Browsed by
Category: animals

Birthday Surprises

Birthday Surprises

Comments 0 Comment

An email this morning told me a package had been delivered.  I got a kick out of this — the fact that I had come in through the garage last night and overlooked this large item on the front stoop, being informed of it through a bunch of 1s and 0s on my computer. It was a funny way to begin this last day of November, the birthday of two people I love — my daughter and my brother.

But that was just the first surprise.  The second happened when I was lugging in the first — and Copper trotted around the front of the house (where he is never, ever allowed to be because he will run away) and right through the front door. The backyard gate must have been left open.
Whatever the case, it was all meant to be — the package left out overnight so that I could be there when Copper escaped, could usher him back where he belongs. The rescue of a dog that means so much to the birthday girl.
Yes, it’s often a random world — but sometimes it’s not. Today is one of those times.
Sleeping Dogs

Sleeping Dogs

Comments 0 Comment

We all know what we’re supposed to do with them. But in my house they are — or I should say he is — often riled up.

This is not my approach, though. I let sleeping dogs lie. Especially Copper, who has always been and who continues to be a lively pup.

When Copper sleeps beside me I sit quietly, enjoying his company, the presence of another living being. I don’t usually cover him up (!), but I do take comfort in the gentle rhythm of his breathing and his little stretches — even when he kicks me in the ribs. I appreciate the fact that when he’s still I don’t have to let him in or out of the house.

On some days, the company of animals is the only company a writer needs.

Cats and Dogs and Beauty

Cats and Dogs and Beauty

Comments 0 Comment

Dancers are satisfied in a way that dieters and exercisers are not, writes Ursula Le Guin in her essay, “Dogs, Cats and Dancers: Thoughts About Beauty,” which was summarized in the latest Brain Pickings.

Dogs don’t know what they look like, where their bodies are in space. Cats do. Le Guin describes a pair of Siamese, one black, one white. The white one always lay on the black cushion and the black one on the white cushion. “t wasn’t just that they wanted to leave cat hair where it showed up
best,” Le Guin writes, “though cats are always thoughtful about that. They knew where they
looked best.”

Dancers, too, are exquisitely aware of where they are in space, she says. And I think about my tap teacher, Candy, still jaunty and perky in her 60s, knowing exactly how to move her arms, to hold her shoulders, so that every angle and line was a pleasing one.

From these observations, Le Guin takes us to a place of pathos and love. She talks about aging, that it’s not just the loss of beauty that dismays her (“I never had enough to carry on about”), but the loss of identity. It’s that the person she sees looking at her in the mirror isn’t her — it’s an old woman.

Death, though it is the great equalizer, can also illuminate the essential beauty of a person. Le Guin uses her mother for illustration here, and I will use mine. Because even in death Mom was beautiful: the essential beauty, which lives in the bones, never left her.

Summer Serenade

Summer Serenade

Comments 0 Comment

Thunderstorms cleared the air late yesterday and made way for … a frog chorus.  The little guys chirped and sang and puffed their throats out in that way they do. They’re looking for love, of course. Aren’t we all?

But instead of hitting the clubs and trying some corny lines, these guys were serenading their ladies in style. Bright sounds in the big night. A crooning, haunting symphony of sound — the voice of summer, perfect accompaniment to the glimmer of fireflies. They were singing to their own, but their cries soothed the soul of this suburbanite.

Because when I heard them call from creeks and puddles and the undersides of leaves, I felt part of a much larger, elemental world. That these creatures — just tadpoles a few weeks ago, little more than eggs with legs — could now be filling the night with their song seemed more than a little miraculous. It was a perfect way to end the day — with a summer serenade.

(Wikipedia)

Walking Hots

Walking Hots

Comments 0 Comment

Yesterday’s record-breaking heat brought the words “walking hot” to mind. And that made me think about walking hots.

I remember when my high school friend Susan had a summer job walking hots at Keeneland, Lexington’s jewel of a racetrack. It was the first I’d heard of this practice, and I immediately liked the term. It was pithy, and it required insider knowledge to understand.

“Hots” were thoroughbreds who’d just had their morning work-outs, and hot walkers were the ones who lead them around the ring or shed area until they cooled down. Hot walkers hold the animals while they are sponged down, then walk them some more. Thoroughbreds get sick if they decelerate too quickly. Unlike humans, they’re not allowed to go from 60 to 0 without proper attention.

