When the learner is ready. . . .

Mid-afternoon. It's been a long day.

Sun's bright, clear-blue sky. Unseasonably warm. Out on the back deck where the January sun falls for about four hours in the afternoon, the reading is low-forties. Considering the sun's low January arc, and the thickness of the mature trees out back, I'm amazed.

Snow-melt-water's cascading off the housetop, splashing onto the deck, disappearing through the openings between the deck boards. When I close my eyes, it sounds like rain running off the roof during a torrential summer thunderstorm. Eyes open, I watch it fall in sheets from the frozen gutters 25 feet up.

In fact, the effect is strangely disorienting. On the one hand I'm well aware it's mid-January. These sounds -- especially when I close my eyes -- conjure a mid-summer downpour, minus the lightning. Yet, when I open my eyes, mature tree trunks appear starkly black against the sweep of white snow.

Clearly, it's mid-winter. Snow's still deep. Out along the shoveled brick pathway, snow-piles are shrinking so quickly I imagine I can see them dwindling away. And maybe I can. For just a moment I think about throwing on a sweat shirt, stepping into my boots, making the short trip from the garage, and sticking a yardstick into some prominent snow-pile along the path.

But I'm too lazy.

Besides which, a cloud of tiny finches swirl around the feeder, taking turns at the trough. Several fat mourning doves have joined more finches working the ground beneath. Over close to the barn, my squirrel feeder is all tails and scampers. A real crowd.

Lazy's one thing. Interrupting this banquet'd just be mean. Measuring Michigan snowfall's a lame excuse.

It's true: measuring snowfall around here may make some sense in April. Not today. Sure bet there'll be more snow the rest of January through late March. Plus: this's Michigan. Always bet on weather change. It's always bound to get worse. Well: not worse. More challenging is how we like to put it, when we're discussing weather with our pansy Indiana-Ohio families and friends.

I love watching the finches dance. The way they dart about from feeder to low-hanging branches, meet head-on in mid-air, flip around and return always gets me laughing. No mid-winter blues today.

Squirrels have their own special choreography. Years ago, I mounted a bird-feeder three feet off the ground just for them. It's like they kid around with each other, crowding each other out, hanging upside down from the feeder roof, nosing and shouldering each other out in every sort of ridiculous posture.

Sometimes there'll be a dozen squirrels crowding that low feeder, plus others hanging precariously upside-down from nearby tree-trunks. They sometimes make 10-15 foot leaps from the barn roof landing right on top of their playmates. They've long-since learned they can't make it up the glistening-smooth stove-pipes beneath the feeder the finches and mourning-doves use. Truth is the squirrels gobble up more feed than the birds.

I've cut back the close, low-hanging branches near the bird-feeder, and it delights me to see this ever-hopeful brigade of squirrels climb down these tiny branches close as they can get to the birds' feeder, then slide off and tumble kerplunk onto the soft forest floor.

In this way, these simple squirrels perform an object lesson for me. They seem never discouraged. They never give up. Makes me wonder, should I grow me a tail. . . .


I finish my third cup of coffee, consider for a moment, and decide one more won't hurt. But the past few years of aging have changed my metabolism. I eat and sleep half as much as I once did, and I'm rarely tired. Caffeine? Half don't know. Half don't care. Mostly don't think about it. Except when I know I'll be a long time on the highway -- where by some mathematical miracle, one cup of coffee generates two gallons of pee.

I'm loath to leave the sun-porch. But I finally decide the circus'll continue.

But when I get back the birds're all gone. The squirrels're way up the trees so far I can only spy a jittery tail-flip here and there.

Hmmmmnnn!? Strange. Then I see why: Alex sits quietly behind an evergreen bush just outside the seed-scatter-circle. Here and there, clustered safely among the low-hanging branches , I see my birds chattering away. Squirrels're a-chatter, racing up and down the tree trunks.

Alex's my wild under-the-deck-kitty. He's big. Black, long-haired Tom. Could be a neighbor cat. But I think he's moved in under my deck and lives off the land. Anyway, I've seen him hunt my birds. I often find small clumps of hide and feathers he's left behind after a meal.

I usually run him off gently. But there's evidence he lives under my large deck beneath the hot-tub. He's smart! It's warm there. Every once in awhile in the summer I see Alex come loping along my fence-line, one bound ahead of my neighbor's hound. He's all easy, like it's a game. I've raised a skirt around the base of my deck. It's one board short of the decking.

Alex knows this dumb bowser's one step too slow and too tall and wide to squeeze through that one-board opening. So it's all a game to him. Sometimes Alex zig-zags around trees or bounds up onto the barn roof. He's a good dog, this hound. But odds are he'll never catch Alex. If I'm around to see this chase, I usually let bowser bark awhile, then send him home across the back fence.

Alex's smart enough to act grateful -- as if I'm not smart enough to know he needs no help from me. But I'm also smart enough to know he's tryna work me for some food. I know he didn't get so solid without shrewd hunting skills. Besides-which, I feed him once he's mine.


So anyway, that's Alex. I named him Alex because he first wandered up onto my deck one day while I was soaking in the hot tub listening to noted pianist Alexis Weissenberg play several Rachmaninoff preludes. It seemed to me this sleek young kitty especially enjoyed Opus 3, Number 2 in C-sharp minor. But he hung around for nearly forty minutes preening in the sun through several opus 23, numbers, too. Right away I realized this was a cat with a good piano-ear.

So I named him Alexander Weissenberg. Alex, for short.

But back to where I was before introducing Alex: there he sat all puffed up in a round ball keeping warm, obviously awaiting his next meal.

And sure enough, a handful of finches soon wander back to the feeder. They're stickin' pretty close to the opposite side of the feeder. They've eaten down so much feed that I can see them clearly through the plastic. So can Alex. Every once in awhile his hind legs quiver.

I'm thinking: Hmmmnn!? Can Alex vault that high? Prob'ly NOT! Maybe in summertime. But can he get purchase in this snow? The low trough is maybe seven feet high. He's maybe eight feet from the upright support.

I'm tryna figure the distance of the leap he'll haveta make. . .let's see: a-squared, plus b-squared, equal c-squared. Forty-nine plus 64 equals 113. . .11x11 equals 121? Somewhere between ten and eleven feet -- straight trajectory. What're the odds. I've seen Gatz make half again that leap. Odds're in Alex's favor. Could be. . . .

The finches are getting bolder by the minute. They dart around quietly, roof-top-to-trough, and back again. Soon they're feeding in the near-side trough, apparently paying Alex no mind. His butt's quivering, his nose is down, his ears pointed directly at his prey. I can't see his face, but he must be licking his chops. I'm drawing air, quietly whistling Bye-Bye-Birdee. . . .

While I'm still considering his chances, Alex is suddenly in the air. He's so quick I hadn't seen him collect himself for the leap. He's just a black flash.

He's short by a hair, though his left paw sweeps the trough. . .just as his body smacks into the very top of the high stove-pipe. Then I'm wondering what he weighs, because the entire feeder sweeps back and forth precariously -- and I'm thinkin' he may have broken the 4x4 upright.

But it holds. Rights itself after a few awkward sways.

Off to the side, in the corner of my eye, I see the small cloud of finches on the barn-roof rise about a foot, then settle back down.

The rest of the finches settle back down on the feeder roof. All is quiet.

Alex stands for a moment with his paw raised up midway on the bottom stove pipe. He arches his back and looks up toward the feeder trough. Then he turns and settles back down on his haunches in the same ball of raised fur.

But this time, he's only five feet away. And I'm thinking:

When the learner is ready,
The teacher appears.