Reflections on the First Week of Spring – Stink Obsession

Emma by the Wood Stove Fire

On my knees, facing the toilet Wednesday afternoon, I shook the lemony bathroom cleaner bottle. Not a drop.

I trudged to the kitchen, plopped on my bottom in front of the sink, and opened the door to the cabinet―a place my husband refuses to go. Crammed between a box of rags, a collection of picking buckets, and the compost bin sat a carton of household products. I rummaged through them. Dish detergent, scouring powder, stainless steel cleaner, window cleaner, hydrogen peroxide, and Lysol. No bathroom cleaner. Did I want to change out of my scrub clothes then make the half hour trip to Cochranton’s Market Place for more cleaner?

Picking up the bottle of Lysol that we’d bought decades ago, I read Kills Germs . . . Concentrate. Killing bathroom germs worked for me. And it would save time. I turned the bottle to the back for directions. Tiny letters formed a swirling mosaic. If the mosaic gave directions, I couldn’t read them. Adding a capful to the pail of scrub water would have to do.

Pouring the thick liquid, I missed the cap and a blob oozed across the water. The rusty-brown syrup looked like something to clean rather than something that cleaned. With a rag, I stirred the blob. It smelled―rather reeked―medicinal.

Usually after I scrubbed the tile floor with cleaner, I rinsed with clean water. I didn’t have an extra pail for clean water. I wouldn’t use a picking bucket for cleaning. Should I rummage through Spence’s stash in the basement?

I wiped the floor with a dry rag.

By the time I’d finished scrubbing, my hands tingled. Too late to put on rubber gloves. I emptied the cleaning water, hung the rags, then washed my hands with soap and water. No more tingle, and the bathroom smelled antiseptic clean. Disinfected indeed!

The next morning, Spence, who’d arrived home from Cleveland after I’d gone to sleep, said, “Can you smell that?”

The odor had intensified over night. A corpse with a stuffed nose could’ve smelled it. “It’s Lysol. I ran out of bathroom cleaner.” I wrinkled my nose. “I want our house to smell like wood not disinfectant. Do you think I should scrub the floor again to get rid of the smell?”

“Don’t go crazy.” He opened the front door, stepped outside, and came back with three logs for the wood stove fire. “When it warms up, open the windows.”

While he prepared for another day fighting lead poisoning in Cleveland, I climbed to the loft for yoga―my stretch, relax, and breathe exercises. Breathing brought the stink deep into my lungs. Yuck.

“Goodbye. Stay safe,” Spence called. The front door slammed shut.

I couldn’t wait until the outdoor temperature warmed. Pausing the DVD, I opened the window. Thirty degree air (minus one degree centigrade) poured into the loft. To finish the routine, I pulled on gripper socks for warm toes and no slipping on the yoga mat.

Back downstairs, I opened seven more windows and the sliding glass door.

Our cat Emma merrowed and hobble-wobbled to her blanket in front of the wood stove fire.

“You’ll be fine.” I petted her. Fetching three logs, I stoked the fire. Flames leapt and the stove clanked. I shivered, bundled in a heavy sweater, and huddled under a blanket to eat Spence’s special breakfast concoction―pita stuffed with a mix of chicken, peas, celery, tomato, and tahini sauce

Mourning dove, robin, and chickadee songs floated in with the brisk fresh air. Ahhh. I shivered and took deep breaths. The breaths triggered the memory of inhaling muriatic acid at the YMCA two weeks ago. [See “The Stinging Stench” March 17, 2019] Had I created a toxic stink in the log house?

Robin

Exchanging the breakfast tray for my laptop, I searched for Lysol’s toxicity. The first article warned of swallowing or burns to the skin and eyes. I’d washed the cleaner off my hands fast enough. No burns. The second and third articles proved more dire. Of Lysol’s thirteen ingredients, three were neurotoxins and two caused asthma not to mention damage to multiple organs and systems in the body. Sheesh. And hobble-wobble Emma had asthma. I stared at her on the blanket in front of the fire.

She slept with her legs crossed. No coughing. No snoring.

Two and a half hours later, the chilled air made dull, nagging aches radiate from every joint of my right hand. I checked the temperature on the kitchen weather station. The outdoor temperature had warmed from 30ºF (-1ºC) to 40ºF (4ºC). Despite the stoked fire, the indoor temperature dropped from 66ºF (19ºC) to 61ºF (16ºC). Time to shut the windows and pack for lap swim.

The bathroom still stunk of Lysol. I left the exhaust fan on and stuffed the cleaning rags into an empty coffee bag that had a robust, dark roast aroma.

