Almost Magic

A couple of weeks ago, Iain was on fall break, and he and Tom went to Florida to kayak a couple of rivers.  I took several days off that week, including the two days they were gone; I thought I'd get some things done (I did, although not much) and look after the dog, who is not used to being home alone all day.

One of those days I was home by myself with the dog, I was sitting at the dining room table doing something on my computer, and heard a rustling sound from the kitchen.  It was not a loud sound, just a plastic bag changing position.  The first time it happened I thought it might be happening on its own - a draft or gravity or something, not anything that meant anything.  When I heard it again I only had one thought, that there was a rat in the kitchen.  We have had rats in the house before, and I found this a quite upsetting idea.  I looked; I didn't want to, but I felt that I had to, and I didn't see anything.  Relieved, I went back to whatever it was I was doing.

A little while later, I heard it again.  There definitely was something moving around the plastic bags with produce in them that were on the kitchen counter.  It did not sound big enough to be a rat.  Maybe it was a mouse, but it was something.  So I looked again, and saw a lizard that was just starting to make its way up the wall.  So I grabbed a plastic container and caught it.  It wasn't happy.

It was a green anole,  Having pursued many small lizards in the wild over the years and failing to catch them, I figured I could keep this one for a little while, given that it had intruded into my kitchen.  So I went to Pet Supplies Plus and got a plastic terrarium and a dollar's worth of small crickets, and put some dirt and a plant and the lizard it it. 

The lizard spent most of its time immobile on the small plant or on the sides or top of the terrarium.  Green anoles change color.  Sometimes they are green and sometimes they are brown.  This one was brown most of the time but one evening I couldn't find it when I looked; it was green, and sitting on a leaf, was so well camouflaged I didn't see it for several minutes, even though I knew it must be somewhere in that small container.  

Caroline came home over the weekend.  She had had a pair of green anoles as pets for a time and pointed out that this one, lacking the characteristic dewlap that male anoles have, was a female.  By then Iain was back from Florida and he noted that the lizard was molting.  We didn't know that lizards molted but that is what this one did, that first weekend.

The terrarium eventually got moved off the dining room table onto a shelf.  There were still crickets and I figured I'd turn it loose when the crickets were gone.  Every day I misted the terrarium, but I was getting ready to go out of town for a week and I didn't want to ask Tom to take care of it, so last weekend I figured it was time to let it go.

So I took the terrarium into the back yard and took the lid off of it and watched.  I thought the lizard would make a run for it immediately, but it didn't.  

It was immobile, except for its head; it looked around from its perch on a philodendron leaf.  

Over the next several minutes, it turned nearly completely green, starting from its armpits (if a lizard can be said to have armpits).

Only then did it move from the philodendron leaf, to freedom.

Since then I've read a little about color changes in anoles.  There is less known about this that you would think there might be.  Color changes in anoles are thought to have less to do with camouflage than with level of stress.   According to Wikipedia, the green anole (or Carolina anole, in this article) has three layers of chromatophores in its skin that account for the color changes.  

But watching it last Saturday morning it almost seemed like magic.  

Riding a Bike, Again

My first ride on my first bicycle was not particularly auspicious.  The house we lived in when I was a small child had a steep driveway (at least that's how I remember it).   The first time I got on my new bike, I went rolling down the driveway and my mother screamed as I went sailing across the street, and then I crashed into the curb.  I do not remember being hurt but the tire didn't survive the collision with the curb.

When I was about to go off to college, I told my parents one night at dinner that I thought I needed some wheels to take to school.  They were relieved when they realized I meant a bicycle, and I got a 10 speed Schwinn that I rode all through college.  I didn't ride it every day but the two years I lived off campus I did ride it to class some of the time.  I never had a car when I was in college.

I didn't have a car in medical school, either, and at some point I bought another bicycle which I remember riding to the hospital the month I did a rotation at the Roxbury VA Hospital.  When I lived in Boston, my primary modes of transportation were walking and public transit, but I did ride my bike some.

One summer during medical school I did my obstetrics rotation in Dublin, and after I figured out that they didn't care if we were there or not, started taking three- and four-day weekends.  I made three different trips to three different parts of Ireland.  I rode the train somewhere, and then rented a bike and stayed in bed and breakfast places along the way.  One night I stayed in a bed and breakfast place run by an older lady who was very eager to find things for me to do.  She told me I should visit the beach.  I asked her where it was and she gave me very complicated directions involving lots of turns and climbing over some fences.  I told her I thought I'd have trouble getting there and would probably get lost.  She said she'd have her dog Joey take me there.  She called the dog, and said, "Joey, take her to the beach," and the dog headed to the end of the driveway and turned to the right.  There seemed to be nothing I could do but go with him, and he took me to the beach.  This was a rocky beach and as I recall it was an overcast day; this was not the kind of beach where you sunbathe, but the kind where you wear a sweater and walk around with your hands in your pockets and think about death.  So I was glad to be there with the dog for company, and when I was ready to leave he got me back to the house and I had salmon for dinner.  That was the summer where I learned about topographic maps and if the lines were too close together, it was difficult bicycling.

Later I lived in Durham and used to ride my bike around downtown in the evening, although by then I did have a car.  It was the same when I lived in Nashville and Baltimore -- I didn't ride a lot, but I did ride sometimes.  I knew where to go and what times of day would feel safe for riding.  Then, I moved to Atlanta, and I stopped.  It didn't feel safe, so I just didn't ride.  That was 25 years ago, and I didn't ride a bike again.

Of course in recent years some things have changed.  There's the Beltline, and the new extension of Piedmont Park to Monroe, very close by, and finally the light installed that stops the cars for a safe crossing to the park.  Before each of the last several Streets Alive events, I thought this would be the one that I would finally do on a bicycle, but I didn't.  Last year I looked at bikes at a bike shop a couple of times, but I never rode one.

Last weekend it was beautiful weather, and we wanted to get out of the house on Sunday afternoon.  So Tom dropped Iain and I off at the Beltline on Irwin Street and we walked back, all the way to Ansley and then home from there.  It took a couple of hours.  The Art on the Beltline installations are still up, and they were fun to see, but this is the thing we saw that impressed me the most:

This is at the Elizabeth Street access point to the Beltline.  I'm not sure where all these people came from, but they were probably having a late lunch in one of the restaurants nearby. 

Atlanta Streets Alive was on Highland weekend before last.  We were on our way home and saw there was a new bike shop that had opened up in Virginia Highland, between George's and Moe's and Joe's.  We stopped in and chatted and I looked at a couple of bikes, but I didn't ride any and we headed on home.

Today I'd taken the day off and Tom and Iain are in Florida.  So after I'd walked the dog I headed back there this morning.  I rode a couple of bikes in the parking lot next to Highland Hardware.  I haven't ridden a bicycle in 25 years; I'm glad no one was paying any attention, those first couple of minutes.  I bought a bike, and after lunch, rode from our house to Piedmont Park to 10th Street to the Eastside Trail on the Beltline and then on down to Irwin Street and then back.  I'm not sure what time it was when I left, but I think it took a little over an hour (including walking up the last couple of hills, close to home, on the way back).

Dinner somewhere on the Eastside Trail?  Totally.  I'm in, just let me know when and where.

Atlanta Streets Alive -- North Avenue Edition

Last Sunday was Atlanta Streets Alive, the wonderful open streets event organized by the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition.  This time the route was from the intersection of Virginia Avenue and Highland Avenue south on Highland through Poncey-Highland into the Old Fourth Ward, then north on Boulevard to North Avenue, then past the Ponce City Market and Historic Fourth Ward Park back to Highland, in a lower-case sans serif "d" shape, 4.5 miles in length.

I volunteered for the early shift to help with tactical urbanism projects.  We met on the stretch of North Avenue between the Historic Fourth Ward Park and Ponce City Market.  Our first task was spray painting the slates of some wooden shipping pallets, repurposing them as mobile blackboards.

Next, we constructed protected bike lane in along the Ponce City Market-side of North Avenue, with plastic bollards, plants, and sandwich board signs.  A man with a leaf blower came when we were done and cleared debris from the pavement.

Once that was done, I got a taco from Tex's Tacos food truck.  

The young woman who took my order said it was her boyfriend's truck and this was his third week of operation.  She recommended the chicken taco and I got one of those and one carne asada.  They were both terrific.  (Business must have been ended up being good because when I came by with Iain later, they were out of carne asada.)

I was still on North Avenue when the bike parade came through, with the famous huge flying phoenixes.  I think that's Chantelle Rytter in the lead.  

By then Iain was on his way home from mock trial, so I went home to meet him and then we walked the route on foot.  I took lots of pictures, and if you weren't there, I'll show you a little bit of what you missed.

There were people.  I think this couple was on Highland.

There were lots of children.  Before I took this photo I asked a woman standing nearby if I could take it.  She said "sure," and as I was taking the picture, she hastily added that this little girl wasn't actually with her.

There were friends and neighbors.  We saw Mia at Java Vino.

Even the APD officers seemed to be having a good time.  This was at Highland and Ponce De Leon.

There were dogs.  This one was near Ponce City Market, and the one below was near Blind Willie's.

This faux dog was spotted on Boulevard, on the back of a bicycle.  I think I'd seen the rider-bike-mannequin without the dog head previously at one of the Streets Alive events on Peachtree.

We spotted this pup at Java Vino and Iain and I were both struck by how much he looked like a younger version of Leonard; he has the same longer hair on his ears that Leonard does.  We told his owners that he looked like our dog, a Labrador retriever-Australian shepherd mix.  They were surprised and said their dog was also a Lab-Australian shepherd mix.  And it doesn't show in the photo, but he also has a patch of white on the chest and long white coarse fur at the tip of his tail, just like Leonard has.  So I bet this is what he looked like when he was a puppy.  If he ever needs a picture of himself as a pup for a project at dog school, I'll just use this one.

There was music. There was blues at Blind Willie's.  (There also was jambalaya, which Iain got for lunch before he had the taco.)

There was zumba at several points along the route.  This was near Highland and St. Charles.

There was a marching band.  We saw them later, performing at North Avenue and Freedom Parkway.

There was dance music on Boulevard.

And this trio was performing on North Avenue, near Ponce City Market.

There were plenty of other things to see and do.  There were people playing bicycle polo and a little kids' soccer field on the parking lot on Highland across from American Road House.  Iain and I played a couple rounds of corn hole; neither of us did very well.  On Highland, there was ping pong.

On North Avenue, there were acrobats from the Imperial Opa Circus.

The poets from Free Poems on Demand were set up on Highland.  As we always do, we requested a poem -- this one about the Braves moving to Cobb County -- but we didn't wait for it and were unable to circle back by to pick it up.  I need to follow up with them on that, as this is always one of our favorite Streets Alive activities.

This wonderful collection of portraits (part of this year's Art on the Beltline) was on North Avenue.

There were a couple of large constructions on Boulevard that were created by architecture students at Southern Poly State University.  This is one of them.

 And there were the other tactical urbanism interventions along the route.  The blackboards we had painted were all along the route, and cross walks had been decorated with sidewalk chalk, in a sort of temporary intersection repair-type intervention.

 This one, on Boulevard, was set up as a participatory color-by-number activity.  Iain and I colored in one of the large red squares before we moved on.

And here's the protected bike lane that we'd constructed earlier, when we came back by later.

It was a great event, and I'm so glad we went.  There were a couple of disappointments, though, besides not getting back by the Free Poems on Demand table to pick up our poem.  The commercial areas of Highland were totally packed with people and bikes and activities, but Boulevard seemed underutilized.  Atlanta Medical Center should have had displays and health screening in front of their facility, but once again they were completely missing.  The only sign of life we saw in that stretch of Boulevard was this stethescope-carrying guy in scrubs who was on a cigarette break.  

There also was nothing going on this time at Fort Street United Methodist Church.  One bright spot on Boulevard was a lively scene at Blueprint Church, near the color-by-numbers crosswalk, 

This was the last Streets Alive event of the year; already I'm looking forward to the next one.  And if Atlanta Medical Center needs any ideas about what kinds of activities they should have, the next time Streets Alive is on Boulevard, they should feel free to get in touch with me.  And maybe they could include some information on smoking cessation.

Addendum from October 6, 2014:  I got the poem by email!  Thanks to Zac Denton for writing it and Jimmy Lo for emailing it.  Here it is: