why I love Ottumwa.

red bellied woodpecker.

what a pretty red hat on this red-bellied woodpecker. I haven't gotten a good look at it's belly but from what I can tell it's not very red. Yet another good example of a poorly named bird (titmouse being the worst). I would have called this guy a dotty-backed red-cap woodpecker. That would have been a much better name.

Woodpeckers are harder to photograph then my other backyard birds. Whenever this guy sees me he'll fly to the back of a tree and cling to its trunk. What an asshole. There's also a red-headed woodpecker that likes to torture me by flying to the other side of the yard whenever I grab the ol' camera. Once again, what an asshole.

the dinosaurs in my backyard.

I've got some smart turkeys in the backyard. I saw them, scratching around, through my back window while I was eating soup. I had to run to my camera. I spilled my soup.

Photos

1. They haven't noticed me, yet.
2. Ten seconds later, they have TOTALLY noticed me.
3. I didn't get a third picture because they had already ran away, looking very much like dinosaurs as they ran.

Iowa, its legal here.

Gay Marriage. Its legal in Iowa. I love this state.

*what a beautiful day, though. Blue skies, white snow, a historic house, and two buddies.

obese highway dog.

I saw an obese dog trotting along the 34 East median at 5:30pm yesterday. The dog was so enormously fat I was able to see him from far away. I decelerated from 80 to 60 because I didn't want to kill another animal with my car.

What did I observe about this dog from my car?

1. He was an obese black lab.
2. He looked oily, so he probably smelled.
3. He was a smart dog and appeared to be super-aware of all the cars passing him.
4. He was wearing a collar.
5. He was a happy dog at that particular moment and was wagging his tail.
6. He had a big, brown thing hanging out of his mouth.

When I passed the dog I saw that the stick hanging out of his mouth was a deer leg. Old guy had been chowing down on frozen venison and wanted to bring some home. It was pretty funny. He probably does stuff like that all the time, no wonder he's obese. Kibble at home, carcass on the road.

I've been seeing stuff like this for the past six months, domestic dogs leading a feral double life. It has inspired a series of paintings called "cadaver dogs." Domestic creatures can become feral pretty dang fast. Each painting features a domestic dog paired with an abstract tangle of the creatures they were consuming when I saw them. The paintings are becoming more narrative and I should have one posted by Monday.

Bon appetit.

a strange little leucistic cardinal.

See that neat looking bird with the grey and white body in the middle of the photograph? This bird is a rare find. It's a cardinal with a pigment deficency called leucism. Being leucistic? That means this guy's pigment has failed to develop properly. Leucism has left him patchy and abnormally colored...unlike his red brother cardinals. Leucistic animals are not to be confused with albino animals. Albinos are missing all their pigment, even in their eyes. A leucistic animal can be all white, patchy, or piebald but still have pigmented eyes. Our leucistic cardinal visits every Sunday after I dump out a bag of wild bird seed on the lawn. I've done some reading up on pigment variation in animals and am very proud to say that I have officially seen and documented a rare creature. If you want to see a real crazy cardinal google "xanthrochroism, cardinal." Enjoy the photos.

sitting on a stick!

possum city.

I live in Possum City. Possums live under our porch, in our dilapidated chicken coop, in the garage, in our backyard, and ALL over forested acres. Tracks everywhere. My favorite part about possums is that they aren't very fast and they're clumsy as hell. If you happened upon one trundling across a field you could easily walk up to the marsupial and catch it. I don't know what you'd do with it after...raise it like a cat, eat it?

possum got snapped.

I snapped a shot of the elusive possum that lives under our back porch.

(I'm pretty sure this is the same guy I caught cuddling Porch Cat)

porch cat blood face.

Porch cat's muzzle is covered in blood. I wonder what she murdered this time? Also, an update on her feline pregnancy status. That one time I thought she was pregnant, she wasn't. She was full of little animal skeletons. Neat!

my morning walk through DeKalb

DeKalb photos: 1. my old house 2. mallards 3. the kishwaukee river

1. See the top right window on that house? That used to be my window. I kept my degus by that window. Of course the rodents DESTROYED the blinds by chewing and peeing on them. As a result, my landlord took ALL of my deposit (UNFAIR). Once I looked out of that window and saw a drunk girl rolling around my lawn. Another time I looked out that window and saw the Locust street drunk dry heaving into a bush. Come to think of it, on the weekends, all I ever saw through that window were drunk college students. Good stuff. Good times.

