Category: Uncategorized

My Precious Old Lady

She’ll be 14 next month and she doesn’t particularly wear it well. Once a beautiful girl, she is now painfully thin, despite gorging on the high-protein foods we feed her.  She limps terribly, but we can find no obvious injury. She is stone-deaf and her vision is also going. However, she ‘sees’ through her nose and continues to follow me faithfully. I slow down my pace for her now, and when we arrive at one of our in-home destinations, she plops down and falls into an immediate and deep sleep. She is my office mate, my reading companion, and my sit-under-the-tree in the backyard buddy. She sleeps with us in bed at night, and hardly moves once she’s curled herself up tight and cozy.

She has many health problems including Cushing’s and never-ending UTI’s. She’s been on every antibiotic in the book. She wears diapers because she has no control over her bladder. But her time hasn’t come despite her current condition. She eats, she follows, she sleeps, and she loves. Likewise, I love her with all my soul and heart. My beautiful girl. It’s not time, but when it is, she will tell me. I dread that day.

The Little Dog That Did

I continue to smile with joy and admiration every time I see this video and the heart of this little Boston Terrier, Ripple, as she races with everything in her, only to make sure her handler is okay when he takes his unfortunate fall. Despite losing, at the end these two show the world what real winning is all about.

A Case for Plain Writing

As an academic for (dare I say it) over 30 years, there is one thing that has always bugged me and that is the self-serving, pretentious and utterly unreadable text of many in the higher education profession. So when I came across this article today, I could not wait to pass it along.

Enjoy!

Where Did You Say the Bird Was?

You’ve surely heard of “A bird in the hand.” Well, I have a bird on the foot. My precious cockatiel Grant (my good friend has his brother who she named Lou) is an odd duck, er, I mean bird. (Aren’t ducks birds?) He is a bit standoffish, doesn’t like to fly, eats like a, ah, flying pig, and is obsessed with my feet.

Yes, that’s correct, my feet. You see, Grant’s cage is up on a high stand, and shortly after I remove him from it and put him on top of the cage for a change of scenery, he flop-flies down to the floor and toddles to my feet which are usually under the desk as shown here. He then scrambles up onto my shoe where he happily meditates. Frankly, I do feel plenty foolish with a bird thusly ensconced on my foot.

I’ve had a number of birds in my life, but never have I had one with such an unfailing foot fetish.

Pool on the Hill

It starts with a huge splash followed by manic flapping of wings, punctuated by a few quacks: a cherished early rite of spring.

Year after year, a mated pair of ducks land in the neighbor’s pool to herald the coming of spring, despite the snow that often still flew. It was always so exciting to hear that initial splash, followed by our excited chorus of “they’re here, they’re here!”

We often wondered: could it possibly be the same two ducks every year or was it their offspring who picked up on the pool where their parents left off?

No matter, it was soul soothing to watch them as one went off to find food for both and the female disappeared to sit on her nest in a secluded spot nearby. It was fun to hear the splashes of their landings in the pool, and the enthusiastic quacks of the greetings they gave each other. Then one day, mama duck emerged with her ducklings waddling behind her and soon, they be gone, until next year!

Next year came, and so did the ducks. Only before long, the male duck was alone and he started screaming and screaming and screaming. It was heart wrenching and a clear signal something was very wrong. The female didn’t return and he was screaming for her. Surely she would return? She didn’t. On the road the next day, there sprawled a duck, silent and dead.

Gradually his cries subsided and eventually, he left the pool. Ducks mate for life, so I wondered if he’d find another mate and another pool.

This is the first year it’s been quiet in the pool on the hill. No splashes, no quacks, and no joyous welcoming of spring except for the forsythia that blooms, yellow and quiet, in our side yard.

Finja the Devil Dog and Her Monkey

Don’t let this precious little face fool you. It’s the face of a devil dog, and I created her!

See that thing in Finja’s mouth? Of and by itself, it is an adorable little thing. It is a stuffed monkey made for dogs and it makes the most gosh-awful sound when the dog squeezes it. Finja loves to squeeze it. That’s Problem number 1.

