Living in the country for the summer presents me with a lot of "free" time. I LOVE that ! But being the type of person who always feels the need to be doing something I find myself involved in some crazy projects. I have cleaned off the work bench in the garage, sorting tools and rearranging lots of junk. There were the 2 summers I spent "organizing" all the crap in the small garage so that The Man could have a yard sale. (That never happened). Then there was the summer that The Man decided he wanted to sell a bunch of stuff so I took pictures and posted them on Facebook Market Place. That was a HUGE pain in the butt thanks to all the dealings with crazy people and having to ship all the crap once it was bought. The Man finally decided that it really wasn't worth all HIS time so that project was scrapped.
This year is the Year of The Turkey. For the last several years I have entertained myself with collecting feathers that the wild turkeys, sand cranes and numerous small birds have dropped. It is incredible how many feathers I collect on any given day. The turkeys should be totally bald considering how many of their feathers I have collected over the past 3 years. It's been a great way of getting myself out side and wandering all over the property. But there are only so many feathers that I can display in vases, cups and glasses before the house is over run with them. I have taken a bunch to Florida to display down there. We had feathers in every room of the house and I still had bags and bags full of all different colors and sizes. I couldn't just throw them out so I decided I was going to make a turkey feather wreath. The wreath is almost done but I have NO idea where I will put it since it turned out to be MASSIVE. I think it's pretty awesome but that's only because I made it.
Getting back to my collecting of feathers . . . We will be sitting in the kitchen looking out on the back of the property and Eagle Eye Man will spot a feather way out in the field. He has the eyes of a hawk. I can't see the field no less a feather lying on the grass. But out I go as he directs he toward the feather. It's a fun game. Each day I take a long walk around to see what I can find. Some days there are no feathers, some days I need a bag to put them all in.
The turkeys have a set route that they take each day so I usually start there. Another good spot to find feathers is on the driveway out to the mail box. It seems that the turkeys walk back and forth through the woods crossing the drive way in a couple of places. I usually find at least one feather along there.
The other day I was walking out to the mail box late in the afternoon when I say a big feather right on the driveway. As I picked it up I noticed a beautiful white feather in the woods, just a few feet from where I was. I don't normally go into the woods because of ticks and snakes and bears but this feather was too good to pass up. I walked the couple of feet into the woods, picked up the feather and then continued on to the mail box. When I returned to the house with the mail and my 2 prize feathers I put everything on the. kitchen table where The Man was sitting. I sat down opposite him as we went through the mail. Seconds later my arm started to itch, then my neck, then my head and back. I looked down at the table and saw a bunch of teeny tiny dots moving around on the table surface. I told the man we had bugs on the table and he of course told me I was wrong. I started trying to squish the little buggers but they wouldn't die no mater how hard I pressed on them. That made me start thinking maybe they were fleas. But where would fleas come from? I finally got old Eagle Eye to see the bugs and he pronounced that they were fruit flies. The facts that they were tan and fruit flies are black, these bugs had NO wings so they could not fly, and there was NO fruit anywhere that they would have come in on, Sherlock Holmes still insisted that the bugs were fruit flies. All this transpired while I continued to itch and scratch. I got some rubbing alcohol and tried killing them with that. No luck ! So I went for the big guns and got the can of insect spray. As I was spraying the table and chair The Man said, "Maybe they came in on one of the feathers." DUH !!!!! Sure enough, the. beautiful white feather was teaming with little bugs. I grabbed the feather and threw it out the door and then sprayed the hell out of it and the rest of the kitchen. Next I went into the shower and got all the bugs off me while The Man took my clothes and washed them in a HOT water wash in the washing machine.
Thankfully we seem to have killed every last one of the little buggers but I couldn't stop thinking about what they were. I went on line and googled Bird Feather Mites and sure enough there they were looking exactly like what was crawling all over the feather. How I ever thought of the word "mite" is beyond me. Thankfully out of the 3 types of bird mites these were the least problematic. They are harmless to humans and were easy to kill. Why this one particular feather was crawling with them I don't know. Maybe because it was in the woods ? Who knows ! But now every time I pick up a feather I look at it VERY closely to make sure it doesn't have any hitch hikers on it.
As for the lovely white feather . . . I burned it in the fire pit !
No comments:
Post a Comment