Technical Writer

Wild Animals of This Afternoon

I went to Surreybrook Gardens (www.surreybrooke.com) today and walked all over the gardens and over to a large pond fringed with bushes planted with birds in mind.  I was admiring the lovely weeping willow tree nearby when a stunning new wildlife sculpture attracted my attention at the far end of the pond.  I was surprised to see it, because it was obviously a Great Blue Heron, but outsized.  The sculpture was facing up the pond toward me, and it really was big, perhaps four and a half to five feet tall.  I have seen many such herons on the coast of Maine in the summer, from near and far, and I am familiar with these birds.  I started to walk toward it for a closer inspection when it turned to look directly at me, and then it lifted itself up and away into the nearby trees. The heron was larger than any I have ever seen--it could have been a modern pteradyctl.

Later, I went to Boonesboro not far away, a Civil War-era town in an agricultural region.  My husband and I visited a shop whose owner was tinkering away on his product, which I will not name for reasons that will be made clear.  Richard (not his real name) and my husband were discussing gears and works from the early 1800s when Richard looked over at me and excused himself for a moment saying that he was going to check on a pal.  He ducked in to his house, and moments later he appeared with a frisky squirrel on his shoulder.  The squirrel was riding high.  I was introduced to Merry, a three-year old gray squirrel who was reared by Richard, who found him in the grass, fallen from a high nest in a tree in the front yard.  Merry's eyes were still closed, and he was probably no more than two or three days old the veterinarian later estimated.  Richard tenderly nurtured the little fellow to the fine figure he is today. 

Richard advised me not to pet Merry, and we had a conversation about sharp little teeth that can bite to the bone.  All the while, Merry was climbing over Richard, and down over the work table, and back and around, exploring.  Merry had a medical emergency in his hindquarters last year, and his heretofore plush tail, is now not quite as plush.  Richard had called his friend out from his spacious romper cage but little Merry could not move his back legs.  Off to the vet he went, and after twenty X-Rays and consultations, and a course of antibiotics and other non-invasive therapies, Merry regained use of his legs, although he does not grip as well with his back feet as once he did. 

Richard knows that the life expectancy for gray squirrels is only four years or so, and he is providing a wonderful life for friendly little Merry, who remains in the very pink of good squirrel health.  Richard said he doesn't tell many people about Merry, and I was honored to have met him.

 

John McCain and the Redistribution of Wealth

I listened to the approving roar from a crowd at a televised John McCain rally, and a campaign line that triggered loud approbation was that he, Senator McCain, would not "redistribute wealth," a socialist concept, he and his running mate inform the crowd, but he would let people keep their wealth. Of course he would. There is nothing like hiding in plain sight.

It seems to have escaped many of his supporters in the regions of the country that stand firmly for his presidential bid that they, and their states, are more frequently the beneficiaries of that redistribution of wealth than, for instance, New York or Massachusetts.  Among my acquaintances and broad family there are staunch supporters of the Republican ticket, for a number of reasons that are not identical. I won't discuss those reasons, but one of those lines of thought I can extrapolate somewhat and apply to a part of the electorate. Essentially, there are middle-class families who are struggling financially and whose opportunities appear limited by poor education and poor investment and borrowing choices (so much that can not be predicted), and this is seen only in retrospect, the  choices appearing sound at the time.

We tax ourselves to redistribute the wealth for the good of the country. Public spending programs that spread the wealth would

• Provide opportunities for an improved health care system with all the complexity that supports individual responsibility and entrepreneurial endeavor while broadening the existing federal programs to cover more children and the indigent.

• Provide an improved public education system that includes the diversity of opportunities families seek for their children, and that is also excellent district to district, state to state.  I read an article recently about the high achievement of the school children in Finland, where apparently the children learn quickly and uniformly and can articulate their subjects with mastery and sophistication.  The United States is vastly different from a small, socio-economically homogeneous country, and the problems that must be overcome here are quite different. The problems are not the kids, however, but how we need to better educate them, and that includes the many pre-conditions for learning.

• Provide a national reconstruction of our failing roads, rails and bridges. Can we afford to have the already meager federal highway funds dry up? The interstate highway system was initiated in 1956 by Dwight Eisenhower with federal highway laws that assumed the national security importance of the nation's transportation infrastructure.  It took Eisenhower the president to inaugurate such a vast improvement, but its geneses was his participation in the Transcontinental Motor Convoy of 1919 to ascertain the fitness of the first national road in case need arose to move troops quickly across country in case of war.

