The Volunteer

The interpreter was dragging a twelve-foot wooden folding ladder from a shed.

“I help you,” said Cyril the volunteer, materializing out of nowhere.

“No, that’s okay, no, let go, Cyril, OW!” His hand was mashed against the doorframe. The ladder fell on his foot. “OW!”

“Sorry,” said Cyril. “I help you carry it.”

“No!” said the interpreter.

Cyril was a young man who volunteered at the park on Saturday mornings. He was from Macau and although had lived in Canada for almost a decade still struggled with English. He had started at the park as a high school student, hoping to perform 30 hours of volunteer service, a requirement for graduation. He finished his 30 hours within two months, and four years later was still volunteering. He liked the park and had an almost worshipful fondness for the interpreter, which other interpreters found amusing. The interpreter found it annoying.

The interpreter had never liked supervising volunteers. He never knew what to do with them. There wasn’t much that needed to be done that didn’t require specialized knowledge, and he believed that one thing you should never do with volunteers was waste their time with meaningless tasks. He felt that if you couldn’t find something genuinely useful for volunteers to do, you should at least have them do something that interested them. Cyril, his most ardent volunteer, seemed to like birds.

“Maybe we’ll do nest box maintenance,” the interpreter said to Stacey that morning.

“Just think about that,” she said. “Think of all the ways he could possibly hurt you. Hammers, nails, heavy wooden things...” There was a well-known history of Cyril unintentionally inflicting bodily harm on the interpreter. He had fastened his hand to a bulletin board with a staple gun. He had dropped a steel cross-piece from an exhibition tent on his head. He had dumped a carafe of hot chocolate in his lap.

“Ladder,” Stacey said. “You’ll be remembered for perishing in a hilarious slapstick accident.”

“Bah,” said the interpreter. “He’s been improving lately." Cyril would prove her wrong. “I'll see you this afternoon, still in one piece.” The conversation played in his head as he pressed the bleeding heel of his hand against his thigh.

The interpreter explained to Cyril that the plan was to remove the old, squirrel-chewed and flea-infested nest boxes and put up new ones that had been constructed and donated by a troop of cub scouts. Six or seven of the twenty or so were usable, having sides and tops and bottoms that came together without large gaps. The interpreter had preselected these and added an additional piece of wood to each, which he cannibalized from the shoddier efforts. The extra piece he nailed to the back so that it extended above the bird house. He then tapped two more nails into, but not through, the extensions. The nest box would be placed against the tree and the nails would be hammered in—simple.

“I’ll carry the ladder, you push the wheelbarrow,” said the interpreter.

“Okay,” said Cyril.

They grunted along into the woods, the interpreter occasionally bumping into tree trunks and then backing up into Cyril, Cyril hitting roots and dumping the load. Eventually they arrived at a tree that already bore a nest box. The interpreter decided to check its condition. He struggled to position the ladder, fighting gravity, fighting Cyril. “It’s okay, I’ll do it! Cyril, Let go!”

The ladder had to be leaned rather than spread open so that its top rested against the trunk. The legs were then ground into the soil to achieve stability. The presence of roots meant this was not always possible.

“I go up,” said Cyril.

“Yeah, well, you be careful,” said the interpreter.

Cyril quickly reached eye-level with the box.

“How does it look?”

“What?”

“What’s inside it?”

“Oh. It is empty.”

“No dried grass or moss or anything?”

“No anything.”

“Great, just leave it there,” said the interpreter.

“I pull it off,” said Cyril.

“No, don’t bother.”

Cyril wrenched it from the tree. The interpreter had to throw his weight against the ladder. The nest box landed in dense salal beside him.

“Good job,” said the interpreter as Cyril climbed down.

“Easy,” said Cyril. He seemed ready to move on.

“Shall we put up a replacement?” the interpreter asked. “That’s basically the point of this.”

Cyril considered. “Okay,” he said. “I do it.”

The interpreter held the nest box against the trunk and showed Cyril how to drive the nails. “Put it as high up as you can,” he said.

“Okay,” said Cyril. He tucked the hammer into his belt and climbed one-handed, holding the nest box against his chest.

The interpreter divided his attention between keeping the ladder steady and watching for falling objects. Cyril hammered tentatively, swinging from the wrist.

“You’ll have to hit it harder than that,” the interpreter said.

Cyril repositioned himself, leaning into the ladder. It took a long time, including the bending and unbending of nails, but eventually the box was secured. Cyril sighed from the effort and stepped back down. He rubbed his neck.

They looked at the tree. “Oh. It is wrong,” said Cyril. The nest box tilted strongly to one side.

“It’s a bit crooked, but it’ll do,” said the interpreter. “We can always adjust it later.”

