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Category: animals

Closing the Gate

Closing the Gate

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For years it was the first commandment of outside living in my family. Close the backyard gate! Our frisky Copper dog was, as I’ve mentioned before, quite the escape artist, and he missed no opportunity to leave the only loving home he had ever known.

As a younger dog, he rushed the doors, both front and garage. Guests entering the house had to slide in quickly before he barreled past them. 

But at least a couple of times he found his way out of the fenced backyard into the great beyond.  One time he moseyed under the deck and squeezed through an opening we never thought could accommodate him. I found him calmly sniffing the hedges near the front stoop. 

His most likely point of departure, though, was through the backyard gate, which is tricky to latch and was prone to being left open by the meter-reading man and other folks. We lived in fear that we’d forget to check, let him out the backdoor and that would be the end of it. Copper, of course, had no fear of cars.

This week I’ve walked through the backyard gate dozens of times. And every time, not just out of habit but out of reverence, I’ve made sure it’s closed behind me. 

An Encounter

An Encounter

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An early walk this morning, sun smoldering orange on the horizon, first birds clearing their throats, air soft on my skin. Back home, I bounce and stretch on the trampoline. When the fox spots me, I’m doing the bird dog exercise, so I’m on all fours just as she is. We are maybe 20 feet apart. 

A fox’s face is doglike, though the eyes are more wary than soulful. The animal takes my measure just as I take hers. 

I wish we could hold the gaze longer than we do, but she’s smart. She knows better than to linger long with someone 10 times her size. So she scampers off to try an alternative route to her prey. And I go back to my exercise. Just another morning in the suburbs. 

Welcome Wreath

Welcome Wreath

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I began to spot them in the forest a few days ago, although from the looks of it they’d been there for a while. The wreaths seem homemade, maybe fashioned from local boughs. 

This one is special though, decorated as it is with an eagle feather. 

Welcome back, the wreath says. Welcome back to the eagles, more common in these parts than they used to be.

Welcome back to the foxes, who prowl and hunt and make their home.

Welcome back to the walkers, including this one. 

Visit from a Vulture

Visit from a Vulture

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Today we had a visit from this fine fellow and two of his pals. Attracted by a suet block, I hope, though I later read that black vultures (his type, as opposed to turkey vultures) attack vulnerable small birds and mammals rather than dining only on carrion.

I marveled at the Thanksgiving-turkey-size heft of this bird, at his noble profile and the wisdom of his folded wings. He seemed to have arrived from an earlier age. 

My thoughts on him today are no doubt shaped by the book I’m reading. In Field Notes from a Hidden City, Esther Wolfson elicits understanding for the less-understood denizens of the animal world. She takes up for magpies, foxes and even slugs. 

“Slugs and snails, as everything else, have their place in the scheme of life, in the food chain, in the ecology of the earth: a purpose, you might call it, even if it’s a purpose that doesn’t always accord with our own. “

And as long as the vulture’s purpose is not to eat the birds that sup at our feeder, I’m fine with that. 

“Not So Different”

“Not So Different”

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As part of our readings for the course I’m taking this semester, we’re learning about animal behavior to enlighten our view of human behavior. The basic point is that we are more like bonobos and dolphins and many other animals than we might care to admit. 

Many species mourn their lost loved ones, from the chimp Flint grieving his mother Flo, as described by Jane Goodall, to reports of elephants crying from the loss of a parent or child. 

Animals have an innate sense of justice, proved by studies in which primates refuse to solve a puzzle to earn a grape because the same treat is not being offered to their cage-mate. Vampire bats will feed each other even if it means giving up 20 to 30 percent of their own calories. Yes, there is an element of reciprocity in this. They do it, in part, because it might ensure their survival on a bad hunting night. But not all of this behavior can be explained away as quid pro quo. 

A basic question Nathan Lents asks in his book Not So Different: Finding Human Nature in Animals is why must we prove animals have these emotions — rather than prove they do not?

(Photo of bonobos courtesy Wikipedia) 

Mourning Copper

Mourning Copper

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When a human being dies there are rituals and ceremonies, ways to process the passing. When a pet dies, not so much. But I’ve been touched beyond measure by the calls and messages from family and friends that have comforted us these last several days. 

The outpouring heartens me — and tells me how important animals are to us. It reminds me that we homo sapiens are not alone in this world, that we share it with many creatures, and that we could do worse than  look to them for a model of how to live. 

Copper did not complain in his final days. He suffered silently and took life as it came. Yes, he could be silly and rambunctious. Yes, he tested our patience at times. But you always knew where you stood with him. He was always completely and utterly himself. 

So just as we grieve people by recalling their uniqueness, what they brought to the world and how we might emulate it, so do I mourn Copper. 

Messiness and Joy

Messiness and Joy

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Today we celebrate the birthday of our aging canine, Copper. He’s over 17 in human years but can still cavort in the yard, terrify the toddlers and pounce for treats. 

He’s also a living, breathing lesson in patience, as he soils the carpet and gets stuck under chairs. But even addled and voiceless (as opposed to the old days, when he barked all the time) Copper is still Copper: loyal, loving and feisty. 

It’s hard to look at him and not see the future that awaits us all, but it’s also hard to look at him and not see the fun he has always brought our family, from his chaotic arrival giving us a merry chase down the street to his victory laps now when he makes it in from outside and celebrates with a run around the house.

When I look at Copper, I see life, with all its messiness and all its joy. 

(Photos: Claire Capehart)

Stereophonic Summer

Stereophonic Summer

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The cicadas are back today, or maybe it’s just that I’m outside, in a better position to hear them.  Their shimmering sound is stereophonic, flowing from one side of the yard to the other. 

How evocative it is! How it distills the summer. It is chorus and verse, call and response. It is fecundity and humidity and all the other parts of the season that make us (or at least me) feel so alive. 

Today, however, it’s competing with the sound of chain saws, which it often does these days. But I’m tuning out that white noise and focusing on the cicadas instead.

(Photo of cicadas from last year’s Brood X.)

The Deep

The Deep

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The sounds of a party filled the place: laughter, conversation, the clink of glasses. But step away from the main room and it was another world. 

Sharks patrol their waters with ruthless intensity. Rainbow fish flit to and fro, a blue starfish pulsing in their tank. Porcupine fish bristle. And stingrays glide through the water like so many fluttering handkerchiefs. 

At the entrance, schools of sea creatures swim to the left of us, to the right of us, and above us, too. It was a dramatic entry into another world, a world of the deep.

The Deer Did It

The Deer Did It

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Sometimes the deer do us a favor, although not often and not directly. Because the rapacious critters ate my impatiens while I was away, I wanted to put something in the large flower pots that flank the front door. Begonias have a reputation as deer-resistant, so I found a good deal on four plants.

The favor part of this is that the errand landed me in a part of town I don’t usually visit. And that meant a walk on a sunny and unfamiliar path. I cruised along a road for part of the route, then circled a pond that was luminous with bird and insect life.

Dragonflies buzzed, frogs croaked, birds chirped as they landed on lily pads. A gazebo let me view the scene from a shady perch. Afterwards I took a series of tree trunk steppingstones through the wetland bordering the pond, then strolled through a cool glade. 

It was lovely midsummer moment, brought to me (sort of) by the deer.