Lucifer: "Where is the Good Stuff?"

     The photo above shows our cat Lucifer looking me in the eyes, questioning when will her special supper be served.  You can se in the photo, she already has a bowl of kibbles there, and twice a day she gets wet canned cat food, but she is waiting for something with taste, that she can eat throughout the night. 

    We feed Lucy upstairs on my desk.  That is the only place we can safely do it so that Kona doesn’t get to it and scarf down all Lucifer’s food.  Right before bed, I am scrambling around downstairs in the kitchen, trying to come up and prepare some kind of special treat food for Lucifer.  While I am doing that, she up on my desk waiting patiently at her feeding station, ready to be served.

    Her special food is made up of something relatively fresh;  like strips of cheese, little chunks of chicken or turkey left over from our meals, or maybe just a small puddle of milk or cream in a plate.

    We readily admit to spoiling our pets, but a year or so ago, I was sure Lucifer was about to die.  She was incredibly thin and urinating very frequently, making us think her kidneys were giving out.  That’s when we started really spoiling her with the special food.  While she is still incredibly thin, now she is more motivated, energetic, and healthy.

    Looks like she is getting cheese strips tonight.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmaarchant2.ca

I Loved Those Paper Drives

     During the 1950’s when I was a kid, local community organizations periodically held “Paper Drives” as fund raisers.  At our church the Boy Scouts would do it, and the elementary school’s “Community Club” would do it on the school grounds.  A big truck freight trailer would be pulled in and parked, with the rear doors unlocked, so people could bring in their old magazines, and stacks of newspapers to throw onto the paper pile in the trailer.

    Back in those days, there were plenty of newspapers.  Our middle-sized city had both a daily morning newspaper and evening newspaper, with a thick Sunday edition.  People would save stacks of the old newspapers, to donate to the paper drives when they happened.

    There were a lot of magazines around also.  My parents rarely got magazines, but being a Cub Scout, I did monthly receive “Boy’s Life”.   My grandparents often had copies of Life magazine, Look magazine, and Saturday Evening Post.  All in all, there was a lot of old publications that could be recycled to make more paper.

    My love of those paper drives had nothing to do with recycling paper, although that seemed like an intelligent thing to do.   What excited me was some of the other publications that could sometimes be found in the giant pile of paper:  Comic Books!  

    Although my sister and I loved to read comic books, my father took a dim view of them, and discouraged us from buying them.  “Don’t go wasting your allowance buying comic books” was a line we often heard.  We still did buy a few, but when I discovered that paper drives could be a readily available source of comics, I was excited every time I saw a paper drive trailer in our community, and could hardly wait to go rifling through the giant pile of newspapers and magazines looking for comics.

    I found comics of cartoon characters (Donald Duck, Scrooge McDuck, etc), super hero comics (Superman, Batman, etc), mythical character comics, like The Phantom, Turok, (Son of Stone, an Indian who fought dinosaurs),  and I always really treasured the Classics Illustrated Comics I sometimes found, that featured the classical stories by Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and Robert Lewis Stevenson.

    At one point in my paper drive searches, I came across a Mad Magazine, and when I got home and started reading through it, my life changed forever.  I loved the amazing comical art, the really clever humor, and the satirical social comment.  Mad Magazine put an end to my desire for comic books, and set me looking instead for more Mad Magazines.  Unfortunately, they were an extremely rare commodity in paper drive trailers, so much to the chagrin of my father, I started to spend my money buying new ones, as they were printed.

    Mad Magazine did have a profound affect on my life.  Not only did it give me a more cynical  and questioning view of the world and introducing me to a higher form of humor, it was in trying to draw some of the characters I saw in Mad, that I later in life, ended up as a local cartoonist.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Costa Rica 1992: Monkeys and Blue Morpho Butterflies

     I grabbed both these photos off of the internet, because they were too quick for me to get photos.

      Our next stop was the souvenir shop.  While there, the clerk indicated that there were some white-faced monkeys outside, and did we want to see them?   Of course we did, and raced outside to see one in the low branches just across the parking lot.  The primates just kept moving, no sitting around for those guys.  We followed them from tree to tree, hoping to get a good photo.  

    We were pretty exhausted from our hike.  We had been on our feet from 6:00 to 3:00, so back in our room at the El Bosque Hotel, we rested, showered, and then snacked on banana whole wheat muffins, then our tastes deteriorated, and we devoured taco chips, and a Coke.  Being in the heat and humidity of the Tropics drive us to drinking two or three cans a day.

    At the El Bosque Restaurant, our evening meal consisted of a big helping of Creole Chicken.  It cost us $11 CND.

    The next day we didn’t get such an early start, because our funds were starting to get very low (only $3 CND), so my first order of business was to get some more money.  That meant making the 6 kilometer hike, up and down the steep hills back to St. Elena where there was a bank.  With our funds topped up, I hiked back to join my wife at the hotel, then together, we made the three and a half hike up to the Nature Reserve.

