I woke up this morning to find that we were having babies. The female guppy was hanging at the top of the water, looking very like she was half dead, but it was also obvious that her "taillights" (two dark spots at the rear of the abdomen) had moved south. I soon discerned that she had an infant guppy in her birth canal, and was concentrating hard on her job.

Before I could figure out what to do, Loomis suddenly rose up beneath her and delivered a hard bite to her vent. I don't know if he actually seized and ate a baby guppy, or if he merely nipped an oddly smelling area. I should have been able to predict his future behaviour from this action, but as they say, hindsight is often clearer than foresight.

Hastily, I reinstalled the divider in the large aquarium and shooed Loomis and the two guppy males into one half before pushing the perforated plastic into its final position. When I stepped back to look to see if it was upright, I noticed a small speck swimming just above a cluster of weeds. As soon as I moved, the tiny dot darted into cover. Apparently mother had finished birthing one of her fry as I was installing the divider.

Her "taillights" were still apparent and her motions were odd, so I surmised there were more babies coming. I watched and watched, took a break to drag my mom out of her bedroom so she could also observe. We resumed the vigil side by side, but after fifteen minutes or so, my mother tired of the hobby. I too was ready to give up. When I returned from washing my face, there were two black dots swimming among the low, matted weeds, but the female guppy was looking sickly and worn, and her "taillights" had resumed their normal translucency. She was done making babies.

Since female guppies eat their young if given the chance, I dipped her up in a plastic cup and returned her to the other chamber. As quick as she hit the water, Loomis came down on her like a shark and tore her tailfin to shreds, right back to the base. The attack was mortal, and the poor mother soon died. Loomis found himself in a small betta bowl atop the washing machine, since I suspect that he has now developed a taste for guppy. He can't be faulted. A betta is a predator, and a wounded or ailing guppy makes good prey. She smelled of the birthing process, and her weakened state made her easy pickings.

Meanwhile, the two babies were exploring their new environment. One discovered that he could slip past the edge of the divider and into the adults-only section of the tank. It's been over an hour since I could find both babies, so I presume one of the males has had a spot of brunch.

This is not turning out to be as easy as one is led to believe. Guppies? Sure, anybody can raise them! Yeah, they also told me that about radishes and zucchini, and look what happened.
(Update: I just found the second baby! They're both still in the nursery.)

All together now, and LOUDLY! One, two, three:
"The WON-derful thing about Tiggers is
TIG-gers are wonderful things!..."
et cetera and so forth, und so weiter, ad nauseam, ad ridiculam.

It's an Ohrwurm, and it's burrowed its way in through both my ears simultaneously, to feed on grey matter until it dies of old age. To make matters worse, I willingly put my noggin up against its nest and invited the varmint to take hold.

"Ohrwurm" is one of the German language's more concise compound nouns, being structured of a mere two parts, one meaning "ear" and the other translating as "worm." This word is gradually insinuating itself into English by virtue of its descriptive roots, stems which convey the parasitical nature of this hideous affliction. I do not, however, believe there have been any fatalities attributed to infection, although occasionally sufferers have gone quite mad and required confinement to prevent them from harming themselves. An ohrwurm (we'll drop the capital letter since we're not on Teutonic soil) is simply a song that sticks in your head, and a term that requires much less effort to pronounce.

There's no known cure for this malady, but once you've identified the causes, you can gain relief from any specific variety readily. All you have to do is reinfect yourself with a different form. I have successfully routed "Snowy River Roll" with repeated applications of "Molly Malone." I have dispatched insipid elevator music with a children's song called "Banana Slug." Trade several of the most virulent over a period of weeks, and one morning you'll wake to find them all gone, gone.

Is it some quirk of the mind that causes us to seize on a particular series of notes, similar to the mental disorder that causes people to speak in rhyme? I think most of us have observed times when the "silly songs" we mutter to ourselves or to our pets approach pathological excess. The cycle revolves and the urge fades, and I, for one, have wondered if the condition was generated by a chemical imbalance in the brain. We understand so little of what truly makes us "think."

Well, we may never know. For now, I'd just like to come to the chapter In Which We Tell Tigger Goodbye.

I continue to be amazed by the speed at which my woodpile is moving.

With the new fireplace insert installed, I wanted to find a good home for approximately half a cord of supremely dry firewood presently occupying the north side of the carport. Both my neighbours burn wood, so I first offered it to Clyde, despite knowing that he had recently brought several cords out of National Forest land to season until winter. I understood when he declined to accept.

The second option was Dennis. In fact, Clyde suggested that Dennis could really use the wood since he seemed to be scrimping on his oil purchases. I approached Dennis with a philanthropic air, certain that I was doing a deed that would earn a gold star for my crown.

"Dennis!" I yoo-hooed loudly over the fence, "You want some firewood?" The expected exuberant affirmative was not forthcoming. "Free!" I added, wondering if he thought I was going to tack a price on at the last minute. "Just haul it away."

Dennis and his family have borrowed firewood over the years, and although I've suggested refilling the stack at some future, more convenient time, the deed has never occurred. It's not as if I ever went short, so the oversight didn't really matter. As a matter of fact, this particular cord of wood was bought over ten years ago and carefully hoarded for Christmases and power outages. It's largely alder and therefore still a good heat source despite its age, and I'd have thought my neighbour would be jumping at the chance to lug it home. For some reason, he was hesitating.

The long pause must have measured the amount of breath required for him to frame an appropriate acceptance speech. "Yeah, I guess I could take it," he replied, in a manner suggesting that he was doing me a favour. I didn't mention that Alternate Plan B would have netted me some pin money: putting wood bundles out on the roadside, thus to relieve tourists of their spare change at a buck a pop. Campfire wood sells well on weekends, believe me.

After a bit of unrelated chat, my neighbour said he'd send his son (an adult) over after the wood that weekend if I wasn't in any rush to have it removed. I found the plan agreeable, and was satisfied that the woodpile would be gone in short order.

The weekend came, but the son did not. The following week, I issued a gentle reminder. Again, Dennis was hesitant, and made excuses about not having an immediate place to stack the pile. Another week slipped by, during which I considered the dilemma at hand. I have another friend who would undoubtedly have raced down here in her truck to collect what to her would seem a treasure, but I had no way to tell Dennis I'd rethought the offer. Eventually, I struck on the idea of saying that when he had asked if I was in a hurry to get it out of the carport, I had understood him to mean he'd be there in a few days instead of immediately. Yes, that was a polite way of lighting a fire under the neighbour who's always a little shy when the subject of manual labour comes up.

Saturday, I presented my case. Again, Dennis said he'd send the son. Sunday was the appointed date. This is Monday, and the woodpile is still firmly set beneath the carport roof. In the immortal words of writer Sam Ewing, "Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all."

You get two lessons for the price of one today. First, you're going to learn a new word: p-a-n-c-i-t, "PON-sit." It's Filipino, but once you get talking to a number of people, you'll be surprised how often it's recognized.

Pancit is an utterly delicious dish that can be served hot or cold. I learned to make it about thirty-five years ago in the kitchen of my foster sister's soon-to-be mother-in-law. Marilyn's marriage has stood the test of time, undoubtedly supported by bushels of pancit. Such is the nature of the food.

You will need:
a 6 oz. package of chuka soba noodles***
a skinless chicken breast diced into 1/4" cubes
(you may substitute 1 cup of diced boneless pork chops if you wish)
a handful of sugar pea pods (may be cut into smaller pieces or left whole)
a respectable carrot cut into wafer-thin rounds
lots of diced garlic (I buy the stuff in the jar)
canola or peanut oil for frying vegetables and meat

From there, you're on your own for veggies. Feel free to ad lib. I've used baby peas, broccoli, bell pepper, celery and bok choy at different times.

Break out your biggest kettle (4 quart minimum) and fill it half full of water. Turn it on high, and while it's coming to the boil (the old chuka soba package used to say, "First make the water boiled"), pour some oil into a large frying pan and heat it to just below the spatter-test level (water flicked into it should not cause the oil to spit all over the stove). Add at least a tablespoon of the chopped garlic and heat briefly before adding the veggies.

When the water in the big saucepan is boiling, add the chuka soba. You'll be tending two things at once, here. When the noodles are completely tender, remove the pan from the heat and pour them into a large colander. Rinse under cold water to remove excess starch. Leave them to drain until they're called for.

Add the meat to the vegetables in the frying pan and stir-fry until done. You may want to add more oil, because you'll want enough to coat the noodles before they're served. If you do add extra, be sure to heat it in the pan with the garlic and vegetables so it picks up the flavour.

