The Plight of Greyhounds




Sao Tome Shrew

I don't normally use this blog to promote books (with the exception of my own,) but I recently participated in the Northern California Independent Booksellers conference in South San Francisco. One of the books I picked up was Comet's Tale: How the Dog I Rescued Saved My Life, not because I rescue greyhounds, but because a dear friend does and it was her birthday. What caught my eye was the subtitle. If you've read this blog more than once, you know I believe in the healing power of our relationship with animals, and the natural world in general. Animals we adopt as pets to give them better lives frequently lead us to understand it is they who enrich ours. Animals as healers is a theme that runs throughout everything I've ever written, so I carefully read Comet's Tale before giving it to Tanya. 

I'm extrapolating here, but too often the question that arises before any consideration is giving to saving a unique habitat and the species found in it--a polar bear or Preble’s meadow jumping mouse--is what purpose does it serve? How is mankind any richer for saving a Sao Tome shrew or a Pig-nosed frog? 
Pig-nosed Frog


That should never be the question. The question should be what right do we have to destroy it? However, for those who think the former question trumps the latter, perhaps greyhounds need protection because we have thousands of veterans coming back from our wars who need help, and there's a chance they might make great service dogs.
  

From COMET’S TALE, by Steven D. Wolf. © 2012 by Steven D. Wolf. Reprinted by permission of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. All rights reserved.

Even if a racer survives (the risks involved in racing,) the dog’s long-term prospects are grim. Hounds who never place in the money far outnumber the winners, and even the winners will start losing one day. Most of the losers are three years old or younger. Because food and care cost money, no racing kennel wants to keep them around. Since greyhound breeders produce tens of thousands of dogs ever year, it’s easy to obtain a replacement. The president of the Pensacola Greyhound Assoc. summed it up the industry attitude when he said, “That’s just a bad part of the business, unfortunately. I compare it to owning a professional sports team. If you have one of you star players who isn’t putting out, then you have to make other arrangements.”
            The “arrangements” are what lie at the end of the road for hundreds of greyhounds. Some are killed legally by veterinarians hired by the dogs’ owners…then there is the other option, known within the industry as “going back to the farm.” A man named Robert Rhodes operated one such farm—eighteen acres in rural Alabama where he admitted to shooting thousands of greyhounds during his forty-year career in the racing industry. An aerial photo revealed an estimated three thousand greyhound skeletons scattered around his property. Rhodes, a security guard at a Florida track, said dog owners and trainers had paid him as little as ten dollars per animal to dispose of their greyhounds.
            Something similar happened in Arizona. In 1992, the rotting corpses of 143 racing greyhounds were found after the bodies had been mutilated and scattered in an abandoned citrus orchard. After shooting the dogs, the killers had cut off the tattooed ears, hoping I would prevent them from being identified. Good police work led to the discovery of some of the ears, and an Arizona breeder and kennel owner was convicted for his part in the massacre. He was fined $25,000, sentenced to 30 days in jail, given 18 months probation, and ordered to perform 400 hours of community service. Compare that to the punishment of Michael Vick, the professional football player who in 2007 was convicted of animal cruelty and served a 23-month prison term for his part in a dog-fighting ring that resulted in the death of several pit bulls. The disparity in those two sentences may point to how differently ‘pets’ and ‘livestock’ are valued.
            In addition to the massacre of greyhounds, there are a multitude of documented cases where greyhounds have simply disappeared. Thousands have been ‘donated’ to medical research, and many more have been transported to other countries. Advocates for the Greyhound Protection League say that 24,000 is a conservative estimate of the yearly number of greyhound killings that occurred during the racing industry’s heyday from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s.
            ‘If there is anyone to indict here, it’s the industry because this is what they’re doing to these animals. They misery begins the day they’re born. The misery ends when my client gets ahold (sic) of them and puts a bullet in their head(s).' That is how Robert Rhode’s attorney attempted to defend his client’s actions as late as 2003. The defense was ridiculous, but his observations about the industry were on target. A racing greyhound’s misery does begin the day the dog is born. However, owing to growing public awareness, greyhounds are being rescued and adopted in ever increasing numbers. By 2003, 18,000 retired racers were being placed with families each year. Unfortunately, that still left 7000 hounds who were needlessly put to death. While the numbers might be fewer today, the percentages haven’t necessarily improved.


 Comet's Tale: How the Dog I Rescued Saved My Life is available from the following booksellers  http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781616200459 


Needles and Jenny
adopted by Tanya Smart and Brent Wright

Tossing Sea Stars


dailymail.co.uk


I came across this story online and it reminded me of a post I did last year, which I've included again. It seems appropriate since these bizarre events are happening more frequently. We need to take better care of our planet even it's one sea star at a time. 

 

Mysterious stranding on Irish beach involved up to 50,000 starfish

By: Pete Thomas, GrindTV.com

It was a surreal and somewhat ghostly sight: that of perhaps 50,000 starfish that somehow had come ashore overnight, en masse, and perished on a secluded beach in Ireland. The Belfast Telegraph reports that harsh weather might have been responsible for last week's peculiar and mysterious event, on Lissadell Beach. Click on the link for the rest of the story.
http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/blog/41673/mysterious+stranding+on+irish+beach+involved+up+to+50000+starfish/


Mass stranding in Japan
advancedaquarist.com


“While wandering a deserted beach at dawn, stagnant in my work, I saw a man in the distance bending and throwing as he walked the endless stretch toward me. As he came near, I could see that he was throwing starfish, abandoned on the sand by the tide, back into the sea. When he was close enough I asked him why he was working so hard at this strange task. He said that the sun would dry the starfish and they would die. I said to him that I thought he was foolish. there were thousands of starfish on miles and miles of beach. One man alone could never make a difference. He smiled as he picked up the next starfish. Hurling it far into the sea he said, "It makes a difference for this one." I abandoned my writing and spent the morning throwing starfish.” ― Loren Eiseley

May little acts of kindness enrich your lives and the lives of others. Thank you for your interest in my ramblings.
and
Happy Thanksgiving to my USA friends.  


An idiot, full of sound and fury.


On November 15th last year, I posted the story below about my first encounter with an octopus, which was exactly this size. As you might imagine, my heart broke when I read this recent story online. What I really don't get is what makes us strut and pound our chests over taking the life of the largest fish, the oldest elk, or an 80-pound Pacific giant octopus. How demeaning to our status as humans that we have among us the likes of this young man.

 http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/blog/40201/divers+capture+of+a+beloved+giant+pacific+octopus+sparks+outrage/

"If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans." James Herriot
 

 


When I was 15 my parents took me and my sister on our first vacation ever. We lived in Winter Park, north of Orlando. The vacation was to Clearwater Beach on the Gulf of Mexico. I remember two things about that vacation: my sister had a shrimp cocktail and a hot fudge sundae at the Columbia restaurant in Ibor City then threw up on the drive home. The other was finding a baby octopus on the floor of the car. The baby octopus looked like a tiny mobile clump of wet sand. It came out of a what we thought was an empty conch shell we'd picked up on the beach, and would never have noticed it if it hadn't crawled out (in search of water, no doubt) and across my mother's foot.

 It died, of course.

All my life--to that point--I'd collected small dead animals and kept them in jars of alcohol. I had quite a collection by the time the baby octopus was added: snakes, lizards, baby turtles, newly hatched birds. This rather morbid curiosity about animals eventually led me to pursue a degree in biology where it was a perfectly acceptable practice to collect and preserve dead things.
I don't know what happened to my dead animal collection. I'm sure my mother put ever jar in the trash the same day I moved to Miami, but since finding that baby octopus, I've loved them. Yesterday, someone sent me this amazing video. As they say, It's awesome!

 http://www.sciencefriday.com/videos/watch/10397


North Pacific Giant Octopus
 


  
Octopus opening a jar with a screw lid

From Wikipedia

"Octopuses are highly  intelligent, likely more so than any other order of invertebrates. The exact extent of their intelligence and learning capability is much debated among biologists, but maze and problem-solving experiments have shown that they show evidence of a memory system that can store both short- and long-term memory. It is not known precisely what contribution learning makes to adult octopus behavior.
In laboratory experiments, octopuses can be readily trained to distinguish between different shapes and patterns. They have been reported to practice observational learning, although the validity of these findings is widely contested on a number of grounds. Octopuses have also been observed in what some have described as play: repeatedly releasing bottles or toys into a circular current in their aquariums and then catching them. Octopuses often break out of their aquariums and sometimes into others in search of food. They have even boarded fishing boats and opened holds to eat crabs."


