MARGARET KNIGHT

508-627-8894

(margaret02539@yahoo.com)

Welcome back to the seasonal residents who are here for Thanksgiving and possibly their last visit to Chappaquiddick for the season. With a few more people on the roads and riding the ferry, it doesn’t seem quite so much like winter is around the corner — although the weather hasn’t given much indication that it is either.

There is an open house at the Chappy Community Center tomorrow from 2 to 4 p.m. (not 3 to 5 as I said last week). Everyone is welcome to come by and have some hot cider and cookies, and visit with friends and neighbors in front of the fire. The 2010 Chappy photo calendars will be available for pickup, or for sale if you haven’t yet ordered one. There will also be CCC T-shirts, tote bags, et cetera. Lily Morris will be there with her photo cards, and Shirlee Miller will have her hand-knit items for sale.

The screech owl that nests in an owl box on North Neck Road has been spotted regularly sunning itself through the hole in the front of the box. There has been a screech owl in residence there since Dick Knight put the box up about seven years ago. The year before, he had noticed an owl living in a box on the side of a driveway on North Neck where he was doing a project. He said, “The screech owl would sleep during the day, with the noise of heavy equipment and trucks going back and forth right under him all day long. When things quieted down at the end of the day, he would appear in the nesting box hole and sun himself.”

Dick built some other nest boxes a couple of years ago and gave them away. Woody Filley has one that he can see from his bedroom window, and he’s seen baby owls. Nancy Hugger and Skip Bettencourt have a box and have also seen owl chicks. Dick gave a box to Bob and Fran Clay. Bob put it up in a tree at the edge of their yard. After a while when no owl had moved in, Bob mentioned to Dick that an owl hadn’t come yet. Dick told him the location might not be right — they like the box a little back in the woods and on the south side of the tree — and anyway it can take a while for them to find the box. So Bob waited longer.

One day when he opened the door of the box to check inside, to his surprise, an owl was sitting there. It looked like a screech owl, but it turned out to be a perfect stuffed-animal version. He was pretty sure who had put it there, and he wanted to return the bird, but it took him awhile to figure out how. With the help of Rick Haslet, he came up with an idea. That Christmas Bob gave Dick a present. It was a jack-in-the-box, and when Dick cranked the handle, out popped the little screech owl.

Recently, Bob decided to move his owl box to a different location. When he opened the door to check it before he took it off the tree, there was an owl! He thought at first it was a stuffed one, but then it swiveled its head to look at him. After that it just shut its eyes, which is something like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand. “If I can’t see it, it must not exist.” Bob didn’t have to move the box after all.

The next potluck at the community center is on Wednesday, Dec. 2, starting at 6 p.m. with appetizers and 6:30 for dinner. Sidney Morris and I will be the hosts. All are welcome.

At the last potluck, Donna Kelly told me she found kudzu this past summer growing in one of the Chappy gardens she tends. Kudzu is an incredibly invasive legume that is a serious problem in the southeast United States where the conditions for growth are perfect. We have a similar kind of problem with bittersweet, but kudzu seems way worse. If you Google kudzu, you can find pictures of it covering whole buildings. If you have even more time, you can go to a web site called “Kud-Zoo” and see pictures of kudzu-covered vegetation in the shape of animals. Donna is concerned about its possible spread to the island. According to Wikipedia, it has been found as far north as New Jersey, which probably has a similar climate to here. Be on the lookout next summer for a three-part leaf a little rounder than poison ivy, with a purple pea-like flower.

Also at the potluck, Judy Buss brought up the question of why no one is making bicycle-powered electricity on Chappy. She thinks it would be good especially when we have power outages. You can buy a kit to build your own or buy a setup one and produce electricity with your stationary bike. So many people exercise inside, and all that humanly produced energy is wasted. Maybe we could get people who use treadmills to grind grain.

Peter Wells expects that the On Time III will be back on the job for the weekend of Dec. 5 and 6.

Peter mentioned how many deer he’s seen lately that act as if they’re not the least bit concerned about his presence. It’s that time of year when deer come out of cover, which brings the hunters out, too. It was bow and arrow season until last weekend, and Peter said he’s seen some deer riding the ferry in the backs of trucks. The deer have a week’s respite now, and then shotgun season starts Monday, Nov. 30 and runs through Dec. 12. Then it’s primitive firearms season from Dec. 14 to 31. Sing loudly if you’re taking a walk in the woods, or wear orange.