C. Aubrey Hall's Blog, page 7

Writing Days

Summer is winding to a close. The hot days that press down on the prairie like a sizzling iron have eased to moderate temperatures, thanks to the hurricanes pounding the coasts. My brain is starting to wake up and revive from the stupor that three-digit temperatures always induce in me. (My roses feel the same way, perking up and putting on their fall flush of blooms.) Autumn in the prairie cauldron is a short-lived season, one to be seized with joy and gratitude because finally we feel revived and able to get a few things done.

Like write.

Yeah, I know that the sun is mellowing into the golden radiance that late September and October bring, the kind of light that lures me outdoors despite my best nose-to-the-grindstone intentions.

I know that it’s time to clean up the yard, clear off the patio, put away the lawn chairs, wash the windows, treat the grass, buy pumpkins and pansies, plant tulip bulbs, tarp the AC compressor and cast iron patio table, decorate for Halloween, contemplate how many Christmas trees I might put up in November, find my flannel shirts and–more importantly–my socks, and generally get ready for winter, but I need to write.

So many distractions swirling like the north wind that will soon have brown, red, and golden leaves skipping across the lawn–and yet, I need to write.

I am this close to writing the climax of my current work in progress. It was supposed to be one of two books completed this summer. Alas, that objective was not reached. My sights have lowered to the all-important task of getting this one manuscript finished. I can do it. I just have to ignore the beckoning autumn weather, park myself in my writing chair, and type those final scenes.

Back in the days when every summer was a race against the ticking clock of looming publisher deadlines, involving the writing of long, large-cast, complicated novels before my return to the university campus, I typed like a madwoman. The final days of rough drafting were crazy, nearly round-the-clock sessions of writing, eating, writing, crashing to sleep, and rising to write more. I refuse to count the number of years I spent on that particular work treadmill, and how I pushed myself to meet the challenge again and again.

This manuscript is not that complicated. There is no deadline, except the one I’ve set. I have savored the luxury of taking my time. It doesn’t mean I’m writing better. It doesn’t mean this light adventure has any depth. But I’m writing, and for this year–this summer–that is enough.

Here’s a quote from Louis L’Amour that I like: “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”

We can let ourselves freeze up from doubt, anxiety, and uncertainty. We might be facing the kind of story we’ve never done before. We might feel we don’t know what we’re doing. We might feel we’re too rusty, too untrained, or insufficiently talented to write what is filling our heart and imagination. As creative people, we can invent a dozen reasons why we shouldn’t try.

But as L’Amour says, turn on the faucet. Sit at your keyboard and type. Make your protagonist talk to someone, even if it’s the nosy little girl next door that has nothing to do with your plot outline. Type anyway, until your story sense takes over and the real scene starts to flow. You can always cut out the little girl later. Or, you might decide to keep her.

Roll with it.

Write.

Enjoy the fall weather after your writing session for the day. Whatever your daily page quota happens to be, meet it, even if some pages are too weak or inane to keep. And during the days when buying pansies beckons, reduce your page quota–if your deadline will allow–so you don’t feel guilty and you don’t miss the fun.

And, for as long as you need to write, do it.

 

 

 

Star Making

Ever see the movie, A STAR IS BORN? Take your pick among three–soon to be four–versions.

The original film came out in 1937 and starred Janet Gaynor and Frederic March. It is NOT a musical. While ironically in real life Gaynor’s career was waning and March’s was just hitting its stride, Gaynor’s portrayal of a star-struck girl named Esther who comes to Hollywood with no training and no contacts contrasts well with March’s brittle acting technique. This version, unhindered by big musical production numbers, focuses on the plot of a nobody of extraordinary talent discovered by an alcoholic major star on the skids, their relationship first as mentor and student, then as friends, then as newlyweds, then as a married couple held together by her determination, and finally the heartbreaking tragedy of his ultimate sacrifice for her.

Today, some critics find the original story line to be less plausible than the subsequent versions. I disagree in that I feel they are thinking too literally. The story is all about being star-struck, about having dreams that are bigger than you are, about finding the guts to reach for them, about maybe–just maybe–meeting a mentor that will give you a helping hand up to your first foothold, about then clawing your way forward through hard work, persistence, and raw ability, and about the price you always pay for whatever you achieve.

The 1954 version–sometimes referred to as A STAR IS REBORN–is all about a Judy Garland comeback. She’d been off-screen for four years before fighting her way back to the lead of this film. Critics seem to love this one. After all, Judy Garland! What more needs to be said?

Well, I think quite a bit. The story line in the second film has been significantly altered, although most of the major plot points remain. Garland’s character Esther has worked her way up to a mediocre singing career, where she has hit a plateau. She’s happy there, until James Mason’s character hears what she can really do with a song. He convinces her to reach higher. The film, despite having George Cukor as director, struggles to balance the plot against numerous production numbers that showcase Garland’s voice. It often loses that struggle and sags badly in the middle.

