The News Journal from Wilmington, Delaware • Page 6

The News Journal, Wilmington, Del. Wednesday, Oct. 8, 1997, Section DE DELMARVA 7(5 A supplement serving the Delmarva region Sounds nutty, but Fluffy loves her adopted babies r. The News Journal GAHYEMBGH Fluffy (far left) happily nurses, in shifts, her own seven kittens and five abandoned baby squirrels. Animal rescue volunteer Nina Bunting rubbed the tiny squirrels against the kittens to imbue them with eau de chat, and Fluffy adopted them right away.

5 Two weeks ago, Fluffy had kittens in the morning. In the evening Bunting's friend Gene Smith called to say he had five abandoned baby squirrels in the back of his truck. "I decided to sandwich the squirrels alongside Fluffy's kittens," she said. Bunting first rubbed the kittens against the squirrels so they would acquire a cat essence. It worked.

"Fluffy's been a perfect mother ever since," said Bunting. When news of the feline mom and her half-feline, half-rodent family was broadcast on WBOC-TV (16), Delaware state veterinarian Dr. Wesley Towers said the situation was almost unheard of: "In the wild, these two animal species are natural enemies." No one informed Fluffy of this. After licking the squirrels clean, she nonchalantly began nursing. The squirrels are 7 weeks old, and their eyes are open.

The kittens still can't see and don't seem to mind eating in shifts because of these strange creatures attached to their food source. (Fluffy's anatomy allows only eight babies to suckle concurrently.) Weaning will take all winter, said Bunting. "It's too late in the fall to free them and expect them to survive." Her husband, Tom, is building a cage for the basement, and the squirrels have begun a diet of grapes, nuts and seeds. In the spring, they'll gradually be introduced to the woods beyond the Buntings' home. Bunting's children, T.J., Kevin and Dawn, help with rehab duties.

"The kids can't wait to come home from school to see what the squirrels are doing," she said. Fluffy's bushy-tailed babies scramble in and out of the box, over the couch, up the chair and onto laps. They eat grapes and stash peanuts. They pull hair out of brushes and fibers from beneath the sofa. When awake, "The squirrels are like toddlers they're into everything," said Bunting.

At rest, their tails form a canopy over peaceful mounds of fur. isolation if and a few caring women are bringing much-needed aid to this small Sussex town V. j. i'). iufn" By ANNETTE C.

SILVA Special to The News Journal MILFORD No one can blame Fluffy for feeling a little squirrelly. After all, she's feeding five bushy-tailed rodents. And that's in addition to her seven kittens, i Fluffy is a cat that lives in Argos Corner, a small community on the southeastern skirts of town. The orange tabby, saved by Nina Bunting from starvation two years ago, is now nursing her own second litter while the motherless squirrels are nuzzling up. Yes, you read right kittens and squirrels.

"This is her last litter," said Bunting, a trained volunteer at Tri-State Bird Rescue center in Newark. "After this, we've decided she's our mother of the year!" Bunting, who has applied for her animal rehabilitator's home license, also hovers over homeless baby rabbits, her new St. Bernard puppy and an orphaned beagle not to mention three children and a husband. UD, the government By ANNETTE C. SILVA Special to The News Journal PINETOWN In early summer, Jesse Sirmons' grandfather, Felton Lewes, tilled the vegetable plot behind Burton's Chapel AME Church's Fellowship Hall.

Jesse helped harvest lima beans. Now Jesse and his friends pull weeds and pick their tomatoes, melons and other produce. Before heading out to the garden, however, Jesse and 16 or so other youngsters have important things to do. They're participants in an after-school program for residents of Pinetown, a community nearly hidden among soybean fields and suburban sprawl between U.S. 9 and Delaware 1 in eastern Sussex County.

Mobile homes and simple cottages frame Pinetown Road through this century-old community of 250 residents. "Everyone in Pinetown is a descendant of seven sisters and one brother," said Rhonda Bundick, a University of Delaware agricultural extension employee who grew up in Pinetown and returned to help the young people of her former community of African-Americans. A 41-year-old mother of two boys, Bundick is dedicating her adult life to working with children within her church and beyond. She has traveled and worked as a volunteer for both Pentecostal and AME churches and is doing her best to provide cultural education, life skills, self-confidence, tutoring and mentoring programs to Pinetown youngsters. "Pinetown has been and still is an isolated community," said Bundick.

Because of its small size and rural location seven miles west of Lewes, two miles east of Harbeson it has no stores or bus service. In June, Bundick was named site coordinator of the Pinetown project, financed by a $37,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to provide summer camp and after-school cultural activities and mentoring for Pinetown youngsters. They meet in the Fellowship Hall of Burton's Chapel AME Church on Sussex 264. See PINETOWN Page 4 The News JoumaVGARY EMEK3H iren Letonoff 's "Fme Troll" is part of a new Rehoboth Art League show.

rv I (.) ti.a I the of ft V. 1 -ess Rhonda Bundick and the Pinetown project sponsors are accepting donations of children's books, art supplies and garden tools. Contact Bundick at 645-4177. What: "Lume Lustro," a celebration of light and luster in works of art When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Monday-Saturday; 1-4 p.m. Oct. 19 through Oct. 31. Where: Rehoboth Art League, 12 Dodds Lane, Hentopen Acres.

