Hard Headed

My pit bull has zero retriever DNA. I know because when I throw a ball, he chases it, grabs it, shakes it around, and then runs around the yard with it to everywhere but where I’m standing. So we play a lot of keep-away. I throw the ball, he charges after it, grabs it, runs to a few feet from me, drops the ball, and looks at me. Taunting me. And I fall for it, every time. Don’t get me wrong, if I say in an authoritative manner, “Lucius, drop it.” He will. He’ll stand over it calmly while I pick it up and then sit while I throw it too, but that’s no fun right? Where’s the challenge? There’s nothing like the rush of adrenalin when my tender hand beats those quick jaws to the slobbery ball. A victory dance for me and then whoosh! Off he goes.

A quick note about a pit’s jaws, they don’t lock. I know this because Lucius has hay fever and gets daily doses of Benedryl. To give a dog Benedryl you have to take gel caps, imbed them in a glob of butter, pry open those well muscled jaws, and shove the mess down their throats. Trust me, neither of us finds this amusing, but it’s Benedryl or really itch hives and oatmeal baths. Oh, don’t laugh, the poor fellow has enough problems.

Likely, the myth about locking jaws has to do with their tenacity. Pit bulls were originally bred in England for bull baiting. Basically they were thrown in pits with bulls. I never hypnotically regressed Lucius to a past life to find out the truth, but I imagine it was a hang on or get trampled strategy that helped them develop their strong bite. Eventually bull baiting was deemed inhumane so dog fighting replaced it (I know, the limit to human hypocrisy must not exist). But the pit’s tenacity remains to this day. If you can’t get them to let go of their chew toy, they probably just don’t want to.

Back to the yard though, for the denouement of this blog. So we’re playing our version of fetch and it’s a heated battle, can I get to the ball before he grabs it. I toss one straight up in the air he waits, waits, and leaps at least six feet vertically to snatch it before it falls. But he misses and it lands, bounces, rolls. I take off. So does Lucius. I get there and bend down, hand outstretched. But I’m too slow and he already has the ball. As I’m going down to grab it, he’s coming up (to gloat most likely). And smack! A big, solid pit bull skull hits me right in the nose. I plop down in the grass, stunned and waiting for the blood to start flowing.

According to my doctor, the forward and downward momentum is what caused the concussion. Today, the headache has finally abated enough to blog. We may just be playing traditional fetch from now on… maybe.

Orally Fixated Kitten

Orally Fixated Kitten

Ok so she isn’t a kitten anymore. Willow will be three in August, but she’s my youngest cat so it’s hard to think of her any other way. We rescued Willow, and she’s been a conundrum right from the start. From her crossed eyes, to her odd markings, and her, well… psychological issues, she’s always been my wicked little mystery.

It started with the trick she played on me when we first met. I was walking up some concrete steps to the building where I worked. I used to work in construction so we started early and it was still dark. There was this tiny, cream colored kitten huddled at the top of the steps. I went to pick her up and she limped away, just out of reach. We played this game, me taking a few steps toward her, and her limping away, for about five minutes until some co-workers showed up and helped me trap her. I drove her home and set her up with a bed and food (which she devoured) in the bathroom. Willow and my husband bonded at the vet’s office later, when I told the vet she’d been limping and the vet told me there was nothing wrong with her leg. My husband grinned.

“Little punk. She played you.” He couldn’t stop laughing and they’ve been best buddies ever since.

Of course she had worms, every cat I’ve rescued has had worms, but even after the worms were gone, a ravenous appetite remained. The infamous Dr. Stuart joked that she’d gone ahead and given Willow the tummy tuck/spay package because she was already rolly polly at six months and that was just simply embarrassing for a young kitten.

I started calling her Yum Yum Willow because she purrs when she eats and that is the ONLY time she purrs…. Sounds like she’s saying ‘yum yum yum yum’.

Which brings me to the crux of the problem, biting. Freud said that early weaning can lead to an obsessive desire to fulfill oral gratification. I wasn’t present for most of Willow’s kitten hood, but I’d guess from the enjoyment she gets out of gnawing on human flesh that something went awfully wrong there.

When I greet my cats I typically offer them a hand, they’ll sniff and then rub and get all happy. Willow will sniff, then lick, then nibble, then gnaw until she breaks the skin if you don’t get away fast enough. She loves fingers and toes and the fleshy under parts of your arms. But if breakfast is late, the perky tip of my nose is her favorite treat. And it isn’t just me (although it mostly is, what did Freud say about adoptive mothers?) she bites the dog too. Anyone who says Pit Bulls snap and lose their cool has never met the longsuffering Lucius. He’s been bitten and nibbled and gnawed on almost constantly for the better part of his two years on Earth and still loves to cuddle with the vicious Yum Yum. They’d make a great team should anyone ever decided to break into our house (which is probably only a matter of time).

So I tend to regard Willow as an attraction on a safari. She’s fascinating to watch (lolling about, nibbling the dog’s legs, trying to clean her ass), but you really don’t want to get too close.

P.S. So no one thinks I’m abusive, Willow is on a low fat food and diet… we’re all wearing chain mail around the house now.

