Act Your Age?

We’ve heard it a thousand times, “Act your age!”  Adults use this phrase with children in hopes that they will abandon their tantrums or potty humor for some more dignified, mature behavior.  But what does this phrase mean for us adults?  How do we act an age?  How does age 30 act as compared to 60?

On this day, the anniversary of my birth, the celebration of adding a year to my stated age, the ceremonial passing of yet another year of life lived (and one less in front of me?), I began with walking my 13 year old Labrador on the trails.  Mid-way we met some new friends on the path.  While the dogs played, the humans chatted.  One human asked if my dog was a puppy!  This happens often, partly because my Riley has the benefit of fur to hide her laugh lines and wrinkles and being a natural blonde hides the fact that her face is white, and partly because she NEVER acts her age.  She is physically fit and young at heart.

Physically fit and young at heart.  That is how I have always seen myself…not as a number.  That part doesn’t seem to change.  One look at my face and nobody would ever accuse me of being a puppy.  My laugh lines are deep and I wear my grey streaks with pride.  I run.  I splash.  I play. I’m known for my potty humor and stupid antics.  Is that how a 48 year old acts her age?  Weeks after hitting the mid-century mark, my husband won a decent cash prize for being the Fastest Old Guy in a 50k race.  Was he acting his age?  Most of my friends are silly and crazy and like to play…are they acting their age?

Since I can’t grow fur on my wrinkles and am not interested in dying my hair, I think I’m going to retire that phrase.  I don’t think age and behavior are related.  Decades from now I plan to be running, splashing and playing, making bad jokes and maybe even throwing a tantrum or two.  Don’t tell ME to act my age.

It's a Bird Eat Bird World Out There

            Whoever came up with the phrase, It’s a dog eat dog world out there, doesn’t know jack about dogs.  Sure, we’ve all seen dogs get scrappy.  They snarl and show their teeth, they’ll even bite and tousle with a new alpha dog that appears on the scene.  But the fighting is all about order in the end.  Once they have established their place in the little dog society of the moment (dog park, neighborhood turf, etc.) then the pooches cooperate and play accordingly.  Dogs don’t eat dogs.  If they ever have, it’s about as common as human cannibalism.  So sure there may be a handful of Hannibal Hounds out there, and one or two Jeffrey Dahmer-Doodles, but it is not the norm.  Let me repeat, dogs don’t eat dogs.

            BUT, have you ever noticed the birds?  And I don’t mean their elegant flight or beautiful song.  These lovely feathered animals are BEASTS!  I’m no expert - I don’t carry a Life List Journal, wear an Audubon badge or have an eighteen inch camera lens hanging around my neck, but I do notice things.  On my forest walks I have heard the desperate screeching of a bird defending its young, and look up to see a Jay or Crow feasting on the fledglings of the panicked parent.

            Of course we all know there are birds of prey.  We have owls that eat all sorts of nocturnal animals, and regal eagles that feed themselves and their young upon gilled, four-footed and even winged creatures. Hawks, osprey and vultures are well-known meat eaters that are known to snack on the feathered meat of birds among other animals.

            There are some less obvious but common bird-on-bird predators such as the crow, jay and starling.  Keep an eye on your backyard wildlife in the spring and you are likely to witness a few battles with smaller birds trying to protect their homes from these nest-raiders.  But as I began to look deeper into this avian cannibalism I was surprised at how few birds are completely innocent of this behavior.

            Even one of my favorite birds, the beautiful red-winged black bird will eat eggs from competing wren’s nests in order to keep control over territory.  And the wrens do it right back.  Sweet little brown sparrows will drag eggs and baby-birds out of others’ nests in order to take over the home of another bird family.

            This carnage is not limited to ordinary birds, either.  The beloved Road Runner (remember the cartoons?)  will lurk near a smaller birds’ nest and leap up for the kill when the resident returns to its home.  The Australian kookaburra that we have all sang about as children will snatch a bird and bash it against a rock or other hard surface before consuming it for dinner.  Think about that next time you’re singing the happy song to a child “Laugh, Kookaburra!”

     Did you know that pelicans have been known to gobble up live birds when there isn’t enough fish to go around?  And since the big clumsy bird can’t chew, the young duck or pigeon experiences a slow and acidic death in its over-sized gullet.