When the meat is cooked through, pour the drained chuka soba on top, lower the heat to medium and put a lid on the pan. Allow fifteen minutes or so for the noodles to warm. Pour the who lot in a big serving dish and stir lightly to distribute the vegetables and oil.

Voila! You have pancit! Don't ask me how to make sinigang, or you'll regret it. (Clue: you'll need a couple of salmon heads.)

***(N.B. chuka soba noodles may be referred to by other names. The Sun Luck brand also calls them "chow mein" noodles, although they require further preparation to be used in that manner. You should not need to go to an oriental market to obtain them, since they are available in many conventional grocery stores such as Fred Meyer or Safeway.)

Never a dull moment! Although I deplore the habit of afternoon naps, I had nodded off with the cat situated comfortably on my lap and was just skirting the boundaries of the dream state when an abrupt jolt waked me. Skunk launched off my abdomen, instinctively knowing that which humans must be taught: duck and cover. The shaking lasted only a few brief seconds, but by its midpoint, she was under the couch.

"Was that an earthquake?" my mother asked, not particularly perturbed.

My eyes were scanning the room for signs of tilted pictures or swinging plants. I had forgotten I'd moved the hoya to another location, safe from long-armed pussy cats. Nothing in easy sight would have swung, and no wall decorations had gone cattywampus. "Yair, 'bout a 3.2," I guessed. My feet were still on the footstool.

For a few months last year, our house seemed to be the precise epicenter for a number of earthquakes in the 2.9-3.7 range, as validated by topographic maps. These were substantial enough to be noticed, but not strong enough to do any particular damage. One or two stirred up the well and caused the toilet bowl to fill with muddy water on the first subsequent flush, and a precariously balanced dish or glass might have fallen over in the drying rack, small reminders to keep a person aware that they live in a geologically active area. We natives tend to shrug the minor ones off and go about business as usual. We are waiting for "the Big One," keenly aware that it's long overdue.

My home page is set to the National Earthquake Information Center's worldwide quake bulletin. I keep links to the University's seismo lab and the local shake map in "My Favorites." I am often the first person from this zip code to utilize the "Report a Quake" facility. Like many of my neighbours, I am earthquake-conscious, especially at times when I have on my "earthquake hair."

This is a sensation I can best describe as "all my follicle nits hatching out at once." It may be due to subtle changes in the electrical field of the earth, the same factor they say sends birds to their trees. I doubt I could validate that scientifically, but something certainly prickles, and it generally directs me to check the local map oftener than I usually do. It's always gratifying when I get confirmation, like yesterday. But it's not foolproof. A 6.9 blindsided me, and I was in a public building when it hit.

As for our little shaker yesterday, the cat recovered in a matter of minutes. By then, I was at the computer and checking my sources. The temblor had been a bit stronger than I'd thought. Initially rated at 3.7, they upgraded it to 3.9 when a human geologist reviewed the reports. Just a little excitement on a sleepy afternoon, that's all. Ho-hum.

Following up yesterday's post regarding "Winnie the Pooh," my friend Paul had some observations of his own. I invite you to read them in his blog. I've checked Disney's bastardization out of the library for a second perusal, so you may hear more.

I pity any child who grows up knowing only the Disney versions of childhood's classics such as "Winnie the Pooh." I suppose I am particularly affronted by "Pooh," since I loved it best of all my books, loved to hear the wispy voices of its characters in my mind speaking words in a quaint British way, loved the spirit of a bygone era when Roo's malt syrup was served to youngsters who relished its stickiness and unique flavour. My imagination fleshed these friends, and I loved each for the personalities I could impart to them aside from their printed descriptions. Possibly, my visions of Pooh and Owl, Piglet and Eeyore didn't match those in my mother's head (for she too was raised with the same companions), despite her portrayal of them as she read the stories aloud. To hear a person reading dialogue is very different from listening to a character speaking lines in their own "voice."

Aside from the groundhog that Disney threw in (or whatever that damn thing was), Tigger was the most radical divergence from "truth" as far as I was concerned. My Tigger (the Tigger Milne created) wasn't clumsy or maudlin, wasn't goofy or slow-witted, only overly exuberant and a bit too anxious to please. He certainly didn't look like the striped second cousin of a slobbering hound-dog (Mr. Shepard be thanked), and he had a certain dignity despite his flaws. His apologies were sincere and not fawning, and I suspect he felt his errors more deeply than those who took the consequence. Milne's Tigger was a creature for us all.

Eeyore (that's what a British donkey says, not "Hee-haw") was another case. Disney's version was dully morose and uninteresting, and failed to convey the optimistic pessimism of Milne's creation. In this, I was personally affronted. I am Eeyore. I recognize my friends' attempts to brighten my life and although I appreciate them, sometimes I just kinda wish they'd go away and leave me in peace. Of course, when they do, I miss them terribly, so like our friend the donkey, I am suspended in a place that is the best of neither world: a world of my own, and entirely self-made.

"Winnie the Pooh" was a book for humanity. Disney turned it into a cartoon for children. The book is immortal, the cartoon merely a diversion. Excuse me, I have some Woozles to track.

Okay, I know half of you (or more) weren't even a gleam in your daddy's eye in the 50's, but for those of you who haven't succumbed to Alzheimer's already, here's a 1950-60's TV Trivia Quiz:

1) What was Joe Friday's badge number?
2) Who was Joe Friday's original partner?
3) Who was the girl Dobie Gillis worshipped?
4) Who was the girl who had a crush on Dobie Gillis?
5) What was the closing line on "The Life of Riley?"
6) What was Mr. Peepers' first name?
7) Who was the prosecutor on "Perry Mason?"
8) Who starred in "Palladin?"
9) Name the quirky scientist from "Superman?" Hint: he was played by Sterling Holloway
10) Who was Rin Tin Tin's young owner?
11) What were the names of Sky King's niece, plane and cattle ranch?
12) Who was Lonesome George?

Awright, are ya ready? For whatever solace it will give you, I had to look up the actors' names for most of these.

1) The show called "Badge 714" was "Dragnet's" precursor, and gave Friday his shield.
2) Frank Smith was played by Ethan Embry, later replaced by Harry Morgan as Bill Gannon.
3) Thalia Meninger, social butterfly and stuck-up prig, was played by Tuesday Weld.
4) Zelda Gilroy and I have a lot in common, although I liked Maynard more than Dobie. She was played by Sheila James Kuehl.
5) "Oh, what a revoltin' development this is!" Riley (William Bendix) always managed to land in a pickle.
6) Robinson Peepers was played by Wally Cox.
7) I mean, how could you forget a name like Ham Burger? Hamilton Burger was played by William Tallman.
8) Richard Boone played the swarthy hero that gave this western its title.
9) Professor Twiddle and/or Uncle Oscar may have been two names for the same nutty inventor.
10) Corporal Rusty and his dog were rescued by Lt. Ripley "Rip" Masters.
11) Penny often flew with her Uncle Sky in the "Songbird" above the Flying Crown Ranch. The two were played by Kirby Grant and Gloria Winters.
12) Comedian George Gobel had his own show for six years, 1954-1960.

Now you're edified. Do you care?

I took my mother to the zoo today, specifically to see puffins. Heretofore, her acquaintance with them has been limited to text and image. She wanted to see the real McCoy.

In that regard, we were fortunate. Our local zoo has a lovely puffin exhibit, complete with an area that allows you to view them swimming beneath the surface of the water as well as from above, and a dozen or so of these amusing birds will provide more entertainment than a full house of monkeys. We watched their antics for fifteen minutes or so as one youngster (evidenced by his lack of characteristic coloration and "tufts") dove deep and sprang out of the water like a jack-in-the-box, splashed and splattered and even rolled over on his back in a great display of juvenile exuberance. He was particularly skilled in clearing the pool of all other swimmers by making a scattering oval run around the periphery of the water, feet just barely dragging. Then he'd flop and flail a fountain of spray around himself, repeating the entire exercise over and over again. Invigorated, he took his reward from a tray of herring and went back to swimming sedately among the returning adults.

Despite lavish displays of fishes from various parts of the world and in all sizes, the zoo was sadly lacking in exhibits. We saw two reindeer, a walrus, two snoozing aardvarks, a modest family of penguins, peacocks, goats and chickens, one raven and an owl, a seal, two beluga whales and an octopus, a musk ox calf, a polar bear, three large tree frogs and one snake. That was it, period. No lions, tigers or bears (other than the polar bear), no monkeys, exotic birds, great cats, giraffes, zebras or other things that one normally associates with the word, "zoo." There was an elephant exhibit, but we did not visit it since it lay down a gravel path, and I was pushing my mom in a wheelchair.