"A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow man, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help."
Albert Schweitzer

Guest Blog by Kate Erickson

  
An Hour More or Less: Remembering Tucker
My kids were going off to middle and high school, and Wilson, our dog, was no longer a puppy. The house needed new energy, so I went looking for something little and fluffy.
            “There’s a cute dog in that bottom cage,” the Humane Society attendant said.
            I bent down to look. It was cute, but not exactly what I had in mind. As I rose to full height, I came face-to-face with a tiny hedgehog-looking puppy in the top cage. The excitement bursting from those obsidian eyes said, “I’m your boy.” And indeed he was.
            Eleven years later, I would caress his thick fur, gaze into those dimming eyes and whisper, “Sh, it’s okay. You can go now. I promise we’ll be fine.”
Our Tucker-Boy died on November 6, 2011, the day we change the clocks to standard time, the day we get an extra hour, but it gets dark an hour earlier so it’s not really a net positive.
My husband, Gary, and I are normally alert to the depressing one hour shortage of daylight, starting the morning with a brief argument over whether the clocks get turned back or forward and spending the rest of it saying things like, “It’s two o’clock, but it’s really three.”
During last year’s switch from daylight savings, our grief over watching Tucker die left us little energy to give a crap about anything, let alone a mere gain or loss of an hour.
            From the moment Tucker came into our lives, he charged the air. Our lab-border collier mix, Wilson, was an active, yet aloof dog. Tucker was eager to give affection and hungry to receive it. During that first year, the little hedgehog grew into a 60-pound moose. We never knew what breeds combined to make him, but his head was reminiscent of a Rottweiler which gave him a menacing look.
Tucker was far from menacing. He maintained the demeanor of a small, anxious dog. He bounced and danced whenever any of us got up in the morning, returned home, or offered a walk.
He needed to be close to either Gary or me, those brilliant dark eyes always alert to our movements. When I was working from my home office, he’d position himself in the narrow passageway between the edge of my desk and chair, forcing me to step over him every time I went to the filing cabinet or the fax machine. If I made him move, he’d seek out Gary.
Tucker was so adept at pretending to be small that he’d sneak into our cramped galley kitchen while I cooked dinner, moving nimbly around me. I wouldn’t notice he was breaking the no dogs in the kitchen rule until he’d start bouncing with delight when the other family members entered to serve up their plates.
He was easily spooked by thunder, fireworks, and balloons. His certainty that scary monsters haunted the landscape caused him to hesitate at the door and look up at us for reassurance before going outside.
            In the last few months of his life, his energy diminished and he appeared to be in pain. Our vet put him on medication, which helped for a while, but he quickly went from one pill a day to four.
He had a habit of lying on the bathroom floor each night while I bathed. On his final Saturday night, I was upstairs preparing my bath when I saw him struggling to climb the steep staircase to be with me. When I rushed to stop him, he looked so sad that I coaxed him the rest of the way and petted him until his heaving breath returned to normal. He followed me to the bathroom where he laid, like always, next to the tub.
At three in the morning on that Sunday, Gary woke me to say he’d been up with Tucker since midnight. Tucker was breathing heavily and unable to lie in one spot for any length of time. I took him outside to see if he had to go potty, then tried to get him to lie down on his bed, but he wouldn’t. I spread blankets on the floor, made myself a bed, and invited him to join me. He would not. I asked Gary to lie down on the sofa, and after a few minutes Tucker laid down near me and we all went to sleep.
At daybreak, Tucker seemed better, but clearly not well. I gave him a pain pill. Gary and I discussed keeping him comfortable until we could take him to the vet on Monday. By late morning, I was in my office doing some work and thought Gary was napping on the sofa until I heard him yell for me.
I ran into the living room to find Tucker standing, his breathing labored. Gary was petting him and crying. He said that Tucker had come over to the sofa and put his face near his, but when Gary reached to touch him, Tucker had a seizure.
“He was trying to tell me it’s time,” Gary said, his words choked with tears.
Our veterinarian’s answering service connected me with the on-call vet. Sobbing, I told her I didn’t think we’d be able to bring him to her office. In a calming voice, she said she would come to our house. However, she’d have to wait for her husband and he wouldn’t be home for a couple of hours.
As Gary and I waited for the vet to come put an end to Tucker’s suffering, we sat by his side with classical music playing in the background. Through tears, we petted him, thanking him for being our pal, for bringing such vibrant joy to our household, and keeping us always alert to dangers lurking outside our front door.
An hour after the vet removed Tucker’s body, I took Wilson on a walk. This would be our new normal—just him and me; we might as well get started. My heart actually hurt—as if blood was draining from it faster than it was being replenished. What I really wanted was to walk out my sadness.
I had to coax Wilson into his collar and leash. He kept looking around, waiting for Tucker.
“This will be fun, buddy.” My tone was upbeat, but he wasn’t fooled and balked at being led outside.
We headed down the alley behind our house. Every dog walk for the past 11 years had been with Wilson on my left and Tucker on my right. I felt unbalanced without him. I kept remembering how hard he’d worked to control his enthusiasm and learn to maintain a proper heel. I could tell that Wilson felt it, too, as he kept glancing over to where Tucker should be, and then back towards the house.
I let Wilson off his leash when we were deep into the cemetery where the two dogs were free to run and play, but Wilson ran back to look for Tucker.
I called Wilson, put him on his leash, and started to bawl, wiping my eyes and nose on the sleeve of my jacket. He patiently waited for me to cry myself out, then he led me home.
As the dinner hour crept up, Gary and I sat into the sinking darkness, barely able to speak. We chose a meal that held the promise of easing our grief: Jenny’s giant burgers, fries and chocolate milkshakes. Its sedative effects only lasted for the time it took to consume the food.
I doubt that Gary and I will ever forget which way the clocks need to turn in the fall or the spring. The day when we relinquish daylight an hour earlier will always be the time of year when we lost our Tucker. That loss will carry us into darkness until spring arrives and the forward turn reaffirms that grief diminishes as life goes on.



Kate writes an hysterically funny blog about small town adventures on the Mendocino Coast: www.ithappenedatpurity.com


Kate & Tucker
November 8th update: Kate just posted this on her blog and it's worth sharing.


Fido the Rescued Rat by Prudence Breitrose

 

freeinfosociety.com
Fido the Rescue Rat

My son, Charlie, refers to it as “Fido’s origin story,” and there was certainly something mythical about it, because of all the ways to get a new pet. . .

We were low on animals at the time. We’d lost two goldfish, our hamster had recently died, and the two box turtles–Bugs Bunny and Explorer–were not exactly sociable.

I was shopping at our local family-owned grocery store–can’t remember what it was that I needed to get, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a rat.

I was near the front of the store, where paper sacks were lined up waiting for delivery, when I became aware of a surge of excitement–the sort of EEEKing and squawking that tends to go along with rodents. A grocer went barreling by, yelling,  “Get it out of here!”  Another was shouting, “Kill it!”

And there, sticking his head out of one of the paper sacks, was a rat. Not one of our local roof-rats, which do look a bit sinister–so sinister that we prefer to call them ‘rabbits’ to take the edge of a visit to the garage at night. No, it was one of the prettiest rats I’d ever met, softly patterned in brown and white.

This was before I became part rodent myself–before I thought myself into the heart of mouse society for my series of books set in the Mouse Nation. But like my fictional mice, I did manage to react with lightning speed.

“Stop!” I shouted to the rampaging grocers. “Triple bag that rat. I’ll take him!”

Poor Fido! Who knows what had happened to him before he found himself in that paper sack, then triple-bagged? He seemed traumatized. We made him comfortable in the old hamster cage, then bought him his own palace, a three-story condo that sat in the corner of the kitchen where he could feel he was part of the family.

