Broken routine

Let's see, first the ordinary. Something that thrills me every time I see one is a great blue heron flying through the trees along the creek side. With their 6' wingspan it's a wonder they can navigate a safe path through them. They're almost as flighty as smaller birds; it's difficult to approach one closely, so I rarely get a chance to shoot one. This one was comparatively cooperative, holding still after it landed on a creek spanning log as I approached to within 30 yards. I'm not fast enough to catch one in the air in the trees.

A couple days ago I wandered over to the south branch of the creek as it wanders through the wetland area. A large, tan bird flew up from the ground to a tree branch. Silently. An adult owl. I made the mistake of looking away for a second; when I tried spotting its perch again I couldn't see it in all the clutter. Looking further afield, I spotted this guy, another owlette, this one growing in his flight feathers. After taking a couple shots I went off to look for the adult. The floor of the woods is covered with last year's cottonwood tree leaves and lots of deadfall, small and large. I just can't walk with any measure of stealth. Up ahead an owl left a tree headed away from me. It wasn't the tree I thought it to be in. I got a bead on its landing spot and headed off again. Again, an owl took off heading away from me. It was the first one I'd seen judging from the spot it had left. With that and the distance to their landing spots I gave up on trying to get a picture of either -- I was never going to get close enough for anything good. As it turns out, all but three pictures I'd taken of the juvenile owl were badly out of focus. I junked those. I may have to work on my manual focus skills in the near future; they suck at the moment.

And now the breaks from routine. Our neighbor, Vel, called. She was having woodpecker problems. Every day from 7-10am and again from 5-7pm they were pecking at her north-facing wall. She had talked to the Audabon Society and a pest control company about how to rid herself of them. They basically told her she couldn't as they are federally protected. I was floored. They had pecked two 3" plus holes into her attic space and she couldn't do anything about it? What a bunch of crap! She had purchased a motion sensing owl and was wondering how to mount it, but had also heard that using mirrors and moving, shining things would keep the birds away. I took down a handfull of old AOL distribution CDs I hadn't thrown out. We made a bunch of noise, she pounding on a downspout and me on the attic wall in an attempt to scare any bird inside out. Either we scared it stiff or (we're hoping) there were no birds inside at the time. I mounted a couple CDs over each hole, overlapped to prevent insect, especially paper wasp, entry, then hung a few other CDs from the exposed rafter. Vel reported no pecking that evening or the next morning. Now, however, in anything but a very gentle breeze (this is a windy time of year) the hanging CDs are being blown into the attic side making as much racket as the birds, without their clock-wise regularity. They're disturbing Vel's sleep. I've an idea on how to limit their swing and may be implementing it this afternoon.

I gave my diabetes counselor three weeks of blood glucose readings on the new insulin regimen. That calls for me to take a reading before each meal to determine how much insulin to take at that meal. That's right -- four shots a day, three with varying amounts of insulin. The good news is that the BG control is better than it's ever been. The bad is that the BG crashes just about every morning before lunch no matter how little insulin I take at breakfast time. It also occasionally crashes in the afternoon. Crashes aren't fun. The first sign of a crash is a funny feeling in my lower legs, and occasionally a numb tongue -- figure that one out. If nothing is done, I break out in a sweat which will leave a tee shirt all but drippy wet. Other crashed symptoms are loss of balance and confusion. The solution/prevention for a bad crash is to eat one or two small rolls of Necco wafers or packages of candy Valentine's day hearts. A 10 ounce bottle of orange juice also works wonders. If the crash isn't caught in time things can get ugly.

A couple Sundays ago, one hit especially fast as I was trying to find something to watch on TV. I was so confused I didn't know if I was supposed to eat candy or shoot insulin (that would have been bad). I was unable to move; I must have passed out. Fran came back from church and found me pretty much unresponsive on the couch. She managed to wake me enough to drink some OJ and eat some Neccos. My first memories coming out of it were eating the second roll of candy. Thank goodness she knows what to do! After that I picked up a Glucagon kit. It contains a hormone which counteracts insulin. When used blood glucose rises rapidly. It's meant to be used if I can't be aroused enough to drink or eat. Fran's concerned about using it as it is an injection. She knows how to inject, I've had her inject the insulin a couple times, but she's worried about eliminating the air from the syringe. Lessons are forthcoming, I guess. If we're lucky, she'll never have to use the knowledge.