Just When I thought It Was Safe to…

go back outside and walk the dog, I had an incident with Boxer lady.
I was taking my garbage to the dumpster and had Fannie on a leash. We walked past the common area between the buildings and I saw boxer lady with her dog. Never seen her there before, she typically takes her dog to a different spot near her car, never actually walks the dog anywhere.
To set the scene I had a run in with boxer lady when I first moved in. On my first attempt to take Fannie out to pee I went to a nice area next to my unit only to discover it full of dog poop, like a winter’s worth that is uncovered with the thaw. I spoke to the manager about it and even asked for a rake to clean it up a bit. No rake and they told me the story about boxer lady, unauthorized dog, hates the complex owner and swears at him and gives him the finger whenever she sees him.
Short time later I go out with Fannie and I see her in that space with a boxer. Aha moment. Fannie and I walk the parking lot skirting the edge of the green area. I yell to her “You want to watch out where you step it’s full of dog poop.” She tells me she knows because it’s from her dog. She has a problem with the owner and won’t pick up. I told her she will have a problem with me if she doesn’t pick up.
Months past, I never see her there again, notice her regularly with her dog in another spot, poop scooper in hand. Then on two occasions I catch her mother giving me the stink eye. In one case she actually follow to watch me get out of me car and eyeballs me between the tree branches. I wave to her.
The boxer lady is 42 years old, has lived with her parents in the 2 bedroom apartment for 20 years. What’s wrong with this picture? And my assessment hearing her talk to people around the complex is she is too loud and either too happy or too angry. Bipolar?
So back to taking out my garbage, I just can’t resist yelling to her “Thanks for picking up your poop” Cheery, I was. Well she starts screaming at me calling me scum and other stuff and giving me the finger repeatedly. All the while struggling to hold her dog.
I notified the office. She is scary. Crazy people are very unsettling. There is no way to deal with them.
So how to retaliate. You know I can’t leave this alone. Early in the evening when I happened to notice both their cars gone, I went to the spot where no one picks up the poop. I had my trusty poop scooper and picked up a load and walked over to where she regularly takes her boxer. I discretely dumped dog poop around the area. It provided me with such a sense of deviousness and fed my increasing passive/aggressive tendencies.
Yesterday I noticed quite a bit more dog poop accumulated in that other area. May have to make another poop run. Want to feed her paranoia that other people aren’t picking up their poop and leaving it when she gets in trouble for same! I want to see her crack!

Close Encounters

On a typical warm summer evening, I went out my front door. The dogs were there, as always, eagerly pushing out to be the first into the yard. Sitting right next to the front door is a brush porcupine, made for cleaning dirt off boots and shoes. As I exited the door behind the dogs, I happened to glance down at the boot brush. Something caught my eye –I didn’t have my glasses on but it appeared to be a really big bug perched on the brush. I bent down to examine it in closer detail. It was a bird, a ruby-throated hummingbird!
My immediate concern was that I may have caught the attention of the dogs, and they would really take an interest in something so very clsoe to their noses. I had to move this bird. There were also my predatory cats to contend with. It was surprisingly easy for me to pick up the bird in my hand. I thought about placing it back in a tree on a nice branch safely above resident predators. It didn’t seem to be able to perch – the tiny claws didn’t grasp the small twig. I careful looked at the bird as it sat quietly in my hand. It didn’t flutter in panic, just sat.
What to do? I couldn’t just toss it into the wind and let it be taken up by fate. I thought about my past attempts to rescue wildlife critters; sometimes they work, and often they don’t. It has been easy saving birds temporarily stunned from an encounter with the window. Baby birds just out of the nest too early were a big problem; often I couldn’t find or get to the nest. My few experiences with calling various animal rescue groups in the past didn’t prove useful in finding an immediate solution for the problem at hand.
This bird seemed just tired, and I wondered if perhaps it was an old hummingbird. So I decided to administer basic first aid – rehydration with water. And I knew I had a formula for mixing hummingbird food that consisted of sugar dissolved in water. I also had a syringe handy that I last used to dispense medicine to the cat a few months back.
I put the nosey dogs in the house, mixed the simple formula, all the while gently holding the bird. With a filled syringe I headed outside to sit on the swing with the tiny bird. The bird sat very still in the palm of my hand, eyes closed. I placed the syringe over the beak, and suddenly this very long tongue darted out taking in the liquid from the syringe.
So I spent the next 45 minutes having the most astonishing experience watching this hummingbird but 5 inches from my face. I could see the sunlight make the feathers glow with a shimmering iridescence. I also could see that the beak was really a tube, from which a needle like tongue darts out to take up the sweet water. He took enough water to leave a water souvenir in my hand.
So there we sat, I was enjoying the late summer afternoon and the extraordinary experience of this bird in minute detail. He sat quietly, eyes looking more alert.
All of a sudden he lifted off my hand onto a short branch of the oak tree some five feet over my head. I watched him for a bit longer then went in the house. It was time for my day to continue. A short time later I came out to check and he had left the branch.
In the next few evenings, as I was working in the perennial bed next to the oak, a hummingbird would make his way around the flowers. I like to think it was the same bird, stopping by for a visit, and to grace my flowers.

