Tent Musings

Max and Clover

It is a simple recipe for glorious and perfect frivolity:
1) Make your children hike all day in the glaring sun.
2) Feed your children a high salt dinner full of preservatives and nitrites.
3) Give your children a generous handful of M and Ms.
4) Instruct your children to brush their teeth (all of them) and spit the toothpaste a good distance from the campsite to avoid attracting bears.
5) Allow the sun to set and the stars to announce their presence and the nighttime cold to bite and pinch just a little, then instruct your children to bed down in the tent.
6) Tell the children to read for no more than 10 minutes then it's lights out.
7) Shush the children gently as they get settled.


So as your children settle in the tent, and you sit on the log outside watching the familiar constellations emerge like long-awaited friends walking up the front steps for dinner, you notice the silence in the tents and the hesitant turning of pages within as if the readers are really not that interested in reading. All creation awaits...


Then, as shyly as a mouse poking its thimble-sized head over a nearby rock, a hesitant little fuchi welcomes the night from within the tent. (Fuchi: Spanish, Mexican slang, noun or verb: stinky; flatus or the passing of flatus). Like counting the seconds after lightening strikes until the thunder peals, there is a brief pause, then an abrupt eruption of synchronized, diaphragmatic laughter. The silence around the campsite is broken and every bear, marmot, rodent and cricket in your Sierran quadrangle scatters for cover.


It's all over now. The fuchis follow in quick succession. Some are short and declarative like those airhorn blasts at Giant's games. Others are symmetrical and nondescript. Some are polite and demure like a slender bride mingling with her guests at the wedding reception. Some are like the wind through the trees. And still others are full of bravado and flare like an untied and over-inflated balloon which has been released from your grasp.


The laughter is now unbridaled. As you note the yellow star, Arcterus, coming into view, you realize you have lost all control of your children. They are now uproarious and hitting each other over the head with their pillows. Books are tossed aside and sleeping bags are hastily unzipped. The kids are bouncing up and down on their Thermarests. Their headlamps within cast raucous shadows on the tent walls.


The tents are wavering North and South and East and West as if battered by the wind at Camp IV on Mt. Everest and are precariously close to toppling. They seem to be shimmying off their tarps. A tent pole suddenly comes unsecured and the tent collapses and the laughter intensifies. The tent is now a rolling mass of nylon sheen migrating clumsily over the pine needles, across the campsite and toward the lake. The children seem to be wrestling inside. They are all wound up with their sleeping bags like towels which have twisted together in the dryer.


Sleep is long-off, you realize. There is too much adrenaline, the good kind of adrenaline, and you know the kids will have tousled hair, red faces and hot ears. "Settle down," you say pathetically, knowing that it is hopeless. Sleep will come only when the horizon greys with the approaching dawn. It will be a long night.

Henry Wide-eyed

Sammy Highlighted

Beware the Kitchen Cupboard

Every family designates a kitchen cupboard for cleaning products. Ours contains Windex, shoe polish, 409, Ajax, Soft Scrub, Murphy Oil Soap, Pine-Sol (I love that smell!) and hidden in the rear of the cupboard, unused and untouched, a canister full of Raid Wasp and Hornet Killer. Printed on the can are dire warnings like "do not spray into eyes" and "do not use for unintended purposes." I'm sure Sam, Max and Henry could think of many unintended uses for this spray. It's a good thing, therefore, that it remains concealed and out of reach.

As an aside, pest control has always interested me. In fact, I took an aptitude test in 9th grade, and the results said I should either be a french horn player or a pest control specialist. I would love to drive one of those pest control vans with the big ant on the roof or a black widow spider painted on the side flashing its red hourglass at passing cars. Now to do so while playing the french horn? That would be really cool!

Anyway, growing up in Santa Cruz many years ago, our friend Steve was asked by his mother to use the dust spray to clean the beautiful, black, shiny Yamaha grand piano in the living room. Steve reached up into the kitchen cupboard and unwittingly pulled out the canister of Easy Off Oven Cleaner rather than the Endust dust spray. Not really looking at the spray canister, he asked his mother, "So how do I use this stuff?" His mother was folding clothes in the next room. "Just spray it all over the piano, dear, wait for 15 minutes, then wipe it off with a clean cloth," she answered.

