When the Grass is Mowed

The mowers came again yesterday, as the grass had been getting quite tall again. They hurried to get all done in one day this time, because as usual, we are expecting rain. Bow asked to go outside into the outer pen after they came, but when I opened the door, he gestured for me to come with him. I told him I would come, but I had forgotten to bring my phone to film with, so I went back inside

 Alone in the pen with all that noise from the mowers, Bow looked unsure of himself.

When I came back out with the phone, I was surprised by a sight that I never expected to see: Bow was apologizing to Leo. I was not really ready  -- it was so unexpected, that I not able to get pictures of the entire apology, so this is just the tail end of it.

Leo did not quite know what to make of Bow's apology, but even as the dog walked away, Bow was still trying to make up to him, with friendly faces.

This may look silly, but this is the face Bow makes when he is trying to ingratiate himself with someone

In case you want to refresh your memory as to what Bow's full apologies look like, you can read this post from 2013:

http://notesfromthepens.blogspot.com/2013/01/chimpanzee-apologies.html

Now why would Bow feel he needed to apologize to Leo? What was he apologizing for? You may well ask. He was probably not apologizing for any specific thing, so much as trying to get into Leo's good graces. Bow had wanted me out there for moral support against the mowers. When I left, he felt a little abandoned. Rather than displaying at Leo, the way he usually does, Bow was trying to get Leo to help him against the mowers, in case he needed extra support. He was not saying "I am big and strong and I can beat you up!" as he usually does. He was saying: "If I was mean to you, I am sorry. Now please help me."

Bow's apologies, even when they are to Lawrence or to me, are extremely pragmatic in motivation. He does not really apologize because of heartfelt remorse. He apologizes because he's in trouble, and he is trying to get out of it. That's really not so different from most humans I know.

Even after I was out there and Bow did not need Leo's help, he still was not as aggressive as he usually is toward the dog. His focus was more on the mowers, and he did not seem to be able to decide whether he wanted to court them or warn them. In the video above, the gently rocking up and down dance that Bow initially does on top of the bench is not an aggressive move. He does break into a kind of display afterwards, but it, too, is less aggressive than usual, and you can see that he has no problem with Leo, showing only friendly regard to the dog, while he worries about the "mower problem."

Later, the head mower came in the house, and Bow said hello to him. He has known the man many years and actually seems to like him. He's just not crazy about the machinery that is used to mow the grass and the noise it makes.

When the mower and Bow were communing, I mentioned to him that the next plant about to bloom by the lagoon was the yucca, and I needed the poison ivy cleared away from around it, so I could admire the blossoms. Only just at that moment, I could not remember what the yucca plant was called. So I fumbled around for words to describe it, and here's what came out: "Spiky leaves. Tall tower of flowers. Cactus." Now, I knew that was wrong when it came out of my mouth. A yucca is not at all a cactus. But I needed a fast way to say what I wanted, and I could not think of the right classification: succulent. However, this shorthand, inexact description was good enough for the mower, and he got the job done! It's funny how faulty phylogenetic classification is good enough to communicate with another human being.

Poison  ivy spreads everywhere, and I am allergic to  it, so I have been trying to think of ways to get rid of it that would not harm the other plants. The last time we spoke, the mower said that he had heard of a spray that gets rid of poison ivy. But on further inquiry, he informed me yesterday, that spray would kill everything else, too. "Well, we don't want that," I commented. And he agreed.

In the evening, I enjoyed resuming my favorite walk on the newly mown trail. I got to see flowers that have only just now bloomed on either side of the path.

However, I saw no new wildlife until I got back to the mowed portion of the yard.

I spotted a rabbit from afar. But the rabbit disappeared into the underbrush by the lagoon, and then I heard a sound and saw a deer leap across my fence, and into the neighbors' field. I went toward the fence line to look.

The deer stood there for a while looking at me and twitching its tail, so that I wondered whether it was waiting for a companion to follow. But when no one else came, it went into the woods.

And just as the deer disappeared, I heard some rustling from the underbrush by the lagoon. I thought it was the rabbit coming out again. But no, it was an armadillo!

The armadillo did not seem to be aware at first that I was watching him. He went out to the newly mown grass and started digging at once.

I wanted to get a better look at its face, but when I drew closer it suddenly noticed me and initiated a program of armadillo evasive maneuvers, which are quite different from rabbit evasive maneuvers.
He went straight for the woods and took a very short break there. After taking a short rest among the cypress spurge plants at edge of the woods, he continued on his way in a more or less straight line trajectory -- no zig-zagging for him -- until he hid for a while under the storage building.

The armadillo did not stay there for long, though. Soon  I could see that he had crawled out from under the storage building and was going as fast as he could toward the barn, where he seemed to think he would be able to take shelter. However, no sooner had he gone into the barn than he came out again. I think the kitten scared him away! I watched as he went into the woods by the barn and pursued him no further.

