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freshest greens of the year Thursday, April 22 2004
It was another beautiful day, with temperatures in the 70s. A thunderstorm seemed to be brewing in the late afternoon, but it never materialized. When I wasn't off on a housecall I tried to be out in the woods as much as possible. I've demarcated so many trails now that I never tire of the places to go. Of course, at this point in April even the yard is entertaining. Everywhere plants are changing by the hour. Their buds are swelling and rupturing, revealing the freshest greens of the year. I want to crush them between my eye teeth.
Serviceberry (Amelanchier) visible below the Stick Trail about three quarters of a mile from home.
The bluffs overlooking the Stick Trail, just a couple hundred feet south of the ford of the Chamomile.
Fern fiddleheads emerging in the middle of the Stick Trail.
Me along the Stick Trail. A good basis for a mullet is visible here.
I was doing some work on Muskrat, my bench computer, when I detected the scent of something horrendous wafting up from amongst the piles of electronics and wires in the low-ceilinged area near the side-walls of my laboratory. I wondered if maybe it was a dead vole left behind by Clarence the cat. I kept casting around, trying to find the origin of this smell, but it was difficult. I'd stick my nose in a cardboard box and it would smell fine. Then I lift up something and a thick ribbon of stank would reach my nose. But I'd look and nothing would be there.
Then I saw it, a pile of black cat shit on a coil of wires. To get it out of there I had to carry a nest of entangled wires and dangling dongles. Lumps of poo clung here and there. I was in such a frustrated hurry that I yanked on the wires to free them of their moorings, mangling the seating for one of those little anchor screws that sits on either side of a printer cable's D-connector. That pissed me off even more. I'm sure the shit belonged to Maxwell, who is sometimes too much of a 'fraidy cat to venture downstairs to the litter box.
As I hosed down the wires out in the front yard, I was amazed to discover that the poo had permanently discolored a beige monitor cable. I wondered what chemical reaction had taken place.
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