In Cukor’s defense, the most egregious number–one that goes on and on and on and on–was added after he’d finished the film, requiring a few plot points to be cut. (And as we writers know, editors can sometimes chop and hack our polished effort brutally to fit some production agenda other than our artistic vision.)

The film also suffers from lost footage, so there are weird patches of black and white photo stills overdubbed by dialogue. While damaged footage is common to silent movies because of age and faulty storage, it seems peculiar for a film made in the 1950s.  I don’t know what occurred to damage Garland’s movie. I believe the film was restored in the 1980s, when the stills were inserted as some sort of Band-Aid measure. If you have never seen the 1937 film, you’ll find this section of the Garland movie to be baffling.

Garland’s talent is undeniable. The voice is still strong. The acting is still delightful. But she looks fragile and strained. Her personal issues show in her face, but like the character she’s playing, she hangs in there.

However, the original version had a grandmother character who embodies the theme of the story. She is the one that encourages Esther’s dreams and sends her cash when Esther is struggling to find work in Hollywood. And when Esther feels beaten and is ready to throw her career away, the grandmother steps in and chastises her for being a quitter. There are several reasons why I prefer the 1937 film, and the grandmother is one of them.

As a writer, over the years I’ve known feast and famine, success and failure, high praise, touches of glory, and moments of disappointment so acute I wasn’t sure I could go on. All of that goes with a writing career. There are times when the only way to keep going, to keep writing, to keep submitting is sheer determination. So I like the grandmother’s scene where she won’t let Esther quit or throw away all that’s been achieved. It speaks to me, and that’s what story (whether prose or film) is for.

The 1954 Garland version lacks the grandmother character. Occasional care and encouragement are provided now and then by the character of the studio head, but there’s no tough love coming from granny. (As for those who claim the Garland film is more plausible than the Gaynor version, I ask if you really swallow the concept of a studio head being as warm and kind as a grandmother.)

Few actors can cry or transmit grief better than Garland, so she tugs your heartstrings enough, especially in the scene when Esther is worried and crying about her husband and then is called by her director to resume her performance and hits it perfectly, but I wish there had been one less overdone song to make room for preserving the grandmother role. Scriptwise, it’s important to keep that theme of paying the price–which to me is the core of the entire plot–going.

As for the two other film versions, also centered on music, there’s the 1976 vehicle with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. I admit I haven’t seen it. Streisand’s singing ability is huge, although her acting annoys me. Kristofferson–a talented songwriter–has never otherwise impressed me. Since I haven’t seen the film, I don’t feel it’s fair to comment on its merits or possible flaws. However, it’s a copy of the copy. Let’s leave it at that.

Now, there’s going to be a 2018 effort. I believe the film will be released this October. It stars Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. Is it to be a copy of the copy of the copy? In 1937, Frederic March channeled the amazing but self-destructive John Barrymore for his performance. In 1954, for her performance, Judy Garland channeled the very best of the amazing but semi-destroyed Judy Garland. Who will this year’s stars channel, if anyone? I hope the music appeals to Gaga’s fans. I hope the best of the plot remains preserved. But I hope most of all that the theme of reaching for your dreams despite the price you pay has not been tossed aside as irrelevant.

Anyone in the performing arts, whether writer, actor, or singer, has to face that reality sooner or later at any level, and find the guts to pay up. Anyone who’s driven to perform or write–or why else do we do this–must pay. If you don’t, if you quit either by giving up due to discouragement and fear or by refusing to train and hone your craft or by drowning your doubts in self-destructive behavior, then that means you are silencing the muse and destroying your gift. Think of poor Whitney Houston–blessed with outstanding talent–who threw it away. There are so many other tragic examples. Don’t be one of them.

If the price before you seems too high, ask yourself why. What must you give up or sacrifice for it? Time, effort, and hard work? What else are you going to do?

If the timeline for success seems too long and discouraging, so what? As my father always says, “Time goes on anyway.” Get started and keep going!

If the price challenges your ethics or honor, take a second, even harder, look at the situation. No writing gift requires you to cheat, plagiarize, steal, or lie. Back away and choose a different path to your dreams. Find a price you can pay.

Face reality. Your heart may be set on writing bestselling novels, but your ability lies in nonfiction. How can you make that work for you? When I began my career, the hottest genre on the market was romances. I tried, but my heart wasn’t in them. I had to choose other genres, knowing they were less lucrative. That was a price I became willing to pay. One of my favorite novelists, Georgette Heyer, was brilliant at writing witty, socially satirical Regency romances in the style of Jane Austen. She wanted, however, to write mysteries. And although she penned several, they never achieved the outstanding success of her Regencies. Did she pout? Did she quit? No, she kept going.

Once you’re in the game, how will you stay in it? By being willing to make sacrifices, by putting in hard work, by adapting and changing what you do and write as the world, your readers, and the markets shift, and by never quitting.

Remember that whether you are a big or little star, you make your luck through persistence, hard work, and being prepared to seize opportunities when they come your way.

 

 

 

Exploding Plot

“Plot is people. Human emotions and desires founded on the realities of life, working at cross purposes, getting hotter and fiercer as they strike against each other until finally there’s an explosion–that’s Plot.”