It’s Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Sunshine, always seems to lift your spirits. Maybe it’s getting that extra dose of Vitamin D. I can’t figure how why Fannie doesn’t always have to pee in the morning. Where does she store it? That honey has one big bladder, maybe stretched after bearing lots of puppies.
But she is such a sweetie – over 5 years now, no housebreaking or discipline problems. She has developed a passion for the cat food now, but is there a dog that doesn’t?
Let’s hear it for older rescue dogs! And when I finally find a house, I think I will get a second. The only thing better than one dog is two dogs.
And if I can get the insert image to work, I’ll add a photo. Meanwhile she is the Gravatar image.

Fannie Needs a Home (Yard)

Poor Fannie. Took the little dog to my niece’s house today so she could run free and cavort in the yard and meet and greet the neighbor’s dogs. She is always on the leash now that I live in an apartment. Also, she can leave her poop there and mark to her heart’s content.
As far as the search for a house, got another dumb realtor. Thought Larry was a bit better than the rest. He gets mixed up on what I want to see and the features of a specific house.
And stop sending me old listings! I signed up for Real Estate One’s “1st to Know” service. The idea is that they will send me hot new listings that fit what I’m looking for. So what do I get – OLD listings, houses that have been on the market for some time. I’ve already seen all that. Don’t make me review stuff I’ve already looked at and eliminated.
And Larry – don’t tell me it’s on a ravine and I make a trip to do a drive by and don’t see any ravine ’cause you got the listings confused. Take notes next time.
Glad I have signed with anyone as my buyer’s agent. I’ll go back to my strategy of when I find a house I will call the listing agent. This whole real estate business is so convoluted. They must have a strong lobby group. That should end now in view of the housing market fuck up.

Taking Toys from Tots

Is this a wrong thing to do? My niece’s children, are 4 and 7 years of age, possessing an overabundance of toys. I was rather surprised to discover that Easter has now become another holiday where consumerism is the main celebration. The children don’t really seem to care about WHAT they get, but HOW much they get. Packages opened, if they even bother to open anything, goods briefly looked at, then laid or tossed aside.
Here I was so naive as to think that a basket with a tasteful assortment of edibles would be welcomed. It was quickly dissembled by one child to look for toys he could hoard from the other.
Among the items they got a gifts from the ‘Easter Bunny’ were interesting plastic snow scenes filled with glitter and rabbit ears. And it bounces! Before I left I took one that lay forgotten in a corner. I took it home and played with it a bit. The bounce is really quite nice, and makes the glitter swirl. And Fannie, my feisty little companion, loves it! It is not often she even gets a new toy; she really has to content herself with hand-me-downs from my previous canine companions.
Then the next weekend I had a friend visit and she was quite taken my the glitter rubber ball. I gave it to her as a belated Christmas gift. She was very please. Much more pleased than the children for whom it was originally intended.
And meanwhile I took the kids to McDonald’s when they got some sort of cheap plastic shit with their Happy Meal. And can you believe their dismay when they discovered it was a toy they already had. I made them finish their meal and wait till the line at the counter was gone before I let them go back to see if they could exchange the toy. And of course they briefly torn open the package, then ran off to Playland. In the car they tried to assemble the toy without success. Wanted me to help, while I was driving. At any rate, after taking them home I found one dragon toy left in my apartment and the other in the car backseat. Forgotten. I remembered one to at least return to them, but they didn’t care. They’d moved on.
And for this we fill containers from China and fill their coffers with US Dollars.
What else would I like…Fannie really likes that little white bunny that lays around in the corner among the pillows…

