Four and twenty birds

Bananas, avocado, citrus and

bird

with champagne bottle from Sam's Bac result,
bread basket and nut bowl

Yes, that's right. Bird. In my fruit bowl.

Of course there's a story.

I think it was yesterday that I first heard the noise, a scrambling, beating, frantic sound that appeared to be coming from the wood stove flue. As one does with all possible problems that haven't fully gelled into a clear and immediate, I chose to ignore it. My brain very helpfully came up with several plausible possibilities, each of which released me from any responsibility to a living thing very likely caught in my 125 mm diameter metal chimney flue.

First, there was merely a nest up under the "Chinese hat" that protects the opening to the flue.

Second, well, there was no second.

Today, I was sitting in the living room, debating the real or imagined necessity of going to the shopping mall to buy something to wear to a party tomorrow evening, and a few pairs of lightweight summer pants -- it's awfully hot for jeans, and one pair has spot inside the thigh that has worn thin enough to become a hole; definitely not alright for my husband's wife --, when it started again. I got up and went to inspect the wood stove, and clear as day there were animal paw prints in the oven cleaner I hadn't bothered to clean off the inside of the glass window after applying it, oh, Sunday.

That's great for the animals to ingest when they clean their paws, said myself, with a distinct air of criticism.

My thoughts raced to Baccarat, who had refused to eat her dinner last night, and her breakfast this morning. While these were absolutely and definitely not her prints, was it possible she had licked Wisp's, and for that, wasn't it more likely Shadow, since they were quite high up? Shadow being much larger.

Look, there are white paw prints on top of the stove, too, myself pointed out. And there were. Wisp. I couldn't imagine Shadow up there, but could the animal have gotten out and gone back in? Are you completely crazy or only stupid? asked a surprised self, shaking her head. Like it could possibly get out of a flue covered with the ceiling panel of the combustion chamber and then choose to climb back in there. Oh. My. God.

I didn't like the sound of that, but there wasn't much to say, so I returned to my emails. It was quiet, for a little while. I got up and went to knock on the chimney flue. No response. I knocked again, and returned to my computer to put off deciding whether I was going to the mall and to call the vet. I got up again and headed over to get Baccarat's untouched breakfast off the dining table and offered her the bowl. She lowered her head and nosed it, then, she ate a bit. It took longer than usual, but she ate all but a last bit she left in the bowl, which Rapide finished off and then licked the floor.

Watching Rapide lick the floor, I thought about calling the Morso salesperson, a very nice ex-professional jockey, to ask him if a bird or small animal could really get into the chimney flue tubing. I mean, didn't they have screens exactly for that purpose? I returned to the sofa to think it over, and then, it started again, with even more insistence. I jumped off the sofa and knelt in front of the stove. It sounded like the trapped -- for trapped it without question was -- animal was right above the wood stove, in the bend of the tubing. I knocked, and it flapped on, a bird, possibly a squirrel; I have seen a couple of red ones around lately.

You're going to have to take it apart, said myself. There are instructions in the manual. It didn't look that hard, if you'll recall. You should clean it anyway, you know. Myself is becoming bossy and officious these days. There was no point in arguing.

"I know."

It looked straightforward enough, to a formerly-practicing and decently competent architect. Just push the top panel up, to release the side panels, remove them, and then tilt the top panel to remove it and to get to the one above it to remove that one, and I should be at the opening to the flue. If the animal were nearby, or descending the tube, it should eventually fall out, or die.

Then you'll have to call the Morso guy, said myself. We were both imagining the bad smell.

[Tho' ye subjoct be but a fart, yet will this tedious sink of learning pondrously phillosophize. Meantime did the foul and deadly stink pervade all places to that degree, yt never smelt I ye like, yet dare I not to leave ye presence, albeit I was like to suffocate.]
-- Mark Twain, 1610

[Credit to Monsieur Renard du Marais]

The top panel budged, but it wouldn't come out. The frenzy in the tubing continued and even picked up a degree. I reached for the instructions. All it said to do was precisely what I was doing.

"Not helpful," I said.

You'd better figure it out, said myself.

I looked more closely. There was quite a bit of accumulated crystallized soot on the top of the ledge that holds the ceiling panel of the combustion chamber in place. Was it enough to jam the panel, preventing me from being able to move it enough? I reached for a bit of wood and started to clear it out. More fell onto the ledge from above, and more and more until I was able to lift it and slide it out, revealing the second ceiling panel above. It came out, covered with a pile of shiny charcoal briquettes.

Probably another sign that you really should have bothered to cut the wood smaller, unnecessarily commented my better self.

"I've had enough, thank you."

Myself wisely elected not to reply, and we both sat back on our heels to listen for noise. It had stopped sometime while I was struggling with the panels, and myself and I hadn't even noticed. The noise did not return. Here, the way was open, and the animal had died? I went to wash my hands and sit on the sofa. I couldn't very well go to the mall and leave the animal, in the event that it wasn't dead yet, to my animals. Wisp or Shadow would see to that in no time flat.

I looked around. I thought about calling the vet, the Morso guy, and a friend, whose father I learned from my email had died last night. I sent a text message, and then, the noise started again, Wisp and Baccarat battled to be the first to the open door of the wood stove and before I could react, a small gray bird flew clumsily out, half falling, half flying, and careened across the living room and dining table, animals dashing along behind, crashing into chairs, as it came to light on the table.

What? The open door was just beyond, and it lands on the table? Baccarat looked confused. Wisp prepared to jump, and it took off in flight, making it less than a meter before it half fell and half flew to a halt near the radiator.

