Mom was being difficult -- which is a little like saying fish swim in water -- and decided she didn't want to go to the butterfly conser- vatory.
B.J. wanted to go, and I of course wanted her to feel as if this was her vacation, not just another part of her job.
So she and I went.
And wept, as the early risers fluttered about us in iridescent blues, greens, reds and oranges.
There are precious few religious experiences in my life, but this was one of them.
Those two dots you see on the right under the crape myrtle are ganders, and goose is nesting on that little ringy thing out in the lake, to the left of the tree. (It helps to click on the picture for a closer view.)
We built the floating planters last year, on specs Disney provided after we admired theirs, and they used to be matte black, but apparently turtles clambering up on them to sun over the winter wore off the paint.
But I digress. Ms. Goose took up residence in the ring about a week ago, and her two male companions have been standing watch on the shore ever since.
Now, I'm no gansologist, but . . . three? Are they waiting for the results of the paternity test? Or are they just "modern"?
I'm a bird lover, and if you are, too, you may find this difficult.
Tough.
These sweet little critters, captured by a Czech wildlife photographer, are wonderful in their place, but that place can't be above our veranda. It's great to watch the little swifties doing their aerobatics, less so to watch them dropping guano all over our dinner guests.
In past years, we've built "decorative" corner blockers to stave off nests. No go. Some years we've let things slide until they hatched out a brood, and only then hosed the mud-daubed nests down and pressure-washed the white-spattered flagstone underneath.
This year I'm giving no quarter. I've had it. So far I've brought four nests down from the north side of the veranda ceiling and one from the south side. The swallows are ticked off -- swooping down with their "Alert! Alert" chirp -- but they still won't take the hint.
I'm keeping the hose out.
Are hard. I don't know how they herd all those animals into one place for the duration of a photo shoot at, say, summits.
I was lucky to get these four (three, if you think one is a Pushmi-pullyu). The other seven with them weren't as willing to hang around.
From my best count, there are 10 others like her on the place, though it's hard to get them to line up for a group shot.
They play hob with fresh leaves and new plantings, and some days my patience grows thin; but I have to admit there are few things more fun than wandering out on a summer morning and being startled by a deer who's just as startled to see you a few yards away.
One neighbor to the east has put up a deer blind -- that's a camouflaged hunting platform, for the uninitiated in Gomerculture -- at the edge of his fence line one narrow pasture away, facing our driveway.
Hope I don't hear slugs whizzing by (it happened all the time at our place in Wisconsin every fall), because it would be awfully sad if the deer blind spontaneously combusted somehow.
I can't get my head fully northward without a few glances back south -- in this case, at the brilliant little fella who spent so many afternoons basking on the now-all-but-naked mussaenda off the porch.
Click on the photo and you'll appreciate the amazing beauty of his tiny eye, far more attractive than mine: I was out preening the oleander when a gust of wind slammed a leaf, point-first, into my left eye.
The white went blood-red. Maybe it's a trick I'll have to do in the fall, when the Fantasy Fest theme is "Villains, Vixens and Vampires."
Around here, on a typical night, you never know who you're going to see on the street. These could be . . .
A former king of Fantasy Fest?
A former Queen Mother?
Two past presidents of the local chapter of the Sons of Italy?
Yes. All of the above.
I found this creature clinging for dear life to our mussaenda the other morning, and thought I'd post him today for my Mom's birthday.
He, or she, was backlit, glorious in the morning light, but having a rough time of it.
He didn't move for an hour or so. I figured he might have given up the ghost.
But when I came back outside after refilling my coffee, there he was on top of the leaf instead of under it.
He got blown sideways a few times, but kept crawling back up to the top. And after what seemed an eon -- and probably was, in his frame of reference -- he fluttered into the wind, and up, and away.
Triumph, at least for a while. Fitting for a day like today.
On this one, I think of patterns, though less of Amy Lowell's kind, and more of something by Tiffany or Klimt or Mucha.
When we first went to Prague those many years ago, the Mucha Museum was maybe a block-and-a-half from our hotel. And there were these russets, these ochers, these greens, these grays.
But this is drawn from nature, drawn from our front yard. I'll give you the larger-scale picture later. Do you get it if you click it?
As the playbill said: The singer, not the opera.
And there she was Saturday night, Carmen Rodriguez, singing her life story to a sold-out Waterfront Playhouse.
It was a remarkable show, tying numbers together with a seamless career travelogue: Key West to Way West to Las Vegas to time on the road and then back home, with everything from Carole King to Beatles to Donna Summer to Rogers and Hart to Sondheim.