We invited him out. After closing all the kitchen doors, we would leave his cage door open. But for a while Fido wasn’t interested in freedom. Didn’t want to stick a paw outside his home. And if my son took him out of the cage he would sprint back to it at the first opportunity.

“I guess it was weeks,” Charlie remembers now, “but if felt like months before he’d come out on his  own.”

Fido’s emergence happened gradually, a few steps at a time, still punctuated by sprints back to safety. But at last he seemed to trust us, and to take pleasure in exploring his surroundings. At last he was happy to hang out with his humans, and climb on Charlie from time to time, which he remembers as kind of scratchy.

Charlie and Fido
The only down side was that my daughter insisted on rodent-parity and we bought her a pretty white mouse. Disaster! Unlike Fido, the mouse showed no interest in humans and seemed to have only one talent – to smell so bad that she had to be exiled from the kitchen.

I can’t remember what happened to the mouse, but Fido went on to achieve pet immortality, with an honored place in the rose-bed.


Prudence Breitrose is the author of the marvelously
inventive Mousenet
www.mousenet.org

Yakity-Yak: Guest Blog by Mark Winwood

On April Fool's Day, 1989, a passenger on my flight from NY to Bermuda died of a heart attack. I did CPR for 45 minutes while we waited for a medical doctor to pronounce her dead. While this was going on, passengers in the back of the plane were robbing our liquor kits. The glitch they overlooked was Bermuda Customs, which were alerted by one of the other flight attendants. They were all in cuffs when the crew went through about an hour later.

A couple of days ago, a dear friend and fellow retired flight attendant, sent this to me. It was written by Mark Winwood, her meditation teacher. She knew I could relate.

Dharma 101:

Yakity-Yak . . .

                     
 It was the Sunday Allegiant Airlines flight from Bangor (Maine) to Orlando. The plane was crowded, take-off had been bumpy as we broke through the heavy "Down East" rain, but soon all was calm.
  
 I was in on the aisle in the row behind the bulkhead reading my book when the motion of a flight attendant running past caught my
 attention. There was commotion behind me, something had happened.
When another attendant stepped up and stood on my arm rest to unbuckle and take the oxygen tank stored in the overhead bin, I knew someone had fallen ill, perhaps seriously so.

There was much flight attendant activity, rushing back-and-forth, and then came the announcement for any doctor or medical professional(s) on board to please identify themselves. I was not aware if the crew was successful in finding anyone who could help, and kept myself from turning around to see what was going on. My sense was to let the professionals do their job; if I could not directly help I would not interfere or distract them in any way.  But the flight was now different, charged with tension.  I found myself empathizing . . . how would it be to become stricken on an airplane . . . how frightening, disorienting . . . uncertain.

About fifteen minutes later the attendants asked the people sitting in the bulkhead row ahead of me to stand and move out, that they would be given seats in the rear because their space was now needed for a medical emergency. Shortly thereafter an elderly man was brought up and placed in the seat in front of mine.  He was wearing an oxygen mask and was conscious, but not looking so good . . . clammy, very pale and slumped over. 

The man was apparently a doctor and unable to clearly communicate what was ailing him, except to say he had heart trouble in the past and was experiencing painful tightness in his chest. His and his wife's carry-ons had been located and gone through, and a bag of prescription drugs was found.

Two nurses traveling on the flight had been found and pressed into service, and for the remainder of the flight they sat with the man, one in the seat next to him, the other in the legroom in front of him. They determined that he had not taken his meds that day, so they gave him his daily dosages. One held and rubbed his hands while the other worked to calm him. His blood pressure was taken every few minutes and was dropping. His heart beat was beginning to slow down. After a while he said he was feeling better.  

The captain came back and spoke with the nurses, who were convinced the man was out of danger enough for the flight not to be diverted for an emergency landing, which, as I heard the captain say, at that point would save just a few minutes over completing the flight into Orlando. The captain also indicated we were cleared for a direct landing, no circling or waiting in line.  

***

I am recounting this to communicate how beautifully this man in need was cared for . . . how those who were called upon instinctively came together with clear-minded kindness. It was wonderful to see, this compassionate caring for a person who needed help.  

A sweet man across the aisle reached over and stroked the man's arm, telling him not to worry, that the hospital nearest the airport was one of the best in the state and that if he were to be hospitalized there he'd be in wonderful hands.

Every few moments one of the flight attendants would visit, speaking reassuringly to him, through their concern articulating not worry but confidence and kindness. 

And the nurses -- ordinary passengers with dakini hearts -- remained with him until delivering him to the care of the medical team on the ground. 

I sat behind, watching this all take place . . . periodically visualizing the Medicine Buddha above the man's head, holding a bowl of medicinal nectar that cures all ills, hindrances and obstacles . . . this nectar streaming into the man's and his caretakers' crowns, infusing every cell of their bodies with perfect healing ability.  With this visualization I silently chanted the Medicine Buddha mantra.  

About 20 minutes from landing the captain re-emerged from the cockpit and came back to tell the man we'd be landing shortly and that there would be medical personnel waiting to care for him. He then leaned into the man and told him he'd land the plane especially softly, and smiled before returning to his duties.

I know that what occurred on that flight happens often, people do get ill in mid-flight and flight crews are trained to handle such situations, etc. But that's business, professional responsibility, and what I was witness to went beyond the responsibility of a job. It was heartfelt care and true human concern and kindness ("metta") exhibited by strangers for a fellow being in distress, and it deeply touched my heart.  

***

Upon landing the medical team came on the plane, were debriefed by the nurses and carefully removed the man on a stretcher, his wife nervously accompanying them. After a few more minutes of getting things straightened out, we were allowed to deplane.

As I was walking toward the airport exit, a woman greeted a man she had been waiting for. Aware of the delay and having seen the ambulance outside the terminal and the medical people, she asked the man what had happened.

"Oh, nothing.  Just some old fart got sick on the plane. Looked half-dead. The assholes wouldn't let us get off until he was taken away."

They kissed and turned to leave, their most recent annoying inconvenience soon to be forgotten.

Mark Winwood, founder and resident teacher, of The Chenrezig Project, a Tibetan Buddhist study and practice group in Central Florida.  Chenrezig Project www.chenrezigproject.org    
 

MY FATHER'S GARDEN


en.wikipedia.org

This October is the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. Only recently has the speech President Kennedy wrote to inform the nation we were going to war with Russia been found--a reminder of how close we came to annihilation. My family lived in Winter Park, Florida, a small town surrounded by Orlando. This personal essay was published a few years ago in the St. Petersburg Times.
  



My Father's Garden
by Ginny Rorby
Daddy's garden was not this lush.

On a cool, crisp Sunday in October of 1962, just days after the first tanks and trucks full of soldiers rolled through Orlando headed for Key West, my parents loaded my sister and me in Daddy’s ’54 Ford, so there would be no mistaking us as moneyed, and drove out Highway 50 West to visit the half dozen bomb and fallout shelter sales shacks that appeared almost overnight during the Cuban missile crisis. My parents were so sure that war with Russia imminent construction began the following week on what would become the focal point of our backyard.
            Daddy was enamored of a cave-like underground model, but my mother, who was writing the check, chose from among the above-ground samples, deciding, I suppose, that if the nuclear hit was not direct, a fallout shelter was all we would really need.  
            I remember the construction clearly because the hole the workmen dug for the foundation near the base of our backyard’s only palm tree was deep enough to fill with water every night. Until the floor was poured, that was the closest we ever came to having a swimming pool.  There were paired cinder block walls—interior and exterior—with a three-foot space between them, which they filled with sand.  After the interior ceiling was poured—three feet below the top of the walls—this, too, was filled to the brim with the dirt. Within a month, weeds took hold.
             On the inside, four cots were bolted to the wall but could be raised or lowered as needs dictated. There was a small sink, a hand pump for water and a silly, little hand-operated air pump.  The shelves at one end were soon lined with water jugs and canned food. I have no memory of a toilet or a cook-stove. Even before Khrushchev backed down and removed the missiles, I think the shelter became a recognizable mistake. The effort to complete the preparations lost momentum and petered out, replaced, instead, by the need to conceal it. My father painted this eye-sore the same beige color as our house which was also cinder block. Momma had him paint the steel door turquoise, her favorite color, and she had the yardman plant an ixora hedge along the side that people could glimpse from the road.  
             As the cold war years trickled by, my parents took to quietly sparring over the ultimate possession of the shelter. In the narrow space near the foot of the cots, Momma had bookshelves built and filled them with a growing collection of Readers' Digest Condensed Books. My father installed an air-conditioner above the steel door to cut down on the mold and dampness in the summer. 

