Never Eat Crow - A Critter Tale

I think I've had one of every animal pictured here. Maybe two of the polar bears.

I am a collector of all things furry, feathered, flying, creeping, purring, and barking. Taming my urges to acquire all of God's creatures has been hard-earned.

Grizzly used to bring home every stray anything, hand it to me to save, and then gripe endlessly about its existence in our home. Like the time at work he pulled four tiny kittens out of a pipe that was about to be flooded. The progenitor was nowhere to be seen. Naturally, I became the mama to the tottering, eyes barely opening, mewling felines.

"We'll find homes for them," he announced to me, two-year-old Wild Man, and six-year-old Bo. Yeah. That'll work.

Let's see.....we'll all be mamas since there isn't one. And that means we'll hover over them every minute, feed them nearly on the hour, feel them snuggle in the crooks of our necks for warmth while sucking on our ear lobes, and when they're hail and hearty a month from now, off they'll go.

That might have been feasible if he'd brought home hyenas. Not so much with four purring fluff balls.

Names had to be given of course. We were consumed with Beatrix Potter at the time so two of them became "Tom Kitten," and "Jemima Puddle Cat." The others just "Tucker" and "Bess" because we liked the names. Two tabby striped boys, two all white girls.

In our family almost all names get morphed. We can't help it. It might even be a syndrome they haven't named yet. The kids have vacillated between despising us for it and gleefully participating. Recently, they have begun to show signs of irreversible infection.

For instance, "Tom" became "Tommy." No big deal. Then "Tombo Combo" because one of our local hole-in-the-wall hamburger joints had a menu item by that name. (Former owner was named Tom. You don't need to know this so of course I'm telling you anyway.) Then Tommy developed an intestinal problem which rendered him sulphuric and socially unacceptable. Consequently, we dubbed him "Tombo Combo Dropped a Little Bomb-bo." And on and on it went.

"Jemima Puddle Cat" became "Jemima" which became "Mime-urs" but is spelled "Mimers." Which looks like it should be pronounced Mimm-ers. Nothing makes much sense. I just call her "Stewy." Yes, there's an explanation for that, too, but it can wait.

Bess and Tucker, strangely enough, managed to hang on to their original monikers most of the time. JoJo, however, who entered the fray at roughly the same time, developed approximately 35 names. I'm telling you, it's a strange condition and we probably need medication.

But this story wasn't about cats or dogs, believe it or not, or our odd naming affliction. This story was supposed to be about birds. I have no idea what happened.

I meant to tell you about the day Grizzly brought me a baby crow.

He was the biggest, most helpless looking baby. And such a dark gray he was nearly black.

I had always wanted a crow. You rarely see babies because the parents are so intensely protective, the fledglings don't leave the nest until they are nearly grown. And you can teach crows to talk. Technically, you're not supposed to keep them as pets. But if one flies right into your arms, what are you supposed to do? I know what I did, having rehabilitated more than my share of wild critters. I checked the Internet for what to feed him and how best to get him to eat. I even made a mock crow head out of plastic tweezers and a glove and poked food down his throat. He thrived. He grew. He made strange noises.

Every day I gave him flying lessons by holding onto his feet and making him flap. He loved it. He was the UGLIEST thing I have nearly ever seen. And he STANK. Our is it stunk? He smelled bad. But he was ours. I hoped to set him free and find that he wanted to live around our yard. I envisioned him calling out words to us much as a previous rescue, "Hope," the mocking bird, learned to imitate the toads and would croak from the tree tops. I envisioned him swooping in for visits. What I didn't envision was his transformation into a pigeon.

I looked at him one day and wondered why he wasn't black anymore. He was getting lighter and his beak was looking decidedly freakish for a crow. Stripes started forming down his wings. I don't know when it dawned on me but I do remember staring at him one day and saying, "That's no crow." It was Bo who piped up and said, "He looks like a pigeon."

"A PIGEON?" I exclaimed, protesting. Surely, in all of God's green earth I wasn't raising a pigeon and thinking it was a crow.

"Yeah, Mommy. That's a pigeon! Isn't he beautiful?"

"Well, maybe, for a pigeon," I replied, "but he's a pretty ugly crow."


It dawned on me I'd been feeding him the wrong diet. He couldn't have cared less. He was huge.

Since there was nothing to be done but finish his ground school pilot's work, I kept up the lessons. My goal was to teach him to fly......AWAY. One pigeon turns into a herd of pigeons, or a grove, or a quorum. Something.

