Bow Discovers Rap Music

Yesterday was a big and eventful day. Bow discovered rap music.

It started out like any other day. We have been having icy mornings, with everything covered in sheet of transparent frozen water.

This is not Bow's kind of weather, and no amount of cajoling will get him to leave the warmth of the inner pen.

On days like this, Bow remains in the pen, lying on his blanket and I venture forth to see what is going on outside.

On my way to the front yard I said hello to the two cockatiels and Summer the Quaker parrot. I noticed that the female cockatiel, Queen, was trying to nest, but I did not think much of it. In our backyard, the old mourning dove nest had been covered in ice, like a nest made of diamonds.

In the front yard, every tree and bush and blade of grass was coated with ice.

By noon, however, all that ice was melting and crashing to the ground.

After lunch, I brought the iPhone into the pen with Bow, so he could see what I had seen outside. But he was having none of that. He swiftly located the YouTube app and started surfing for new videos to watch. In no time at all, he had located a rap song and began to groove to it.

It was nothing I had planned on. I was in shock! I could not stop him, and he would not give me back the iPhone until long after the spirit of the song had left him. Luckily, he had a firm grip on the iPhone the whole time he was dancing and swinging on his rope to the beat of the rap song.

Bow is growing up. He needs his own electronic device, I thought, as I was cleaning out the bird cages last night. And then I noticed something unusual in the cockatiel cage. It was an egg. But it was cracked. She must have laid it while on a high perch.

Somehow when I saw her trying to nest, I did not take Queen quite seriously enough. I thought she was just playing at being a mother. I had seen her and King mating the day before, but thought nothing of it. I mean, I considered filming it, but decided that YouTube would not approve, so I didn't. Now I was really sad that she had not had a good enough nest to protect this egg, which was undoubtedly fertilized.

In the two years that I have been taking care of the cockatiels since I took them over from Sword, I have never found an egg in the cage, even though the birds have been active as a couple. I wondered if this was a fluke, or it means that King and Queen are ready to start a family.

Last night I went to Wal*Mart with two things on my shopping list: a tablet for Bow and a nesting box for Queen.

Passing the Turing Test

Bow uses smart technology all the time. He swipes to select photos.

He watches recorded livestreams to see what I and his friend Charla have been up to while away from the pens.

He is a big fan of Lady Gaga, who excites him. But he watches Julie Andrews respectfully and quietly while she delivers a speech on the history of musical theater.

Bow has logged countless hours watching YouTube videos -- countless because they cannot be counted by the internet  bots, since Bow does not have his own account. They cannot tell if I am the one watching or Bow is. Because of this, they totally ignore the chimpanzee demographic when pitching ad space to advertisers. It seems sad that Bow's opinions and preferences should not be tallied along with everyone else's, but then I have to remind myself that there are plenty of humans who watch YouTube and whose opinions also do not count. Not everybody has a YouTube account. Many watch, but not only do they not subscribe -- there's no way that they could subscribe. And YouTube, trying to corner all the big spenders in Gen Z need to know exactly who you are in order to count your vote. Or so they think.

Livestram with Julia
https://youtu.be/KFUqOf_dmXQ
and
https://youtu.be/5Fv8UFCQGT8

But that's not really how the free market operates. The market does not need to know who paid for the bananas. It just counts how many bananas were sold, and what price they went for. Does it matter if the person watching is not human or not an adult or not a voter?

Back in the day, when I started Project Bow, I was hoping that one day, when Bow was literate and on the internet in total anonymity, he would pass the Turing test. I noted that we as humans had brains that are wired in a variety of different ways, and yet we use the same languages to communicate with one another.

We don't just anthropomorphize chimpanzees when we ascribe to them the thoughts and feelings  we would have had under the same circumstances. We do the same to our fellow man. No two brains are alike. No two have the same wiring diagram for processing language.

When I wrote the article embedded above, I was attending a conference at Dartmouth, and Sword and Bow and I were staying in rented house in Canaan, New Hampshire.

With us was the first Project Bow intern, Samina Farooqi. Since then, Samina has gotten her Ph.D, Sword has graduated from high school and is a freshman in college, and Bow is about to turn sixteen. Bow is a member of Gen Z, computer literate and internet savvy. But his input doesn't count, because he is not a subscriber.

I liked it better when the anonymity of the internet gave everyone a chance at passing the Turing test no matter who they were, how they were wired or whether they had a Google account .

Bow's Christmas Card and Gift

Bow received an envelope in the mail today. It was addressed to "Mr. Bow Katz", and there were beautiful stamps on the front.

"Look, Bow. Here is something for you. It came in the mail. Do you want to open it?" He examined the envelope and set about opening it. Then he fished something out of the card inside it. It was a red Christmas hat shaped ornament, with a bent paper clip for a hanger and a little bell at the end. This fascinated Bow so much that he almost did not notice the card.

