Idyll Banter (2003)

by Chris Bohjalian

  Ah, but these are unfertilized eggs. Hence the avis prophylactic.

  Did the contraception work? Nope. Early last month, for the third time since December 23, the veterinarian had to perform an emergency egg-in-dectomy on Rosalita. Once more the cockatiel lived, but it was clear to Rosalita's family that the little bird's eyes were, so to speak, bigger than its stomach. Something had to be done.

  And so on February 12, for the fourth time in his career, Prezant got out his teeny-tiny scalpel and his miniature clamps, and attempted a bird hysterectomy. Now, bird surgery is dicey. Not only are the organs diminutive, but a bird can only withstand anesthesia for somewhere between fifteen and thirty minutes. Consequently, a doctor has to work fast, with little room for error.

  Teo remembers spending a long chunk of that day simply murmuring to herself over and over, "Please-please-please-please-please."

  Her pleas were answered. Rosalita came out of surgery just fine, and today the family is, understandably, all atwitter. Especially Isabella.

  And the patrons at the Lincoln General Store learned once again that, if you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs.

  Chapter 4.

  IT'S NOT MIND OVER MATTER--IT'S MIND OVER MANURE

  THIS AUTUMN I fell off a horse for the first time. I've been riding for three years, and so I was due.

  I was cantering in a rutted field dotted with spindly apple trees and a few boulders the size of Volkswagens, and one second the horse and I were paralleling a fence by a road, and the next I was on the ground looking up at him as he snitched leaves off a tree beside us. I was--and this seems all too appropriate--directly beside a fresh pile of poop left by one of his pals from the stable where I ride.

  Falling was a humbling experience, though not because I have ever deluded myself for even a nanosecond that I have the slightest idea what I'm doing when I'm on a horse. I only started riding because I was researching the experience for a book, and because it struck me as one more hobby I could share with my daughter as she grew up. We ride together once a week. Over time, however, I discovered how much pleasure I, too, was deriving from riding: the sense of power and speed, the feeling of accomplishment, the reality that here was another way to indulge the mid-life demons that besiege a man once he is forty.

  No, falling was troubling for the simple reason that it revealed to me just how in thrall our bodies are to our minds. (As Yogi Berra is alleged to have said about baseball, "It's ninety percent mental. The other half is physical.")

  Without wanting to subject anyone--least of all myself--to some completely ill-advised and uninformed armchair psychotherapy, I believe I fell in part because on the way to the stable I'd been listening on the car radio to actor Christopher Reeve discuss his new book, Nothing Is Impossible, on Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

  It is difficult to think of Reeve without recalling the tragic equestrian accident in 1995 that left him a quadriplegic. This was especially true that afternoon because he and Gross were discussing both what he cannot do and the small but astonishing strides he has made as a result of vigorous physical therapy.

  And so as I tacked up the horse I kept imagining that moment years ago when Reeve was thrown from his mount. And then I saw over and over in my mind the loop of film from Gone With the Wind when little Bonnie Blue Butler takes a header off her small but energetic pony and dies.

  I was riding alone that day on a stallion named J.T. I like J.T. a lot, and not simply because he's the only male at the stable who is--and I will try to be delicate about this--intact. J.T. is an aging Morgan show horse, whose moniker is short for "Justin Time." I think the world of this animal because he has a kind disposition with inept riders like me, and because he still loves to run. I've ridden him almost exclusively this year.

  And then out of the blue I fell. I won't say I was thrown because that would imply J.T. was culpable, and it's clear this was my fault--not his. He stayed right beside me, a further indication that he hadn't meant to rocket me into space.

  But topple I did, and my back and neck were sore for a week. When I climbed back upon J.T. that day, I did so with the grace and agility of a very old man.