There are many other examples of national spending priorities where we redistribute the wealth, a phrase that seems to send shivers of apprehension down the spines of men and women who are being taught to associate such spending with socialism.  There was real state socialism, with its sad, failed policies that brought degradation and misery to hundreds of millions of people, and those countries have largely failed.  To conflate socialism with a discussion of national spending priorities is a ruthless and dangerous McCain tactic.

I do not believe that all is fair in love and war, but I have come to think that John McCain does believe this.  The prize he so desperately wants is for himself, not for the country, and this is why I believe that he should not win the presidency.

Let's Build a Fort

When I was a kid, and long after the age when I really could get away with such wild play, I liked to build forts in the field behind our house.  In fact, my mother's sisters reminded me on more than one occasion that I was too old to play with sticks and brush, grass and stones, but I ignored their admonishment. The field was vast, and on a hill.  Field is too tame a word for what was really scrub land.  Near the top of the hill was a rocky outcropping fringed by trees, and below that there were thickets of brush, and even wild berries.  Wildflowers grew everywhere.

Building a fort takes less skill than you might imagine, but it is essential to begin it right.  Back up to a big rock, or better yet find a coppice of trees out of sight from the houses below, and begin laying out the entry place with a line of stones. Then you can begin to collect sticks and brush to pile and weave the walls around you.  The trees are canopy enough, but it's good to have some low boughs to form the roof of the fort.  You can make a bed with a pile of any forest debris, but autumn leaves are best.  After the fort is built, then you can lay in your stores, which should include plenty of sharp-pointed spears (always reusable in each new fort), a book, and maybe some apples for later in the afternoon. 

It's raining now, and I have an assignment due, but what I really want to do is build a fort somewhere.

Saturday Flowers #5

Today is dark and gloomy at late morning.  In fact it is pouring rain outside.  Flowers brighten any room, and reflect their colors in the mood of the observer.  Here are today's flowers. The lilies will open as the week progresses and as the white roses fade and are removed from the bouquet.  I enjoy tending the flowers and every other day or so I change the water and trim the stems of the flowers that remain fresh. 

Here is a picture this morning of last Saturday's flowers (#4).  The flowers are cut down considerably and have been moved to a smaller crock on a small sideboard in the dining room.  The smaller crock belonged to my mother's grandmother, known forever as Mockin because that was what my mother's older sister Jane could lisp as a child.  My sisters and I never knew Mockin, but we cherish her recipe for Christmas cake made with applesauce and raisins, and plenty of rum. We have our different ways with this cake, and Yvonne's version is the best.

Avoid That Intersection

When a person who comments on art, life, and literature slips in the phrase "articulate a location at the intersection of" and you know they aren't giving you directions to 4th Street and Vine, then you should turn off the radio or skip the rest of the article because the speaker is engaging in discourse aimed at enlarging the discontinuity between subject and the discursive (but vacant) lot out back.

Home Improvement

The past week has been a flurry of house maintenance.  Doors that have creaked and perhaps never closed in a century have been made right with the world (I can now feel the gentle poof of air pressure when each of eleven doors close); door jambs have been replaced, and a new basement door installed to the garden that scoffs at the lengthy (and by-passed) process with the Historic Commission. Bricks have been pointed; window panes have been glazed, and all that is just on the outside.  While workmen have been busy with the exterior, plumbers have made themselves busy on the interior and we have new copper pipes that I believe are sheathed in hundred dollar bills.

 

Every few years, an old house deserves a serious maintenance overhaul.  I, too, could use an overhaul. Maintenance, reinvention, call it what you will, I could use a fresh gloss of paint and a little caulk, too.  Perhaps a new tube of Chap Stick!

Saturday Flowers #4

Whatever I am doing, as soon as my eyes rest on flowers on the kitchen table, I relax and have a moment of pure happiness.

Op-Ed New York Times 10.17 Brilliant

I spent a joyful few minutes this morning with several cups of Typhoo tea and reading the Op-Ed page of The New York Times.  Page A27 was the perfect conjunction of my favorite commentators--David Brooks, Paul Krugman, and Warren Buffett and reading them was like being in the presence of friends gathering to review the events that matter. Brooks wrote that candidates such as Barack Obama strive to fulfill some capacity in their nature rather than seeking to fill a void as does the current president; Nobel prize winner Krugman wrote that the next president should spend money up front to improve the country's future; and finally Buffett wrote that he is buying American stocks now because if you wait for the robins spring will be over. 

