For once the gang is actually smiling and being friendly with one another. Don't get used to it though. It's a rarity.

Willy : )


Archives

Nothing here yet. Don't worry. It'll fill up.

Update: August 20, 2001

Just who are the Weasels?

Not really sure what all will make it here. It's up to "the gang" at WeaselWorks. Everyone has a job to do here and may not want to take the time to work on much of their own stuff (classic weaseling!). Willy, of course, will keep on top of things, giving you probably more than you even care to see; after all, he's the big guy; but the rest? We'll see.

The Gang of Four

GUESS

THE GIRL

SCOOTS

BUDS

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My Backyard

Submitted 5/15/01

I live in a medium-size city wrapped around a bay with snow-capped mountains just over the foothills in a fairly rainy part of the world. My home is an average home, built around the turn of the century, with a typically ignored front yard and only slightly more cared for back yard. I built a deck against the south fence, just a step above ground, which serves as a wonderfully flat and stable perch from which to watch the happenings in my back yard. It is a fairly peaceful back yard, except for the "freeway that runs through it" just the next half block over and to the east. As I stop to listen, the constant drone of traffic washes over me, like waves crashing against the shore or an all-too-babbling brook babbling incessantly; but I rarely stop to listen, so the din is just pushed back below my awareness, and my back yard is a peaceful place to be.

I have two enormous poplar trees in my back yard which can be seen from miles away, from any high vista around my city - guideposts letting me know where I am, wherever I am. The trees are actually on my neighbor to the north's property, but they have pushed through the fence (a couple lateral feet in the thirteen or fourteen years I've lived here), hang over and drop 85 percent of their leaves onto my back yard. I really don't mind. Every year we wager which way the wind will blow when it's leaf-dropping time. Generally, I lose. The only problem with the fallen leaves is that they are usually wet, none of the big piles of raked pleasures so often portrayed as "Hallmark Moments" and looked upon nostalgically in comic strips. No. Our piles are soggy, generally used by the local cats because it's easier than digging. Right now I'm watching the last moments of a totally unexpected rainbow framed between the two trees. You see, it never rained today, nor did it really get cloudy. Sometimes September is like that. Sometimes it's not. The rainbow is gone.

A lot of visitors traverse my back yard. My neighbor to the south has about a dozen cats (usually at least one pregnant momma cat at any given time cats tend to be pregnant, one very young litter, and whichever young cats from any previous litter that remained. I don't think my neighbors understand how it is cats have kittens, or how it can be prevented). These cats can usually be seen slinking through the yard ( I say slinking because they breed them unfriendly next door, and they always have that "hey, what are you looking at" look about them), looking for piles, leaving piles, exploring the shed, or sitting on the fence and glaring with the aforementioned look. I really don't begrudge the cats too much; it's just the neighbor I wonder about. The only truly unwelcome cats are the two local toughs - the intact toms that so relish ravishing the lady kitties to the south. Actually, the black and white tom is a rather nice cat who tends to skedaddle with the slightest provocation. The gray tom is a bastard. He is belligerent, vicious and ugly. We don't get along. Especially when he goes after my cat. Yes, I have a cat. A gorgeous cat. A friendly cat. An eighteen-year-old old-man kitty who doesn't need to spend his dotterage fighting with the local young bucks in his own back yard. But he always stands up to intruders, winning a few, losing a few. At his age, I don't like him losing. So the gray tom and I are sworn enemies, and he tends to leave when I show up, though he saunters off with a swagger, suggesting that it's really his idea. I hit him fairly solidly on the head with a good sized rock one day, and planted a good kick when we cornered each other in the shed another day. Now, before you start getting your hackles up, he has hurt my cat on more than one occasion. We tolerate most things in my back yard, but "Smokie" is pariah!

Visitors are fine, but what really interests me are the residents of my back yard: the poplars, the neighbor's locust tree, my longsuffering rhody, the scotchbroom I dug up from along a side road, the invading brambles, vines and weeds from the neighbor to the south, the honeysuckle and clematis I planted this spring which are taking over the gate/pergola I built to keep the rose of sharon from crowding the gate and any passersby, and of course, the various bugs, beetles and creepy crawly things just below the surface, my favorite being the jumping spiders.

I love jumping spiders. They are the true predators, solitary hunters relying on stealth, quick-wit, and the ability to leap tall buildings. And they're fearless. They don't have a problem with butterflies and horseflies, creature gigantic to their diminutive size, nor with a finger poked at them. Southern California has a particularly pugnacious variety, whose members I'd known would take nothing from nobody, least of all a grown human adult (of course, I wasn't about to squish it, maybe it knew, maybe it didn't).

- neighbor cat just galloped across the deck, through the yard and into the alley. There was a brief lull in the traffic. Now a large truck just went by, and someone beeped a horn -

I would take a toothpick-size piece of dried grass and poke it near the spider. He'd rear back, take a bead, and lunge onto my sword. I would parry his thrusting attack and attempt a blow which he would deftly sidestep and reach out with a left hook. This would go one until I gave up. The jumpers around here are not quite so eager for a fight. There seem to be three varieties: black, black and dark gray, black and white (the latter being the smallest, the black and gray the most common), and they tend to shoo off at the mere mention of fingerplay. But they still hold a soft spot in my heart. My youngest hates spiders. Yeah, who doesn't hate spiders? Who likes running face-first into a deplorable tangle of spider web, especially when the damnable beast itself is sashaying its fangs and forelegs at the great meal it has caught? Or when a monstrous wolf spider dashes across the floor, in its haste narrowly missing your naked foot lying inches from where it emerged? Now, where did that one come from? And are there more? (not usually, wolf spiders tend to be lone gunmen in my house.) He really hates them. Even the little innocuous one. But I have made such a show and fuss over my jumpers that he, too, has come to not only accept jumpers but also to show a bit of happy appreciation when we find one. I'm given to wonder just how much fear and loathing, prejudice and disgust is learned and passed on from our homes. Everyone in my house has learned to allow the jumpers free passage throughout our world: the yard as well as within the house. And if one must be removed from within, it is carefully scooped up, tenderly, and placed at some fortuitous location outside. All other spiders found within the confine of our house are summarily and without remorse, pity or hope, immediately dashed, smashed, stomped, squished, flushed and any number of other means so disposed - though, of course, I am the usual executioner. Even my oldest acts the weasel when it comes to spiders (human weasel, not the fearless ferret variety). I am left to do the deed and remove the remains.

