wideeyedfunk

Category: Pets

They are all completely unpredictable.

  • Shotgun Monte, Thief

    Shotgun Monte, Thief

    There was a time, not that long ago, when my stuff was my own. Shoes unchewed, rugs unnibbled, pens – fountain pens! – unmolested, books safe from spine damage, counters un-surfed, socks un-stolen. Name it, I’ve lost it. Inhale deeply. Exhale completely.

    Resting, watching, waiting for opportunity.

    Enter Shotgun Monte. Oh they grow out of it, people said. It’s teething, others wise in the ways of young dogs told me, nodding with that special irritating wait-and-see way. And the best, if the dog chews, it’s your fault for providing the chance. Thanks. Helpful.

    Sweet little Monte chews in the abstract, half asleep against the sofa arm, mouthing the corner. He rends with intent, stuffed plushies eviscerated with focus – always the butts or eyes first. Creepy.

    And he steals. Shamelessly. With joy. Computer mouse, shoe, sock, phone, loaf of bread, $170 brand new Pilot fountain pen purchased as a special self-gift at a stationery on a dark ‘L’ street in Chicago. He grabs the unguarded thing and gazelles through the house, leaping from rug to rug, lips stretched in a huge doggie smile around the loot hanging out of his mouth, eyes wild. And he’s fast. Can’t be caught. Fleet and slithery like a Victorian era pick pocket.

    Yep, the correct response is no, drop it. But I defy you to take action against that impossibly fluid athleticism used in mad glee, the absolute fun he has in running cycles through the WideEyedHouse. He drops the purloined, usually, with no harm, if you don’t take your eyes off of him. But really, don’t look away.

  • Rolling in the clover.

    The neighborhood is full of them, those little yellow signs: “Keep Off Pesticide Applied.” Crooked Hankie and Sweet Miss Tibbit prance by them without a pause, sniffing and nibbling and thinking dog thoughts. I read them, I observe the lush green carpet lawns, and I get it. That stuff is soft and inviting and looks just like a fresh new shag carpet. I mean, I guess it looks like a fresh new shag carpet because I haven’t actually observed one of those, mainly I see used, flattened, stinky shag carpets awaiting tear-out in the less updated homes the WideEyedHousehold has purchased over the decades.

    But then, our evening walkies round the corner into our WideEyedYard and the joyous chaos of bees buzzing and butterflies fluttering and beetles creeping among the taller green stuff is so soothing to me. And to Hankie and Sweet Tibbit, because they stop, drop, and roll as soon as they hit it, standing up reeking of green clover and scattered with little clover blooms.

    Our yard is cut long because the Museum of Natural History in London posted on social media that this is the best way to create habitat for hedge hogs. [Pause.] I know. Hedge hogs do not live in the yards of Buffalo, NY, but in the spirit of supporting the importance of hedge hog foraging space, I complied with the suggestion.

    Something wonderful happened to the yard in mid-June. The long grass went to seed with little fronds flowing in the breeze, and the clover grew taller and bloomed. Our city yard is a mini-prairie, rolling and surrounded by mostly edible shrubs, and herbs, and flowers, and trees. The bee hive susurrates in the back and little honey bees with leg pockets full of honey and their little sacs full of nectar come and go.

    If I stand still and wait, the big bees, little bees, fuzzy bees, and butterflies swirl around me. The dogs flop and pant. The gardens rustle and push push push for the warm summer sun in our short growing season. It is pure joy to lie down in the clover with the whole lot of the garden things and know, everyone can enter here. There isn’t any pesticide. No one need keep off.

  • Leave the puffer behind.

    70 degrees Fahrenheit. Possibly the most perfect temperature. And friends, I’m incredibly relieved to report that I’m experiencing it today. Experiencing it outside. Because of course inside my second story office in my antique house with antique radiators, it is usually well over 70 degrees when it is 65 degrees downstairs at the thermostat and 15 degrees outside.

    I’m not making sense. Blame it on the 70 degrees.

    On this day, I left my ankle length Patagonia puffer on the coat rack for morning dog walkies for the first time since mid-November. I felt mostly unprotected and I did worry a bit. What if the situation changed around the corner? Ok, now I’m bragging about my own bravery because the truth of the matter is that I had on thinsulate lined Carhartt bib overalls, blundstone boots, my red pompom hat, and a slightly lighter jacket. But not the puffer and that’s something.