2. I am a bird papazzatzi: Birds hate getting their photo taken and, as you can see from the photo, these water fowl hated me because they don't like being blogged about. These mallards are trying to get very far away from me. But I blogged about them anyways. Take that, ducks.

3. THE MIGHTY KISHWAUKEE RIVER: It flooded our town real bad a few years back. I saw a bunch of fat kids swimming in the river run off and all I could think about...staff infections and pink eye. It was an unreal flood. Oh yeah, and once there was an alligator in the Kishwaukee River (it was caught by a fisherman in the area shown on the right side of the photo).

memorial.

sorry, pal. I'll miss you and I'll miss your toes.

sights from the drive to illinois.

1. A barn near(ish) Muscatine, Iowa. This shack is on 61E and is in all of the "weird iowa" books.

2. Hog House. Gotta love the logo. It is on 92E.

3. This church's top fell off! Its on 34E.

It was a good ride, I allowed myself to stop and photograph anything that ignited my curiosity. I collected old paint chips from the graffiti shack and will send them to whoever requests one, they look pretty cool (years of paint build up on aged wood). I also saw several dead coyotes, a sharp shinned hawks, two bald eagles, and a mama deer with triplets casually cross a highway.

feet.

a Porch too Far.

This is Porch Cat. She is an orange and white tabby that adopted Seth and I six months ago. The first time I saw her she was asleep in the dirt filled planters on our front porch. We called her Porch Cat and the name stuck. She was endearing, her tail would vibrate when she got excited, she kept the mice away, and she was cute. Sitting on the back porch watching Porch Cat hunt bugs was a good way to spend a lazy afternoon.

But I’d compare Porch Cat to a vampire. Not only because of her ravenous thirst for blood but because once you invite a vampire into your home they will come inside whenever they feel like it. Cats are masters of manipulation and, one cold December morn, I invited Porch Cat into the basement.

Porch Cat started peeing on the floor within the hour. I got her a litter box to pee in but it didn’t work. It was time for her to go back outside. But Porch Cat wouldn’t stay outside; she wanted to live inside the house. Everyday was a battle to keep her from running between my legs and into the house. One day she sat by our back door and oozed puss from an open wound. I couldn’t deny her treatment, I cleaned her up with hydrogen peroxide, saline, and antibacterial gel. I gave her some kibble and she ran away. The wound didn’t affect her ability to eat or want food; I assumed she would be ok. She was ok except for the bald patch she developed on her cheek. Porch Cat left us alone for awhile and lived in the chicken coop.

One night, about two weeks ago, there was a loud smash, flapping, and fucking cat noises coming from our living room. Porch Cat had broken into the house and was trying to murder both of the pet birds. She knocked over the finch’s cage and the finch went flying through the dark room, crashing into everything. Seth turned on the light and saw my finch on the floor, tired from his spastic flight, and he saw Porch Cat sticking her paw into the cockatiel’s cage. That was enough, I had enough. We broke up with Porch Cat and stopped leaving food out for her.

It was a hard two weeks of training. No eye contact, no giving into feline manipulation, no food. But she got the point. Finally, Porch learned to stop breaking into our house. Now I’ll leave food for her by the garage so she doesn’t associate our home with food. The other day I gave her some bologna. As you can tell from the photo, she’s happy to be fed again.

Body Drop

Body drop.
Written jan.25

I see black garbage bags on the side of the road a lot. It costs money for trash pickup and people burn their garbage in burn barrels to avoid the trash pick-up fee. But some things don’t burn and when your burn barrel is full of unburnables you are left with a bag of garbage. Since you don’t have trash pick up and you don’t want to pay a pick up fee you dump your garbage on your neighbor’s lawn. It’s the circle of life and I am a dung beetle, when I walk along the side of the road I'll pick up other people's trash.

I found deer legs and a deer ribs in a garbage bag, dropped off by some chode, on our property the other day. It was pretty gross. But I took a picture anyways. I have to document all these strange things or I’ll forget them. I asked Seth if I should call the Department of Natural Resources to report poaching. He said it was probably just some slobs dumping off their unwanted deer parts. Strange things happen in Iowa.

eagles.

