Midwest Interlude, Pt. 3

This hairy woodpecker landed on the maple and stayed for quite a while, allowing me to photograph it to my heart's content.

Occasionally you find out something about yourself that you wished wasn't true, but there it is. I thought I could stick it out here at my wife's family's home until the end of the year, if necessary, but I will be returning to my own home in a couple of days while my wife continues to provide care for her terminally ill mother. 

For the past several weeks I've watched my wife and her brother and father provide 24/7 in-home care to their bed-ridden and constantly suffering mother and wife -- now their patient -- as they themselves are tested physically, mentally, financially, and just about any other way you can think of. The patient's former bright-eyed cheerfulness now rarely glimmers from behind her mask of suffering. Alive, but not "truly alive," as the saying goes. Constantly harried by the debilitating symptoms of her bulbar-onset ALS, she can enjoy almost none of her former pursuits. 

Her family supports her with all the fortitude they can muster. I've watched them prepare the various medications that prolong her life and relieve at least some of her suffering. The meds are delivered either through her gastrostomy tube or by a syringe of fluid squirted into her mouth, where it must be absorbed since swallowing is impossible. Next is preparing and administering liquefied food through the G-tube, 60 milliliters at a time. The alternation of medicine and food must be done on a fairly precise daily schedule. These meds an hour before feeding, these others an hour after, and these 12 hours apart.

And the days keep on coming. For patient and caregiver, one day is much the same as another. Only the degree of suffering ebbs and flows. No one gets to look forward to the weekend. Saturday morning is the same as Monday morning. Only the weekly arrival of the hospice nurse and the twice-a-week certified nursing assistant intrude on the regular schedule. 

The patient requires assistance getting to the bathroom, suctioning saliva, having her ventilator mask put on and taken off, using the cough-assist machine, and anything else, at any time of the day or night. The patient can't speak, only whimper. To communicate distress, she can whimper more emphatically or write her needs, sometimes quite cryptically due to her loss of mental acuity, on a small electronic tablet. It was harrowing to sit with my wife one evening as she tried to figure out what was wrong when her mother was suffering a panic attack and couldn't clearly communicate what she needed. 

In addition to administering food and meds and aid from various bedside machines, the caregivers have to keep their patient clean and daily change bandages on bedsores. Someone is sitting a few feet away from her at all times. The whole program is much more demanding than a full-time job, but there is no pay or stipend for family caregivers. My wife and brother-in-laws' lost income and depleted savings have run into many tens of thousands of dollars.

Meanwhile, everyday activities like going outside for exercise or preparing a healthy meal become next to impossible for the caregivers when their patient could require immediate help at any time. Convenience food and comfort food become the norm. Weight loss and sleep-deprivation become a way of life. Only their deep love and respect for their mother keep them going.

The decision to take on such a harrowing job is made with no thought to one's own welfare. One simply becomes fated to rise to the occasion and endure whatever comes. The transition to full-time caregiver can come with hardly any decision at all. 

Imagine you find out your failing health isn't a temporary thing from which you'll eventually recover. You learn you will never return to your former, relatively healthy, 80-year-old self. Instead you find out your worsening symptoms are being caused by a terminal and incurable motor-neuron disease. Your recent difficulty chewing and swallowing food is going to get worse, and will soon be lost entirely. You won't even be able to take a drink of water. If you let nature take its course, you will die. Your doctors tell you that medicines and technology can't save you, but they can extend your life. The doctors can insert a feeding tube into your stomach. You do not feel ready to die, so you decide to get the tube, and of course your loved ones support this fateful decision. 

As the patient, you don't realize that the operation is going to leave you bed-ridden for the rest of your life, unable even to care for yourself much less the family you formerly took pride in caring for. As the caregiver, you don't realize you're going to have to leave your job and any semblance of your previous normal life. Neither patient nor caregivers have any idea of the trials that lay ahead, or how long they will go on.

When the technology to prolong life is offered, how can it be refused? Who is going to consider the possible consequences when all you can think is that you're not ready to die? 

I can only hope this experience has bolstered my resolve to let nature run its course when my own time comes. Already in my late 60s now, I do feel as ready as I guess anyone can be to accept death when it comes. It is my belief, based on my own experience of this beautiful, exuberant, challenging, and mysterious world, that when all the surface things and thoughts are allowed to fall away, what remains is an enveloping presence of peace and love. 