flickr.com
             Daddy, a lifelong hunter and fisherman, who suffered in Florida's heat, purchased bullet-making equipment and spent endless weekend hours shut inside the shelter with the air-conditioner running. Momma, who controlled the finances in our family after Daddy's cypress-knee lamp-making business failed, chained the bunks against the wall and began to stack boxes of old bank statements and tax records on the cement floor. 
            Soon Daddy's boxes of new bullets, jars of gunpowder, wad cutters, and empty shell casings crowded out the rusting cans of food and swollen, rock-hard boxes of powdered milk.
            My mother lowered the two bottom bunks and began to fill them with boxes of old clothes and shoes that should have gone to Goodwill. Piles of magazines accumulated: National Geographic, Life, Look, and Saturday Evening Post.
            Daddy bolted a long two by four to the wall opposite the bunks, and nailed jars full of bullet-making paraphernalia by their lids to the board. 
            Momma lowered and began to fill the top bunks.
            Then one day Daddy came home with a trunk full of fertilizer, seed packets, onion starts, and assorted garden tools. He leaned a ladder against the east side of the shelter, climbed up, pulled all the weeds and planted a garden. He bought an extra long garden hose and rotating sprinkler head. He placed a beach chair in the filtered shade of the palm tree with a left-over cinder block for a drink-stand. In the afternoons after work at the job he'd found selling business forms, he’d fix his first pitcher of martinis, stick a tumbler in his back pocket, and climb the ladder to weed. When it got dark, he’d disconnect the hose from the sprinkler, sit there among the radishes, dimly outlined in the buggy glow of the backyard light, moving just his arm from side to side, as he watered his garden.
            Daddy’s pre-dinner cocktail hour habitually lasted until very late at night. When he came in from maintaining his garden, he’d sit alone on the back porch and watch his favorite shows. I would watch television in my mother’s room, where periodically she’d crank open her jalousie-window, left from before the porch was added, and peer down at Daddy, checking his degree of drunkenness, I suppose.  “You should eat, Noel,” she’d say. “Pretty quick now,” he’d answer.  
It became his habit, as his garden matured, to harvest a little something to accompany whatever Momma had left warming on the stove. My mother's bedroom had a door that opened onto the backyard. When she heard Daddy making this final, sloppy-drunk trip to the top of the shelter, she would open her door and stand behind the screen with a flashlight trained on him as he climbed the ladder with his spade. When he made his selection, he'd come boldly to the edge and hold his prize up in Momma's light.
            I hated my father’s drinking, but have often wondered in the years since he died, if Daddy wasn't driven up there by my mother's bank statements only to find that his garden was his success. He could stand, bathed in my mother’s angry light, surrounded by his tomatoes, hot peppers, green onions, cucumbers and carrots, feel his stomach rumble with hunger, and bend and select a few things to take that pain away.



 

IF YOU MISSED THE POEM BY JEWELS MARCUS, SCROLL DOWN.

The Next Coming by Jewels Joyce Marcus


smashingmagazine.com

The Writers of the Mendocino Coast got together with local artists in what's called a Ekphrasis in which one medium of art attempts to relate or describe another. Sixteen writers and sixteen local artists split into two groups. Eight writers submitted a story or poem, each of which was randomly drawn by eight artists. Each artist painted or photographed a visual interpretation of the written piece. In the other group, eight artists submitted their paintings or photographs to eight writers who then wrote a story or poem to interpret the work of art. Last Saturday, at the Artists Co-op in Mendocino, the writers and artists met and saw the results for the first time. I don’t have the painting this poem by Jewels Marcus references, so I Googled American children in Poverty for a picture that would capture the emotional essence of the portrait it was written to interpret.  I hope you will share this poem with every parent you know.


The Next Coming       

I’m not who you think I am.
Days of lush lazy lawns pregnant
with carefree laughing children
are long gone.
I’m your daughter’s daughter.
The new messiah.
The coroner.
The next coming.
I’m walking on the backs of discarded plastic bottles,
across seas, in search of salvation and clean drinking water.
I’m sifting through un-majestic purple mountains of trash,
for the tainted treasure of tasteless scraps    
to fill my aching    empty    guts.
I’m roaming radiated deserts for evidence of my inheritance.
I’m your judge      your jury      your coroner
stuffing the giant cracks you left in the scorched earth
with the putrid, swollen bodies of my kin.
I’m your daughter’s daughter
needing to grow new lungs to filter the filthy air
new hands to claw over continents of blackened concrete.
I’m the one left after the last holocaust.
The one you didn’t want to notice, too busy
entertaining  yourselves          for one third of your lives.
I’m not who you think I am.   
I’m the minister       the preacher        the teacher.
My hopes and prayers like wolves sent out to devour our fears.
I’m the new messiah.               Walking on water.
The coroner.                            Burying your future.
The next coming.

Jewels Joyce Marcus c2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekphrasis

For locals, all the art with accompanying stories and poems will be the program at this Wednesday's (the 17th) Writers of the Mendocino Coast meeting.
6 p.m.
in the Mendocino Hotel's
Garden Room

nataliesreblog.blogspot.com


Sand Bees II photos by Katy Pye



Point Cabrillo
You can tell it's summer. The last rain we had was in March.

Back in April I did a post about discovering Sand bees at the old, abandoned Georgia-Pacific site in Fort Bragg. When I looked up the life history of Sand bees what I found first was a way to kill them. Below is a link to that post.



A few months ago, my friend and fellow writer, sent me photographs of the Sand bees she found at Point Cabrillo. (You know--my favorite--have given 16 years of my life to--lighthouse.)



Bees' eyeview of Point Cabrillo










Revisiting Monarchs and Monsanto



When I was a flight attendant I used to fly to San Francisco often, but it wasn't until 1982 that I saw the real coast of northern California. At the time, I was working on a degree in Biology at the University of Miami with a focus on ornithology (the study of birds.) Dr. Oscar Owre, my ornithology professor, Bob Kelley, UM math professor and then President of Miami's Tropical Audubon Society, and Dan Cary, a grad student studying the Everglade kite, were all going to the ABA (American Birding Association) conference at Asilomar in Monterey, CA. I could fly free, so, as I recall, I invited myself along. 


photos.igougo.com



We took two field trips: One to Point Lobos, where I saw my first sea otter asleep in a bed of bull kelp, and a landscape that took my breath away. This Florida gal had never seen anything like those cliffs and that roiling, icy sea. I fell instantly, permanently in love with northern CA. (Nine years later I moved to the much more remote Mendocino Coast.)


hibernating monarchs
 geog.ucsb.edu

Our second field trip was to see the Monarch butterflies in Pacific Grove. It was late October.

The following is an edited version of an article I found on  this website.

Monarch butterflies go through four stages during one life cycle, and through four generations in one year. The four stages of the monarch butterfly life cycle are the egg, the larvae (caterpillar), the pupa (chrysalis), and the adult butterfly.

In March and April butterflies lay their eggs on milkweed plants. The eggs hatch about 4 days later into baby caterpillars. A baby caterpillar feeds on the milkweed until it's full grown in about 2 weeks, then it attaches itself to a stem or a leaf and transform into a chrysalis.

monarch-butterfly.com

From the outside, the 10 day-long chrysalis, or pupa, phase seems to be a time when nothing is happening, however within the chrysalis the body of the caterpillar is undergoing a remarkable transformation, called metamorphosis, to become the beautiful butterfly that will emerge.

The monarch butterfly will emerge from the pupa and spend the next 2 - 6 weeks of its life visiting flowers, finding a mate and laying her eggs before this first generation monarch butterfly dies.

 
 monarch-butterfly.com

The second generation of monarch butterflies is born in May and June, goes through exactly the same four stage life cycle, as does the third generation which is born in July and August and dies 2 - 6 weeks later.