 

What could I offer, I thought, to contribute to intellectual discourse at the kitchen table this morning?  I have small pieces left on the cutting room floor today from a larger article for a client.  I have written before here about my business of technical writing, and today's leftover piece is on the commoditization in the IT industry. My three readers and the few readers in India I have somehow attracted could care less, however, and I have to agree.  Somehow the subject is yesterday's news.

 

 

Washing Clothes with the James Washer

The picture of the James Washer in the Gaiam catalog reminds me how I washed the laundry at home in my old Cape Cod house on the mountain.  The advertisements for the washer promise that you can launder as many as seven sheets at one time, but I know this assertion is a stretch.  The washer held two full-size flannel sheets, or a few days of other laundry. 

Wash day was a serious production that took hours and hours of intense work.  First, the water had to be heated.  I'd fire up the Glenwood Modern E wood-burning stove (I wrote about the stove earlier) and position the copper boiler over two burners of the stove to heat water to fill the washer. I'd fill the copper boiler with several buckets of water and transfer hot water to the washer, and then plunge the laundry into the water.

When the clothes were clean,  I opened the spigot (you can see it under the machine) and drained the washer into the bucket, and dumped the bucket into the claw-foot bath tub.  (The tub and the sink both drained into a stone-filled section of an old, barn cellar hole.) After the water was drained, I'd press the clothes through the hand-crank wringer and drop them into a big basket,  refill the washer with clean water and rinse, dump water, wring clothes, and maybe rinse the clothes a second or third time.

Drying the clothes in the summer was never a problem.  I had a line strung between two trees at the edge of the woods near the old house.  In winter, when the snow could be four or five feet deep, I'd hang the clothes in the kitchen to dry.  If I had washed sheets, I hung them from lines strung from the ceiling beams.  If you have read Beatrice Potter's Miss Tiggywinkle, you will recall an illustration of that fine little hedgehog hanging up her wash to dry from the beams in the kitchen.  That's what my drying regime looked like for sheets.  For clothes, I opened up the wooden clothes horse and hung them to dry by the stove.

I came by a clothes horse in a friendly way.  While I was working in the garden one fine summer day, a  bicyclist stopped to say hello.  Passers-by were rare, and a week might go by in the summer and I would see no one.  In the winter, weeks and weeks might pass in the same manner.  I invited the bicyclist inside for a glass of water, and the fellow told me that he had a little company in Maine that made wooden clothes horses.  A few weeks later there was a knock at the door, and the bicyclist was there again; he had strapped a new clothes horse to his bicycle and had ridden up Stone Mountain to give me the gift.  When I left the mountain, I brought the clothes horse with me.

Last year, I gave my little treasure to a neighbor, a young man,  who drys his clothes outside on a clothesline in his city back yard.  His line is strung between two trees. He used to have a clothes horse for winter drying, but it had fallen apart from use.  I retrieved the rack from my basement and gave it to him. These things are meant for use, but I have grown accustomed to soft city life. 

Nowadays I no longer have to set aside a half day exclusively for the washing.

My eyes were bigger than my walls

I  have stood transfixed by tapestries hanging in the Cluny in Paris, the Walters in Baltimore, and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.  I have taken a tour through the  Gobelins tapestry manufactory (with its own metro stop) in a language I did not understand just so I could look again at these great works of art.

At the Gobelins, taken over by France in the middle 1600s, I watch modern-day craftsmen and women ply their ancient and honorable trade by the light of day through the windows.  No other illumination is permitted, and these tapestries are woven for the ages, for the hundreds and hundreds of years they may hang in great halls. 

The  first time I saw Les Vendanges at the Cluny, I became lost in a medieval world of viticulture and colors and sensibility I have yet to recover from. There is a little tapestry shop across the street from the Cluny, close by a patisserie that makes the most marvelous chocolate creme tart on earth.  In fact, while eating such a tart in a small, iron-gated garden nearby where I retreated to consider the state of my bank account, I decided to go back into the tapestry shop and bring home a smaller version of Les Vendages, but that is not what I am showing you here. 

Permit me to demonstrate how one's eyes can be bigger than one's house.

