Tourist Trap

The article in Wikipedia under the heading "tourist trap" explains very clearly and with a hint of irony the meaning of the phrase, and lists a large number of the better-known places. The final entry under North America is, "the Tennessee cities of Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg have numerous tourist traps."

"Numerous" is an understatement which could be enriched by editing it to read "too numerous to mention".

OK, so Dolly Parton was born in Sevierville. That explains the Dollywood attraction. But how about all those other wall-to-wall traps that do everything from stuff you with pancakes to fling you around in a vertical wind tunnel.

None of the above, not even the food, attracted us. As the driver on the trip, I had to negotiate the passage through Gatlinburg to the mountains. Crawling along at an average of perhaps two miles an hour reminded me of the time we drove to Canada up I-75 and got caught in an interstate parking lot between two exits miles apart. I seem to recall it took 2 hours to drive 10 miles.

Since we're not great photographers, I figured that YouTube would fill in the gaps.

This video gives you one person's experience driving through the town. Traffic, people, and multiply by two, and you have our experience.

The real attraction, of course, is the mountains themselves, and the thrill ride is driving the twisty-turny US-441 that takes you to Clingman's Dome. Once there, we were content to watch the perpetual fog blow in over the slopes, and the hundreds of tourists who hiked up and down the trail. We were not among them. Although posted with handicap wheelchair signs, it is clear that an electrically-assisted chair would be the only reasonable way to hike to the top. Walking normally, the hike is 30 minutes to the outlook tower. We came, we saw, we demurred.

And then, there's the bears. This one clouted a car back a few years ago. That bear really knew how to trap tourists.

If you can't lick them, join them

Well, Sylvie is well on the way to adopting us. In fact, she already has. It's just that we have to keep her separated from the other cats so that there won't be pitched battles when they finally come together in the house. And, of course, she has to wait for a few more days until the clinic removes her powers of reproduction.

Spaying/neutering go a long way towards civilizing a stray, as most folk know. Sylvie will miss the excitement that goes with mating with some other local stray, the stress and responsibility of raising kittens two or three times a year, and the vulnerability to disease and early death that inevitably skews the feline actuarial tables.

The Feral Cat Coalition of San Diego puts it this way:

Many people assume their animals will survive when they move away and leave them behind. Contrary to popular belief, domestic animals do not automatically return to their "natural" instincts and cannot fend for themselves! Already, U.S. animal shelters are forced to kill an estimated 15 million homeless cats and dogs annually. ...

And think of the reproduction rate:

A pair of breeding cats, which can have two or more litters per year, can exponentially produce 420,000 offspring over a seven-year period.

The Feral Cat Coalition subscribes to the Trap-Neuter-Release theory that releasing a feral cat once it can no longer reproduce is the antidote to being overrun with cats. An opposing argument is, of course, the one that says that ferals become experts at avoiding traps, and hence they are not vaccinated against the deadly diseases that put the public, especially children, at risk. And this is in addition to the vast numbers of birds killed by cats.

A page at the University of Michigan, Detroit says:

If each outdoor cat only killed one bird per year, it would equal over 60 million birds annually.

Well, Sylvie, who doesn't know about all these facts and opinions because she doesn't spend any time on the internet, is quietly sitting in the Zinn Center at our back door, where, we hope, she will be protected from the nightly maraudings of various male cats and various raccoons of undetermined gender. In a few days, the great experiment of seeing whether she and Orange and Dusky and Kaboodle can co-exist in the same household will begin.

My guess is that there will be a few territorial puddles and some feral feces to clean up, and perhaps a number of free-floating balls of hair in the atmosphere, but the time will come when the ancient wisdom of cats will prevail, which is, I suppose, "a bird in the paw is worth two in the bush."

Robin In The 'Hood?

Yesterday, J spent several hours intently researching bird songs on the internets. She had noticed an unusually clear and melodious tune coming from somewhere in the neighborhood, a voice that seemed familiar, but yet one that she couldn't place. Off she went to the computer, and for the next four hours bird calls peeped, squawked, chirred and pippled from the speakers. This one was clearly complaining, "People never know our song tunes."

We had to leave for a drumming gig, so I busied myself loading the car. It was a day of audible contrasts. We played on the sidewalk and at the curb on a very busy street, with big diesel buses stopping beside us to board and discharge passengers. The store (10,000 Villages) had arranged for the group to celebrate Fair Trade Day, dedicated to the principle that if we're going to buy from other countries we should not take advantage of them. I bought a bamboo pan flute and J purchased a clay ocarina.

Unusually for the drummers, the noise levels out on the street were almost enough to silence them. The pedestrians had no trouble, and many paused for a while to listen. Some danced a bit, and some of the kids took over a djembe or two for a few licks. 

The band flailed away valiantly for three hours despite the physical layout. The musicians at either end could not hear their opposite companions well enough to stay crisply on the beat at times.

At dinner, J announced that she had found the bird song. It belonged to a baltimore oriole, who clearly believed in being heard and not seen. The identification of a baltimore oriole is relatively straightforward if you can see the bright orange breast and black head, but the bird is very creative when singing.

At one point, a technology company offered an in-field pair of binaural bird identifiers, the Song Sleuth, a portable device with a built-in sound matching algorithm that could identify the likely source of whatever you focused it on. According to the site, it was too expensive to manufacture for the target market ($299), but they're working on a new model and looking for a manufacturer. 

I hope they succeed, because as everyone knows, spring is the best time for birding: the birds are calling, the leaves are not fully out on the trees, and in the clear air of a fine spring day, what can be more satisfying than to know that even if you haven't seen it, you can be sure of the bird you heard. Meanwhile, pass the mnemonics, please.