The fourth generation of monarch butterflies is a little bit different than the first three generations. The fourth generation is born in September and October and goes through exactly the same process as the first, second and third generations except for the dying part. Instead, this fourth generation of monarch butterflies migrates to warmer climates like Mexico and California and will live for six to eight months until it is time to start the whole process over again.

Monarch butterflies are not able to survive the cold winters of most of the United States so they migrate south and west each autumn to escape the cold weather. The monarchs that over-winter in Pacific Grove and other sites along the California coast are from the population that lives west of the Rocky Mountains. These migrating Monarch butterflies use the very same trees each and every year, even though they aren't the same butterflies that were there the year before. Monarch butterflies are the only insect that migrates to a warmer climate, a migration of up to 2,500 miles.

The Monarch butterfly migrates for two reasons: They can not withstand freezing weather in the northern and central continental climates, and the larval food plants do not grow in their seasonal over-wintering sites, so that fourth generation must fly back north to places where the plants are plentiful. Visit Monarchwatch for information on tracking migrations with a color map. Monarchs Like to Hibernate in the Same Trees Every Year

The monarch overwintering sites are under threat because of people cutting down their favorite trees, but there are groups that collect money to save the important trees and educate people about monarch conservation. You can learn more about helping monarchs here.



NOW FOR THE REALLY BAD NEWS   

Twelve years ago, a study found that genetically modified Bt corn was lethal to monarch butterflies; recent research shows that another type of GM (Genetically Modified) crop is even more damaging to the beloved insect.

A recently published study says that increasing acreage of GM Roundup Ready (RR) corn and soybeans is a major cause for declining populations of monarch butterflies in North America. The paper, published in the journal Insect Conservation and Diversity, says that increased use of glyphosate herbicide with RR GM crops in the Midwest is killing the milkweed plants, which monarchs rely on for habitat and food. Chip Taylor, an insect ecologist at the University of Kansas, says the proliferation of RR crops and the overuse of glyphosate (Round-up) is the major cause.

(This following article would lead one to believe there is no impact on Monarch butterflies because it is targeting the corn borer larvae. But here's the problem: Pollen drift. Please also read the Cornell study that follows.)

Bt-CORN: WHAT IT IS AND HOW IT WORKS

To transform a plant into a GMO plant, the gene that produces a genetic trait of interest is identified and separated from the rest of the genetic material from a donor organism. A donor organism may be a bacterium, fungus or even another plant. In the case of Bt corn, the donor organism is a naturally occurring soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, and the gene of interest produces a protein that kills Lepidoptera (the Order of butterflies and moths) larvae, in particular the European corn borer. This protein is called the Bt delta endotoxin. Growers use Bt corn as an alternative to spraying insecticides for control of European and southwestern corn borer.  

Bt Delta Endotoxin

The Bt delta endotoxin was selected because it is highly effective at controlling Lepidoptera larvae, caterpillars. It is during the larval stage when most of the damage by European corn borer occurs. The protein is very selective, generally not harming insects in other orders (such as beetles, flies, bees and wasps). For this reason, GMOs that have the Bt gene are compatible with biological control programs because they harm insect predators and parasitoids much less than broad-spectrum insecticides. The Bt endotoxin is considered safe for humans, other mammals, fish, birds, and the environment because of its selectivity. Bt has been available as a commercial microbial insecticide since the 1960s and is sold under many trade names. These products have an excellent safety record and can be used on many crops until the day of harvest.

To kill a susceptible insect, a part of the plant that contains the Bt protein (not all parts of the plant necessarily contain the protein in equal concentrations) must be ingested. Within minutes, the protein binds to the gut wall and the insect stops feeding. Within hours, the gut wall breaks down and normal gut bacteria invade the body cavity. The insect dies of septicaemia as bacteria multiply in the blood.  http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef130.asp


Toxic pollen from widely planted, genetically modified corn can kill monarch butterflies, Cornell study shows

The key statement: "Unlike many pesticides, the Bt-corn has been shown to have no effect on many "nontarget" organisms -- pollinators such as honeybees or beneficial predators of pests like ladybugs. But the Bt-modified corn produces pollen containing crystalline endotoxin from the bacterium genes. When this corn pollen is dispersed by the wind, it lands on other plants, including milkweed, the exclusive food of monarch caterpillars and commonly found around cornfields."

PLEASE VOTE YES ON PROP 37

What's in your Urine?

Monsanto is spending millions to defeat Prop 37, which would require labeling of Roundup Ready, Genetically Modified (GMO) foods in California. This is huge because if labeling is required in CA, so goes the nation. The FDA does not require outside studies of GMO foods. Studies are done in the hen house by the fox, and all of them so far have been short term studies. Below is a link to information about longer term studies, the results of which are quite apparent. 

Rats with tumors
 http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/09/22/superbugs-destruct-food-supply.aspx?e_cid=20120922_DNL_

Get Out The Vote: Prop 37, California's GMO Labeling Initiative, Could Mean Change For The Entire Country

What are GMOs
"Roundup Ready Crops (RR Crops) are genetically engineered crops that have had their DNA altered to allow them to withstand the herbicide glyphosate (the active ingredient of Monsanto's herbicide Roundup). They are also known as "glyphosate tolerant crops." RR crops deregulated in the U.S. include: corn, soybeans, canola, cotton, sugarbeets, and alfalfa. When planting Glyphosate Tolerant crops, a farmer can spray the entire crop with glyphosate, killing only the weeds and leaving the crop alive. However, one concern with the heavy use of glyphosate on RR crops is that it will lead to the development of glyphosate resistant weeds (sometimes referred to as "superweeds").[1] One variety of RR Corn, NK603, was linked to tumors in rats by a 2012 study.["
More about glyphosate in an excellent article
http://naturalsociety.com/monsantos-infertility-linked-roundup-found-in-all-urine-samples-tested/
"The amount of glyphosate found in the urine was staggering, with each sample containing concentrations at 5 to 20-fold the limit established for drinking water."

What I found really thought provoking about the article is that Roundup kills more than just weeds in cornfield. "Glyphosate radically affects the metabolism of plants in a negative way. It is a systemic poison preventing the formation of essential amino acids, leading to weakened plants which ultimately die from it." But what about the necessary flora in our guts? GR
The small print: There is a dissenting opinion by Steven Salzberg in Forbes magazine:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2012/09/24/does-genetically-modified-corn-cause-cancer-a-flawed-study/ Salzberg tears this study up, while including the following statement about one of the researchers:
"Joel de Vendomois, is a homeopath, with a “Homeopathy and Acupuncture Diploma”, a double dose of quackery in a single degree."  

Personally, I'm going to come down on the side of caution and vote for Prop 37. If nothing else, I want the right to decide for myself if I want Monsanto's Roundup in my food, or killing off the lovely, hard-working flora in my stomach. GR

p.s. I would love to hear from my readers in Europe on this subject.

Humane Society update: It only gets weirder

 
Frankie
The date for the public meeting with the Humane Society has been changed to Oct. 18th, 5:30 - 7:30 at Town Hall.

AND

Frankie and Mow have been cat-napped.

On July 10th and again on the 18th, I did blog posts about Mow, previously advertised as strictly an indoor cat, becoming part of the Shelter's "barn cat program."  This does not include an actual barn or any other safe-haven, but that didn't stop the Shelter's director, Sharon Felkins. from evicting Mow and Frankie (an extremely friendly cat) from the Shelter to join the 15 or so cats she has deemed to be feral. Food and water are placed outside for them, but they otherwise fend for themselves in the woods surrounding the Highway 20 facility.

Believe it or not, when Frankie and Mow were discovered missing, the Shelter filed a theft report with the Sheriff's department. This is a small town, but we still have issues with gangs, drug abuse, meth labs, spousal abuse, pot farms, and petty larceny, but apparently that didn't stop law enforcement from giving the disappearance of two 'feral' cats the highest possible priority--starting with a call on one of the Shelter's volunteers, 78 year old, Lizette Weiss. 

Dear Sheriff, For the record, I don't have the cats and don't know who does.

This is a portion of the letter to the editor Lizette wrote.