–Leigh Brackett

Have you outlined a tidy, well-organized, and logical plot for your story? Are your characters busy being civil, well-educated human beings going about their lives and work, sighing now and then over a lost dream or one of life’s disappointments? Are they angst-ridden mopers propped up on bar stools, feeling sorry for their failures and delivering beer-sodden soliloquies that are your insights to life?

Are you typing and typing and typing, compiling a ever-growing page count while in the back of your mind you worry whether your story is actually going anywhere and how will you end this thing anyway?

And if you have a reader that’s honest with feedback instead of simply an ego-supporter, and that person is quiet after perusing your sample pages and hasn’t much to say in reaction, then it’s time to face reality:

Your work-in-progress could well be a self-indulgent, staid, lackluster, sanitized bore.

As Winnie the Pooh would say, “Oh, bother.”

Where, I ask you, is the fire?

A book, a story, a yarn intended for the commercial market isn’t a collection of words, or character speeches, or passages of description, or self-conscious style, or even a slice-of-life duplication of life’s most mundane moments.

Instead, it should be alive, with vivid characters bursting with emotion. It should be messy, because human beings are squalid, and tender, and ferocious, and petty, and heroic, and gentle, and greedy, and contradictory messes themselves.

Your characters should be in trouble. Not just suffering from a bad day. Not simply afflicted with the choice of whether to purchase a white car or a blue one. Not concerned with how to afford those Starbucks lattes while paying little Jimmy’s private school tuition. When I say trouble, I mean plagued with worry so intense the stress is eating them alive. Blighted with jealousy so white-hot it sears them every time they look at the person they believe is their spouse’s lover. Terrified in mind-numbed paralysis by the stalker that leaves eerie messages and gifts inside their apartment while they sleep. Raging with the grief and frustration of being falsely accused and convicted of a crime they didn’t commit. Horrified by the cruelty of cyber-bullies that have been secretly grinding their once-happy daughter into a withdrawn, bulimic, isolated, social outcast.

At its essential core, a story is what pits one character against another. It’s how those characters clash in struggle against each other, how they grow fiercer in striving to win–or survive–and how they overcome the biggest challenges of all at the end to achieve poetic justice.

You cannot generate a successful, emotionally satisfying plot that comes alive in reader imaginations unless you’re willing as a writer to get your hands dirty. By that, I mean willing to step right into the intense emotional quagmires within your protagonist and antagonist. Until you do that, you will never fully understand their motivations, and of course without motivation the actions a character takes will always seem contrived and artificial.

In other words, you can’t write at a distance from your characters. You can’t remain tidy and detached. You must be willing to crack open a sleek character’s facade and look at what’s seething beneath the mask.

More than that, you must be willing to apply more pressure to a protagonist already in tremendous trouble. This is done by not protecting or safeguarding your lead character. This is done by allowing the antagonist to hit the hero where he or she is most vulnerable–and hit that person hard.

Until we push a character hard enough, how will we–let alone readers–ever know what that story person is really made of?

Until we push a character hard enough, that character will not take action, will not take risks, will not dare to strike at another individual, will continue to hide or stay safe, and will remain dull and boring on the page.

Think about the best mysteries you’ve read. Often–in cozies anyway–the first victim is a sly, wicked, conniving, ruthless, immoral blackguard so rotten every suspect has a solid reason to wish him dead.

Think about your favorite thriller where the protagonist is swept up in the sudden terror of an ordeal so dangerous and horrific the suspense is tightened to an almost unbearable degree. The danger forces the protagonist to flee whatever comfort zone she has always known and attempt the unthinkable in order to survive.

Think about those romances where sparks fly between hero and heroine who stand on opposite sides of an issue yet are pulled together by a physical attraction so potent they are nearly powerless against it.

Think about the fantasy where magic is the only way to save the person the protagonist most cherishes, yet using that magic will extol a terrible price the protagonist fears to pay.

Do you see how, in each of these genre examples, I’ve set up a situation that puts the protagonist inside an emotional or ethical pressure cooker? Yes, some of these examples are stereotypical, and the tropes are well worn, but they work to illustrate my point.

Brackett’s quote says that explosion creates plot. If so, then you need intense emotion, conflict between characters in active opposition to each other, and situations that demand frequent clashes. They are your dry tinder. Additional pressure and/or stress is the spark.

Result?

Conflagration … and a plot that comes alive.

 

Growing Acorns

“Sometimes … the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”  –A.A. Milne

Through my career, I have often been asked by newspaper reporters or newbie writers how I get ideas. It is not a good question, or a useful question, or even an insightful question. Most professional novelists sneer at it. Some might even label it “dumb.”  Innumerable jokes have been generated by it. When asked, you feel superior and clever. You try not to smile or burst out laughing, if you’re a courteous person. And if you’re a kind person, you might even answer this question with some degree of honesty, especially if the inquirer is a new writer genuinely trying to understand. But if you’re neither kind nor courteous, then you could succumb to the terrible temptation of being flippant, disdainful, or even misleading.