I grew up in Oak Park, Illinois. Oak Park did not have bald eagles. Oak Park mostly had robins, cardinals and tiny brown birds. Occasionally a kid from school would report having heard an owl. A crow said “Hello” to me at the Trailside Museum during a field trip; I didn’t know crows could talk at the time. When I was ten, running barefoot on Humphrey Street, I stepped on a pink baby bird. I liked birds a lot. Birds were cool.

I still like birds. I still think birds are cool. Cardinals are my favorite and always have been. A pink winged cardinal lives in our glorious backyard. I like to identify the other backyard birds with Peterson field guides. Quick list of the yard birds: goldfinches, blue jays, tufted titmouse (tufted titmice?), pheasant, downy woodpeckers, turkey vultures, and regular gobble turkeys, red tail hawks, red winged black birds, and red bellied woodpeckers.

I didn’t see a bald eagle until mid December or late November in 2009. A bald eagle flew above my car on a drive to Muscatine, Iowa. Now, I see them all the time. Seth saw two of them eating a deer corpse in the field yesterday. I saw a bald eagle on my drive to town today. The eagle was eating possum road kill. I managed to snap a shot of the eagle after it flew away from his lunch and into a cornfield, that bird probably smelled terrible.

I got another pretty good photo of a bald eagle today. I snapped the shot by the Pig slaughtering plant. That was where I saw a big, black, lump in a cluster of trees. I pulled over and walked through mud and dog poop to investigate the big, black, lump. It was, as I suspected, a bald eagle. He looked at me for about twenty seconds before I took out my camera so I could violate his privacy. Of course, the eagle called me a tourist and flew across the river to avoid me.

I’m sure I’ll see more bald eagles this winter. They are truly an awesome bird; carrion eating, scavengers with yellow feet and beaks.

ice storm

(I got new specks and can see again. Everything is so clear, perfect...awesome.)

Iowa got blasted with an ice storm. A serious blast. Power lines are down. People are without electricity. Turkeys can't scratch through ice plates to get their food. Ironically, everything is beautiful. I've never seen anything quite like it. Iowa is wearing an icicle coat. Individual blades of grass have individual ice sheaths. There was a dead vole encased in a form fitting ice casket in my yard. Each twig on each tree is shining like a fucking diamond and it feels like I am living in a souvineer shop geode. And I need to see it with my new glasses. After work.

After work: I park the Honda and slip and slide my way to the deck. I open the back door and let Arkoo the dog outside. We need to see the ice-spectacle together. He immediatly eats icicles. When we walk onto the lawn, together, it crunches, cracks, and meows? Porch Cat decided to join us and I decide we are a pack. Ice is covering everything and I'm overstimulated and I start to run. And the dog, the cat, and i are all running together. And its dark. And the light on the garage is reflecting off every ice crystal. And it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen or felt. Me and my pack, running together through the ice in my backyard.

We run through the tall grass and it snaps and falls like dominos. We run through the low trees and it looks like the inside of a chandelier. and we run back to the house. Porch Cat is hungry and i give her a bowl of lard.

and then its all over.

Fake Beards.

I've been having strange dreams lately.
I was at an art opening. It was late. I was alone.
and I was nervous.
As I wandered through a maze of people i recognized but did not know, I saw abundant nooks and crannies on every wall.
Each nook was occupied by tiny pieces of art. Each crannie held a rat cage inside and I fed the rats crumbs from my pocket. It was plesant and I felt less nervous.
All the men in the gallery had long, beautiful beards made of yarn. A myriad of color on each man's face. Some of the men had monochromatic beards, some had complementary colored beards, some beards were earthtone with a punch of color, some were actual rainbows. They stroked them often.

I was lead out of this dream by a dog licking my hand.

bluejays in my yard.

woodland tenants.

Bone pile, Wyoming.

This is a photo of a twelve foot tall pile of elk and mule deer antlers, skulls, held together by balance and barbed wire. Rachel, Matt, Brian and I passed it on our way to Yellowstone National Park...of course we had to stop to gawk.

A mule deer skull had fallen from the pile, we took it as an omen to put her in the back of our car to keep us safe while we slept in Walmart Parking lots and rest areas. We named the mule deer milky and parts of her would flake off like dandruff when she was handled. It may sound silly, but I think she kept us safe.

