Community

2011 Spring Harvest Dinner, Palisades, NY

Yesterday we attended the Harvest Dinner at the Palisades Community Center in Palisades, NY.  This dinner was a way to mark the end of their Winter Farmer's Market and a fund raiser for the Center.  Tables were set up long, end to end and tickets were sold that were used as money for the purchase of your food items.  A hot dog-2 tickets, BBQ chicken-5 tickets, glass of wine-3 tickets..........

It was an interesting experience to dine and mingle with folks I don't know, but in a setting that made it feel as if we were all part of some large family reunion.  The bell in the old school house rang to get our attention for the raffle.  Young people had matching aprons and helped out in many different ways, including a group of giggling "tweeny" girls selling the desserts.  After, when it was all closing down, many people stayed and help to put the place to rights, folding chairs, clearing debris, getting tables and everything else back inside or to owners.

I guess in a larger sense it was a family reunion.  Aren't we all of the same family?  The Humans, or an even larger family, the Earth's inhabitants.

This kind of event, this kind of experience is for me just what walking A reasonable path is about.  It is getting off of the expressway and enjoying a slower pace.  It allows for familiarity, and this familiarity can then breed affection, from affection we can make way for compassion. 

Yesterday we discovered another form of community:

3 of the Gang of Four (so far), named: Hall, Liv, Bath, Bed

Walking across the floor of the hallway, then the living room, then the bathroom, then the bedroom we discovered this little family of young mice.  Here is where the internet changes things in a large way.  Google search: feeding baby orphaned mice.


Last week after finding evidence of larger mice inside the house I set traps.  After a few days I had killed 3 mice and slowed the signs that anymore were around.  Until yesterday.

Some might say "Karma is".  I while warming these little guys in my hand and trying to get them to take the fortified water from a dropper I couldn't help seeing the irony of worrying, and wanting to save these little guys when I had probably killed their parent(s) last week.  I don't like killing anything, including the mice I wish would just stay on the other side of the walls or out in the 73 square mile of state forest that back my home, but our health has to be preserved and the mice just don't seem to understand the rules.

I have no idea of wether or not they will survive, or what I will do with them if they do.  I know that if they do not survive I will be very sad.  If the do survive I will be very troubled as to what comes next.  I suppose letting them out to become food for the local wild life is probably what will happen.  They could just end up coming back into the house and eventually cause me to set traps once again, only to kill them later.  Life is not always easy to understand, at least for me.

Yes, I have tried the live traps but no country mouse around here seems tempted by those things.  I suppose a cat could be considered, but my 8 year old socially dysfunctional dog would try to eat it, I believe.  My dog is a little scared or intimidated by the mice, go figure!