For a long time, I found the very notion of seeking an idea to be laughable. My imagination was teeming with so many plots, characters, and settings that I despaired of finding time to write them all. I had no patience with anyone that claimed to suffer from writer’s block. I felt that anyone lacking in ideas should go and do something besides write.

These days, I’m less arrogant. I’ve learned that you can hit emotional dry holes that leave you empty, too drained or distracted to create. It’s not the same as being blocked–not exactly–but the result is similar, in that you sit at your keyboard but produce nothing beyond a new Pinterest board. I’ve also realized that some new writers feel so timid and unsure that they can’t judge any idea that comes to them.

Fear and uncertainty can kill ideas by draining away all the belief and excitement generated by creativity.

Expectations that are too high can blight a story idea before it barely gets started. I’ve known beginning writers so determined that every word be perfect, so focused on the mistaken belief that their first writing effort would not only be amazing but an instant bestseller that they could not move their project past an endlessly polished Chapter One.

And good ideas can starve and wither when an unprepared writer lacks the skills, experience, or craftsmanship to write them well.

Writers at all stages seek ideas every day, and every day good ideas come to them. Some will make a writer clap hands and chortle with glee. Others don’t look like much at first glance. They get pushed aside, ignored or even forgotten.

But often the best ideas are much like the Milne quote I began with. They are small and quiet. They creep into your mind when you’re paying no attention to them at all. But unlike your grocery list or your promise to walk the dog after supper, they aren’t forgettable. They take your notice, fade to the back of your thoughts, then return. And each time they come again, they’re slightly bigger or they’re better or they shine with a gradual brilliance that finally forces you to look at them, thump them, tug them this way and that, and at last to start testing them for inherent conflict, unpredictability, and marketability.

Milne wasn’t writing about writers when he penned that sentence I’ve quoted. His simplicity of expression, that bell-like quality of purity and the direct thinking of childhood, is what grabs our reading attention and makes us think, Hey now. That’s profound. I’ve pulled this quote from its original context and applied it to our topic without any straining to make it fit.

As writers, what takes up the most room in our heart? The big overblown, over-plotted, grandiose story with a cast of hundreds? Or a story of smaller scale that’s deeper and more complex? Either or none or both?

You decide.

But the little idea can grow into something large and worthy. Don’t be too quick to judge it invalid. Don’t dismiss it as foolish. Don’t call it silly. Don’t criticize it to death to prevent others from potentially picking holes in it.

Evaluate it by all means. Ideas have to be turned into plots, and that process involves stringent tests and plenty of thought.

But don’t try to make it bigger than it wants to be. And don’t throw it away because it’s only a short story idea and you wanted a novel or it’s in a genre you don’t want to tackle or it’s sweet when you want to be dour and mysterious or moody when you want to write romantic comedy.

Listen to it. Think it over without prejudgment. If it stays in your heart and grows, give it a chance.

 

 

Shaken

Firstly, I apologize to the followers of this post for having neglected you for so long. This year, I have found many such apologies in the blogs that I follow, and I understand. Sometimes, we’re interrupted or become over-committed. LIFE gets in our way. In my case, I could kick about my situation or complain about LIFE stepping in and throwing my recent writing goals to the curb, but as a writer I know that we need LIFE to give us new material.

Also, after my three recent books on writing technique, I felt for a while that I’d said all I had to say on method and approach. This attitude is unfair to you as followers and shirks my responsibility to you. However, as a writing teacher once said to me many years ago when I was as yet unpublished and living on dreams and sheer determination … “From time to time, you have to let the well fill back up.”

Earlier this summer, when I was feeling guilty about posting nonsense about toads instead of advice on killing adverbs, I told myself to pull it together. It was time to walk into my office, sit in my writing chair, and resume posting on writing techniques.

Instead, a weird thing happened. I was plowing through a stack of possible novels to assign to my university course on genre fiction this fall when I read a book by a highly successful author of romance and romantic suspense. It was my first exposure to this writer’s work. I don’t know whether it’s representative of her usual effort or an aberration or a new direction for her.

All I know is that this genre novel had next to no plot. The protagonist hit a strong and dangerous problem in chapter one. That problem was resolved in chapter two. The romance was clenched in less than twenty-five pages. The subplots were introduced and resolved without any conflict. And the rest of the story filled in with illness, personal makeovers, and wardrobe decisions.

That book poleaxed me.

In hindsight, I realize that it got to me because I was tired and stressed due to LIFE. Worry and lack of sleep had sapped my reserves more than I realized. And for the last three weeks after reading that book, I kept thinking, What is the use?

That question is always a danger signal for any writer, at any time, in any situation.

It means, in effect, that the writer is surrendering, giving up, and abandoning the art and joy of creating with words on the page. Whether a writer is stymied by lack of time, distractions, hindrances, self-doubt, criticism, lack of support, or whatever form of resistance being thrown at her, too much of it becomes a tsunami that can drown intentions, goals, writing schedules, and projects.