On that trip we encountered a deranged truck driver who asked us if we had loaded guns while he drank our beer and intimidated us at our Oregon campsite. I was afraid he was going to kill us. At a Walmart in Idaho I walked past a man wearing a navy hoody, he glared at me and then ran away. Minutes later a police officer told me a man fitting that description had shot someone and they were on a hunt for him.

When the trip was over Brian took her home. Milky later perished in a fire. Milky died for us and the experience made me understand why caveman painted bison on their cave walls, sympathetic magic is a powerful thing.

snow job.

obligatory snow post.

Well, its my first winter in Iowa. Everyone Iowan told me to dread the snow. I told them to not worry about me because,

"aww, schucks. I've driven in Illinois winters for years. It can't be THAT bad."

You can't compare a Chicago winter to a rural Iowa winter. And this snow and ice and sleet has humbled me. On Tuesday morning we had a storm come in from Nebraska, Tuesday night a storm blew in from Illinois (or vice versa). When those two storms met in the middle they fought a mighty fight. The winds blew a powerful 45 mph, about as fast as a thouroughbred horse. The snow came down and down and down eventually laying twelve inches of powder. Then the wind and the snow worked together to make tremendous white mountains and drifts. Sadly, it was not packing snow and no snowmen were made.

It was a fantastic feat of nature.

The snow locked me indoors and i got the day off work...paid. Porch cat tried to beg her way into our home by sitting on the window sill by the t.v and meowing...when she slipped off the edge of the sill and disappeared from my view I felt sorry for her. I let her inside and she slept happily by the space heater all day. I could feel kittens in her tummy, spinal chords and heads, it was kind of gross.

the end.

deer in the backyard.

Ode to a Dead Bumble Bee

While i ran across the lawn
You bumbled in the clovers
Carelessly,
You played matchmaker
Among the pretty flowers.

For such a tiny, buzzing thing,
Hardly even there.
Into my arch, i felt a sting
Into my skin so bare.

And with that sting that felt like fire
Burning up my shin
I cussed and screamed and cursed that bee
My foot became its pyre.

Carelessly,

I stumbled forth
And landed on the stairs.
I clutched my foot
To look at it
And half the bee was there.

A tiny pulsing abdomen
pumped venom in my skin.
And i knew that bee would never buzz
or ever fly again.

Now I walk on aching arch
With steroids as my pills.
To dull the pain,
Unflame inflamed

From a bee whose guts were spilled.

trail cam pictures.

hungry eyes.

I have a trail camera attatched to a tree on our property. It collects photographs of wildlife around our Iowa home. I have pictures of all sorts of creatures; bobcat, coyote, male and female deer, squirrels, raccoons, possum, birds, and other woodland creatures. The camera is set off by a combination of heat and movement so the camera won't take pictures of swaying reeds, leafs blowing, or other boring things. Occassionally the camera will take a very amusing photo of animals just doing what comes natural to them. I've decided to share two of the more amusing photographs with you all.

1. A coyote taking a number two right in front of our camera. Very random.

2. A young male deer looking for love (he is doing "frenum", mouth open smelling for mates),he has a small erection which means he's probably about to run and harrass a doe.

cadaver dogs.

In Chicago they band together,
roving packs of angry, canine youths.

They roll into the suburbs
and disturb my mother's neighbors.

Only to be chased away from emptied garbage cans,
by the River Forest Police.

In Iowa you solo roll,
trot along the four-lane highway.

Dead smells seduce
your olfactory sense.

You cadaver dog. Eat what you find.

A.J Fosik.

This is a sculpture made by the prolific and talented A.J Fosik. If i prayed to a God, I would pray to this Bear-like wall God. my goodness this guy could fine art any girl right outta their panties. Take a gander at his work...http://www.toxel.com/inspiration/2009/05/03/animal-sculptures-by-aj-fosik/

new art.

My new art. four color silkscreen, robert hardgrave, awesome. i'm going to hang it above my fireplace.Now i just have to get a fireplace.

dodging furry bullets.

