For Frying Out Loud (17 page)

April 2009

FLOUNDERING ON THE HIGH SEAS

“You can't swing a cat in Rehoboth without hitting a lesbian.”

The quote, quite true, came from a group of gay gals laughing it up along Baltimore Avenue last week in the incredible sunshine and heat. April? Town was packed!

And as one of those in danger of being smacked in the head with a flying feline, it's just great to see the weather change for the good here in Gayberry RFD. The April taste of summer wasn't wasted on me. Having been cooped up most of the winter, nose to the computer keyboard, I immediately put the convertible top down on my car and drove around town like a tourist. Upon my return to the house I flung open the windows and luxuriated in the fresh scent of cherry tree flowers and blooming plants.

What was I thinking? After one night's sleep with open windows, I had two pounds of pollen packed in my sinus cavities and another bushel blanketing every surface in the house. I'm sniffling and snorting from allergies that feel like swine flu. I tried a sinus wash – you know, waterboarding, like the military uses for torture. It didn't help.

Then, like fools we went to the nursery for the annual replacement plants. I don't know why we don't just stick plastic flowers in the planters. If all the dollar bills I spend each spring replacing dead stuff were laid end to end they'd reach to the condominium I should be living in.

We toted plants sentenced to death to a car covered in pollen, for planting in a yard that's basically a dog latrine. Tomorrow we'll plant the greenery on death row, I mean the backyard. Achoo!

A glutton for punishment, Bonnie and I then accepted an invitation to breathe in several more buckets of pollen and allergens – we went for a day on Rehoboth Bay, fishing. I've never been a fisherperson, news that I'm sure shocks you.

But much to my delight though, the generous Captain and First Mate surprised me with my very own fishing rod – pink, with teeny sparkly lights that blinked whenever the reel spun. “I couldn't resist,” said the Captain. I think it was the Hannah Montana edition.

After drifting for a while near the Indian River Bridge, me with my pink fishing pole dangling professionally from the side of the boat as I busied myself with e-mail on my phone, the first mate landed a big flounder. Mission (dinner) accomplished. We reeled in to go traveling.

This is where it got interesting.

On our way out of the Indian River Inlet and into the ocean, Bonnie and I sat up front on the speedy fishing boat. I may be a neophyte fisherperson, but I'm an experienced boater, having lived on and traveled in a 29 foot power boat all around the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, up to New York City and Fire Island and back. The alternate title of my first book was going to be
My Life as Ballast
.

So imagine my surprise when, as we nosed out toward the ocean, what I can only describe as a mighty rogue wave swelled up in front of the boat and made my eyeballs switch sockets.

(FREEZE FRAME)

This gigantic wall of water rose in a colossal swell about, I don't know, a thousand feet higher than the boat deck. Okay, six feet overhead and five feet away. I channeled Shelley Winters, picturing that fierce wave crashing through the cockpit windows on the Poseidon. I marveled at the wave's enormity, its stark green expanse of color, with bubbling white foam on top. I gasped when I saw two more identical waves right behind it. I went into a momentary coma, broken only by the sound of somebody screaming. It was me.

(ACTION!)

With a giant crash, the wall of water hit the boat, the bow
rose to conquer it and we thumped up, then down like a bathtub toy. Geeze it was scary, seeing all that dark water up close and wondering, omigod, is the nose of the boat going to come back up again?.

(FREEZE FRAME)

If the bow didn't come back up it was called pitch-poling –
“pitch·poled, pitch·pol·ing, pitch·poles
Nautical
. To flip or cause to flip end over end.” I learned the term in Power Squadron boating class, or, as I used to call it,
101 Ways to Drown or Blow Up Your Boat
. I know they wanted to frighten us into caution, but they scared the barnacles out of us – and I was flashing back to pitch-pole class. And of course it didn't help in the pitch-pole department that it was my lard ass sitting up front as, once again, ballast.

(ACTION!)

Of course the bow came back up, but we got a thundering, frigid shower. It may have been 90 degrees out but the ocean didn't get the memo.

When we looked back at the captain, who was hollering a reassuring “We're okay, don't worry…” the second wave pounded us, sending a fresh freezing tsunami into the boat, then a third. We got glacial facials and held an impromptu wet t-shirt contest. This was now a combination of fishing and a sinus wash.

Amazingly, as soon as the Captain turned left up the coast, the water went calm again.

Alrighty now. I was drenched, hoping it was all sea water and I hadn't peed myself. The Captain and First Mate were pretty wet, too. But Bonnie really got the worst of it. She was dripping wet from head to toe and I expected to see her wearing a flounder on her head.

Three of us sopped off with towels, but Bonnie was undryable. She shed her shorts and shirt, wrapped up in a towel and noted it would be an inopportune time to be stopped
by vacationing Somali pirates. We laughed and hooted and hollered. Lucky for me, my Disney fishing pole survived the incident.

(FREEZE FRAME)

Really, we were freezing our frames but the sun shone, dolphins swam by, we cruised along and waved to the crowds on the beach. How lucky to be invited for a wonderful cruise in the sunshine. Achoo! The season had begun and all was right with the world.