As many people know, we can experience the grace of this fundamental presence even while we're alive, and of the many means of doing so, I have chosen mindful contemplation of the deep nature of mind and of things, a practice for which nature photography is an excellent doorway. Besides improving my appreciation for the spectrum of life by acknowledging and embracing everything from the sublime to the harrowing, I believe I am preparing myself to courageously confront the adventure of my own mortality as the rueful day approaches.

When my father was in his 90s, having suffered a type of Parkinson's disease for decades, he suddenly found himself unable to get to the bathroom on his own steam, which I believe he considered a death-blow to his sense of dignity and self-reliance. Shortly after that he stopped eating and drinking and even willed himself into a coma. He died in his sleep in about two weeks. The rules of his religion would almost certainly have forbidden what is called Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking (VSED) (there is an article about VSED in The New York Times). I imagine he also didn't want anyone trying to talk him out of his decision, so he didn't ask permission or, sadly, consult with his children, so we did not get to say good-bye. Still, I not only respect his decision but see it as an act of love and courage.

I get it that contemplating one's mortality isn't for everyone, but waiting for it to suddenly come calling can have its disadvantages too, both for oneself and one's family. Not that everyone would or should decide against hanging onto this precious life for as long as possible, and at all costs. To each his own. And besides, the choice of nature vs. technology isn't always going to be a simple matter, even for the terminally ill.

Even after the neighborhood's robin and cardinal fledgelings had all moved on, the house sparrows continued feeding youngsters for another couple of weeks.

The feathered critters aren't the only ones eating the birdseed I scatter about.

Squirrels will also pick up some of the birdseed, but they also dig up old acorns or maple seeds while sniffing around in the grass.

A water main broke, flooding this intersection. A Metra commuter train is passing by in the background.

Sometimes there aren't any birds hunting for the birdseed.... I don't know if it's the seed bounty or just the season, but both the squirrels and the rabbits have been increasingly frisky lately.

Sometimes it's too darn hot to do much of anything except lie in a shallow depression of cool dirt.

Hairy Woodpecker Digging for Insects in a Maple Tree

My wife and I were married by her uncle, a retired Chicago judge, under this tree more than two decades ago.

Some neighbors let us borrow a couple of bikes, and after giving up on waiting for a cooler day, we finally rode out along the Salt Creek Trail which skirts the Brookfield Zoo. The fawn was getting frisky and splashing around.

A second fawn emerged from the foliage along the banks of the creek to join its sibling and mother, and help itself to a drink of mother's milk.

After cooling off and drinking some water, the family ambled back into the cover of the woods. I never see deer around my inlaws' neighborhood, but the same morning I saw these deer, I had been walking to the local Y to swim laps when I wondered why I hadn't seen any rabbits on people's lawns. A moment later I noticed a nearby squirrel calling out an alarm from up in a nearby tree, and then I spotted a coyote as it ducked into an alley....

I spotted these woodchip fungi (Leucoagaricus americanus) in a small park while walking home from the Y. I didn't have a camera with me, so I picked one up and returned to the scene shortly after getting home, not wanting to risk waiting another day.

Leucoagaricus buttons.

I'd been about to watch a movie on my laptop when my wife came upstairs and told me there was a hawk in the back yard. I figured it would of course be gone by the time I could get down there, but as you can see, it stayed put because it had wounded a young house sparrow.

The immature Cooper's hawk took a long time (about 40 minutes) to make its kill. There were times when it even looked like the sparrow might escape by skittering into some brush or nook.

The hawk didn't seem to know how to kill the sparrow, or even how to keep it pinned down. It often pecked at the sparrow by striking at its tail feathers.

Frustrated Cooper's Hawk

The sparrow (its beak doesn't look fully formed, so I figure it's a youngster) kept trying to escape but could only briefly flutter its wings. Here, the sparrow had managed to move closer and closer to me until the hawk was afraid to move in. I had to wonder if the sparrow's movement toward me was purely by chance, or part of her instinctive survival strategy. Did she recognize me as the human who put out the birdseed? The strategy, if it was one, might have worked, but I didn't want to frighten off the hawk, so I got up and moved farther away.

