Froby: The Great Dane Who Thought He Was A Deer

Froby: the Great Dane Who Thought He Was A Deer:

Part 1. How It All Began

“I confess I’ve been totally smitten

By a canine vast, not by a kitten.

He was found at the pound

But he’s bound to come round

To our house, when the papers are written.”

I penned this little ditty on July 19, 2011. We had just found the successor to Enkidu, our sensational Portuguese water dog, and were waiting for the animal shelter to deem us worthy of adopting one of their own. It had taken us quite a while to find a dog not thin enough to get between the uprights of our fence, not agile enough to jump over it, and not clever enough to dig his way to freedom under it. I was looking at the animal shelter's website when my eye was caught by a family of Great Danes: a female and her three, seven-month-old puppies. We hied ourselves to the shelter and asked to see the male.

Kobe was named after Kobe Bryant, the basketball player of Extreme Height and Even More Extreme Notoriety for Sexual Misconduct. “I’m not naming our dog after a rapist,” protested Eldest Son Iain, and who was I to argue? We changed his name to Froby after the notorious Sir Martin Frobisher, the man who single-handedly put the “fool” into “fool’s gold”  (But that’s a story for another day.) Kobe was duly brought out on a leash and handed to Robin.  What a sorry sight!  He looked for all the world like an English-style toast rack covered with a harsh, staring coat of black, gray and a rather grubby white. He could have been an illustration from a textbook: ”The Skeletal Structure of a Dog”, for every bone in his body was painfully visible. Great Danes are inveterate leaners, and true to form, Frobe leaned heavily against Robin, while fixing us both with his expressive, golden eyes. "Take me," he implored. “I'll do anything you want if you’ll just take me out of this ghastly dump. All I need is a little TLC, honest! You’ll see, I’ll love you forever, I promise!"

The staff looked us over critically. I was entering the 10th year of my adventure with Parkinson's, and my mobility was sorely compromised.  They were obviously wondering how I would cope. I thought about long walks, even runs, such a colossal dog would surely require and wondered too. Was I taking on too much— more than I could handle? Was it fair on the dog? What about my husband—was it fair on him? On the cats? My ruminations were cut short when the staff raised the subject of Wobblers Syndrome. They were pretty sure that our chosen one was developing this malformation of the spine that would lead to partial, then total paralysis of his back legs; that we were probably facing a short life for him, and not a very healthy one at that. They were not at all sanguine about the prospects of finding a better qualified, willing adopter, however, and so it was agreed. Kobe, now Frobe, would come to live with us, and we would all muddle through as best we could.

Froby was willing, even eager, to get into the car. So far, so good; maybe there was less to taming semi-wild dogs than I’d feared.  Call me Dog Whisperer . . . Home again, I leaned  down almost imperceptibly to reach the leash looped around his neck, with a view to affixing it to his animal shelter-issue collar, I was blown away by the sudden eruption of raw canine power that pulsed through his meager frame.  Talk about strong—the leash was ripped from my hands, and our brand new family member disappeared into the tangled, overgrown corner of the yard that none of us had yet ventured into.

We went to bed that night with three questions uppermost in our minds: 1) Is the yard Great Dane-proof; 2) Assuming it is and we still have a dog, How in the world will we begin to make his acquaintance, and 3) What will the good folk at the shelter say when we confess that we lost him already, less than one hour after they gave him into our care?

With these concerns buzzing in my brain, sleep was, to put it mildly, fractured. I had an inkling that I’d need to be well rested come the morrow, so I practiced relaxing exercises and waited, with some apprehension, to discover what the morning would reveal.

Whatever's the Matter with Percy?

Percy has been going through a rather difficult phase lately – staying out all night, snarling at her best pal Froby, refusing to come when called . .  . I'm not sure whether it's teenage angst or a midlife crisis. Yes, I am aware that it's generally an easy question to discern– age of onset gives the clue - but that's for humans, not dogs. What does middle age look like in dog years? In Great Dane years? In Great Dane with Wobbler’s Syndrome years? There is an unfortunate correlation between the size of a dog and its expected longevity: the smaller the dog, the longer it lives. Thus the demise of our faithful, 130-lb Newfie, Phoenix, from lymph node cancer at the tender age of 8; of our glorious, medium-size Portuguese water dog, Enkidu, of an enlarged heart at only 12. Meanwhile the tiniest Yorkies and Chihuahuas yap their way through as many as twenty-plus years. But I digress. Back to Percy . . .

 It all started with the kitchen door. Now, bear in mind she had used this door multiple times a day for as long as she’s been with us, about six years. Considering the number of times she asks to go out every day purely in order to bark a request for re-entry, I estimate her “kitchen door events” at approx. eleven thousand and fifty-seven . Despite this, I say, she simply refused the kitchen door, going instead to the dining room’s French doors where she sat on a  small rug conveniently placed, and waited  expectantly for me to open it.

Many years of living with Froby’s sporadic, prolific and entirely unpredictable incontinence meant that I took her urgent request to go outside seriously.  l hurtled over - “hurtling” being for me a relative term these days, implying not so much speed of movement as "with a mounting fear of the ghastly repercussions should I not get there  in time".  I decided to engage in warfare with her: she would return to using the kitchen door!

 All the dog training experts tell you never to begin a battle unless you know you can win it; I chose to ignore them all, and next morning, unleashed my opening salvo.