Last winter, while visiting Cancun, or rather visiting the international shopping area, I found myself in a vast carpet emporium.  Walking deeper and deeper through cavernous rooms, I came into a small, modestly lighted room at the back and I saw the tapestry of my dreams.  It was 8 feet tall and 15 feet long, and it was of a forest scene of green trees, woodland animals, water ways and falls. If I could have convinced my husband to mortgage the house and build  a gallery for the tapestry, then I could have brought this grand thing home with me.  As it was, I started looking for something that would actually fit my house.

Here it is--my Diana after the hunt, for such it is.     As a modern piece made in the style of the 18thcentury French tapestries, I decided I had to have it. The colors, the canopy, the beautiful tree and those dogs--what was not to like?  Sadly, it remains folded up, and I sit upon it on my office chair because I do not have a wall in my house large enough to display this correctly.  I hauled it outside this afternoon and flung it over a garden wall so I could take this picture for you.  Notice those beautiful dogs, the stream, and handsome lads hauling the canopy above Diana's head.  

What was I thinking, I have more than once asked myself.

Time to Sell the Rolls

How rich is someone who is so reduced that she must sell her 1939 Rolls-Royce Wraith for $150,000?  Apparently not rich enough.  Whatever the sad little story is, we see the resulting for- sale advertisement in the Weekend Journal section of the WSJ. The vehicle is sold, but not before respectability has been lost. There can't be many '39s in excellent running condition and in perfect repair, so everyone in the club must know the shame-faced individual.  I can only hope the buyer didn't haggle.   Pass the Talisker, the distiller's edition, please.

Saturday Flowers #3

What is especially nice about this week's bouquet is the broom grass in the background, mixed in the zebra grass and the fragrant purple stock, which smells like cinnamon. 

Looking at the news, I imagine that this financial turmoil has scotched any notion of privatizing Social Security.  The verb to "scotch" means to crush, or stamp out, to refute conclusively. 

I moved last week's flowers, much reduced but a few still bright, to the dining room table with a bowl of fruit and vegetables to free up the kitchen counter. The morning sun through the north window caught  them just so.

Mirabella Visits Mouse of Gorse Hall

It was late morning when Mirabella completed packing the wicker basket of provender for the Mouse she rescued before breakfast when she and Samson were ranging the hills at dawn.  Mouse had been bravely fighting off the hunting dive of a Peregrine falcon, and it had been clear to Mirabella when she and Samson advanced upon the scene that the Peregrine had the upper hand. The Peregrine had wheeled away from them in irritation with a keening kar-kar-kar and disappeared in a flash of swift wing.

 

Mirabella arrived for her visit to Mouse on the back of Samson. She retrieved the heavily laden basket wedged firmly between Samson’s humps and slid down the bactrian’s nose and landed gracefully in the clearing in front of the main gate of Gorse Hall.  She did not need to otherwise announce her arrival; the Hall was well guarded, for Mouse was laird in these parts, and much respected. He had inherited Gorse Hall in direct line from his ancestors, and the manse was a sturdy hall that his father and now Mouse had expanded over time.

 

Mouse stepped out into the clearing beyond his main gate and while his heart may have skipped a beat at the sight of a large camel grazing beyond her, he recognized Mirabella as the one who had rescued him from the Peregrine, and his good manners as host overcame any trepidation within caused by a cat at the front door.

 

Mirabella herself had the good manners to suppress her sudden keen interest in the aroma of the den,which she accomplished by turning to the basket and pushing it forward, as a gift to the laird.  The basket was covered with a homespun napkin in a pleasing plaid in colors of  green, blue, yellow, and orange.  She knew that Mouse's Doe would use the cloth for her family in any number of ways, and that Mouse himself could use the basket’s contents to extend next winter’s larder.  Mirabella had packed barley and oat cakes and some of last night’s clootie dumpling, and there was fresh salmon left from breakfast, and she threw in some stovies and  leeks for good measure. She even found a nice wedge of cheese, and wild rowen-berry jelly and butterscotch drops for the children. 

 

Mouse advanced sniffing the air and he bowed to her gracefully, sweeping the ground with a fore paw, and accepted her tribute.  Mouse instantly recognized that although the Hall was a spacious and commodious abode, he would have to entertain her out of doors. He jumped upon a mossy log that formed a short wall directly outside the door, pulled out his brier pipe and invited Mirabella to join him there for bannocks and barley tea. After their initial pleasantries,  it was Mouse who raised the subject of the Peregrine.