Its getting scarier, friends. Every morning i wake up, hop into my mud covered Honda and drive down my dirty, dirty, dirt covered road. It is always pitch black at 5:30am and the stars are still twinkling. Most people I know would my call my mornings beautiful or serene, lovely and quaint, or even pretty as a picture. But I know better, it may be beautiful and lovely but it is dangerous out there. I don't know why it's happening but every possum in Iowa wants me to hit them with my car. They are nature's buffoons. I've had three little idiots try to walk into my speeding car since the last time i actually pegged one...yuck. I don't want to kill you, animals, stay away from my car. All of you marsupials, rodents, raccoons, and even-toed ungulates (deer) (which i almost hit today) (it was a big ten point buck) just stay away from my car. That's all i ask.

Every night possums haunt our backyard. We have at least four living under the porch. All night long they will clank through my cans, eat my garbage, woo my pregnant cat, and cause general disarray. Some might say,

"Jane, why don't you just throw away your garbage? Then the possums won't come over all the time."

and to them I say, we have no garbage pickup where I live. We have to burn all the paper waste and drive the rest of the trash to the dump...so garbage is on the back burner for awhile. I have better things to do and the garbage will continue to sit behind the cellar door where only the tiniest of possums can get into the stinky bags...the little ones aren't thaaat messy. And, to tell you the truth, I like being able to look out my bedroom window and see a clumsy possum knocking my stuff over. They remind me of me...loud, uncoordinated, messy, and opportunistic. I see myself in those little creatures... so they can live under my porch and eat my garbage, I don't care. At least if they're under my porch it'll be harder to hit them with my car.

*possum image from http://urbpan.livejournal.com/tag/opossum

Down Low and in the Garden...my weekend in Dekalb.

When you live in the middle of nowhere and visit the middle of somewhere it is an eye-opening vacation. I used to compare DeKalb to Chicago...I'd complain,

"DeKalb doesn't have any good food, art supplies, or record stores...wah, wah, waaaaaah."

Man was I spoiled. Because DeKalb has good food. Pita Pete's on Lucinda is delicious and I ate there two times in a twenty-four hour period because i KNOW there is no fallafel or hummus in Eldon, Iowa. DeKalb also has good art supplies. The school book store had all the paper, gouache, brushes, inks, erasers, and various pencils a girl could shake a stick at and I went to the art store two times because i KNOW there is no place in Eldon, Iowa to get gouache and 300 lb watercolor paper. DeKalb still doesn't have a brag-worthy record store but, luckily, Barnes and Nobles had the record i wanted. The Monsters of Folk rock and it's a damn fine record. Not to sound repetitive... I bought it because i KNOW that there is no place in Eldon, Iowa to buy a good album. I bought a lot of things this weekend.

There were also a lot of good friends, art and fun in DeKalb. My buddies (ann flowers, joanna goss, adam cox and Christian campos) and i finally put our work together to create the show, "Down Low and in the Garden." Even though it was rainy people showed up to have some fun, drink PBR, and sell hotdogs to fundraise. I talked so much that evening my voice started to go out...i sounded silly but didn't care and talked anyone's ear off that would let me. We went to the Annex (bar) and stayed till two a.m. which was nice. Then i slept in ann flower's bed without ann flowers in the bed with me. Unrequited. sigh.

The next day I ate, drank, and was merry. Sushi, icecream, pita petes, books, glitter. I even spent the night in a hotel that reeked of incense and my pals came over to be merry as well. This weekend filled me with joy.

a picture says a thousand words.

roadkill.

I've had a bad morning because I killed something.

I knew it was going to happen sooner or later, things keep running in front of my car. Today a Virginia oppossum ran in front of my car and I hit the poor thing. I tried to swerve to miss him and nearly drove my car off the dirt road. But I clipped him.

I wanted to make sure he was dead so he didn't have to suffer further. I drove back to check. He was lying in the road, very still. Then he looked at me, wide-eyed. I could see blood was pouring out of him. He was alive and struggling to get to the side of the road. I didn't want him to suffer anymore, he could have lived like that for awhile...

So I backed up my car, took aim, and put him out of his misery. It was terrible and I feel horrible.

possum went a courtin' and he did ride, uh- huh?

I have a pest problem. It's harvest time in Iowa which means farmers are driving around in their combines collecting crops...mostly corn or soybeans. Mice have been chowing down on corn the entire growing season and have developed a hearty mouse population in the fields. Now that the crops are gone the mice are scrambling to find a warm place to spend their winter...they've decided to spend it in our house, damnit, and we've been finding little mouse turds everywhere. Poop on top of the fridge, under the couch, under the sink, in the bathroom. I'm not worried about the mice so much as the fleas they could be harboring...and I don't care much for their turds, either.