“Other door”, I commanded when she went to the dining room door. “Go to the Other Door.” Percy smiled at me, wagged her tail, and budged not an inch. I tried again, my words a little slower and louder (rather in the manner of a tourist in foreign lands convinced that the natives will understand proper English if only it is spoken loudly and slowly enough: “OTHER DOOR!!” Her smile morphed into a grin, Robin proffered his help, to no avail. My fundamental error of logic struck me full force: true, I had her breakfast held hostage, but she had a weapon infinitely more  menacing – after a full nine hours in the house, her bladder was FULL (and who knows what else besides?)

As they say at Wimbledon, Game, Set and Match!  Hastily I told her, “You can go out of any door you like, just as long as you Go Outside NOW! “

And. She. Went!

She has returned to her old, sweet, goofy self. True, she still insists on only using the dining-room door, but I have perceived a method to her madness:  the red tiles of the dining room are smaller and less smooth than the pale ones in the kitchen.

And thus less slippery!

So what appeared to me to be nothing more than arbitrary caprice on her part turns out to be nothing less than the far more laudable Instinct for Self Preservation: she knows that, with her Wobbler’s Syndrome worsening, walking into the kitchen has become a Very Bad Idea indeed. Her legs slide out from under her and her poor, bony elbows, ribs and knees hit the hard tile floor with a bang that makes my teeth curl.

Forgive me, Percy, for doubting the moral integrity of your actions.

Wow, but it’s hard to second-guess the mind of a Dane!

THOMAS: the Perfect Fire, Part 2.

I cannot recommend trying to sleep in a car, even next to such an enchantingly picturesque beach as Carpinteria. This is especially true if you have a cat yowling at full volume in the back seat. I wondered dimly if a towel draped over the carrier would shut him up, as it does a parrot, but was far too cold and stiff to go to all the trouble of finding out.

Our first day as refugees from the fire: actually, I suppose "evacuees" is more accurate than “refugees", which I think implies something political. Nuances of vocabulary aside, once a brief glance at the fire map had dispelled all hope of returning home in the foreseeable future, we needed two things in fairly short order: breakfast, and a bathroom.  (How I felt for families wjth babies or small children to care for!) The first café we tried could not serve us breakfast because power outages had played havoc with their computers, which were down for who knew how long. I briefly considered volunteering to scramble any number of eggs with no help from a computer whatsoever, but thought better of it. Which is quite possibly why I’m still alive today.

We were relieved to find a Motel 6 with a vacancy, and planned to spend the next night there. But ever-vigilant fire watcher Lorna had other ideas: parts of US 101 had been closed, or were in danger of being closed; Thomas was roaring north and would soon be threatening Carpinteria. She strongly advised that we move up the coast to Goleta, just north of Santa Barbara, and adjacent to the airport.

Ah yes, the airport. For, in an act of cosmic serendipity, we were booked to fly up to Seattle from Santa Barbara that very Thursday, returning on Monday.  It seemed downright cavalier to leave our pet sitter in charge of a house that might burst into flames any moment, but she insisted she was up to the challenge. Knowing how much the dogs loved and trusted her, also that there was still absolutely nothing either Robin or I could do apart from look anguished and wring our hands - and I’m none too sure how to do even that. (Note To Self: watch more Victorian melodramas), we reasoned that, once evacuated, we might as well be in Seattle as in a motel.

Meanwhile, we looked into having the Humane Society go and rescue the dogs, as they were picking up large animals (horses, zebras, giraffes etc.) in the evacuation zone: they refused, unimpressed by my argument that both Great Danes were easily the size of a small horse. I'll swear I shrank a good three inches under the withering glare of the H.S. rep when I admitted that yes, we no longer owned a vehicle big enough to transport both dogs.

My special relationship with my clothes was getting pretty intense by now, and we were both longing for a shower; thus we disobeyed Lorna's explicit orders and drove home. That was probably the most extraordinary drive of my life. The air, as we crossed the Ventura County line, became putrid with smoke. Where it was thinner we saw evidence of the firefighters’ extraordinary work: over and over again, fire blackened hillsides reached right down to houses that stood unharmed at their base. But tragically, some still smoking piles of rubble amid charred trees marked the spot where a family’s life-as-they-knew-it was terminated, an enforced fresh start imposed

Hopes of a shower were thwarted yet again: Lorna told us that all four exit roads had been closed an hour or two previously, sealing off the flaming Ojai Valley from the outside world. One exit was now open, and we should take it while we could. Pausing only to grab a few clothes for our Seattle trip, and to reassure the dogs of our fundamental, all-appearances-to-the-contrary-notwithstanding dependability,

we bade our home au revoir, hoping it would not prove to be adieu.

I can prevaricate no longer: I must tell you about Tuesday and Wednesday nights. But first, a slightly more intensive geography lesson: the Ojai Valley sits roughly 750 feet above sea level and is approximately 3 miles wide and 10 miles long. To the north are mountains ranging from four or five thousand feet to the imposing Topa Topas, visible to the north-east from our dining room window, at close to 7 thousand. Mountains to the south, which our kitchen looks out on, are not to be sneezed at, checking in at around 3 thousand.

Only one road, the 150, traverses the valley, providing the sole exit to the east; to the west it is briefly joined by the 33, which offers a straight run to Ventura in one direction, a “gee, it sure looked shorter on the map” mass of sudden inclines and hairpin bends leading – eventually – to Maricopa in the other. Firefighters were making a desperate effort to redirect the fire to bypass Ojai to the south. That is to say, within a few hundred yards of our house. This critical time was to occur on Tuesday night; danger was directly proportional to wind speed.

