a leap at or opening a mouth full of teeth to a team member would never be good, so the team allows the feather to fall to earth to “live to play another day”. And like all birds of a feather, my favorite acrobatic fighter jets fly on to reconnaissance elsewhere. I hope they know that I have the best white down game pieces in the area and that they are welcome to practice maneuvers in my backyard anytime.