October 8, 2002

• Rabbit Runs

  
  

  My neighborhood is enmeshed in a web of game trails.  The first few years I lived here, in times of relative remission of the CFS, I used to walk the mile to the Big Susitna River along the top of the bluff just south of our place.  After a few trips back and forth, I had observed how the bear trail and moose trail converged and diverged many times in that mile.  It’s a mile on the map, straight-line course; the bear trail is a little longer, and the moose trail longer still.

  
  

  At the places where gullies cut back into the bluff, the bears go down into the gully and follow it up the gentle slope to its end.  There it rejoins the moose trail where it skirts the head of the gully.

  
  

  Where trees are down across the trail, the bears go under if there is room, or skirt the upcast root mass on the downslope side, while the moose walk all the way around the top of the fallen tree.  But I digress… I meant to blog about rabbit runs.

  
  

  I was sitting here enjoying my screen saver, a slide show of my pictures.  Synchronicitously, the above shot of a muskeg rabbit run I took in fall of 2001 came up on the screen, and then shortly after, the one below came up, a shot of part of the same local system of runs used by our arctic hares.

  
  

  

  
  

  
  

  This one was taken in July of this year, in the woods about 20 meters from the muskeg.  The hares aren’t the only animals using these runs.  Ermine weasels, lemmings, voles, cats and dogs travel the exposed parts of the trail, and I suppose everything small enough to do so uses the underground tunnels as well.  Coyotes sniff along these trails for prey; wolves, too.

  
  

  We saw a coyote this evening on the way home from Wasilla.  Lean and slinky, he was.  He was just what I needed to see at the time.  Trickster always shows up at just the right wrong time.

  
  

  I had a perfectly wretched day today.  As I was dragging myself from one of our shopping stops to the next, I told Greyfox, “I usually get a fibro flare-up after a trip to town.  This time I’ve started from home with one, getting an early start, to beat the rush.”  He laughed.  I laughed, too.  What else can you do?

  
  

  Once again I’m grateful for my handicap parking permit.  Grateful, too, for shopping carts to uses as walkers.  Each recent trip, we talk about using the motorized shopping buggy in the big stores, but I haven’t tried it yet.  And while I’m at it, I must express my pleasure and gratitude that the mall has so many comfortable old-fashioned wood-slat park benches to park my butt on while Greyfox tracks down his jujus and wamwams, tschotckes and fnords.

  
  

  I made it again, there and back again, grateful to be home.  I’d have put off the trip a bit longer, but when I reached into the bag this morning for a chewy treat for Koji, the bag was all but empty, nothing but shards and crumbs.  Greyfox had been asking for a few weeks when we were going to town.  I’m sure he would have liked more advance warning, but he was ready almost as fast as I was once we made the decision this morning.  We dare not run out of chewy treats for Koji, lest he start chewing on the furniture or eating firewood.

  
  

  The car died twice early on the way in, and the two of us did our visual inspection and laying on of hands with the wires and hoses and such, and it went again, no more problems.  The lunch buffet roulette was break-even:  he ate the toppings I would have preferred (supreme, with peppers, onions and all) on thin crispy crust, while I got the plain sausage and pepperoni on the deep dish soft crust.  He’s not crazy about peppers, but he hates thick puffy crust even more.  You can put almost anything atop a hot, thick, puffy pizza crust, and I’ll eat it… ALMOST anything.

  
  

  Except for legs that didn’t want to do what I told them to, and a few novel and disturbing sensations (okay, if you’re curious, at one time, as I stood in the pharmacy waiting for my asthma inhaler, my left foot was cold and numb and the right one was burning), the day wasn’t too bad.  I scored nicely at a thrift shop:  a Corelle cereal bowl; four Corelle dinner plates, each of a different pattern, none of which I had in my collection until now; a coffee mug with a photo of a gray tabby and the words, “You’re nobody until you’ve been ignored by a cat;” and a forty-to-fifty-year-old collectible Pyrex Flameware saucepan; a candle and a Tamagotchi keychain, all for less than $4.00.

  
  

  We also caught bargains on big fillets of silver salmon and mahi mahi, and restocked on goat milk for me and the special fat and lazy cat food for our ladies, things that just aren’t available in the little local general store, or the grocery up the highway.  In the morning, I have tomorrow’s chores to do, as well as today’s.  And I have donuts to go with my coffee.  Teehee.

  • 5:02 am
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