Tuesday evening's weather forecast was far from reassuring; in fact, it was downright terrifying. The Chief Weather Guru waved his arms at a map featuring a massive, immobile high pressure area centered on us which, he stated bluntly, meant inevitable winds of at least thirty mph blowing the fire from the mountaintops, down the valley, straight at our little town. Losing our home looked like a certainty. “It’s only stuff” was the mantra I had heard repeated. True, true, but we are at heart a sacramental people, imbuing our “stuff” with all the power of the memories that it invokes.

We went to bed dreading what the morrow would bring – and yet when we awoke, the weatherman had been dumbfounded, the “inevitable” winds had failed to materialize. Ojai was saved! The fire chief himself called it “miraculous”.

To cut a very long story short, we had an almost exact replay on Wednesday, with the exception that the fire, driven by winds of 3-4 mph (not 30-40, thank you CWG) and strongly encouraged by legions of fire fighters, skirted Ojai to the north, threatening our good friends’ homes, but ultimately leaving most of Ojai standing.

Postlude:  January 1, 2018

And there the story of the fire – or at least, our involvement with it - comes to an end. Still no rain, but the winds finally show signs of abating, giving firefighters a chance to contain the active edges of the fire. But back in early December, Thomas was till 100% unchecked. We flew out of Santa Barbara the next day, Thursday, on a packed plane, returning on a half empty one four days later (funny thing – nobody wanted to be in Santa Barbara anymore). Our car was covered in ash, which blew off as we drove. Breathing masks were essential, both indoors and out; the air in town looked like diluted porridge, and was chokingly hard to breathe (shades of Beijing). Everywhere we went, we were acutely reminded of our good fortune: so many people were homeless, or had lost their livelihood – a car mechanic’s garage with all his tools, a potter’s barn, burned to the ground; a craft shop aimed at the tourists who ordinarily flock to Ojai, closed for lack of customers. Restaurants with a freezer full of spoiled food and no patrons. It has been inspiring - and truly humbling – to see how the community has rallied to help those affected by the fire.

Incidentally, the entire firefighting system was incredibly impressive – they fought with brains, not just water and fire retardant. Foreseeing a problem, they moved to extinguish it like a panther closing in on its prey. Would that our government acted with such grace and economy of movement! The police too were phenomenal, maintaining order and preventing looting.

It could have been so much worse, but Thomas still stands unchallenged as the biggest and most destructive wildfire in the history of California.

The Story of a Fire: SoCal, Dec 4 - ?? '17

THOMAS:  the Perfect Fire

I had a strange feeling that Monday as I picked out my clothes for the day: a suspicion that I would feel rather differently about these clothes when I took them off; that I was entering into some kind of a special relationship with them.

That evening, around 9 o'clock, a friend texted me: "Have you heard about the fire?" No, indeed I had not. I pushed aside a gnawing sense of unease – Santa Paula was 15 miles away, surely a comfortable distance -  and called Robin who was still at work,  blissfully ignorant of the fire. He told me he would come home directly. By now my sense of dread was had grown to unbridled fear; I wished Robin would hurry up  and  come home. Surely once he was home, everything would go back to normal! But news grew still more dire: much of Santa Paula was under mandatory evacuation orders, while Ventura  - well, it was hard to know what exactly was going on in Ventura. We heard rumors – a brand new apartment building  burned to the ground; bone dry vegetation erupting in flames at the touch of a single spark. dozens of homes in flames, the fire, 100% uncontained, spreading like . . . , well, like wildfire.

Helpless to do anything to help apart from pray and stay out of the firemen’s way, Robin and I sat on our patio praying the rosary, and watched the orange glow move along the mountain peaks at an alarming rate.  I went to bed with my clothes on, (see “special relationship” above), just in case we needed to evacuate, while Robin made himself fairly comfortable on the sofa in the living room, setting his alarm to wake him every hour to check on the flames’ progress.

He never got the chance: at 2 AM the sheriff knocked at the door.  “Evacuation in your area is not mandatory, but if I were you I would get out now, and I wouldn’t stop to think too hard about what to take with me.” That was enough for us!  I stumbled about, trying to think of things I would need and, for the most part, failing miserably.  My own personal Eeyore was silent, replaced by a sort of desperate positivity: "We'll just have to spend one night out, and then it will be all clear and we can go home.. So I don’t really need to worry about clothes, do I? " Meanwhile, Robin grabbed the yearbooks that were the record of our homeschooling years, and which, I am happy to say, came quite willingly. 

Not so Pyga the kitty cat, a hissing, spitting ball of fury who, lacking any clue as to Robin’s good intentions in cramming him into his cat carrier, let out a shout of protest on every outbreath. I know, I know, cats don’t “shout”, they “meow”. Not Pyga. He shouted. It was the most unearthly racket – I later tried to imitate it, but try as I might, could not attain the decibel level Pyga achieved so effortlessly.  At least, I assume it was effortless – he was able to keep it up for hours on end, with no appreciable wear to his vocal cords.

Another indefatigable family member was our daughter Lorna. From her apartment in Seattle, she kept us informed of damage thus far, of  the fire’s progress, and road closures. Thank God for a computer literate daughter! It was eerie, driving through the night in pitch darkness with only Lorna’s voice for company. And Pyga. Mustn’t forget Pyga . . .

The Ojai Valley is ringed with mountains, and there are only four roads going in, much the same number coming out. (Thank you, Fiddler on the Roof). Hwy 33, the main road, was closed, so we took our chances with Hwy 150, the grossly contorted hypotenuse of the triangle formed by Ojai, Ventura and Carpinteria, bordered by Hwys 33, 150, and US Interstate 101.

