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Category: animals

Love Bites?

Love Bites?

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Skin: For so much of the year it’s just there, boon and barrier, boundary between world and self. 

In winter it may chap or dry, nothing lotions can’t handle. But in summer, ah, in summer — well, I forget every year that I’m not the only one who likes to be outside all day and into that evening, that there are skeeters and spiders and no-see-ums that leave their marks.

In time (starting day before yesterday!), I’ll spray on repellent if I venture beyond the deck. But up until then I’ve weeded and bounced and walked with springtime abandon, forgetting that the insects are out there too, biting and stinging their way into summer. As a result, I’ve been making liberal use of the hydrocortisone cream. 

On the other hand …  it’s finally warm. My sweaters are packed away with cedar balls.  I don’t exactly love the bites — but they’re worth it.  

(Photo of cicadas, which do not bite but which may confuse your arm or leg for a tree trunk.)

Seize the Day!

Seize the Day!

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Their sound holds within it the rattle of a snake and the swish of a beaded curtain. It has more crescendoes than a brass band on a June afternoon.

The cicadas have brought us quickly to the soul of summer.  They have taken us to the brink of that shimmering, simmering time of year when everything seems more intensely alive.

Yesterday, on the Glade Trail, I moved into and out of various cicada hot zones, places where the critters congregate more plentifully, where they sing their songs with more abandon than others. 

Maybe it’s because they prefer laying their eggs on these branches (in our backyard they seem to like the crepe myrtle more than the dogwood, for instance). Or maybe it’s for some other reason buried deep in the cicada psyche.

All I know is that seeing them mate and fly, hearing them shout and sing, knowing what I do of their lifespan and life story, leaves me with one urgent message: Carpe diem, folks, seize the day. 

Feeling Sorry for Cicadas

Feeling Sorry for Cicadas

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I arrived home to the sound of Brood X, the 17-year cicadas that have been biding their time underground since 2004 and are now living the high life in Virginia and other states. 

They are funny critters, singing and mating and getting stuck on windshield wipers, where one got a free ride for a few minutes yesterday as I drove home from the Reston trails. 

The hum they make sounds like a commotion in the next county, like something big is going on somewhere else, which indeed it is. 

But as I dodged their exoskeleton carcasses yesterday on my walk, my amazement at their presence was tempered with pity for their plight. What a life …. 17 years of nothing followed by three weeks of way too much. Theirs is not a path of moderation. 

On the other hand, who am I to judge a bug? My life may seem just as strange to them.

The Spa Treatment

The Spa Treatment

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I’m trying not to make too much of the fact that although there are three mothers now in my immediate family, the only creature who had a spa treatment on Mother’s Day was Copper the dog, who not only is not a mother but was most likely never a father either.

Granted, it was not exactly a long languorous soak in the tub followed by a mani-pedi and massage. It was a trying hour in a van in our driveway during which he almost hyperventilated. 

The groomer finally gave up without trimming his ears and neck, but she got much further than last year’s groomer, who cut short Copper’s appointment, told us never to come back, and left our nervous canine with a funny patchwork trim he’s been growing out all year. 

“Most of the dogs I see have already been banned from PetsMart,” this year’s groomer said. 

How did she know? 

Leaving a Trace

Leaving a Trace

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I noticed them the minute I stepped out of the house on Sunday. There was no evidence of humans making their way through the newly fallen snow — but a world of animal tracks greeted me on that still morning.

Tiny bird footprints, the skittering marks of a squirrel or chipmunk, and the more dog-like paw prints of our local fox. Whether hopping, scampering or loping, these animals left their marks.

We think of snow as a covering, coating the verges and leaf piles, making smooth the weed-strewn and the bald-patched.

But snow reveals as well as conceals. It tells us who was here and, if we pay attention, how recently. It’s a blank white slate on which movements make their mark. 

A Dog, a Pig and the Music

A Dog, a Pig and the Music

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It’s barely discernible but significant to me that at 5 p.m. there’s now enough light to play with Copper in the backyard. He enjoys it when I bounce on the trampoline, and one of the best ways I can think of to wind down the day is to close the computer, run outside and urge him to come with me so that I can watch him trot down the slight rise in the yard: his sturdy little legs, his mouth open with joy — or perhaps because he wants to bite me. 

