Day 138

Little red squirrel destroying the bird-feeder.

This squirrel finally discovered how to execute an amazing leap on to the window-feeder.  He then proceeded to gnaw with his ultra-strong metal-like teeth at the openings, thus destroying it forever and ensuring that I never put another feeder in that particular spot.  Squirrels are very intelligent beings and could probably take over the earth.

It was the last class for my 12th graders this afternoon so we had a little party, with gateau and biscuits and milk.   I will miss them so, this Tigger and this Eeyore.  They have entered my heart, these two boys.  I asked one of them whether he was happy to be leaving school forever, and he replied, to my astonishment, that he would do this year all over again if he could!  He gave a brilliant recommendation for our school, when he said that the students are all amazing and very tolerant, and the teachers all care about the kids.  It is true, I think because all these students are well-travelled, so they know and understand being foreign, and therefore never treat someone as an outsider.

He also had a brilliant idea for war, as, like most other teenage boys, he loves playing video games.  He had the idea that countries should still train armies, because you can never stop the male warrior soul, but instead of fighting real wars, they should send their best soldiers to play a war video-game, or something like laser-tag, and then the winner gets what had originally been agreed upon by the two sides as the prize, although he thought that this system might run into difficulties if what had been agreed upon was an entire country, for example.

I drove home in the rain tonight with the lovely voice of Jose Carreras floating around my ears as I sailed through the storm in the warm, dry sanctuary of my car. I thought of my dad, who really appreciated music and had a whole listening ritual.  He would put on a cd and sit down in his Morris chair, the same chair he had my entire life, which probably still bears his imprint.  If someone was around, he would draw them in by noting, in that utterly certain way he had, "Now THIS is music," then lean back and blissfully experience the melody.  Invariably then he would close his eyes and drift off to his famous 'forty winks', after which he was miraculously invigorated to leap up and make tea, or work in his garden, or fix someone's fridge.  It was never in his nature to sit for long.

My portrait today is a wire salamander which I made as an example for my grade 6 wire sculpture class, and I finished it today when I had a bit of free time.  It is a blue-eyed Bouwer salamander.  There are salamanders in our pond which have tadpoles which live two or three winters under the ice, only metamorphosing in their third or fourth spring!