The day started with a rapid metallic rat-a-tat-tat. I froze and listened. Rat-a-tat-tat, like miniature gunfire. Or something much more impressive.
I tiptoed to the window and peered through the tulle curtain. There it was. Long toes, red cap, narrow sharp beak. A woodpecker. I was surprised to see it sitting on the metal porch roof, not a common place for a male hairy woodpecker to pause. I drew my head back because I did not want to scare it off. Could I get a video of it?
Rat-a-tat-tat.
Drat. I missed seeing him drum on the metal. I hope his wrap-around tongue provides a good enough cushion for pounding on the hard substance.
I leaned forward once more, setting the curtain to swaying, and he flew off, dipping slightly and two other winged shapes darted away from below the porch roof. I was not sure if the three were all woodpeckers, but it made sense. They were all headed in the same direction, and the flash of tail color was similar.
Was the metallic drumming a way to signal to the other two?
How strange to see three woodpeckers not in the trees when I so rarely hear much less see one when I’m out walking trails.
Chirping brought me to another window. Birds were darting in and out of the ground vegetation, pecking on the chopped wood, swirling through the air. A couple (at different times) hit the windows. Ouch. I peeked downwards, hoping I would see them fly away or at the very least first stumble then fly. I felt blessed that so many birds had chosen my yard to stop on their way to their next destination. The family of grey jays that occasionally visit whirled around near a spruce tree. I noticed but did not wonder too much about the birds each flying relatively close to the ground. None winged halfway up a tree much less touched the treetops. Gliding and soaring were also seemingly not in their repertoire this morning.
Five hours later I started to understand why: The winds started trying to push the trees onto their sides.
There was not a bird in sight or within hearing. They had all wisely found other places to be. The winds swirled in the treetops, sending broken branches aloft and littering the air and ground with twigs, needles, cones, and leaves. Dust devils churned and gusts of winds caused dry soil to move along the ground like mist across low waves. My wind chimes played musically and at times manically. The clouds swelled and undulated, slowly rolling out curved, stretched, and bulging shapes in every grey shade. The wind rattled the treetops and snapped the weak.
A fat trunk crashed on to a main road, and vehicles stopped so their people could chunk the shattered pieces to the other side of the sidewalk. A couple people in jeans, a woman in a spaghetti string tank top and shorts, and a woman in a flowing garment and a head scarf all worked in busy coordination to clear the street. By the time I drove down the other side of the road from the three vehicles, the road was littered only with some remaining chunks of bark and broken off twigs in a brown chalk-line shadow reaching over nearly three lanes. The drivers and riders climbed back into their vehicles.
Earlier in the day, I headed to a cafe for breakfast later than I had planned. I wished I had arrived early so I could have been ahead of the wildfire hotshot crew and had asked the cashier to put their coffees on my credit card. Working 21 days on/three days off all summer long, they had flown up to Alaska to help out the local crew. As it was, the last man was collecting his coffee as I walked up to order.
Now, here too, I had arrived too late to help.
Due to the winds, my house had lost power by 5 pm., when I returned from the day’s errands. By seven o’clock, a dead, needle-less spruce had taken out three lines, which draped across the dirt road, the only vehicle exit my house has. I was grateful that someone had placed a road emergency triangle as a warning, yet was displeased that the property owner had not cleared away the trees as is their responsibility. I checked the service drop leading to my house in case I was being hypocritical.
Yep, all clear since my last tidy-up. There is one alder that has sprouted up surprisingly fast and so sometime this week or next I need to chop it down. It is directly under the power line and in a year or two will be able to touch it. So, technically, I admit: I haven’t maintained the 4-foot-wide path (ground-to-sky clearance) after all. Better to take care of it (safely) this summer.
All of my friends told me via texts that they had to eat their ice cream to keep it from melting…
A loud honking from my phone startled me. I flipped it over and read:
This was when I started to feel a little scared. Not because of the unreachable 911 system (because now I know to call the department I might need directly — I still have phone books in my house! Yay, old school!), but because the 911 dispatch system was not getting electricity. If it wasn’t, then what other important facilities could go down?
If there was a time for a criminal to commit crime, now would be the time.
At 22:38 I received another honk-alarm notification saying the 911 system was back online and people were NOT to call 911 to test the system. Really? People would do that? Yes, of course they would. And some probably still would even after receiving the alert. Sigh…
I heard a bird chirp, although it could have been a squirrel squeak. The first wildlife sound since the birds dropped to safer ground.
22:58 The house clicks and whirrs. I forget how loud electricity is until it comes back on after a power outage. No wonder people are hesitant about being out in the world without the familiar electric sounds. Wind continues to stir the air. The sounds turn off, then pop back on. So far, they seem to be on for good. A good end to the day for me.
Hopefully the others will soon have a good night, too.