Fully feathered out and completely ready to launch, he was actually beautiful. We had grown quite attached to him and dubbed him "Twig." He knew his name and began to make lovely sounds when he landed. He was making regular tours around the backyard now and we expected to find that he had gone for good nearly any day, off in search of a flock of his own. But instead, he seemed quite content to stay with us and perch on any surface where he could land. And the closer to the back door the better. If we left it open he would walk right in.

In case you were ever in doubt about this, pigeons poop. A LOT. Soon our ladder, patio table, garden fence, etc. were being christened in lovely white splashes reminiscent of grotesque modern art paintings and equally as welcome. We attempted to shoo him out past our yard. He was undeterred. He belonged to us even though we had at least 300 other pigeons he could have joined at anytime, living a mere 1/4 mile away in an old, abandoned winery tower. Life was good with us. And so we felt his relocation might need a boost. Perhaps he should live somewhere farther away where he could still have human contact.

The perfect place dawned on us. A huge park fifteen miles north with lakes and trees and, best of all, people who came regularly to feed ducks, geese, and pigeons. He would be in his element. He would find a wife. He would go on to create a family tree. With more twigs on it.

With sadness, but a sense of anticipation, we dropped Twig into a cardboard box and closed the lid lightly. We had to stop at the bank on the way and, not wanting to leave him in a hot car, took him into the bank with us. The Wild Man, being six-years-old and not yet known for his judgment, began to worry that Twig couldn't breathe well. So he opened the box. In the bank. Twig popped up his head to decide which teller should receive his deposit. He spread his wings for flight just at the moment we all noticed him. We forced him to make an emergency landing and returned him to the terminal. Disaster averted. On to the park.

As we approached a little lake surrounded by trees we decided this was our spot. We stroked his soft feathers one last time. We assured him birds were thriving all around him. We told him about his romantic possibilities. But the kids cried anyway. They worried he wouldn't know what to do. They were sure he'd starve.

We set him down on the ground. He made no attempt to fly away and merely walked around dejectedly. Bo burst into tears. And then, all at once, he flew to the top of the highest tree and simply sat there, looking lost. This wasn't the comforting parting I had planned. I wiped faces and noses and said the reassuring things mommies say. There was no happy way out of this but I tried to reassure them Twig would adjust.

I headed toward home with a heavy heart. Would he adjust? Had I condemned him to starvation, deprivation, annihilation? I tried to put it out of my mind, distract the kids, and get our errands done.

By the time we got home I sat said children at the schoolroom desk and set their work out before them. The day was beautiful and I threw open the windows and doors. It seemed a little quiet in the backyard not hearing Twig's fluttering coos as he flew about and my heart accused me with a tight pang. I hoped the kids weren't feeling the same way but I figured they were. We had grown so used to his sounds.

Suddenly, I heard a familiar whoosh and coo. I stopped in my tracks and snapped my head toward the back door. Of course, there could be no way it was Twig. I hoped the kids hadn't heard it. Girzzly had already threatened to relocate Twig to Pismo Beach, 150 miles away, and I had laughed him off quite sure 15 miles was enough. But maybe Twig had spread the word before he left and now another pigeon was discovering the gravy train. I rushed to the back door. So did the kids. Yep, they'd heard it.

"Is that Twig?!" they shouted.

I looked to the patio table. And sure enough, sitting there plump, pretty, and pleased with himself was Twig. "Made it!," he seemed to say. "Where's my ladder? I really gotta go."

The kids were elated, naturally. This meant Twig simply had to live with us because in his God-given bird brain, this was home, and he'd proven he could find it from anywhere. The place he knew and the place he loved. There had to be another answer. We would discover it. But in the meantime, what could we do but say, "Welcome home, Twig! You're amazing! How in the heck did you DO that?" and, oh yeah, "Dad's gonna kill us!"


To Be Continued....


Copyright 2009

Punxsutawney Phil and Gopher Guts

Don't you just hate those days when a gopher has a death grip on your shoe and you can't launch him off no matter what?

I am thinking of gophers today since it's Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, officially sentencing us to more cold weather. I'm in California. If it gets any colder in Los Angeles it'll be summer. Winter never fully arrived in some parts of our state. If you're in London, what with the blizzard and all today, you probably think Phil is a bloody genius and wish we would swap him to you for Madonna. Frankly, I think we should leave things as they are. I don't know what you ever did to deserve Madonna but hey, she's yours to keep. She says she wants to go back to New York now that she's gutted Guy Ritchie. If I was NYC I'd hang out the "No Vacancy" sign.

But speaking of things you don't want, I'm glad our gophers aren't as big as Punxsutawney Phil. Your leg could get a cramp trying to shake them off. It was hard enough trying to dislodge an average sized rodent.