The radiator? Again? What is it with radiators and birds?

I got on my hands and knees alongside the animals, milling all around me, and hunted behind the slats, around the dust and cobweb-filled shopping bags used to carry the paper and glass recycling to the bins, stuck behind the radiator to keep them out of site, shoving Wisp out of reach, and moved the litter box. There was movement. A little ball of gray bird hopped and then flew up into the dust-filled air, back across the living room and into the entry. Wisp was far ahead of me, and heading for the rear staircase.

But there are no open windows at that end of the house, and we can't see it! said myself.

"I know. Move, Wisp. Now!" She was forcing herself between the vacuum cleaner and a fire extinguisher on the stair turn that had no business there, and struggling with her, I searched the air for the bird. Nothing.

Hop. Hop-hop.

It was there, just past Wisp's needle-like claws and teeth and the fire extinguisher, wedged into the space against the stair riser. I reached. It hopped. I reached again, using the extinguisher to body-block Wisp. It hopped, and then it flew, like a drunken pilot, back across the entry, the living room and the kitchen towards the door, only to land in --

The fruit bowl.

"Aright," I said. "If you're not in a hurry, I am going to get my camera."

It was there, nestled in between the avocado and un radis noir, covered with a bit of paper, the feathers on its head somewhat gelled by the soot from its several-hour experience in the chimney flue. It blinked and swiveled its head around. Wisp meowed in frustration, and Baccarat looked utterly perplexed, and then the bird took off again. This time it ran straight into the open panel of the kitchen casement before finding its way out through the enormous, gaping hole in the wall the open window makes, before diving dangerously and helplessly near the lawn, onto which Wisp and the ailing Baccarat had made it just as fast. I had to negotiate the table to get to the door and outside, where I joined Rapide, looking as confused as her blank expression permits.

There was no sign of the bird, and Wisp was back, inspecting the dismantled wood stove interior.

Already.

Leaving Rapide and I to wonder, "What's with me and the birds? And does it have anything to do with having been chosen to recite Four and Twenty Blackbirds in the kindergarten pageant?"

Sing a song of sixpence
AKA blackbirds in a pie

Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened the birds began to sing,
Oh wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the king?
The king was in his counting house counting out his money,
The queen was in the parlour eating bread and honey
The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes,
When down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose!
http://www.rhymes.org.uk/sing_a_song_of_sixpence.htm

Which, if you trust Snopes.com -- and who doesn't? --, might explain something about my taste for Patrick O'Brian novels, history and adventure.

And I'm down to what, 19 now? Just click on the "Bird" tag and start counting.
....

The country life for me

The koi finds a friend

Please, don't tell it that it's its own self; I haven't let on yet.

Koi, like goldfish, are highly sociable creatures and don't like being alone in their own pond in quarantine very much, although this one seems to be starting to get used to the fact and the new rhythm of life, including 30 minute to one hour Nifrupirinol bath treatments in the afternoon. We are staving off the Ziploc bag in the freezer option as long as we can continue to give the antibiotics I can get in the store and the sea-salt regime a chance of working. It isn't eating anymore, aside from the perhaps accidental ingestion of a koi stick the day before yesterday, when I put it in the clear salad bowl of Nifurpirinol solution for the first time, which isn't so great a sign.

Neither were the enlarged blood vessels around its right eye yesterday. They don't look much worse, and possibly a little better today.

Word must be getting out, however, that I am something of an animal recovery and treatment center because the neighbor turned up at the gate with her 3-year-old and her 5-year-old niece in tow earlier than I expected them to come for a swim.

"Ah, on a eu un changement du programme?" I called from where I was peering into the quarantine basin. They were to have taken a postprandial nap before coming for a tea time swim.

"Non, on a trouvé un bébé crapeau dans le bac à sable, et on a pensé l'amener ici."

Why, merci beaucoup!

In short, they found a baby toad cowering in a corner of the sandbox, and they thought they'd bring it to me. Well, as it happens, I have a toad house or two available, with piscine, in the border. I invited them in through the gate, and led the girls, followed by my neighbor, to the very spot, an empty orange juice bottle filled with water for the toad pool in hand. This, I handed to her small daughter, standing next to me in her ruffle-bottom swimsuit, and asked if she would like to fill the toad pool herself before we released the bébé crapeau into it.

She began to show advanced stages of doubt and trepidation, standing there clutching the one liter -- plus 15cl gratuit! -- orange juice bottle against her bare belly, eyebrows drawing together and lowering several centimeters as her lower lip protruded worrisomely, and then quivered. She cast her glance demurely down to the right and refused all further action or offer of assistance.

"Tu veux que je le fais moi?" I asked, certain of failure. She raised her eyes and their brows a millimeter in my direction, and I detected the faintest nod. Oui. "D'accord, je le ferai." I reached for the bottle, which she released, and poured it carefully into the dish. I pointed to the clay flower pots, decorated with stones and sunk into the dirt on their sides below the yew tree. Chez Eugénie G, half-way house to toads not inclined to stick around.

"Ca c'est l'une des maisons. L'autre," I pointed to where the second one was, behind a hosta, "est là." She nodded, her blond hair drawn up into a ponytail leaving wisps of honey colored hair along her brow and round cheeks. Her mother smiled, amused by the seriousness of the event, and handed me the sandbox toys that contained the small toad. I opened them carefully to reveal a bébé crapeau, standing on its hind legs, eager to find la sortie. I lowered it to the dish and it hopped directly into the shallow water and on past it to crouch at the base of the Falstaff rose and clematis ('Niobe'?).