The Misfortune of April 13

My father wished not to die on the 13th. Back to his army days, it was as unlucky for German soldiers as for so many others. But he did die on the 13th, of April, 24 years ago.
I took my mother on a day trip to go visit his grave on this anniversary. Now that I live close to her it is much easier to do this. So we headed north, to the city where she lived for 24 years, and they lived for the last six years of her husband’s life.
It is a township cemetery literally out in the middle of nothing. Some graves date back to the 19th Century, showing wear and that they’re long forgotten. The influx of inhabitants due to the nearby recreational housing development, Sugar Springs, has been a boon to the cemetery – a definite influx of occupants in the last 30 years.
By city standards the field is scruffy and unkempt. But there is the wonderful peacefulness of the north woods. The grass is not manicured, but the pine trees are large sentinels keeping company with the dead.
We had our garden tools along to clean up the gravesite. Long ago my mother put in a border of bricks. Recently the cemetery required all raised beds removed by a set date otherwise it would be dismantled by the township. These beds had become a nuisance for the mowers; besides which so many were forgotten and unsightly. Ours was left probably because the bricks were grass level.
The daffodils are ready to bloom. We dig in a pot of white, silk lilies so it won’t get blown away by the fierce wind sweeping in from the north.
Then we wander among the gravestones, find an acquaintance she forgot had died two years ago. I straighten out an errant silk flower to give a gravestone the look of remembrance.
I think of Jane Kenyon’s poem, where the dog pees on the gravestone, a welcome visitor to the dead.
On each visit my mother points to the headstone with her name and birth year. Yes, her stone cutter knew enough not to prematurely put in a 19 for her death year.
It was a cloudy, rainy morning but now the sun is shining. The wind still has a bit of a chill. We say goodbye.