    My smile actually ached in my cheeks in the final block, and it is certain any watching neighbors, and in the city there’re always watching neighbors, well, they probably thought the isolation finally sent me off the rails.

    But it wasn’t madness. It was wild joy. And I still feel it. The (nearly) useless dogs feel it. Catticus the Cat feels it. The WideEyedBees in the backyard WideEyedHive are living it. They are living it so robustly that I think we are going to have to suit up and crack that thing open this afternoon to check on food stores and brood. It’s a little scary in the off season because the bees, oddly, do not respect that I am acting out of concern when I allow cold air into their home. They dive bomb our bee suits and leave startlingly large poop splotches in their wake. No one has ever asked my opinion, but I’ll give it now: any given creature should not produce poop splotches nearly as large as themselves. I guess holding it in for a few months will cause that.

    Snow is predicted for the weekend but it won’t stay. I think I’ll step into the backyard and hoot and holler a bit. The sunny warmth is begging for it. Might as well confirm my mad state with the neighbors.

  • Double Dog Indignity

    Ten decades. Ten thousand miles. Immediate indignity in the WideEyedHousehold. Or is it love?

    The old stuff I bring home despite long and windy WideEyedSpouse sighs seems to get along ok with the old stuff already here. Basement-abandoned, mildew-stinking, dusty, grandparent furniture, lamps, rugs, geegaws – they all seem to agree to the neutral zone pact of the WideEyedHousehold: meld or hit the road. Each of them has a history with other families, sometimes these are decades long histories of ill use and hard living. Sometimes they glow as the treasures they have been and are to me now. I like to think when they get here, they are open to new histories, new families. And, dogs.

    Two days ago the most recent old-thing arrived, a rug fragment originally from central Asia. It has been tooling around the world since 1920. Turkistan to someplace, [someplace to someplace], someplace to Arizona, Arizona to the WideEyedHousehold in Buffalo, NY. Packed in trunks. Rolled. Folded. Squashed. On trucks and boats and planes and feet. Ten thousand miles over ten decades. When my grandparents were young, it started out fresh, reeking of dye and new wool. Now, when I am not-so-young, it landed here, reeking of nothing at all really. Just, rugness.

    Raggedy corners and suspicious ends.

    Its ends are missing. Its sides are barely holding on. The weft is thin and the warp peeps out. How many feet tromped it? Carrying the dust and grunge of how many lands? How many fights or words of love in how many languages has it witnessed?

    The old things have dignity in their experiences. And dignity attracts dogs. Evidently.

    Absorbing experiences through osmosis.

    Welcome rug, to the love of dogs.

  • Sticky missions

    A year and a half, more or less, of stress and misery masked by smiling fortitude. Yuck. I’d rather wail and screech. Family deaths, an unjust nation, job hunting, and illness. The horoscope writer in the newspaper hates Sagittarians because every day I’m told to keep my head down, trust no one, stay close to home. I drag on my cheerful stripy socks and live each day like it isn’t preceded by something wretched.

    Miss Tibbit the Useless, Crooked Hankie the Corgi, the WideEyedSpouse, and I walk the three block walkies circuit most evenings. Christmas lights are going up all over the neighborhood and legions of bagged leaves line the strip between the sidewalk and the street. Hank pees on as many as possible, his stout corgi body rushing to the next leaf bag each time. I can tell he loves marking up the captive yard parts. After each leg lift, he gives me a sideways look and a grin and then accelerates to the next, ears aflap.

    Tibbit ignores the leaf bags and gathers sticks. Our yard is the neighborhood stick repository. She is selective, only sticks with decent heft or length make it worthwhile. A stick pile makes sweet Tibbit smile, tongue lolling. “Ok, get a stick,” I tell her. The big sticks take some thinking, and I mean ALL of her thinking because this dog qualifies as Not Smart, and because they have to be balanced in the mouth. Twiggy ends are long but weigh less than branch ends. A dog can’t just grab hold of the middle and call it done. Her sticks fwap our legs as she rushes past us, leading the walk with head and tail high, stick mission in process.

    This is when walkies get really dynamic. Hank can’t leave the stick missions unmonitored and unmanaged. He runs just millimeters in front of the stick, the twiggy ends brushing his fuzzy corgi haunch hair, evidently an annoyance to be endured stoically when one is managing a mission. Passing leaf bag clusters require his attention so of course he falls behind. Then he rushes past us, ducking low and sleek, grabs any part of the stick he can reach to slow the mission, and heaves his body in front again. Tibbit marches on, aloof inside her sticky mission.