"Tu le vois, Lili?" asked her mother, as the older cousin looked on, silently. She nodded.

"Il y a quelque chose d'autre de l'autre côté," said Lili, her nickname. I peered, trying to understand to which of the many things possible she might most likely be referring. The holly berries, an eye-catching shade of a dusty violet-blue, seemed most likely. She pointed toward them. "Les choses bleues," said Lili. The holly berries. I reached and broke a bunch off.

"Ce sont les fruits du houx," I told her.

"Ca ne se mange pas," added her mother. No, I confirmed, we don't eat them. They would taste very bitter and give us a stomach ache. Of course, I am not sure of that, but it works with preschoolers.

"Ils sont les graines de la plante," I explained, "pour que le houx puisse en faire d'autres houx." The girls nodded together, ready for lycée. "Tu veux les prendre?" I asked the older one, who reached out and took the little bunch of violet-blue fruits. "Ils ne te feront pas de mal si tu ne les manges pas."

I briefly considered a job as a teacher, or a gouvernante for a wealthy family with vast gardens, and exceedingly well-behaved children, interested in nature, literature and foreign languages, art and alpine sports. Perhaps yoga in the shrubbery.

We looked at the frogs in the bassin, and I accompanied them to the gate to go home for their nap so they could come back and enjoy our pool.

Ah, the joys of country village living, such as they are. Second only to the joys of marriage and your child being "admis" by the Académie pour son Bac.

Time to go remove the pool summer cover and vacuum it.
....

Le résultat du bac, he did it

The list

He didn't know that I was standing in the little crowd on the lawn in front of the Lycée Condorcet in Limay looking for him. He had left me at the car down the street, but I followed. From the car when I dropped him off, I could see and hear the lycéens, and I wanted to see them get their bac results; the closest thing we have to a graduation ceremony.

It's a ritual to gather at the school where your list will be taped up and look for your name and all your friends' names on the lists of those "candidats admis", to scream your delight and hug your friends, or to cry and be consoled. I parked the car on the sidewalk where it would fit and headed up the walk toward the students, the parents, listening to shout after shout go up, laughter and excited conversation. My legs felt unsteady. It's so hard when you don't know what you will find when you get there, and I hadn't expected to be there at all, although I had offered the night before when we talked about what it would be like for 624,000 lycéens and their parents and grandparents trying to get on the site at the same time to get their results. Besides, he'd need to pick up his file.

"No, Mom. It's okay. It's just as easy to take my scooter, and I'll go straight to work after."

"Are you sure? It's no problem for me to take you and drive you to work, especially if the news isn't good; it would be easier for you. Wouldn't it?"

"It's okay," he said, and headed up to his room, his strawberries still sitting on the table.

The evening had been better than I had imagined. He brought his laptop down to join us even, and "La Soupe aux Choux" was on TV, to get everyone to relax on the eve of so momentous a day, I figured. It was on one of the government stations, after all. I turned the sound way up, made Oxo noises gleefully and drank un ch'ti canon ou deux with our dinner.

Sam did not even frown and tell me to stop that.

I went up to bed when the sports talking heads really got going on le scandale des bleus, Raymond Domenech and the Fedération française de football again. I have my opinion, and it's working for me. We'll talk more about that another time, though. Today is Sam's day.

A little before 1 am, the phone rang and sent us into a panic. Audouin looked around, completely lost. I snapped on my bedside light.

"A côté de toi," I said, completely unhelpfully, looking at the phone. I'd have had to jump over him to get it. He looked at me. "Non. Le téléphone -- à côté de toi."

"Uh," he said, reaching for it and looking for the right button. "Ca doit être l'hôpital." I hoped it was.

"Unh... unh... hunh. D'accord, je viendrai doucement," he said into the receiver and hung up. "C'est l'une des secrétaires. Une stérilité. Je dois aller l'accoucher. La tête s'applique bien."

That meant that it was one of the secretaries in his department he had treated for infertility, so he had promised to be there for the birth, which is usually handled by the midwives or the doctor on duty, if the birth is complicated, and which was coming faster than anyone expected because the head was what one calls "well-applied" and helping things along. I grumbled. I always do. He works such long hours already, and this means neither of us gets a normal night's sleep, and the night before the bac results, to boot. We lay quietly for another few minutes before he got up to get dressed, and I turned on the light to go make hot soy milk and read myself back to sleepiness.

Only an hour later, he walked back into the house and returned to bed, shortly before Sam got up with a nervous tummy. I'd had mine already that day. I was feeling nauseous by then.

Sleep failed to return.

And then the alarm clock rang. It woke us up. We must have wandered into sleep.

"Mom?"

"Unh?"

"Mom? Can you sdfhrit zeozifjzr grg ergi?" Came Sam's voice from the other side of my door, the landing and his door.

"Unh? I can't hear you." His door opened.

"Can you drive me to Condorcet and then to work?"

"Of course I can."

I got up, took a shower and turned on the coffee machine and then the computer, returning to peel a banana while my eggs cooked and the coffee dripped.

"You want some?" I called upstairs.

"No. I'll eat later."

I printed out the itinerary down the highway and across Nanterre to the office and typed some phone numbers into my new SIM card. People I'd want to call with the results, if they were good.

"Can we go?" he said, coming down the stairs.

"Yes. There was a SMS from Anneso, wishing you tender thoughts."

"I saw."