I have a cat that lives outside on the porch, we call her Porch Cat. She's prgnant and hungry and I'm sure she's doing her fair share of mousing to feed her little kitten fetuses. We'll feed her kibble at night but she doesn't always eat all of the food. The other night I looked out the window and saw that the food was gone and I saw Porch Cat cuddling next to a black cat, or so I thought. I yelled to Seth that we had a new black cat friend. I tapped on the window to get it's attention and, I'll tell you what, that wasn't no black cat. It was a giant Possum (opossum) and it was getting awful friendly with Porch Cat. When the Possum saw me it trundled off into the wild blue yonder and Porch Cat just sat there staring at me, mad that I chased off her warm cuddle buddy.

So, I guess Porch Cat doesn't have the killer instinct of a bobcat. Or maybe she's just trying to find a baby daddy. It's nice to see creatures getting along. That possum damn near scared the shit out of me, though. I'm still glad she'll eat a mouse.

I've been thinking about an Apocolypse.

This is what the world will look like when we are gone and animals reclaim their space. Josh Keyes is nostradamus...

http://www.joshkeyes.net/.

paintings top to bottom: Sowing, Fever, Drifting.

I wouldn't eat that if i were you...again.

This is a squirrel. Some people think they are disease ridden tree rats...which is sort of true, some of them carry fleas that harbor the bubonic plague and we all know how that went, sores, lesions, and death. Other people think they are pests...which is also true because they'll get into your garden and eat your beets...but i see this quality as being more opportunistic then pest-like and I like squirrels because of this quality. Still yet, other people find them to be delectable, delicious, scrumptious, or savory. I was (un)fortunate enough to make a feeble attempt at eating one of these woodland creatures after Seth brought one home and cooked it up. I was nervous when he texted me and told me what was for dinner...could I really do it? I love squirrels...but I also love cows and I still eat them. When I got home I saw Seth on the porch, the cat was also on the porch munching on a messy pile of guts. This was an instant turn off. I was now afraid of eating the squirrel. When I got to the front door I saw the squirrel's little feet hanging out of the cat's mouth...I was even more disgusted but still determined to try a bite. Within the hour, Seth presented me with a tiny drumstick...I knew where it came from and it was starting to make me dryheave. I put the drumstick to my teeth, pressed down, felt the rubbery texture, and almost vomited on the air mattress. Moral of the story: I would only eat squirrel if I was starving or if it was in a stew and I didn't have to see a cat eating it's innards before I ate it's limbs.

i wouldn't eat that if i were you.

My family came to visit me the other day. Here's what happened :

1. we shot pumpkins and made them explode.

2. we ate chinese food at the chinese place next to the adult xxx theatre in Ottumwa. I didn't eat the egg drop soup

3. we saw strippers taking a smoke break. how did we know they were strippers? fur coats, platform shows, and no pants, thats how.

4. we almost hit a raccon and a possum.

But my favorite event happened while we were driving to the gas station. As we were winding down the dirt road my mom said,

"Hey, guys, look at the sweet Brittaney on the side of the road! What is he doing there, the little scamp?"

The dog pops his head up to look at us while we drive by. His face is covered in blood. The dog sees us and promply shoves his head back into the abdomen of a deer carcass and continues to munch on deer chittlins (deer intestines).

Delicious.

(photo of the brittaney made possible by www.dailypuppy.com)

how i learned to love a cow.

My love affair with the cow began in Canada when I met this happy little fellow. I had never seen a baby cow up close and personal until this very moment in 2005. It was at a winery that specialized in Ice Wines...ice wine is made from grapes that are allowed to freeze on the vine. The wine is very sweet and thick and, in my opinion, disgusting. The winery also specialized in petting zoos and had a variety of furry headed chickens, fly covered pigs, and a couple of scabby eared goats.

This baby cow said, "maaaaaaaa mooooooooo," and I was in love. I ran over to the calf and pet it's chin. The calf stretched out it's neck, I pretended to kiss it's face, and then this photograph was taken by one of my shit-head friends. Then we ate some sandwiches, fed a cat some potato chips, bought some shitty wine, and went on our merry way to Toronto.