Peak

The pendulum swings far and back
Too many babies, what will we all eat?
Suddenly the switch, another panic attack
Now too few to support Wall Street
We wait in running cars in the drive-thru line
Wanting our turn to order fast food
It’s sunny through the smog and we feel just fine
The weather’s getting stranger, the world in a mood
Maybe we’ve peaked while driving around
Who will take care of us when we are old?
Peaked at the drive-thru, going down without a sound
An AI wonders at the price of gold
This might be as good as it gets
Maybe an AI will keep a few of us as pets

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: drive-thru.

I am Elwha

Mother is cutting our food again. Sol Duc and I would rather eat through the day whenever we feel like it AND out of each other’s bowls. She picks up my bowl sometimes! Then the other bowl is empty and there is NOTHING!

As you can see, I continue to offer my favorite things in exchange for food. Mother took platy, but she just rinsed her in the sink. I got her back when she dried. Sometimes if I drop toys in the puddle, the little ants come. They do not taste good. They are not good food. Sol Duc and I persist, though.

I may put the finger box back on the small noisy sky thing setting. Since Mother won’t give us more food. She did get a new water thing. I am not sure about it. I would rather have food.

Ragtag Daily Prompt: puddle.

No tomatoes today

No tomatoes today. Squash, yes, but it’s a long time to tomato season. But the squash is delicious!

I went to a March 17 party. I wanted to bring a vegetable and looked at my Immigrant cookbook, but potatoes were already taken. I took squash baba ghanoush and it was delicious!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: tomatoes.

Bonfire metabolism

We are having our first real cold snap, with snow and lots of accidents two evenings ago. We have Anna’s hummingbirds, who can over winter. By yesterday morning, the temperature had dropped to 17 degrees F. Both of my hummingbird feeders were frozen.

I went out to wrap a hot towel around one. The front-of-the-house Anna’s buzzed me, inches from my face, to let me know she is HUNGRY and the food IS NOT AVAILABLE. The hot towel didn’t work, so I took the feeder in for a bit. She didn’t like that at all.

This looks pretty silly, but success!

The tiny feeder is one to hold in my hand. I have three, so I rotated them during the day to keep thawed food. Anna Front still spent energy chasing other hummingbirds away. She doesn’t look too upset, does she?

Anna’s hummingbird guarding her feeder and grooming in a rhododendron

The photos and video were taken through my window from my desk.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bonfire.

Berries

These are the berries the robins eat in late January, early February, when there isn’t anything else to eat. I don’t think they like them that much, but it’s what is left. They will eat them from the top of the tree to the bottom outside my clinic window, with a dozen robins in the tree at once.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

Peace and strudel!

After the Tweetle Beetles battle with their paddles in a puddle in a bottle on a noodle eating poodle, peace declared, they eat oodles of flapdoodles and noodles and share it with their poodle, who brings raddled strudel. Paddles down, Tweetle Beetles peace the poodle with flapdoodles and sing “Praise for peace and strudel!”

Wrong Dr. Seuss book: the Tweetle Beetles are in Fox in Socks. But this book is in my Little Free Library today, hooray!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: flapdoodle!

Food needs two

Ok, so what menu did I choose for my friends with food needs, as listed in the previous post.

First course: Sweet Pea soup. The color is vivid and almost lurid. My guests look worried until they taste it. It tastes like spring! Butter, onions, broth and frozen sweet peas, just cooked. My guests go from worried to asking for seconds.

Second course:

Lentils baked with sausages. This is also not a gloriously pretty dish. Again, my guests love the taste. Lentils, a little red wine, butter, onions, bay leaf, sausages, thyme and baked. Yum.

As well as:

Roasted Ronde de Nice Squash with California rice and Early Girl tomatoes. Except I did not make the rice, I couldn’t get farmer cheese and the tomatoes were varied and from the store. And a different kind of squash! This is from a cookbook new to me: Community Table, Recipes for an Ecological Future. The sweet pea soup is from a cookbook that I’ve had for forty years and the lentils are from memory, a recipe a friend taught me in the 1980s.

Dessert is fruit salad and chocolate. With tea.

No liver, gluten, shellfish, giant rubbery cooked mushrooms, anchovies, dried fishies or grubs.

Voila! Food needs satisfied!

Food needs

I am having a few friends over and am checking to see if there are any food needs. Since my March 2021 pneumonia, I can’t eat gluten. Weird, huh? But antibodies tend to rise as we get older, darn them. And there can be a rising baseline. Double darn.

Anyhow, I have some funny friends. My query “Is there anything you don’t eat?” got these responses:

“I don’t eat anchovies or dried fishies or grubs.”

“We eat everything in moderation.”

“shellfish, giant rubbery cooked mushrooms….”

“liver”

They crack me up! I think I invited the right people.

Now, let’s see, what is my menu, with no liver, gluten, shellfish, giant rubbery cooked mushrooms, anchovies, dried fishies or grubs? Tough, huh? Pretty narrow range left.

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I took the photograph at the Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Race in September 2022. Pretty earnest discussion going on among an interesting group.

The pinch

I am Elwha.

Mother has relented, a little. I could feel the pinch of hunger in my belly. She seemed to be ignoring the offerings in my bowl. My sister has helped. She is able to climb up and get the gloves with the delicious animal smell. I do not know what the animal is, but it makes me more hungry than ever. She brought me a glove from high on the shelf and added it to the bowl after we had our sparse morning feeding! I was starting to feel as if my belly was pressed against my ribs! My sister is still rounded. She is smaller and doesn’t have my needs.

Yesterday I talked to mother all day and she finally relented and gave us extra food! We were out in the bird watching box for a good half hour. My sister talks about zippers but she is not able to manipulate them to let us out. We would very much like to eat one of those birds! Or four. Or more. Some, the gold ones, are very small. It is cold out and the sky wets on us, so I am more hungry than ever!

My sister would run out of the bird watching box in a moment. I would catch a bird, but then go back in. Those cars and trucks going by terrify me! Especially the recycling one and the buses. They want to devour me, I know it. Mother does not seem to fear them.

I feel better with the extra food. I hope that mother continues to give it to us. At least until we catch those birds.

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: pinch.