Truth be told, Steve was simply following directions. Within moments after Steve sprayed the oven cleaner onto the piano, its surface started making a crackling sound like Rice Crispies. The piano finish was soon warping and bubbling. It dripped a thick, black fluid onto the shag carpet which coalesced and oozed its way into the den like a lava flow inching down a road in Hawaii. A mist formed and hovered over the floor at knee-level.

I will spare you the details of what transpired afterwards, but suffice it to say, the laundry remained unfolded, the family dog, Scruffy, developed a incurable skin ailment and Steve never had to dust again.

Ants and Amigos

"Do you have anything else besides Mexican food?"

(Dusty Bottoms, from The Three Amigos)

"The bird will work!"

(Flick, from A Bug's Life)

I suspect that my blog followers (all two of them) have seen the movies The Three Amigos and A Bug's Life. Today while I was flossing and staring at myself in the mirror, I realized that these movies share identical themes.


In both movies, the small town characters (the people of Santa Polco in Amigos and the ants in Bug's Life) are terrorized by bullies (El Guapo in Amigos and Hopper, the grasshopper, in Bug's Life). The bullies demand payment from the town characters. Otherwise, there will be mayhem and destruction.


Along come performers (the silent movie stars in Amigos and the the circus performing insects in Bug's Life) who agree to protect the town characters, unwittingly thinking they are performing, but later realizing that they are actually not performing. It is all real. ("They're real," the Steve Martin character whimpers in Amigos when he realizes the truth after being shot, "The bullets are real.") Instead of trying to escape unscathed, they all decide to remain, using their performing skills and risking their lives to save the townfolk.


These themes are wound around superb acting, and one can't help but rejoice while experiencing the pathos and the redemption embodied in the characters. These elements are highlighted in the climactic scenes of both movies: in Amigos, when Ned Nederlander, played by Martin Short, exclaims "Sew very old woman! Sew like the wind!" and in Bug's Life, when the paripatetic pill bugs point at the attacking bird and hysterically warn, "Tweet tweet! Tweet tweet!"


My life-long friend, Clifford (not the Big Red Dog), was also flossing recently*. As he stared at himself in the mirror, he realized that the plots of Hamlet and Disney's The Lion King are also similar. Imagine that! Or how about Bambi and King Lear?

I have also backpacked with Clifford, and one of our trips shared thematic elements with both The Titanic and Tora Tora Tora. On this trip, among other things which went catastrophically haywire, we ran out of food. For our last dinner we enjoyed the remnant crumbs of six Ritz Crackers.






(*Clifford has all 32 of his teeth. This includes his wisdom teeth! Also, he has never had a cavity or a bad hair day)

Mather Pass and the First Purple Candle

View looking South on the John Muir Trail to

Mather Pass

(the wide "V" in the upper center)

Turkey Tetrazzini Pete and I approached Mather Pass from Deer Meadows on August 2nd, 1988. Mather Pass is the king of pain in the ass passes. Hiking up and over it is exhausting and demoralizing. You can see the pass hours and miles before you are within spittin' distance. You put your head down, you take small steps, you gasp for air, you realize you are thirsty and your lips are really chapped, then you look up. The pass is just as elusive and far away as it was an hour ago. It never seems to get any closer. All you can do is methodically place one foot in front of the other, adjust the weight of your pack and try and distract yourself with the granite debris at your feet or some fanciful daydream about life back home.

On that morning I only wanted the pass to appear closer. I wanted some sign of progress, some sign of hope, a dove with a flower in its beak, a bearded sage like John Muir or Moses descending from the pass and reassuring us that we would indeed reach our goal.

Pete and I marched on in silence all morning, though occasionally he would remind me that we were now formally participating in the Bataan Death March, Part 2, and that he was not having an enjoyable experience in the mountains.

That Pete, God love 'im! This was the trip where Pete left his toothbrush at home ("I didn't know you brushed your teeth when you went backpacking," he explained), and he brought a 16 ounce bottle of sterile saline solution for his contact lens. (This was in the days before ultralight backpacking).

Eventually, after a series of false passes, false hope, and general fussiness and some choice expletives from Pete, we approached the final 100 yards to the pass...

On this first Sunday of Advent I'm reminded of that day Pete and I shared 21 years ago. Advent provides an opportunity for us to reflect on waiting. The Jews waited countless years for the arrival of Jesus. Now we wait for the second coming of Christ, and we also wait for Christ to enter our daily lives in our steps, our interactions and our quiet moments. While we wait we simply need to be attentive, and we simply need to keep walking. Then we discover that the view is much better than expected.

Water in, Water out

McArthur Burney Falls

Noone expects such wonderful falls when travelling on Hiway 89. The falls look like they belong in Maui or in a painting but not here in Northern California. Although the river is typically dry a mile upstream during the Summer months, the falls thunder over the cliff all year round. They do so, because they are fed by underground springs. The waterfall pool and viewing area is an easy walk from the parking lot, and the cold spray is a welcome treat for wilted, travel-wearing children. It works better than a popsicle.

Ahh , water. Here is Clare drinking water in Yosemite on the trail to Cathedral Lakes:

When you drink water, you will eventually need to pee. This is because we are mammals, and the definition of a mammal is a living organism which has kidneys. Mammals also nurse their young, or they give their young formula in a bottle. Most mammals have hair, but others, like me, are in the process of losing their hair.

Can a mammal go without peeing in a 24 hour period? One year at music camp, our friend Steve decided to test this theory. Music camp in Santa Cruz was a week-long adventure in the mountains where you could swim and do archery and get really dusty and sing and play an instrument in an orchestra. You would then do a concert for your parents on the last day when they came up to fetch you. Once at music camp we sang a song called If by the 70s band, Bread:

The lyrics were:

If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can't I paint you? The words will never show the you I've come to know.

For those of you unfamiliar with this song, please take heed and never, ever listen to it. I'm begging you. The melody and the lyrics are intensely depressing and will bring you down faster than gravity. You have been warned.

Anyway, Steve played the cello at music camp. He was one of those cello players who would stick out his tongue when he played. You know the type. Back home he once played a Communion meditation at mass. It was a piece by Bach. The music was lovely, but Steve's tongue sticking out made his mouth look like the capital letter "Q." All of us, including the priest, were in stitches. He was actually really good, because he could do vibrato before he had turned 13! Doing vibrato involves shaking your hand on the strings to make your tone sound really pretty. For a preteen like myself, being able to do vibrato and shake your hand like that defined musical greatness.

Yoyo Ma (a mammal) demonstrating vibrato

He is very good at it!

Back to the peeing. Steve bet some other campers that he could go 24 hours without peeing. He would be monitored closely so he could not cheat, and if he succeeded he would make 10 dollars. He peed the last time at midnight as his cabinmates excitedly yelled, "On your mark, get set, go!" indicating the start of the 24 hour period.

In the morning Steve ate oatmeal and a banana and skipped the orange juice and milk. He skipped the morning snack after orchestra practice, and at lunch he took a hike in the heat wearing a sweatshirt so he could sweat out his urine. This seemed to be a smart approach, I thought. By dinner time he was complaining of growing discomfort in his lower belly, but interestingly, he also complained of thirst. That was weird.

By 10 pm the camp excitement was mounting as word spread about Steve's endeavor. He paced around the floor of the cabin then would sit in a chair and pound his feet up and down like someone trying to hold his breath as long as possible. Other campers were gathering round and asking questions like, "Could he burst?" or "Is this safe?" In general, though, Steve seemed to be winning the admiration of all the campers in the string section and even some of the woodwind players.

In the last 15 minutes before midnight Steve was running around the swimming pool with his hands tightly squeezing his crotch, and all the the other campers were running with him. Many tried to assist him by clearing people out of the way and yelling words of encouragement. "Just don't think of water," they said, or "Squeeze harder!" One of the drummers brought out some bongos and was playing some kind of Tiki-dance music.

In the last minute the entire camp did a countdown from 60 as Steve ran to the edge of a hillside and started screaming. At midnight exactly he unabashedly whipped out his wienie and let loose a stream of urine which arched toward the starry sky in a magnificent parabola which shot over the manzanitas and ended up sprinkling the volleyball courts at the bottom of the hill. Everyone sighed "Oooooh!" like they do when they watch pretty fireworks.

Steve peed for 4 minutes straight. When he finished he zipped himself up and everyone broke into rapturous applause. Steve took a bow. He then went to his cabin, drank some water, put on his pajamas and climbed into bed.

Of King Tut and Split Pea Soup

Awhile ago my family dined at Pea Soup Andersen's in Santa Nella just off Hiway 5. A Danish windmill outside the restaurant was spinning continuously in the warm Central Valley wind. We planted ourselves in the air conditioned dining room. While perusing the menu I noted a man in his 60s sitting at an inconspicuous table in the corner. The man was sipping pea soup and reading a newspaper. His hair was gentry white, and his face was nicely tanned like the people in People Magazine. He had really good posture.


"Hey!" I whispered to the kids, "Don't all stare at once, but look over in the corner. It's Steve Martin!" The kids immediately tossed their menus onto the table and whipped around to stare where I was pointing. They squinted hard.


"That's not Steve Martin!" Clare finally said. "That's just some guy eating split pea soup. He doesn't even look Steve Martin. No way! You're nuts. Sheesh!"


I looked again. "Well," I pointed out, "If you kind of push your fingers in your eyes and use your imagination, it could be Steve Martin."


Later our meal was served. The appetizer at Anderson's is always split pea soup. There are no salads or bread sticks; there is only split pea soup. You could order minestrone for your main dish, and they'll still serve you split pea soup as your appetizer. I watched the kids poke around in their soup with their spoons. They suspiciously eyed the little chunks of partially submerged ham floating around like flotsam. I wondered how the split pea soup and the burgers and fries would all mix in their stomachs. This was a combination of food that just shouldn't be served together, I thought, like jello and olives, or turkey sandwiches and chocolate shakes. It was just wrong.


Meanwhile, the white-haired fellow in the corner wiped his mouth with a napkin then added some sugar cubes to his coffee and began stirring his drink with a little spoon. He caught my gaze, and I quickly averted my eyes, embarrassed. "Would you leave it alone?" my wife implored. "It's not Steve Martin!"


When leaving the restaurant I took this picture with my cell phone:

To this day my family still insists it was not Steve Martin. I'll let you be the judge.

Cirque du Jerome

Something beautiful:

View into Brewer Basin from Sphinx Pass. Southguard Peak, Milestone Mountain and Table Mountain in the background. My brother, Joe, dubbed Brewer Basin "The Garden of Earthly Delights"

Something funny:

Yesterday, 11/09/09, Samuel gave me a "rough draft" of his Christmas list. He promised that the final copy would come later.

Something aggravating:

Tonight at 9:30 Max told us his explorer report project was due tomorrow. "Don't worry though," he said, "I've already done the rough draft. All I have to do is type it, make a posterboard with lots of maps and do the bibliography."

Wow, I learned tonight. That Hernando Cortes, what a dynamo!

Something harrowing:

Clare drove me home tonight on Hiway 580 during rush hour. She has her learner's permit. When I suggested she look in the rear view mirror occasionally, she seemed surprised. "What?" she said, "I'm supposed to look in the rear view mirror?"

Something curly:

Henry refuses to get a haircut.

Something wacky:

My sister, Kristin, EMailed me a picture of her cat looking at an internet webcam site showing my parent's cruise ship going through the Panama Canal in real time:

The Tree in the Sun

This tree on Lembert Dome is blooming where it was planted. Isolated from its brethren, it anchors itself to its granite perch with its tenacious roots. Improbably, it seems to be thriving. It has enjoyed this unfathomable view for decades, branches outstretched and embracing the sun as it courses through the sky each day.

I'm reminded of the scene from The Shawshank Redemption in which Andy, the prisoner who had been wrongfully incarcerated years before, locks himself in the warden's office. He puts on the recording of Mozart's heavenly Sull' aria from The Marriage of Figaro and uses a microphone to amplify the music over the prison loudspeakers. All the prisoners in the yard face the loudspeakers and stand in rapturous silence as the music envelops them:

Meanwhile, back in the warden's office, Andy leans back in his chair with his hands behind his head and simply smiles a far off smile. The warden is infuriated, because when the prisoners hear the music, they suddenly understand that no walls can restrain their hope. They are free.

"Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow"

Helen Keller

Dudes on the Dome

Lembert Dome, 08/23/09

Skeeter, Caveman and Chopper enjoying dusk

Mr. Peanut in the Sierras

In third grade I wrote a report about ants for my teacher, Ms. Heuttman. (In a future blog I will describe Ms. Huettman's hairdo). In my research I learned that the ant's body is divided into three different sections: the head, the thorax and the abdomen. On the report's cover I drew a picture of an ant over the words, "The Amazing Ant." The picture was really cool and showed a jaunty ant sporting a top hat and a cane. It seemed to be dancing:

"The Amazing Ant"

Anyway, since third grade I have acquired more ant knowledge. Some of my knowledge stemmed from the 1954 sci-fi flick, Them:

In Them, a colony of ants is exposed to nuclear radiation out in the desert. They mutate and grow huge, really huge. Even their pupae are huge and look like those big white propane tanks you see behind gas stations while driving up to Tahoe. The ants are the size of dump trucks and march around the desert sand waving their big pipe-cleaner antennas while making horrific screeching sounds:

This movie really scared me. I was only about five years old when my parents allowed me to watch it. The protagonist was a child named Jerry. In the movie's climactic scene, Jerry is shown running through a town's subterranean sewer system while being chased by some of the ants. I didn't sleep that night. I hid under my covers, worried I might be skewered by the pincers of a giant ant and carried off to the colony.

Years later, in July, 1980, we took a family backpacking trip to Granite Basin in Kings Canyon with our family friend, Betsy. Betsy was from South Carolina. One night Betsy woke up and startled us all out of our sleeping bags, hollering, "There's an ant in my ear! There's an ant in my ear!" With her southern accent she sounded like the maid from Gone with the Wind: "Ms. Scarlett! Ms. Scarlett! Ms. Scarlett!"

We tried to convince Betsy that there was not in an ant in her ear. It was just a hair, or wax, or the wind blowing through the trees. She persisted, but on the last day of our trip she reassured us that she was better. The ant had died, she said. When we returned home my dad took her to his office. He looked in her ear with his otoscope, and, much to everyone's surprise (except for Betsy's), he used some tweezers to extract the head, the thorax and the abdomen of a dead Sierran ant.

I wonder about Sierran ants. They are five times the size of regular, little black house ants. I have simply dubbed them "high altitude ants." Is it possible that ants grow bigger at higher altitudes? If so, could the Mt. Everest Base Camp have ants like there were in Them? This is precisely why I will never, ever visit the Mt. Everest Base Camp!

John Muir wondered about Sierran ants as well:

On my way to camp a few minutes ago, I passed a dead pine nearly ten feet in diameter. It has been enveloped in fire from top to bottom so that now it looks like a grand black pillar set up as a monument. In this noble shaft a colony of large jet-black ants have established themselves, laboriously cutting tunnels and cells through the wood, whether sound or decayed. The entire trunk seems to have been honeycombed, judging by the size of the talus of gnawed chips like sawdust piled up around its base. They are more intelligent-looking than their small, belligerent, strong-scented brethren, and have better manners, though quick to fight when required. Their towns are carved in fallen trunks as well as in those left standing, but never in sound, living trees or in the ground.

When you happen to sit down to rest or take notes near a colony, some wandering hunter is sure to find you and come cautiously forward to discover the nature of the intruder and what ought to be done. If you are not too near the town and keep perfectly still he may run across your feet a few times, over your legs and hands and face, up your trousers, as if taking your measure and getting comprehensive views, then go in peace without raising an alarm. If however a tempting spot is offered or some suspicious movement excites him, a bite follows, and such a bite! I fancy that a bear- or wolf-bite is not to be compared with it. A quick electric flame of pain flashes along the outraged nerves, and you discover for the first time how great is the capacity for sensation you are possessed of. A shriek, a grab for the animal, and a bewildered stare follow this bite of bites as one comes back to consciousness from sudden eclipse. Fortunately, if careful, one need not be bitten oftener than once or twice in a lifetime.

This wonderful electric ant is about three fourths of an inch long. Bears are fond of them, and tear and gnaw their home logs to pieces, and roughly devour the eggs, larvae, parent ants, and the rotten or sound wood of the cells, all in one spicy acid hash. The Digger Indians also are fond of the larvae and even of the perfect ants, so I have been told by old mountaineers. They bite off and reject the head, and eat the sickly acid body with keen relish. Thus are the poor biters bitten, like every other biter, big or little, in the world's great family.

Maximus Jeromeus

MAXIMUS JEROMEUS

on the shores of Lower Cathedral Lake, VIII/XVII/MMIX

"Hey Dad, tonight can we all, you know, just sit around, talk, and drink water?"

(asked by Max)

The Doodad

Yosemite's north boundary country boasts the Sawtooth Ridge, a serrated wonderland of supreme granite crackage. For the hiker trekking North to South, the ridge marks the beginning of the best of the Sierras. Before you stretches 200 miles of pristine rock, altitude, whiteness and blueness, and nonchalant marmots basking in the wind. You have arrived.

From the Sawtooth Ridge rise peaks and peaklets: Matterhorn Peak, Petite Capucin, Dragtooth (not "Dragontooth"), The Three Teeth: Middle, Northwest and Southeast Tooth (four out of five dentists have climbed each of these), The Sawblade, Cleaver Peak, Blacksmith Peak and last but not least, The Doodad.

The Doodad? There is actually a Sierran peak named The Doodad? Place Names of the High Sierras does not mention when or why this name was applied to this 25 foot granite cube perched precariously on the Sawtooth Ridge (see the nubbin of rock perched on the peak to the right):

Do you see it? That's it! That's the Doodad! On September 9th, 1996 I hiked with Turkey Tetrazzini Pete up Matterhorn Canyon and over Burro Pass and Mule Pass. I remember that trip, because on the way home I phoned Lydia from a payphone in Bridgeport on Hiway 395. She told me we were pregnant (Lydia and I, not Pete and I) with Sammy, our second child. That's what I remember about that trip. I don't remember seeing The Doodad.

Which begs the question, what is a doodad anyway? Webster says:

Pronunciation: \ˈdü-ˌdad\

Function: noun

Etymology: origin unknown

Date: 1888

1 : an ornamental attachment or decoration 2 : an often small article whose common name is unknown or forgotten

And from Roget's Thesauraus:

doodad: gismo, gizmo, gubbins, thingamabob, thingamajig, thingmabob,thingmajig, thingumabob,

thingumajig, thingummy, whatchamacallit, whatchamacallum,whatsis, widget, doohickey, doojigger, gimmick

The Doodad from 100 meters away:

The Doodad close-up:

The Doodad with climbers (These are not GI Joe Dolls perched on a little boulder):

I'm glad The Doodad actually wasn't called "The Thingamajig." Could you imagine the trip journal from a climber like Sir Edmund Hillary?

We pushed forward well past midnight, Tenzing Norgay and I, the wind howling like banshees and slapping our faces numb and the snow blinding us to our surroundings and all reality. Our exhaustion was total and devastating and our legs seemed fixed to the earth. Only with supreme effort and the breath of God could we budge them and inch forward. But then, out of the blizzard and the void which enveloped us, it appeared and stared us in the face...The Thingamajig.

Of The Miter and Muskrat Love

Miter Basin

Sequoia National Park

08/23/06

Mt. McAdie (center) 13,799'

The Miter (to the right)

Bishop's Miter

Close-up of The Miter

Always interesting, I think, how Sierran peaks are named. Sometimes the names actually describe the appearance of the peak. It's a kind of visual onomonopoeia. The Miter, as pictured here, is a wonderful example. Half Dome is a good example as well. (Could you imagine how undescriptive it would be if Half Dome were named Mt. McKinley?).

Other good examples include Table Mountain (looks like a table), The Thumb and The Hermit and The Doodad and Fin Dome (all solitary monoliths), The Sawtooth Range in Northern Yosemite (serrated), The Sphinx (you get the idea) and El Capitan (looks like a big, broad-shouldered captain standing guard over Yosemite Valley).

Speaking of "The Captain," we used to own this album growing up. You remember The Captain and Tennille? Those were unusual times. I had a big crush on Tennille (or is it "The Tennille"?), so I was not a big fan of the The Captain. He was my competition. It was never clear to me if they were married or just dating, or if they had their own families and just liked hanging out and playing music together. Also, what type of captain was he? He did wear a captain's hat. Where was his ship? Or where was his army? It was all very suspicious. As a 12 year old, I wanted these issues clarified.

I really dug the song, "Love will keep us together." That was the first line of the song, and the only line I understood. The other verses all got muddied together because of our lousy record player. I used to pretend Tennille was singing that song to me. We could survive anything, The Tennille and I, because we had love keeping us together. They also sang a duet called Muskrat Love in which you could hear a little creature like a rat twittering in the background. That must have been a novel idea in the 70s: let's hook a microphone up to a rodent and record it and work it into our song! I have no idea what Muskrat Love is (or who it is), but hey, it must have been something pretty special.