(ACTION!)

Now I'm off to close up the house, turn on the A/C, and over-water the plants.

May 2009

GOING BATS

I was at Our Lady of Lowes last Sunday morning along with much of the other lesbian population of Sussex County when I spied two friends walking down the aisle with what appeared to be a birdhouse.

Oh no, they said, it was a bat house and it's all the rage now for clearing backyards of mosquitoes. Every lesbian they know is putting up a bat house.

Now I'm as anxious as the next person to avoid B-52 mosquito squads, but the idea of inviting bats to the party to deter mosquitoes seemed rather like inviting Dick Cheney over for hot dogs in order to keep Colin Powell away. I'd rather have General Powell and a swarm of blood-sucking mosquitoes than Dick Cheney and bats. Dick Chaney and bats, in the same sentence, that's quite appropriate.

No, no, said my friends, bats are lovely guests, you hardly see them and they insure a swarm-free picnic on the deck. They are nature's best insect deterrent. To me, nature's best insect deterrent is staying in the house.

Next, my buds told me you have to mount the bat house on a twelve foot pole, which I agreed was perfect as I wouldn't touch anything to do with bats with a ten foot pole. My spouse just rolled her eyes and put a bat house into our shopping cart. Peer pressure sucks.

So I did some research. All you have to do to attract bats is to provide them with a bat-friendly structure. Apparently bats like crowded, warm spaces, so we're lucky we don't attract them to women's happy hour on Friday night. And they like it to be 80 to 100 degrees where they can bask in the sun. Perhaps they'd like an Olivia cruise.

Experts suggest putting a thermometer atop the pole along with the bat house so you can check if the temperature is right to attract occupants. I can barely stagger to the TV in the
morning to check the weather channel, so there's very little chance of me shimmying up a pole to check the bat climate.

Here's good news: “a single brown bat can eat up to 1,000 mosquitoes in one hour.” I imagine that a single gray schnauzer can eat one bat in the time it takes for me to hit them both with a broom to break up the feast. This concerns me.

“A single bat consumes up to 3000 insects a night – a third of those are usually mosquitoes!” Good god, what are the other two thirds, locusts?

“Bats kill mosquitoes that spread West Nile Virus.” Oy, something else I never worried about that I can obsess over now.

Here's a great fact. In Austin, Texas there's a place called Bracken Cave, which is the summer home to between…ready…20 to 30 million Mexican free-tailed bats. Like I needed another reason never to go to Texas.

On the internet I found a pamphlet called Attracting Bats, which, along with Field Guide to Moose Dressing is something I figured I never would have to read. Apparently, using lures like bat guano doesn't work, thank god. Did I ever think I'd be typing the words “bat guano?”

Holy Bat Box Batman, this attracting bats thing is much like field of nightmares – build it and they will come. Eventually. We should have put the bat box up this past spring, before the bats came back from their winter hibernation. That's good, actually, since Bonnie can have all the fun in the world installing it now and I won't have to worry about going bats for at least a year. Now that's a project I can encourage. I bet the bats hibernate in Ft. Lauderdale like the rest of Rehoboth.

Another bat book warns that it could be three to five years before I get a healthy contingent of bats. At that rate, when we sell the house the bats will convey. This project is sounding better and better.

I wound up on the internet half the night looking at bat stuff. I especially liked the site with advice on getting rid of nuisance bats. At this point in my reading, there seems to be no other kind.

But no, there are a zillion varieties. According to the Bat Conservation Organization you can even sponsor a bat, choosing from big brown bats or Vampire Bats. They even have names, like Gandalf the Egyptian Fruit Bat. I wanted to know whether I would get a welcome kit and wallet-sized picture of Gandalf if I sponsored him. Can we e-mail and get updates? Is my sponsorship enough to feed and clothe a bat for a year?

I made the mistake of posting my little bat project on Facebook and immediately started getting all kinds of dire warnings.

Most began with, “Are you crazy???,” followed by the advice that building a house for Purple Martins would work just as well against mosquitoes. Then somebody suggested I forget the Purple Martins and go directly for purple martinis which suited me fine. I could get back to the bat project later.

But then came the most dire warning of all. “Careful! They love coming in the house – and I don't mean the mosquitoes! Ever try catching one as it fly dives from room curtain to room curtain? We did – finally had to call a bat catcher to do the job.”

Okay, now I'm picturing having to call Dracula Exterminators for a bat geek to prowl around my darkened house with a giant fish net while the dogs and I check into a motel.

That did it. I sent Bonnie, the bat house and the twelve foot pole back to Lowes with instructions to return with Citronella candles and Deep Woods Off. I'm relieved there won't be bats at Schnauzerhaven any time soon, but I'm seriously worried about all those lesbians in Rehoboth trying to lure bats into their belfries. Give it up, girls. Maybe this summer, to get up close and personal with bats, we should skip the Michigan Womyns's Music Festival and go to the Annual Great Lakes Bat Festival on August 28 and 29. At this one, I hope to hell nobody gets naked in the woods.

Now I'm off to get a purple martini.