 

"Old Falco the tiercel has lived on yon high cliff since before the time of my grandfathers," said Mouse, puffing thoughtfully on his pipe, "and he has caused me no end of watchfulness for my wee mischief of pinkies."  He wiped a paw along his sleek whiskers to settle himself at the memory of that recent encounter. Tea arrived on a tray carried by one of the many house mice, and Mirabella accepted a cup.  She admired the beauty of the surroundings, and especially the bright yellow canopy of Gorse Hall, which caused Mouse to blush with pleasure.  He said that they often took for granted the grandeur of their surroundings, and that it could take an outsider’s point of view to remind him of his good fortune and the hard work of the family, and his own stewardship, of course.  The rest of the morning passed in conversation, and Mirabella was even introduced to one of the little pinkies who had wobbled out the front door before he was scruffed and dragged back inside by a house mouse.

 

Too soon it was time for her to return to the fishing bothy and Edward Morgan.  She had much to tell him upon her return, to which he listened with evident interest over afternoon tea. 

Birthday Thought

A birthday is a handy way to mark the passage of time, but the real birthdays occur every waking moment, if we just took a moment to acknowledge them.  The concept of living in the moment is usually misunderstood to mean living recklessly with no thought beyond the gratification of the moment, with the gratification gyrating down around the ankles.

 

I told a friend that I wanted to live in the moment, and he replied that if one lives in the present only, then there is neither past nor future.  For me it means instead that one anchors the past and future in the present, which is purely creative and responsible.  The responsibility comes when you recognize that you make the world rolling out before you.

 

On the other hand, try to tell that to someone in deadly peril right now, and who would rather be anywhere else than at the danger place.  You can't say this to the person walking the gang plank because the overwhelming meaning of the moment has been determined by everything the person has learned to be true, and death is the future of that moment.

 

Have you ever noticed how the greatest threats always involve money or the body? I think that's because the body is the temple-front we construct to protect a vulnerable interior of inchoate thought.  The body becomes a magnet attracting the very thing we would protect it from.

Money is another form of materialization of what we value, and we depersonalize it and make it paper and metal or maybe sea shells, but in a way, it is nearly the same thing as what we construct of our bodies--protection against harm, or offense against looming threat. 

 

I do not see the difference between attack and the recognition that the body it seeks to protect is ultimately vulnerable.  I will take the leap and assert that attack is never in strength (although we may train for it and coordinate muscle and purpose), but in fear that something will be taken away.

 

I have read, “Beware the soul that relies on the body.  Beware the body that relies on the soul.”  There is a balance to find.  Maybe I should go take a walk.

The Joy of Birthdays

A pile of books was the perfect birthday gift. Each one was wrapped and handed to me at my birthday dinner.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

The Guide to the Birds of East Africa

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

Brief Letter to Barack Obama

Looking at the front page of The New York Times this morning, I am increasingly heartened by the shifting poll data that brings you closer and closer to a good outcome for the United States on Election Day.

The issues support you, but as the McCain campaign and its affiliates tighten the screws in the only way now left--through targeted, thoroughly negative advertising--the issues may not be enough for even you.  What will remain paramount is character, and I urge you to continue behaving in your expansive, presidential way and not lower yourself to the level of vicious behavior that the McCain campaign will unleash in the battleground states.

There was a passionate moment in the vice presidential debate when Joe Biden spoke with strength and authority to refute the false notion that John McCain is a maverick.  He was not being negative; he was speaking with truthful conviction.  You can use anger, too, not to defend yourself, but to protect this country from the easy grip of McCain's negative imaginings, the seeds of which are being sown by a campaign going mad with the desire to win.

I sincerely hope that voters grow weary of ugly, soul deadening negative attacks. I suspect there is a fine and nuanced understanding within the campaign of how much the public will absorb before there is a rejection of such advertising, but maybe not.

Be personally kind to John McCain during your next debate, but confront all errors of omission and commission.  Continue to face him as well as the people in the debate.  When you are president, he will still be a senator, and you will be working with members of his party who will not forget that you treated their reckless candidate with respect and dignity.

Finally, please do not relax between now and November 4, because the McCain campaign will become more erratic and dangerous to the country and while you must point that out, you must also remain tightly focused on presentation of yourself and your own program. 

Saturday Flowers, Oct. 4

I intend to post my Saturday flowers so I can relive their beauty while anticipating the next bouquet.  This is number 2 in my series.