Once I was out of the way, the hawk finally bounded over to the sparrow, grasped it in its talons, and flew it up to a branch in the maple tree above us. Sadly, the sparrow continued to struggle as its feathers were being yanked out. Somestimes even the harrowing side of nature has its own kind of sublimity.

I'm reading An Immense World by Ed Yong, and he discusses the debate about whether a given animal feels pain or is reacting reflexively (nociception). We can't know precisely how the sparrow perceives its world or its fate, but we also can't help wishing the hawk (its yellow eye and dark streaking mark it as a juvenile) would have made the kill more quickly and efficiently.

Glowing Tracks

When I told my brother-in-law that sunset was going to be at 7:56 p.m., he lamented that it was already happening before 8 p.m. A year of caregiving gone by, and summer slipping away.

There's a young cardinal around, and an adult female that sometimes feeds it, but I haven't caught them in the act and do not know if this is the juvenile or the adult.

House Sparrows Waiting Out the Rain

Sparrow Gang

My Car in the Rain

That speck up there might be one of the adult merlins. There were four merlins not too long ago, two of which presumably were fledgelings. It's been much more quiet around here without all the merlins screeching in the skies and treetops.

Rainbow Squirrel

Closing out a day that of 85-degree heat with 80 percent humidity, thunderstorms raised the humidity but cooling rain finally brought some relief from the high temperatures.

The bunny was lying in its divot near the fence when the squirrel got a little too close for comfort. The squirrel made no move on the rabbit and scarcely registered its presence.

Meanwhile, a couple of neighborhood cats were hanging out together. The gray cat was watching a squirrel make its way across the top of a fence. When the squirrel darted to the ground, the gray cat gave chase but missed. The orange cat followed at its leisure, and they both soon moved off to rest in the shade of thick plant cover in front of a nearby house.

Coming home from a brief evening bike ride, we came across this scene of a young man attending to an injured raccoon lying in the grass next to the road. The animal's skin wasn't broken -- it wasn't bleeding anywhere -- but its left leg and/or hip was out of commission. Another lady stopped and called for help at some local animal care facilities (she hadn't found one that wasn't full by the time we left). Interestingly, the young man reached out and scratched the raccoon's head as if it were a cat, stating that he was a hunter (implying, I guess, that he felt comfortable reading the animal's state of mind). He was still trying to comfort the raccoon as we left.

It's mid-August and the sunflowers are going to seed in a yard a few doors down. A couple of lesser goldfinches have gotten wise to the prize. This is the best angle I could get from the alley due to an intervening young oak tree.

The monarch butterfly is the Illinois State Insect (California's is the dogface butterfly, Zerene eurydice). I wondered if this monarch, with lots of white pollen stuck to it, is preparing to migrate back to Mexico anytime soon, although September is peak migration season. There has certainly been no cool weather that might induce migration (it's been around 90 degrees an awful lot this summer). The last generation of the year is called the "super generation" and is physiologically better suited than spring and early summer generations for making the long trip south. For one thing, the super generation butterflies can live up to eight months instead of the 4-6 weeks of typical monarch. For another, they go into reproductive diapause and do not mate or lay eggs. Instead, they feast to build fat reserves to sustain them on their migratory journey.

Here's Campsis radicans showing its elongated fruit capsules. Its common names include trumpet creeper, hellvine, and devil's shoestring, and it's in the same family, Bignoniaceae, as the red trumpet vine that grows across the street from our home in San Francisco.

I was looking through a milkweed patch for any sign of a monarch chrysalis or caterpillar, but all I found were groups of golden aphids accompanied by a strange and interesting, unknown insect.

Nearby, this wasp was apparently hunting for nectar on some old milkweed blossoms.

I was surprised to see a squirrel jump into a next-door apple tree sapling that only had maybe four or five apples in it. But I was even more surprised when the squirrel plucked the apple and carried it away. Here it's about to jump up onto a garage roof -- quite a leap even when they're not carrying anything.

Salt Creek Filled Up After Some Recent Rains

Raccoon and Heron Tracks Along Salt Creek

Great Blue Heron Hunting on Salt Creek

This looks like an older rabbit, with lighter-colored fur, a cropped ear, and a tick on its nose.