That's another point. The zoo grounds slope down toward the shore and the paved paths are steep, even those designated specifically as wheelchair ramps. I found I had to really dig in my heels to keep us from going downhill faster than we wanted to, and on the return trip, I was exhausted by the time we got back to the car.

Many of the exhibits were accessible only if you walked down a short flight of steps. Others required you to stand on top of a concrete step to get a good view into the enclosure. Inside buildings, we encountered rough plank floors, irregular rises in concrete that resembled speed bumps in size, door sills that necessitated tilting the chair back to cross. The chair could not be turned around inside the restroom stall. At least one elevator was not functioning, and more than one electronically activated door failed to operate. One of the exhibits had heavy strips of plastic over its entry and exit, much like those you find in car washes. It was difficult to maneuver the chair while keeping the plastic from hitting my mother in the face.

Tonight, I compared the price of visiting this nearby zoo with that of one only two hours away, and researched the type of exhibits the second provides. For a fee only slightly higher, you have three or four times the zoo, and a much friendlier environment for a person in a wheelchair.

My mother wanted to see a puffin before she died, and we accomplished that today, but her words best sum up the experience: "That sure wasn't much of a zoo."

"Come here. I'm going to show you something you don't want to see."

The smart comeback I was framing was cancelled by the look on Sande's face. I followed him to the far side of my car and glared at the flat tire. He tapped the surface with his finger. "What's that?" he asked. The bright silver head of a wood screw clicked beneath his fingernail.

Chances are that if he hadn't spotted it, I'd have hopped in and backed out of the carport and torn the tire to shreds. It was flat as the proverbial fritter. I generally don't run through a pre-flight check list before taking off, don't conduct the leprosy victim's visual surveillance of extremities. I suppose I have the stereotypical woman's blind faith in mechanical things, believing them to have been engineered to do their job and do it well.

"I'll help you change it when we get back," Sande offered, but that's not my way of doing things.

"No, let's do it now and get it over with," I said. "That's what you get for getting here early."

The car is only seven months old. We had to crack the owner's manual to find the jack. He got down on his 83-year old knees on a board, installed the scissors and the handle, and cranked it up. I handed him the lug wrench. He fussed with it for a minute before saying, "Now why won't that go in there?"

When I bought the car, I also purchased snow tires and because we were heading into winter, had them installed on the stock wheels. A little later, I had the "summer" tires fitted on custom wheels to avoid the recurring expense of dismounts and remounts. The custom wheels had recesses into which the lug nuts fit...longer lug nuts in snug little holes. We needed a deep socket and a socket wrench if we were going to get them out.

I went next door and woke Dennis up. He loaned us the appropriate socket and an electric impact wrench, and a good thing, too! The lug nuts had been torqued down so firmly, it was hard to remove them even with the impact tool. Sande completed the job by mounting a snow tire, and we went fishing. (Yes, we caught our limits. Nice rainbows, by the way.)

Today, I went back to the dealer who had sold me the custom wheels. "I'd like to have a little serious conversation with somebody here," I began with a half-kidding frown which hastened my referral to a service manager. I told him the full story, beginning with the day I bought the wheels.

"Okay, what if," I finished, "I had been up in the Back of Beyond at some high alpine fishing lake (which I very likely might have been) and out of range of a cell phone tower? Nobody here told me I needed a special wrench. I would have been up a pretty tall stump, wouldn't I?"

The young man asked me to wait a minute. He walked into the bays and brought back a fitting. "This is yours," he said, "no charge." It was a deep socket which the lug wrench fits over. He didn't charge me for fixing the tire, either.

Two robins were sitting in a tree one afternoon, and one remarked to the other, "I'm hungry. Let's go find something to eat."

The pair flew off their perch and over the countryside together. Soon, one of them spied a freshly plowed cornfield, and dozens of angleworms writhing among the clods of soil. They dived down and alighted, and began pecking up the worms as fast as they could.

It wasn't long before both birds were gorged. They tried to fly back into the sky to go home to their nests and mates, but they were so full, they simply couldn't lift off.

"Ah, fooey," the elder of the two remarked. "It's so nice, I think I'll just lay back in the sun until part of my meal digests." He settled in with his chin resting on a clump of grass.

"Me, too," his companion agreed, and spread his wings comfortably over the green leaves of a dandelion.

A big, grey tomcat happened to be taking his afternoon constitutional in the neighbourhood, and spied the two birds lounging in the herbage. Closer and closer he crept, a master of stealth. One last, sudden leap landed him with one bird under each paw, and he greedily gulped them both down.

When his meal was finished, he sat back and burped, then wiped his face daintily with a dampened paw. He was quite content, Old Tom, and thought to himself, "I just love baskin' robins."

(All right, friends, that's the kind of jokes I want you to send me, not ones about Viagra!)

I've had various reactions to the offer of a taste of pickled shad from friends and relatives, ranging from delighted acceptance through hesitant skepticism and outright fear of the unknown, reminding me of an often-told story about my maternal grandfather and olives.

My grandmother frequently served elaborate salads with dinner, augmented by a few black olives as a garnish. My grandfather invariably picked them off and laid them carefully at one side of his plate, and for many years of marriage, the routine never varied. Why my grandmother didn't cease her efforts, no one can guess, but she continued to serve the ripe and tasty globes despite my grandfather's objection that he didn't care for them.

It came to light eventually that he had never actually tasted a black olive, never bitten into the succulent flesh or had to effect a surreptitious removal of the pit from his mouth. My mother's young brother found this tacit refusal to partake of an eminently delicious substance unthinkable, and clever as he was, he devised a plan.

He proposed to eat some foreign substance ("Maybe a chocolate-covered ant?" my mom suggests) if Grandpa would agree to eat an olive. The deal was struck and the hour arrived. Gus ate his bite of dubious foodstuff bravely, then waited for the bargain to play out. His father took an olive between finger and thumb, looked at it as if he expected to drop dead the moment it touched his tongue, and then with an uncommon show of intestinal fortitude, put it in his mouth and closed his teeth upon it (presumably because it was too large to swallow whole).

For a while, there was unbroken silence as he chewed the grey-brown flesh. Gus waited expectantly. My grandfather considered the effect this tiny fruit was having on his taste buds and then said slowly, "I think I'll have another." From that day forward, my grandfather's suppers always included an open tin of black olives set beside his plate. They were never placed in a bowl or in a dish, just taken straight from the can.

My mother's initial reaction to the shad was not so enthusiastic. She objected that it was too vinegary for her tastes. "But it sure doesn't have any bones," she added politely.

When I entered the living room with a custard cup full of pickled "herring" the second night (my evening snack), I offered her another morsel. She took it and ate it, as if only to please me, but before I could finish the pieces in my bowl, she said, "I'd hate to say this, but...is there any left?"

It grows on you, pickled fish. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.

Thundershowers predominate the forecast for the next several days, and one might think that would afford some relief from the California-like heat we're experiencing, when the exact opposite is true. Afternoons become sultry with humidity which never quite congeals into raindrops, and the air mass hangs over the hills and valleys like a sodden dishcloth. It ripens like a deer carcase, and nowhere can you escape its fetid breath.

I am fond of thundershowers nonetheless. As a child, I used to watch the dry storms of the eastern part of the state while sitting with my father in our lawn chair. I was not yet in school, and none of the science fiction read to me by my uncle was of the Frankenstein genre, so I had no idea of the hazards associated with electrical storms. Nor had my father, apparently. The piece of garden furniture which held us was sturdier than its modern plastic counterparts, being built entirely of strong straps of painted steel.

Thunderstorms are less common in this half of the state, and in the lowlands, occur principally along the convergence zone to the north of our major city. Small funnel clouds have been known to appear in this same area, and in years past, some have touched down and done moderate damage. The foothills and mountain regions are more likely to see electrical activity and less likely to have small tornadoes, the wind currents required to generate the latter being broken up as they pass over ridges. "Less likely" is not synonymous with "impossible."

A few years ago, a thunderstorm of incredible magnitude broke over the mountains near my home. For two or three hours, the claps rolled continuously, one behind the other with never full cessation in the rumbling. Bolts of lightning shot through the clouds three at a time in any direction, and I was sufficiently frightened to take up a position dead center on the living room floor, as far back from a window as I could be while still enjoying the spectacle. It was both terrifying and exhilarating, impossible to count the time between streaking shaft of electricity and subsequent growl, impossible to compute my distance from the heart of the storm.

From the east, a pale, rich color began to spread among the lead-grey clouds and the winds rose and sent the anemometer wild, pirouetting its arrow with mighty gusts. There was no way to tell from which quarter the winds came by looking at its meter, and the trees writhed on their trunks, this way and that. The hue of the sky turned mysterious and greenish, like nothing I had seen before, and out the east window, a treacherous black column formed against the steely background, wider at its apex and tapering to a pointed base.

It never touched ground.

I love a thunderstorm. You won't find me waving a graphite rod around in one, no. The Weather Gods let me off the hook when I sat in that lawn chair, and when they summoned the funnel cloud back into their realm, my bacon rested much easier. I'm not going for third-time's-a-charm.

When I discovered the "pregnant" guppy on the bottom of the tank, my subconscious mind began reviewing everything I had ever read about fish disease. The memory is nearly eidetic, Alexandrian in its proportions, but much of the material within is too obscure to be of use to anyone but myself, and hides behind densely festooned cobwebs. Age tends to slow the reflexes of the brain as well as those of the body, so it is no small wonder that it took several hours to ferret out the word, "dropsy." By then, I had performed an autopsy which revealed no visible parasites, no enlarged organs and no baby guppies.

The Internet assured me that dropsy is not considered a contagious disease, although it may have its origins in either bacteria or viruses which attack an already weakened renal system. Poor water conditions can facilitate the disease's progress, i.e. lack of cleanliness in a breeder's or dealer's tank. It is difficult and expensive to treat, two commitments I am not willing to make for a two-buck guppy.

I brought home two new fish today, and introduced them into Mr. Fish's aquarium while the sick guppy was still alive in the other, although exhibiting odd behaviour. I had noticed that one of the replacements was bulgy, and had selected "her," hoping that she might be pregnant. Now I realize my mistake, for this fish is also dropsical, and I will terminate her rather than allowing her to agonize. Fortunately, my purchases carry a 14-day guarantee, and now I know what to look for when selecting new stock.

Mr. Fish roused himself to investigate the newcomers to his home, then retreated to the haven of a weed wherein he lay on one side. It's obvious that he is coming to the end of his existence through no medium other than advancing years.

A nursery has been established in the largest aquarium. A bed of low, plastic weed has been laid in one corner, and a perforated divider separates one fish from the others. A mystery has been solved as well. The female suspected of being pregnant received the lion's share of attention from the pretty yellow male before she was herded into the private apartment she'll inhabit until parturition.

I have no intention of going into guppy raising. This is an experiment which Nature began before I purchased my fish, and I will follow it to its conclusion with no goal but the satisfaction of my curiosity. Likely I will dispose of excess guppy fry (assuming that any survive predation by the other fish, or even the mother herself), keeping only one or two to raise as replacements. The female will be removed from the nursery as soon as she delivers, but having never seen a baby guppy, I have no idea if they'll be small enough to pass through the holes in the divider and into occupied territory. I'm sure Loomis is up to the task of population control. On the other hand, the young are known to have a strong survival instinct and seek cover immediately after leaving the mother's body.

In mating, the female guppy often receives several "packets" of sperm which she stores to produce as many as five subsequent broods in the absence of a male. For this reason, the father of her upcoming offspring is unknown. Even if she mated again with the yellow male before I moved her to the hatchery quarters, her next several throws may be from a different father or fathers. The hatchings come four to six weeks apart, ensuring a long line of guppy generations from which to pick the best.

Thirty-five years ago, I dabbled in rearing bettas. I remember them breeding and nesting, and rearing at least one crop of young. My recollection ceases at that point. Did we give them away? Sell them? Did they die in infancy? Did some go on to live in the tiny bowls ranged along our mantel? I kept no record of the process. It was fun, though. I remember that.

It's always best to go into an experiment with nothing staked on the outcome. If we get baby guppies, grand, but if the female turns out to be "pregnant" of overeating, I have to admit I'll be a little disappointed. We'll know within a month, and that's quicker than Christmas, anyway.

Combat fishing isn't my cup of tea. Ten guys fishing jig-and-bobber for steelhead in a hole no larger than a washtub qualifies, as does standing elbow to elbow on the fishing bridge with only enough room to drop your line straight down. Lines tangle, tempers shorten, and even the most complacent of us resort to treading on toes both physical and metaphorical. As much as I like smoked silvers, they're not worth getting punched out for, or doing time in the local hoosegow for clipping a bully on the snoot.

A warning had been given to me from a reliable source, and although it was second-hand, it carried the earmarks of truth. "There were 85 people on the bridge day before yesterday," Dale told me. "That's what my friend said."

Well, 85 people wouldn't fit on the bridge, but I got the picture, and it was gruesome. I attempted to put the information somewhere it would do some good. "Sande, I don't think we ought to go to the bridge today. It's s'posed to be really crowded." My tongue got ahead of my mind, and I added something else Dale had said. "The fish are jumping like crazy, though." I realized the imprudence of this remark as soon as it flew from my lips. Full disclosure is not necessarily a good thing.

Too late. I'd made my bed, and lying in it was next on the agenda. We drove past the river I'd proved was full of hungry 14" rainbows, and Sande never said, "Do you think we ought to stop here first?"

The span of the bridge is not entirely fishable, the south portion being reserved for a boating lane. It can hold twenty fishermen comfortably, and another ten if everyone's taken their Prozac. When we arrived, close to fifty people had lines in the water. Two boats (later four) were trolling along the banks and parallel to the bridge, skirting dangerously close to the curtain of monofilament. Sande was not to be deterred, and set up housekeeping on the rocky shore.

Try as I might, I haven't been able to explain the function of drift to that man, and drift from the shoreline where the river debouches is contrary to the current and decidedly unnatural. It was only through some skilled twitching that I was able to entice one slow-witted silver to my hook, and in two hours, that was our only fish. In the meantime, I had spoken loudly of my intent to land a slip sinker on the windshield of one of the boats, and one of the bridge fishermen had spent more time in trying to cast across my line than he did in active fishing. It was time to leave, and Sande finally saw it. We retreated to the other river, the small one where fishermen stand twenty feet apart, and took our tithe in rainbows.

The bridge, my friends, is combat fishing. Compare it to today's adventure when the Grasshopper drifted quietly and alone but for one other craft on a twenty-acre lake, with her steersman serenely picking up browns from near the shore. Tell me where you'd go.

The foray into amphibiculture has been brief. The third frog died last night.

Fine in the morning, it had begun to falter in the afternoon, although its behaviour was quite different from the previous two, but the most curious factor was Mr. Fish's nursemaiding, as if he recognized his companion's life drawing to a close. He would swim beside the frog, pause for a moment, and then shift his position to drag a fin across the little body, an action which nearly always caused the frog to kick or wiggle. Failing that, Mr. Fish would station himself directly over his friend protectively. This morning, however, the frog lay on the bottom in extremis. Mr. Fish had accepted the inevitable and was swimming in another part of the tank.

Given this evidence, I've reconsidered my decision to leave Mr. Fish alone. I will replace his amphibian friends with two -no more than two!- guppies, and pray that my elderly betta will be able to keep up with the antics of two rambunctious "pets" in his dotage. They say that human seniors benefit from the companionship of an animal and from the need to give it care. It gives them a sense of purpose. Perhaps it works for fish as well.

Poor Mr. Fish! Faced with another male betta in a mirror, he tries to fan his fins and flare his gills. His spirit is willing, his flesh weak, as only the gill on one side extends. He rests lopsidedly, and I wonder if he's had a stroke. Yes, maybe a guppy would brighten his day, like the grandkids coming for a visit.

As I was driving into town today, my mind wandered to an incident which occurred along this same stretch of roadway, a circumstance involving a reckless driver and my attempt to report him to the law.

It was either a holiday or a weekend, a rare time for me to be travelling due to my loathing of traffic situations, and I was returning along the four-lane street on the outskirts of the shopping district. It's an area which has stoplights every half mile or so, and I was in between two cars in the inside lane. Next to me were two young men in a red truck (there it is, a red truck again) with the stereo turned up to 8.2 on the Richter scale and the windows down so passersby could appreciate the vulgar rap it was spouting. The light changed, and the line of vehicles began moving forward. The driver of the red truck allowed a space of half a car to form beyond his hood before he jammed the accelerator to the floor, burning a stinking streak of rubber, then jinking abruptly to the right and onto the verge to pull out and pass the cars in front of him. The truck then yanked into the inner lane two or three vehicles ahead of mine.

