Tag Archives: animals

Wordless Wednesday: Plato and the Turtle

It’s the middle of the week, my friends!  So what have we covered so far?  

You get good at what you practice.  

Practice Makes Progress.  

And now a few words from my buddy, Plato, and a baby sea turtle:

Plato on Progress

If you know someone who is plugging along, share this message with some encouragement!  Have a great day.  

deer in autumn

Leggo That Eggo

I haven’t lost a single iota of love for my children, but I certainly seem to be lacking in mothering energy this weekend.  Here’s a little vignette that illustrates what I’m getting at.

Vivi has a stomachache, so she didn’t touch her waffle this morning.  I dropped it in the dog’s bowl as I was cleaning up breakfast…about 4:30pm.  About an hour later, I hear G ask the baby, “Where’d you get that waffle, Buddy?” and in a split-second glance, I assess that:

  1. the waffle is missing from the dog bowl
  2. there have been no other sources of wafflery today
  3. the waffle in the baby’s hand is almost gone
  4. he’s eaten worse
  5. my Daddy (a veterinarian) never worries when kids eat a little dog food

CONCLUSION: I didn’t say a word.  Just went on about m’business.

Well, until now.  Hey, G!  Carlos got the waffle out of Huck’s bowl and he’s FINE!  Look how his eyes sparkle!  And isn’t his coat thick and glossy?

funny-dog-ROFL-Scooby-Doo-waffle

A Rebuttal on Behalf of Mr. Huck L. Berry, Esquire

Huck

A few weeks ago, a certain blogger (in the post “Sometimes, You Just Gotta Say, What the HUCK!”) leveled numerous allegations of a slanderous nature towards myself.  The raft of unfounded charges evinced my proclivities towards misbehavior, canine debauchery and generalized shenanigans.  Charges included:

  • Cake stealing
  • Oprah killing
  • Hole digging
  • Fence busting
  • Duck chasing
  • Excessive woofery

To wit, I, Mr. Huck L. Berry, Esq. would like to submit for your perusal this photograph, taken on a recent trip to the park, wherein I am pictured obeying–concurrently–both the “Place” and “Sit” commands atop a bench whilst my young charge, one Vivirootie Miss Patootie, distributes a mélange of stale cereals to a flock of ducks.

Unperturbed ducks.

I bid you ‘Good Day,’ Baddest Mother Ever….’GOOD DAY!’

I’m Feeling Honky…

Canada Geese flying over the Atlantic coast, New Jersey, USA. From Wikimedia Commons.

HONK IF YOU LOVE GEESES!

All week, I’ve had that ominous feeling that I need to be somewhere, doing something, achieving, excelling, exceeding, exciting…and I’m not.  The rush of the river, the crazy dreams, the ennui for college.  BLARGH!!!

The voice in my head (singular!) is telling me that I need to be DOING GREAT THINGS but the voice that comes out of my kid tells me that I need to be finding some oyster crackers for snack and hey this milk smells funny.  The voice in my heart shouts “SOAR!” but the voice in my checkbook says, “Get back to work, slack ass!”  

Maybe this is what animals feel when it’s time to migrate.  Whether it’s the length of the daylight or smells on the wind or the variance of the magnetic fields of the earth, something tells that bird that it’s time to GO.  Something also tells that bird to STOP. That they have found a safe place, they will be warm for the winter, there will be enough food for everyone.  Stop your honking and RELAX, forcrissakes.  

When I get like this, I read Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese” out loud to myself until I can hear the world “announcing my place in the family of things.”  Read this out loud to yourself today, even if it’s mumbled under your breath behind a cubicle wall.  

Wild Geese

~ Mary Oliver ~

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Sometimes, You Just Gotta Say, “What the Huck!”

“In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.”–W. H. Auden

Oh, Huck.  Huckleberry.  Huck L. Berry, Esquire.  Huckabuckabucka.  Hucklebeezer.  Beezypeezy.  Beezer.  Chuckleberry.  Huckleberry Finn.  M’Boy. 

Dear readers, if you are asking yourself what breed of dog this fine specimen is, he is a Greater Pike Hound.  That’s because he’s from Pike County, Georgia and he’s kind of big (as compared to the Lesser Pike Hound).  We made that up. 

I adopted him from my dad’s vet clinic.  The staff pounced on me while I was in a weakened state–just having held my dachshund Katie while she got “the pink shot.”  Katie had been foisted on me three years earlier when Daddy called and said, “I’ve got this dachshund that some people abandoned because they didn’t want to pay the bill.  She’s got all kinds of heart problems, probably won’t live more than six weeks.”  I took her in as a hospice dog.  That dog lived for THREE fart-filled silly years.  One night, she was up under the covers in my bed (with the other two dachsies) and I said, “Dang it Katie, if I had wanted all this farting and snoring, I would have stayed married!”  Katie lived a long full life and on her last day, Daddy’s assistant comes up to me and says, “Ohhhhh….you should go look at that dog we have in the kennel.  Cute puppy.”

The kennel was ahowl with dogs and I made my way slowly down the row, saying hello to each guest and calling them by the names written on their kennel cards.  In the next to the last run, I find a beautifully groomed collie, sitting calmly on her pallet with a welcoming expression in her golden eyes.  Her card read “Free to a Good Home.”  I should have stopped there and yelled, “SOLD!” but I made the mistake of looking in the last run.  There sat a wiggly whitish dog, covered in red mange, skinned up nose pressed into the chain link, otter tail thumping on the concrete.  His card says, “Free to a Good Home.  TOWEL CHEWER.”  Aw, maaaaaan.