    On my way back from the bank, I saw a large Blue Morpho Butterfly, another sight we wanted to see in the jungles.  The Blue Morpho is big one, with a 12 cm (4.7 inch) wingspan and is incredibly beautiful with it deep iridescent blue wings.   When I told my wife about spotting one, she was very envious, but her envy didn’t last long, because as we hiked up to the Cloud Forest Reserve we spotted another one fluttering by.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Costa Rica 1992: Beautiful Hummingbirds

             It’s s little embarrassing to title the blog “Beautiful Hummingbirds”, then show some terrible blurry photos of them, but hopefully you can imagine how they colorful they looked.  Among all our memories of Costa Rica, the many exotically colored hummingbirds we saw certainly hold a prominent spot.  Now back to our hike through the Monteverde Cloud Forest: 

        We could hear a myriad of birds, but couldn’t actually see many of them.  We did spot some teal-green hummingbirds, and some big black guinea-hen-looking fowls with a red spot near the eyes.  Three “amigos” who we had met on our bus trip to Monteverde, pointed out an Ornate Hawk Eagle sitting on a tree.  They told us the bird was quite rare in the Preserve.  Their guide had pointed it out to them.

        One of the jungle critters I was hoping to see in Costa Rica was a “Poison Dart Frog”.  This is a group of very tiny (half an inch) brightly colored and patterned frogs that can be highly toxic.  Their colorfully designed exterior advertise unpalatability to predators.  Some species were crushed by natives onto the tips of darts and arrows to make them more effective in hunting.   This explanation is leading up to the fact that I did finally see my first poison dart frog along a trail at Monteverde, however the one I spotted was not very spectacularly colored, it was a boring hue of beige.

        A less spectacular sight, although totally unexpected was a mouse running under some plants.  I had never associated mice with jungles.  While I was looking to see more of the mouse, I came upon a powder blue mushroom.  Although I didn’t know anything about this mushroom, its coloration led  me think it must be pretty toxic.

        I had an interesting experience on the path overlooking a waterfall.   We found ourselves on a jungle trail that snaked its way beside a river valley.  I stopped to take a photo of a waterfall.   At the time I used a 35mm camera and had several lens for it.  As I stood beside the barrier that was erected to prevent people from falling down the slope, I fumbled around trying to put the telephoto lens on my camera.  I got the lens on, but when I removed the lens cap, it slipped from my hand, and bounced over the edge of the slope.

                I could see where the lens had landed; it was only about 10 foot (3 m) below me, on a ledge.  It didn’t seem like it would be too dangerous to retrieve it, so I climbed over the barrier, and carefully made my way down the steep slope to get it.  

        When I got down to the spot where the lens ways lying, I reached for the lens cap, and got a surprise.  Just a couple of feet (60cm) away from it, sat another camera lens cap that someone else had evidently dropped from exactly the same outlook spot.

        Once we got off of the trail we went to the Information Center where we were mesmerized by the huge variety of colorful hummingbirds that were busy at the feeders that were hung there.  They were larger than what we get at the Robson Valley, and unusually colored.  There were teal-green ones with a white stripe at the eye, showing off their iridescent violet throats, and another one with a long, slightly curved beak.  My favorite was a very large iridescent violet one—beautiful!

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

The Amazing McBride Horse Rescue

     “The Renshaw” is one of the largest snowmobiling areas that exists.  Thousands of snowmobilers travel  to “sled” in this vast alpine area every year.  In December of 2008, one of those snowmobilers came across two starving horses, trapped in 5 to 6 feet of snow and near death up in the Renshaw.  The word of his discovery slowly traveled through the McBride “grapevine” and eventually it was heard by some of the “horse” community in the Robson Valley, who became both outraged and concerned.  They needed more information.

    One of them, Birgit Stutz, took it onto herself to do something.  She contacted Matt Elliott, a local snowmobiler (and World Champion) and after explaining to him that more information about the horses’ condition, he volunteered to sled up to the Renshaw to find the horses.  Matt with three other sledders who were horse people carried with them some “flakes” of hay for the horses if they were still alive, and a gun to put them out of their misery, if they were too far gone.  

    Birgit told the sledders to look into the horses’s eyes and if there was still a bit of a spark there, they still had a chance to survive.  When they found the horses, “despite the sad state of the creatures, there was a glimmer in their eyes” (quote taken from “The Rescue of Belle And Sundance” a wonderful  book by Birgit Stutz with Lawrence Scanlan).

    Having determined that the horses could survive, plans were then made to rescue them.  The first thing that had to be done was to slowly feed them so they would gain enough strength to walk out.  Only a small amount of hay could be fed to them each day, because in their condition, large amounts would kill them.

    Daily feeding visits were done via snowmobiles, and plans were made to dig a trench leading to a groomed snowmobile trail where the horses could walk without the trench.

    As word spread in the community, a dedicated group of volunteers began to make the trip up to the Renshaw to help dig.  Just getting there was an ordeal.  It meant getting up in the dark, then making  a twenty kilometer drive from McBride to the end of a logging road, then there was a long, bumpy, frigid, 30 km snowmobile ride up to the Renshaw alpine and the horses.