The only thing I'll miss about the weather out here is the awesome thunderstorms.

Another flush of these Leucoagaricus americanus mushrooms (aka reddening lepiota or American parasol) came up after more recent rain. I didn't notice before, but the young stipes stain yellow.

I spotted one chipmunk as I was biking down a busy street on my way to the Salt Creek Trail, so I turned around to see what was going on. Amazingly, they were getting up the nerve to cross four lanes of traffic to reach the forest on the other side. Happily, they made it!

This is little Salt Creek after a good rain, flooded up to its ears. The places where I recently photographed a great blue heron were underwater. As I rode out the trail I was surprised by the fragrance of cotton candy in a few places. Surrounded by so much unfamiliar woodland I had no idea where to start looking for its source, but when I got back to the house, my brother-in-law suggested I google it. So I did, and the Katsura tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum), a native of Japan and China that thrives in Illinois, fits the bill.

This little buck-fawn showed no fear as he cropped grass and leaves along the Salt Creek Trail.

I was glad to get a shot of a chipmunk that was nowhere near a road. One chipmunk had already crossed the bike path in front of me, but this one was stuck until I passed. Look at that angry face! It was in fact making alarm calls, but it didn't run off.

I reached a point on the Salt Creek Trail that was flooded, and as I debated whether to ride through on my borrowed bike, another cyclist coming the other way told me there was a much deeper flood not far beyond. I reluctantly turned around, but that's when I almost immediately spotted the chipmunks, this orange club fungus (possibly Clavulinopsis laeticolor, or handsome club), a deer family trekking through the woods, and a flush of oyster mushrooms.

These oyster mushrooms were pretty, but also extremely buggy! Hordes of fungus gnats, and at least one large beetle.

This guy was following along in a small family group, just barely coming into his antlers.

I was trying to find some new bike routes through the small forest reserves when I encountered a very birdy area with robins and flickers and blue jays, and also this downy woodpecker and a white-breasted nuthatch.

The white-breasted nuthatch struck a nice pose.

I was sitting on the back deck when something weird fluttered across my field of vision. It was green and diaphanous at the same time, and I wasn't sure if it was a plant billowing on the wind, or some kind of animal. Luckily I was able to take note of where it landed, and I soon located the katydid in nearly perfect camouflage. Its flights were silent, or close enough to it that I couldn't hear anything over all the ambient neighborhood noise of motor vehicles and passing trains (the incessant rasping of cicadas hadn't begun yet). According to dietary laws in the Book of Leviticus, katydids are considered "clean" for eating purposes (as are cicadas), although I'd rather have a Boca Burger myself. I was surprised none of the many nearby house sparrows tried to snag this beautiful insect for birdy num-nums.

The Des Plaines River, on the way to the Salt Creek Trail, which has been a lifeline for me.

Whatever was munching these fat boletes was doing so right next to an underground hornets' nest.

I continue checking out various milkweed plants but have still seen no sign of monarch caterpillars. Just these mating milkweed bugs.

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Common Green Darner

Blue Cardinal Flower (Lobelia siphilitica)

When I checked out this flower I felt the stem and thought it was square, and that this would be a member of the mint family. Nope! It's angular but not square. The specific epithet comes from the belief that this plant could cure syphilis. Extracts of the plant are used in several antidepressant and opioid medications.

Ohio Buckeye (Aesculus glabra)

I'm going to go with Boletus campestris for the little guy on the left (I would later find one in my father-in-law's yard and discover that its stalk and pores stain blue when handled). 

At first glance I thought this was a pair of cockatiels. I don't recall the last time I saw a white pigeon, but I'm pretty sure I've never seen two of them together before. They were hanging out on a power line above a very busy intersection (Cermak Road and Rt. 45/N. LaGrange Road) along the Salt Creek Trail.

As a kid in Maryland we used to call cicadas "heat bugs." Their sound is ubiquitous in the summertime.

This one was resting on the sidewalk and paid me no mind. The other day I wanted to photograph one on the back deck, but it was too close to the grill. I found a small stick and planned to scoot it into the open, but it flew away as soon as I touched it.

I went out to look for monarch caterpillars again, and this time I got a little closer -- note the single egg on the milkweed leaf to the right of the butterfly's wing.

