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Not Uma Thurman, but an Unidentified Munching Animal. While on a business conference call (stressing business here), my cell phone rang. It was my wife upstairs. "A strange animal is in the apple tree! (Everybody panic!)" I watched the tree for a while from a nearby window and there it was, a non-turkey, non-deer, non-rabbit animal. Now is the time for reader participation. What the hell was it? Eyewitnesses claim it was the size of a very fat cat with a reddish belly, brown coat and dark brown tail. It may have had some white on its face (or not) or a lighter colored face. Fact is, it was fat and not a squirrel or raccoon. It was crawling out onto thin branches to get apples and almost falling. Any guesses?

After all the extensive research I could do in 4 minutes and the countless emails I received on the subject (countless == zero), I have determined that the mystery animal that attacked our defenseless apple tree was a woodchuck. Everybody panic! At least a woodchuck won’t dart out in front of me at 3:45am.

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Daisy (our new puppy) had to widdle in the middle of the night. It was my turn, so I put on her leash and went out the front door with the light on. We only walked about 15 steps when the sound of "big rushing animal" stopped us cold. We must have looked ridiculous as she and I stood there like meat popsicles watching a giant bunny (okay, hare) bolt from the house to the woods only five feet in front of us. At the time, I was completely dazed and nothing registered for at least 15 seconds. By the time I got back to my bed I was thinking "what if it had been a bear?" Of course, there aren’t any bears in Ithaca. Right?

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Fall does a lot more than bring cool relief to those of us fed up with steaming hot days. You burnout surfers out there are thinking that as a northeast newbie I’m going to go on and on about amazing fall color. I won’t, well not a lot anyway. It is beautiful but it goes so quickly. One windy day and poof! away goes the facade. My amazement should die with the leaves (especially since I had to rake them all up with the "help" of a 4 year old - see pic) cute pile killer but it doesn’t. Everything is suddenly exposed. And when I say everything, I mean "everything".

The privacy of our house has disappeared. The uncovered windows that gave such beautiful views of a private verdant landscape now feel like fishbowl glass. I plainly see the neighbor’s old trailer that used to be well-shrouded behind his house. I see into windows of houses on another street as plainly as if they were next-door neighbors. Junk wood piles, rusty machinery, a power sub-station besiege me on almost every side. If I had seen these things in the summer when we bought the house, would I have signed the papers so fast?

I would have because along with the detritus are remarkable gems. Surprise birds’ nests occupy trees adjacent to our house and punctuate the bare treescape. What was once the dark mass of South Hill where Ithaca College sits as a crown seems on fire from late color trees by day and newly exposed streetlights by night. Birds and squirrels can no longer hide in the canopy and the larger deer creep closer to find food near the house.

A bit of snow is due this week, not unusual for the area, but another adventure for us. It is as yet another turning point. Much of what has been exposed will vanish again. Snow-laden nests will slowly disintegrate from the trees and junk piles will become simple mounds of snow. New, colder, discoveries will emerge. What they are, I can only imagine.

Important Definitions for the Winter Illiterate (like me)
Flurry: A period of light snow with little sweeping or shoveling required. Could be accompanied by the occasional screams of surprised motorists.
Freezing rain: Rain that freezes on impact with a sufficiently cold surface. This can cover trees in a uniform layer of very clear, shiny ice – a beautiful phenomenon (unless you own a car, are camping, or need to get to work), though excessive accumulation can break tree limbs and utility lines, causing utility failures and a rise in insurance premiums.
Lake-effect snow: Produced when cold winds move across long expanses of warmer lake water, picking up water vapor which freezes and is deposited on the lake’s shores. Best viewed from inside a lake-front summer home with single-pane windows and no heat.

more at Wikipedia…

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My neighbor hates leaves and, since she is retired, she has all the time in the world to contemplate this animus. Her hatred extends all the way into my yard, I discovered recently, where she hates my leaves for me. For some reason I am supposed to rake and gather up the leaves in the corner of my property by a specific date - according to her. I don’t know why. The leaves aren’t doing any damage and more will fall soon, but this feels familiar.
In California we have the same thing with grass. Uncut, un-edged, unpolished grass is grounds for lawsuits and divorces. It was the primary topic of conversation back in my neighborhood. Lawn wars raged and if you fell foul of the local volunteer lawn police, woe be unto you. One neighbor took it upon himself to send his gardeners over to cut another’s yard when they were away. This would be seen like a neighborly gesture in a lot of places. Not in California. When they returned the man acted as if the neighbor had ravished his cat.
To make peace with my neighbor, I have called the town and found out that they will pick up leaves on November 5th free of charge (make a note of this all you future Ithacans). On the 4th I promise to get rid of those despicable leaves. Will someone remind me, please?
This week’s bonus!
You would think that a chain like Gimme! Coffee near an ivy league university of all places would get the spelling right on something as simple and permanent as this…
Someone should invent some food or drink thing that makes the mind more alert. Can’t somebody somewhere do that? You will make a lot of money. I promise.

This week’s bonus!
You would think that a chain like Gimme! Coffee near an ivy league university of all places would get the spelling right on something as simple and permanent as this…
Someone should invent some food or drink thing that makes the mind more alert. Can’t somebody somewhere do that? You will make a lot of money. I promise.

