3:17 PM (1 minute ago) |  | |||
Creatures We’ve Had In Our House
In this time of COVID, (to be exact, 405 days
into this time of COVID),
after days, weeks, months of mindless
social media scrolling, photo viewing,
cute cats, recipes, art techniques, loaves of
bread, babies, personal musings, reconnecting
with old friends, pithy sayings,
and online lessons,
I have thrown myself into the ‘Art of List-making’.
Why? Please read on…
List-making Benefits:
1. A writing exercise.
In December 2020, I was part of a small, online
writing group,
each of us encouraged to contribute daily.
List-making came up as one of the exercises.
Actually devised to kick-start the creative juices,
this was beneficial, creating a starting point of sorts,
a potential springboard for ideas, spurring one to
giddy-up out of that pesky writer’s block.
2. It’s fun.
I love lists. I love compartmentalizing things
– organizing space, using grids, dividing, labeling –
like the butterfly collections of old,
but without the pins.
3.Instagrammable.
Being a visual artist, most of my social media posts
are, well, art. I have, however, Instagrammed a few
written works,
most recently a short poetry collection called
(What I’ve discovered: People are more interested
in ‘points’ than long rambling musings.)
4. Creates a record.
Due to COVID, this past year has been spent in the
company of each other, human-wise,
almost all of our time on our rural property east of
Peterborough.
As most of our visitors these days are NOT human,
this led me to think about who, exactly,
has crossed the threshold in the ten years
that we’ve been in this house.
In a way, it’s a sort of Guestbook of human
and non-human visitors.
5. A memory test.
Think back, way back.
My thoughts, as you will see,
take the form of… a list.
Here it is:
Creatures We’ve Had In Our House:
1. Humans - many
Well, yes, up until a year ago, we certainly had humans in our house. That is, humans other than the two of us who inhabit this space. Dinner parties, family get-togethers, studio tour visitors, drop-ins saying hello, those asking advice, giving advise, coming for a walk in the woods, a workshop, a cup of tea, a beer, were all fairly regular events pre-March 2020.
2. Dogs - 5+
Chester, our forever dog,
Best friend Fido,
Granddog Burley,
Bear and Rex, regulars,
and perhaps a dozen other dog visitors, (not all at once).
3. Cats – 4
Larry the Cat, current resident,
Gertie, who died at 22, known as ‘The Biting Cat' by the grandhumans,
Grandkitten Milo,
and one feral cat, a longtime nocturnal visitor, via cat-flap.
4. Baby Bunnies - 1
Brought in, very much alive, by Larry the Cat.
5. Birds - 2
Wild birds, each time, when the door was inadvertently left open.
6. Turtles - 1
A snapper, right up to the threshold, but not, I suppose, technically in.
7. Raccoons - 1
Caught dragging a bag of birdseed to the cat-flap in the middle of the night.
8. Mice – lots
9. Insects - thousands
A note on insects…
I'm wondering if anyone else has had a pet wasp.
Yes, a wasp.
We had a rather dopey, partially hibernating (queen?) wasp living in our house through the winter. We occasionally placed small saucers of water or (un)frozen blueberries or blueberry juice near her, and she (we think) nearly overdosed, judging by the amount of time she spent perched on a blueberry.
Her life ended tragically in March.
After biting the hand that feeds her, (mine, actually my leg), contrary to popular opinion, she did not die, at least not right away, living for about another week.
Rest in peace, Willa.
10. Tree Frogs – 1
Hopped in during the Studio Tour... a bit of a surprise and short-term excitement. .
11. Red Squirrels - 1
Ran in, sat up, looked around, ran out, all in about 3.5 seconds.
12. Spiders – Oh, yes.
(They get a category of their own.)
Specifically, in fact almost exclusively, Pholcidae, (daddy-long-legs).
We have a soft spot around here for daddy-long-legs, which goes back to our years living in a little cabin in the woods, where we were plagued with mosquitoes from May to August, and loved that daddy-long-legs are purported
to eat them, or suck the juices out of them, or otherwise reduce their numbers.
Not all of the humans who frequent our home are fans though.
Our number three grandhuman once exited the bathroom proclaiming,
“I counted eight spiders in there.”
I like them.
They are sort of the ‘Fred Astaires’ of the arachnid world - graceful, coordinated, quick.
In typical Canadian fashion, I have apologized to one for inadvertently brushing it aside.
They have great resilience. They can look crumpled and dead, and on closer inspection, suddenly unfold themselves and stride away.
All of that, and of course, the mosquito thing,
so they stay.
‘Creatures We’ve Had In Our House’ can be regularly updated, (the beauty of lists), depending on who comes in.
I might add that we’ve had a wide variety of creature visitors who have peered in, scrambled over, and crashed into, while not actually entering the house.
Perhaps a list for another day, but these include ducks, geese, crows, chickadees, doves, one hawk, (RIP), and last Fall a small herd of teenage calves, (brown, white and cheeky-looking), who made it as close to the house as the patio, two metres from the door. Maybe if they ever show up again, we’ll leave the door open and see what happens…
Anne Renouf – Peterborough County Ontario – April, 2021