            Spotted Woodpeckers?  Yep.  Warblers?  Uh-huh.  But my favorite by far is the Loggerhead Shrike.  This diminutive fellow eats all sorts of small animals and bugs (and yes, birds) and has an ingenious process for killing and storing its prey for later.  This spritely little bird impales its meal on thorns, twigs and even barbed wire.  And apparently the “pecking order” for this species is decided by who has the most dead bodies decorating its nesting tree.  (see below)

            I love figures of speech as much as the next person, but get it right people!  If this were a dog-eat-dog world, we would be living in peace and harmony with everyone having a firm place in the hierarchy of society.  When life gets tough and you’re in a cut-throat, competitive situation, this is definitely a Bird-Eat-Bird Kind of World.

           

The Loggerhead Shrike saving some leftovers for later.

Be Like Mike

 

   My brother was a sort of “Jack of all Sports and Activities”, except his name was Mike.  I can’t think of one activity that he wouldn’t or didn’t try.  As a youth he took scuba lessons and hunted octopus in front of our beach home.  In high school he was detained by police for scaling the side of a building, BB rifle in hand, while filming a movie with friends.  In the late 70s he competed in several triathlons long before they were main-stream and required a ton of gear.

      Mike had a room in his house devoted entirely to gear. Open the door to see wall-to-wall crampons, sailboat gear, snow shoes, several basketballs, a snowboard, a bike trailer to pull his dog and piles of gore-tex of every weight for every part of the body.  As for the rest of his house, it was quite neglected.  Clean laundry piled up on the couch and unsorted mail cluttered every horizontal surface.  He had torn up his kitchen to raise the ceiling and put in canned lights.  Unfortunately for his house, Mike’s priorities were not focused on housework or finishing projects.  There was no reason to finish up the drywall as long as there was a better offer dangling.  These other, more desirable opportunities could range from simply playing at the dog park to preparing for a climb of Mt. Baker.  The house chores could wait.

     He was certified to summit Mt. Rainier solo, although many of his attempts failed because he refused to take the easier, widely traveled route.  All of the mountains from Hood to Baker were part of his playground.  He had a 22 Ranger sailboat that saw action on the Puget Sound all year long, no matter what season.  Mike rode the RAMROD (Ride Around Mt. Rainier in One Day) more than once as well as the STP (Seattle to Portland) and the RSVP (Ride Seattle to Vancouver and Party).  Whether he rode those races in one day at a competitive level or took the two-day option depended on who he was riding with and what they could handle.  Mike was usually up for anything!

     My big brother believed that the ultimate weekend day was The Triple –  squeezing three separate activities all into the same day.  A perfect Triple might start at a mountain trailhead at dawn for an early hike with his dog and friends, after lunch maybe a road bike ride, often with his dog Nellie in tow, and then finish up with a long evening sail on the bay.  One was good.  Two was better, but three sports completed the best kind of day.
 

     Early September of 2005, three months before my brother was taken from us by meningitis, I had asked Mike to come and run in the Padden Relays with us on a family team.  The evening before the race I had called to give him an ‘out’ if he was too busy.  His response was, “Well, I haven’t come up with a reason not to, so we’ll see.”  In other words he had not received a better offer.  No one had yet invited him to play in a basketball tournament in which to break his nose (again).  There was no wind for sailing, no group bike ride, so he might just make it to the Relays.

      At 7 a.m. the next morning he called from his car, already en route to Lake Padden for our morning race.  That day he ran his guts out for the whole 2.65 miles and was sore for a week.  Running wasn’t one of his strengths, but he would often indulge me by joining in some races no matter what kind of sorry shape he was in.

     I don’t know if he ever ran again.  He probably put his running shoes aside for the fall, in exchange for his basketball shoes, and assumed he would pull them out again to train in the spring for another Sound to Narrows – how many times had he run that race?  There was always another Running o’ the Green or Haggen to Haggen in the future for an excuse for a weekend in Bellingham with little Sis.  “Why not?” was a phrase that often rolled out of his mouth. 

     Of course he didn’t run another Bellingham race.  Though his life was cut short, I can honestly say that he would have had no regrets about how he spent his days.  Sure, he was unencumbered by a spouse or children, unlike most of us.  He wasn’t tied to a weekend schedule of driving the soccer carpool or supervising play-dates.  I do think that even the busiest of us all can take away a lesson from Mike’s philosophy of life, especially during these lazy days of summer.  We can find those fleeting, unoccupied moments in our schedules and cram a little bit more fun in there.  In fact, today when I drop my daughter off I think I will wear my running shoes, bring my dog and take a lovely twilight run along the Boulevard Waterfront.  I’m going to try to be more like Mike.

Picture at top:  Mike the very proud teenage octopus hunter, with a slightly squeamish little sister watching from the window!

Time to Suck it Up and Move on

               With the annoying screech of arctic terns overhead, I woke up with dewy, soggy, unruly hair.  Looking out toward the beach I watched a seagull snatch a bright red crab the size of a hamburger patty from the shallow water.  The bird struggled with the snapping pincers until the crimson creature’s soft underside was exposed, and the feast began.  I lingered in my sleeping bag for nearly an hour, watching the geoducks (say gooey-ducks) perform a synchronized water fountain show while a heron glided silently in for a delicate landing in the shallows, and an eagle only slightly less gracefully perched on the lone piling for a good view of the passing salmon.

               I had camped out on this deck a gazillion times, but not recently.  I spent my childhood summers this way, watching and exploring the wonders of Puget Sound.  Now middle-aged, I haven’t yet grown tired of beach-combing and the joys of the smallest discoveries.

I’m still not quite sure why one of my favorite things is watching for sea lions.   Spottings are occasional at best and we can only see what emerges above water - usually a round, shiny head with a big smile (at least that is how I see it) cruising along, and then the flash of the smooth back and tail as she dives into the deep.  We may see her reappear several hundred yards away, chuckling, if we’re lucky.  Some might say it’s as exciting as watching paint dry.  I have always found the thought of such a glorious mammal enjoying its life in the wild, just yards from where I sit, to be completely exciting.

               In recent days I have shed plenty of tears in my beers over the impending loss of my childhood home.  Our Mom and Dad have grown weary of maintaining the half acre of waterfront on Commencement Bay that we have called home for many-a-decade.  It is time for my folks to relax and enjoy their golden years in a well maintained condo instead of attending to the thousand-and-one nagging chores that come with owning a large piece of property and an old, creaky, but unbelievably charming, house on the beach.

               Having just returned from a couple of days camping on the deck at that rocky beach, packing up boxes of books and things that haven’t been touched by a human hand for years, I’m coming to some sort of peace with this move that my heart has been having a hard time accepting.  At first the flood of memories felt like pain, the pain of loss.  But then I began to think about who I am now. 

               I am an observant person who won’t pass a struggling earthworm on the pavement without stopping to toss it into the cool grass.  When I hear birds making a fuss, I’m curious to find out what might be causing the panic so I stop to watch.  My running partner often becomes annoyed when our rhythmic pace slows to a stutter simply so I can check out the beaver nibblings on the pond-side trees, or to follow the bunny trail, just to see where it goes.  We have discovered an osprey’s nest by following our ears, and watched an owl family calling to each other across the creek in the middle of the day. 

With all of the reflecting on my childhood in recent weeks, compared to the life I live now, I have decided that the slightly nutty person that I am today is in large part a product of my beachside upbringing.  All of the memories of childhood that I have suddenly felt so desperate to hold onto will not be lost.  The countless memories are most definitely the building blocks of who I am.  All of us are a product of our past.  Whether you spent your childhood nurturing younger siblings or competing at a high level in sports, these experiences become part of who we are.  I learned to love nature from watching it every day from my breakfast table.  Feeding the shore crabs bologna from my sandwich at lunch and silently observing barnacles grabbing microscopic food with their feet as the tide washed over them taught me that even the tiniest things can be fascinating, and that nature is important.

It’s time to put these memories in my pocket, close to my heart, and move on.  Now I’m going to think about how I’m raising my own children.  What kind of memories are we creating together?  Will these become the building blocks of who they become as adults?  It all matters.