News relayed by Lorna was increasingly grim: the fire (nicknamed "Thomas") was spreading at the rate of one acre per second (you read that right - one acre per second), fanned by winds of 60 mph, gusting up to 80. Hundreds of homes in Ventura were in flames, the firemen too occupied with their efforts to prevent Thomas from spreading to deal with houses that were already ablaze - a sort of real estate triage, in effect..

We reached Carpinteria, pulling to a halt  by the sea, not far from where Eldest Son Iain had camped with his family last summer, under somewhat rosier circumstances. I didn’t know what the morrow would bring,  but one thing was clear:

Thomas looked as if he was planning to stick around for quite a while.

To Be Continued   .

"I can't believe I've lived all these years without knowing this word". . .

Today's "I can't believe I've lived all these years without knowing this word" (courtesy, as ever, of Anu Garg’s magnificent A.Word.A.Day) is . . . wait for it . . . 'tenesmus'.

It is a noun, and it means, "A distressing but ineffectual urge to defecate or urinate."

There - see what I mean? Only think about where and when you might have used this truly remarkable word, and I fully expect you will find possibilities stretching in an unbroken line to the horizon and beyond. (Kindly do not ask me how I know what lies beyond the horizon: let's just say, I have my sources.)

And so I exhort you - make up for lost time, for all those squandered opportunities when you could have used 'tenesmus' and didn't (admittedly for good reason, since up till now you had never heard of the word), and beginning today, simply insert 'tenesmus' into your everyday conversations! Your friends and family will be gobsmacked, as will any potential job interviewer with an ear for unorthodox vocabulary. (You may want to consider carefully the  tension implicit in the phrase, “distressing but ineffectual”;  does this really imply, as indeed it seems to,  that something distressing will, in the normal run of things, be effective?) 

 Also, if indeed you find yourself in a job interview and the subject of tenesmus is raised, consider carefully whether you ought not look for a different job.

And now it’s time for our Exciting Contest: just use “tenesmus” in a sentence of any length, preferably in English, using words containing not more than 15 syllables,  and add it to the Comments section. 

You’ll be glad you did -

And so will I!

In Which I Consider The Possibility That I Have Gone Completely, Stark Raving Bonkers.

Yesterday I opened an email from my friend “Cicely” (names changed to avoid embarrassing innocent victims), and noticed with some surprise that, while it was dated May 1, the previous email was from February 2. Had I really not communicated with Cicely in those three months? Of course I had – but here was proof positive that I had not. How could this be? What did it signify?

Feeling just a wee bit queasy, I opened the email: it told me that she and her husband “Cuthbert” were going to San Juan on Thursday, returning on Friday, to check on the new renters. Now, bear in mind that this was first thing in the morning and my brain was still more than a little groggy from sleep and caffeine-insufficiency, also that for quite some time now my mind has (quite of its own volition) been taking mini-vacations in the Pacific Northwest where we lived for twenty-four years and all six of our children were born, and you will understand what happened next: I thought she meant the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington and British Columbia!

Beyond gobsmacked, that I was! How could it be that in all the years I had known her, Cicely had never once let slip that she and Cuthbert own a rental property on the San Juans? Moreover, they were flying up to Washington on Thursday and back on Friday. Highly uncharacteristic – there was definitely something fishy going on. Add to this the missing three months of emails, and you will get some idea of my complete bewilderment and confusion.

So this is what it's like, I thought. This is the beginning of the end, of the utter mental chaos and inability to manage one's environment that gives dementia such a bad name.

Maybe, I thought, I am misremembering the islands’ name: maybe the San Juans are actually the California islands – could that be it? Hastily, I Googled San Juan Islands. Sure enough, there they were just as I remembered them, firmly plunked in the Puget Sound. Not only that, but Oh Glory! As my eyes traveled down the list of San Juans, they came to a screeching halt at San Juan Capistrano. Aha! Capistrano I know about: our family spent three months there living in a house right on the beach, while my husband was running an anti-euthanasia campaign back in ’92. San Juan Capistrano was where I bathed our then youngest in the kitchen sink and practically wiped out my right knee on a rock, body-surfing.

San Juan Capistrano is also where Cicely’s mother’s house is: a house that has been rented out for some years, ever since Cicely’s mom moved on to a place where she has no need of an earthly dwelling.

Even the three months of missing emails had a benign explanation: Cicely had been clearing out February’s emails, found “If you loved ‘LaLaLand’ you’ll love . . . “, and forwarded it to me to see if any of their movie suggestions appealed.

Ta-da – vindicated! Guess who isn't crazy after all – but when I looked up LaLa Land in the dictionary and learned that it is “a euphoric dreamlike mental state detached from the harsher realities of life”, I think I may just pay it a visit.

I’ve had about all I can take of the “harsher realities of life” for the time being.

WALTZING MATILDA - SHOCK HORROR REVELATION!!!!!!!

WALTZING MATILDA – SHOCK HORROR REVELATION!!!!!!!!

Like a thunderbolt out of the blue it struck me: Waltzing Matilda, which is practically Australia’s national anthem, is in duple time. That's right, two beats per bar! All my life, I have unquestioningly believed that it is in triple meter – after all, that's what a waltz is, isn't it? ONE – two – three, ONE – two – three . . . and now I put on my critical listening ears, I find it is actually a march: ONE – two, ONE - two, LEFT- right LEFT - right. What, Waltzing Matilda not a waltz? Next, you’ll be telling me that Brighton rock is not made in Brighton, or that toad-in-the-hole is not now, nor has ever been, an amphibian.