The card said "Wishing you a furry Christmas" on the outside and inside there was a dog that barked the tune to "We wish you a Merry Christmas." In handwriting it said:: "Merry Christmas, Bow. Your friend Charla."

 Bow listened to the barking dog sing a little and then jiggled it. But the red hat ornament was what he really wanted for his own. He handed me back the card after a while, held on to the ornament, and asked to go outside.

Bow went walking around outside, human style, stomping his feet and carrying the ornament in his hand. This really impressed Leo.

Bow was very happy with this early Christmas present. It was the perfect gift!

The Loggers Next Door

This morning, things have not been so peaceful. Ever since breakfast, the neighbors next door have been logging on their section of the woods next to ours. They have every right to do this, but Bow has been very upset about it.

Bow asked me to go outside to see what was going on. I came back with this picture.

Bow would periodically go outside, display at the loggers, then come in and  ask me to go out in the front yard to spy on them.

He kept asking me to go check what they were doing out there, even though I assured him it was not on our property. "It's okay, Bow. They have the right to do that."

Bow spelled: "זה רק שזה רע"  Meaning: "It's just that it's bad."

I didn't know what to say. Maybe I read him The Lorax once too many times when he was little.

My Partially Empty Nest

In the past couple of weeks, my daughter moved out and into her college dorm, Bow and I witnessed a partial solar eclipse, and many, many wild animals presented themselves to me, as if to make up for the lost companionship. And, of course, Bow is still here.

The eclipse, such as it was, was just a momentary darkness in the pens and an odd kind of light out of doors. You can see what we saw in the video embedded below.

My daughter also witnessed the eclipse in Springfield, two hours away from here. I have visited her there once since she moved into the dorm, but it's a long drive, and I can only go in the evening, because I have to stay with Bow from sunup to nearly sundown. Lawrence has remarried and moved away, so we are currently one chimp sitter short.

So how does it feel to have a partially empty nest? I see a lot of young animals  everywhere I look on my property. This turtle has such big eyes, because it is a juvenile three-toed box turtle, only three or four years old.

This brown thrasher allowed me to get close enough to it to take a picture, because it is a juvenile who has not yet learned to fly properly. I saw it after the mowers had left, and as brown thrashers are ground nesting birds, it seems likely the nest was disturbed.

And, of course, there are always the deer. The twin fawns are the easiest of all the deer to get close to.

It's as if all of nature is trying to make up for my fledgling who has flown away. Of course, I still have one in the nest. Bow looks so peaceful when he's asleep!

Poppy Seed Muffins

Yesterday, I decided to bake some poppy seed muffins.

I let Bow lick the bowl. While the muffins were in the oven,  I looked out the window and I saw some deer.

It was the doe and the twin fawns.  I went outside to see if I could get a better look.

The doe looked at me. One of the twin fawns decided to go into the back pasture, but the other one kept looking at me. Then the doe decided that she would leave, and they all bounded away.

 As a result, the poppy seed muffins were a little overdone. But Bow did not seem to mind. He ate them with great relish.

Good Neighbors

Bow enjoying a cookie sent him by a neighbor

Yesterday, there was an internet outage. It was a beautiful day, though, so both Bow and I spent a lot of time outdoors, he in the outer pen, and me just wandering around outside.

I saw a box turtle that was around fifty years old.

I spotted a Great Spangled Fritillary Butterfly on a purple milkweed in the pasture.

The milkweed there is surrounded by poison ivy, so I could not get very close.

The video of the butterfly embedded below is worth watching, if only for the bird song and other nature sounds.

I spent some time in the front yard recording videos and podcasts for my Anti-Romaticism series, and then I went out into the backyard to be with Bow. But about then, Bow started to show concern, and there was a smell of smoke in the air. So I went into the house and back out through the front door, to try to find out where the smoke was coming from.

The view of the fire from my pasture

The smoke led me down the path in the pasture to the southern border of my property, where the air was thick with it, wafting across the property line.

About this time, I could hear sirens. The local volunteer fire department was on its way.

The view of the neighbors' field from te road

Try as I might, I could not see into the neighboring field well enough to understand what was going on there, because the trees and shrubs are so thick at the border. So I walked back down the path and up my driveway to the road, and down the road to my neighbor's field. I stood at the side of the road, and this is what I saw.

The fire was under control. It would not spread to my land. But the field was black and charred, and plumes of smoke still wafted in the air.  I went home and reported to Bow that all was well, It was about time for lunch, so we forgot all about it and concentrated on our food.

Today, after lunch,  I attended a neighbor's open house with my daughter. A lot of other neighbors were there. Somebody mentioned that burning field yesterday. "I was thinking of you, Aya," somebody else said. "I know you stay indoors a lot, so I thought you might not know what was happening."