Problem number 2: She is absolutely, unequivocally and resolutely obsessed with the thing. No big deal, right?

Wrong.

My little pupper will not, repeat, will NOT let go of this thing, for anything, except food. What you see here in this picture is exactly how she, and it, look all day long. She carries it in her mouth everywhere she goes. When she has it, we keep her separate from the other dogs because, well, it is entirely possible that there could be an unfriendly discussion among them. So, we remove the monkey from her mouth and put it someplace where she won’t know where it is.

Ha!

So much for that idea. Dogs and their sense of smell. We have since found a fool-proof hiding spot, but until we did, no matter we put the monkey to encourage her to forget about it, no luck. She became a quasi-pointing dog, eyes unwavering on the spot where the monkey was “hiding.”

We are thinking this monkey is her “baby” in a very real sense, but never having bred dogs, maybe someone can tell me if this makes sense?

This whole monkey deal is somewhat endearing, except for when it is really, really not.

The Devil Has a Bathtub

Several weeks ago, my man-friend Dominic and I went for a hike in our favorite park, in our favorite place in the park. The park is Mendon Ponds Park, the largest park in our county, and if I do say so myself, the most beautiful. I have spent many hours there swimming as a child at its now-gone little beach, as a teen, sitting on a hilltop with a favorite beau, as a parent of young children, sledding down one of its many hills, as an adult horse-rider, going for Zen rides on one of its many trails, and now as an older adult, hiking, sitting, and drinking up its magic.

Devil’s Bathtub on an early winter afternoon

My favorite place in the park is a kettle-hole, which is a small, glacier-made pond surrounded by steep ridges. Its actual formation was caused by retreating glaciers and as such, it is rumored to be very deep. I have always been fascinated with it because of its astounding beauty and geological history. However, I became obsessed when in 2009 and 2016 it became the focal point of two of the most gruesome murders in our city’s history.

Whenever I go there I feel I can hear like the ghosts of its victims are whispering through the trees.

Kissing 2020 Goodbye

Where there’s life, there’s hope, no matter how precarious that life may seem.

Write or Not to Write: That is the Question

I like to write

So write

But …

I don’t know the words to use.

How can you write without words?

Will you help me?

No. I can’t. I won’t.

Why not?

They’re your words, or should be.

But …

So write, even if it’s mush.

Why?

Because it will be your mush and no one else’s.

Okay. Should I go to school?

No, don’t go to school.

Why not?

Go take a walk in the woods. Write what you see. Write what you feel. That is enough.

Okay.

Rosie the Executioner

Look at this face. Have you ever seen anything so sweet?

Don’t let this face fool you. This is our beloved Rosie and she is much cherished by us. But she is also, shall we say, a fighter of the most skilled and skulking kind.

We first learned of our little angel’s prowess when we began to see little breathless (translated dead) creatures scattered about our backyard. Then one day, we came upon the remains of an animal about as big as she — a rabbit. That one really killed me, too. The thing of it is, Rosie is only in it for the kill. Once she’s done her duty, she’s off to some other adventure, like barking maniacally at the neighboring pitbulls.

Now here’s the rub. Once Rosie has grown bored of the poor dead creature, our Finja comes along and finds it to be quite the delicacy. I will never forget the night when I came upon her devilish red eyes crouched over some departed animal soul imbibing to her heart’s content.  On that night, I scooped her up as quickly as possible and rendered her mourning in my arms for her prize delicacy.

The issue with Rosie is her prey drive. She is an expert and obsessive Frisbee player, a behavior which is related to prey drive. Does that mean we should stop doing her most favorite thing in the world? No. It’s important to understand how to let the dog exercise the prey drive in controlled situations and places, like the very nice fenced in and tightly contained back yard. This article presents a nice and simple way to allow the dog to have fun with a Frisbee while exercising the prey drive in a relatively cost-free way.

Now for my little Finja carnivore: what’s better than a nice, fresh, juicy … well, you get the picture….

Okay, so that’s a gross summary of the backyard war zone. Next time I’ll talk about the inside battle field.

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