At the next stoplight, he repeated the procedure, narrowly missing bumpers as he darted from lane to lane, occasionally slamming on the brakes in order to make another jackrabbit start. His behaviour was such that I suspected drugs. Not remembering that it was a day when governmental offices would be closed, I pulled off at the next intersection and directly into the parking lot of the local sheriff's office. When I realized no one was there to take my complaint, I rummaged up my cell phone.

"Fire or police?" the woman asked, and patched me through when I requested law.

I explained what had occurred, but when dispatch asked for the address, I couldn't find the cross street's number. "I'm in the sheriff's office parking lot," I told them, "just off Meridian." The dispatcher asked me to hold.

A new voice came on the line to repeat the questions I had already answered. I gave them a detailed description of the vehicle and its occupants, as well as my location. They asked for a better address, but all I could offer were the numbers posted on the sheriff's door. A great pause ensued, and then the officer told me, "That number isn't in our data base," as if I were perpetrating a hoax.

I became insistent. "Look it up in the phone book," I suggested. "It's the xxx County Sheriff's office on Meridian across from the Albertson's store."

As it turned out, I had been referred to law enforcement in the wrong county, owing (I think) to my cell phone's area code and duplication of the street name, "Meridian." I was again transferred.

The person to whom I spoke on this occasion asked me whether I would describe the driver's actions as "aggressive." As a semanticist, I felt the term was inadequate, and there we bogged. I replied that it was more belligerent than "aggressive" covered, but "belligerent" was not included in the boxes my contact was supposed to check. I tried again with "reckless" and "dangerous," only to be asked repeatedly, "But would you describe it as 'aggressive?'" Eventually, I saw that I was up against a wall, and allowed that "aggressive" would be an appropriate term. By then, of course, the red truck had driven many miles, made several turns, and possibly taken out another vehicle in its progress. So much for doing my duty as an upright citizen.

This train of thought pulled into another station on the line. Sande and I were fishing, and stumbled into the fresh litter of a meth lab. I called to report it to the law, again without a specific address to give them, but that wasn't the only hang-up I encountered when I connected with the person to whom I was to make my report.

"What are you reporting?" a woman asked.

I explained that my fishing buddy and I had come across the detritus of a meth lab near the confluence of two of the county's rivers.

"The what?" she said.

"Excuse me?" I replied, confused.

"What did you say you found?"

"The detritus of a meth lab," I repeated.

"What's that...'detritus?'" She fumbled over a word I've used since I was in junior high.

I've been in this position before, but I thought law enforcement careers required some education. I groped for a term she could grasp. "Junk, stuff, litter, mortal remains," (that got her attention), "drug bottles, empty propane canisters, used-up lighters, that kind of stuff, " I elaborated.

"And where did you say it was?" she wanted to know.

"At the confluence of the xxx River and the xxx River."

"At the WHAT?"

I wish I had had the wit to ask to speak to someone who spoke Spanish, to talk to someone to whom I couldn't possibly use a word they couldn't understand, due to my own limitations in the language. Instead, I patiently gave a vocabulary lesson to the person who was supposed to be helping me. "'Confluence,' where two rivers flow together," I said.

Once we'd got past the bilingual aspects of English, another hindrance to justice arose. At some mark between the point it leaves its headwaters and its junction with the mainstem, the tributary changes its designation. The confluence of xxx and xxx was not found on the map until I remembered it wore two names.

I hope they finally got the mess cleaned up!

One would never expect the gap between crisis and normalcy to be so easily bridged. Life has resumed its regular tempo once again, and I find myself planning for fishing and shopping as if yesterday's interlude had been nothing more than a paragraph in a story. The only reminder is a bouquet of dianthus amid my mother's statues of Ganesh, and a cedar-chest smell in all our rooms.

In the New Age, it's not uncommon to find Druids and Wiccans among your friends, but forty years ago, a Caucasian who worshipped any of the so-called "heathen" gods was looked upon with derision and scorn. My mother kept her reverence for the child of Siva and Parvati to herself, and none but her closest associates ever entered the home which was his shrine. She often placed flowers or incense before his image in supplication or in homage, and in times of difficulty, sought the aid for which he was renowned.

You might surmise correctly that my religious upbringing was eclectic. Until my father passed away, the family was Catholic, but even in my tender years, I found the idea of a solitary deity unacceptable. The universe to me seemed too beautiful to have been cast in anyone's mold, too orderly to be anything but the product of Chaos. In my formative theology, neither God nor relativity was adequate to the task.

Without searching, my answer came to me from the backcountry sites in which my ancestors dwell. I sing their names from the Dreamtime as I walk among them, tree and rock and creek, linked to me by energies surpassing genetics, myself encoded to them in a molecular cohesion some might term their "spirits." I am their child and they are my children, they are my parents and I am theirs, in a structure recognized by the Australian Aborigines since the dawn of time.

When buttonholed, I will say that I am an animist, finding "spirit" in all things. My proofs are all around me. I need neither book nor icon to reinforce them, nor devotions to sustain them. We are infinite, the universe and I, and you as well.

Could coffee have been the culprit? Could two cups of a different brand of caffeinated beverage been too much for a frail system?

My mother is up, and has taken nourishment in the form of two wontons floating in chicken broth. The aroma of good soup mixes with the fragrance of cedar incense without conflict.

For the friends who faithfully read this blog, I am compelled to post something of a personal nature.

Since October, I have been caring for my aged mother. She recovered nicely from a period of serious illness, and other than a few "senior moments" of vagueness and confusion, seemed to be doing rather well. Early this morning, she took a sudden downturn.

At this time, I am monitoring her carefully. She is mentally competent, but refuses medical intervention in any form. Because she has drawn up an Advance Medical Directive through her lawyer, I can take no further action.

I would not be surprised to see her either rebound or fail entirely. My mother is a person who never does anything by halves.

From the East, the direction of the Mountain and of the rising sun, comes strength.
From the South, the direction of the Earth, comes stability.
From the West, the direction of the sea and of the setting sun, comes harmony.
From the North, the direction of the wind and of the aurora borealis, comes the current of life.

Through Crow and Raven, Jay and Nutcracker, I ask Ganesh to guide her through her difficult time.

We're now a three-frog family. The solo African aquatic frog moved in with Mr. Fish a few days ago because the gluttonous guppies gobbled any bit of food that fell into the tank, and the "sinking frog pellets" never had a chance to reach the bottom before being Hoovered up. Even Loomis (the red betta) is finding he has to compete for his dinner. The redistribution of housing was determined by food preference, because although the guppies will eat flakes, betta bites or frog pellets, the bettas refuse anything but the granules designed for them, and the frogs will only eat their own food. The bettas and frogs eat once a day, the guppies twice, so I feed betta bites in the morning to the lot in the guppy tank, in sufficient quantity that Loomis has a full meal. In the evening, the Hoovers are given their flakes. Loomis may take one or two in his mouth, but spits them out in total disgust. Frogs and Mr. Fish thrive solely on a hearty breakfast.

As I checked out at PetsMart, the young man at the cash register inquired socially, "Do you have names picked out already?" I chuckled at the idea, but before I'd driven half the distance home, I'd determined that our three amphibian residents would bear the monikers E, O and Z.

The frogs are far more entertainment than the fish, despite the constant activity level of the darting guppies. While the bettas lounge, having nothing better to do than be beautiful, and the guppies flit and flutter, those pesky little frogs play a skilled game of hide-and-seek with their keepers.

"E's gone missing again," I tell my mother, the avid frog fancier of the family. She comes to look. E is the littlest one. Where is E? 'E's not in the bush, 'e's not behind the rock. 'E's not clinging to the side of the filter, so where in the world is 'e? A thorough search is conducted for wayward E, using a flashlight to probe dark corners and the thin gap between the filter and the tank's wall. No E. I go back over the same territory again. This time, I notice something that looks like tiny claws protruding from the bottom of the filter housing. Every frog-in-the-blender joke I ever heard runs through my mind.

The filter, however, is sealed. E has discovered a box-shaped cranny in the plastic, barely big enough to hold a thumbnail-sized frog. I lift the filter out of its slots, and with careful probing with a flat, blunt toothpick, successfully dislodge our tiny pet.

An hour later, E is missing again. I shine the flashlight into the nook. No E. As I begin taking the filter out of its moorings, E is discovered clinging to the rim of the aquarium dangerously close to escape. I decide to take action and remove the plant he can climb beyond the surface of the water. I take out the layer of gravel and substitute a pile of beach glass to provide a variety of cul-de-sacs wherein a frog might conceal himself.