I have a soft spot for the unadoptable ones.  The hard luck cases.  The scabbier, the better.  I had had a good streak of dachshunds, but it was time for a big dog with a bit more bark and maybe some bite.  My husband had died a year earlier and I thought I would feel safer if I had a big barking dog.  My dachsies were plenty fierce, but they weren’t exactly intimidating.  Daddy called them “Death from the ankles down.”  So the towel chewer found a home. 

It took me a while to name him.  He was almost Cletus (after the Roman emperor and the guy on The Simpsons).  He was almost Buster (but I decided to save that for a smaller dog, maybe a three-legged one).  I wanted a literary allusion–what better choice than Huckleberry Finn, the orphan with a heart of gold and NO manners. 

What day did I get him?  April Fool’s Day.  Of course.  

After about a month, my brother-in-law said, “Huck’s starting to look like a real dog.  No, what I mean is, Huck’s starting to look like somebody’s dog.”  The mange was gone.  He had filled out and his brittle coat was growing in thick thanks to a better diet.  That was the day my nephew said, “I think Chuck likes me!” while patting him on the head and Huckleberry got his first nickname. 

Huck is a big galoot of a dog and he doesn’t always fit in with the dainty pack of Yorkies, Italian Greyhounds, Schnoodles, and whippets in the rest of the family.  He was like the big white eye of a hurricane of boiling dogs when I took him to my dad and stepmother’s house.  He thundered through the boxwood hedges and thwacked his tail against the antiques.  He was goofy, but welcome….until the day Huck killed Oprah. 

It was the day before Thanksgiving and I needed to get to Atlanta for my first half-marathon.  I didn’t have a key to the clinic so I went by Daddy’s house.  They weren’t home, so I turned Huck out in the backyard and locked the gate.  They’d be home soon and all would be fine.  I didn’t know that Oprah, my stepmother’s favorite little hen, was free-ranging it that day.  The next day at Thanksgiving dinner, my stepmother came up and whispered, “Huck killed Oprah.”  Wahuh???  Oh.  Ohhhhhhh.  Errrrr.  I felt so bad for poor Oprah and for my stepmother.  I made a donation to Heifer International in Oprah’s memory.  It was enough to buy a flock of chickens for a family in need.  Huck’s never been back.  

See that little white diamond on his head? That's Huck's lucky star.

See that little white diamond on his head? That’s Huck’s lucky star.

He’s a sweet boy, really, he is.  He has watched over both of my babies and would give G and me the stink eye if we let them fuss for too long.  He hasn’t eaten a dog bed in years.  He barks whenever a car pulls up then hushes.  But he’s still a dog.  Given the opportunity, he will sneak food off the kitchen counter.  Like Tuesday, he ate half of a homemade red velvet cake and only a small part of the cardboard box it was in.  And I guess he hasn’t learned from the Oprah incident because last weekend at the park he dove into the lake and started swimming after the geese.  It was the first time in seven years I’ve seen him touch the water voluntarily.  When it gets rainy, he digs holes under the fence and roams the neighborhood looking for other dogs.  He’s made a new friend up the street and last week he dug a hole INTO their backyard.  

Life with Huck can be frustrating.  Especially yesterday.  We all woke up 40 minutes late because the baby had turned down the volume on my clock radio.  Vivi refused to get dressed and was hiding under the coffee table.  I looked around and NO HUCK in the den. No Huck on the deck.  No Huck in the yard.  WHAT THE HUCK.  I jumped in the car, rolled the windows down and drove slowly up and down our street screaming, “HUUUUUUCK!  HUCK!  HUCKHUCKHUCK!!!  HUUUUUUUUUCK!”  It’s cathartic.  But I was careful to enunciate.  Very careful.  

My friend’s dog is named Axel.  Gotta be careful yelling that one, too.  

A Morning With My Favorite Chickadee

Clear blue sky, light breeze.  Crisp and sunny Sunday morning for our first Great Backyard Bird Count.  In 30 minutes, my girl and I spotted:

  • 6 chickadees
  • 6 tufted titmice
  • 1 house wren
  • 1 redheaded woodpecker
  • 1 Eastern towhee
  • 2 hawks

That was actually pretty low for our house.  We live along a river with good bushes and a nice mix of forestation.  Any guesses as to why our team may have had less than stellar results with our birding?

Vivi and Rufus

Vivi and Rufus

No matter how many times I shut the cats and the dog in the house, Mr. Science forgot and let them out again.  C’est la vie.

We filed our report on www.birdcount.org and watched the global map of other reports coming in.  She was disappointed that Hawaii wasn’t showing any activity yet and that China was dark so that led to a discussion of time zones.  But we saw Iceland’s reports and one in Brasil and someone in Chile filed WHILE WE WERE WATCHING.  She plotzed.  I thought it was pretty cool myself!

I think this experience has started something.  Vivi just did a count in her room and here’s the tally:

  • 1 duck
  • 1 parrot
  • 1 Zazu
  • 1 unicorn
  • 21 penguins
  • 1 meerkat
  • 3 ponies