They continued along. “We might put one on that tree,” said Cyril.

“That tree’s too small.”

“Maybe this one.” It was a pine, alone in a clearing.

“That’s too exposed. But we don’t want deep in the woods either. You have to think like a chickadee. They like to flit across open spaces, but not live in them. They like to have a nest where they can see danger coming. Find one at the edge of a clearing.”

“There!” Cyril pointed. It was a young spruce with a patch of clear trunk at ladder height, and with no confounding lower branches.

“Perfect,” said the interpreter. “That’s thinking like a chickadee. Do you want to do this one?”

“My neck hurts. You do it.” Cyril handed the interpreter the hammer, and the interpreter climbed the ladder, cradling the nest box like a football.

“Hold the ladder firmly,” he said. “It’s a bit wobbly.” He got to the top, but then backed down a step. It wasn’t steady.

“You can think like a chickadee? How can a human think like a bird?” Cyril called up.

“I can think like a lot of things,” said the interpreter. “Lately I’ve been thinking like a giant, dog-sized salamander.” He closed his eyes, imagining lurking in cold, oxygen-rich water. He was in a dark, shadowy place, beneath a log, or within a cavern in a river bank. He was waiting for motion, a passing fish, the leg of a wading bird, a frog. He would lunge.

Cyril watched. The interpreter wasn’t attaching the nest box. He was smiling at the branches above. Cyril asked, “Ah, are you going to hit the hammer?” He then turned his face downward and rubbed his neck.

“Hmm?” The nest box slipped. The interpreter yelled, “Heads-up!”

Cyril lifted his face as if to kiss the falling box. The nest box bounced, and Cyril fell to the ground, silent.

He had killed him. The interpreter slid several feet, and then jumped from the ladder, which went crashing down in the opposite direction.

When Stacey arrived at the nature house, Cyril was leaning back in a chair with a bag of frozen cranberries across his face. The interpreter was filling out an accident report.

“What happened?” she asked. “Cyril, are you okay?”

“Vengeance is mine,” said the interpreter.

Cyril pulled the cranberries away. “It was a little accident,” he mumbled.

“I think he just has a fat lip,” said the interpreter. “I told him he should go get checked out, but he’s being stoic.”

“Let me look at you,” Stacey said.

Cyril allowed her to examine his injuries. “He dropped a bird house on my head from a tall ladder,” he said.

“Shame on you,” Stacey said to the interpreter. She moved Cyril’s face from side to side. “Show me your teeth,” she said.

They went outside to look at a canoe that was strapped to the top of a sport utility vehicle. Both were owned by Stacey’s cousin Randy, who was on a month-long vacation in Europe. This vehicle and boat were to provide transportation during The Great Quest.

The canoe was yellow, with black foam sponsons on the sides. It was low and wide, the keel almost concave. The interpreter was somewhat of a canoeing purist. This thing was not a canoe. He thumped it with his fist. “Is it plastic?” he asked.

“Fibreglass maybe?”

“It’s a banana,” said Cyril.

“Good one,” the interpreter said.

“Why don’t you take it for a spin,” Stacey suggested.

The interpreter said, “Yes. I would rather it sink here than out in the middle of nowhere.” He reached to release the bungee cords.

Cyril was instantly in his way. “I help you,” he said.

Continued..

Pruning and pretty thing.

Phalaenopsis sp.

Today was a day of pruning--of the towering white lilac and the out-of-control nine-bark "Diablo." The pruning was relatively easy and fun, but bundling up the mountain of cuttings was not.

I discovered that morning glory/bindweed (Convolvulus) had spread from the neighbour's side of the fence into the crowns of both shrubs. There is something very satisfying about grabbing a clump of the stuff and hauling hard--the way it comes ripping out of the branches and falls at your feet like a beached sea serpent. This plant is creepy; it refuses to go quietly. Even as the vines shrivel, the flowers continue to bloom.

Rather than show the results of pruning and weed-pulling, I'm providing fresh images of the Phalaenopsis left outside our front door a week or so ago. Thanks to Mr. Subjunctive for identifying it.

More things with wings.

Following yesterday's wing-bearing post, more wings:

We went to the Olympic Speed-skating Oval today. My wife and daughter went inside to attend a program. Son and I were happy to stay outside. The oval is on the south bank of the Middle Arm of the Fraser River, near Vancouver's airport, so there is usually something to stare at.

Oh look. A government surveillance plane, cunningly labelled, "Surveillance." I guess full disclosure is the rule here, although this seems a bit extreme to me. Painting the plane bright red is perhaps not the best choice either. I dunno.



We were watching the river, hoping for a seal to come bobbing past. Frequently our conversation was interrupted by the roar of a float plane coming in for a landing. When there's a west wind, they bank hard left directly above the oval, then head downriver to land.