What's up? Have the Australians, with their highly developed sense of irony, been playing an elaborate practical joke on the rest of the world? I found the answer here, in Rolf Harris’s entertaining and highly informative preamble to his inimitable rendition of the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl-YI44XYjI

Aha! All stands revealed: a “swagman” (wandering hobo) carries his meager belongings, and such tucker (food) as he possesses, in his “swag”, a ragged blanket tied around his shoulders, which he mockingly refers to as his “Matilda”, or life companion. So “waltzing” has nothing to do with dancing, but rather evokes a slow, weary trudge through the Australian bush, whose grimness is briefly relieved every morning by such magical sounds as these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1yf1bP_W4E

Alas, we learn that our hero has run afoul of the law – he has stolen a jumbuck! What is a jumbuck, I hear you ask. Hmm, should I tell you, or make you listen to the song? I’ll tell you this much: the penalty for stealing one in 19^th century Australia was death . . . and uh-oh, here comes the “squatter”, or landowner, (strange isn’t it, how the meaning of the word has changed?) mounted on his thoroughbred. Choosing a quick death by drowning over a protracted one ending with hanging, our lamentably uncatechised swagman leaps into the billabong, crying, “You’ll never take me alive!”

So there we have it: a rattling good song, a brief foreign language lesson, and an introduction to Australia’s unique wildlife (be sure not to miss the Thorny Devil.) And if you’re still itching for a waltz, try this one: Tchaikovsky - Waltz of the Flowers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxHkLdQy5f0.

How Rude - or then again, Perhaps Not!

I’ve been thinking about words that appear to be rude, but aren’t. Words you can use with impunity in front of your Great Aunt Bertha, knowing full well that, when she fans herself and reaches for the smelling-salts, you’ll be ready with the perfectly innocent definitions culled from A.Word.A.Day.com. For your convenience, I replicate them here:

Crapulous

adjective: Sick from excessive drinking or eating.

From Latin crapula (drunkenness), from Greek kraipale (hangover, drunkenness). Earliest documented use: 1540. Also crapulent.

Modern Usage: (Mother): All right, Timmy, go ahead and have another slice of cake; but don’t blame me if it makes you crapulous!

Bonus: We learn the Greek for a hangover: Kraipale. You never know when it may come in handy.

Pricket

noun:	1. A sharp point or spike for holding a candle.
	2. A male deer in its second year, before the antlers have branched.

Diminutive of prick/prik, from Old English prica (point). Earliest documented use: 1331.

Mod Use: “This pricket’s way too small – the candle keeps falling off!”

Fard

noun:	Makeup
verb tr.:	1. To apply makeup.
	2. To embellish or gloss over.

From Old French fard (makeup), from farden (to apply makeup), of Germanic origin. Earliest documented use: 1450.

Modern usage: “Will you please stop farding in the bathroom and come for breakfast?”

Cunctation - noun: Delay; procrastination; tardiness.

From Latin cunctari (to hesitate, delay). Earliest documented use: 1585.

Modern Usage: “Even as a baby he was given to cunctation: he’d wake me up at 2AM, but not to nurse; he’d just yawn three times and go back to sleep.”

Cock up – noun: Something going horribly wrong, e.g. this definition, which the computer stoutly refused to provide. Instead, I was treated to those infuriating whirling circles – definitely a cock up. And I can provide no “earliest documented use”, either.

Now, about those two bonus words I promised you. Here they are:

Bonus Word #1: verb: formicate, To swarm like ants.

Modern usage: At graduation, visitors beheld the campus covered with formicating students.

Bonus Word #2: absquatulate: verb: to make off with something.

Modern usage: “I say, that bounder just absquatulated with my cricket pads!”

Enjoy introducing your friends to these words – but don’t be surprised if you get a few strange looks along the way!

How to Catch A Seagull

At no point in my adult life have I devoted significant mental energy to contemplating how to catch a seagull. Never, that is, until I found myself discussing this very question with some newfound friends at the beach one Sunday afternoon in early August. It turned out that not only had they captured a seagull in the past, but they were willing to try it again. There was even a teenage boy (let’s call him Hamish), eager to make the attempt. My sole job was to observe from a respectful distance and take scrupulous mental notes.

Here's how it's done: first, Hamish selected a part of the beach with few humans, especially of the junior variety who like to run around screaming. Ensuring that there were sufficient seagulls in sight, both airborne and waddling along the sand, he scooped out a shallow trench more or less the same length as himself, and lay down in it. Taking a large towel, he covered himself from feet to chin. Both arms lay cunningly concealed beneath the towel. One arm sneaked out, bearing a succulent morsel of leftover foodstuff designed to titillate a seagull's taste buds into paroxysms of delight (in this case, the remains of a chicken wing with just a hint of Alfredo sauce), and placed it on the towel, right over Hamish’s stomach.

Now came the hard part: we waited. And waited. And while we waited, (it being rather a hot afternoon,) my lunchtime beer kicked in and I began to fantasize. Suppose we get lucky, I thought; suppose a gull spies the morsel with its beady eye, and swoops down to claim it as its own. The moment for action has arrived! Like a coiled viper, Hamish unfurls his betoweled arms and seizes the hapless bird in his steely embrace. He has our seagull!