    The snow was about 6 feet deep and the 3 foot wide trench had to be dug for about a kilometer.  The group worked out a system; first volunteers would dig down two feet, they were followed in that trench by another crew, who dug down a further 2 feet, then a final group would dig down for the last two feet.

    Slowly over many days the conditions of the horses improved, as the trench lengthened.  Additional  volunteers started digging the trench from the other end, and at 1:30 in the afternoon on Dec. 23rd, the trench was completed, and figuring it was too dangerous to leave the horses overnight, now that a trench might give a pathway to predators, the volunteers started to lead the horses out of their captivity.  

    “It took half and hour to get them through the trench, seven hours to walk them down the logging road, done in the dark.  the temperature was -30°C (-22°F).  It was a long, cold, walk, almost 30 kilometers (18 miles).  They finally got the two horses to the horse trailer at 10:00 PM.   They were then driven to a nice stall in a cozy barn.  Once they had recovered both Belle and Sundance gained 600 pounds.

    The rescue of the two horses made international news.  It was a heartwarming news story during the Christmas season.   It remains an amazing story of compassion, sacrifice of time and money, and hard work in very very uncomfortable conditions, in order to save the lives of two horses that had been abandoned, and would have slowly died of starvation, had nothing been done.

    The whole story of the rescue can be found in “The Rescue of Belle And Sundance” the very touching and well-written book by Birgit Stutz with Lawrence Scanlan.  (in print or as an eBook)

    You can watch a video showing photos of the rescue at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDNbxbmMlqY

    The photos on the blog were taken from the video.

    There was a fictionalized full length made for TV movie made called, “The Horses of McBride”, but  it was very fictionalized, but sort of based on the rescue.

View my painting of the rescue and my other paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

My Latest Painting: McBride's Abandoned Horse Rescue

     Last June, a handful of local artists were commissioned to paint images of important McBride events or locales, that were to be used for banners that would be hung on the lamp posts along Main Street.  I was commissioned to paint an image of the McBride Horse Rescue that took place in December of 2008. 

    Although the subject was much different from what I generally paint, I have always been proud of the fact that some compassionate local people got together and worked for days in extremely cold and hostile conditions, to rescue two starving horses that had been abandoned months earlier in the a mountain alpine.   When winter arrived, they were skin and bones and barely alive, when they were discovered.

    The painting is on a 24” x 48” canvas, painted with acrylics.  It took me 188 hours to paint.  I will blog tomorrow about the incredible horse rescue in McBride that made international news.

View my other paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Smokin' Pumpkin Pie

     On Thursday afternoon I went to our Book Club at the library.  On my return home and entered the house, I could smell a pie cooking in the oven.  My wife had spent the afternoon making a pumpkin pie.  Once I got my coat and boots off and came into the kitchen, she began telling me of the terrible ordeal she went through trying to make it.  I don’t remember the details, because all of those facts were erased from my brain by what happened next.

    The smoke alarm went off, its high tone piercing our ears, and making our dog and cat scrambling for a hiding place.  I ran to turn off the smoke detector, while my wife opened the oven door, causing smoke to poured into the kitchen and filter into the rest of the house.  Around the edges of the pie’s crust, we could see oil sizzling and boiling and dripping to the bottom of the oven.   My wife said that the new crust recipe had a lot of butter, too much butter, it seemed.

    We weren’t sure what to do.  The pie’s pumpkin filling was not done and was still somewhat liquid, so we didn’t really want to take the pie out of the oven yet.  So we closed the oven door so the pie could continue to cook, and then we began to go around the house opening the doors and windows to let the smoke escape.  Having the windows and doors open started to really make the house cold inside as the freezing outside air began streaming into the house.

    We periodically opened the oven door, which each time allowed a plume of more white smoke into the house.  Our eyes were starting to burn from the smoke.  Then our smoke detector, which by this time had a chance to recover after having its turn-off button presses, detected the new smoke and went off again.

    I rushed over and pressed the turn-off button again which silenced it,  then we began to repeat the same actions over again:  Opening the oven to let the smoke escape, waving the open doors back and forth to push more smoke out and fresh cold air in.  

    Because the house was getting cold and smoky, I started to build a fire in the wood stove.  That would not only start to heat up the house, but also draw the smoky air from the house and up the chimney.  

    Then after another pause, the smoke detector went off again.  This time I took it off of the wall and remove a battery out so it wouldn’t go off any more.  The pumpkin pie continued to let off smoky fumes each time we opened the oven door.  A thin cloud of smoke was still layered through the house.

    Eventually, the pie crust started to brown and the filling started to become more solid, and we removed the pumpkin pie from the oven.   We went around and shut all of the windows and doors, and after about forty minutes, with the air cleared, our house became more livable again, so I put the battery back in the smoke detector and hung it back on the wall.

    The whole ordeal was pretty horrible, but fortunately, it didn’t effect the pie, which tasted delicious.  I don’t think my wife will use that crust recipe again.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca