Crazy Stable

It was our pleasure yesterday morning to offer refreshments to an intrepid Forgotten New York walking tour of Victorian Flatbush. The group had cookies and lemonade and heard a few tales to prime them for their exploration of the lush enclave a block away; I shared this reflection on life just outside a rock-star historic district.

Spouse and I tagged along for our umpteenth tour of our own neighborhood, because there's always something new to discover in Prospect Park South.  Newcomers always love the "Greek temple" houses, like this one on Buckingham Road...

...or this one, the raffish "Spider Web House"...

...with its Morticia Addams windows.

Here's two sweet details from Buckingham Road, a turret I've actually been inside (it's next to a top-floor ballroom in a shingle-style pile)... 

...and the exuberant palette of the famed Japanese house plus its maple foliage screen.

Several of these grande dames were having facelifts. One was stripping away siding to reveal decades-old shingles.

  This one had undergone a complete chemical peel. Some tour guests seemed surprised that Landmarks gets a say on what colors you can paint your house in a historic district. (We, on the other hand, could paint the Stable hot pink and neon green and no one could stop us. Hm, there's an idea.)

It was a four-hour ramble, too much to recount in one bite. Tomorrow: Flatbush tour, part II: Old ghosts and new gardens.

Look what I found growing in the garden!

This is Chuck, All-American Cat. When I first heard him hollering (for food and love in equal measure), he was in the driveway, and I thought he was our Charlie, another golden boy. But closer inspection showed otherwise. Chuck is topaz, not champagne-colored, and is a very young fellow. He's still small but I suspect he will grow into that ringtail of his.

Of course I started feeding him, but feral cats began bullying him at his outdoor dish, and he was terrified. So he's come into the Crazy Stable quarantine area, where he's pining for human companionship and about to be neutered and inoculated on our "dime" (I wish).

That means Chuck could be yours by this weekend. That is, if you are ready for this much love to be poured in your direction! I'll deliver him with whatever cat supplies you need; give a shout to brenda (at) tenthleper (dot) us and we'll start you on the road to a richer, Chuck-enhanced life!

Meanwhile, the desolate fenced-off area of driveway that I have long dubbed the "garth" (medieval cloister garden) is trying to become one! Above: Garth, 5 years ago. I also call it the "sledgehammer garden," and this year the remaining cement looks more tentative than ever. The raised bed was finally installed and filled (it took a lot more compost than I thought)...

...and has produced a brave little crop of peas! Snow peas, snap peas, shelling peas...I don't know, I planted all three and they're all growing together, and they're all snaps if you eat 'em young enough. Peas have always refused to grow for me, so this is great news.

They're almost done, and next up is Japanese eggplant and a "black" Bulgarian tomato named "Vorlon," a double dose of geekery (gardening + "Babylon 5"). If you know what Vorlons are, you will understand why I fear that this tomato will drift around muttering runic utterances.

But one harvest at a time. Want a really good cat? Of course you do!

That would describe St. Philip Neri, the patron saint of joy, whose feast day this is. There are "better" paintings than this one of Philip, but he looks a bit daft in most of them. Here he looks friendly and fun.

I love St. Philip for several reasons. We belong to a parish of the Oratory, which he founded during the Renaissance as a spiritual haven of fellowship, prayer, learning and laughter. (Ours in 21st-century Brooklyn is all that, I am blessed to report.) Because I have suffered from depression, I treasure Philip's connection to joy. (His heart was said to radiate loving warmth, so that he is often depicted with collar open--making him also an unlikely but apt patron of the menopausal.)

But my friendship with Philip was cemented a year ago, when I visited Rome and the church he founded there, the Chiesa Nuova. I described my pilgrimage here last year; I realize now that I will revisit those hours all my life. Here is the altar and chalice Philip used at Mass; in later life he would go into ecstasies and even levitate, it was said. (Our parish has music beautiful enough for levitation, although too often my mind is on my to-do list and my worries.)

Philip chose trust in God over worrying. Reportedly, he would hang out on the church roof, looking over the rooftops of Rome. Penitents besieged him, however, since his wisdom and compassion as a confessor were legendary.  Once, when a depressed young man asked his advice, he bolted out into the streets, saying, "Run with me!" The simple genius of that...I love to picture them both, sweating and laughing, blocks away or down by the Tiber, the sad young man shaken out of his melancholy by the old priest with (as Chesterton said in defining sanity) tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.

To celebrate Philip's day, I think I will go take a walk. Maybe try a bit of a run!