"She sent you one, too?" He nodded. I tucked the directions and the map into my straw bag along with my nearly dead cell phone. I hoped I'd have enough battery left to call everyone I'd need to. I hoped I'd want to.

Every now and then, I forgot where we were going, and my breathing returned to normal from stopped completely. We talked about things being alright if it didn't work out.

"Do you know how many times your uncle repeated a year?" He glanced at me and shook his head. I showed him three fingers. He smiled and chuckled. "Three times: the quatrième, the seconde, and he didn't get the bac, so the terminale. He must have been 21 when he finally got his bac." He snorted a laugh. So, it could get worse.

Another uncle had also repeated the terminale for the same reason, and he now has an enviable position, just like the uncle for whom he is working, the one who repeated three times.

It wouldn't be the end of the world. He was right; do it on his own, prepare only the classes he didn't get from Spain to perfect his Spanish. It even sounded better than going to university by the time I had finished condoning his plan, reminding him of it, just in case.

More kilometers passed under the wheels of the car, and we arrived in the housing development that borders Condorcet. We drove up and down a few streets, knowing we'd eventually find it. We were both in a dream. A state of suspension.

"That's not Hugo's gate, is it?"

"Yeah. Head up there. It's somewhere near there." I negotiated a U-turn in front of a woman with a child in a stroller and headed up the street we had just almost left at our backs.

Walking up toward the entrance to the school, I realized that joy carries farther on the air than sorrow, and walking among the students, I looked at the faces. Most were happy. Some were serious. A woman walked by, speaking into her cell phone.

"Il a eu rattrapage."

Rattrapage. That's what Sam thought he'd get. I looked harder for him in the group gathered near where the bac ES results were posted, and then I saw his track jacket by the windows, his head bent scanning the lists for his name. I took a picture, and then another as he bent closer to the pane, and then he walked away, tall in the crowd of students and parents. I watched him and walked toward him. He was looking over the heads, but not for me. He thought I was in the car, waiting. There was the slightest smile on his lips, enigmatic. It looked like he was making an effort to hold himself together. His eyes continued to scan farther out over the people around him. The battery on my camera died. It didn't matter. He wouldn't have let me take a picture of him, anyway.

"Sam?" He looked down and saw me.

"I got it."

"You got it?" He nodded. "Oh, Sam!" I reached up to put my arms around his neck and give him a hug he did not return. He doesn't do that. I smelled his neck.

"How much?"

"I don't know. I have to go get my file and check for the grades online," he said, and then hesitated. His phone was ringing. His eyes were moving again. "I have friends to see, over there. We'll meet at the car." He was already on the phone, like everyone else around us. I pulled mine out to call the hospital, family that was thinking of him, friends.

He had his bac, and my chest felt tight still, only from different emotions. So hard had these years been. So full of doubt and frustration. They were nothing like my own school years, but here he was, with his baccalauréat dans la poche.

It was over.

C'était fini. C'était en fin vraiment fini.

Nom de Dieu. Nom de Dieu!



And when he joined me in the car, he read his file all the way down the highway to Nanterre. It was his turn to crow and make them eat their words, swallow their pride and their certainty that he couldn't do it. The teachers I mean, not the directors of the school. They had let him make his mistakes and his choices; they had lectured him brilliantly and squeezed my hand. We knew he was bright enough; we only wanted him to act like it, but I knew him better. He wasn't going to play their game according to their rules. He read me out his grades (they were in the file) in each subject and the teachers' comments and then the grade he got on the bac.

"You would have been right," I told him, "to do it on your own if you had to do it again."

"That's pretty much what I did this year for all the work I did during the year." He had prepared it in the last month before the test, figured it out and did what he thought he needed, and he was right.

I called a friend.

"And?" she said, knowing perfectly well.

"He got it."

"I told you so!" she exclaimed into the phone so loudly that Sam couldn't possibly not have heard. Hers was crow I wanted to hear, as the president of the parents' and students' association at his old school in Paris, the one he attended when we got here, and which informed him that he could go on to lycée, only not at their school. Hers was an opinion I valued above all others, and her belief in him had always made me feel a little foolish for my own reservations. "I told you he'd get it! Cover him with kisses for me."

"I will. I think he'll let me if they are from you."

And now he has completed this, and he is ready to take the next step and go to university. I'm ready, too. We did this much of our jobs, and he can do the rest. He thought long and hard about himself and about it, he researched the schools and the programs they offer, and he knows who he is and what he believes he wants. For now, it is law. He is ready to try that, and to consider changes, and I couldn't be more relieved or proud.

Years ago, the therapist looked at me and asked who would buy the groceries. When I replied that I would, she asked again and again. It was like an interrogation.

"You are aware, aren't you" she had asked, "that the children of single mothers do not do as well at school as those of two-parent families?" It involved intimidation.

I understood her. I did not go back, but I have revisited that challenge to my conscience and my decision making at every critical moment of his life, and I have often thought that I had chosen as wrongly as I had chosen well, only there was no way to see it in those terms. Don't we all, when we are becoming parents, take on the same challenge, the same responsibility, learning that we will carry it a long time and feel relief only longer away still?

And eight years ago I brought him here to live. He was about to turn eleven, and he didn't speak a word of French. I was about to make his life much harder. The compensation was that I was also about to make it much richer.

How does it feel today? It feels good. It feels great. Today I can think that I have done my job, and that I have loved it, and that I am deeply grateful.

The rest is his.