In the morning, E is on the bottom hobnobbing with O and Z. I think my solution has worked. Froggie, Froggo and Frogsie (E, O and Z, respectively, for short) are content, and so is my mother.

Sande is a helpful sort, but he's also a bit of a jokester. I'm not exactly sure how to react to an event that could have been innocent or could have been a bit of scurrilous mischief.

Chapter Two of the Great American Shad Fishing expedition came to a screeching halt beneath a forecast of rain and thundershowers, and a report of reluctant fish despite growing numbers. Clouds have a way of putting these fish in the middle of a very broad river, curbing their appetites and their aggressive instincts temporarily until sunny skies reappear.

As I removed the shad kit boxes from my fish pack, Sande brought several pieces of paper in the house. He often brings me sections from the newspaper regarding trails or lakes he thinks I've never heard of, along with copies of Fishing and Hunting News, Field & Stream and Readers' Digest. Occasionally, some other tidbit finds its way into my hands via this selective courier, and for the most part, I am appreciative.

I looked cursorily at the readin' matter he'd brought, being rather focused at that moment on developing a hasty Plan B with respect to fish, likewise diverted by his suggestion that I save it for later. Something in an envelope appeared to be in Spanish. I could see that much through the glassine window. "Ah!" I thought. "He's brought me something to practice on. That was thoughtful!" Only hindsight makes me wonder why he didn't give the material to me to read in the truck as he usually does.

Between rain showers and gusty winds at four different locales, one of which we visited twice, we managed to bring home a fine collection of rainbow trout and one small silver (landlocked coho). I was chilled to the bone even through the layers of wool shirt and full longjohns, and I was really looking forward to backing up against that fireplace, but first I had to boot up the Evil Machine and check my emails. While electronic synapses clicked and whirred, I picked up the Spanish letter.

Three short sentences into the text, I encountered a word I'd learned from a book called "Street Spanish: The Best Of Naughty Spanish Slang." The opening lines of the letter had told me which direction we were heading. The third sent a rush of blood to the very tips of my ears. I didn't have a what-they-said, and if I did, I would have called it something more polite if I'd been writing to a stranger. Curiosity led me a few sentences further, and then that was enough. I picked up the phone and dialed Sande.

"Did you have the faintest idea what was in that Spanish thing you gave me?" I demanded with good humour, considering what I'd just confronted.

Rather than answer me directly, he replied, "Why? What did it say?" I refused to translate. He said, "Give me a hint." I replied with the name of a product you need a prescription to obtain. "Why would somebody send me something like that?" he asked. I hadn't a clue, and told him so without suggesting that his urologist might have sold his mailing list. The conversation continued for a few minutes, and finally he said, "Well, give it back to me and I'll give it to Ralph's daughter-in-law. Maybe she can read it."

I made a stand on behalf of the Spanish-speaking American woman I'll meet next month at the granddaughter's wedding. "No way. I'm going to put it through the shredder. You ain't givin' this to anybody!" I suppose I should have acceded that it was his mail and he should be able to do with it what he would, but my first thought was to spare someone a vulgar shock. My tone was firm, and the discussion ended.

At the final tally, I find myself both amused and affronted, and also a little confused. As I dropped the pieces of the letter in the shredder, my eye caught on the name of the product. Those two descriptive words were clear. They were in English.

You're wondering what I do with all that shad, right? Okay, maybe you weren't, but after you read this, you're going to want to run down to your local grocery store to see if they've got any herring on hand. A shad, after all, is just a whopping huge herring, and you can use 1-inch chunks of the smaller fish in this recipe if that's all you can obtain. Your Norwegian friends will love you if you pass this around at dinner. I guarantee it.

Phase one:
For each quart of pickled fish, scale, clean and filet a shad, trimming away and discarding the rib bones and thin meat covering them. All you want is the thick strip on the upper part of the body. Remove the skin by working an edge of it loose at the head end, then pulling backward toward the tail. It will come away in one piece, or almost. You do not need to filet or skin your fish if you're using herring. The small bones remaining in the meat of shad or herring will be soft and edible once the pickling process is complete.

Prepare a salt brine as follows:
Dissolve 1/2 cup of non-iodized salt in
2 cups of warm water
Stir until very little undissolved salt remains. Allow to cool to room temperature.

Cut your shad filets or herring into bite-sized pieces approximately 1 inch square and place the chunks of fish in a bowl and cover them with the salt brine. You will want to have a plate or saucer that will fit into the bowl in a manner that will hold all the fish chunks under the brine. You may need to put a cup or other weight on top of it to hold the fish down. Put the brined fish in the refrigerator and leave undisturbed for 48 hours.

At some point during this time (even at the last minute, although it's best if you let it age a day), prepare your pickling brine using multiples of this recipe for each quart of fish:
Dissolve 1 Tbsp. of white sugar in
3/4 cup of warm water and
1 1/2 cups of white vinegar.
Add a pinch of ground allspice
1/2 bayleaf broken into several pieces
1/2 yellow or white onion, sliced into half-rings

Phase two:
After the shad pieces have been in the salt brine for 48 hours, drain and rinse them thoroughly in cool water, otherwise the final product will be too salty. Pack the fish chunks in quart jars, interspersed with bits of onion and bay leaf. Add the allspice and top up the jars with the picking brine. Put the jars in the refrigerator for at least a week, preferably 10-14 days. Small bones may be visible in the flesh at the end of the process, but they will be very tender and quite edible.

Evening update: Skunk approached the Fearsome Fireplace looking much like a feline dachshund, taking fifteen minutes to cross four feet of carpet to address it nose-to-nose. If it had chosen that moment to ignite, we would have had a cat-shaped hole in the ceiling, but the thermostat was set at a low temperature and her nerves were spared. She left with a bit more dignity, only once looking abruptly over her shoulder to see if it was following. So far, she thinks she has it figured out.

A friend posted a very interesting little quiz in his blog today, and I encourage all of you to pay the site a visit, just to see how accurate it proves for you. The host is none other than the BBC, and the branch is "Science and Nature."

Via this medium, I find myself classified as a Naturalist Thinker. A Naturalist Thinker is one who
a) likes to understand the natural world, and the living beings that inhabit it
b) has an aptitude for communicating with animals
c) tries to understand patterns of life and natural forces

Some notable Naturalist Thinkers are Charles Darwin, Jane Goodall, Johnny Morris of BBC's 'Animal World', and David Attenborough of 'Life of Birds.'

Good career choices for a Naturalist Thinker include biologist, meteorologist, forester, farmer, astronomer, alternative therapist.

I ain't so sure about that "biologist," but for a forest ranger and shaman who has painstakingly kept weather records for over 30 years while raising sheep and chasing comets, they were pretty much spang-on. They missed principle passions of geology and wordsmithing, but I'll grant that I might have paused too long while considering my answer to certain questions, and may have unintentionally skewed the result.

On other fronts, the fireplace is installed and the cat's in hiding, terrorized by concrete drills and strange, artificial smells. Sande is proving recalcitrant with respect to shad, so it may be that I go partnerless to the Columbia unless I can be more persuasive. The goldfinches are pairing up at the feeders, and the cosmos are setting their first true leaves.

Tomorrow, we'll be getting a fireplace insert. I've long lamented the fact that there is no back-up heat source in this house, nothing that will function without electricity other than an inefficient fireplace. I've also publicly bemoaned central heating (see 23 February 2004) as an innovation which, like so much other technology, only serves to render a person's life more inconvenient.

My idea of a heating device is that it should warm you. I don't think that's too much to ask. I loved my old Ben Franklin wood burner equally with the oil heater you ignited with a match, or the freestanding propane stove, for every one of them was somewhere I could park my hindmost quarter to thaw its padding. If a chill was on me, I could turn up the dial to chase the polar bears away, and when the sweat broke on my brow, turn it down again and retire to a cooler section of the house. This blasted oil furnace has its heat vents near the ceiling, an affront to scientific principle, and not a single floor register to stand on when it's cold.

It could be hype, but previous experience with gas suggests that the salesman's pitch of less expense is accurate. Propane is also cleaner, both in housekeeping terms and ecological concerns. I rather imagine we'll be using it more often than can be called secondary, and we may some day be inclined to add a second 120-gallon tank as a fuel reserve.

Besides its obvious benefits, I understand this insert has an added feature that isn't in the advertising. While you're sitting on the hearth enjoying its radiant warmth, before the shield of its glass, you can brown a perfect marshmallow any time you want, and make the best s'mores. In all my long years, I've never eaten a s'more.