Actual signature of St. Philip Neri

(With thanks to my fine cousin Joanne for reminding me of St. Philip's day today!)

I woke up in Flatbush as usual this morning, groggy and anxious. I had an early phone conference, for one thing. 

Sunrise over Joplin, MO, May 24, 2011 (Joe Raedle, Getty Images)

As usual, my back ached and I resented our mattress, which has gone squishy only a few years after purchasing it. 

Ted Grabenauer sleeps on his front porch the morning after a tornado ripped the roof of his home in Joplin (Mike Stone / Reuters)

I worried about getting a handyman to patch the sheetrock where we'd removed the baby raccoons, and about whether or not we'd be able to afford it.  Talk about "it's always something." 

Street in Joplin, MO (Mike Gullett, AP)

I sent Daughter off to the bus with her lunch, but this morning I forgot to go to the window and wave.

Maggie Kelley and her husband, Trey Adams hug their dog, Saint, after finding him amid the rubble on their Joplin home. (Adam Wisneski, AP)

Our house is so badly in need of painting, plastering and floor refinishing that I sometimes feel utterly overwhelmed by the sheer weight of undone projects. I usually love the house, but sometimes I hate it for its mortifying shabbiness.

A note to rescue workers on a tornado-damaged house in Joplin.  (Adam Wisneski /AP)

Maybe I need to get a little perspective.

Where to begin? With the fact that we ignored the scratchings and screechings in the walls because we "thought they were just the squirrels"? As if that were somehow normal?

After a week or so, even the Edies would have agreed: Those were no squirrels. The chirrupings we kept hearing between the second and third floors seemed heftier than our usual interlopers.

And then we started seeing "Spidey."

 I dubbed him that after seeing him scale the front porch like the web-slinger himself at dusk. Soon, he was making appearances all over the roof. Spidey didn't seem rabid-fearless, just very active. A bit of research into the wall-chorus revealed why: Spidey was a she, and she was out doing errands while her new babies awaited her return. Inside our walls.

Yes, those were Spidey's young'uns, and they had to go. Turns out it's not so easy to find a wildlife remover in Brooklyn. We found Dave on Long Island, who arrived in a truck plastered with photos of his bedbug-sniffing dog.

We were brusquely assured that we did indeed have raccoons. There is only one plan for Baby Raccoons in the Walls: Trap mom outside, and wait for the young to start hollering. Because the only thing worse than live raccoons inside your walls is dead ones.

Dave set two kinds of baited traps for Spidey: nonlethal ones at the base of our mammoth tree,  which would grab the animal's wrist like a handcuff; and a lethal one on the porch roof, because the others often fail to do the job. Although we were told the wrist traps were "species-specific," it took only hours for a poor little feral cat to become frantically ensnared; with difficulty (and oven mitts), we freed her and she shot off, unharmed.

The next morning, Spouse said, "Don't look on the porch roof." Spidey had chosen badly. I had to look; it seemed cowardly and dishonest not to. The scene was unbloody but gruesome; Spidey had clearly died instantly, as if by ninja attack to the neck. What haunted me was the classic indicator that young will be found nearby: Spidey had nursing nipples. The body was removed, and we waited.

Within 24 hours, the orphans started to holler. Fortunately, they didn't travel much; you can punch holes all over your house trying to extricate older, more mobile young. We masked every damn thing in the kitchen (raccoon-nest insulation not being high on hygiene), and Dave returned with a Sawz-All.

On the second try, he scooped out four little masked cubs and laid them on the kitchen floor, screeching and stumbling around shakily, like tiny Godzillas.

"There's one more." Another cut to the Sheetrock, and the last baby dropped out. He was the spunkiest, grooving around solo while his siblings huddled together.

Dave says he releases them out on the Island somewhere with a live-captured mom, and that nursing raccoons readily foster orphaned litters. This may be up there with "Sparky went to live with a nice farmer and his family in the country, Johnny" in the annals of credibility, but I chose to believe it. We had none, none of the resources--time, money, expertise--to rescue and rehome Spidey and the kids to some Raccoon Resort. There's Born Free, and then there's Brooklyn. 

I wish the little guys luck, I really do. Authorizing their mother's execution was a stark exercise in choosing between sentiment and self-preservation. Our family's health, our home, our pets were all threatened by this wayward family, who could eventually have made their way out of the walls and into our living space. It's hard to feel like Ripley in Aliens when you're chasing little guys in fur pajamas, though.

 Take a look at their brief sojourn on our kitchen floor, which is just about the most surreal interlude in the history of the Crazy Stable: