Bob White and Other Friends

 Confession time:  I am baffled by the current fascination with chickens as recipients of human affection.  I don't get it.  When I look into a chicken's beady little black eye, I see and feel nothing better than indifference. I understand the fascination with incubating eggs, watching them hatch, and hearing the slightly endearing peep peeps of the little chicks.   When I see the results of chickens' behavior toward their kinfolk.....no tail feathers and the like..I'm tempted to say, "With friends like these....?"

On the other hand, there are lots of little birds I am quite fond of: the wrens, aggressively protective from a safe distance,  hectoring  and scolding one moment and the next pouring out a glorious liquid melody from the hidden corners of the yard. The finch family, whistling to each other while they flitter from the seedy buffet of the coneflowers and rudbeckias. Though I don't mind a nest or too in the fern baskets on the front porch, I do get annoyed when they are so neighborly as to build in my porch lights or above the fan....or on the front door.....

It used to be a big deal to see a turkey.  Not long after we moved out to the farm, the dogs treed a hen turkey high in the elm in the front yard.  It was the first wild turkey I'd ever seen; her pictures are in the photo album from that year.  I will swerve to avoid a pheasant...we don't see them that often anymore and the birds are more beautiful than brainy.

I love to hear the quail calling from hillside to hillside on summer days while I am watering the mum lines. When I was growing up,  'bob white' seemed to echo continuously along the gravel road to our farm. Even our next door neighbor two miles down the road was named...Bob White.

I was still in my quixotic horsey phase when the Whites decided they wanted to sell their riding pony.  I arranged to walk over one day and take a ride on the pony and try him out.  As I remember it, the two of us did just fine for a while, until all of a sudden, the pony took a wild hair to dash off the track into the woods, jumping a couple of fallen logs along the way!  Fortunately, I managed to hang on, and eventually delivered the perverse creature back home, but the experience pretty well cured me of my flirtation with horse ownership.  Guess I'll just stick with the Clydesdales...

Then there are the animals best experienced as scenery...peacocks, for example...pronghorn antelope on the range....decorative cattle like Belted Galloways and Red Angus.  The prime example of scenic beasts is the American bison,  majestic by itself, artistic and evocative spread across a hillside, the cows and calves powerful even when pastoral.

But our stories, our sentiments, our reminiscences are all about the animals we name, we raise, we talk to,  we hug.  They can be sounding boards, or silent companions. Sometimes they are footstools; sometimes pillows.  

And while these faithful friends in our family have mostly been dogs,  I do want to pay homage to one cat from our past that was as devoted as any dog and had the same disdain for any notion of personal space.  She showed up unannounced, like all our pets did on the farm.  One day she followed me into one of the greenhouses where I was watering poinsettias, leaped onto the benches, and, with no warning, sprang onto my shoulders and wrapped herself around my neck like a purring furry stole.  There she stayed, riding along as I maneuvered between the benches.  Cats in the greenhouses are pretty well verboten because no one wants to find a surprise in their potted plants, but one never left this little cat behind. She was small, a black calico with wide yellow eyes and we just called her 'Baby'.  She always jumped up on my shoulders and never once scratched me even when I removed her...she was just companionable in the extreme and very sweet.

The current farm dogs are a lovable though eccentric bunch, and in that they carry on a tradition going back more than three decades from Bob who ate fireworks to Mister who danced, Dunkin who chased reflections, not shadows, and Juno, patient, quiet, and gentle despite her Doberman/German Shepherd heritage.

This Christmas season I can't help but remember the day a young, scared and very pregnant black Lab turned up in the driveway.  We took food and water down to the old shed and sure enough, the next day, we found her there surrounded by seven wriggling puppies.  My first thought was to name her Penelope, but that didn't stick so Mama Dog she was for the rest of her life.  She never became a truly friendly dog; she didn't like noise or crowds and disappeared when there were lots of little boys around.  But whenever we were alone on the farm...working on a greenhouse or watering lines or pulling weeds....we would see her keeping watch from the top of a terrace or from the shade of a propane tank. It was a sad day when Blake and I came to work and found her cold body...she was faithful and true.

Ike was one of Mama Dog's puppies.  Matt adopted him and shortly thereafter, Ike moved with Ann and Matt to their home in Kansas City.  Ike loved all kids, had a sensitive stomach, and had no idea he was a dog.  He was happy at the farm, but would wear himself out trying to keep track of all his people...no napping on the job for Ikey!  His successor is Griswold, who falls all over himself each morning wanting to ride, to go; soon and very soon, he will be a farm dog himself.  Lee and Ryan's compatriots are Elvis of the soulful eyes and Gibbs, an enormous mound of hair and paws.  Gibbs thinks he is a lap dog and no one has managed to dissuade him of the notion. He is a lover, not a fighter, that will indeed bark at a strange noise or a disturbance....from under the front porch or the garage.

These are some of the good guys of the animal kingdom, the ones we love, who meet our eyes with their great brown ones and bridge the gap between man and beast.

P.S.  And then there are the animals I'm not so fond of....

Alligators and crocodiles...cold, cold malice.

Goats....destruction that jumps

Tomato hornworms....it's  personal.....

The Rally Cat and Other Four Legged Friends

A few nights ago, the small grey cat streaked across center field of Busch Stadium like the proverbial “bat out of h***” into...at the very least….its fifteen minutes of fame.  The crowd was riveted to to the big screen struggle between the young groundskeeper and terrified animal, but after those two actors leaped into the stands and vanished into the maw of the stadium, Yadier Molina created an even bigger sensation when he launched a grand slam homer, putting the Cards ahead in a moment that was Roy Hobbs worthy...in the view of ecstatic Cardinal fans, like us!

Wednesday night, #RallyCat shared the spotlight.  Wednesday night, we were all cat people.

But...in general, that has not been the case.  Dogs have been the critters in our family pictures…Nip and Tuck and Skaggs on one side...Frisky and Silver on the other.  Of course, Millie has always had chickens and my dad had cattle as soon as he had pastures for them.  Laura and I were proud owners of Brownie, but even though she was named, it was strictly a business relationship. Nip and Tuck were the Labs that flung themselves, slobbering and barking, upon our Dodge Dart when we pulled into the driveway at Granny’s house. They greeted us in the same way, tackling us with their giant paws and giant jaws as soon as we stepped out the back door of the car. It was always a terrifying experience.

Compared to Nip and Tuck of memory, Juno, our first dog, was as gentle as she was large and calm despite her Doberman/German Shepherd heritage.  She loved Blake and became the consummate farm dog companion when she was transplanted from the duplex we lived in the last year of college to a life of pickup seats, wide open windows, and standing on the tool box in the back with her ears streaming behind her.  As far as I know, she only fell off once and climbed out of the ditch and jumped back into the truck with more damage to her dignity than injury from the tumble.  

Juno’s great doggy friend was Barney, Nancy’s beagle.  He was a wanderer, traveling from farm to farm to visit and staying until Nancy physically hauled him back to their house.  Even after they were both old and gray, Barney would find his way the six or seven miles through the country to our farm to visit his friend. He would stay for weeks while we enjoyed the sight of the two old dogs napping companionably under the shade of the elms.  

When the girls were old enough to be enamored with pets, we tended to acquire puppies in pairs.  Tommy and Holly, two black and white mutts with mirror image personalities: Tommy never knew a stranger and would roll over for a scratching before he was introduced, but Holly, who had been hit by a pickup early in life, was cautious, aloof, with sad black eyes. Tommy and Holly and I had a love hate relationship during their puppyhood.  Every time I planted something in the yard...a tree, a shrub, a rose, a perennial of any kind, they found it and dug it up.  We made our peace, but I spent an intense and angry spring chasing them through the yard, screaming imprecations that they couldn’t understand, and attempting to flail them around the ears with whatever desiccated plant carcass they had literally unearthed.

During these full house years, word evidently went out on the doggie grapevine that we were soft touches when it came to canines.  Every dog dumped heartlessly along our gravel road made its way to our dog dish. And some lovable scamps they were:  Frisky, a beautiful black puppy with a penchant for pulling clothes off the line; Mister, a raggedy long haired black and white critter with a desire to dance; and Bob, an enormous well mannered giant with a passion for fetching fireworks.  All three passed through giving us at one time or another, a population of five dogs on the farmstead along with the unnumbered unnamed cats; no wonder any stranger to our farm tended to wait in the car.

The very last stray appeared, like Mary mother of Jesus, pregnant in the deep of winter.  She was a cautious quiet nervous black dog, that we found hiding in the straw in our old shed very near Christmas time.  And, sure enough, she delivered her puppies in the barn….eight of them...and thus she became Mama Dog for all the rest of her life.  The puppies ranged from cocoa to chocolate to black and were cute as could be.  Ann and Matt fell in love with a chocolate male, and Ike was their faithful, loving, though finicky, family member before Aaron, before Lizzie and before Josh.  Peanut wound up staying at the farm, spooky, gargantuan presence under the front porch; like her siblings, she had personality quirks and a thyroid problem to boot.   Mama Dog was a good friend, following us out to the greenhouses to work, though she was far too nervous to nap inside.  During the summer hours though, she would come down to the mum patches and and rest in the clover nearby, keeping watch over her people as long as we were out of doors.

Like the lyrics from a Lyle Lovett song, these are but a few of the furry friends that spent time with us.  Chickens from Grandma Millie.  Fish that lasted longer than anyone had a right to expect after their people decided cleaning the tank was too gross. Bubbles, the head butting bottle calf. Cats like Magnum, PI, the only pet Blake ever brought home, and Pumpkin, an enormous...yes, you guessed it...orange tabby.  Finally, Baby, the last named and most loving cat ever, who would climb upon my shoulder and curl herself around my neck, giving me both a purring massage and a fur stole.

“And there are more I remember

And more I could mention

Than words I could write in a song..”

Lyle Lovett, Family Reserve