  I don't view riding as any more dangerous than skiing, snowmobiling, or most of the myriad ways we humans entertain ourselves. I wouldn't encourage my daughter to ride if I did. Moreover, I've had a splendid afternoon every time I've ridden J.T. since that tumble. Nevertheless, I remain struck by the way a small quiver of fear in the back of my mind sent me over the top of a horse. Apparently riding, too, is ninety percent mental. The other half's physical.

  Chapter 5.

  THE CASE OF THE CURIOUS CRUSTACEAN

  NO ONE LIKES roadkill. No one likes seeing it, driving by it, eating it, and--especially--causing it.

  And while even a PETA-dues-paying vegetarian weenie like me understands that roadkill is one of those undeniable harbingers of spring, I am careful to focus my seasonal reveries of rebirth upon the bluebird, the dandelion, and the sugarhouse steam.

  Let's face it: There is little poetry in roadkill.

  There is probably a message lurking somewhere here, but to be frank, it was neither moral outrage nor a yen for a tofu substitute for opossum pudding that inspired it.

  Rather, it was a lobster.

  Last month I was returning to Vermont from Boston. Midmorning, in the wooded stretch of Interstate 89 that rolls like waves between Concord and West Lebanon, in the breakdown lane to my right, I saw my first road-killed crustacean.

  At first I thought it was a plastic toy by the way the sun bounced off its shell, or perhaps a "happy meal" lunch box from Red Lobster.

  I slowed down to study it more closely, although I don't usually find my daughter her new toys along the side of the road--unless, of course, what happens to be lurking there is a sandbox with a big "Make me an offer!" sign.

  What led me to stop? Well, one reason was the fact my car windows were up: Had my windows been down, the smell from the roadside attraction alone would have kept me speeding along at a steady sixty-five.

  In any case, I climbed from the car, tried to breathe solely through my mouth, and stood for a moment in awe: It was a lobster all right, probably a good one-and-a-half to two pounds of shellfish.

  And, I'm sorry to say, the stench was a pretty fair indication that its heart was beating-challenged, its pincers were gripper-challenged, and its legs were movement-challenged.

  The animal, in short, was living-challenged.

  It's no mystery how a raccoon winds up inside-out by the side of the road.

  But a lobster? This was a mystery. Its claws were not rubber-banded as if it were a grocery lobster cavalierly tossed from a speeding car window. And its eyes, though lifeless, didn't look like they'd ever had that death-row gaze lobsters get after days in a holding tank.

  And so I made some inquiries. I began with Vermont's Department of Fish and Wildlife, asking law-enforcement assistant Maureen Allen how she thought the lobster had arrived on I-89.

  Her theory? First of all, she convinced me it didn't swim there, pointing out that lobsters need more salt in their water than even a highway department drops on a road.

  Then she suggested the lobster had either been left there accidentally by someone selling the animal's lobster friends by the side of the road, or someone had left the creature on the hood of his car and then sped off, leaving the shellfish in the dust.

  "You wouldn't think anyone would put a lobster on the hood of his car, but you wouldn't think anyone would put a purse there either. But people do that all the time," she said.

  Then I called the Net Result, a Burlington seafood store. Heather Wyman actually deepened the mystery when she explained that lobsters don't generally swim, they crawl--meaning the fact I was inland didn't matter!

  And, she said, lobsters can live up to three days from the ocean, if they're properly wrapped in moist seaweed or newspaper.

  So, is it conceivable this lobster had a reason for crawling nor
th, and somewhere along the way lost its seaweed slicker? As they say on Unsolved Mysteries, "No one knows for sure."

  I think, however, my favorite theory belongs to my wife, who has spent many hours lately with her nose buried in children's books: "A great but greedy bird scooped the lobster from the sea and carried him over land until he grew too heavy. And so the bird had to drop him, despite his days and days of effort."

  Chapter 6.

  AN OLD CAT'S NAME ALONE CONJURED WONDROUS MEMORIES

  EARLIER THIS SUMMER, my wife, my daughter, and I said good-bye to one of our cats, an animal who lived exactly one season shy of seventeen years. Merlin--a male with dime-a-dozen black-and-white tuxedo markings--was named by my wife and me for the minister who married us, Leslie Merlin, because he was found on our wedding day.