Danny Weathers joined her for one number, and did all he could to steal the show with his own fine voice, but she held it as effortlessly as a spray of calla lilies.
And afterward, over drinks in the courtyard, she was as gracious and sweet as her voice.
Nice to know I can still feel a crush at this advanced age.
Buddleia's common name, butterfly bush, is accurate enough; they love it.
But so do hum- mingbirds, wasps, bees . . . especially bees this time of year, which makes deadheading a little dicey.
No sudden moves as they buzz around me and overfill their little yellow saddlebags with pollen, already swollen from the blooming key lime across the pool.
So a slow snip, drop to the pile, another careful snip, more on the pile -- and by the time the pile goes into the back of the Gator, it's a challenge to carry it in a slow tai-chi ballet while the bees bumble about it looking for that last sip. No stings so far, but only because it plays out in the slowest of motion.
I have been hesitant to write this, hoping beyond hope that this chicken would -- yes, wait for it -- come home to roost.
But no. George (seen here in a file photo) no longer provides our morning serenade, nor do any of gang from around the corner at Bobby's who used to challenge him in the occasional turf war.
I had heard some time ago from Don, who was watching our place and is the handy guy at Duval House, that some guests there were less than charmed by our gypsy fowl. He hinted darkly that he had humane traps we could use if we wanted to quiet the dawn patrol, and we said no, but thanks.
He's away on vacation now, so I don't have to ask him the difficult question.
And now just before the sun comes up, when I'm sitting on the porch with a good cuppa French Roast, I hear them off in the distance, most likely in Bahama Village, but not George's distinctive crow.
I miss him. But as with everything else, the tide rises; the tide falls. And one of these days there'll be a rooster renaissance here just as surely as chicken eggs hatch in 21 days.
He's been knocking at the kitchen window for the last few days, with his olive-drab mate sitting a little higher and farther back in the dogwood. They come to nibble, and stay to battle with the rivals they see in the glass.
So BANG goes the bill, and then BANG again.
I guess it comes with the territory -- as do the deer defoliating our little evergreens (I counted 15 at the buffet the other night as I went down to get the mail, sans camera of course), and the nesting geese on the lake (now down to one, fruitlessly honking for its mate; Ray thinks the turtles snagged the one that's MIA), the rabbits hunkered under the boxwoods, doubtlessly licking their chops in anticipation of the impatiens that are about to go in (looks as if we've had our last frost -- I hope). . . .
Not quite the same as pelicans and palm trees, but it'll do for a while.
There is only so much time that you can spend watching your Conch Republic flag billowing in the breeze, wrapping itself lazily around the pole and wondering if it will unwrap itself, and magically it does, until you realize it might be a good day for errands, with Robert in Sarasota for a big bridge tournament, and there's a nice clear sky after the overnight storm, and it's in the low 80s.
So there was the driver's license office (renew the registration on the Keysmobile and get the new stickers for the plate, now two years at a clip, and get a new license that doesn't require that I wear glasses, thanks to the cararact fixes); then to KMart for some tumblers (after the Cleveland Quartet all wanted glass and left me with plastic, which I hate, Robert finally agreed that four in the cabinet didn't cut it); then to Publix for some staples; then to the library to turn two books in and take two out (with the clerk saying rather pointedly as she scanned my Grishams in, "Looks as if we finally need a break from literature, don't we?"); and to Fausto's for a precious little piece of veal and a bottle of marsala (quarter of a cup for the veal, and a half or so for the cook), a cold-case packet of gratinéed potatoes from Switzerland that have to be tasted to be believed, and some rainwater madeira for a rainy day (good lord, is malmsey next?), I was heading home when. . . .
Yes, that green-feathered rooster.
I have grown accustomed to some serious plumage here, including the speckled fella who gave flurrious challenge to our glorious orange-and-auburn George (in the right corner) to cock-of-the-walk space on our street a few days ago.
But: green?
Yes. A vigorous yes.
And this to answer sweet bam, my Chicago anchor, who asked in a comment the other day whether Hemingway's cats still roamed here. Or was it his roosters?
To set the record somewhat straight: His descendants say he had no cats, though his tourist-attraction house two blocks from us (which our architect rehabbed, by the way) has a collection of polydactyls that they trumpet as original -- and has brought them grief from animal activists, who have got them in trouble with the feds by claiming that they operate as a zoo. Give me a break.