It is important to be surrounded by beauty.

Frederick In the Streets October 4, 2008

Getting jiggy with the people in the annual In the Streets free-for-all festival in Frederick, October 4, 2008. My friend Annie, who just returned from Pisa on a semester's sabbatical leave told me that the daily market scene in that Italian city is as crowded as the once-a-year festival in my town. 

I'm not one for rubbing elbows with the madding crowd, but once a year I can dive in, knowing that a hot soak, a good book (The Story of Edgar Sawtelle) and a cup of Yogi Tea (with valerian and chamomile) will set me right. So here you are! Take a look at wonderful people in my town.

Morris Dancers and perfect children.

Maybe they will remember the day.

This is Michael's tea room.  His customers have other things on their minds today.  We stopped in to pick up Typhoo tea, about a month's supply.  Here is Michael himself in the tiny kitchen, preparing savory pies. I have stopped at the tea room after a harried day to explain to Michael, "I have guests coming, the table is set, the salad is ready, but the main course has failed.  What would you recommend?" Not a problem.

The Cuban Cafe, two blocks from home.

The festival took place on Market and Patrick Streets, and the Carrol Creek Parkway.

Bands played throughout town.

Frederick's German heritage was celebrated.  The town was settled by German immigrants after 1745, led by a German Reformed schoolmaster from the Rhineland Palatinate.

Here are just a few images of people enjoying the day on Market Street .

 

I

 

I just wanted to show you the passing scene.

There's nothing like a street festival to bring out the best in people. These two people are Obama fans in a state already in his camp. 

Empty Streets of Frederick Town

As my husband and I drove home Thursday evening from my big birthday bash we noticed that the highway and city streets were deserted; in other words, alone on the road we were.  It was 8:55 p.m..  This was a unique event.  I have never seen the highway without traffic.  I read that 70 million people watched Biden Palin debate, and I am here to tell you that 60,000 of them were in Frederick.

Do you notice that the big birthday bash was over well before 9 p.m.? I just noticed that myself.

Mirabella Adventuring Before Breakfast

Mirabella edged her camel into the lee of the ridge as the wind picked up over the blue hills.   She gazed north by the light of the emerging stars; the moon was sinking beneath Sgurr nan Ceathreamhnan.  Mirabella was in the lonely mountains north of the Great Glen, many miles from the public roads leading around their distant edge.  She trusted Samson to pick out the track.  After all, the Bactrian had surprised her by finding his own way when he followed her home to London from the wilds of Tibet in 1911.

She had been riding awhile, snug between Samson’s humps, which kept the breezy and chill night air from ruffling her long fur. The camel stopped to crop the verge by the track, and as Mirabella meditated on the quietness of the night a sharp barking cry came from the woods away in the direction of the fishing bothy where Edward Morgan and she had been lodging the fortnight past.  “Don’t panic, wee lass,” Samson whispered to her.  “I have big hairy feet to protect ye with.” 

Samson much preferred to use the rugged Highland dialect on their travels north, rather than the smooth city speech he had adopted in the first months after arriving in London.  Her friend calmed fear’s grip on her, for she knew Samson could stomp any trouble flat. But she was alert with concern; what could they have heard in the woods, and was Edward Morgan in danger?

Samson left the main track and veered down the path to the bothy at a trot.  Mirabella knew that he could run swiftly across the high steppes of Tibet, and many a time she had ridden him with her ears pressed back by the wind. Now with hearts racing and feet pounding on the trail they ran quickly toward the sound and reached the bothy clearing, and there in the center of the clearing was a solitary mouse facing a menacing Peregrine falcon, the source of the commotion. The mouse was brandishing a very sharp stick, thrusting it up toward the falcon now startled by their sudden arrival.  Heedless of the risk to herself, Mirabella leapt from Samson onto the ground between the brave little mouse and his doom, who considered that the odds had turned against him and flew away.

Now the little mouse began brandishing the stick at her for he thought one doom had replaced another.  Mirabella backed away to indicate her gentle nature and invited him for breakfast, but the mouse completely misunderstood and made a dash for the safety of the gorse and as he disappeared from sight, Mirabella could hear the faint shouts of “Papa’s home,” from his joyful family awaiting their protector’s return.  She promised herself that she would return with a basket of provisions for the family, later in the day.  Now close to home and dawn approaching, her thoughts turned to breakfast.