September 4, I had an unpleasant visit from a sheriff's deputy . . . who accused me of stealing cats from the Humane Society's shelter. His manner was intimidating and threatening. I told him that I knew the two cats in question: Frankie and Mow, both females. I truthfully said I do not know who has the cats. (I) invited him into my home and introduced him to my cat. I also told him it was inhumane to release domestic cats into the (woods) to be preyed upon by . . . wild animals and for them to prey on the birds in the forest. The officer told me he would not stop looking until those cats were found and that the person who stole the cats would go to jail.

I have volunteered at the Shelter for more than a year and a half to socialize cats who are waiting for homes. I have been quite dependable, coming every Monday unless I was ill or out of town. I have told staff about problems I found with the cats (worms, coughs and upper respiratory illness, skin conditions, hairballs and cats throwing up for unknown reasons). 

Since the Humane Society released these cats into the wild, there has been a flurry of letters to the editor on this subject. The e-mail circuit has been kept busy with ideas for making the Humane Society more open to the community and to suggestions for democratizing its operations. This is particularly important since the group receives $2500 a month in taxpayer funds from the City of Fort Bragg, leases public land where the shelter is located for $1 a year, receives City dog license fees, and enjoys many thousands of dollars of donations from the public. The public also supports the organization by shopping at its resale shop -- The Ark.

On September 10, I went to the shelter for my regular stint socializing cats. First I found two dogs running unleashed in the area holding the outside cats' feeding station. So much for taking care of the outside cats, euphemistically called 'barn cats' by the shelter (although there is no barn for them to find safety in). After I signed in, Sharon Felkins, the Humane Society director, told me I was no longer welcome at the shelter and to leave immediately and never come back. I asked her why and she said, "You are a troublemaker."  I also asked her who made that decision and she told me the board of the Humane Society (only one of whom I have ever met) voted unanimously. There is no way to know if this is the case as the staff has a long history of being 'veracity challenged.'

She said she had called the Mendocino Sheriff to report the two outside cats had been stolen and had given them my name and address. I told her that I did not appreciate being called a thief and that she had no right to do so and had overstepped the bounds of normal behavior. One has to wonder why the Sheriff would feel an animal abandoned to its fate in the wild could be 'stolen'.  

I left the shelter when Sharon Felkins (picked up the phone to call) the Mendocino Sheriff to have me forcibly removed. I left for my own health and mental well-being . . . (but) of equal importance, I feel that public safety personnel are a very scarce resource. I feel this resource was being employed in a frivolous manner to assert one person's sense of importance.

The Humane Society, as a 501(c)(3) charity, has a board of directors that currently has 6 regular members four of whom are two married couples. Sharon Felkins and Alberta Cottrell also serve on the board. (It is highly) irregular to have two paid employees serve on a policy board since their work is overseen by the board.  It is like having a boss boss herself. This is a situation that . . . has led to an abuse of power. The board could have a total of eleven 'regular' members which would make it more representative of the area it serves and less like a 'private club.'

The Mendocino Coast Humane society is not a small operation. They reported to the IRS on their 990 form for the year 2010 submitted this past February that they had a total revenue of $477,000 and assets of just under $789,000. For this small community, this is quite a large charity. Yet the Humane Society keeps asserting that it is a private organization and they certainly strive to keep their meetings and deliberations private. As near as observers can tell they have not held a public meeting in more than nine years. When questioned they assert that the last meeting they held, the public complained and criticized (them). You think?!

I wish I had a solution.  I feel sad that the cats, who craved my attention when I visited, no longer have . . . volunteers to pet, groom and play with them.  In good conscience, I could never recommend the shelter as a place to volunteer as it is hostile and unpleasant to spend time there if one is at all sensitive to normal human interactions.  Simple things such as saying "hello" and "thank you" to a visitor are in short supply.  There is no sense of collaboration with the volunteers and woe beware the individual who disagrees with any decision or points out a problem situation.

I could have written about these problems months ago but did not because I know good hearted people are trying to come up with ways to make the Humane Society more humane. Frankly, with the present leadership, I doubt it is possible.

Lizette Weiss
Fort Bragg

(According to the Sheriff's log, animal welfare advocate, Carol Lillis, also received a visit from a Sheriff's deputy on Sept. 4th, but was not home to receive him.)

Mow

In a P.S.
Below is a copy of an email from Sharon Felkins in response to a query about the availability of 3 'feral' cats that the Stanford Inn wants to adopt. Sharon told Carol Lillis, and a second individual who inquired, that the 3 cats were MCHS property and that they were unavailable.  Clearly not understanding why cats living in the woods were unavailable for adoption, Carol contacted a board member who told her that "all MCHS cats indoors and out were available for adoption, and that it was their mission to adopt out animals." When Carol asked for confirmation that the cats were available, she was told by that same board member that she would meet with Sharon on Friday (the 14th) and would confirm by the same afternoon. When Carol didn't hear back, she again emailed to express the Stanford Inn's continued interest in the 3 cats, and was told that those cats, all three--the exact same cats--had been adopted. I (GR speaking) have it on good authority that, as of yesterday, those same three cats are still in the woods. I find it hard to believe that Sharon, and the other board members, carry such animosity toward Carol that they would prefer to let animals, with an opportunity to be adopted, continue to suffer the perils of life in the forest, but that seems to be the case.


This is the final paragraph in Sharon's email to Carol Lillis:
I do not expect, want, or need a reply to this email. There have been too many negative statements made about MCHS that have come from SOS and volunteers of SOS. I think its best that you not plan on being a volunteer at MCHS anymore. Thank you for all you've done and continue to do with SOS.
Sharon
Shelter Director
Mendocino Coast Humane Society

(S.O.S. formerly Support Our Shelter - Mendocino County Animal Care Services Fort Bragg, provided toys, treats, medical care beyond that which the county could provide. After Animal Control closed, they changed their name to SOS - Networking for Mendocino Coast Companion animals. They raised funds for surgery & got a grant to help a dog named Valen in need of a very expensive surgery. Valen had been left in need of surgery for quite some time because funds at MCHS were low and S.O.S was told, there was no money to help him. They also arranged for transport to and from UC Davis. More recently, they raised funds for Dime's surgery as well.)

A Bee Bake

organicconnectmag.com 
I love gee whiz biology--that moment when you discover something amazing that you never knew existed.

Last week a friend in Miami called to tell me that a colony of honey bees had taken over a small storage unit in her garage. We've all heard how threatened honey bees are, and how dire the consequences to our food supply if we lose our best pollinators.
http://vegan.com/blog/2012/04/07/cause-of-honey-bee-die-off-likely-discovered/

My friend has a grandson who is allegeric to beestings, so she started calling to find someone to remove the bees. At every turn she was told the bees would have to be destroyed. "They might be the africanized bees." (I've since checked this out and can find no government mandate requiring the destruction of bee colonies: No federal mandate, no Florida state mandate, nor in anything in Dade County, where she lives. However, that's what she was told.)  She rightfully insisted that if they were Africanized bees, she'd probably be dead. (She opened the storage container, saw the swarm and slammed it shut. That would have been a call to arms for  "killer" bees.)

According to my very reliable source, Africanized bees and the European honey bee (Apis mellifera) are the same species. The difference is in disposition--a zone of tolerance for having their busy work disturbed. The European honey bees (our species is from Europe) have a high tolerance; Africanized have very little.

"They react to disturbances ten times faster than European
honey bees, and will chase a person a quarter of a mile."

However, my friend refused to take the destruction of the bees as an answer; she kept calling and finally found someone to move them to a new home. While he was setting up he told her about how hornets will invade a honey bee hive and wipe it out, biting the heads off the much smaller bees. (There is a YouTube video about everything, but the one I found wasn't very good.) But here's the gee whiz part, I found this video of how some honey bees protect themselves against this kind of invasion. It's totally cool. Enjoy.
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/animals/bugs-animals/bees-and-wasps/killer_bee/


 When I was in Baja a few years ago there was a swarm of bees in the bushes on the trail to the camp bathrooms. It looked just like this. In addition, the only source of freshwater for the bees was the sink where we washed up in the morning and brushed our teeth. I was so proud of all of us. We shared the sinks with them, and tolerated each other, and I was lucky enough to see the moment when they suddenly departed.
texasento.net
This is a temporary swarm of bees
A hornet. Note the thread-waist.
Yellow jackets are a species of hornet
Hornet's Nest

And here's an ARE-YOU-KIDDING-ME ARTICLE
http://truth-out.org/news/item/11464-scotts-miracle-gro-to-pay-record-fines-for-poisoning-birds-and-selling-illegal-pesticides#.UE_ZoWV8COI.email

I'm headed out to turn my compost pile.

