In season 3, episode 17 of /Scorpion/, the team is sent to Greenland to
repair the power system in the Granse World Seed Vault. I couldn't find
that entry in Wikipedia, but they did describe the Svalbard Global Seed
Vault in Spitsbergen.
The team arrives at the seed vault and one of the failures spews
hallucinogenic spores affecting three of the team. Each affected team
member experiences whatever it is that he or she fears most. In the
case of Sylvester Doff (played by Ari Stidham) it is chickens. He was
bullied as a child and fears chickens because bullies locked him in a
chicken coop and the agitated chickens jumped about many of them landing
on him. He felt he was being attacked. In this episode the team members
not exposed to the hallucinogenic spores must talk Sylvester (via
intercom) and the other two hallucinating members into overcoming their
fears so they can activate controls opening doors and such like.
I wasn't impressed by the scene because the chickens terrifying
Sylvester are all hens. A rooster, on the other hand, will actually
attack a person as I learned as a child. My mother and sister wouldn't
go into the chicken coop and risk their bare legs. But I wore jeans so
it was my duty to collect the eggs. Each time I entered the coop, the
Rhode Island Red rooster would attack me but he couldn't get his talons
or beak through my jeans. I never developed a fear of chickens, but I
did acquire a respect for Rhode Island Red roosters.
Lawrence
On 9/26/2021 11:00 AM, david ritchie wrote:
Conversation with a chicken is not always and easy or steady-flowing thing; often we sit in companionable silence, with nothing to report or examine. After one such period this week I asked whether more sitting had changed her view of the world. Once the herd would graze and move; now a single chicken moves from /sitzplatz /to /sitzplatz./
She responded after a moment’s reflection, “It’s lower.”
“What is?”
“My view of the world. About two inches.”
I explained that I’d been thinking about the relationship between events as we all experience them and history, that which turns up in our recounting. The ratio is like an iceberg, most events never reach a level which makes them worth including in a story.
Mimo disagreed.
“To me it’s all of a piece. This week, for example, there were seven dawns. The crows returned. No melon seeds on two of the days. And there was that soft stuff. All of it history.”
“The muffin was history? Stale muffin?”
“Quite nice.”
“Different subject: have you seen snakes?”
“Not recently.”
“Only, I passed one out front, just now, sunning itself by the road.”
“Did you kill it?”
“Left it alone.”
“Back here the cats would kill it. So what kind of events don’t rise to the level of story?”
“If I told you, they’d be in a story.”
“Not necessarily. You could present them in the form of analysis, with statistics and a power point.”
“What do you understand by power point?”
“Just a phrase I heard. And if you tell a story to a chicken, does that really count as telling?”
I nodded. “The week began with a series of unfortunate events. You’ll have noticed the electrical trucks and the tree down on the wire?”
“Noisy.”
“And then the heavy rain.”
“Nasty.”
“Drain out front was blocked.”
“Probably by snakes.”
“Then another drain blocked, inside.”
“Isn’t that usually where they block? I suppose a horse could block a drain on the outside.”
“Why do you think drains are blocked by animals?”
“Motives can be very mysterious.”
I let that pass. “And then I avoided emergency surgery.”
“What is that?”
“Something none of us wants. I was drinking a glass of water. Just before I swallowed, I felt something odd in my mouth. Turned out to be about a one inch sliver of glass. A bit of the rim had broken off.”
“You lost me.”
“The point is that swallowing glass is bad for gods.”
“We swallow stones.”
“Gods shouldn’t swallow glass slivers.”
“I’ll take your word for it. And then what?”
“I finished a draft of the essay I’m writing and put it in the hands of a reader.”
“Is that bad?”
“No, it’s good. I’m thinking these essays might be going somewhere.”
“Is that good?”
“Could be.”
“Do they fly or walk?”
“What?”
“Essays. When they go somewhere?”
I thought a change of topic might be appropriate so I explained that the other god, the one who got married, was off exploring Mediterranean beaches.
“What’s a beach?”
“It’s a piece of land between the land and the sea. You lie on it.”
“Why?”
“Or you can sit.”
“And think?”
“Or not.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do gods sit or lie on a beach?”
“Motives can be very mysterious."
After a quiet start to my Saturday afternoon, I decided that with rain in the forecast it was moment to harvest our wine grapes. I wish I could claim prescience, but I planted merlot and cabernet without thinking about global warming. The pinot has done nothing this year, while those two vines (one of each) produced about a cooler and a half of fine-looking specimens.
I was pleased they chose to grow up a Douglas fir tree and so extend the amount of late-afternoon sun they captured. But the “wine” pleased no one. Last year there was no harvest; smoke from wildfires ruined the crop. This year the vines grew into the dogwood tree. Some of the bends were right angles, so the harvest was hard and sweaty and even involved crashing on concrete. Western, macho grape harvesting. Bound to produce a better kind of wine. I’m going to experiment with leaving stems in the fermenting liquid, which is said to increase tannins, possibly in a good way.
Tannic wines should be laid to rest for a while. The additional benefit of this method is that I can postpone discovering that I have made yet another undrinkable bottle.
Arsenal won. Slaughtered Spurs. Mimo was delighted. No idea why. Motives…
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