  For the past four years, we were giving Merlin two shots a day for diabetes, and for the past eighteen months we were insisting that he swallow a half tablet of children's Benadryl in the morning and then another half in the evening so he could breathe without wheezing like a fireplace bellows.

  Merlin was one of four cats in our house, but he was my wife's and my first together, and he outlasted enough feline sisters and brothers to fill a small wall of cages at an animal shelter. He lived longer than Cassandra, who we will remember for many things, not the least of which was the time she hid for a weekend on the top shelf of my closet when my wife and I were away and--unwilling to come down--sprinkled urine like rain down upon all my blazers and suits.

  He saw B.K.--a.k.a. Barn Kitty--come and go, the first of many cats who discovered that the couple who lived in Lincoln in the yellow house with the yellow barn next to the church could be counted on for free food and medical care, and just maybe a spot by the woodstove. When I recall B.K., I think of a Tuesday before Thanksgiving, when my wife came home from the supermarket and left a good-sized turkey on the front porch along with a couple of bags of groceries. B.K. had both the strength and the brazen self-confidence to nose the rock-hard bird down the porch steps and then try to drag it back to the barn.

  Merlin outlived his closest feline friend, Clinton. Clinton, another stray, was named for the Brooklyn street on which we found him, not our former president. On the other hand, there were evenings when--not unlike the junior U.S. senator from New York--I did imagine standing outside and yelling for Clinton to stop tomcatting around the neighborhood and come home.

  Merlin saw Ranger, another barn cat, come and go (and, truly, we do not know where that great wanderer finally went), and he lived longer by far than Matilda.

  He outlasted the dogs in the nearby houses who occasionally chased him--Fred and Alice and Barney--as well as my mother and my father-in-law, and the grandparents who attended my wife's and my wedding.

  Merlin leaves behind three feline siblings, all younger things whom he tolerated with varying degrees of haughtiness and magisterial indifference. He was, without question, the smartest cat we have had, as well as the most persnickety: He demanded a pristine litter box and then, in his later years, his very own litter box. Unlike his less-entitled peers who migrated into our home from the barn, he would actually turn up his nose at select brands and flavors of cat food. And he always took the warmest spot on the porch or the shadiest spot under the irises.

  It might be wrong to have favorites among our pets, especially since our pets are in large measure what we make of them: They represent parts of our lives, iconic shorthands and Rorschach tests, and their names alone often conjure who we were when we first took them in.

  Nevertheless, that is precisely the reason why I will miss seeing Merlin and saying his name. He was my wife's and my first cat together, and the one who could remind us both of our wedding day. Even when he was a very old man, when we would pet him or feed him or hold him in our lap while giving him his twice-a-day Benadryl, he could remind us both of what it was like to be young.

  *

  PART V

  THE GREEN--AND THEN SPECTACULARLY

  YELLOW AND RED--MOUNTAINS

  Chapter 1.

  WHY THE GREEN MOUNTAINS

  TURN RED

  I AM STANDING in the remains of a turret in Scotland's Edzell Castle, staring down into the restored Renaissance garden that a British nobleman designed four hundred years ago. This castle is a gem: It has the power of history (Mary, Queen of Scots, visited here), the aura that permeates any relic the size of a football field, and a vast garden with roses, statuary, and hedgerows trimmed to spell out the inspirational motto of the Clan Lindsay, when seen from above.

  When the British couple beside me hear that I hail from Vermont, however, the subject turns instantly to leaves. Specifically, it turns to Vermont leaves. An elderly French couple quickly chime in, wanting to share their memories of a September visit to the Green Mountains in 1979 and how they had never seen anything like the Vermont foliage. I try to steer the conversation back to the castle in which we are standing, but in the opinion of these four Europeans, the Vermont autumn is infinitely more interesting than a castle built centuries ago.

  The Vermont foliage is like that: For two or three weeks in late September and early October, the trees explode in an absolutely phantasmagoric display of color. The maples--a third of the trees in the state--turn shades of crimson and cherry and red, the birches become an almost neon yellow, and the ash becomes a purple that is as flamboyant as my young daughter's most vibrant Magic Marker. The color moves inexorably from north to south, from the higher to the lower elevations, traveling through the trees like a tsunami.

  And along with those colors come the leaf peepers. Roughly four million people visit Vermont in the autumn, almost seven times the state's population--spending close to a billion dollars, according to the state's tourism department. Several upscale bed-and-breakfast owners tell me they are likely to do a sixth of their annual business during that three-week period when the leaves may be at their best.

  Moreover, while the tourists may be visiting in large measure because of the foliage, it's not merely the colors in the trees that have drawn them: It's the notion that the whole Vermont landscape is a throwback, an unspoiled glimpse of agrarian America. The dairy farm may be beleaguered in Vermont, but some 1,600 still remain, and it is easy to find a hillside speckled with Holsteins or discover a red barn beside an elegant country skyscraper of a silo. Though the woods don't feel exactly primeval, there are numerous pockets in the state where the trees still grow thick and the daylight can disappear. And while we do have Wal-Mart now--four, in fact--we also have iconic New England greens surrounded by white clapboard churches with elongated steeples, nineteenth-century Greek Revival "cottages" with slate roofs and gingerbread trim, and Victorian homes that boast fish-scale woodwork along their front porches.

  Yet there is an irony to the foliage display the Vermont woods offers its guests every year, as well as to the notion that the state's remarkably beautiful landscape is the product of centuries of careful husbandry of the countryside. First, Vermonters almost completely deforested the state not once but twice in the last two-hundred years; second, if we hadn't leveled the forests, it is unlikely that our hillsides now would be exploding with myriad shades of red and yellow and orange.

  I grew up loathing leaves. I was raised in the sort of mannered New England suburb in which lawns were supposed to be appropriately manicured every day of the year when they weren't buried in snow, and so I spent a great many September and October weekends as a child trying to keep up with the waves of leaves that would fall to their death between our house and the cul-de-sac on which we lived. (Autumn leaves to an elementary school student must be something like the mail in December to a postal worker: The leaves just keep falling and falling, and no sooner is the yard clean than a wind in the night blankets the ground with them once again.)

  Consequently, it's probably no accident that my wife and I bought a house with few trees when we moved to a village in central Vermont. There are exactly two maple trees in our front yard,
and two more on the edge of our driveway. With the exception of a pair of lilacs, all the trees we have planted in the fifteen years we have lived here are evergreens.

  But I do love the magic of the Vermont foliage. Our house faces Mount Abraham and Mount Ellen, and the color is indeed spectacular. If there hasn't been an early snow in the higher elevations, closing the gap road through the mountains, the tour buses filled with leaf peepers will drive right past my home. The autumnal exhibit in my village is so extravagant that five Septembers ago Priscilla Presley was here with a forty-person crew and a European advertising agency to film a television commercial for Indian Summer perfume. The European director wanted perfect foliage, and the location scouts chose a dirt road and a strip of woods just south of the town. The crew's cell phones wouldn't work in our hills, and they had to depend on the lone rotary phone in the local general store--a situation that probably went from quaint to annoying between days one and four of their visit--but otherwise the shoot was successful. The leaves were particularly brilliant that year.

  I had lived in Vermont for a decade before I learned from my friend John Elder that my state's autumn beauty is the inadvertent result of man's natural rapaciousness. Elder teaches in both the English and environmental studies departments at Middlebury College. The two of us were hiking throughout the Bristol Cliffs Wilderness Area and talking about the book he was then writing about Robert Frost's appreciation for this section of the state.