This morning’s walk was a double double. Burrito was the first. The neighbor’s two kids passed us, chugging up the hill as Rascal and I were going down it. The kids were, ostensibly, walking the family’s puppy. In truth, it wasn’t obvious who was walking whom. The pup is a Great Dane that joined the family over the winter and is clearly thriving. He looks like he may already outweigh the little girl and will soon catch up with her brother as well.
Despite the relative sizes of the children and the dog, the three of them moved along in good order. There was nowhere that any of them would rather be than out for a walk together. Burrito didn’t strain at the leash, and the kids still have those delighted, new-dog smiles. They were a happy little pack.
The other burrito was on one of the yard signs that are part of the library’s summer reading game. Game participants write their own message on their signs, and the sign in front of one house says, BURRITO TAPE. Google says that someone has, in fact, invented burrito tape. Already, the summer reading game is educational. I learned something from another sign today, too: TARTARUGA. Google says tartaruga is Portuguese for turtle. Such a fine word rather elevates the status of turtles.
The other double this morning was flicker. Sunshine dancing off waves in the neighborhood pool flickered in the screen of greenery around the pool. This flickering light is one of the pleasures of swimming outdoors, or even of walking past while someone else swims in the sun.
The other flicker appeared as Rascal and I returned to our shady court. The northern flicker is a bird of the woodpecker family that dresses in extravagant finery: stripes, polka dots, a black bow tie, and a red hair ornament. There’s a flicker couple nesting somewhere quite near our house, probably in our back yard or the yard next door. We often hear them saying, “Clear!” We enjoy it.
Male flickers are such good guys that they not only help feed their young, they take turns with their mates in sitting on the eggs before they hatch. I’ve had a soft spot for flickers since we were kids, going on camping trips with our parents. Whenever we were on the approach to a campground, flickers would fly ahead us, as if to show us the way. I thought of them as the welcoming birds.
Bluegills have been making a splash for the last few days. Males have made spawning beds in the shallow water at the edge of one of the Traver ponds. They scoop out craters and decorate them with pebbles, if they can find them, to attract females. They build the spawning beds right next to each other, so they fit together in a honeycomb-like pattern. As a male waits for a female, he defends his own territory against the incursions of other males, while also making bold forays into neighboring territories. The fish make the water churn. You can the drama unfolding in the sunlight.
A friend named Meghan has a dog with his own ideas of how to spend time on or in the water during the summer. George is a seventy-pound, spaniel-y sort of fellow getting on in years, and Meghan has a small pool in her yard. George climbs the steps and waits at the edge of the pool for the inflatable raft floating on the surface to waft his way. When it does, he steps aboard and floats around the pool. After twenty minutes or so, he’s usually had his fun. So he waits for the raft to float to the edge again and hops back off.
“Does he ever just swim in the pool?” I asked.
“Not at my house,” Meghan answered. “But my parents have a big pool, and he swims over there. He loves it.” George knows how to spend a hot summer day.
So do a goodly portion of the folks who live in Ann Arbor. They put on their bathing suits and take to the Huron River in tubes and kayaks and canoes and paddleboats. They head out one at a time or two or more together. They go as friends. They go as families. One tube Sue and I saw today had room for four adults. Another shot through the Cascades with five young men aboard.
Some tubers pulled a smaller trailer tube bearing a child or a cooler. Kayakers glided along or gathered in lesson groups. Teenagers basked on the docks. Happy Fourth of July on the river!
4 July 2025
The floating dog patiently waiting to return once more to the edge of the pool to to debark.