What is the use, I wondered, of standing on technique, of trying to teach unwilling and recalcitrant students how to form scenes, follow plot questions, or handle pacing? It was as though I was trying to swim across a river, and that novel was a cement block thrown at me instead of a life preserver.

In recent years, I’ve seen waves of poor writing flood our entertainment industry, whether in books or films. I’ve read too many reader reviews raving about books that turn out to be nothing more than gimmickry or a mess of episodic events strung together. I’ve attended writer conferences where young, up-and-coming writers thumb their noses at plot and story design. I’ve watched the publishing industry crashing in Zepplin-flames as the seasoned editors retire or are driven from their jobs in the name of corporate downsizing.

From food to stories, the fashion du jour seems to be deconstruction. I understand this is a fad. I understand that youngsters love rebellion and delight in taking things apart. Yet in a year where the whole world seems to be embracing the cause of anarchy with no signs of stopping, I can’t help but think of that era of history when knowledge and civilization faltered, and Europe plunged into the Dark Ages.

See what I mean? In such a gloomy mindset, how easy–after reading a pleasant but utterly plotless effort by a bestselling author–for me to say, “Writing has reached its end. Stories are dead.”

Yeah, I realize I’ve been a drama queen about the incident. But writers have to over-react. Writers have to be too sensitive. Writers have to be so empathetic that we absorb the emotions of others and vibrate to their joys, tragedies, and comedies.

Good stories are still being written. Plots still exist out there. But, for the past month, I clung to the cement block and sank. I spent a lot of evenings thinking and pondering whether to abandon the abilities and skills I’ve been honing for a lifetime. Was it time to walk away? To say, no more writing?

Well, one of the precepts of genre writing is that readers will accept any emotion in a character except self-pity. It seems to me that it’s a good precept to follow in real life as well. So I dropped the cement block and floated back up to the surface.

Meanwhile, LIFE has backed off its pressure slightly. Stress has dropped a fraction. Sometimes, I get more sleep. I have been reading other books from my stack and they are better. I have dug down and found that my innate stubborn determination is still within me. It’s shaken but intact.

There is usefulness in what I do and teach. I will not stop doing what I know and believe in. I am competitive enough, stubborn enough, certain enough, and trained enough to go on. And if American literacy drops even lower than its current, shameful fourth-grade level, and we become monkeys able only to point and click, then I will hold my lantern aloft for as long as I’m able.

Meanwhile, my intention is to resume regular posts and put my writing schedule back on track. We’ll see how it goes.

 

 

 

 

Phelps, Jr. Update

He’s back.

Haven’t seen this summer’s primary amphibian for a few weeks, but tonight he was enjoying the cool, late-night breeze by paddling in the dogs’ water bowl on the patio. Either he’s returned from mysterious toad perambulations or we caught him by going out for the bedtime stroll a few minutes early.

He’s grown larger. No doubt he’s thriving on a luscious diet of June bugs. He’s not remotely a Jumbo–no toad obesity yet. But he’s taller and fuller. Instead of floating spreadeagled on the bottom of the bowl as before, he was sitting up with his head above the water.

I always keep two outdoor bowls of water side by side although my dogs seldom drink at the same time. One of my dogs was lapping away, ignoring Junior’s perky pose in the adjacent bowl. Even when I took the garden trowel and gently nudged Junior to vacate, his wet splodging about provoked no more than a Scottish look with no pause in lapping.

(You know a Scottie is getting old when former prey hops right past the beard and jutting eyebrows and no terrier fizz ignites whatsoever.)

My aim was to herd Junior off the patio, but he escaped me by diving for cover beneath the wrought-iron fern stand. I let him be. No doubt the moment we all trooped indoors, he slipped back into the water bowl to finish his swim.

Ah, summer. When even the toads have it easy.

Critters: Part IV

And now for the final installment in my animal saga. The last notable denizen to move onto my property since March is a bird that chose to nest in my ornamental cherry tree. I noticed it only because a) it’s not a mockingbird, the variety most often seen in my backyard, b) it’s very large, and c) it chose to nest in a tree barely adequate for the task.

I am an avid, though casual birdwatcher. I love having songbirds in my yard, and two homes ago I was fortunate to live where enormous shade trees supported an ample variety of cardinals, blue jays, woodpeckers, doves, wrens, finches, orioles, and hummingbirds. I made my office in the den at the back of the house and had a wall of large windows overlooking the backyard and patio. Wrens nested each year in my Boston fern, and the cardinals would come precisely at noon each day to feed. If their feeder was empty, they would peck my window glass and fuss at me. I fed generously, supplying the cardinals with black sunflower seeds, the jays with striped sunflower seeds and peanuts, the doves with cracked corn, the finches with Nijer thistle, and the hummingbirds with nectar.