Okay, so now what? What exactly does one do with this very unhappy captive bird, whose mighty beak is thrashing around, inches away from Hamish’s eyeballs—eat it? Sorry, seagull pie is out of the question: when asked by a journalist why seagull meat never put in an appearance on the daily menu, a Devon fisherman replied in his broad West Country drawl, “If ‘ee puts a seagull int’ oven wi’ a brick, th’ brick ‘ud be done first, and it’d taaste better.”

Perhaps it could be tamed and kept as a pet! I looked up “domesticate” in the massive dictionary (which, thanks to the marvels of the common cell phone, I just happened to have with me) and found that the process of domestication generally involves such a close association with human beings that the animal loses its fondness for living in the wild. One look into that flashing eye, one ear-piercing, raucous shriek, one moment’s contemplation of their disgusting personal habits that make them about as desirable a pet as an airborne dung beetle, and I was convinced—there would be no seagull perched in my kitchen, screeching incessantly, taking enormous pecks out of any human foolish enough to venture within striking range, making vast, splashy messes of fishy-stinky seagull poop all over the floor . . .

 My reverie was cut short by Joe’s return. Dusting sand off himself, he admitted defeat: perhaps there had been one too many children running on the beach; perhaps it was the wrong brand of Alfredo sauce; perhaps the birds simply weren’t in the mood . . . Whatever the reason, the seagull-capturing quest had proved a failure.

And I couldn’t honestly say I was sorry.

HEAT - and What To Do About It

"Who goes out in the midday sun?
"Mad dogs and Englishmen"
This little couplet runs through my brain every year when the temperature in SoCal inches towards 100F and I recall the land of my birth. There, in the halcyon days before the climate went berserk and triple digits invading Buckingham Palace became almost commonplace, something quite extraordinary happened: pretty much any time the sun put in an appearance, no matter how brief, every piece of turf, no matter how minuscule, was instantly covered with sweating bodies roasting painful shades of reddish pink, slowly turning as if on an invisible communal spit. "Carpe solem" might be their motto: seize the sun.
Let us now leave my ex-countrymen, and turn instead to the suburban back yards of the US where the cry rings out, "I'm too hot, Mom, it's too ho-o-t, Mom, MOM, I said, IT'S TOO HOT!" (As if the current heatwave had been entirely mom's idea . . .) Here are a few of my favorite things to do with hot, crotchety children:

* set the little ones loose to "paint" the driveway, the flowers, and each other with paint brushes and water.

* Put two buckets of water on the grass (or any thirsty ground) with measuring cups, empty yogurt pots, plastic toys, and ping pong balls (hold them underwater and let go - whose will shoot highest into the air?)

* Buy some cheap synthetic bath sponges, hold them underwater, then SPLOSH! Wettest game of catch EVER!

* Give each child a 2-liter soda bottle full of water, and see who can empty theirs fastest. Is it quicker to twirl and shake the bottle or simply hold it still?

* Teach them a little anatomy. Where does blood flow closest to the skin's surface? Fill a bucket with cold water and give each child a wash cloth to dip in it. Have them slosh the wet cloths on various body parts - knees, shoulders, feet, the back of the neck, tummy . . . Eventually, help them notice that a wet cloth on the back of the neck is a dynamite cooler-offer. Why? Because blood flow to and from  the all-important head all passes through the neck, where veins lie close to the surface. Can they make an ice-filled sock cooler that will stay tied around their necks as the ice cubes melt in a delectable, icy trickle?

* Think ahead: put containers of your own devising filled with water in the freezer overnight (just for fun, add a little oil to one and see what happens.) Melt them in the sun, in shade, in water. Which is fastest? Where will they last longest?

For a grand finale, have everyone dip their heads into the bucket, then SHAKE like a mad dog.

But please, stay out of the midday sun!

"Goodbye, and thank your mother for the rabbits

"Goodbye, and thank your mother for the rabbits": A Unit Study,

Part the Second, June 2016. (Part 1, see March 1)

I have a friend who maintains that all of human history can be reduced to two questions: "What could possibly go wrong?" and "How was I to know"? In 1859, an Englishman by the name of Thomas Austin released twenty-four English rabbits into the wilds of Australia, saying as he watched the twenty-four cute, fluffy little tails hop merrily off into the sunset, "The introduction of a few rabbits could do little harm and might provide a touch of home, in addition to a spot of hunting.” If pressed, I’m sure he would have added, “What could possibly go wrong?”

Quite a lot, Mr. Austin, quite a lot

LOGIC, HISTORY and BIOLOGY

Invite the children to attempt to outthink Mr. Austin. What dangers can they foresee that Mr. Austin could not? (Hint: hybrid vigor; rapid proliferation; few predators; ideal climate; farming vital to the economy.)

                                                                                               

For starters, he failed to realize that bringing 24 of England’s finest rabbits to interbreed with the Australian locals would, thanks to hybrid vigor, produce a veritable SuperBunny   Not only were rabbits perfectly suited to the climate, whose mild winters meant they could breed year round, but farmers who ploughed up vast areas of scrub and woodland unwittingly left behind them ideal conditions for warrens. What followed was the fastest spread ever recorded of any mammal anywhere in the world. Within ten years, rabbits were so numerous that over two million could be shot or trapped annually without making a dent in the population. In less than 30 years, so great was the damage inflicted on farmers’ crops, that the government of New South Wales offered a £25,000 reward for  "any method of success not previously known in the Colony for the effectual extermination of rabbits." (Just for fun, estimate how much  £25,000  would be worth today.) On an outline map, http://www.kidzone.ws/geography/australia/map-australia.htm have the children draw in the three “rabbit proof” fences. What kinds of animals were used to help in the building? In the maintenance of the wall?