Last evening I bounced to the last movement of the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony, which I came to love after seeing the movie “Babe.” (The final theme of the symphony is the tune that rallies the little pig.) 

How lovely it is to bounce to that grand sound, looking up at the house, the windows dark in the room where I was just writing, so different from moving through the air, the glorious release of it all. And yet knowing that the experience of bouncing will come most alive for me when I try to get it down on the page. And that involves (you guessed it) … heading right back into that dark room.

(Photo: Universal Studios/Photofest and the Hollywood Reporter)

 

What’s Eating Folkstone?

What’s Eating Folkstone?

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Neighbors are buzzing. Theories abound. But no one has yet figured out why great swaths of lawn are being rooted up, ripped through and turn asunder. No one is quite sure what’s eating Folkstone. 

Is it that eight-point buck that’s been cruising the woods near here, pawing the ground in a show of virility as he partakes of our impatiens? Or could it be an errant bear, chunking up before winter comes.

The most believable theory is that hungry skunks or raccoons are tearing through the grass looking for grubs. Once they sniff them out, they paw through the dirt until they’ve eaten their fill. 

It’s hard to overstate just how bad a lawn looks after they’re finished with it. The photo above just hints at the damage. But stay tuned for more evidence soon. The latest plan: to install a remote camera.

The Raven’s Debut

The Raven’s Debut

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Last night I caught most of “You Can’t Take it With You,” Frank Capra’s 1938 film staring James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Basil Rathbone and … Jimmy the raven. It was first of many appearances for Jimmy in Capra films, most notably (at least for me) in It’s a Wonderful Life. 

I’m not a Capra expert, but I certainly picked up on themes I’ve known from his other films — the little people against the big people, the importance of friendship, the corrupting influence of money, and the dearness of animals. 

In this film Jimmy the raven helps make fireworks (don’t ask) and a small kitten sits charmingly atop a sheaf of papers that one of the characters is typing up for a book. She decided to become a writer when a typewriter was accidentally delivered to their house. Perhaps as good a reason as any to take up the profession.

Whether it was the writing, the raven or the sheer zaniness of the plot, the film left me light-hearted. Not a bad way to end the day.  

Part of the Furniture

Part of the Furniture

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Yesterday, a hummingbird dive-bombed me, flew around my head several times, then hovered right in front of me, as if to announce herself. Of course, I couldn’t get my camera ready in time to take a closeup shot (though I did snap the one above of her or one of her compatriots sipping nectar last week).

Hummingbirds aren’t the only animals who are becoming nonchalant about my presence. A six-point buck was grazing in my backyard this morning shortly after dawn. Foxes trot through the tall grass that needs mowing as if they owned the place. A few weeks ago, there was a tree frog in the wind chimes; his croaks were highly amplified.

But the birds are on a completely different scale. Because I’ve been working outside on the glass-topped table all summer they have begun to treat me like part of the furniture. They flit, they flutter, they feed. They completely ignore me. 

Because they do, I can observe their tiniest rustlings, the way a slender stem bends with their weight, or the chirps and peeps of goldfinches, cardinals and chickadees as they congregate around the feeder and gone-to-seed coneflowers. 

Amidst all this bounty, my task is simple: I sit and take it in. I am, after all, just part of the furniture.

Dizzy Doggie

Dizzy Doggie

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A dizzy doggie is a sad sight to behold, and we’re beholding it now since Copper came down with something called vestibular disease. It affects the part of a dog’s brain and ear that regulates balance, and is a condition known to affect old dogs.

This time yesterday we thought our dear pet was not long for this world. He couldn’t eat or stand, was sick to his stomach. I thought he must have had a stroke and was preparing myself (not well, either) for the worst.

But a trip to the vet informed us that he would most likely recover and just needed to be kept quiet until this thing goes away. Of course, we left with medications because this after all is a modern, state-of-art veterinary practice. But time is the great healer here — as it so often is.


(Copper is looking ahead to better days.)