Driving into Mantes, I knew who I wanted to see. I filled the tank with gas and drove over to the garden store, the sister store to my old Florosny, where I had found Marie-Noëlle again not long ago. I wanted to tell her and to get the irises to plant down along the wall with the Rose of Sharons.

Arriving at the cash register just as they were closing for lunch, she spotted me and smiled.

"Comment allez-vous aujourd'hui?" she asked.

"Très bien. Mon fils a eu son bac."

"Ah! Félicitations," she said, her face lit up from our old Florosny friendship, our years living in neighboring villages, and being mothers. "Savez, je l'ai vécu aussi," she said. Leaning closer to me, she told me about her son, and how he had wanted to do a bac S, or science, to become a physical therapist. He is gay, she told me, and his gym teacher didn't like gay students and made things difficult for him. His father, she told me, didn't deal with it very well, thought he was a bon à rien. She shared his story with me, and how today he is something, and how he needs to hear that from his father.

"Ca viendra," I told her. "Je suis certaine que ça viendra."

"Je le pense aussi," she said as I was heading to the door, hurrying a bit to let them get to lunch, and then I turned back and saw her standing there with some of the other employees. They stood there in a row. They were all smiling.

"En fait," I rushed to add, "je suis venue vous chercher pour vous le dire à vous."

Everyone waved and grinned, like they all knew that I had done exactly that and couldn't have been happier.
....

Dropsy

In a Nifurpirinol treatment
baktopur direct

I was going to give up, and then I went online one more time and googled "Dropsy" and "Hydropisie". I found just enough hope not to go get larger Ziploc bags and prepare myself to euthanize my koi in the freezer.

One site I had not read yet said:

My heart goes out to any koi or goldfish I see that has dropsy. It's such a nasty infection and almost always fatal. It's basically an infection of an internal organ, often the kidney. The fish is no longer able to process its fluids. They build up inside the fish causing the tell-tell [sic] signs of bloat. You could probably wquate the effect it has on the fish to the effect kidney failure has on us.

There's very little we can do to help a fish in the advanced stages of dropsy. We can, however, do things to help prevent it [great] and treat the fish we suspect could have early stages of it.

Well, that cheered me right up. About as effective as thinking of the bac results being available tomorrow. I read on, listlessly.

What makes dropsy so hard to diagnose in time to treat it is that the symptoms that we know as dropsy do not come out until the fish has entered the final stages of the disease. The fish literally blows up like a balloon. Its scales stick out, making the fish resemble a pinecone [sic]. In fact, dropsy is often called Pinecone [sic] Disease because of it. The eyes will bulge out from the trapped fluids beneath.

Dropsy is also often accompanied by external bacterial infections including fin rot, mouth rot and ulcers. In some cases I've seen almost any and all symptoms. It's really a sad sight to see.

There was a picture of a dead koi, lying on its side, a sort of medical tool lifting one of its raised scales.

My eyes continued scanning the page.

What was the point? My koi might not have ulcers or enlarged blood vessels, but it definitely has raised scales, even if it doesn't look like a cartoon of a koi that has breathed in the air from a balloon it was blowing up.

I have a bad habit of giving up when I hear the symptoms of dropsy described to me by a customer [Hunh? He had my attention]. I will always say that there's really nothing they can do for it [Oh] -- just to make it comfortable and let it live out its short life in a stress-free environment [well, that's not the Ziploc bag in the freezer, anyway]. I was happily reminded [Hunh? What's that?] just this spring that every now and then a fish actually survives dropsy -- even after it has swollen up from it [Smile!].

And ours isn't that swollen. Yet.

The treatment regimen [All eyes here] that worked on the lucky koi who survived this year was feeding it triple antibiotic food and keeping him in .3% non-iodized salt. This was such a no-nonsense approach and so basically simple! The triple antibiotic food kept the internal infection at bay while the salt prevented water from seeping into the sores or skin of the koi and keeping his protective slime coat intact.

That leads me to believe that there is hope for a koi or goldfish who has dropsy as long as the fish is still eating [Oh].

I hopped in the car and headed to Truffaut. The young woman has helped me before, and she told me the bacterial tablets I had picked up wouldn't work, even though I had read the notice, and it did mention the symptoms of dropsy and treatment, and showed me to shelves with the big bags of non-idodized sea salt. I put the tablets back and went to the cash register, feeling a little regretful.

I drove over to Jardin de France and looked for and found the tablets, picked out a pair of natural rubber garden clogs, some sock things that prevent human fungal infections or keep your feet warm in cold-weather gardening, looked at expensive cat litter boxes, tried on a few more straw hats, exercised some self-control and left them in the store and went to pay.

I drove home, hitting a bird of some type that was sitting on the road. I backed up, trying not to do the same to two kids on bikes, whose grandfather and younger sibling were watching from father up the road, and got out of the car. The wings flapped, the dog in the garden on the other side of the link fence came charging up, barking, and the grandfather looked at me -- oddly. I smiled -- forcedly. The bird folded its wings. Everyone peddled on by, the dog kept going crazy, and I started to reach down, uncertain what exactly to do, when it spread its wings and lifted at an unnatural angle into the sky, trailing a broken rear leg behind it, and disappeared into the branches of a tree across the street. I returned to my car and drove the last two kilometers, trying to not damage anything else.

The koi has had a 30 minute bath in the dissolved Nifurpirinol (antibiotic that is easily absorbed through the skin) "baktopur direct" tablet, over which Baccarat and I presided, and which it seemed not to dislike, and returned it to 60 liters of basin water with 280 grams of dissolved sea salt and two élodée (or elodea) plants for oxygen and company, and sat back on my heels with Baccarat to watch it.