Is anyone talking of building a wall today?

MATH The reproductive potential of a female rabbit is truly phenomenal.  A single female can, in seven years, become the matriarch of 184,597,433,860 offspring.  That’s almost two billion cute little fluffy tails, from one female and her female descendants. http://www.bio.miami.edu/hare/scary.html

For a different take on a similar mathematical phenomenon, read

One Grain Of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale by Demi

For the younger children, read The Muddle-headed Wombat by Ruth Park, Australia’s delightful answer to Winnie the Pooh

Investigate marsupials; also

 Egg-laying mammals that are only found in Australia: duck-billed platypus, echidna.

DRAMA and HISTORY: They say, “it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good”; during the Depression meat was extremely hard to come by – except, that is, for rabbits. Who might have spoken our opening line? Make up, and act out, a short scene featuring a family during the Depression who have not a morsel of meat in the house, and precious little else to eat. An unexpected guest knocks at the door, bearing a gift from her mother: you guessed it – rabbits for dinner! And as they wait for the bunnies to cook, they join in singing, “Waltzing Matilda”. I’m quite sure they knew what all the words meant, and after singing along with this, so will you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl-YI44XYjI

Earwigs By the Book, Part 2

Earwigs By the Book, Part 2

As you may recall from Part 1, I set myself the task of writing an entire blog about earwigs using only the six references in the Eyewitness book, Insects, and earwig minutiae already lodged in the darkest recesses of my brain. No Internet whatsoever! I had two questions: could it be done, and would the results differ significantly from an e-version? Which would be a better model to use to teach writing? There, that’s three questions. We’re off to a great start! I turn to the index, and thus to the first mention of my subject.

Earwigs can fly! I glean this from the Latin name, Dermaptera, "skin wings". This refers to their tissue-thin hind wings, which are kept folded beneath their very short, much tougher front wings.

Here I encounter my first problem: not everything that has wings can fly. Can an earwig? I know I’ve never seen one airborne . . . The only available book that offers to tell me is volume 5 (or possibly 6) of Encyclopaedia Britannica – a daunting prospect if ever I saw one. I yearn for Siri, for the instant access to information she offers. “Can earwigs fly?” I would ask, she would answer yes or no, and just like that, I would know. Oh, the temptation to tap into that infinite ocean of knowledge the Internet offers!

Reluctantly leaving the question of flight unanswered, I turn back to the book. I am relieved to find that earwigs do not in fact crawl down the ear of a sleeping human and take up residence in the brain. Furthermore, earwig mothers are awesome! They dig a small hole for their eggs then stay on guard until the nymphs are hatched. If the eggs are scattered (presumably by some malevolent researcher) she will gather them up and put them back in the hole; when the young nymphs emerge, mama earwig stays with them until they are able to fend for themselves. Get that, Hallmark? You have a new pin-up candidate for Mother's Day cards! Maybe such maternal solicitude accounts for the earwig's evolutionary success story: judging by the fossil record, they have changed little in 35 million years.

They may not care for a sleeper’s ear, but one thing they do like to crawl into is the nasturtium flower. You can tell just by looking at the little pointy bit at the back that it’s an earwig’s Ideal Home. A fact that I chose to ignore when, as a girl of about ten, I spent a significant chunk of my early summer laboriously interweaving sticks to make the framework of a den at the base of the cedar of Lebanon at the bottom of our garden. My plan was to cover the framework with nasturtiums, thus providing myself with a colorful, fragrant getaway in which to while away the lazy days of summer, and quite possibly the occasional night as well. Nourished by the adjacent compost heap, the flowers did their part and grew apace; with mounting excitement I looked forward to the day when I would enjoy my first picnic lunch in my den. What a very "Swallows and Amazons" thing to do, I thought, imagining my eager friends vying to take their turn in my flowery sanctum.

You’ve guessed what comes next: as I took my first bite of whatever succulent treat I’d chosen for my sandwich (quite possibly a Winnie-the-Pooh special, honey and condensed milk – I was ten, after all,) I was puzzled by the sound of raindrops falling in my perfectly dry den.  A glance at the ground revealed the awful truth: it was alive with earwigs, plopping gently from the flowers to form a shining, golden-brown carpet.

I high-tailed it out of my labor of love den in less time than it takes to tell, and I never looked back.

So there you have it: blogging without a (n/inter) net! I rather enjoyed it – I’d never have recalled the nasturtium den that wasn’t without ransacking my brain for a story. As for the tantalizing question of whether earwigs fly, I just checked Wikipedia and the answer, as is so often the case, is a resounding . . . yes and no. There are around 1200 species worldwide and some do, some don’t. It would be hard to write an interesting paper about that, I think

As to whether I can write an interesting column without the Internet . . . well,

You Be The Judge. And please, let me know the verdict!

Earwigs By The Book

 I had a startling encounter in the bathroom last night. In the dark. Something . . . someone? had its . . . his? hands around my neck in a malevolent tickle that gave fair  warning of its evil intent to throttle me to death. Meanwhile, his accomplice was crawling up my leg, pausing to savor enormous bites on his way . . . I took a deep breath,  stilled the panic mounting in my breast, and TURNED ON THE LIGHT!!!

Two earwigs, blinking stupidly (if earwigs do indeed blink, which I think they don’t,) momentarily transfixed by the light. I was seized on the spot by a burning desire to find out everything  I could about earwigs, what they were doing in my bathroom, and most important of all, how I could keep them from returning.