Though I didn’t cough and didn’t have a scratchy throat, the stink lodged in my lungs. During the fifteen mile drive to the YMCA, I inhaled deep, twelve-second yoga breaths. I held the air four seconds. Thinking of the force I’d used to make the plastic balls rise in the incentive spirometer after surgery decades ago, I pushed all the air out from the bottom of my lungs. By the time I nosed the car into a parking space on South Main, I’d expelled the stink―ready to douse myself in chlorine.

When I lugged my swim gear back home, I opened the front door with caution. A fainter Lysol smell met my nose. I opened the windows for two more hours.

When Spence came home in the evening, I greeted him with “Do you smell the Lysol?”

While he took two sniffs, his nostrils flared. “No. The airing worked.”

For him. The airing had worked for him.

Friday morning dawned rainy, and Lysol greeted my nose yet again. How long would the stink last? Because of the rain, I only opened the bathroom window and turned on the bathroom fan―enough to make Spence use his falsetto voice when he took a leak. “Ooooo. There’s a draft.”

I busied myself washing laundry and baking a chicken pot pie. Mid afternoon, I pulled the third load out of the dryer and took a whiff. The bathroom smelled of baked crust and chicken with a faint aroma of warm lint and Lysol. Maybe if I baked a pie daily for a month, I’d have a house that smelled like pie not Lysol. If the Lysol stink lasted a month, would that cause harm even if only I could smell it?

I dumped the clothes onto a chair, pulled the concentrate bottle from beneath the sink, and squinted. The tiny letters still swam in a mosaic. Fetching a magnifying glass, I moved it back and forth between the print and my face. Slowly, painfully, I decoded the back. Danger . . . Avoid prolonged breathing. How long was prolonged? I kept reading. No hints on getting rid of the smell.

When I woke to the stink of Lysol Saturday, I gritted my teeth and growled. “I WILL ERADICATE THE STINK!”

“Don’t go crazy.” Spence sipped his morning coffee. “You’re going to the Jane Austen meeting Sunday.” He rubbed my back as if calming a sobbing child. “When you come home Monday, the smell will be gone.”

Would the house smell like wood instead of Lysol on Monday? Maybe. And I’d do my best to make sure.

After breakfast, I said, “Please stoke the fire, Spence.”

With his shirt sleeves rolled up against his biceps, he scrunched his forehead at the request. Nevertheless, he stepped onto the porch for more logs.

I rushed about opening the eight windows and sliding glass door. Then I moved everything off the bathroom floor, fetched a handful of rags, and filled the cleaning bucket with water. On my knees, facing the toilet, I rinsed the floor with water and dried it with rags. With sopping sweatshirt cuffs and jean knees, I tossed the water out and settled in my log chair by the fire. Wind chimes clanged on the porch while a red-winged blackbird and phoebe sang. Air blew through the great room spreading papers and contents from the ash bucket across the room. I moved the ashes to the porch, picked up the papers, but left the windows and door open.

Early afternoon rain poured onto the great room floor.

One by one I closed the windows and door then walked to the bathroom. I inhaled a deep yoga breath. No Lysol stink. Maybe the smell of wood would dominate the house again. And the next time I contemplate taking a short cut, I’ll opt for the long way around.

Phoebe

Reflections on Winter into Spring – Out and About in Bear Weather

 

Milkweed Seeds

Unlike me, animals don’t check the calendar for the end of winter. They move out and about in bear weather. When the sun warms the air and lengthens days, bears wake from hibernation and hunt for food.

Such a day arrived Wednesday, March 13, a week before the spring equinox. Leaving my winter jacket on its hook, I pulled on a sweater then grabbed a broom and paper grocery bag. I opened the sliding glass door and stepped onto the sunny, 58ºF (14ºC) deck.

Chickadees abandoned the deck for the white pine stand.

Pulling off the suction cup bird feeder my husband Spence had attached to the door [ See “Flutterings” January 27, 2019 ], I dumped sunflower seed dregs into the paper bag.

A chorus of chickadees squawked in protest.

“It’s bear weather,” I shouted to them.

Chickadee-dee-dee-dee-dee.

Ignoring their danger call, I swept mounds of discarded sunflower seed coats from under the feeder, from behind Spence’s shelving boards, and from between flower pots. I meticulously transferred every dropped seed coat to the bag―no whisking the pile over the deck to the garden for a hungry bear to find.

