Month: May 2026

CAT POPULATION

/ janpriddyoregon / 5 Comments

I was reading an upbeat story about a species of dove native to a Pacific island that had become extinct in the wild since 1972 due to human activity and human-introduced species. Cats are often cited as the cause of the birds’ extinction, but the real damage to the birds’ survival had been domestic sheep that destroyed their habitat, explained a scientist with Mexico’s Institute of Ecology who is leading habitat restoration efforts on the island. The cats merely finished off an already decimated population. What is missing may be another cause, too often ignored: human-introduced rats.

“I hear you have an opening?” Leakey invited herself into our home a couple of weeks after Zora Neale Hurston Cougar Cat, “Zora,” died at age 19. It was January and we learned that Leakey with two other cats had been dumped the previous late summer. There had been sitings, but the cats were shy. My theory was that the cats had managed well enough, feasting on wild rodents until winter when the chipmunks were estivating. By the time she showed up at our door, Leakey was starving, weighing less than half what she should. She quickly put on weight with us, but never lost the habit of hunting. Leakey had a small meow and a loud purr and developed a love/hate relationship with our Saluki, Yeti. She was gentle and sweet-tempered but also had the longest and sharpest claws I have ever seen on a domestic cat. Rodents were her prey of choice and like Zora before her, she often ate her catch, but not the rats laid out for Gary to dispose of. [I did try to coax the other abandoned cats to join the family, but no. Only Leakey.]
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CONTROL

/ janpriddyoregon / 7 Comments

On Monday, Gary and I covered at least ten miles. I ran two of them. Wednesday I ran three miles and we walked. I scheduled a 3-mile run for this morning, but Gary wasn’t feeling well so I went out alone. I’d decided to run two miles instead of three. How many did I run? One. I came home and worked for a while, and then I lay down. I felt rotten too. We tested for Covid and that was negative, and we’re feeling better after hot showers.

I generally introduced assignments with a story, so here it is: Before we married, and while we were both students at the University of Washington, Gary and I managed a once-notorious apartment building in the University District known locally as Big Pink. The FBI and the Seattle Police came several times while we managed the building, but the last of the prostitutes had just left before we moved in, and the last drug dealer accidentally set fire to his kitchen soon after, so he was gone soon enough. This was in the early 1970s, and my memory is not entirely reliable, but what I’ll write what is still vivid and accurate.

One of two knobs I put on the bottom drawer of a pie chest we bought out of an old barn—made by someone who did the Bellevue Arts and Crafts Fair beginning in the 1970s. The other has a woman’s face. These porcelain works combined simple shapes with molds of antique pieces and applied bits. Our first grandchild was fascinated as a toddler. I remember the artist’s name as David Keenes, but that seems to be incorrect. I’d hoped that the sugar bowl I have, also made by the same artist, would be stamped with a name. No such luck. It has TAR and KSM. Then I checked the parrot coffee cup I got for Gary back in the day and it is stamped DK.
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WILL BOB FOR AGATES

/ janpriddyoregon / 4 Comments

On beach runs, I cannot resist the amber agate, striped limpet, or rare bit of glass. I circle, bend to pluck them from the ground, and bring them home. I pile stones on the coffee table, line limpets on the kitchen counter, and upstairs too, beside the sink and on either side of my computer—the irregular translucent quartz and smooth flat ovals of jasper and agate. The baby sand dollars. Eventually, they find their place in bowls and jars. A couple of decades ago I collected more than a dozen Coach bags by bidding on Ebay. I carry a flat red bag on weekends. I pack another large bag for overnights. But there is also the brown bag I bought for my first teaching job. The rest were pointless accumulation. My mother would have understood.

Do you see the eagle at the headland a mile and some north of our home? She used to rest in a snag, but lately she’s chosen a higher perch.
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CROSSING TO SAFETY

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When I cross the street I look both ways, even when I’m in a crosswalk, even with there is a light telling me I may, and I look both ways even at a crossing of two one-way streets where I shouldn’t have to look. Drivers in the early morning aren’t always paying attention to someone like me.

People like me are concerned about where our country is headed, but first: Safety while running.

On our way home from the Farmers’ Market,last Saturday morning, I noticed my favorite rose was already blooming. This pink climber is a “volunteer”—that is, no one deliberately planted it in the narrow crevice between sidewalk paving and concrete building. However it sprouted, it’s grown to be enormous! It is also gorgeous, as is the woman at right. Gary called out that I wasn’t taking a photo of her but the rose, and she laughed. She’d moved out of the frame by then, but I wish I had a photo of that grin!
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BABY SAND DOLLARS

/ janpriddyoregon / 1 Comment

Coming back from my run on this morning, I saw a crow standing well out on the shore in about an inch of water. I gave the bird a bad time about that. “What are you doing out there? That’s not your place. You don’t belong there.” The crow was indifferent to my chiding, but I went on a bit more. “Get in here!” Then the crow turned her head and I saw her red beak and realized she was a black oystercatcher. I had to apologize.

I arranged my finds on the railing of what we call “The Cat Deck” though we no longer have a cat. Most of what I found this morning plus four spices of limpet, scallops of two kinds, a round button of rust (iron, rusted clear through), “Ugly clams,” and the back shells and one head shell of chitons that we call “butterflies.”

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SAFETY

/ janpriddyoregon / 4 Comments
The white lacecap hydrangea, above, was near where we entered the south end of massive Forest Park in Portland (more than 5,100 acres). The Rose Garden is within Forest Park and the extensive Japanese Garden, the zoo, second growth and old growth forest trees, and more than 80 miles of trails. A former coastal neighbor has a bronze plaque in the Rose Garden. Sometimes I run up to the roses—a hard uphill route, run loops up and down through the garden past thousands. of roses.

It’s May Day. I hope you find an opportunity to walk near a garden, into a garden, a place a little bit untamed, wild, and a place to find a quiet place to feel safe.

When I was a teenager, I used to sneak out of the house at night. I suppose a lot of teens did that back in the day. Maybe some still do. I didn’t sneak out to be with a boyfriend or any friend. I didn’t go to parties or score drugs. I walked to be alone and think. I went walking in the dark entirely by myself because I was miserable most of my high school years and walking in the dark was a comfort. I’d walk a few miles on the gravel shoulders of suburban roads and go home to bed.

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