We walked around a bit, to see what else was there was to see.

We saw this--a fishnet/jellyfish art piece. Although not wing-ed, it is somewhat airborne. There are two of them. Their purpose seems to be to give visitors something to photograph. Success!

We walked further, and heard "Skrawk!"

"What's that?" asked son. A sound he's never heard before.

A Caspian Tern flew overhead. Then two more. They aren't uncommon in summer, but are more often seen farther out, beyond the river mouth. The sewage pipe jetty that extends far out into the strait from Iona Island may be the best land-based, nearby place to see Caspian Terns.

I'm a fan of terns, the sleeker, more pterodactylous relatives of gulls. When I was a kid in Toronto, a bit more than my son's present age, I was taken down to the Leslie Street Spit on a sunny day. The fog rolled in, and then Caspian Terns came squawking out of nowhere, flying low, thrilling and startling.

That's what I thought of at the sound of the bird. I almost forgot to say its name because I was somewhere else. Amid the planes and the sky-jelly net-art we hear and see a bird that has double meaning--a fresh new imprint, and a found memory.

The bright red spy-plane, on the other hand, was an intergenerational equalizer.

Anything with wings.

Another hot, dry day. The birds are up to nothing, the gardens aren't providing anything new, which means it's time to head to the pond and look for....

Four-spotted Skimmer, Libellula quadrimaculata.

dragonflies. Dragonflies are mid-summer methadone for jonesing birders. There are usually just enough species around to keep that part of the brain satisfied. I saw four species at Garden City Park today. Number one, above, is the Four-spotted Skimmer. It is most common in/around acidic waters, which is why it is a common species here in Richmond, with our Sphagnum peat-bog soil. Note the dark spot at the midpoint of the forewings, and the faint golden wash along the leading edges of the wings.

Eight-spotted Skimmer, Libellula forensis.

The Eight-spotted Skimmer is a flashy species with two large irregular dark spots on each wing. It is a slightly pruinescent species:

From Wikipedia: Pruinescence, or pruinosity, is a "bloom" caused by pigment on top of an insect's cuticle that covers up the underlying coloration, giving a dusty or frosted appearance.

Pruinescence occurs in many odonates (damselflies and dragonflies). Within the dragonflies it is commonly found in the skimmers (Libellulidae). Typically, only males pruinesce.

Common Whitetail, Libellula lydia (Plathemis lydia in some sources).

The Common Whitetail shows a higher degree of pruinescence. This species prefers unglamorous spots--muddy water, puddles, cattle ponds and often perches on the ground. Quite the slummer. Males raise their conspicuous abdomens to threaten rivals, so a low perch would seem appropriate.

Blue Dasher, Pachydiplax longipennis.

Finally, the Blue Dasher, also a libellulid, whose mature males have bright green eyes and a slightly pruinescent (blue) thorax and abdomen. It is relatively small compared to the species above, and perches on twigs or stems with its wings cocked forward. Dragonflies, like most birds, are reliably stereotypical and restricted in their behaviours.

There, I've had my fix. I feel better now.


Reference:

Cannings, R.A. 2002. Introducing the Dragonflies of British Columbia and the Yukon. Royal British Columbia Museum. 96 pp.

A tree and two carnivals.

This is Albizia julibrissin, known as the Persian Silk tree, among other names. The leaves suggest a Mimosa, which it is also sometimes called. It is a legume, Family Fabaceae. The flowers, with their clusters of thread-like stamens, aren't typically pea-like, but the fruit is a flat pod containing several seeds. It is native to Asia, from Iran to China (Wikipedia).

This tree is in the arboretum at Garden City Park. It is not presently at the stage shown; these pictures were taken last year, late in July.

A reminder of two tree/plant blog carnivals that have appeared in the past two days:

Festival of the Trees #37, at TGAW, a roll call of trees that have endured.

Berry-Go-Round at Foothill Fancies, a summer feast, visual and otherwise.

Go fly a kite on Canada Day.

Unrelated but patriotic artwork provided by national rodent, Castor canadensis.

A sunny, windy Canada Day. We went out for lunch, and bought a kite at Crappy Tire (8 bucks). Got it home and opened the box to find that it contained a repackaged broken kite, probably returned to the store for a refund, then, instead of being inspected and tossed, put back on the shelf to be sold again.

I went to the loonie store at the corner mall and bought a kite for a toonie, a batwing kite with a snarling leopard graphic. I used the string from the Crappy Tire kite because it was more robust, and heck if the two-dollar kite didn't fly like an eight-dollarer. So the kids flew a kite in the wind, in the sun, on Canada Day.

I hope you've had a good Canada Day, regardless of citizenship or location.