When I went inside, a chickadee swooped to the spot on the glass door where the feeder had hung. The chickadee fluttered, as if treading air to inspect the area, then darted to the railing. After cocking its head in humorous angles, the bird made another flight to the glass door. Still no feeder. Back on the railing, it glared, with more head cocking, then made a roller coaster flight to the end of the south garden.

A cardinal, song sparrow, goldfinch, and four more chickadees repeated the first chickadee’s where’d-the-feeder-go search.

Their antics pecked at my conscience. We’d made them dependent on the feeder. Would they die before finding other food? I bit my lip and turned my back on the glass door. The birds could eat seeds in the field or fly to a neighbor’s feeder. I wouldn’t take a chance of attracting a hungry bear to the deck.

The next day, birds resumed their vain searches for the feeder. Distracting myself from their flutterings, I noted signs of approaching spring.

• The first day the temperature rose above the fifties, 72ºF (22ºC) in fact.
• The first day we opened the sliding glass door and bedroom window to warm the log house instead of building a wood stove fire.
• The first day we saw a robin. When Spence and I left for an appointment with our tax preparer, a fat specimen sang cheer up, cheerily, cheer up from the wood shed roof.

  

  Robin

  
  

Maybe Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction had come true.

On Friday, only a pair of cardinals came to the deck. The male perched on a flower pot and peered up at the empty glass door. His mate hunted seeds under the feeder.

“Go where the chickadees found food,” I called through the door and went about my business―washing laundry, registering for the Pennwriters Conference in May, and driving our cat Emma to the vet’s for her last mobility check-up. [See “Wobble, Hobble, Flop” March 3, 2019] Too exhausted to wait up for Spence, who campaigned against lead poisoning in Cleveland yet again, I carried Emma to bed with me at 9:00.

She merrowed at the indignity of being carried―the last sound I heard until I shuffled to the bathroom at 11:30.

“We had a visitor.” Spence called from the sofa.

Uh-oh. Wide awake, I washed my hands and marched to the great room. “A bear?”

Spence tossed a handful of peanuts into his mouth and washed them down with red wine. “I got home at ten fifteen―too wired to sleep. I sat on the sofa reading news on my laptop.” He reached down to pet Emma who, awake too, wandered past him on her way to the food bowl. “At eleven fifteen, I heard bumping. The bear light [a solar powered motion activated light] came on. And a medium-sized bear walked up the ramp.”

Medium-sized. Not the huge black bear that licked the corner of the feeder a year ago. [See “Sign of―Bump, Thump, Clunk―Winter’s End” March 12, 2018] How had I slept through it bumping at the gate on the other side of the eight-inch thick log wall? “On its back legs?”

“No. On all fours. It paused at the door and sniffed around.” Spence put his wine glass down and twirled his hands around is if replicating the geography of the bear’s sniffing. “I wanted a good look at him. I put the laptop on the table and got up to turn off the reading light. I tripped on the cord. The laptop crashed to the floor.”

“Yikes!” I hadn’t heard the laptop crash either. “Did the bear react to the noise?”

“The crash didn’t faze the bear.” As if sliding his hands across a level surface, Spence moved his hands through the air in opposite directions. “It walked to the porch and bumped around. Then the bear walked back down the ramp.”

The next morning I hustled outside to investigate. Unlike last year’s visitor, this year’s bear hadn’t left any hair on the gate. It did leave the gate wide open and a pile of poop in the south garden. Removing the bird seed for bear weather was right. But had I endangered the birds?

Black Bear Left Gate Open

Temperatures plummeted over night. After wondering about bird food for twenty-four hours, I slipped into my boots. “Will you take a walk with me, Spence? I want to search for food birds could eat.” I grabbed my camera and winter jacket for a not so balmy 35ºF (2ºC) exploration.

His feet hit the floor, and he set his laptop on the coffee table. I interpreted that as a yes.

Gravel crunched under our feet on the walk up the driveway. We passed dried thistles below the kitchen window. All the seeds had vanished―insatiable goldfinches no doubt. I hoped the burning bush would have berries. It kept berries the longest of all our shrubs. When we reached the end of the driveway, I stared at bare branches with tight buds at the tips. “No berries, Spence. What will the birds eat?”

“You’re not looking like a bird.”

We walked through the field. Pine, spruce, and fir cones hung from trees in the nursery. Several robins hopped and scooted over the grass. They tilted their heads to listen then stabbed worms which wiggled out and about through the thawed, warmed soil. Would feeder birds wrestle seeds from the cones or gobble worms?

Entering the woods, I spotted a plethora of branches broken by winter storms. “Maybe the exposed wood has insects for the birds?”