When our house was being built every gopher in the neighborhood waged war with the encroaching humans. The gophers were tough and big and carried small semi-automatic weapons. One afternoon, we pulled up to our house to check the progress and the Godfather met us at the curb. He stood up and stuck his chest out. Grizzly Adams, my husband, yelled and stamped his foot in a show of brutal authority. The gopher clutched his heart and staggered, fell down laughing, then leapt to his feet, possessed-red-eyes flashing, and buried his Bucky-the-Beaver incisors into the toe of Grizzly's sneaker.

My husband is no Jackie Chan but he's got pretty sophisticated ninja moves when vermin are attached to his lower extremities. He whirled and kicked and jerked and whacked and sprinted down the curb, still sporting two long teeth and a pair of beady eyes, and that wasn't even counting the gopher. I very helpfully ran along yelling, "Get him off! Get him off your shoe! Kick him! Fling him!" These helpful utterances offered him valuable insights that might not have occured to him otherwise. But it didn't matter. When the rubber hit the road, it did so with the thud of vibrating gopher flesh and there was no sign of retreat.

As I looked around wildly for a stick or missle launcher, Grizzly gave one last massive kick. I watched our miniature nemisis sail through the air as though shot from a cannon. With a final show of dominance he stuck the landing and dusted himself off, glaring down the road at us. I always hoped he was the one my cat laid at my feet several years later.

Kitty Baby made it her life's mission to divest the neighborhood of this evil element. She relished her job. It wasn't enough to merely kill the things. She felt if you could not enjoy your work there was no point doing it. She frequently showed up in the backyard circus playing "Flying Trapeeze," in which she would throw the gopher and then fail to catch it on the other side. This provided hours and hours of great cat fun. When she grew bored, she would skin them and lay them out on the front porch for the rest of the rodent clan to view. In her spare time she made jaunty little hats for herself out of the leather.

I like to think she was avenging me from a childhood attack.

When I was seven I walked to second grade by myself everyday. It was about two miles and that was a lot of time to think up hair-brained ideas like how great it would be to catch a gopher in a paper bag. The thought first occured to me when I spotted a furry brown thing scooting along the ground one day. It was my foregone conclusion, as it was when I saw any animal, that it was lost, desperately lonely, and would undoubtedly die but for my timely intervention. And then there were the show-and-tell possibilities. No one ever pulled a wild rodent out of a sack. I was sure to be popular.

The next day, with brown lunch bag firmly in hand, I set out for school hoping my gopher rescue would go off without a hitch. As soon as I spotted him I dumped my lunch and closed in. He saw me and sat up. I lifted the bag for rapid capture. I was successful except for the fact that I had caught him by the teeth with the fatty part of my ring finger. He was firmly attached. I screamed bloody murder and ran like my tail was on fire. He wasn't the least intimidated. I shook my hand, my arm, the earth on which I stood. We were one.

I think he gave up when I entered the third grade.

Supposedly I never contracted rabies. But I have raged around and foamed at the mouth a few times to the point that the shed and being shot have been mentioned in my actual presence.

Which reminds me of the time I had a feral cat plastered to my head via teeth and claws and actually did get rabies shots. But that's a story for Halloween when my booster is due.


Copyright 2009

"Kitty Baby" - A Love Story

“Kitty Baby.” It wasn’t supposed to be a name, just something to call her until we figured it out. But I’m sure most of you know how that goes and, after while, she just couldn’t be called anything else.

I found her late one afternoon as I turned into Wendy’s for a quick bite. She was hanging out at the trashcans eating French fries (fast food would continue to be a favorite her whole life). I have always been a sucker for cats and dogs so I couldn’t help stopping to talk to her and see if I could get her to come. We made eye contact and a little sizzle of connection zipped between us. She rolled over onto her back with a bit of a tease on her face. She wanted to come to me but was unsure. No one at Wendy’s knew anything about her but when I inquired at the bank next door, a lady said she had fed her intermittently for about six months and she seemed to want to make contact with people.

I left the parking lot determined to catch her. The weather had been unusually cold and was forecasted to drop to 17 degrees that night, with freezing rain. We had been experiencing record low temperatures for several days and nights and I wondered how much longer she could take it. I made my way to the local animal shelter, secured a trap, and headed home to give Jamie the good news. He was less than thrilled, but amenable. We baited the trap with anchovies and tuna and left her alone. A half-an-hour later she was protesting loudly, with fish breath, from the confines of the cage. She was officially ours.

I was 5 months pregnant with our now 17-year-old daughter and Kitty was wild as a March hare once she was confined. Jamie had built a large convalescence cage for a former cat and that became Kitty’s home. Each day he admonished me to stay away from her until he could tame her. I was very careful but I couldn’t stay away. I spent time with her and talked to her. I brought treats. Within a week she began to rub against the cage and flip over onto her back. I knew any threat that may have existed was gone. I reached into the cage and petted her. Warm response. I leaned over and ran my hand under her belly, giving her a little lift up. No protests. Soon I dropped her into my arms. She nuzzled my face, purred, and became mine. I left the garage and headed into the house with her in my arms. Jamie thought I was nuts and immediately envisioned toxoplasmosis and rabies. The baby and I were never in danger. In fact, nothing could have been farther from the truth.

Kitty seemed to know I was expecting and doted on me. She was especially fascinated with my burgeoning belly and would spend hours draped over it. She would stare at the movements underneath and send her purring vibrations directly to Miss Hannah. We three spent many contented evenings snuggled up together.

Once the baby arrived, Kitty took over. She diligently watched out for her. Wherever I would lay Hannah down, Kitty was immediately nearby. When Hannah nursed, Kitty would drape herself over my shoulders and around the back of my neck, gazing down at her. Occasionally she would get down and give her head a good washing so she would not only be fed, but clean. One time as I sat in the rocker with my nursing bra on, Kitty walked up, took a look at Hannah on one side and decided the other side ought to be put to use as well. She opened her mouth wide, gently latched on, then looked up at me as if to say, “What’s so great about a mouthful of cotton?” She decided it wouldn’t work for her. I couldn’t have agreed more.

When my son was born four years later the treatment was the same. Each time the babies learned to crawl she shadowed them. If they went into the playpen, so did she. If they pulled out fists of fur….all in a days work. She knew they were baby “things” and afforded them every exception. She never slept near their faces but I would occasionally find her snuggled in a crib at their feet. She watched baths and hung out close by. She endured the dress-up of fashion shows, bit parts as the “baby” actor in plays, and dutifully accepted being pushed around in strollers and mini-shopping carts.

She never bit, hissed at, or scolded a child. The only time she got her tail in a knot was if we had been gone for a few days. When we would return she would snub us for a bit, and then absolve us. That changed, one time, with an extended absence. The kids and I had been traveling for three weeks and Jamie was the only one home. When we finally returned, Kitty was beside herself with joy, meowing loudly. Suddenly she disappeared and ran out the pet door. I forgot about it with the unpacking and didn’t give it another thought until I flopped down on the couch exhausted. In a few minutes I heard the telltale sound of yowling that cats make when they have prey in their mouths. Kitty was just below me. I looked down as she looked up and our eyes locked. We both regarded the dead gopher she had laid at my feet. Her most prized prey was my welcome home gift. And she’d even thought to skin it for me. What a gal.

Then there was the night she came in injured, with a terrible abscess. I thought it was a bite but actually came to find out years later it would be a chronic condition she developed many times. She had a fever and needed immediate treatment, and the vet was closed. Having grown up around critters, horses, kids, etc. I wasn’t squeamish and had some limited medical training. I shaved her down, got out a scalpel from my ditch medicine bag, treated the area with betadine, and, after donning gloves, employed ten-year-old Hannah as my assistant – she’s tough as nails. There was no anesthesia so we made every effort to be as gentle as could be managed. Kitty was in so much pain she seemed to be relieved at any treatment and lay as quietly as she could. She never tried to bite either one of us though the procedures would sometimes take two hours to complete. We would drain and clean the affected area, and debride the necrotic tissue. I would do Internet searches for what antibiotic would be effective and then go on the hunt for left over meds the kids hadn’t been able to take. (Remember, we don’t do meds well in our family so those were always plentiful.) Invariably, I would have what was called for, measure it out by tiny amounts on a grain scale, and treat accordingly. She recovered beautifully each time and only needed a trip to the vet for it once or twice.

And there was no mistake: as much as she loved the kids it was because she saw us as co-parents. She belonged to me and it was me she slept with and sought out for love and assurance. We had a sixth-sense connection. Those don’t come along with just any animal but if you’ve experienced it, you know what I mean. That made it doubly hard as her health began to deteriorate. She looked to me for comfort but dreaded the meds I had to dole out to help her and would often avoid me. I began to know the decision was coming. I just didn’t know it would happen so suddenly, all at once, in a day.
We laid her to rest here. It was terribly hard to part with her beautifully soft fur and gentle little body. But we will always keep the love we shared so earnestly through the years. She brought me great comfort during times of sadness or crisis and there were many during the years. And she offered abundant love and true friendship on a daily basis. I hope I’m half the patient, loving, friend my cat was. I will continue to learn from her legacy. Good-bye, my dear little friend. I will sorely miss you.