Compared to San Francisco, there are hardly any hummingbirds here, and I have rarely gotten close enough to one to get a picture. This is the only time I've been close enough and had my camera with me. It seems that Anna's hummingbirds are as common here as they are back home.

I was curious about these flowers (White Turtlehead, Chelone glabra) and spotted this Goldenrod Soldier Beetle ambling around on it. You can just make out a flower spider on the blossom to the left. As the beetle got closer, the spider ducked into cover.

Milkweed Bug and Milkweed Seed Pods

The weather has been changing a little lately, getting cooler (hardly breaking 85!), but I would guess we're still a month away (the time it takes a monarch to go from egg to butterfly) from the "super generation" that will migrate to Mexico for the winter.

Chicago Bungalows

Farther up the street, this one is for sale for $540,000 -- a lot of money, but it's been around 40 years since you could buy a house that cheap in San Francisco.

This great egret flew down to land on a branch near a second egret on the Des Plaines River. I didn't see that the egret had landed with one foot on a turtle until it turned and walked toward the riverbank, finally lifting its foot off the relieved turtle.

Great Egrets, Des Plaines River

Monarch Nectaring on Fuller's Teasel

Most of the teasel in this spot had already flowered and gone to seed, but the monarch was making the most of the remaining blossoms. In fact, it (or another monarch) was feeding on the flowers when I passed by the patch on my way back, a couple of hours later.

Obedience (Physostegia virginiana) on Banks of Salt Creek

Supposedly you can push an individual flower to the side and it will move as if hinged and stay in the new position, hence the name obedience, or obedient plant. I tried it on a later trip and was not impressed.

Ichneumon Wasp on Iron Bridge Railing Over Salt Creek at North Bemis Woods

I wondered if this was the same great blue heron I photographed some time ago along Salt Creek despite being a few miles upstream.

The heron was hunting from the middle of the creek, not having much luck.

Doe and Fawn Along Banks of Salt Creek

Check out all the lichen and other plant matter stuck to the fawn's coat.

I'm just about out of birdseed, so the bounty is almost over for the yardbirds.

And their buddies, the squirrels and bunnies. This little rabbit has gotten a little bigger, but still has a good ways to grow.

There's plenty of squirrel bounty growing from the trees, so they won't miss the birdseed too much. Just this morning I also saw a squirrel catch and eat a cicada.

Long Bunny

I was hearing an interesting new animal call as I rode along Salt Creek, and I assumed a bird was making the call. Nope. It was this guy, tightly ensconsed amidst a snaggle of forest debris.

Not much farther down the trail, two doe/fawn pairs were browsing leaves near the edge of the woods. Here the fawn crossed in front of me to catch up to mom on the other side of the path.

Still no luck finding a monarch caterpillar on the milkweed. This scene was kind of interesting with the variety of an adult milkweed bug (Oncopeltus fasciatus) with numerous nymphs, a daddy longlegs, and an ant or two.

I was onto the new-for-me chipmunk call, so I stopped when I heard it again and managed to get off this single frame before the critter ducked out of sight.

Thanks to the chipmunk I also spotted these incredible golden mushrooms growing on a decaying log nearby.

This whole shot is in color despite its look of being color mushrooms on a black-and-white background.

Turns out they are Yellow Oyster Mushrooms (Pleurotus citrinopileatus), natives of eastern Russia, northern China, and Japan, which have found their way to Illinois (as well as a few other states, with Minnesota and Iowa being the western-most).

This red-bellied woodpecker flew off the snag and into an oak tree where it snagged an acorn, then returned and looked for a place to cache it.

They could take a lesson from our acorn woodpeckers who dig out holes in which to stash the nuts for later.

These were kind of big and juicy-looking for crabapples, and they even tasted sweet (as well as astringent). Turns out they are probably Siberian crabapple (Malus baccata).

A bunch of Canada geese had gathered at one of the parks adjacent to Salt Crek (North Bemis Woods), and all of a sudden the word got out that it was time to go back into the creek. Several lines of geese trooped from a nearby field, crossed the bike/pedestrian path, and entered the creek in the same place.

Troops of glowing grasses seen on my last ride along the Salt Creek Trail before heading home to San Francisco.

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