Oh yeah, baby. It's spring. Well, OBVIOUSLY it's Monday, since one of my children is having a meltdown at the breakfast table. Technically he is now out of the house, walking to school after having missed the bus, but the meltdown still lingers (and really, if I opened a window I could probably hear it). Subject of meltdown: it's teacher appreciation week, so our lovely, highly-organized school moms had the sweet idea of having every student bring a single flower to school for his/her teacher.
I'm guessing the moms who organized this have girls. Or kindergarteners. Not third-grade boys.
Nevertheless, thanks to my Monday-morning inflexibility on random points, I made him go through with it. I had my regrets, of course. I'm not sure if I really believe in making him comply with the sweet but slightly clueless appreciation choreographing of the PTA Moms--it feels a bit like being the sort of mom who throws a sulking fit if the Hallmark card does not arrive for the Hallmark-developed Mother's Day celebration or is not accompanied by the approved Hallmark-designed gifts. However. He loves his teacher, and as I did point out in my tactless Monday-morning mood, she daily does all sorts of awkward and humiliating things for her students. The least they can do is reciprocate.
Bah.
Moving on, this was a weekend about restaurants (we are going to start trying to save money ANY DAY NOW). On Friday I dragged Hubs away from house misery and we had a date night in the city: dinner at Sasa Sushi, which was perfectly delicious but not necessarily worth a special trip into the city, and then we went to the Denver Art Museum's last-Friday-of-the-month Untitled program, which was quietly awesome, and also crowded. The Buntport Theater Troop was doing a little sketch/riff on the subject of the evening (the F-stop), and this was a) why I wanted to go and b) totally and completely worth it.
Then on Sunday after Si's team got creamed YET AGAIN in their baseball game, we went to Don Carlos, an awesome little Mexican restaurant in Littleton. Awesomeness example: they make their own refried beans from scratch, using a special bean from their home state that they import. Also, they're pretty cheap. AND, they're housed in an old Howard Johnson shack. What's not to love?
Okay, enough with the crosslinks. The final highlight: goose gossip. On my Sunday run I passed a pond where a bunch of geese were having a cacophonous COW. Honk honk honk honk! Honk honk honk honk! It went on and on and on so that even though I usually ignore the doings of Canada Geese, I stopped to watch. This is what I saw: two geese in the water, shouting at two geese up on a concrete block island (which makes a perfect nest spot). I assumed the two in the water maybe wanted the nest spot for themselves and were trying to shout the other two geese away. Then I saw that there were already some eggs up on the concrete block. THEN one of the two geese up on the concrete block slowly and deliberately rolled an egg off the block and into the water. The cold-blooded nerve! This made the geese in the water so mad/distraught that they flew up and bit the other geese, and won back their nest, at least for now. The other two geese swam off and pretended to look for a new nest spot in the grass on the side of the pond. I resisted the urge to go chase them off. Egg-drowning creeps.
Have a great Monday!
5 comments:
We went to Sushi Sasa in December when my family was in town. It gets great reviews everywhere. Even Zagat gives it a 27, which is a really high score. It was good and all, but we weren't blown away. Of course we also aren't big Sushi Den fans. The best sushi we've found so far in Denver is Banzai Sushi. Yum. And much cheaper than either of those other two places.
Egg stealing is one of the more confounding goose behaviors, I think. I have also seen (and heard numerous accounts from others) of geese rolling eggs from another's nest INTO THEIR OWN. It's like the opposite of cowbirds. All I can figure is that an undefended nest with exposed eggs is like a blinking OPEN sign for nest predators. So rather than accept the increased risk of predation on their own nest, geese will steal the eggs from the exposed nests.
What do you think?
I may need to follow up with some research on this one.
I've never heard of that rolling eggs into their OWN nest phenomenon! That cracks me up and also reminds me of how sparrows (and probably other nestling-feeding birds) will feed other birds' babies if they pass too close to a nest--something about that gape is IMPOSSIBLE to ignore.
I always think of that behavior whenever I'm out and hear a baby crying or hear someone small saying "mom! mom! mom!" I ALWAYS turn my head, and if the small person in question happens to catch my eye with needing something I tend to do it automatically, even though I'm really not a nurturing type.
What fun - reading about your escapades. I hate geese. There. I said it. They're mean and nasty. They attack me when I'm riding my bike. So, I'm not surprised to hear they'd drown an egg and feel no guilt!
PS: I'm gonna start saving money at some point in the future as well. :)
Kate--the thing that surprised me the most, maybe, was how bad I felt for the parents of the egg. I mean, it's not like they wouldn't probably do the same thing if the tables were turned. I agree with you, though: geese = mean. And also vaguely threatening.
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