Peg Kehret Blog

There were two peacocks in my yard yesterday morning. If you have read The Ghost’s Grave, you will know why I began laughing when I saw them.  They belong to my neighbors, and I often hear their raucous cries, but I had never seen them on my property before. They wandered to the bottom of my porch steps, then looked up at the house before they ambled back home.  I had already written The Ghost’s Grave when my neighbors got their peacocks and, as far as I know, these birds are not anyone’s reincarnated relatives.

A fawn was born here yesterday. I saw the pregnant doe grazing, mid-morning. Then she settled down in the tall grass, where the deer often sleep. I was writing and have a view of that area from my office window. I looked out every so often, and she was still there.

After about an hour, she got up and walked toward my window, with a brand new fawn!  When they were out of the tall grass and on the area that I mow, she stopped to clean him. She licked every inch of that fawn, while he (she?) stood on wobbly legs and looked around at his first view of the world.

The fawn is tiny - I’d estimate two feet from nose to tail, and about two feet high. When I got my camera and tried to take a photo through the window, Mama deer heard the shutter click and led her baby off into the woods. The fawn is adorable!

I found a snake skin yesterday. It is from a garter snake, about sixteen inches long, and it is intact, including the head. I had never seen a snake skin outside of a museum, so I am excited to have this treasure. I didn’t bring it in the house because I was afraid it would be the victim of a cat attack; I have it on a shelf in the garage.

Of course, this discovery sent me on line to learn all about how snakes shed their skins. It is a fascinating process. When I look at all the wrinkles I’ve accumulated with age, I think the snakes may have the right idea.

Three deer curled up in the long grass behind my house this afternoon and took a nap. They slept there for over two hours.

The lilac bush outside my office window is in full bloom. It attracts the hummingbirds, and I love having a close-up view of these tiny birds as they feed.  And, yes, Yo-Yo Bird is still flying up and down by my front porch.  Life on a wildlife sanctuary, even a small one like mine, is never dull.

More good news for The Ghost’s Grave.  It has just won the Nevada Young Reader’s Award. I am the first author ever to win this award three times. What an honor! Thank you to the children of Nevada.

The good news keeps coming. I learned today that Escaping the Giant Wave has won the 2008 Young Hoosier Award. This is the fifth time that one of my books has won in Indiana, a new record for me.

The five winning books represent three publishers, and include two mysteries, one memoir, one adventure story, and one novel that I don’t know how to categorize. (I only write them; someone else has to figure out what they are.)

Here are my Indiana winners, and the year that they won:

1992 - Nightmare Mountain

1995 - Horror at the Haunted House

2001 - Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio

2007 - Abduction!

2008 - Escaping the Giant Wave

The award for tenacity goes to Yo-Yo bird who is still going up and down by my front porch.

The juncos are building a nest in a bird house on my front porch. It’s a log cabin bird house that my husband, Carl, built many years ago. I put it on the end of the porch railing, in the corner by the garage wall, as a decoration. This is the first time it’s been occupied.

I enjoy watching the little juncos as they go about their business. One day I saw one of them standing on the carpet square where Mr. Stray sits to eat and drink. The bird was pecking at the carpet, and at first I thought he was eating bits of dried cat food that Mr. Stray had spilled. Then I realized the junco was tearing out tiny tufts of carpet fiber, and using them to build a nest.

I wanted to help with this effort so I brushed Lucy and Molly, and put their fur out on the porch. The juncos immediately took it for nesting material. A  friend told me she puts dryer lint out for the birds each spring, but I have more pet fur than dryer lint so I’ve brushed the animals each day since, and every time the juncos seem glad to have this contribution.

They are a busy bunch, including the one I call Yo-Yo Bird. There are rhododendron bushes in front of the porch and this junco flies from a rhododendron branch to the top of a garage window, a distance of about five feet, and then back down. He does it over and over and over. Sometimes he collides with the window, though never hard enough to stun himself. I have no idea why he does this; I wonder if he knows. While the other juncos busy themselves collecting materials and constructing a nest, this one bird simply goes up and down, up and down, like a yo-yo. He has been doing it for six days now.

As I watch him, I think he’s a lot like a few people I know who are endlessly busy but never accomplish anything. They fill their days with trivial chores that they deem necessary but which have no effect on their quality of life or anyone else’s. They rush here and there, and complain that they have no time, yet nothing substantial results from all their busyness.

Time is a precious commodity. The older I get, the more I cherish each day, and the more I hope to use my time wisely. Although I am fascinated by him, I don’t want to be a yo-yo bird.

I love to read. When asked what I do in my spare time, my answer always begins with, “I read a lot.”

For many years, I’ve kept a book journal. It’s a simple spiral notebook where I list the title and author of every book I read. I began the journal in June, 1990, because my friend, Mary, and I, who see each other only once a year, are both avid readers. We like to discuss what we’ve read, but we can’t always remember every title. We decided to start book lists and bring them to our yearly reunion. We’ve both done this ever since. I also note the months as well as the year when I read each book. I wish I had started my book journal earlier. It would be fun to look back and see what I was reading at various times in my life.

Once I began listing the books, I developed an urge to note those I especially liked, so they get a star next to the title. Doing this reminds me of the piano teacher I had when I was little, who pasted a gold star on my music if I played it without mistakes. I am stingy with my stars and give them only to books that I really loved.

Since those of you who pay attention to this blog are also readers, I thought you might be interested in knowing some of the books I’ve starred. I am listing only books for adults. I read a lot of books for kids, too, but I know many of the authors personally. It’s harder to be objective when reading a book by a friend.

 Here, then, are a few books for adults that I especially liked:

Jim, the Boy  by Tony Earley

Ahab’s Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund

The Good, Good Pig  by Sy Montgomery

Loving Letters from Ogden Nash: A Family Album  by Linell Nash Smith

The Habit of Being  by Flannery O’Connor

I am also a fan of Julia Spencer-Fleming and eagerly await the next book in her series.

I could have titled this entry, “Still More Good News” because, yes, The Ghost’s Grave  has won another state young reader award! This time it’s the South Dakota Prairie Pasque Award. Here’s the list of state winners, so far: New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Washington, Tennessee, and So. Dakota. It is also nominated in a couple of states that have not yet voted.

This is the third consecutive year that I’ve won the South Dakota award. I’ve won three times in other states, but never consecutively, so this is a different kind of first for me.

Here is how I got the idea for The Ghost’s Grave:  About a mile from my house there is an old cemetery, and the whole last row of gravestones has the same date of death. The people buried there were all coal miners who were killed in a mine explosion. The first time I visited this cemetery, I got curious about mining accidents, so I began to do research on coal mining in my area.

I also did some research on the cemetery itself, and I discovered that one miner lost a leg in an explosion. His leg is buried in this cemetery but he lived out his life elsewhere, and when he died, he was buried in a different location.

I had been wanting to write a ghost story, and once I read about the leg, I knew how I wanted to create my ghost. Willie is an old coal miner who tries to convince Josh, my character, to dig up Willie’s leg and rebury it with the rest of him.

Like most of my books, The Ghost’s Grave  used many incidents from my own life. The tree house that I describe in the book is an actual tree house that’s in my woods. My husband built it for our grandchildren.

The stray cat in the book is also based on my own experience of finding a mother cat and her kittens in the woods, and taming them. 

I even had a neighbor once who actually shot a bat in his kitchen!