My Mother's Cat


Between my cat Risty's death and a friend's illness, I've been thinking about grief lately. I wrote this when my mother was sick.
                 
                  My Mother’s Cat
mourningclothes.blogspot.com

I always thought the Pruett women sounded like dreadful people. But my mother, for a reason it took me decades to discover, thought well of them.
            In the mid 1920s, the Pruett women were a curiosity in my mother’s town of Shenandoah, Iowa. They rarely left their house, which was a block from my mother’s on an elm-lined street. The curtains remained drawn in all seasons and only the wind made any use of the swing on the front porch.
            It was the “Roaring ‘20s,” but the Pruett women dressed as if untouched by time. In all the years since Mr. Pruett died, the only change they made from a year of wearing black, was to wearing gray—long, gray dresses with starched white collars buttoned to the throat. They wore their hair in tight buns, concealed by unadorned bonnets. When they left the house, they did so with the mother in the lead and her daughters clamped to her elbows, their heads held high, eyes straight ahead, lips drawn down into fine lines of secret disapproval. They went about their business knotted together so tightly, my mother told me, you couldn’t have split one off with a scalpel.
            I first heard the story of the Pruetts when I started school. There was a beautiful little girl in my class with thick red hair. She already knew her alphabet and could read a little, had both her front teeth and was the teacher’s pet. I didn’t like her and, at 6, found that hiding her crutches before recess compensated for my unremarkable start in first grade. Our teacher called my mother and Momma rolled out the Pruetts.
            The little girl had polio, she told me, and though she wore braces on both legs, she needed crutches. While I was growing up whole and normal and ignorant of the alphabet, this poor girl was confined to a bed with nothing better to do than practice her letters. From now on, she scolded, I was never to tease, or make fun, or do anything to make life more difficult for anyone. Think of the poor Pruetts, she said, it might have been just one person’s unkindness, one act of cruelty that caused the Pruett women to withdraw. They may have closed out the world, not because they really wanted to be isolated, but because hiding was preferable to risking the pain of exposure. I was never, she warned me, to be the one who caused a heart to slam shut.
            When I was 22, the boy I was in love with died in a plane crash. For the next three months, I left my apartment only to go to work. I stopped answering the phone calls of friends trying to lure me out, and ate canned Franco American spaghetti every night for dinner.
            Grief is a good thing, my mother said, if it helps heal the heartbreak, but if you are going to use it to become a martyr, then you need a bun and a bonnet and starch in your collars.
            When my mother was a girl in Shenandoah, people walked after Sunday supper, talked to their neighbors, and exchanged niceties. But when they passed the Pruetts’ house, they fell silent, and their eyes were drawn to the curtained windows and empty swing as if they might glimpse an unguarded moment: see the mother take a pie from the oven, spy a daughter at a dresser brushing her hair.
            On one such Sunday, my grandparents and my mother came out for their walk to find a crowd had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the Pruetts’.
            The mother and her two daughters were in their front yard. The older daughter was at the bottom of their porch steps next to a freshly dug mound of dirt. Her hair, long and full and blond, had come loose from its bun and hung over her shoulders and down the front of her dress, which was stained at the knees with dirt. She held a spade at her side. The other arm was thrown across her eyes.
            The mother and the younger daughter were on their knees by the mound. The daughter’s hands covered her eyes and she wept loudly. Her mother had crumpled into a gray heap, as if she’d been crushed and cast beside the pile of dirt. Her wispy gray hair hung in long thin strands.
            My mother and her parents joined the gape-mouthed neighbors at the edge of the Pruetts’ yard. My mother said, Mrs. Pruett saw them first, straightened and composed herself enough to pull her youngest daughter close and smooth her hair, then turned, her face glistening in the afternoon light. “It’s our cat,” Mrs. Pruett said, lifting her hands, palms up to the gathered congregation. “It’s our cat,” she sobbed.
            The neighbors nodded, bowed their heads, and went away. After that day, the people of Shenandoah spoke when they saw the Pruetts out. And the Pruetts began to respond.
            My mother told me this story long before my boyfriend died, before I’d had any experience with grief. She explained that Mrs. Pruett asked her neighbors to understand, and they did. Their loss was personal; grief is universal.  
I was in my forties, when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She still managed to laugh occasionally, get her hair done, and play bridge with her friends, but I could see in her eyes, she thought only of the cancer.
            “Try not to think about it, Momma,” I said one day when she forgot what she was saying and stared off into space. “Think of other things.”
            She looked at me, tears welling in her eyes, and took my hand. “Try to understand, honey, this is my cat.”
petside.com

The Hospice Cat


Oscar the Cat
southerncrossreview.org

This is Oscar, nicknamed the Hospice Cat. He was adopted by the medical staff as a kitten and his home ever since has been on the third floor of the nursing home with the dementia patients at the Steere House Nursing Center in Providence, Rhode Island. Oscar isn't necessarily a very friendly cat; he bit a doctor and often hisses at patients he passes in the hall, but he is such a reliable predictor of a patient's imminent passing that the nursing staff will call in the family when they find Oscar curled up in bed with a patient. Born in 2005, Oscar had accurately predicted 25 deaths by the time he was 2.
 
From an article by Catharine Paddock
in the Medical News Today
"Dr. Joan Teno of Brown University, who is experienced at treating terminally ill patients, said that Oscar can predict who is going to die more accurately than the staff. She became convinced of Oscar's "skill" while treating a patient who had stopped eating, was breathing erratically and her legs had started to look blue. She thought the patient was near death. But although Oscar called in to see her, he did not stay in the room.

As Teno later found out, that was 10 hours before the patient actually died, and the nurses told her that Oscar came back to sit with the dying patient 2 hours before she finally passed away. This was Oscar's 13th accurate prediction.

There is a commendation wall plaque at the nursing home, awarded to Oscar by a local hospice agency. The plaque reads: "For his compassionate hospice care, this plaque is awarded to Oscar the Cat."
 
"A Day in the Life of Oscar the Cat."
David M. Dosa.
NEJM Volume 357:328-329, July 26, 2007, Number 4

Click here to read the Article.
 
While researching this, I discovered this book written by Dr. Dosa.
Making Rounds With Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat, written by Dosa, an assistant professor of medicine and community health at Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School, was published by Hyperion 2010. The book recounts the stories of families who got to know Oscar and his unique ability. Dosa hopes that in reading Oscar’s story, readers also will learn more about terminal dementia and end-of-life care.
 
 

The Reptilian Brain

There are two species of alligators: the American alligator and the Chinese alligator, neither species is endowed with what one would call superior intelligent. Neither are the owners of this cat.


           I grew up in Florida. We lived on a lake, swam in that lake, saw alligators in that lake--even witnessed a fight between two large male alligators. What we were smart enough never to do was feed the alligators, or let our dogs swim in the lake without someone watching for 'gators.
           Alligator are poikilothermic (cold-blooded) which means their body temperature is at the mercy of their surroundings. On cold nights, alligators stay underwater because water loses heat to the atmosphere slowly. When the air warms up, and the sun is out, gators sunbath. People mistakenly assume these large, lumbering, groggy-looking reptiles are too slow to be dangerous. Far from it. Gators are capable of alarming bursts of speed. Their main prey of small (cat-sized) animals, which they can kill and eat in a single bite, are taken in split second lunges.     

cuteanimals4you.com

           In a behavior called the 'death roll,' large prey are grabbed, and dragged under water. The gator then spins, twisting off bite-sized chunks.  
           From Wikipedia:
"Most of the muscle in an alligator's jaw evolved to bite and grip prey. The muscles that close the jaws are exceptionally powerful, but the muscles for opening their jaws are comparatively weak. As a result, an adult human can hold an alligator's jaws shut barehanded. It is common today to use several wraps of duct tape to prevent an adult alligator from opening its jaws when handled or transported. Alligators are generally timid towards humans and tend to walk or swim away if one approaches. In the state of Florida, it is illegal to feed wild alligators at any time. If fed, the alligators will eventually lose their fear of humans and will learn to associate humans with food, thereby becoming a greater danger to people."
         The laughing, happy owners of this tourist attraction are feeding the alligators which will eventually lead to the killing of this cat. You can see in the second video how close these kids are to the gators. Like any good, suspenseful monster movie, it's likely that at some point, when these gators are larger and totally unafraid of humans, a customer will be snatched off this Louisana mudback and experience, first hand, albeit briefly, the death roll.         