Bettas, those showy Siamese "fighting fish," have an average life expectancy of two years. I have two aquariums, one of which housed two separated males until about a week ago, and the other has always been occupied by Mr. Fish all by himself. The decrepit Mr. Fish is tattered and worn and pop-eyed, but his blue colour is bright and he's active, for all of his three and a half years of existence.

The other two fish, Loomis (red) and Lotus (white with purple fins), were less than a year old when Lotus first began exhibiting signs of failing health. Bettas are top-feeders, but Lotus would pursue a bite of falling food rather than seizing it from the surface, and then would spit it out to give it a second glance in the manner of a trout, abnormal behaviour for his breed. I noticed that he occasionally rejected the larger pieces, and I wondered if he was getting enough to eat, so I made a practice of breaking the tiny pellets into tinier portions. Within a few weeks, he also rejected these. Loomis, on the other hand, remained healthy and vigorous. Whatever was wrong was not a disease.

As a standard, bettas come in two colours, red and blue. Lotus, then, was a hybridized fish or genetic sport. I suspect something had gone amiss in his DNA, a digestive malformation or a tendency toward tumours. In any event, he got thinner and thinner until it became too obvious that he was starving amid plenty, and deserved a kinder end.

With the divider removed from the five gallon tank, Loomis looked mighty lonesome. I didn't want to run a heater, and our so-called fish "experts" couldn't offer any suggestions for a companion other than a miniature African aquatic frog. With prodding, they acceded that tetras might survive in 68-degree water, so I went to town with visions of small, brightly striped fish dancing in my mind.

I reviewed the informative tags below each aquarium in the shop, passing quickly over any that looked too tropical, only to finally concede that I was going to have to add a heater, like it or no. As I looked them over, totally out of my depth, a clerk came up and asked if she could help me. I explained my plight. It didn't take her thirty seconds to come up with a workable solution. "What about guppies?" she asked. "They do well even in a bowl."

Guppies? Those permanently gravid, dull little fish? She led me to a tank occupied by darting flashes of yellow, orange, red and black, one of the aquariums I'd given only a cursory glance. These were not the guppies of my memory. I selected four females (probably all pregnant, since there were males in the same aquarium): two yellow, one red and speckled, one plainer reddish-orange.

For the most part, Loomis is unconcerned with his new friends, unless one small bully chases him. He paid brief notice to the little frog. Mr. Fish the Ancient deserves peace in his superannuation, and still has his tank to himself.

Argh, there's no sense denying it. I have shad fever. Even as I write, I'm mentally tweaking the schedule to see if I can work in one more trip.

Sande doesn't share my sentiment for this exhilarating sport. Once a year is good enough for him, even without side trips to the Back of Beyond. I'm not afraid to mention a second round (although perhaps I should be), but I'm certain his answer will be a concrete-embedded, "No." Mind you, he relishes the pickled product, if not quite with the gusto he reserves for lutefisk as a second-generation Norwegian, and there's another point: if I am to keep the two of us in pickled herring for a year, another half dozen fish wouldn't go amiss.

Shad-crazed Linda and Tammi plan to spend their next days off on the banks of the Columbia. I'd tag along, but obligations tie me fast to Tuesday even if the weather forecast should spin around to sunshine. The later days fare better in terms of warmth and wind, and the shad numbers are rising, rising like the tide. The scales are weighing pretty heavily toward Wednesday, since he who hesitates is lost. Now, how to convince Sande, who wants silvers in his smoker? I shall have to be at my persuasive best, or resign myself to flying solo.

"Feed a fever." Isn't that what they say?

A few weeks ago, Sande had an accident. It wasn't serious, and both of us were rather amused that after a lifetime of fishing, he could still make a beginner's mistake like slamming the truck door on his rod. It wasn't put together, so the only injury was to the ferrule which, although mashed, was still usable for catching average hatchery trout. However, before Tammi and Linda had left Bonneville, Sande struck again, and this time, it was the tip of a pole and the wound was fatal. The rod was Tammi's, and the weapon of destruction was the Chrysler door.

The girls are good-spirited fishermen, and Linda had told me she'd just purchased three new fishing poles, so I wasn't surprised when Sande told me that his offer to pay for his carelessness was turned aside. Tammi told him the rod had been a cheap model and old, and she wasn't at all concerned by its untimely demise. I'd never accuse these friends of harbouring grudges, and besides, they'd given us directions to the forest service road before the mortal blow. Mind that word, "before."

They were five hours ahead of us, and possibly sitting at home by the time we left the dam. We'd expected a call if they'd run into problems, but Sande's cell phone had not once played its obnoxious and excessively protracted concert of a ring as we drove the winding miles beside the wide Columbia looking for our turn-off. At last, we came to the spot. Sande dodged between two cars rounding a curve before the semi speeding up from behind could try to squeeze between the Chrysler's fender and the guard rail. I breathed a sigh of relief as we entered a more rural venue.

The miles wound on, curving beside the meanders of a smaller river, passing through farmland and a pleasant synthesis of the two ecologic regimes which describe the halves of our state. Pine and larch flanked us at one moment, fir and hemlock the next, as if fingers of an alternate universe poked through the fabric of our western space. We were on schedule, according to the information we had been given, and all seemed right with the world.

When we came to the last outpost, its sidewalks had been rolled and stored for the night. The gas station was closed, the lights in the little store dimmed, so we sailed through at the speed limit. Outside the tiny community, I saw a sign giving mileages and something rang a warning bell. Checking Sande's woefully inadequate AAA map, I found that we were headed back whence we had come, to a town on the Columbia called Carson. That would never do! We reversed course. Behind the closed ranger station on the outskirts, I found an employee packing her car. I asked her to point us to the forest service road, and then thought to double-check my data. "It is open, isn't it?" I inquired.

She hesitated before answering rather slowly, "I think so. Was the gas station closed?" I nodded. Another significant pause made me uneasy, but then she added, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's open. Just go back in town and make a left."

The drive was beautiful, climbing steadily through forest, allowing brief glimpses of glaciated mountainside and distant hills. The air was cool, the roadway shady, and I remarked to Sande how much more pleasant it was to breathe the scent of evergreen instead of rank car exhaust, speeding up the freeway at 70 miles per hour. It might drive slower, I suggested, but the distance was shorter, and therefore, even if not quicker, we'd get home all imbued with nature and at ease.

Soon we came to a T in the road. Our path lay to the right, and in less than a mile, the pavement ended. Linda had advised us of an unpaved section "about five or six miles" in length, but what did that sign denote, the one that read, "Roadway varies in width for next 17 miles?" The Chrysler bounced hard over a series of potholes. Sande said a phrase I've heard before: "I'm not liking this."

I responded with my customary glibness, "We're having an Adventure! C'mon, what's a fishing trip without a little excitement?" My enthusiasm persisted as the road climbed through snow-dotted forest, but ended swiftly as we rounded a blind corner and saw the end. Snow blocked two-thirds of the single lane. Tracks ran halfway through it and terminated in piled sticks which someone had used to gain enough traction to back out. We were done, and done for.

The imprints of tires in the snow did not belong to Linda's truck, having been made several days previous, as evidenced by harder ice in their ruts and twigs firmly frozen into place. Nor was there truck spoor along the soft verge, a sharply declining edge which the weight of a human body easily displaced. There was no sign of any fresh turnings-around or backings-up, nothing to show that Linda and Tammi had ever reached this spot so near the crest of the forest service road's pass. Sande dismounted and walked along the embankment, studying. I scampered downhill to answer nature's call. If Linda's camper had passed this way, it had wings we'd never seen.

A summit meeting convened (if you'll allow the pun). During the proceedings, it was discovered that the fuel gauge was tagging the quarter mark and a quick bit of math proved unsettling. The two nearest towns were close to 50 miles away, and the nearer one's gas pumps were locked down for the night. The Great Unknown lay down the left arm of the T in the road. Was it paved? Washed out? From prior visits, I knew the town had a gas station, but would it be open when we got there, if in fact we did?

Here an earlier concern resurfaced. Was my mother locked out and imposing on the neighbour's hospitality? What would he think if I wasn't back by midnight? A quick look at Sande's cell phone did nothing to allay my fears. We were "out of service area."

Rock. Hard Place. We agreed that the best course of action was to essay the uncharted route, a road which, incidentally, did not appear on the AAA map. People who belong to AAA don't drive these kinds of roads.