Of course, the squirrels learned how to pull the top off the cardinals’ feeder and would hang upside down while filling their cheek pouches to bursting. I watched the woodpecker court his new lady friend by bringing her to the feeder and selecting the best nuts to feed to her, one by one. There was the day of the hummingbird battle, witnessed through my kitchen window, in which a small green-throated hummer struck his larger, teal-blue opponent such a fierce blow to the head that the blue hummer fell to the grass and lay stunned. I thought he was dead, but after several minutes he roused and flew off.

The doves cooed and grew fatter, making their small heads seem even more absurd. And the obese tan-and-white field mice benefited from all the spills and dropped seeds.

However, my current home is in one of those newish subdivisions carved from raw prairie ground. It has developed slowly. So although I’ve lived here nine years, new streets are still being cut at the back of the development, and the cedar thickets providing habitat for varmints of all types, including coyotes, continue to be forced back. The ground is hard red clay–the kind you make bricks from. Tree roots can’t penetrate it and rope across the top of the lawn instead. (If the tree lives at all.) Required by the HOA to plant and maintain at least two trees on each property, neighbors exhibit varying degrees of success in each small yard. Scrawny saplings, staked and cabled to protect them from the unceasing wind, offer next to no appeal to songbirds. They wear water bags, like unbuttoned cardigans slung around a girl’s shoulders, and still they die or–at best–grow stunted.

When I moved here, I found a few sparrows and house finches, mockingbirds, and an occasional red-winged blackbird. The sparrows sit and twitter in my rose bushes. The mockingbirds nest in the shrubbery. And I saw no cardinals at all until last year, when one flitted shyly in and out of my yard. This year, there are more of redbirds. They come cautiously to sample the bits of hulled sunflowers placed in a saucer for them on the flowerbed wall. They remain unsure and do not stay long. There is no arrogant pecking on my windows … yet.

Last summer, eagles flew over my house regularly, soaring on the wind currents, but they have not come back this year. That’s probably due to the new streets cutting down more of the wild thicket to the west. (The coyotes no longer howl and yodel in the night, making me shiver while I wait on the patio for the dogs to finish their late-evening perambulations.) The mockingbirds sing but that’s all. The doves that sit on rooftops do little cooing. Instead, they utter raucous cries that are harsh and discordant.

But in March, I noticed a peculiar reddish-brown bird sitting on the backyard fence. It was spotted and large, with a long tail. A mutant mockingbird? No, definitely not. I watched it flick its tail up and down before it flew into the fragile branches of my cherry tree. This tree–planted as a mere whip when I moved here–has grown slowly, slowly, slowly to a height of perhaps eight or nine feet. Its top spreads maybe five feet wide. It did not bloom for the first three years after planting. Finally, it began to open a few delicate pink buds as dainty as a baby’s ear. This year, thanks to the balky spring and fluctuating temperatures, only a few blossoms opened. And there, making the entire treetop sway alarmingly, was this large bird and her nest.

I decided she must be a thrush. I haven’t been outside enough to hear her sing. After all, I’ve been busy fending off the unsavory newcomers. I don’t know if Mrs. Thrush eats insects or will come to a feeder, but I suspect the former. Even so, she’s more than welcome. I hope she’ll stay, and if she migrates, I hope she’ll return.

 

Critters: Part III

In this chronicle of what’s moved into my house and yard since March, I want to move now to a happier tale. Not everything that happens in my household is a disaster. So in this post I want to describe the young toad that’s managed to charm me this year.

My yard always has toads. In fact, it’s even equipped with a cute toad house that was a very kind gift.

I used to flinch and jump during my first summer here, shying from plump toads that hopped from the evening shadows across my sidewalk. Initially their presence excited my Scotties to fever intensity. There was a spell of determined toad hunting, resulting in the excavation of the backyard sprinkler system and a great deal of spitting and mouth foaming until two stubborn dogs learned not to bite their prey and not to dig up Mama’s expensive sprinklers. Since then, the dogs have become indifferent to our amphibian wildlife. And while last year there was some temporary investigation into what was living between the dog house and the patio’s brick wall, once we discovered that it was only Jumbo–surely the largest, fattest, most obese toad I had ever seen–Jumbo hunting ceased. (Incidentally, Jumbo cannot fit through the doorway of the toad house.)

This year, ever since spring temperatures warmed up, I’ve noticed that the dogs no longer want to drink from their outside water bowls. Because they’re outdoors a great deal, I make sure they always have water in the shade. Two large, deep bowls are kept filled on the patio by the back door. Indoors, there is one small stainless steel bowl. And while normally they prefer to drink outside, this spring they have marched past the outdoor bowls to drink inside. I am constantly replenishing that inadequate metal bowl. They gulp down its contents like they’re dying of thirst.

I was puzzled by this at first, and then recently when I took the dogs outside for their bedtime stroll, I found a toad in the bottom of a bowl, submerged completely beneath the water.

Using a garden trowel, I fished him out and bumped his backside gently to send him hopping off the patio and onto the grass. The next night, there he was again, taking his evening bath.

Small wonder the dogs did not want to drink the water he’d been swimming in.

This toad is small as amphibians in my yard go. I am calling him Phelps Jr. No doubt, once the June bugs come out, he will feast well under my patio windows and grow rotund.

