Foiled by Critters

Earlier this week I was making paper. I enjoy taking old shredded ledger sheets from work and turning them into something beautiful. Actually this was more in the category of paper casting; I was trying to make an impression of a bird’s primary flight feather in paper. This needs a lot of pulp (which takes a while to dry, even here where we’re expected to reach 100 degrees by Monday). Patience, and a dry climate, are very helpful.

So I duly put my pulp-loaded screen outside the front door, hoping it might dry by the morning. Unfortunately, a small rodent—mouse? rat? ran across the wet pulp, leaving its muddy prints on my masterpiece. The alfalfa field just to our south got flooded last weekend providing a smorgasbord of delights for the local herons, egrets, and Swainson’s hawks. I think this rodent was heading north away from their beady eyes, under cover of darkness.

There are other hunters at nighttime around here, though, so who knows what its ultimate fate was. The fate of my paper casting was for me to cover the tracks in colored pencil…