The amazing expandable snood

I remembered to take a camera with me when I let the turkeys out Friday morning. Here’s what Jake looks like when he first gets up.

Jake's snood when he first emerges from the coop

Quite soon, the caruncles and dewlap start turning red, and the snood starts getting longer.

Dewlap and caruncles turning red; snood getting a little bigger

Here is a video of the snood expanding.

And in case you’ve forgotten from last week, here is the fully extended snood. It just goes to show that “sexy” is defined differently according to what species you are.

And now, both head and snood are blue. How does he do it?

I spent all day Saturday at the Green Living Expo at MCC. I began the day working Vendor check-in with Pat. Here we are with Kim, MCC’s Sustainability Director. At this point, I am wearing my winter coat because it was rather chilly.

Kim, me, and Pat checking in vendors. 

For the duration of the expo (10:00 to 3:00), I stood outside next to my car talking to people about electric vehicles. It did not begin well. The first person to come by was an engineer who wanted to know much more about how my car worked than I knew. I didn't even know how to open the hood, but we figured that out. I handed him the owner’s manual. But that wasn’t enough. He proceeded to tell me all the ways he had reduced his energy usage by, for example, re-engineering an old refrigerator to use 1/10 the electricity. I was reminded of a Roz Chast cartoon entitled “where the ecologically correct meets the pathologically frugal.” And the new smart meters are just a government plot to charge people with solar panels more money. Big Brother is watching you. Or something. I smiled and earnestly hoped he would leave soon.

Most of the people I talked to were normal, nice folks interested in reducing their carbon footprint. Only a few were on the lunatic survivalist fringe. Here I am wearing a much lighter jacket having pleasant conversation with an automotive instructor.

Chatting with visitors by my car

It could not have been a better day for standing around outside. It was 70° with a light breeze, a good deal warmer than the 62° that had been forecasted. As an ecologist, I find this deeply disturbing. It should not be that warm on November 5 in Illinois. Still, I was glad to not be freezing my butt all day. I should not have worn my long underpants.

Sunday was the last push to take care of the excess apples. At the beginning of the day, there were four pink trays and two rotting bins full of apples in the spare refrigerator. (The term “rotting bin” dates back from my days at Buffalo State, where one of our graduate students once remarked, “What is it with the vegetable crispers? They are just rotting bins. You put the food in there and it rots.”)

Before

By early afternoon, I had 9 lovely quarts of apple juice, and the refrigerator was empty. I had gotten faster and better at making apple juice every time I made it. I used my scientific training to write down my perfected protocol, knowing full well that I won’t remember by next fall. Now if I can just remember where I put the protocol….

After