JOY ALONG THE WAY: MOLTING TIME CAN BE CREATIVE

I am prone to making lists of needed things. The urgent things are always at the top, but sometimes a seemingly insignificant thing makes the top because, well, its seasonal time has come.

The top of the list now is an Osage orange or a round, Styrofoam ball of about the same size. Why has its time come? Because of molting bird feathers! This sounds like a disconnect. Let met connect the dots.

It has been my unique pleasure, though some may call it weird, to collect molted feathers, stick them into a suspended round, knobby Osage orange (to keep it a thing of nature) until the whole thing appears to be a feathered ball. The more different kinds of feathers I can find, the better. Teaching the little folk who come which birds the feathers belonged to is a passing fancy. They like to remove a feather or two, stroke it admiringly, maybe tickle my cheek with it and try to stick it back into where it was. Once, to their immense joy, I stuck in a peacock feather. They thought it would make a good fan for a fairy.

I seem to recall that a few years back it was illegal to do something with bird feathers. I don't know whether the collection of them fell into that area. If so, maybe I can collect a new and different kind of feather -- a jailbird feather!

A few of these feathered balls suspended on a colored string from the back porch ceiling creates a sort of statement of what the occupant's business might be, such as the mortar and pestle for pharmacies and the three bells for pawn shops.

I don't know how to label the occupation denoted by suspended feather balls. They may symbolize the manufacturer of chimeless wind chimes, the practitioner of some voodoo magic or an age-challenged woman with odd ideas.

Already I've gather a fistful of feathers. This current weather, the birds have wingsticuffs over whose time it is to get into the bird path. The result is falling feathers. The trip to the mailbox always results in a feather or two. I come into riches at fair time when I visit the chicken display area. When people see what I'm doing, they help me out. To get a soft feather from a Buff Orpington or a Silver Laced Wyandotte is a treasure.

I possess a beautiful, soft, long, curling feather from a Barred Rock. It is usually pinned to the center of a god's-eye ornament which, in turn, is pinned to a crocheted rag wall hanging. Sometimes, for shock value, I wear this feather as a lapel pin!

My fascination for feathers started way back when Mama challenged me to draw a big picture of a chicken and then fill it in with pasted-on feathers, putting wing fathers, breast feathers, and tail feathers where they belonged. She didn't say to make it a purebred chicken or any specific kind, so I visited the neighbors who raised a breed of chickens we didn't: beautiful New Hampshire Reds, Barred Rocks, Brown Leghorns.

This year I am using a Styrofoam ball because granddaughter Lauren, away at college, is not available to accompany me on our usual nature walk down under the persimmon tree, across the old Troll Bridge (it's gone), along the creek bank where grow the elderberries and up a little ridge where we know the Osage orange or hedge apple tree grows. The Styrofoam ball may be the better thing. for it will not rot and molt its assorted feathers as did the Osage orange.

Should I decide to attach a tiny bell at the bottom of the balls, I think they should have a name. Feather Bird Perches? Feathered Flights of Fancy? Scare Away Visitors Bells?

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.