The coming of the mowers causes a temporary disruption in the normal flow of events around here, but that subsides pretty fast. The grass starts to grow again. The wildlife goes back to its usual habits, and so do the rest of us.  This morning, Bow was displaying aggressively at Leo again, and Leo was bounding up in the air and barking at him. Everything is back to normal.

And Then The Mowers Came

It has been very cool lately. At lunch yesterday I was wearing a jacket. I decided to give Bow only my pinkie to spell with.

Bow was discouraged at first, and he took a break from his spelling to gaze despondently at the windy landscape through the the front door. But then he took up the task and asked for an apple.

Things went more smoothly when Bow requested his meat dish, which was actually the main course for lunch. He finished the entire meal, and then the mowers came.

Bow gets very excited whenever he sees the mowers. He watched them for a while through the front door window.

When he had tired of watching them from the inside, he took my pinkie and spelled בואי אתי החוצה  -- "Come outside with me!"

This is very different from what he usually says when he wants to go outside. Usually he just writes "Let me go outside." But apparently this time he wanted my company.

While the mowers mowed, Brownie took some time to dig a nice big hole in the back yard.

Bow was pretty complacent at this point, and I was able to leave him for a moment out there and pick my daughter up from school, as the bus did not run locally yesterday for some reason. By the time I got back, Bow was ready to come in, and the grass was already mowed.

In the evening, we had a beautiful sunset. If you look closely at the front lawn in the picture above, you can see that it is freshly mown. The wildflowers that sprang up there are gone, but their memories live on.

A violet that once was

Native Wood Violet Postcard

The Mowers and the Forecast

Yesterday started out as a very sunny, hot day. In the morning, Bow was pretty happy and content, overseeing his domain from the outer pen.

However, around mid-morning the mowers arrived, and their presence and their noisy machines made Bow feel less comfortable. He went and sat in the corner and rocked at first.

Things were not as they should be, he felt. Something ought to be done about it.

The solution was obvious. It was time to put on a display.

When Bow displays he gets very active, the adrenaline rushes to his brain, and he feels much better.

One display is usually not enough to neutralize the mowers.

Eventually, the mowers finished their work. Bow watched them leave.

Then we went inside. and I let Bow play with my iPhone.

This video was shot on my LG, which was my previous cell phone. The resolution is much lower than on the iPhone, but the up side is that it takes very little time to upload. Even though the LG no longer receives service, it still functions as a camera, an organizer and an alarm clock. 

Bow is fascinated by the iPhone and seems to know what one does with it, but his touch on the screen does not often elicit a response from the phone. If it did work, it could serve as a much better communication device than the old touch screen, because it is portable, and since Bow sees me use it all the time, he wants to use it, whereas he never really wanted to use the computer. Now all we need is a text to speech Hebrew app for the iPhone.

Anyway, this time around, all Bow managed to do was to bring up the forecast, which was sunny. As soon as he heard this, Bow asked to go outside again, presumably to take advantage of the sunny weather. But when we went outside, it was not sunny anymore. The wind was blowing. The skies were cloudy and overcast, and tiny drops of rain were starting to fall. 

"It's not sunny like they said," I told Bow.

 He smiled philosophically about it. He never believed the forecast.

Soon after that we went in, just before the rain started to fall in torrents. 

Rain falls on the newly mown grass in the front yard

They say that our region is going through a drought, but it does not seem that way on my property. The grass is green, the wildlife is thriving, and we have more bunnies than any other neighbor. Maybe the rabbits have done something to keep the rain coming. 

As the Grass is Mowed

During the spring, summer and early fall, the grass, in those portions of my property that I keep civilized, has to be mowed every two weeks at the very least. I mow the back yard with a reel mower, but I have the rest mowed by others. I save a lot of money by keeping the pasture mostly natural, with only a narrow path to walk on.

Bow is not thrilled with the mowing. When I am in the back yard with the reel mower, this does not make much noise, and he is tolerant. Also, I pause every once a while in my mowing to notice a ladybug or an unusual plant.

The other day I spotted purple clover growing in the tall grass by the generator.

The rabbits on our property like it when the grass gets a little taller, and you can see more of them out during those periods.

When there are two of them together, they take turns running from me. While one is running, the other stands still and watches. They don't go very far, either. I expected the bigger one to run straight into the woods as soon as I went after her, but she was actually found hiding just the other side of the closest tree.

Bow can be remarkably calm and quiet for long periods of time, even if we have a spider suspended in the air of the outer pen. But when the mowers come and make lots of noise, he feels compelled to puff himself up and display.

When the mowers are weed eating on the other side of the fence, Bow watches them warily, his hair standing on end.

But he also knows when they are leaving, and he watches them drive away  with an almost wistful expression.

It's as if he were thinking: "You had to make all that noise, but you couldn't find time to play with me?"