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Category: animals

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. 

Wild Thing

Wild Thing

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An early walk this morning, into a day just dawning. I leave my earphones out for a while to take in the bird calls, a steady ripple of sound punctuated by the brisk staccato of the woodpecker’s drill. 

Walking before 7, something I seldom do these days, is such a gift. It gives us the day before it’s lost its creases and its curls, while it’s still fresh and still.

Sometimes I see a fox skulking home after a long night of hunting. Other times a young deer, hiding in the grass. 

In early morning, the day is still a wild thing. It does not yet belong to us — if it ever does. 

A Cry in the Night

A Cry in the Night

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I was awakened at 4 by the barking of a fox. This is not a rare occurrence. What made it memorable was how close the fox seemed to be. Right beneath the bedroom window from the sound of it. 

For years after we moved here I thought this sound was the screech of an owl or some kind of wounded animal, so distressed did it seem. It troubled my sleep, made nightmares of my dreams. The night itself seemed to be speaking, issuing a warning, sounding an alarm.

I know now that this howl is the bark of a fox, going about its foxy business, further proof of the wild kingdom that flourishes just outside these four walls. 

I no longer fear this sound, even if it wakes me up.  I just read for a while to settle my jangled nerves, taking comfort in the fact that we share this place with the animals who were here before us.

Staying Alive

Staying Alive

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The thermometer said 12 this morning, but I already knew it was frigid from the near non-stop furnace activity I’d heard since waking. 

The birds have no such heat source. They must keep moving, keep eating, or perish. So I watch cardinals and jays and sparrows and grackles flit out and back, up and down. They cluster around the feeder, drain it in hours. In between, they fluff their feathers and bury themselves deep in the azalea bush.

Downy woodpeckers nibble at the suet block. Sometimes a pileated woodpecker joins them. The squirrels want in on the action, too. Why they don’t partake of the large pile of seed on the ground below the feeder I’ll never know. I think they just like to mess with us.

Wild Kingdom

Wild Kingdom

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The hawk is back, and so is the fox. I’ve seen both within the last few days, the fox as recently as this morning, trotting along the back fence line, looking for breakfast, I suppose.

This is of some concern to us now, since “breakfast” is right here in the house. I’m speaking of Motet, our canine visitor for the winter, an Arizona dog come to stay during the coldest, snowiest season we’ve had in years. 

Either one of the wild critters wouldn’t mind munching on Motet, so she will be restricted to supervised play for the time being.

The wild kingdom … who knew it was as close as the backyard? 

(This relatively close-up view made possible by my new camera!)

Picketing

Picketing

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When you’ve seen a movie as often as I’ve seen “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the lines you may not have noticed on first or second viewings pop out at you later.

One of the exchanges I noticed this past December, during my umpteenth watching of this holiday classic, happens when Mary sees George Bailey walking back and forth in front of her house, presumably getting up the nerve to knock on her door. “Are you picketing?” she asks, in a lovingly jocular way that would come to characterize their relationship.

I think of that line often as I walk Copper, an old doggie whose idea of a long stroll is making it one driveway down and back. First we turn right out of the driveway. After a brief mosey on that side of the yard and a careful sniffing of the planter at the foot of the mailbox, we turn the other way and stroll over to the forsythia and its band of encircling liriope, where there are more sniffs to be had, long lovely inhalations, as if Copper was about to swill a fine wine.

Sometimes we repeat this backing and forthing several times before we go inside. Does it feel like picketing? Absolutely! All we need is a sign: “More meat, less kibble!”

Think Zebras!

Think Zebras!

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Doctors are taught that when you hear the sound of hoofbeats, think horses not zebras. It’s a saying I’ve always appreciated, worrier that I am, a reminder to see the molehill instead of the mountain. But even doctors know that in some situations, it’s better to think mountains — or zebras.

This is especially true in Maryland, where five zebras escaped from a farm and 30 days later have yet to be caught. Zebras have been spotted grazing in suburban yards and dashing across suburban lanes. 

Officials tell folks to be careful around the wild animals, that they cannot be caught, they must be corralled. Funny, I was just reading about zebras in the book Guns, Germs and Steel (more on this classic in a later post), how, unlike the forerunners of the horse, zebras are impossible to tame. They cannot be lassoed, and they have a tendency to bite. 

The Maryland zebras are living proof of these biological and historical facts. 

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)