On a Stick
We are headed out this evening to eat with friends and are bringing the appetizers. And they will be on a stick. It has been so long since we skewered anything!
We skewered asparagus, mortadella,Tom's garlic pickles, grilled scallops, olives, our Romano, grilled eggplant and salami.
The latest hat is done and packed up with two others to go to Ellen.
Even though I'd rather knit cables, I'm taking a cable-break and have started on a stripey one in sort of a Taos colorway.
Today was much calmer than yesterday. The story in the papers about the Chilmark police who shot a tame turkey tom who was, reportedly attacking some delivery people and the subsequent arrest of the person who had raised the turkey who apparently assaulted the officers is much with us.
We go very very far out of our way not to be friends with our roosters - not enemies either of course, but we play the game by the rooster's rules. Don't tease them, don't look them in the eye, don't wear red around them, don't pick them up unless absolutely necessary, don't give them an opportunity to jump up at you, and don't let them think of you as a hen, another rooster or a threat. If a rooster starts to get unhappy that I've picked up his favorite hen, put the hen down and walk away. If a visitor is wearing red, they don't get to go see the chickens unless they take the red off or hide it (which has made for some comical moments but roosters see the color red and to them it looks like a red comb that signals aggression if it another rooster or sexual availability if it is a hen - and neither is good if you are a people.) Figures are iffy, but I think 60% or so of roosters go mean. They are protecting their flock, but a 10 pound rooster headed for you at chest level with 3 inch needle sharp spurs is dangerous. And once a rooster becomes aggressive, we have not seen anyway to reverse the process. We have too many visitors to allow a rooster to even become pushy, much less aggressive. And some of the tricks that work some of the time are the ones above. And that is dealing with an animal whose genes have been tweaked towards docility by domestication for the past couple of thousand years.
But a turkey tom - and it is now mating season - who sees a person as a threat is yet another level of problem. Look at the tom who is wooing turkey hens on our deck.
He barely has to bend his head to drink out of the bird bath. 40 pounds? 5 foot wing span or better? I wouldn't want him coming after me. Who knows about the details of the Chilmark thing, but my bottom line is that you treat domestic and non-domestic bulls of all species with lots of respect and distance.
And finally, the shitake log who we have been nursing since December finally decided the humidity was high enough and is in glorious flush. Thank you Olivia and Anna!