I guess I have a reputation for being a recluse and a shut-in, but Bow and I actually do spend a lot of time outdoors,  so much so that he gets his required vitamin D, and I am getting a bit of a tan.

"What caused the fire?" I asked.

"As near as we can make out, they were out baling the field,when both the hay and the combine caught fire."

Aha! "I thought it was something like that," I said.

So we had refreshments and talked about local vegetation. "What's that orange flower that blooms out beside the road right now?" one of the ladies asked. "Butterfly plant?" "Milkweed?" "Butterfly milkweed." "Yes, that's the one." And another person was talking about yucca and how to get rid of weeds surrounding it. Hey, I know these plants, I thought. I am not a complete newby anymore.

One of my yuccas in full bloom

They talked to my daughter about her choice of college and about dorm life, And when we left, the hostess sent cookies for me to give to Bow. "Tell him they're from me!"

So I did.

Bow was happy.

After the Flood

Although the weather has not been kind to the baby birds, Bow and I have been doing well despite it all.
This is a snapshot I took this morning, while Bow and I were in the outer pen. After spending some time grooming me, he put his head down on my shoulder and rested. The weather outside is beautiful now, and I have not seen such splendid irises blooming next to the lagoon in years.

When we first moved here, there were irises and peonies blooming by the lagoon in large bunches every spring. Then, little by little, the poison ivy encroached on their territory, until they were entirely choked out.

The bulbs were there in the ground still. Some leaves would shoot out each year, but there were no more irises blooming, and the peonies were greatly reduced.

Then two years ago there was that grass fire. It killed a lot of the mature poison ivy vines and tree-like bushes. I started to see a redoubling in iris greenery, but still the irises did not bloom last year, even though the peonies beside them were doing much better. But look at my irises this year, after the torrential rains!

There are two types of irises in the garden by the lagoon.  There are the deep purple that is like a royal blue.

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And then there are the mauve to purple irises, which are right next to the peonies.

I think I took them for granted when I first moved here, seeing their beauty, but not realizing it would not always be there. This year, when they came our I was so excited that I even made a music video about them. It includes other flowers, of course, but the focus is on the irises and the peonies.

The peonies are so bright and fluffy and inviting that all sorts of insects come to visit them.

Every disaster has its upside. What was bad for the baby birds seems to have benefited the peonies.  And the fire of two years ago was a disaster for the poison ivy by the lagoon, but it gave new hope to the irises. When people count the toll of deaths from any particular cause, do they also count the new life that never would have been, if not for it? By the same token, when they tell us that a new government program has saved lives, we must also ask, how many has it killed? You can't change any situation to benefit one part of our interconnected world without also harming another part.

When we hear that something is bad, it is always important to ask: for whom? And when we hear that an intervention is good, ask the same question. Whatever it is, it is not equally good for everyone.

You Can Tell It's Spring When....

There are lots of ways that spring announces itself here in the Ozarks.

There are the cherry blossoms, blooming forth one at a time.

There are the pear blossoms, opening up in clusters.

There are the dandelions that spring up on the lawn.

And there are the Weigela blossoms in all their glory,

But one sign that invariably heralds the arrival of spring is the appearance of Jehovah's Witnesses at our front door.

 Bow was relaxing in the outer pen today, when there was a knock at the front door. It was two women, and they came bearing pamphlets and an iPad. The pamphlets are an old tradition. The iPad was a new twist. They handed me a pamphlet and invited me to an event celebrating the death of Jesus. The pamphlet they handed me said that at the event there would be an explanation of how "his death can benefit you and your family."

I thanked them for the pamphlet and offered to give them a free book, too, But they declined. They wanted to show me a video about Jesus on their iPad, instead. When I said I didn't have time to watch a video, they said that was okay, I could watch it later on their website. They've gone modern on us!

We parted politely, and I hurried back to Bow with the pamphlet. At first, he looked it over intently, but then he decided to nibble on one of the corners. I highly discourage eating literature, so I took it away.

Anyway, it's definitely spring. No doubt about it!

Primping for the Selfies

Today is such a beautiful, sunny day. Bow and I decided we would go outside together and take some selfies. Before we went outside, I decided to brush my hair. Bow seemed to think that he needed to do the same, because when I was experimenting with camera angles, I suddenly saw him behind me, brushing his hair. He was very diligent about it.

Everything has been blooming lately, nature putting forth its most attractive face.

The apple blossoms have opened wide, even though there are still no pollinators in sight.

The daffodils are in full bloom, and the peach blossoms are doing their part.

No wonder Bow also wanted to look his best for his photo shoot in full sunlight.

He needed his chance to shine, too. He waited patiently for me to find just the right angle.