Meanwhile, he’s a smart toad. After several dipping sessions with the trowel, he’s learned to take his bath earlier in the evening, before we troop outside at bedtime. I no longer catch him in the water. Instead, I see a very small puddle on the dry cement next to the bowl. It makes me smile every time.

And I go inside to fill the utility room water bowl yet again.

[image error]Given that the evening patio lighting is too low to get a real photo of Phelps Jr. floating at his leisure, I’ll share this old photograph of my rubber toad instead.

Happy Memorial Day!

Here’s an opportunity to thank every veteran you know, every reservist, and everyone on active duty. Our freedom comes at a price, which these individuals have paid over and over with their courage, sense of duty, and service.

Above all, we honor our dead heroes who gave their lives for America. Let us always remember their sacrifice. Let us always remember what our country stands for. Let us celebrate our differences, speak our various opinions, but never forget to stand united, shoulder-to-shoulder, as Americans.

And let us remember loved ones whom we’ve lost over the years–whether family or friends. Whether our grief is fresh or years old, we can cherish our memories and be grateful for how they touched our lives.

Let summer begin. Stay safe.

[image error]

Critters: Part II

As someone who rarely takes a vacation–and it’s always a visit-my-relatives type of trip, not a lie-on-a-beach-under-palm-fronds excursion–I feel a bit hard done by this year. My absence was brief, but critters moved in with no waste of time. Squirrels were bad enough, but there was much worse to come. Forget the Chinese zodiac. I’m dubbing 2018 the Year of the Ant.

I’m hardly alone with this problem. Everyone in my community is busy fending off these determined, industrious little creatures. Walk in any local store selling ant poisons, and you’ll find gaps on the shelves where the very product you most want is sold out. Mention ants in any conversation, and everyone has an invasion story to share. They are everywhere. They are legion. They are taking over.

When I asked my lawn man recently for suggestions, he reeled back two steps and proclaimed, “You’re the fifteenth customer to ask me that question this week!”

For this installment of my critter saga, let me go back to March. The week before Spring Break, when I was stumbling groggily through the house at daybreak, assuring myself that there were only three more teaching days to endure if I could Just. Hang. On., I entered my guest bathroom to use the shower. It had been a week since I had ventured in there, but I like to keep the plumbing in use. I bent over the shower/tub combo to pull the On lever. Along with the water, a golf-ball-sized wad of black ants shot from the end of the faucet, and this cluster of crawlies separated to spread across the bottom of the tub.

Screaming, I sloshed water all around, sluicing ants down the drain. Finally, when none were in sight, I gingerly stepped into the tub and showered. Needless to say, shaken and definitely stirred, I arrived late to work.

That night, I ventured into the bathroom armed with Terro ant bait–the borax-based glop my mother swore by. No ants in sight. I left a bait in there anyway and decided the weird experience was over.

How little did I know.

Upon my return two weeks later, I again turned on the guest tub faucet. This time, a tennis-ball-sized wad of ants shot into my tub. A black horde of them spread across the white enamel. Suddenly they were crawling everywhere … on the shower curtain, along the top of the tub, on the chrome faucet.

I was beyond screaming. Pausing only to notice that my Terro bait held not a single ant, I shut off water, slammed the door, and fled. On the opposite side of the house, in the master bathroom, I stared at my bleary reflection in the mirror while listening to the squirrels tap-dancing above my head.

How are they getting in? Why the bathroom? Are they after water? Why aren’t they attracted to the ant bait? How did they get inside the faucet? Does that mean I have a leaking water pipe under my slab foundation? Have they invaded my plumbing? There must be a colony beneath my house.

Jackhammers! Concrete saws! Dust! Noise! Chaos! Money!

With visions of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions and billions and zillions of small black ants marching back and forth through all the pipes, I headed to campus. Needless to say, my mind was not on student inquiries about dealing with plot holes. My lunch break was spent frantically running an Internet search on local houses for sale.

With varmints in the attic and ants in the bathroom, I was ready to depart permanently.

Now, sure, every summer there are ants. And usually during the heat of July and August, a few make their way somehow into the utility room, where they venture about 24 inches from the corner of the base cabinets toward the dog food bowl. But they never actually crawl inside the bowl. They don’t swarm the countertop where the sacks of dog food are kept. They keep to a very small area, and although I would label them a nuisance they are hardly pestilence and plague.

However, the minute creatures in the guest bathroom were a different species. They were not polite. They were not restrained. They were a pulsating, crashing, overwhelming invasion worthy of an early Spielberg film. Only if they had been enormous and mutant sized–like the gigantic ants in the 1950s film, THEM–could they have been worse.

Each time I peeked in the room, there were more. On the walls. On the ceiling. On the tile. Along the baseboards. Still filling the tub by coming and coming and coming. Why they didn’t march the full length of that bathroom and spill into the hallway, I don’t know. There was nothing to stop them but their own inexplicable agenda.

