Nuts to You

Tonight’s poker game at my house has been postponed because of the snow and late scheduling conflicts by three players who previously committed to show up. If I were a vindictive man, I’d name names. But in this time of Mandela inspired forgiveness, I’ll follow Madiba’s example and not hold a grudge.

Which brings me to the real reason behind this post, inspired by the time a few years ago during another hosting of my group’s poker games when a friend got up to get a beer and was stunned by the vast quantity of nuts arrayed across the second shelf of the refrigerator. He joked about our house being inhabited by squirrels. 

Truth is, on that second shelf we have regular almonds and dry roasted almonds, slithered almonds, cashews, pecans, shelled and unshelled pistachios, pine nuts, brazil nuts, sunflower seeds, peanuts, chocolate covered peanuts, and trail mix packs. A true squirrel heaven. We have such a wide array of nuts because most mornings my breakfast consists of almonds and cashews combined with assorted fruit, all smothered in whipped cream. Gilda usually takes dry roasted almonds, brazil nuts and some pecans for snacking during the day. 

You might be scratching your head wondering if we’re eating the wrong stuff, but you wouldn’t be if you read Jane Brody’s column in Tuesday’s NY Times (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/09/snacking-your-way-to-better-health/?ref=health&_r=0). Once considered bad for you, nuts are now a first line of defense against such illnesses as cancer, heart and respiratory disease. 

Despite their high fat content nuts are said to reduce bad cholesterol. They also can lower triglycerides. Unfortunately, I started my nut regimen way after my triglycerides topped the four digit level. They’re under control now, most notably from a changed diet along with a supercharged omega-3 fish oil capsule, Lovaza. You have to be careful with Lovaza, or any fish oil capsule, for that matter. If one of the pills leaks, the others in the bottle are infused with an overwhelming fish smell. That apparently happened with my most recent Lovaza prescription. I couldn’t get the fish oil smell off my hands despite repeated washings with soap and water and a spritz of Purel. It got so bad I had to call the mail order pharmacy to complain. I suspect I wasn’t the first to do so as the pharmacist was quite apologetic and accommodating, agreeing to send out a replacement order ASAP.  

Squirrel's Revenge

Just when I thought I’d outwitted the squirrels, along comes Mother Nature to fight on their side.

I awoke this morning, as did most metropolitan New Yorkers, to a sheet of ice across the landscape. I knew it was bad when Gilda reluctantly opted not to travel into work. She’s more reliable and dedicated than the fiercest postal worker, so it was apparent this storm was a real game changer.

As I peered out the kitchen window I noticed tree limbs sagging under the weight of the ice. The dip in their arc meant the birdseed and suet feeders were dangerously close to ground level. My fears were soon realized. The reddish-grey tailed squirrel, against whom I had installed baffles Monday to thwart his assaults from above, was easily able to leap up onto the bird feeders. He leisurely—actually, that’s not a a good word for a squirrel; squirrels rarely do anything in a leisurely fashion—sampled one feeder after another. If it were just snow on the limbs, I’d have ventured out to knock some off to raise the limbs. But knocking a branch encapsulated in ice could crack it and send it and the birdseed feeders crashing to the ground.

I waited till well into the afternoon thaw, till after I spent 90 minutes clearing the driveway of ice, before trudging out through the ice-capped snow in the yard to replenish the food in the feeders and gingerly poke off some ice from the trees.

Once you’ve become a caterer to the winged world, it’s difficult not to feel a sense of obligation to maintain a constant food supply, especially during times when the ground is covered in snow or ice and birds can’t easily find their normal sources of nourishment. I don’t really mind that the squirrels partake as well. They are cute. But I do expect some decorum—hanging from the feeders, literally pigging out and denying access to the birds is unacceptable behavior.

Mother Nature also must learn to fight fair. But then, I should have anticipated some shenanigans. Today, after all is a semi-squirrel holiday. It’s Groundhog Day.

Creature Habits

If you’re not careful, it’s easy to fall into slovenly habits when you no longer commute to an office. While I haven’t shaved every morning, I have fastidiously showered and washed my hair daily to avoid any appearance of seediness. But a little more than a week ago the NY Times ran an article about people who blithely let days go by between showers and shampoos, or even an application of deodorant, what we used to call in summer camp a “marine shower” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/fashion/31Unwashed.html?scp=1&sq=daily%20showers&st=cse).