It swam around more than it did in the malachite green solution.

It is not particularly interested in eating, although it did eat one koi stick at the beginning of its Nifupirinol treatment, but it has been moved about so much.

I have emailed a company in the US to see if they will mail their antibiotic food, not available in the UK and France, which has been said to have some success with dropsy, here.

Dare I call the vet to see about antibiotics?
....


















Update May 28, 2012: Over time, many people have read this page, and I thought it might be a good idea to add that as of this date, this carp koi is healthy, growing and in all ways thriving. I went back to the garden store to tell the young man who suggested I put it in a plastic bag in the freeze to end its life gently that my treatment worked, and he was on third interested, one third probably trying to remember who I was (despite my accent), and one third-distracted.

le 6 juillet

Students get bac results
July 2009
http://blog.coindugeek.com/tag/r%C3%A9sultats%20du%20bac

There are days on the calendar beyond the 6th of July, like the 7th and the 8th, and even whole months and years indicated beyond le 6 juilliet 2010, the date the baccalaureate exam results are available for students of the baccalauréat général in the académie de Versailles, our academy. There are even events planned, like our friend's 50th birthday dinner the 9th. This should give me hope, like the earth will continue to turn about its axis with my son and myself on it, but it doesn't. It might just mean that, yeah, the earth will continue to turn, but with us in a sort of unending torment.

Tomorrow morning at 10 am, hundreds of thousands of lycéens in our will go online to see if they passed. Those who live near here, and don't have to be at work, like my son, will head to Lycée Condorcet to find one another, search the lists for their names and the names of their friends, console the bereft and celebrate with the victorious. Cell phones will light up with hundreds of thousands of text messages.

"G l'ai eu!"

"Je savais. C super!"

"Mention bien!"

"Rattrapage :-/"

"Alors tu l'as eu ou quoi?"

"Non"

"Non? Mec C pas cool"

"JTM"

I don't know how the parents respond. They always show the kids on the news, and they interview the ones who were admitted usually. The others are too gagged with tears and agony to talk, although there is usually a stoic one, who talks about preparing to do it all again come la rentrée.

Please, Dieu, let that not be my son. Please, if you are merciful and not a punishing, angry, Dieu, bent on making one jeune homme and sa mère misérables, s'il vous plaît, laissez-le l'avoir.

Please?

It's really been too much already. It's been enough. Vraiment, vraiment assez.

"Mais je suis convaicu qu'il l'aura," say his tantes et oncles. "J'ai confiance en lui." I nod, petrified for him, anyway.

One series of tests. That's it. That's what decides if you have successfully completed your high school education or not. Even among those who have done well all through lycée, there is often one malheureux, who, to everyone's amazement, does not pass. Sometimes, there is the one no one expects to pass, who does. This is what he is counting on. It's another way to be exceptional. Most often, the one no one expects to have his or her bac does not. This is what is worrying him.

And me.

You can love your child, you can believe in your child, you can scold and encourage your child, lecture and reward, attend meeting after meeting during which all parties can agree that the "system", l'éducation nationale française, is not suited to your child, but no party can think of an option under 21,000 euros a year or sending him away. We return to making excellent arguments, full of sound sense and fine psychology, hoping this time will do the trick and that he'll see the light. All the confidence in the world for his natural intelligence will not be enough to ward off the worry, the extremely legitimate fear that in a few days, tomorrow the worst news will fall on his head, and you won't be able to say anything more than, "Je suis désolée. Je t'aime. On trouvera les solutions et tu t'en sortiras."

The earth will continue to turn. The calendar days will pass. The emotion will calm. Life will go on.

"Send me a text message and let me know," says a parent, whose only concern is that her son might not get the 13 he needs to attend the British university he wishes to attend.

"Don't worry. You'll hear me. Either a cry of joy, or a lamentation to tear the skies open will be heard all the way to Paris. To Brest."

"Mom, I am starting to feel really nervous," he said a day or two ago.

"I know. Me, too." It's hard to wait and to be prepared for whatever it will be.

"I'll go to the office and go online at 10 am."

"Will you be alright if the news is not good? Might it be better to go in after?"

"I'd be too late. I have to do it this way. It'll be okay."

The phone will ring sometime after 10 am. I'll hear it ring. I'll have to answer it, and then I will hear his voice. I'll know right away.

And he'll be too far to scream with joy and hug, or too far to fail to console, and I will spend another day, wandering around my house and garden, like Marianne, pining over Willoughby.

Please God, if you are a kind God, a merciful God, a caring and concerned God...
....

Quarantine

The sick bay

"Vous n'avez que de vous en débarrasser," said the young man in the fish department chez Truffaut after looking at the terrible photo of our sick Koï I had brought, along with the sample of water from the "bassin". The Canon printer had been telling me for some 3 months that it was out of ink. Now it is, but the salmon red lines across the photo weren't enough to obscure the raised scales toward the tail.

"L'eau est nickel," said the young woman to whom I had initially addressed my inquiry. "C'est quoi alors?"

"Une hydropisie," said the young man. Dropsy. A non-existent but fatal illness that describes a goldfish or koï with the body swollen, the eyes bulging and the scales raised all over the body, which also leads to it being called by its more proper name in English, Pinecone disease. The symptoms indicate a generalized internal infection and there's nothing to be done for the fish.

Only, the sites don't tell you what to do with the fish so racked with illness. This young man was much more specific: get rid of it.

"Mais! Comment?" I asked, off-balance. I meant how do I get rid of it. I am not good at killing things. Just look at some of the recent pages of this journal. Specifically, everything concerning birds. There is a tag for your convenience. And the shubunkin last June. Images of me trying to put it into the toilet and flush ran through my mind. I couldn't even one of any sort of crushing or stabbing.

"Mettez-le dans un sac en plastique au congelateur." I considered that a half instant. Put him in a plastic bag in the freezer. I understood. It was kind, all but the putting him (or her) in the plastic bag part. I nodded.

"Il s'en dormira. Je comprends, mais ça serait très difficile de le mettre en sac. Il se débattrait," I said. This time he nodded, and I continued to fill in the thoughts, "Il n'a pas de tout l'aire malade; il n'y a aucun changement de comportement, il mange bien, il est fort." In other words, he'd fight going into the plastic bag, and I didn't know how on earth I could force an otherwise strong fish with a healthy appetite into a bag and put it in the freezer. I had been online, and I had seen the information on Dropsy on the koï sites, but he didn't look like that. He only had one or two areas of raised scales, near the tail. And his belly and eyes were definitely not bulging like in the pictures. In short, I didn't believe it, but I hadn't read enough.

He nodded again and led me over to some shelves stocked with various antibacterial products, suggesting that I could try the one he eventually picked out for me.

When I got back, I did some more checking, and I found that there is a distinction between all over raised scales and areas of raised scales. In the second case, it is due to a bacterial infection, like the parasite Costia (scroll just under hydropisie, or check out an English language koï site for Dropsy and Costia), and can be treated with salt baths and/or antibacterial - antibiotic treatments.

Frankly, I can't imagine our vet injecting our koï with antibiotics.

So, I did as instructed. I cleaned out the black plastic basin I bought for the frogs last year, when we repaired the basin, and I put in 80 liters of water from the "bassin" and 80 liters of fresh water, added a plant and a rock and the appropriate amount of malachite green and then the koï.

He was not happy. I did not blame him. He blamed me. He might be a she.

Then I went and read some more while the hose refilled the "bassin", which I emptied by a bit more than the mere 80 liters. I found the references for salt baths and prepared a 3% salt bath in a galvanized pail, retrieved the koï, who might just never forgive me, if he or she survives whatever is ailing him or her, and put it in there, covering it with a largish water lily pot (they are like sieves) and sat, holding the inverted pot over the pail so he couldn't knock it off and perish in the sparse grass under the linden tree, for the 30 minutes suggested for the treatment, which it seemed to take rather well. Bath over, I returned it to the malachite green water in the black plastic basin, where he has been pouting ever since.

I can't say the scales look much better, but it can have some additional salt treatments, and the malachite green treatment is a four-day affair, followed by a second treatment if necessary. If that fails, I can consult the vet for antibiotics.

Or get a plastic bag.
....

Stairmaster

Coriander and basil in the kitchen window

I am covered with acute urticaria, what the French and the British in a rare moment of cooperation both choose to call hives. Mine look like the ones on the back.

Happily.

I also look a little better than most of the people in the photos.

Even more happily.

It all started yesterday morning, when I had fallen into a coma just as my husband was preparing to leave for work. Let's say that I haven't been sleeping very well, with temperatures well above 90° F for over a week now, to which we must add the wedding last weekend, when Siysphe danced until the middle of the summer night. Her husband even joined her on the dance floor, set up on the lawn behind le Fay.

This brought Sisyphe great joy.

Into a dream that was surely unpleasant (they all are right now), the sound of the lower gate rolling open (or closed, but Sisyphe was certain it was open, and Sispyhe's subconscious rarely fails her). Sisphye opened her eyes and stared at the closed metal blinds, light trying to stream in through the ventilation slits. Thank God for ventilation. And, thank God for slits that keep the light out. Sisyphe listened with all her might, only half awake.

Noise. The door opened. Footsteps in the house. Sisyphe roused herself to the effort to learn who the interloper might be.

"Qui est là? Qui est là?" Sisyphe listened for a reply.

"C'est moi." Moi sounded very grumpy. Moi also sounded just like my husband.

"Mais, qu'est-ce qu'il y a?" Moi stormed around, making angry sounds. Sisyphe rolled over and looked at the digital alarm. It was not well into the morning. It was 7:50 am. "Qu'est-ce qu'il y a? Mais, qu'est-ce qu'il y a?"

[So much for Sisyphe's brilliance in the morning.]

"Où sont mes bottes de moto?" It sounded much more like a challenge than a question. I struggled to think clearly.

"Pourquoi? Qu'est-ce s'est passé?"

"J'ai marché dans une merde de chien. Je ne peux pas aller dans un hôpital comme ça," he stormed. "Où sont mes bottes de moto? Putain, fait chier."

Dog shit. On the motorcyle boots. Damn. They have thick soles with deep treads. Think. Where are the other two pairs?

"Elles étaient dans la rentrée. On les a mises au garage?"

"Je n'en sais rien. Mais où sont elles, bordel!"

Please let me explain. In every day French, "putain", or "prostitute", is used as an expression of discontent approximating our word "fuck", only somewhat less strong. "Bordel", or "house of prostitution", is used rather like we'd say "damn it all to hell". And back.

I pushed myself up, grabbed the first thing to cover myself and staggered out to the garage. There was a yellow shopping sac that contained a pair of black boots. I staggered back into the house.

"Ce sont elles?"