Hot walkers are usually novices or interns, those on the lowest end of the thoroughbred-care team. It’s their job to slow down high-strung animals who are bred to run — and it must be both boring and terrifying.

Much easier to walk hot than to walk hots.

Sound Cues

Sound Cues

Comments 0 Comment

Our parakeets live in a world of sound cues. Even in the dark of early morning, even with their cage covered, they wake to the sounds of the day.

A pair of creaky knees coming down the stairs.  The jingle of a dog’s collar. The squeak of the back door as the dog is let out. The early wild birds waking with plaintive chirps.

And then there are the water noises: the filling of the kettle, the tea water coming to a boil.

I often keep them covered for a while because they’re so noisy, but they know when the day begins. They don’t doubt or second-guess themselves.

If only I could say the same.


(Sid and Dominique in 2012. Rest in peace, Sid, gone almost a year now. Instead of Sid there is … Alfie. And he’s another story altogether.)

Oldest Living Albatross Lays Egg

Oldest Living Albatross Lays Egg

Comments 0 Comment

It’s been hard lately to make my way through the national and political news sections of the newspaper. Which is why I’ve been open to other, more offbeat stories. Like Wisdom, the 66-year-old albatross who is still laying an egg every year. Just laid one a few days ago, in fact.

Wisdom was banded on the Midway Atoll in 1956, so scientists are pretty sure that she’s truly a (late) middle-aged gal.

What an inspiration! Here she is at a time when many human females might be slowing down. Instead, she’s adding to her brood.

Is she worrying about her children? Heck no, she’s too busy having ’em.

And as for her appearance, she’s smooth of feather and sleek of bill. No tummy tuck or chin lifts for her.

(Photo: courtesy Smithsonian.com)

Happy Birthday, Copper!

Happy Birthday, Copper!

Comments 0 Comment

Ten years ago today we threw caution to the winds and bought a puppy. He was a whirling dervish of an animal, full of life, completely unhinged.  One of his first antics was to jump over the back of the couch and land on my mother’s lap when she was visiting for Christmas. Mom, who was a little shy of dogs, was holding a glass of red wine at the time.

Copper was Claire’s Christmas present in 2006. Claire had been dreaming of dogs and pestering us for one for years — but she would be off to college in two-and-a-half years.

Yes, I know. What were we thinking? Here we were, almost in the clear — and then … not.

The child gate went up at the bottom of the stairs. The doors to bathrooms were kept closed so he couldn’t rifle through the trash. Shoes, socks and anything else chewable had to be stowed away.

Of course, you know how this story ends. It’s the oldest cliche in the books: Dog arrives, steals hearts, never lets them go.

And that’s exactly what happened — so much so that no one really wants to talk about his birthday or how many years we’ve had him because, well, we can’t imagine life without him now.

Things to Come

Things to Come

Comments 0 Comment

Well, the jig is up. The summer jig, that is. It’s in the 50s as  I write these words on the deck, swaddled in my warm winter robe, the fuzzy white one. No slippers, only my outside crocs. I could use a pair of fuzzy socks, too.

Copper, however, is in his element, prancing in the bars of sunlight that stripe the back yard at this time of day and year.

He responds just to the weather at hand, which, if it were the prelude to a hot summer day, would be just fine, no problem. But I know what he doesn’t: that this is just the beginning of the chill, that there will be rain and snow and early darkness.

Sometimes I long for an animal brain.

Bird Feet

Bird Feet

Comments 0 Comment

Here at the beach the snowy plovers have hatched but are not yet able to fly. They skitter around on the sand like so many tiny tumbleweeds. A sign warns beachcombers to beware. They camouflage themselves so well that it would be easy to step on them.

I spotted a couple of these cuties on a beach walk. A small crowd had gathered to watch the newly hatched chicks. Seeing them at their crazy ballet got me thinking about bird feet in general.

Though it’s a bird’s wings not its feet that most singularly propels it, shore birds are an exception — from gulls hopping up to beg for sandwich scraps to sandpipers running through the surf.

This morning I spied a tern daintily dipping its webbed toe in a tidal pool. I saw a yellow-footed snowy egret with a long white mane like an aging conductor. And I saw a pelican land nose first in the water, its feet flapping behind.

Bird feet were central in all of these tableaux. And I’ll think about them long after the beach walk is over.

(A bird on the wing instead of on foot.)