Especially as we flow through the parched-skin fall and winter months, the option of not subjecting my (sensitive) outer layer to excess water looms as a very appealing morning option. After all, how grungy could I get just hanging around the house, or running the occasional errand?

Well, I’m not going to tell you what I decided. Next time you see me, though, I won’t take offense if you keep your distance, or at the very least sniff the air around me before approaching.


Three Birthdays: Last Saturday Gilda and I went to two birthday parties. We started the day at the bar mitzvah of the youngest son of one of the doctors in Gilda’s office. Michael made his parents proud.

Saturday night we helped celebrate the 85th birthday of our friend Milton. He was the art director of my publications for close to 20 years. Several of his paintings hang in our home, my favorite being a self-portrait that, to me, makes him look like a Portuguese fisherman. I become transfixed whenever I gaze upon it.

Over the years I worked with many art directors, none who possessed the love of literature Milton did. Moreover, he always took the time to read our stories before designing a page. Never an easy man to get along with—cantankerous would be a mild description of his usual workplace demeanor—Milton has mellowed, even becoming quite sentimental. He reads poetry to his partner of many years, Marianne, as they walk along the Hudson River. To the assembled friends and family at his party, he read the following poem by Robert McCrum:

I have learned, in short, that I am not
Immortal (the fantasy of youth)
and yet,
strangely, in the process I have been renewed
in my understanding of family and, finally,
of the only thing that matters:
Love

Next Tuesday will be the first birthday of our grandson, Finley Hawthorne Forseter. It’s a race to see if the tree we planted last spring, a Winter King Hawthorn, will lose all its leaves before the milestone day. It’s also a race to see if Finley will master walking by then. He’s already able to stagger about before dropping into the arms of his parents. Any day now he will permanently defy gravity. For a video of his latest efforts, visit http://findingfinley.blogspot.com/2010/11/walker-arlington-ranger.html.


Rocky and Friends: I really like watching squirrels. I know they’re rodents, as Gilda repeatedly points out to me. But they’re industrious. Extremely smart. Resourceful. And cute.

Squirrels are attracted to my bird feeding stations. They feast on seeds indiscriminately dropped to the ground by the birds. Of course, being rather self-centered creatures, squirrels prefer to eat seeds straight from the feeders, but I’ve prevented that possibility by strategically placing inverted funnel-shaped plastic squirrel guards along the chains above two of the main feeders that hang from nearby trees.

The other day as I was eating breakfast, I looked out the window at my new bird feeder, a white house with an A-frame metal shingle roof hanging from one of our pine trees. It recently replaced an open gazebo-style feeder that surprisingly never interested the squirrels. The new feeder was promoted as squirrel proof—its perches are levers designed to close up the seed area under the weight of any bushy-tailed scavenger that might pull up a chair, so to speak, to the dinner table.

The new feeder had been up for about 10 days without incident, but on this morning I was brought up short in my Cheerios-crunching by the sight of a squirrel busily munching away on bird seed while it rested comfortably on the perch. Four or five times I shooed the squirrel away, only to witness its methodical return. The squirrel would climb up the pine tree, scamper across the limb from which the feeder was suspended, and shinny its way down the chain till it plopped onto the roof. The last straw was when it didn’t even bother to sit on the lever. Rather, it hung upside down from the roof to casually chomp away at the cache of seeds at its disposal.

My daily rounds that day included a trip to the wild bird store to purchase yet another plastic baffle to baffle and confound the squirrels. Only the squirrels were not content to go down without a fight. For the next day they repeatedly crawled down the chain from the tree limb until they’d get to the edge of the squirrel guard. At the bottom of the guard, the widest part of the funnel, they were forced to leap for the house. But it was too steep an angle. They’d tumble four feet to the ground, shake themselves off, climb back up the tree and try once more. It took several unfortunate falls before they learned they could not get around the squirrel guard.

But perhaps they could avoid it. So the most resourceful did his best impersonation of Rocky the flying squirrel. He jumped from a tree limb toward the feeder. Alas, for him, at least, I had placed the feeder too distant for a successful aerial assault.

Granted, outwitting a squirrel might be considered an insignificant achievement, but it sure beats the office political games I once had to play.