“Definitely.”

As if to verify Spence’s answer, a downy woodpecker hammered on a tree.

Looping through the woods to the south garden, I found seeds dangling from dried milkweed pods and shriveled berries on dried asparagus plants. After a winter of dining on gourmet sunflower seeds, the insects, milkweed seeds, and dried asparagus berries didn’t seem adequate to keep the bird feeder gang alive.

Last Sunday dawned sunny, 23ºF (-5ºC), and with a dusting of snow―not weather encouraging bears to roam. While Spence typed away at Rhino!↑, a newsletter for RHINO members, chickadees swooped to the deck looking for the feeder. After the fourth chickadee searched in vane, Spence stopped typing. “Tell me where the bird feeder is. I’ll put it up for the day. I’ll bring it in tonight.”

In his stocking feet, he walked onto the dusting of snow covering the deck. He pushed the suction cups against the cold glass. The feeder top slipped. He pushed. The feeder slipped. He pushed until it stayed in place. Spence attached the bottom, which he’d filled a third full with seeds.

Within five minutes, a chickadee landed on the feeder and stabbed a seed.

A song sparrow hopped on the deck below the feeder. Finding no tossed seeds, it flew half way to the feeder, flipped backward, and fluttered back down. On its second try, the sparrow bounced off the feeder’s perch. After five tries, the sparrow landed on the perch and pecked at the seeds. Perhaps tired, it flew to a flower pot and hunted for dropped seeds on top of the potting soil.

As soon as I hit publish for my “The Stinging Stench” blog, bear sunshine and Spence beckoned me for a walk along Deer Creek. At the widest section of the creek, I paused to enjoy the sparkling, babbling water. The nearly-spring air smelled of greening woods and fresh mud. Bird songs―robin, cardinal, red-winged blackbird,

song sparrow, and chickadee―echoed thorough the woods. Crows cawed and a downy woodpecker hammered.

Spence tapped my shoulder and whispered, “Look. An animal’s walking up the bank by the tree.”

I peered across the water at a maze of trees. “Where?”

He pointed. “It went behind the uprooted tree on the bank.”

Movement drew my eyes to a long slender animal with short legs and a pointy nose. Covered in glistening reddish-brown fur, the animal hopped onto the fallen tree and marched in our direction.

“It’s a mink.” I pulled off the lens cap and focused on the critter.

Spence chuckled. “A little bear.”

Raising its head as if it heard our voices over the babbling creek, the critter scooted to the end of the log and dove into a ditch.

Holding the camera ready, I waited and waited.

Another tap on my shoulder. “It heard us. It’s hiding in the bank.”

The out and about mink didn’t reappear, but a day later another critter did.

Barred Owl with Half Open Eyes

Monday afternoon, still two days shy of calendar spring, Spence burst through the front door while I rinsed my bathing suit after my morning lap swim. In an urgent voice he said, “Bring your camera and come.”

Jogging to fetch the camera, I called over my shoulder. “What is it?”

“An owl by the old hemlock trees.”

Returning, I grabbed my winter jacket and followed Spence out the door.

“I drove my tractor past it.” He strode across the field with me at his side. “Don’t get your hopes up. It might be gone by now.”

In silence, we crept around the forsythia bush loaded with buds that promised spring flowers.

A barred owl perched on branch of a young black walnut tree growing among the branches of an old hemlock. Brown and white feathers covered the nearly two foot tall bird. It blinked and focused its mostly closed black eyes on us.

Looking through my zoom lens, I studied its gold beak and strong claws. Close enough.

The owl swiveled its head to the left, swiveled it to the right, and returned to the center. Without hooting its famous WHOO WHOO whoo WHOOOOOO, the owl closed its eyes and went back to sleep.

Spring equinox finally arrived, after much anticipation from the animals and me, Wednesday at 5:58 p.m.―while I ripped and twisted pages from an old phone book to make fire starter paper. Only the birds ventured out and about on the cloudy, cool start of spring. Spence and I put the bird feeder out in the morning and took the feeder in at night all week.

Unlike me, animals don’t check the calendar for the end of winter. They move out and about in bear weather. When the sun warms the air and lengthens days, bears wake from hibernation and hunt for food. 

 

That’s a day like today―sunny and 52ºF (11ºC), the average weather forecast for the rest of the week. Despite flutterings, squawks, and chickadee-dee-dee-dee-dees, the bird feeder will stay inside until late fall. It’s bear weather.

Barred Owl with Closed Eyes