Day of the Ducks

It was early winter when the ducks moved in. Snow was on the ground and ice had formed on the lakes. There were a couple – a drake and a female. Because they were mixed, part mallard and part domestic, they couldn’t fly away come winter as the lake froze over. The people that fed them throughout the summer were no longer out throwing bread scraps. The mallards flew south, but these ducks were left to fend for themselves, and they couldn’t. This is how they ended up at the Humane Society animal shelter before they starved or froze to death.
I was a board member of this Humane Society and the workers knew that I wanted some of what I called ‘decorative’ garden fowl. I had a house in the county with acreage and wanted something picturesque to wander around the yard. I already ‘rescued’ a very large rooster that was picked up running about in the north end of the county. He was big, but good natured. Friends asked if it was a turkey – city folk! I could easily pick him up and he got along with the dogs. They quickly learned to keep their distance as he had long spurs and big wings that he would flap at them when they got too close.
Being able to pick up the rooster proved handy when I needed to first check him for lice. And then I got to treat him for the lice. That’s another story.
Life with the rooster, dogs and cats was fine. They all knew their place in the hierarchy. That is until one day while the dog Molly was peacefully lying in the sun warmed grass when the rooster jumped her. He either was trying to mount her or needed a better post from which to crow.
Molly was 65 pounds of dog and really pretty startled at having something, anything, actually try to climb up on her. I was startled as to what the heck was going on. This is surely unnatural. Then it occurred to me that the rooster might need a chicken, or two. Interspecies relationships just aren’t going to work for any number of reasons. And I lived in a religious area where Darwin wasn’t considered a proper subject for science class.
So I got chickens from the Humane Society, two Rhode Island Reds. Seems certain ethnic groups living in the city like to keep fresh animals on hand. Whether for Santaria rituals or food, I don’t want to ask. And when they get out – animal control is called. The shelters want to adopt them out as soon as possible. Farm animals bring a whole new level of issues.
So by the time the ducks moved in there were the dogs, cats, chickens with rooster. Room was made in the little outbuilding for the two ducks and a big water bowl. I didn’t know if the ducks actually needed the ability to swim through the winter months. There was a small ornamental goldfish pond in the yard, very small, But they didn’t want to walk through the snow to get to it.
I learned many things, including that ducks are very messy. Chicken poop is much easier to clean up than ducks splats. We got through the winter alright. The shared living quarters for the poultry proved fine with everyone getting along. I had my hands full keeping things clean, however.
Soon it was spring and all the critters could spend more time outside. Ah, in spring a drake’s fancy turns to thoughts of sex. The first problems were with the dogs. I’d catch the duck chasing after Molly. The drake couldn’t really fly, which he why he was here in the first place. Instead he did a low level combo run and fly chasing Molly around the yard. She thought this was great fun, as the duck tried to bite her in the butt. To her it was a game. And it was rather amusing to see a bottom heavy duck chasing a 65 pound dog.
Then there was Sydney, the other dog. Sydney had a fondness for birds, the fondness that comes in hunting genes. He had already dispatched a Rhode Island Red hen – first time I ever had one pet kill another. I scolded him even though he looked so pleased with himself as the brown feathers fell from his lips. Fortunately I was in the yard when the duck bit Sydney in the butt. I ran quickly to snatch up the duck away from the jaws of death.
Then one day as I was enjoying the spring weather I saw the rooster dragging around the duck who had his bill clamped onto the roosters wing! Break it up!
As I sat at the picnic table the ducks would wander over to me and slyly nibble at the hem of my pants. I think they wanted to bite more, but were testing the waters.
The duck was uncontrollable. He ran after the cats. He continued to chase after Molly who was starting to tire of this game. None of the animals were safe to wander the yard without finding themselves victims of the sex crazed duck.
As soon as the cats got out the back door they would run and jump over the fence for safety. Sydney would no longer even go out into the backyard; I had to let him out the front door to do his business.
One day the duck was walking past when I noticed little dots on his white head. I picked him up to look closer. I think they were peck marks! He must have tangled with Mr. Rooster again.
Oh, the horror of it. There was no enjoyment to be found in the yard. Everyone had to keep an eye open for that duck. He would run for any critter in his sight! Quack – quack, and fastened his bill onto a feather, some fur, a leg. He was unstoppable!
The duck was terrorizing everyone. Couldn’t sit outside and we didn’t have a moment’s peace.
Resettlement was the only solution. I consulted with the people at the Humane Society. They pull me in touch with a wildlife rehabilitator that specialized in waterfowl.
I put the crate in the back of my truck and grabbed the two ducks and took along a forty pound bag of feed. Off I drove. The rehab place was most of a half acre lot. It was fenced in and had a nice large pond. There was a crowd of Canada geese and several ducks. Many of the geese had angel wings, a deformity that made them unable to fly.
We carried the crate into the yard and let out the ducks. The drake ran into the throng. At first he seemed in sex crazed mode, but then he became aware of all the other ducks, female ducks. Oh he was going to be busy for some time – defending and seeking new conquests.
When I got home I made a nice beverage and went out into the yard. The dogs came out cautiously; the cats joined us. Then chickens stared to wander about the yard pecking among the plants for bugs. No one was being chased. There seemed to be a collective sigh of relief. My peaceable kingdom had returned.