A Cynic’s Cure

I was sitting at my computer earlier today, agonizing over this freelance writing thing I’ve decided to try and make a living at and nowhere near deciding which animal would be the subject of today’s blog, when a large white flash crossed the window in front of me. It happened so fast that my brain, locating itself firmly in my second story room in a house sitting in the middle of an urban suburb, could not place the white blur. I peeked over the corner of my screen, my eyes a little fuzzy, and there, perched in one of my neighbor’s fruit trees was a great egret (Ardea alba, if you’re curious).

They aren’t an uncommon site in Northern California, but they are an uncommon site in my neighborhood (an actual hood, in the grittiest sense of the word), at least fifteen miles from any water. It was out of place in every sense of the phrase. Great egrets normally nest and hunt near fresh or saltwater in colonies, feeding mainly on fish. My neighbor’s tree, not suited for a bird three and a half feet tall with a wingspan of almost five feet, was bending and shaking as the lanky fowl searched for a foothold. I yelled down the stairs for my husband. And as we attempted pictures with camera phones (which of course didn’t come out), we discussed the possibilities for such an odd presence in our hood. None came to mind, but we did hope in our world-weary way that none of the neighbors shot it. I don’t know if egrets make good food, but they might make good sport for someone bored, armed, and disillusioned.

After a few minutes it flew off and we both hoped out loud that it made it somewhere safe. Although the sighting lasted only a few minutes, seeing an incredibly beautiful bird in my far from beautiful neighborhood yanked at my mind all day. A soft and elegant white foil to my prickling cynicism? It would seem so. And of course I couldn’t help but wonder if there could be any cure to a cynical world view if such a graceful bird couldn’t banish it for even a few minutes. (Odd Cat howls from solitary as I write this, poor old man gets sprung tomorrow. I wonder if cats get cynical. Actually I’m certain cats can be cynical). I don’t take for granted the unexplained and unexpected sighting, but there was a time when it might have seemed fortuitous. Today, I just worried about the bird and hoped the humans it encountered at worst ignored it and at best were respectful.

I did do a little research on Ardea alba. It turns out they are one of we humans’ success stories. Hunted to near extinction for their plumage (put that feather in your cap), they are now listed as secure and thriving with habitats all over the world. And although a sardonic, ‘just in time to wiped out by global warming’, type comment did race through my mind, a flicker of hope for the world, for the human race, and for egrets in hoods everywhere exiled it and I smiled to sit down and blog about the beautiful bird that crossed my path today.

(image by Davefoc)

Recovering Arachnophobic

I’ve been a huge arachnophobe ever since I was little. And I remember exactly what happened to cause it. I was probably around six and my parents, my younger brother, and I lived in an old apartment in Utah. My brother and I had been goofing around with my dad, wrestling, getting tickled no doubt, and laughing. I had to pee and managed to break away from the giggling fray to run (literally) to the bathroom. I opened the door and pop! A huge spider springs down from the ceiling on a silken thread, touching my nose. I can still see it in dreams, huge mandibles, eight spindly legs pulsating (trying to grab me, really) in the air as it bounced on its SURPRISE! thread. I screamed and peed my pants and then cried for awhile. All of which were all appropriate reactions for a six year old girl.

For the next twenty-four years the first thing I did upon entering any building or room was look at the door jamb, and then the ceiling. I developed my own spider sense. I could tell if there was a spider without even looking. The site of a spider would cause instant paralysis. I couldn’t move, or it would see me and jump on me or run after me really fast, who knows, but something terrible would happen if I moved. It’s hard to describe the irrational fear that gripped me over something so small, and most of the time harmless. But it felt like hot pokers in my chest and fire through my limbs. No matter what my brain was screaming, my body wouldn’t move.

Oddly enough it took an infestation of a highly toxic spider to nudge me toward arachnophobia recovery. Last summer our house was swarming with western black widows. Latrodectus hesperus, I learned. I didn’t want to waste money on an exterminator so I learned everything I could about this rather intimidating looking lady. I learned to recognize males and juveniles, learned about feeding and hunting habits, and I learned about breeding and how to keep a population under control naturally. I also learned that widows are not aggressive and that no one in the US has died from a widow bite since the ‘80’s. It turns out spiders are fascinating creatures. Still, we did have to curb the infestation. We probably killed three or four dozen black widows last summer.

This summer we’ve seen a few, but nothing near last year’s numbers. This year I’ve realized too what amazing predators black widows are. Last year, in the garden and around the house, there was nothing but black widows. This year the diversity in not only insects, but other spiders as well is incredible. Learning more about spiders opened up a whole new creeping crawling world I’d never really taken an interest in. I have four enormous amazing red New Zealand flax plants in my front yard. Two of them have daring jumping spiders living in them that are probably bigger than a quarter. One of them is shown eating a black widow above. And on one of my tomato plants out back I have a celer crab spider. Neither type of spider is a web maker, they rely on their eyesight and quickness to catch prey.

So I’ve gotten over my fear of spiders enough to sit for a minute and observe them if I see them. No panicking and squishing for the outdoor arachnids. And I use the more humane ‘relocation’ method to rid myself of spiders in the house as opposed to the vacuum method I used to use. I do not see letting one crawl its eight legs across my fingers anytime soon, but the paralysis has lifted and I can now identify most of the spiders in my back yard. They truly are fascinating creatures and it’s worth conquering fear to get a closer look at them.