Author: Philip St.Jean

This morning, my 19, soon to be 20, year old daughter stretched out her arm and showed me a Kennedy Half Dollar coin that she held in the palm of her hand. As she did so, she asked “Can you still use this?”

I immediately said “Of course you can!”

Darn, too quick on the answer.  I’m pretty sure she would have given it to me if I had said something more like “Yeah, we don’t use those anymore”.

With COVID-19 sweeping the country in a strangling economic and political grip, as well as the overall push to carry electronic currency, I’m pretty sure we are seeing a huge decrease in the handling and exchange of “real” money, so-called.  Pay with credit card, debit card, Paypal, BitCoin, Apple Wallet, and etc.  The state government has put some nasty restrictions on most activities involving groups of people – retail shopping being one of them.  Just a big weird experience because of the flu.  Ok, so going off track a bit.  That’s OK because nobody reads these posts anyway.  Except me, as part of an early dementia and Alzheimer’s therapy class.  RIP Dad, I know, don’t forget that birdcall joke.

In any event, I’m wondering if we are seeing the last hurrah of actual coin usage.  If my daughter is wondering if we still use coins now, maybe in twenty years I’ll be wondering why I let them collect so easily – a jar here, a jar there, some over there, some in the garage (I don’t even have a garage), some everywhere.

And, when you think about it, the US mints have minted a huge amount of metallic circular currency over the years.  What’s weird is that you only see them in certain places – pockets, bureaus, jars, clam shells, ashtrays, wine bottles, cash registers, desk drawers, car cup holders, and piggy banks.

So, what have we arrived at?

Three things.

First:  Will piggy banks become obsolete?

Second:  Has anyone ever driven down the highway past a junkyard and said “Hey everyone, look over there, it’s a pile of used quarters!”?

Third:  We all see things differently, even when sleeping.

And finally, Fourth:  A nineteen year old is, more often than not, simply 19 years old.  Until they’re 20.

Yesterday, on what would normally be tax day in the USA,  we had a partly cloudy day with a light breeze here in good ole Lisbon Falls, Maine.   So I did a decent burn in the backyard on a small patch of what was left of the snow.  Initially, there was just enough of a breeze to bring the smoke right over to my neighbors house, in a beeline, several hundred feet away, smoke going through the arborvitae hedges and into the house I thought. Lots of smoke, going there, over there as I watched.  Some of the board was still wet from having been left outside in the elements.  It took a while for the heat from the burning kindling to dry out the wet stuff.  So, meanwhile I just watched the smoke, helpless as I was, hoping no one was home over there.  Then, just like that, there was a manageable flame and hardly any smoke, more or less.  Moving on.

Later at dusk from inside, we could hear what sounded like some metal rattling outdoors, akin to a couple snap hooks beating against a flag pole in the wind. Only, we didn’t have a flag pole. What we had outside our house was some metal scaffolding with aluminum staging planks, an aluminum ladder, and some rope hanging from the roof.  Oh, and some tarps – blue ones.  And eventually I couldn’t quite make out what combination of these items would make that sound, and decided to dismiss it as just something rapping up against something in the wind out there – no need to investigate further.

Fast forward through a sunset, darkness, sleep, and sunrise.

I was relaxing a bit when I heard my daughter Cezarie’s laughter emanating from the kitchen, or upstairs, or the dining room.  It’s amazing how fast teenagers can get around when they want to.  We crossed paths in the dining room whereupon she showed me a video on her iPhone of a woodpecker pecking at an aluminum ladder.  Stupid woodpecker.  Like, what’s that going to solve?  And then right on cue – rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-pause-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.  Heeeeee’s back.  Swiftly over to the kitchen window, I looked out and saw, you guessed it, a woodpecker pecking on my aluminum ladder – same one as the one in the video my daughter just showed me.  No, not the ladder, the woodpecker.  Well, the ladder too, geesh, the point is this was happening right outside our kitchen window in daylight; and, there he was –  the “noise maker”.  So I took out my non-iPhone phone and took a short video for your pleasure.

Now, I know what you’re thinking – that that’s some dumb bird.  I know, that’s what I thought at first.  I laughed too.  But wait, there’s more to this than meets the beak.

You see, this is actually the video from his return after I first looked out the window.  Yes, he pecked the ladder and flew off – sort of a jump off the ladder, glide down a bit, a wing flap and up and over the rhododendron in the middle ground, then threaded that gap in the background between several trees with a slight gliding drop to dodge the low branches, and once in the opening on the lawn beyond took a left and up about 15 or so feet into some tall arborvitaes several hundred feet away.  My neighbors arborvitaes.  Yes, same neighbor.  So in reality, this video was of his pecking performance when he returned after about a 10 minute or so “intermission”.

So here is what I’m thinking:  he’s sending me a message in woodpecker language that he is pissed.  Pissed?  About what?  Well, it appears that from watching him fly from this ladder over to the said arborvitaes and those said arborvitaes being the same arborvitaes mentioned originally with smoke, lots of smoke, from the burn barrel burn flowing right through them, that this pecker, I mean woodpecker, figured he would let me know he wasn’t happy about it, the smoke.  And even though I couldn’t understand him, I could read his language.

Other than that, the only other theory I could think of was he was simply trying to impress the lady woodpeckers – “Hey listen ladies,…, Mildred, Quonset, Irachella.  Hear that?  Not the same old boring tree-tree-tree sound.  No I can do tree-tree-tree-percussion(aluminum ladder)-tree-percussion just for your lovely ladies’ sweet ears.”  So yeah, it’s possible he’s showing off – he’s obviously smart enough to know there is no sap in the ladder.

Well that’s it for Bird Study 101.  Next week join me when I smoke out my neighbor’s hen house.