"Oui. Tu comprends, je ne peux pas aller dans un hôpital avec mes bottes couvertes de merde. Je dois aller directe au bloc, et je dois les laisser au vestiaire." I tried to imagine a pair of motorcycle boots, the treads of the soles filled with Rapide's dog shit (Baccarat goes very nicely, as she learned to do, back behind France Telecom's utility building next door), sitting in the changing room of the hospital's OR facility, stinking.

"Non, bien sur. C'est clair, mais, je ne comprends pas, tu as ouvert le portail en bas, alors --" I struggled some more to piece the events together. He had left, and he had returned, but the dog shit was down in the bottom garden, "et j'en ai ramassé les crottes hier --". I had, I explained, cleaned up every pile of pooh that I could see.

"Je suis déjà parti (I was already gone). J'était dans le chemin (I was riding up the lane), et ça m'a sauté au nez (and the smell assaulted my nose), alors je suis revenu. Je ne peux pas aller au bloc comme ça --" he repeated for the third time.

"Non, bien sur. Je comprends. Tout à fait." There is no mistaking the smell of dog shit. Ever. And one certainly cannot walk into a hospital with it covering ones' boot soles, let alone leave them in the doctor's changing room in the OR.

"Mais pourquoi tu n'as pas rincé tes bottes à l'eau au lieu de faire tout ça?" Why had he not simply rinsed his boot soles with the garden hose, nearly 50 meters of which was still trailing down the stairs at the center of the garden, from the spout on the house to the pool. The heat wave we have been suffering evaporated the water level in the pool below the skimmers while we were away over the weekend, letting the pump run dry.

PU-tain.

"Je n'allais pas revenir jusqu'à en haut pour ouvrir le robinet (I wasn't going to come all the way back up the stairs to open the spigot) juste pour redescendre pour rincer mes bottes (just go go back down to rinse my boots), et pui remonter pour le fermer (and go all the way back up to turn it off) pour redescendre pour reprendre la moto (to go all the way back down to get my bike)."

He hadn't thought to call to me to ask me to handle the spigot part while he rinsed his boots and darted back to his bike, but by then, there was no one to whom to make this reply. He had laced his boots and was gone. I watched him shut the door, thinking I was going to have a lousy day.

After breakfast, I covered every inch of myself and trudged down the stairs to the bottomgarden, which I have normally sprayed with chemicals that kill all vegetable life by now. There was a barely discernible path to where we park the motorcycles. The rest was covered with weeds that stood as high as my waist, and presumably dog pooh. I set to work, filling bag after bag with the weeds, including stinging nettles. Forgetting the fact that they are vitamin (and even protein in late season) rich, and forgetting that they act as an activating agent in compost, they are a pestilence. I thought I was protected.

I was not. And then, something "jumped to my nose" (me sautait au nez).

Ugh. What's tha --?

Oh, but there is nothing that smells like dog shit, and no mistaking it. I looked at the bottom of my espadrille, otherwise covered in dirt. A smear of light brown dog diarrhea. I cast a glance around. Looked up the path through the weeds to where the motorcycles sit at night. Nothing. This was the one bit of dog shit, and both Audouin and I had stepped in it.

Bor-del de MERDE!

I scuffed the thin sole of my espadrille in a tuft of grass and returned to yanking up weeds. Bag after bag of weeds. By evening I had 17 large bags full to carry up the 30 steps to the top terrace and over to the gate.

You could always bring the car down and load it from the lower gate, suggested myself.

"Yeah, but this way I get a work-out. It's been too hot to run, you know."

Suit yourself.

With only 4 or 6 bags to put into the car before heading to the dump, my neighbor drove by.

"C'est des déchets végétales?" he asked. I nodded yes through the sweat running down my brow. "Attends," he said, "Je veux ça."

"Mais --" It was too late. He had gone by. I glanced at my watch. I was going to miss the dump. He parked the car and walked up to me. "Mais, c'est des mauvaises herbes -- des ortilles."

"Ca ne fait rien," he said, grinning, heading back up the sidewalk toward me. "Viens avec moi, je te montrai." I started to protest, but there's no arguing with my neighbor. He wanted my weeds, he'd have my weeds. He opened his gate and led me to a place just before the path headed down a set of stairs to their bottom garden. I followed. "Je mets des gravats ici depuis qu'on y habite. Je mets des déchets pour que ça pourrissent et couvrent les dégats."

In short, he had been dumping his masonry from his various demolition projects since he had moved into the house down there, and it created an eyesore. He wanted my weeds to make more of an eyesore until it all rotted into some sort of compost, requiring only a layer of topsoil before planting grass to cover it. I thought of any future residents in their house and how they would feel about that if they were dedicated gardeners, but he looked convinced.

"Ca ne serait pas plus facile de le faire monter d'en bas?" Wouldn't it, he asked, be easier to bring it over from the bottom of your garden here?

"Peut-être, mais j'y ai pensé et je me suis décidée de monter les sacs. Ca fait de la gyme, tu sais. C'est mon stairmaster." Maybe, I said, but I decided to carry them all to the top. It gives me exercise, you know. It's my stairmaster.

Like I needed it, after yanking 26 bags of weeds (more to go), up by the time my evening was finished.

Today, I had to call a halt. Besides trying to save our biggest koï and the rainstorm, which dropped the temperature 20° F in a half hour to 75° F, only to leave us to get our oxygen from the water, like the koï, and still dripping with sweat, the pharmacist narrowed her eyes, looking at my hives, and asked if I didn't have someone else to finish this project for me.

In the interest of protecting my husband, tout à fait connu à elle, I smiled weakly, "Bien sur."


....