And in the rooster roster, Papa was apparently a big fan of cockfights (which continue here in clandestine fashion to this day, according to my barber, Armando, whom I'm overdue in seeing). And our gypsy chickens, proliferating by leaps and bounds, blossom in colors I've not dreamed of, though obviously the Parisiennes did when they specified "coq" for its iridescent sheen.
A good day, though that's true of any day with a flapping flag and veal marsala with some Swiss potatoes.
Until last week or so, he patroled one block south, but now he's strutting up and down our street, too, doing his call-and- response with the other early birds you can hear from 5 a.m. or so.
His "Ai-a-raii-oh" is a far cry from cockadoodle-doo (where did people come up with that, anyway?), and quite distinct, once you become a rooster connoisseur, from the calls coming from Duval House down the block, or from over on Olivia.
It's a pity Katha Sheehan's Chicken Store has flown the coop, replaced by a condo, of all things. She had a ton of things themed to our fowl climate, including the phenomenally popular "I like cocks" and "I like chicks" bumper stickers.
She did not, however, carry the sticker I've seen around town and now want for myself: "I love Key West's chickens . . . with black beans and rice."
These have been a few rough days for eyes -- or rather eye, since the right has been signed and sealed as healed. It's been enough to keep me from reading, which discourages me from writing, and the camera has been mostly a paperweight.
Light is unpleasant. Still, the vision when I do look! And with those birds in the sky. . . quite truly hundreds of buzzards and hawks perning in gyres all day, to get all Yeats about it, and above them a frigatebird or two.
Must have been an adventure for them: The World Cup fastboat races have been in town, and with them a squadron of photo helicopters swooping over the harbors and near-shore waters, and then roaring low over the town, and around the giant wheeling masses of birds, to get back to the airport for refueling before roaring back to the action.
Turns out they're turkey buzzards on their way from Ohio to Central America, waiting here for the right breezes to blow them south (at 6 feet from tip to tip they're great gliders, but not terrific fliers).
As usual, The Citizen's Rob O'Neal came through with a spectacular shot -- but not as breathtaking as watching a hundred or more slow-swirling around an aerial drain.
So I lift up my eyes, and and then close them and think of Byzantium and Yeats:
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
There was scuffling in the Clarks' palm trees next door. An arboreal rat? A cat?
Then a short sighing sound, and the hawk rose out of the fronds to take the killed dove to the top of the power pole across the street.
He plucked it, spitting feathers on a VW parked below, ate half and took the leftovers off for later.
In a bit more than a year here, little lizards like this guy have come into the apartment only, oh, five or six times.
Outside, I've seen hundreds. Green, beige, brown, mottled, almost black, they're robust little fellas. They run, freeze, flex, change color, run again. When you approach them, they scoot.
This one ran up the wall across from the bed. I took him outside and put him on the big sapodilla tree. He ran back inside, and onto the wall. I put him outside again -- farther away, to the strangler fig. He ran in again. I took him outside again, this time to the big philodendron. He ran in again.
I turned out the light, and at least he wasn't there this morning.
We were having lunch at Willie T's on Duval Street today when the chicken crossed the road to join us.
This was not Blue Heaven, on Thomas, where yardbirds scratch in the soil under the table bases. This was Duval, and this magnificent rooster came up to us to see what he could cadge.
Robert threw out a sweet-potato fry, and he made short work of it.
I looked at him, thought of every iridescent coq-feather bit of couture I'd ever seen, assessed the difference, and ordered a ham panini though I'd been planning on smoked chicken.
Handsome devil.
Almost nobody turned a head the other day, on the beach at Salute, when a fairly exotic looking woman walked into the restaurant with her pet cockatoo.
The table of four -- three human, one avian -- had a relatively uneventful lunch. It's a pet-friendly town, after all.
That's one thing we love about the place. Dogs go everywhere. Schooner Wharf Bar, which has music and food as well as terrific drinks, is "where the big dogs hang out" in more ways than one. Big and small, retrievers to Yorkies, pets are always welcome.
Just the other day, eating fish nuggets on the water out at Hurricane Joe's, we had fun watching two human toddlers from one table playing with a big Golden at the next.
Which was why we were surprised Friday at the Hogfish, on the stylish Isle of Stock. It's conchier even than the norm, but when a guy walked in with his little dachshund . . . he was asked to please take the dog dockside. (The lunch crowd booed in support of the dog.) Seems a health inspector got his nose out of joint last week and threatened to write the place up if dogs were allowed.
What's this world coming to?