What I Really Think


Max

I spent last week with friends at Mammoth Lakes on the eastern side of the California Sierra mountains. While they were on daily hikes, I stayed at the cabin and worked on rewriting one of my many unpublished novels. (If nothing I’m an optimist.)
        My friend, Teresa, is Max’s mom. I’m his aunt. Max is the 14 year old black lab mix she adopted as a puppy from our local Humane Society—where he was one of a litter of 11 abandoned by their owner. We call him Max the Mountain dog because next to swimming he loves hiking. Swimming in a mountain lake is the best of both worlds.
        It was while Teresa, Max, and our two other friends were off hiking a 12,000 foot peak that I heard about the Anthony Joseph Ortolani, who abandoned his four-year-old German Shepard, Missy, at 14,000 feet on a mountain in Colorado. According to the statement he made, a storm was approaching, raising concerns for his own safety and the safety of his teen-aged hiking partner. Since his dog's paws were too injured to make it back down the mountain, he left her. Once off the mountain, he did call for help, but was told they didn’t do animal rescues, and since he needed to get back to work, he wrote her off.
       Mr. Ortolani is being charged with animal cruelty. When he has his day in court, I hope someone asks the first question that occurred to me: at what altitude did this fool realize his dog’s paws were cut and bleeding? When did he first notice she was limping—9,000 ft, 10,000 ft? At what point, before reaching his goal, were there indications that she was having trouble. And how exactly did Missy manage to get to 14,000 feet but no further? And what idiot climbs a 14,000 ft. mountain without checking the weather, as my friends did every morning before setting out.
        Eight days after Anthony Joseph Ortolani was safely, snugly back home, a pair of hikers found Missy. They managed to do what Mr. Ortolani never attempted beyond his initial call for help, they organized a successful rescue attempt and brought the dehydrated, starving Missy off the mountain.
        I tried to imagine under what circumstances Teresa would have abandoned Max. Then I tried to imagine Max leaving Teresa. Never would either of them abandon the other. What breaks my heart is the picture in my head of Missy, day after day, watching the spot where she last saw Anthony Ortolani and continuing to trust--until she was nearly dead--that the person she loved would come back for her.
        Mr. Ortolani has apologized and wants Missy back. The guy who took NO for an answer and left his dog to die of thirst on a 14000 ft mountain, needs to take NO for an answer again. He may have had a legitimate reason for leaving her there, but there is no excuse on earth for deserting her.
       Dogs are full of all the attributes we credit to a higher power: love, devotion, trust, forgiveness. I'm sure Missy would forgive him. Which makes her more humane than Anthony Joseph Ortolani will ever be.
Bringing Missy down the mountain
abclocal.go.com
http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_21337462/man-who-left-dog-colorado-mountain-faces-animal

"People always joke that ‘dog’ spells ‘god’ backwards. They should consider that this might it be the higher power coming down to see just how well they do, what kind of people they are. The animals are right here . . . in front of us. And how we treat these companions is a test." Linda Blair

 
Facebook.com

It just so happens there is a bill before the California state senate. SB 1500 by Senator Ted Lieu re: Seized and Abandoned Animals. Support.
   Amends procedures in the process of dealing with seized/abandoned animals to be sure the “owner” can properly care for the animal and pay the costs of being held at the animal control shelter.
   Hearing: Governor Jerry Brown.
   Write: Tell him abused/abandoned animals should not be returned to their “owners” but, if so, they must pay for their care in the animal shelters and assure the animals’ well being.
 Governor Jerry Brown and Legislators: State Capitol Building, Sacramento, CA 95814


Max enjoying a roll in the snow


Max hiking with his mom


When he's not a mountain dog, he's a water dog.



Max and Teresa last week at Virginia Lake Pass
about 12,000 feet




 If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans. James Herriot

The Couch-potato is home from the mountains

Hi All,
I'm home from Mammoth Lakes, CA, where I was NOT hiking. I spent my mini-vacation in our cabin rewriting a novel while my friends hiked into thin air. I considered the air quite thin enough inside the cabin at 8300 feet. I'll come back to that in a few days.
Meanwhile, back in my former sea level (and below) home state of Florida, the largest python ever found was captured.  

Can you imagine, this is the old record
I need a couple of days to get back in the groove. Enjoy the autopsy.

Memories of a Couch-potato

This couch-potato has been watching the Olympics every night, reliving my own meager accomplishments on my high school swimming team where my highest level of achievement was 3rd in the County in the 200 IM. 
           I was also the second of our team's two divers. Emoke Papp was our 'star' diver. Her father, a Hungarian boxer, defected during the 1956 Olympics. Emoke always took 1st place in our diving competitions and I consistently took 3rd, because none of the other teams had a second diver. My job was to get off the diving board without killing myself, or anyone else.
           For me the highlight of Olympics was watching Oscar Pistorius, the South African runner with two prosthetic legs. He was successful in his bid to compete in this year’s—what shall we call them—able-bodied Olympics versus the Paralympics for less able-bodied athletes? Or differently-abled—a category this 3rd-place diver fell into. Anyway, in 2007, the International Association of Athletics Federations, banned Pistorius from competing in able-bodied competitions after tests showed the Cheetah blades allowed him to expend less energy than his two-legged counterparts. In fact, the blades make it harder to get off the starting blocks negating any advantage they give him. 
            Personally, I found myself on the very edge of my recliner when he ran in the qualifying round and again in the semi-finals. I was disappointed that he didn’t make it through to the finals, but he was out there giving it his all and I was there for him. I’d love to see the Paralympics be part of the Olympics, right there in prime time, instead of separate, a sometime later and ‘lesser’ series of events.
            Watching him reminded me of my second attempt at writing--a piece about a wheelchair-bound marathoner. This one was published as a real news story with a picture and a byline, unlike like my first, which was published as an editorial comment. I was living in Coconut Grove, Florida, at the time.
            Of course I kept a copy, and didn't resist the urge to noodle it a bit.
                                                                                             
The applause and shouts of the spectators reached a sufficient volume to finish any thought of further sleep, so with a cup of coffee in hand, I stood on my balcony to watch the stream of Orange Bowl marathoners pass below.
            Most of the runners, especially those early ones, were young men, followed eventually by a few women and a half dozen wheelchair participants.
            A heavy-set, elderly man, his sweater stretched tightly across his ample waist, stood on the curb with the other fans and cheered loudly for every runner who passed, but his attention always returned to watching the corner of Tigertail where the runners made the turn on to Mary Street. I found myself waiting anxiously for whoever he was waiting for. Every runner got his full attention before he'd leaned to look up the street again. The ranks were thinning, and it seemed the last of the runners were passing, but he continued to clap and whistle. When he turned from cheering for the next series of stragglers, a young man in the wheelchair was nearly abreast of him.
            “All right, Billy,“ he shouted, and leapt into the air like a man half his weight and age. “All right, son,” he said, softly.
            For a short distance, he ran along the sidewalk, dodging spectators, shouting encouragement as his boy rounded the corner on to Grand Avenue. Unable to keep up, he pounded to a stop, raised his hand in the air, then made a fist, the downward momentum of which spun him around. He was panting and laughing.
            I couldn’t see where the race ended from my apartment, but I doubt a big deal was made of Billy crossing the finish line. I also can’t imagine that it mattered to him or his dad.

veryvietnam.com

Oscar the Cat
theinternetpetvet.com

Dolphin Tail
Winter

thehandiestone.typepad.com

Riley
  I'll be offline for about 10 days, so
here's wishing you cool breezes.