fetch boy! meow!

my cat was was a retriever in his last life, maybe a black lab.

with tiny toy mouse in mouth, he comes to me and drops it on my feet.

impatiently, clawishly, jumponmeandmesswithmylaptopishly he waits for me to pick it up and throw it.

and he brings it back fast!  barely does it leave my hand and he is ON IT!

tiny mouse in mouth, he trots back to my feet.

again and again.

it isn't fair!

i keep cats to avoid such doggy demands.

party on!

there must be a mathematical formula to figure out how long it takes 2 miles worth of cars to stop for an accident on the freeway (that's when we came along) and how many more cars will line up behind us over the next hour or so.
that many cars stood still, engines off, going nowhere for their holiday weekend, in the afternoon on July 3.
are vermonters nicer and smarter than other people, or is it only the horrible violent traffic snarls that make the news?
here's what happened.
people got out of their cars, walked around chatting with each other, meeting each others' dogs and kids. kids in front of us played volleyball with a beachball over their SUV. the breakdown lane became a promenade, young couples, old couples, teens on skateboards, cell phone yakkers, a kid with a guitar, and a nice lady who went car to car telling us satellite radio said it was a motorcycle accident (which i don't even really want to think about).
what could have been a miserable time of frustration trying to get to the party, actually became the party!

click to enlarge

theory of relativity

i've always loved the buddhist teaching tale

about the guy who was so enlightened 

that shit and gold were the same to him.
my sister glimpsed enlightenment 

last week when florida went arctic.

she and her dog went out 

for their evening exercise walk 

on the darkest coldest night.
not in the habit of thinking 'keep warm,'  

she forgot her gloves. 

it wasn't very long before

she realized her hands were freezing 

even in her pocket!
and then she had a happy thought

(picture the lightbulb going on above her head)
..."oh boy, soon i will have a nice warm plastic bag of dog shit in my pocket to warm my hands!"

worm and beetle lovers! come out of the woodwork!

ziggy lives across the street. 

i meet him up at the store sometimes. he has friends all over the village, and often stops in at back yards for a happy romp with a tethered neighbor.

he'll join dog-walkers or families out for a stoll down the street.
not everyone in the village has a black lab...it just looks that way with ziggy going along for the outing.
dogs and cats used to live outside with lives of their own.
they hated and loved according to their own scheme of things, sometimes right on the sidewalks downtown, and had interesting litters of puppies and kittens that had to be given away or drowned.
dogs had enemies to play serious games with...cars going by! the plumber! the milkman! the postman!...all of whom had to work out their strategies of dog treats or pepperspray.  it was part of the job.
cats have retained their freedom to a greater exent. cats born and bred inside often don't even know how to kill a mouse! their mum has to teach them, it isn't innate; they may figure it out on their own given enough opportunities.
now there's alot of pressure to keep cats inside, especially strong from bird-lovers.
the worm and beetle lovers would just as soon have the birds kept inside, but they don't get much press.

scenes before sunrise

already the sky lights up earlier!
i stand at my big kitchen window, teabag in hand, watching a young teenage boy, bent over like a wood-cutter's child with a huge pack strapped to his back. he walks up the hill to get the schoolbus.
my mug of water goes round and round in the lighted microwave. i can tell how cold it was in the night by how long the water takes to boil. the mug, the water, the machine all cold this morning.
a teenage girl comes up her driveway across the street, heading right towards where i, inside, stand in my bathrobe, framed in my lighted kitchen. we don't acknowlege each other. like the japanese and their paper walls, she doesn't see me thru my window and i don't see her through her curtain of hair.
one morning a few years ago i watched a woman  walk her dog up the pre-dawn street; a strange square hung down in the middle of the length of the leash.  next time i saw her i asked her why she was using pantyhose to walk her dog! (one toe tied to the collar, one toe round her hand) she thought no one had seen her, but probably half the street did, standing in their kitchens holding hot mugs of coffee or tea, watching the dawn break over the hills.  between getting kids to school, and herself to work,and the leash not to be found, it was the closest thing to hand! we laughed and laughed, and still laugh about it sometimes!

how to get a dog

what if you were walking along, minding your own business, and saw a man hitting a young dog that was barfing in an alley?
what would you do?
if you were nancy, you couldn't just walk by -- you'd start a conversation with the guy about his dog.
and it would end like this: "lady, you want this dog? here, it's yours."
sick puppy!!

i've often wondered what happened when he got home.
"where's the dog honey?"
dog gone!!

nancy and sara do get their dogs in unusual ways.
once, driving, they saw a dog running in the median.
they pulled over, opened the door, and in it jumped.
new dog!!

currently they have two. one's a big, typically bumbly black lab that used to belong to a neighbor.
week after week the poor critter was tied out in the heat, ignored, unwatered, not quite bad enough for officialdom to intervene.
one morning he got off his chain, and ended up at their door.
they opened the door, let him in, and he's been theirs since...shhhhhhhh!
secret dog!!

all the other neighbors conspired in this; no one told where the dog had gone.
after a week or or so in hiding, it just became their dog...another of those ubiquitous black labs, and eventually, the previous owner moved away.
whew!!

this reminds me ... my hairdresser once stole a horse from a neighboring farm! the horse was not being fed and was skin and bones.
beth was unable to get the authorities involved fast enough, and fearing it would die, she drove her trailer up one day, and took it!
she actually ended up in jail, mostly for punching the policeman who came to get the horse back.

funny how compassion can make you daring.

scent world

the sheep stare at me walking by
i stare at the sheep
if i had a camera
on a day like this i would claim each scene!
i could pee on each landmark
but that doesn't feel like claiming to me

soon i hear small sounds of the woods
i smell the woods mmmmmmm
what's it like for a dog to map her world by smell?
in Second Life you can turn on 'highlight invisible'
and suddenly some things make sense

in my mind i turn on 'highlight smells'...
i see transparent overlays of many colors (smells)
the color code key reads 'magenta-brown = leafy forest floor'
i click it to learn the forest floor scent components
oak, maple & birch leaves, dried ferns, deer poop, fisher hairs, dead mouse and if i zoom in
i can isolate the deer poop scent area, the color more intense at the center
ah there's yellow, my favorite, my dog best friend was here
and i can tell how long ago

the pasts are here to be scent sensed
like the layers in the road cut