I set out an entire package of Terro ant baits, to no avail. I steeled myself and stood in the pesticide aisle of Home Depot, reading every package of every poisonous product on the shelf. There was a time, a few years ago, when I couldn’t have walked down that aisle without getting ill. Now I had a short window of time where I could tolerate the toxic stench of combined chemicals. I bought something that promised to kill the queen. Kill sounded good.

Die, baby, die! It’s not personal, mind you, but if you come in my house, you’re going down.

Except her workers refused to take the bait, let alone carry it home to mama.

A resourceful friend, appealed to with much wailing and cries of woe, researched “safe” alternative solutions and came up with a formula of vinegar, water, and peppermint oil. She tried it in her kitchen, since it was okay for her cats to be around, and assured me that it worked.

Although I knew I was beyond the mint oil and cucumber peel stage of repelling a few antennaed explorers, I buzzed off to the store and invested in oil of peppermint. When concentrated to an essential oil, that stuff is potent. My air passages are still clear. I counted drops and mixed stuff like a medieval herbalist in ye olde apothecary shoppe, and went forth to do battle with a squirt bottle.

Well, it does work.

Sort of.

You have to directly blast a particular ant and make a drenched type of target acquisition. No doubt the ant drowns in diluted vinegar. Ascetic acid versus formic acid. And the air smells like Christmas.

However, this solution was not enough to stop the ever-marching horde.

When I was a child, one of my favorite films was a 1954 Charleton Heston movie called THE NAKED JUNGLE. Set in South America, it dealt with army ants invading the jungle and destroying Heston’s plantation. The ants ate everything in their path, including people. They were like tiny piranha on feet. Little did I know, as I sprawled on the living room carpet, drinking in the terror of screaming actors, that one day I also would be facing an alien army of my own. At least, in my real world my crawlies haven’t been biters. I don’t have to worry about waking up with ants munching on my eyeballs.

I noticed my swarm was marching into the tub from beneath the handle plate and no longer spewing from the end of the faucet. That allayed my fear of plumbing pipes with holes. But now I knew they were living in at least one wall of my house. I threw my usual rule of no pesticides in the house to the four winds and brought home a gallon of ant killer. Any multi-legged creature found in my home was going to perish.

A friend removed the wall plate and filled the cavity with borax and vinegar and pesticide while I wore my respirator mask and stayed at the opposite end of the house. It’s a wonder the mixture didn’t set off a chemical reaction like mixing baking soda and vinegar. But nothing foamed, and ants died. The wall plate was replaced. The ventilation fan was left running for hours. I stayed far away until the fumes dissipated and it was safe for me to breathe.

Were the ants gone? Not at all. They poured in around the window instead. They died on contact with the pesticide residue, but still they came. Call this room the Ant Alamo. I felt I was down to my last bullet. In a surge of what psychologists call “battle madness,” I strapped on my respirator mask one windy midnight, grabbed the gallon jug of Home Defense killer spray, and circled my house in the darkness like a demented fiend, hosing down the windowsills and foundation despite gusts that blew the stuff hither and yon.

Thank you, wind of the prairie. The pesticide blew away, and stopped nothing.

More friends offered more suggestions. Gels and potions and unguents and enchantments. The lawn guy begged me to let him know if I found anything that would work. I lurked in Lowe’s pesticide aisle, listening to the conversation of strangers discussing how to remove their thresholds to spray ants beneath door frames.

Finally, when I stopped searching Realtor ads despite teetering on the verge of barking madness, the battle turned. I stood outside the south side of my house, bleakly staring at the ants crawling along my sidewalks, my foundation, my walls, my windows, and even in and out through tiny gaps in my brick mortar. My handyman was repairing the soffit screen torn open by the squirrel squatters, and when that was finished, I asked him to caulk the outside of the shower window which was too high for me to reach.

It has helped.

No longer do they march up and down the bathroom wall tile. The last time I checked, the ones on the ceiling are dead and need sweeping down. No doubt the invasion has moved on to another wall cavity and another room. Or, in the mysterious way of ants, they have left.

A few ants of a different species wander across my computer desk. Last night, I kept flicking a wanderer off the monitor screen. Someone that I usually call friend could not wait to tell me about the so-called “crazy ants” from South America that eat electronics and circuitry.

Do I need to know this? Haven’t I trauma enough?

One childhood Christmas, I was given an ant farm by my parents. It was probably chosen by my father, always keen to provide me with educational toys. And I’ll admit it was fascinating to watch my little colony of carpenter-ant sized ants tunneling through the white sand in their glass enclosure. My mother, less enthusiastic about my pets since she’d grown up in the desert southwest among fire ants, admonished me daily not to let them escape. Each day, I carefully opened the small stopper on top and sprinkled ant food, then closed the stopper. Each night, my mother asked me if I’d closed it, and I always answered yes and showed her I had. Then came the day when I arrived home from school and found the stopper open. My ants were gone. Mom was horrified. She hunted those ants high and low, but they were never seen again. Where did they go?

Wherever it was, I wish these bathtub ants would follow them.

Here’s a day’s supply, all dead. Huzzah.