Information: 227-8408. said. Sunlight, moonlight, electric light, firelight, subtle light and dramatic lights cast shadows over scenes and objects in the 150-plus-piece show. O'Brien conceived the idea while browsing through one of her art books. "Nothing fascinated Leonardo da Vinci more than the subtle gra ns ABOVE: mobile no bus LEFT: youngsters Burton is providing TOP: Andrew Bundick which they Involved behind the Ar.t Ijm.

I i F-a- V. Special to The News Joumall.ORI EPSTEIN Cherry Barranco tempts onlookers at Coast Day, Sunday at the University of Delaware, with her winning family recipe. Crab cakes from dad claw their way to the top By NANCY E. LYNCH Special to The News Journal LEWES In less than an hour Sunday, elementary school teacher Cherry Barranco of Milton turned "Dad's Crab Cakes" into Delaware's best crab cakes. The occasion was WT.

Coast Day's Crab "lne Cake Cook-Off at Winning the University of recipe Delaware's Hugh R. Dana A Sharp campus on Pi-K3ge lottownRoad. "There was a huge crowd, and I was somewhat hesitant and a little nervous," said Barranco, a Milton Middle School fifth- grade teacher, adding this was her first cook-off. Her sister, Kathy LeKites of Dover, also a teacher, prompted her to enter. Barranco and LeKites are the daughters of the late Harry Hol-loway, whose family business was Kirby Holloway Sausage Scrapple in Harrington.

"It's my recipe, and my dad's recipe. I used to watch him make crab cakes. Everyone likes them," she said. Her secret? "I try to use not too much filler, just egg, cracker crumbs, mayonnaise and Dijon mustard." She served her entry on a fish platter borrowed from a friend. A tomato-based salsa in her grandmother's cut glass bowl accompanied her crab cakes.

Barranco's best netted her $150 and a plaque. See CRAB Page 4 a well-worn theme, the van Gogh touch works out well with Townsend's take on it. Julie Molyneux of Iewes illuminates the art league's new Ventures space adjacent to the Tubbs gallery with her multi-symbol wa-tercolor paintings. Molyneux borrows from Sandro Botticelli, the 15th-century Florentine painter. In her painting "Icons of Love Awakening," Molyneux re-creates her own interpretation of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" by capturing the serpentine golden hair, classic pose and seashell source of the old master's Venus.

Her version, however, has the beauty clutching to her chest a heart- shaped candy box while wearing a hearts-and-flowers waistband. Molyneux's watercolors tell intricate stories of modern lift, cultural iconsj cliches and ancient wisdom. Special to The News JoumalRALPH FRESO Most houses In Pinetown are homes. The town has no stores and service. Rhonda Bundick helps town with their homework at the Church fellowship hall.

The church space for the Pinetown project Long (left) and Dondre pick lima beans in the garden and the other youngsters in the Pinetown project started church. A celebration of 6Iight' in all its various shades O'Brien based the exhibit and its Italian title on artist Leonardo da Vinci's studies of the concept. Letonoff's "Troll" is a free-form 2-by-2-foot assemblage comprised of used parts: a metal troll (a burner for an open fire), a colander, a cheese grater, an iron and a beetle catcher. Soldered into sculpture and highlighted by tiny lights, the spray-painted conglomeration "lights up domestic life with mundane objects," she said. The piece "sort of evolved," says Letonoff, who co-owns the Icon Factory in Rehoboth Beach, where she crafts and sells forged steel furniture.

Another Letonoff piece, "Peeping Tom," reveals sculpted silhouettes of a woman's face, foot and underarm inside cast aluminum window i anes. "I find a lot of my material at flea markets," Letonoff k1 dations from light to shade," she repeated from an E. H. Gombrich essay in the anthology, "Modern Perspectives in Western Art History." Ijeonardo da Vinci referred to these gradations as "lume lustro." Seaford artist Carles Amill's oil painting, "Two Marshmallows," illuminates simple subjects in paint application reminiscent of the Renaissance. "Carles carves his light out of thick luminous backgrounds layered with paint," said O'Brien.

Amill says, "There are profound messages in the shadows." Dover artist Sheila Townsend's "For Vincent" features a loosely-fashioned sunflower in tempera on paper in a weathered frame. Light blue, yellows and oranges reflect the spectrum of light, a textured line drawing of the flower. Though Art league displays the eclectic work of local artists By ANNETTE C. SILVA Special to The News Journal HENLOPEN ACRES Karen Letonoff's creation is, quite literally, plugged in. "Flame Troll," her assembled sculpture, is illuminated by lights connected by electric cord to an outlet.

It's on display in "Lume Lustro," the latest exhibit at the Rehoboth Art League. "Karen really 'got' the idea," said director Nancy O'Brien, alluding to art league's member show illustrating form and texture in shades light and degrees of luminosity..