In the manner of Mr. Richard Nixon, Sande chose not to look upon the unpleasant fact of the matter, and deposited his cell phone on the dash so that it occluded his view of the fuel gauge. When we reached a level stretch, I insisted, protesting that we might have more gas than we thought after reading it while on the incline. Although he objected, he allowed a peek and found that I was right. There was enough and to spare, and if we had to reach the junction with Interstate 5, we'd likely make it.

The tiny town at the mountain's foot caters to climbers who keep odd, early schedules and often check in late to make an early start. Yes, its filling station was open and no, the cell phone still couldn't communicate with a networked tower. We gassed up and proceeded, and reached the town of Woodland, twenty-two miles north of Portland, at 9 p.m. Four full hours, we'd gone 'round merry Robin Hood's barn, and gained a mere 20 miles on the journey home.

The light was on when we pulled into my yard at midnight, and although my mother had left the cat to her own designs and gone to bed, she got up to greet me before I fell heavily onto the mattress. The cat wanted to play. She'd had a boring day.

Sande and I have a penchant for finding adventure. From the day I met him and pitched headlong into the lake to the time we drove twenty miles over rough logging roads to reach a fishless pond that could have been accessed half a mile from pavement, every year finds us starring in some fantastic episode of Piscatorial Perils.

The bright-eyed robins were still snoozing when I rolled out of bed, having forced myself to sleep from midnight to 3 a.m. by sheer effort of will. I've never used an alarm clock, by the way, and the general rule has been that I wake five minutes before the time set in my head. In this case, it was an hour. Further sleep was as unobtainable as the pot of gold at rainbow's end, so keyed was I on shad.

Sande arrived close after his appointed hour, driving the Chrysler for comfort's sake (his, not mine...the cushy bucket seats pain my hips and legs). We stowed rods, gear, clothes and cooler in the trunk, and the expedition launched officially at 6:30. We hadn't reached the top of the Divide when I realized I'd forgotten two things: 1) an empty cottage cheese tub for stowing roe and 2) to warn my mother that the back door has a tendency to lock itself if closed abruptly. "Well, if she locks herself out," I explained nonchalantly to Sande, trying hard to convince myself, "she can hole up at Dennis' place." Nevertheless, the thought kept nagging me.

Friends Linda and Tammi had gone ahead of us two nights previously. They planned to fish all day Tuesday, then hang around until we showed up on Wednesday to give us the fish report and offer advice on jig colours and The Bite. We made good time to Bonneville, and pulled up at their camper just as Tammi stepped out from behind it.

Linda was down on the rocks catching shad like crazy. I grabbed my equipment and the ice-filled cooler and strode down the rock embankment as quickly as I could. It wasn't steep like a scree field, but some rocks were loose, making the footing unsteady. Sande started down, then thought better of it. He's 83. The possibility of a fall carries more potential for him than me. I pulled up beside Linda, made a few casts and lost my first jig of the day. Tammi ushered Sande to an easier trail downstream and as I fished beside her partner, she fished beside mine.

Losing jigs is a serious aggravation when you're working the Columbia. Unless you can find the perfect drift over the perfect hole, you'll lose a few dozen in the course of a day. This, of course, means a lot of tying up and adding weights until you find your spot, and a lot of testing colours and configurations to see what's working best. The morning bite, Linda advised, was on red and yellow, and I had just a few.

Well, suffice to say that by noon, I had enough fish to keep me in pickled herring for a year, and Sande had put two on ice. We reconvened at the parking area for a spot of lunch and a chat, and then the girls were heading home. "We're going back over the forest service road," Linda offered. "It's about an hour shorter."

At that, my ears perked up and I asked some questions. "You're sure it's open?" "Isn't part of it still gravel?" "You mean out of ...?" and I named a little town no bigger than a minute. "Shorter, eh? I can live with that. How 'bout it, Sande? You want to try it?" Ah, how many times those words have gotten us in trouble, but neither of us is smarter for it, not a bit.

We fished the afternoon, gleefully hauling in shad and admiring the sturgeon who came knocking at the shore. One small shad which I had released fled into the rocks nearby to nurse a sore head, and as I fished on, suddenly a huge splash at my feet startled me so much I nearly dropped my rod. I think my little shad was dispatched in one quick gulp, because the part of the sturgeon I could see passing above its rock shelter was merely a third of the fish's length, and from dorsal fin to caudal, it was a full three feet.

The Bite went off at 3:30 sharp. I cleaned fish, carted the heavy cooler to the car. We stopped to see the various species in the fish ladder's underwater viewport, and were both thankful we hadn't caught any of the lampreys like those hanging on the glass by their ugly blue sucker mouths. At 5 p.m., we left Bonneville, and our Adventure began.

(Hey, what can I say? You get it in installments!)

The Great American Shad Fishing Expedition has begun. My reluctant fishing partner is en route, resigned to my definition of a compromise with respect to the projected departure time of six a.m.

I'm anxious. My accoutrements are packed. My salmon rod stands ready, a supply of variously coloured jigs weighs heavily in my gear. Fileting knives are honed to a hair-splitting edge and the scaling tool is stowed beside an assortment of streamside snacks such as figs and dates and slabs of homemade bread, my fare for the day's labour. I am dressed in my business suit: hard hiking boots, stained jeans, ratty t-shirt and overshirt of wool. The wind blows stiffly down the Columbia, and the afternoon may find me wearing both a wool stocking cap and my indispensable, unmistakable and thoroughly disreputable broad-brimmed fishing hat. I purpose to catch fish, of that there is no doubt when you see me, even from afar.

Given my own schedule, I'd be halfway to Bonneville by now, and munching on a dry bagel instead of looking hopefully for a Denny's sign. We have different ideas, Sande and I, different modes of operation when it comes to getting to the water and the fish, and even as I'm champing at the bit, he proceeds with studied organization. I love him dearly, but for all that, I've often referred to him as my "lesson in patience," a quality which was given me in short supply. He's good for me and I admit it, though I do occasionally appeal to the gods for a brief respite from their rigid schooling, or play truant from their classroom and sneak behind a bush downstream, alone.

The irony lies in the fact that before this day has ended, my arms will ache from wrestling shad and I'll lay my rod aside to take a long-drawn breather. There will be plenty of fish to catch at any hour of the day, and no mere mortal can outlast them. My anxiety to arrive is misplaced, therefore, balanced against the point when I will find myself too tired to reel in another shad, my wrists pained, my back aching and a cooler full of scaly, slippery fish to clean. I will have mislaid the information that home is three and a half hours away.

You have to be a little mad
To go so far to fish for shad.

A few days ago as I lay in bed deciding whether or not it was time to get up, I could hear my mother's radio blaring behind her closed bedroom door. My mom's a little deaf, you see, and although I personally feel that radios and televisions should be taken out and shot, she has a fondness for the genre known as "talk shows." In order to keep her entertained, I've agreed to allow a radio in the house, but she must keep it penned.

On this particular morning prior to the holiday, a male voice was ranting stridently that the gov'mint should open the federal oil reserves for public usage. I presume his Winnebago was starving, or at least too weak from hunger to carry the burden for his weekend expedition for the man was truly incensed at gas prices and seemed to feel the government owed it to him to support his family in the fashion to which they had become accustomed. The caller was a paradigm of gluttony and demonstrated a profound reluctance for belt-tightening while laying blame for shortages on any but himself. I cannot say how this discussion ended. I got up, and the sound of the shower drowned the shrilling diatribe.

My initial thoughts on the subject related to the man's blindness to the meaning of "reserves." His failure to see the long-term needs of military and transport were too typical of our nation's people. This aside, it would have done well for him to ponder a moment on how petroleum products are abused in this country. Aside from the obvious infractions such as single-rider cars, SUVs and motor homes, much of what we pitch in the garbage is plastic. How many bags do you have saved in your cupboard? How many did you chuck because they had holes in the bottom? How many Happy Meal toys have your kids collected and discarded after a week? Plastic milk jugs and other food containers are reusable, but I have yet to find a recycler who will accept the styrofoam which most shippers insist on using.

Yes, I thump the drum for recycling, but I also pipe for consumer conscience and a reduction in production of petroleum-based disposables. Look around your home. Nearly everything you see contains some plastic component. From your computer to your toilet, from your clothing to your cleaning supplies, you consume gallons of crude in every year. So do I. We are captives of our consumerism, and it will require strong resistance to break the bond.

The public wants far more than it needs. You can bear the social stigma of wearing the same clothes to work two days in a row, and could probably pare half the polyester out of your closet and your shoe rack if you put your mind to it. You can survive without that new CD or DVD. Your kids don't need action figures or Nerf balls or plastic swing sets. They need parenting. Think of the good you could do with a family walk once a week. It'd even save on gas.