My house has a basement. And it's a wonderful home to countless spiders and their countless webs. I do what I can (the basement rates as "indoors" therefore open season on the octopeds, though with a bit of lattitude - I don't go at it wholehearted). There is a set of cellar doors leading to and from the basement that get opened periodically, mostly to get the bikes out. They are typical cellar doors - you have to reach down and lift one side, then the other. A couple weeks ago, I noticed a black and gray jumper walking along the north side of the doors. I admired her, pushed her around with my finger (she's very polite, not at all pugnacious like her SoCal brethren) and said goodbye. A few days latter, upon lifting the cellar door, I found she had made a nest just between the door and the frame (there was about 1/4" clearance). Its been a couple weeks now, I visit her every couple days or so. Yesterday she had a great dead fly, fully her size, attached just on the edge of the nest. I'm hoping for a family soon (no, her name is not Charlotte).

I am reminded of another family home we discovered in our wanderings (not the back yard). One day while bike riding in our favorite boondocks/business park, my youngest and I were going from spot to spot, turning over boards and other stuff likely to be hiding a garter snake or two. We'd found one or two so far when upon turning over a 2' by 3' piece of plywood, there lie what seemed to be a nest of fur and grass about 3" in diameter and maybe 2" deep with a quarter-size hole on the top. There appeared to be squirming within it, so ever so carefully we pushed back some of the grass/fur and behold: 2 or 3 baby field mice - pinkies as so named in pet shops as feeders. We were thrilled, naturally, and carefully replaced the disturbed material, put back the plywood, and continued in our searchings. We returned every other day to watch the progress. One day, the squirming became scurrying - the younguns were scampering and venturing forth. A couple days later, the nest was empty. We never did see the adults.

There is another fairly remarkable spider that lives in my back yard. I don't know what the adult looks like (probably just a larger version of the baby), but the babies are tiny, yellow and black and they gather together on a vertical surface in a great pile of probably fifty or so. This static mass of pinhead-size spiders is remarkable enough in its own right. However, what is actually hysterical is that when poked with a finger, they become a seething mass of activity: each spider heaves outward on its dragline and plummets in a cascading spider-fall of yellow and black. They are all frantically hell-bent to get as far from the gathering as possible, probably to confuse any would be diner. Picture a couple dozen rockclimbers all repelling down the face at the same time, getting halfway down and then jamming sideways, covering the entire face of the cliff, all wearing yellow and black spandex. Upon returning later in the day, or the next, the group would be together again. Usually the next day, they would be gone. I'm sure I'm being cruel and hateful, but I love watching them hit the freefall in one mad dash escape. They don't seem worse for wear, as they reassemble and then disappear, I would presume to grow up. They usually happen in mid spring or early summer, I think.

Looking over this I'm reminded that just last Sunday, bright and early, on my way to a friend's church to play guitar, I had cascading spiders right on my head, hat and face - the entire passel of them. I just know I felt the little buggers crawling in my hair all day long. (5/13/01)

Fall has its own particular spider: a bright tan and burnt-orange, smallish to quite large, fat-bodied (at least as the season progresses) spider I call harvest spider because it is the harbinger of fall. (I think I may have seen the first one just the other day.) I'm never really too glad to see these guys because they are basically telling me that summer is over. That and they build webs everywhere. You don't walk anywhere two vertical things are in proximity (doorway, gate, around a corner near a fence, car and tree, you get the picture) without either flailing your arms in front of your face, or wielding a stick doing the same. Fall is also a time around here for morning dew, so every morning is a wonderland of truly beautiful webs, glistening in the sunshine (if the sun is actually out, not all that often) or glistening in the drizzle. They do make wonderful orb webs, usually only supported with three points of contact. I think their favorite/easiest food is the crane fly. (We get crane flies like Pharoah got flies and locust and frogs.) At least crane flies are always wrapped up snuggling along the edges of the webs.

Willy - 9/4/00

The Daily Squeek


The ScotchBroom

The scotchbroom is one of my favorite "wild flora" around here - it grows everywhere you don't ask it to be, especially along the freeway. I think it's related to sagebrush and is just as ubiquitous. It is spindly at best, but mid spring it explodes with yellow flowers.

This guy here was dug up from along some gravelly roadside and planted here while its flowers were still in bloom. It was about 4' tall. Now it's taller than me (6'6") - I think it likes it here. I was a bit worried early spring, however, because its brethern were in full regalia while it barely had a few green leaves. Talking it over with a nursery friend, we decided it wasn't getting enough sun yet (notice the fence to its south) and I shouldn't worry. Well, you can see she was right.

The Gallery

Here are some of the Buds' artwork. The cat and dragon have appeared in a local business publication.

Cool Cat - Hot Tree


La Lumiere


Willy's Dragon


Under the Deep Blue Sea


Diablo II Quick Reference Guide, 16 pages with pictures. We might just have a copy or two left over - for a price!

Yeah! Buds!


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