Now, this is where the story takes a surprising turn. The next sentence should read, what with it being the 21st century and all, "I opened up my computer and logged on to my trusty search engine." But this is where the story enters perhaps the realms of anti-science fiction, because the next sentence actually reads, "I was overwhelmed by an irresistible desire to open a book."

Not Google—a book.

The book that was calling me so eloquently, INSECT – Discover the world of insects in close-up – their behavior, anatomy, and important role in Earth’s ecology, sat among the other Eyewitness Books that I had been eyeing as likely candidates for my next run to the thrift store. As I removed it from the shelf it clung stickily to its neighbors as if to say, “Hey, I’ve been sitting here for years – why move me now?” It fell open to the double page, “How to avoid being eaten” (if you’re an insect, that is); there I found the incredible bombardier beetle, who has discovered that nothing deters a hungry predator like a good explosion right in his face. In the top right corner a hawksmoth caterpillar stretches out its unusually large head, tricking predators into thinking the caterpillar is in fact an extremely small but very poisonous snake.   Fascinating stuff!

On the very same page sits the weta, an enormous cricket from New Zealand that filled the role, normally filled by mammals, of ground-dwelling predator; this was necessary since the only mammals native to New Zealand are two species of bats. Once rats hitchhiked a ride with mankind onto the main islands, the weta “meta” sorry end, and today is extinct in all but the smallest islands.

My goodness, but I had forgotten how much fun it is to browse a good book! Look—here's a man with a bee bonnet (looks rather like my Russian ex-boyfriend… I wonder) . . . And here are two entomologists visiting Alexandria, Egypt in 1920 who spent the night collecting bed bugs rather than sleeping. Their tally by morning? Both men had 70 pins with 10 bugs on each. By my reckoning, that’s fourteen hundred bed bugs. Not a bad night’s work . . . Hmm, this browsing business is getting out of hand. It’s as bad as the computer for tempting you to stray off topic.

But off the topic of earwigs in a book about insects carries one into the wonderful realm of compound eyes and beetle antennae. Did you know that each hair around the mouth of a carpet beetle larva has its own “ball and socket” joint, and can probably pick up vibrations? Or that a locust curves its wings when landing to trap the maximum amount of air and ensure a gentle meeting with the ground, in a manner later copied by airplane designers?

                                                                                                                       

Get off topic on Google (worse yet, on Youtube,) and find a world of salacious gossip about the British royal family, and fifteen uses for a used teabag. And those are the least objectionable, that merely waste time and jam your browser. They don’t threaten to lead one into an utterly depraved lifestyle—though mind you, I haven’t checked out numbers 12-15 of those things to do with a used teabag . . .

But earwigs – what about earwigs? Could I come up with enough content for a blog from the (count ‘em) six earwig references in Insect?  Tune in tomorrow and . . . Now, I know I don’t exactly have a stellar record with lead-ins to part two of a blog (the rabbits are still waiting in Australia, though I did much better with How to Make the Perfect Pot of Tea.)

Tomorrow, I will attempt the death-defying stunt: blogging without a net. Relying entirely on those six references to earwigs from Insects, and rosy earwig reminiscences from my youth, I will produce an entire blog! An extraordinary feat – if, indeed, it can be done.

Tune in next time to find out.

A Farewell to Andrew Episode 6: In Which We Really Do Say Goodbye

“It all happened so fast at the end,” says Gerry, as we stand in what will, if all goes according to plan, be Andrew’s room for the rest of his life. “We were going to paint the room your favorite color. What is your favorite color? There wasn’t even time to ask you!”

A quick glance around reveals the answer. “Yellow,” I speak for Andrew. “Pale yellow.” If it hadn’t been his favorite before, it certainly is now: this is his room at L’Arche, and for the first time in his life he will live at a different address—in a different state, even—than his parents.

I shift my powers of observation, such as they are, into grinding gear, and rev them up mercilessly. First impressions, I remind myself, are important. The room strikes me instantly as perfect.  A window in the eaves swings open to reveal a splendidly mossy roof, (how poetic, awfully glad we’re not responsible for the upkeep,) and a view of the lively street below—so many people walking so many dogs! You can tell it’s an old neighborhood by the cars lining the streets—automobiles are not destined to disappear into garages for another decade or three—as well as by the trees: great and small, conifers and broadleaves, straight and gnarled, an entirely disproportionate number of them in intoxicating bloom. This is May in Seattle, after all, and the air is heavy with the scent of blossoms.

But the pièce de résistance comes when I turn back into the room, and it is straight out of John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers: two carpeted steps about three feet wide leading to a door roughly two feet above floor level, which opens onto . . . (drumroll . . .) THE CLOSET!!!!!  Lots of coat hangers and oodles of space, I notice, as well as a nifty spot to hang out in; there is also a bookcase, a chest of drawers. We’ll have to find him a desk . . . An unexpectedly personal touch from the previous occupant: a mobile of balsa wood aeroplanes whose gunmetal grey strikes a vivid contrast with the yellow walls.

And now we’re at that awkward moment where Gerry is inviting us for dinner (they take food very seriously at every L’Arche home we’ve been to) and Andrew is telling us loud and clear, in unmistakable body language, that it’s cool, he really doesn’t need us to hang around, in fact, Mom and Dad, Will You Please Go Now?

And so, just like that, it’s over.

We embarrass him with one more hug.

And

Then

We

Really

Do

Go.