Margaret KnighT>

508-627-8894

(margaret02539@yahoo.com)

Work continues on the monumental project we’ve been witnessing here on Chappy. This week they’ve been installing cable in the underground conduits, and transformers wherever the line connects to houses. The poles will eventually need to be taken down. The house-sized machine on Dock street that mixed the clay with water for drilling was taken away on a trailer up the wrong way of Main street during the night on Tuesday.

The Point was still in upheaval all week, with various large machines filling the ferry line waiting area, including a crane for installing the vault where the under-harbor cables will connect to the line going up the road. While it was there, the crane was also used to install pilings around the edges of the second ferry slip. Peter wants a safe place to keep a ferry during a hurricane, so he’s making a sort of cradle of pilings that rise ten feet above the normal waterline.

At the end of a work day, the dirt parking lot is full of large equipment. Last week, part of the tar parking lot was off-limits when a couple of fuel tanks were discovered there during drilling. Work was proceeding to install conduit for an electric cable that would connect power down to the ferry from the new underground line when the drill hit something solid. It was about halfway down the parking lot next to the cement barriers that separate the lot from the road. Since they often hit solid things, the workers kept drilling. Then they hit another solid thing, and the drill bit broke. While digging to retrieve their drill bit, they encountered two buried steel tanks, which they’d been drilling through.

Skip Bettencourt’s father Tony, who operated the first ferry City of Chappaquiddick until 1947, used to sell gas and kerosene right there near his ferry house on the outer harbor side of the Point. From Skip’s calculations, he pumped fuel for about 10 years during the 1930s and 1940s. Gerry Jeffers remembers getting gas there when he first started driving at age nine.

The two tanks were found empty except for some kerosene residue which was removed, along with the tanks, by Clean Harbors, the largest hazardous waste disposal company in North America. According to Peter Wells, who spent some time with them, the company runs all their equipment by compressor, so no sparks are produced. Also according to Peter, the workers were yakking a mile a minute the whole time discussing, among other topics, movies and how many sequels should be made on a subject, i.e. Jaws — none.

Former Chappy columnist Marianne Jones writes that her father, Curry Jones, hosted a crowd from off-Island for the New Year’s weekend: his granddaughter, Adelaide Symmes, and her friends Kate Dasey, Julia Hyndeman, Sierra Morse, Karis McBride, Fiona Hogg from Concord, N.H., as well as Marianne, her husband, Whit Symmes, and sister Carol Jones. She says, “If anyone walked out on what’s left of Wasque Beach on the afternoon of New Year’s Day and noticed the addition of prints left by a couple of sets of bare feet, those were from these off-Islanders. Two from the group did their first Polar Bear plunge into the waves at Wasque to celebrate the start of 2011. Reports are that it was numbing but worth it, with photos to prove it. The group was fascinated by the timbers from the shipwreck that were also visible at Wasque at low tide, with brass spikes and bolts sticking up out of the sand. The brass was polished bright. It appeared to be decking that was being uncovered, with a possible tiny gangway. The big sea creature was still lying a little further down the beach — lucky for a stiff breeze as it is surprisingly intact.”

The sea creature is a pigmy sperm whale, which is not much bigger than many dolphins. Scientists from New England Aquarium came to identify the whale, which is rare around here, and rarely seen at all except for strandings.

Skip Bettencourt and Nancy Hugger often walk Norton Point, and on Sunday, they saw part of the exposed ship including brass nails, pegs, and sheathing. Parts of the boat continue to appear, and disappear — either covered by sand again or washed offshore. Evidently a marine historian is looking into the boat’s design to gauge the likelihood that it is the Mertie B. Crowley, a six-masted schooner that sank one hundred years ago off Wasque.

The Edgartown Library book group chose Red Hook Road, a novel by Ayelet Waldman, for discussion at its next meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 25, at 4 p.m. You can reserve a copy at the library and join the discussion.

Each morning the sun climbs over the tree line a little earlier than the day before. Tuesday was a still, cold morning, and all the snow had melted during the weekend’s January thaw. As I opened our henhouse door, the chickens were muttering quietly inside about breakfast. All five popped out, one after the other, ready to hurry this way and that to see what I was serving. I put laying pellets in the bowls, broken tortillas on the ground, and scattered some cracked corn on the ground. Scalp Head came to eat corn from the can in my hand, as she usually does, and Puffed-Up Wind Bag (that’s her name!) tried to get at whatever anyone else was eating. Buffy Orpington ran behind the henhouse whenever anyone looked at her crossly.

In the bushes around the henhouse, about 10 white-throated sparrows and a cardinal looked on patiently, waiting for things to settle down before they came down to inspect the leftovers. A small flock of crows started cawing in the distance, and the older chickens stopped to see what they were saying. Evidently the talk wasn’t about hawks because the chickens went back to eating. The crows flew to the treetop above the bird feeder near the house, making patches of jet black against the pale blue sky.

I know Will Geresy has a bone to pick with crows, and I’ve certainly despaired at keeping them away from my garden, but I keep trying to find reasons not to dislike them. They are interesting, smart birds. One trait I’ve found in their favor is that they warn the chickens if they see a hawk out hunting. If you read Lynne Irons’ gardening column on the back page of last week’s Gazette, you know she lost a couple chickens to a Cooper’s hawk. I’ve seen them and redtailed hawks hanging around the yard, and have lost a couple of hens to hawks. The chickens seem to have gotten smarter about the hawks now. They listen to the crows, and stay back in the underbrush unless they see me coming with a treat.