Ducks and Geese

Today I visited the lake where Mary (Mean Mary) and I left Baby. Baby was the little female duckling from the Big Red Barn video – the duckling that stowed away in the suitcase at the video’s end. She was a full grown duck when we left her at the lake, a lake teaming with waterfowl, so we hoped she’d be okay. We don’t have a pond at our place, just a little pool I’d built for her, and we were afraid it would be inadequate come hot weather. She just loved clean, cool water.

 

The first time we went back to check on her, she was with a family of 13 geese. At that point we searched the entire lake and found only geese – about forty – and not a single duck. But she seemed happy swimming around with this group, so we left her there.

 

I continued to check on her regularly and she was always with the geese. They had totally accepted her and she looked beautiful and healthy. Being solid white, she stood out and was always easy to locate among those droves of grey geese, but I was worried about what would happen if the geese migrated. Some geese do stay year round in Tennessee, but I wasn’t sure these ones would.

 

After the first cold spell, I hurried over to see if she was alone. There she was swimming around with 11 geese. All the other geese had left. One of the geese seemed to be her special friend. Every time she’d veer off a foot or two, it would be right beside her. I hoped maybe this group was going to winter there.

 

A short time later we had another cold spell, a harsher one. I rushed to the lake and didn’t find any birds at first. Finally I saw her – swimming happily around with one very-attentive, grey gander. He’d stayed behind when the rest of the geese flew south, and now he and Baby had the entire lake to themselves. I’ll keep checking on her, but whatever happens now, I’ll always be glad I released her. She’s had eight months to live wild and free!

The wonderful, terrible power of words

2Chronicles 32:7-8: Be strong and courageous, be not afraid nor dismayed for the king of Assyria, nor for all the multitude that is with him: for there be more with us than with him:

With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the LORD our God to help us, and to fight our battles. And the people rested themselves upon the words of Hezekiah king of Judah.

Upon hearing Hezekiah’s words of hope, the people rested from their worries. That is the wonderful, terrible power of words! Words can tear down and destroy or they can lift up. Our words of comfort and hope can often accomplish more than our greatest acts of charity. And if we are the ones being hurt, we can go straight to God’s Holy Word and find all the words we need. They will change everything—God’s words of power and love.

Another dead coffee maker, euthanized by sledge hammer and reconstructed by desperation!

Why doesn’t anyone make a coffee pot under $20 that lasts for more than a few months? No matter what brand I purchase, they still only last until their warranty’s defunct. These manufacturers know their stuff, that’s for sure. They can set the life of a commodity right down to hours and minutes. Of course I could go out and buy a more expensive model, but what if it died just as quickly?

I disassembled each of my last three coffee makers in an attempt to get more life out of them. In each case I discovered the malfunction had nothing to do with an electrical disconnection or clogged tubes. They had simply been built with cheapo electric elements that didn’t last.

Now I’m putting to rest my newest one, in the picture above. It lasted two months and it wasn’t created disassemble-friendly. A sledgehammer convinced it to cooperate. Again it was simply that the electric element (the one that sends the water up the tube) had grown feeble. The actual hot plate part of it still worked ... and it was with that I began my experiments, or should I call it a creation?

I placed the coffee pot on the warmer (the only portion the sledge left intact), and filled the paper-lined plastic filter basket with grounds enough for 12 cups of coffee. I boiled 12 cups of water on the range and poured in slowly over the grounds. Half an hour later I was still trying to get the coffee to run through to the pot below. The grounds must have turned to glue because they wouldn’t let the water pass. The basket was about to overflow, the pot below was only half full, and no liquid was dripping.

Starting over again with only half the amount of coffee and boiling water, I ran into the same problem. I burnt my fingers and spilled coffee and grounds all over the counter trying to close the top of the paper filter and squeeze the liquid out.

At that point I resorted to one of my ancient cookbooks, 1931, to learn what I could about preparing coffee the old fashioned way – by boiling it. It traitorously informed me right away that boiled coffee wasn’t any good and that drip coffee was the best. And all the time I’d thought my new method was drip—only it had just stopped dripping. I guess that made it boiled coffee or possibly squeezed coffee.

I gathered all my loose pieces and tried again, only this time I found a metal container that would hold six cups of water and punched tiny holes in the bottom to allow dripping. With the glass coffee pot sitting on the heating pad, topped by a lined filter basket of coffee grounds, topped by a now-leaky can of six cups of fresh boiled water I watched my experiment take place.

In five minutes the coffee was ready—excellent, smooth coffee! Maybe I should see about a patent???