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Ok Californians, you think you are ready to move here because your hyper-sensitive taste buds can deal with iceburg lettuce instead of the real stuff? What about bugs? Yes, they eat bugs. Check out the proof. See the happy youngster chowing down? They love them so much, they have a festival at Cornell every year to celebrate called Insectapalooza. This young man had two cookies and two crickets on their own. The photographer somehow resisted the tasty temptation.
While you are visiting this winter to see if you can take the snow, you might want to eat at a famous restaurant where they don’t purposely serve bugs. Go to Moosewood (but I’d check the salad carefully if I were you).
Ithaca Quote of the Day: "Ithaca has two seasons: winter and construction."

…And one more thing. I have been trying to spot a Northern Flicker near our house but I never would have expected one to knock on the window. This beautiful woodpecker decided to let us know it was here the other day by tapping on the kitchen window nearest the woods while we were eating breakfast. I wish I’d had the camera ready, but I can’t remember ever having a camera and a bowl of cereal in close proximity. The photo on the right is on generous loan and does not show the exact markings of the bird I spotted but you get the idea.

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For those of you thinking of moving here from California, be warned. That stuff that comes out of your lawn sprinklers actually falls from the sky here. Really! It also doesn’t shut off after 30 minutes which can be a real bummer.
Here’s another brutal discover. Check out the photo of my windshield. Looks like someone sneezed then tried to wipe it off with their hairy forearm. That stuff is called ice. Go to your kitchen and open your freezer. See that stuff you make frozen margaritas with? Imagine that on your windshield. Strange, I know. Here’s the really scary part. That’s just from a light overnight frost.
In a related story, our Prius got a scrape on the right side of the front bumper. I took it to a body shop and the guy told me to come back in the spring. Why? He took one look at my California plates and predicted that this winter I was bound to hit a deer or slide into something hidden under a snowbank. I might as well wait and get it all fixed in March. What a nice guy.

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The contemptuous Ig Nobel prize recently landed on the desk of a Cornell researcher. Brian Wansink spent his time proving something that we couldn’t have possible known without science proving it: we eat because the food is there. REALLY? Gosh!

He took a bowl of soup, rigged it so that it continuously refilled, then stuck a hungry student in front of it. The soup loving student (obviously) did what any student does in front of free food: gobbled it down like a maniac. Incredible!

Now where is the follow up study proving that gobbling down endless bowls of soup makes students have to wee? That might even top this one.

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In Ithaca, we all live somewhere that’s not Ithaca. Long-time residents always talk "neighborhoods" to each other and "Ithaca" to outsiders. "I live in Belle Sherman, Fall Creek, South Hill, Northeast. Oh, you don’t live here? Then I live in Ithaca. Have you seen the falls yet?" To an outsider like me it’s a bit of a chuckle because you could throw a rock from the center of some neighborhoods and hit a house in the center of another.

A couple recently told me they lived in Cayuga Heights (known for some pricey homes) as we stood outside of their house which didn’t look particularly pricey. The odd thing was, we weren’t in Cayuga Heights. I am sure we were standing in Northeast in the town of Dryden, but who knows? It seems there is a marker for some boundary every 50 yards around here. Ithaca is defined by boundaries: the city, the town, the village, the neighborhood. Was it a sad case of neighborhood or village envy or just locals knowing better than the map?

BTW, I now live on West Hill. I wouldn’t say it’s the best, because I haven’t lived here long. However, I have turkeys in my front yard and a view. That’s pretty cool compared to where I used to live.

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Nothing endears you to a new place like making great discoveries. Daisy the puppy (now 15 weeks old) has discovered the culinary delight of deer poop. Obviously it is a delicacy beyond compare. So nice, in fact, it’s worth picking up in her mouth and transporting closer to the front door where she can eat it in comfort. We now have code words for this, "don’t kiss the dog!"

It was during one of her forays too far from the house in search of a new pile of poop that she made an even greater discovery. I was trying to get her to return in that intelligent way that all untrained pet owners do by walking or running toward the dog then stopping and calling their name so angrily that it’s a wonder the dog doesn’t run off for good. My plan was working so well that she was moving, but in the opposite direction per the scientific theory of angry owner - smart dog unattraction: age of owner times the velocity of the owner toward dog, plus anger of the owner divided by the age of the dog [((a x vt = ev) + ao) / ad]. Just as I decided that a food-based approach may work better, she became excited about a new discovery but by now I was heading back to the house for her food bowl.

Every dog owner knows that absolutely full food bowls attract absolutely but owners are often not as smart as their dogs and I wasn’t getting much attention from her while waving around an empty food bowl. In my frustration, I stormed toward her again. This WAS going to work, dammit! Suddenly she looked up and I could see this new thing in her mouth. It was brown, furry, and about a foot long. My mind automatically ran through a list of likely candidates. The best one being a discarded dog toy from the previous owner. The worst one was unspeakable.

I immediately regretted my litany of "dinner time!" and "hungry?" calls when she proudly ran toward the house with the mysterious fuzzy stick in her mouth. I yelled over and over again, "Not in the house! No! Not in the house!" and bolted toward the front door but only arrived after she was already through the door, up the stairs and standing in the kitchen. I pleaded with her not to drop it, whatever it was, but she had to drop it to get her food. So I am a moron. Enjoy the photos of the desiccated squirrel carcass. Someone asked me what I did with it after I took the pictures. Simple. I used a shovel to launch it over the stream next to our house and as far into the woods as it would go. My deer poop catapult now does extra duty as a dead squirrel launcher.

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Ithaca may not be on the list of top 5 greenest cities and towns in the US, but this place makes a real effort. In spite of the 5 SUV drivers who live here (you know who you are, you BASTARDS!!!!) individuals and the city make an effort to reduce their impact on the planet. Here are the top 3 examples for those who are just discovering how innovative this town can be:

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