    So anyway. A long period of stress and misery alleviated every day by an indefatigable corgi and stick obsessed useless little black dog. Maybe not so miserable after all.

  • Dogs like cookies.

    Crooked Hank the Young Corgi and Miss Tibbit the Useless Little Black Dog arranged themselves nearby while I put on the Superga kicks this morning. (Note: this is the first day suitable for kicks rather than snow boots, rain boots, hiking boots, or warm-knee-high leather boots in living memory. Sing praise and joy to the kicks.) I held each sock for Hank’s inspection, prior to getting my foot inside of it. Tibbit sniffed shoelaces and inspected soles.

    I cleared my throat and leaned back, the aging settee creaked and the comfy pillows squashed around me. I smiled to the congregation before me, and opened the liturgy of the Church of the WideEyedDogs.

    IMG_1430 (1)
    Hank

    I chanted, monophonic, “All the dogs should have cookies, all the time.” In my mind I heard the congregation chant the response, “Cookies all the time.”

    Hank and Tibbit sat up, ears perked in a participatory manner.

    And, “The dogs should have the good kind of cookies with liver and bacon, not the cheap wheat flour ones.” Response, “The expensive liver cookies, all the time.”

    Tibbit’s eyes strayed toward the kitchen.

    Then, “The dogs should have free and open access to all of the food, human and canine.” Response, “Free feeding, all of the time.”

    Hank’s furry bottom wiggled around, his seat less secure and his attention wavering. This service was too long!

    I chanted, “The dogs should get dinner, and walkies, and cookies whenever they want, all of the time.” Response, “All about dogs, all of the time.”

    Tibbit and Hank, filled with the ecstasy of the service, sprang up and pushed closer for head rubs and chin rubs and twisting haunch rubs. “Go to the kitchen,” I ordered with all of my authority as the only ordained priest of the Church of the WideEyedDogs, “and get some cookies.” Their fervor carried them, light-hearted and innocent, into the kitchen for snackies.

    InkedTibbit in the pulpit
    Miss Tibbit on the pulpit of the Church of the WideEyedDogs.

  • Aggressive decency.

    Most days I tell myself, today feels good. Birds chirp during morning dog walks. Hankie Smalls the Corgi and Miss Tibbit the Useless Little Black Dog – innocent and protected – are untroubled by politics, economics, or impending societal collapse. They are cheerful and hopeful every single morning. Interesting adventures in the confounding universe await. They smile at me and expect love back. So I smile and feel good, breathing deeply in the cold, hydrocarbon scented city air.

    Then comes the newspaper. The morning news on the car radio. The news synopsis emails. The Facebook feeds. From them I learn who died and how. Who was assaulted, harassed, or disempowered. Who has had their legal rights, access to medicine, or control over their own bodies stripped from them in the night as our political leaders sneak sly, lobby-fueled, religion-fired legislation into the system. The senators must be tiring of my letters.

    Ugh. I grit my teeth and work through it, distracting myself with the minutiae of academic program management and research.

    Time is passing and green stuff is sprouting in the garden. I pruned the pear trees and the blackberry canes. When the snow melts, hah, it is blizzarding right now!, when the snow melts I’ll trim the ornamental grasses.

    But it bothers me every day, who am I to take joy in the universe, in the fresh cold morning, and the coming spring? Humans keep on revealing their inherent awfulness, and I feel powerless to mediate the impacts.

    Is being kind enough? Is growing a garden, petting some dogs, and writing to the powerful enough? Here’s what I think: these things aren’t nothing and every positive action, every tiny commitment to decency contributes to the greater good. The plan: grit my teeth, carry on, and smile while I shove decency down the throats of the asshats. Er. I mean that figuratively, of course I do.

    Here, look at the picture of the happy corgi with me and we’ll all feel better…

    IMG_1355_3-14

  • Provisions

    We ripped through the night in the Mighty Pathfinder, Enrique Iglesias’ Bailando thumping from the speakers, windows open, warm winds blowing. The WideEyedSpouse didn’t slow for a mad-big construction bump and the Mighty P lurched and waggled excitingly. “Bailandoooo!” the Spouse wailed.

    An old man on a porch swing creaked back and forth in time to the song when our crazed journey paused at a traffic light, and a flashing neon sign wanted to be on the beat but couldn’t get there –an electric version of me trying for the rhythm but never finding it. Cracked sidewalks sketchy bus stops stinky gas stations barking dogs blatting broken muffler cars – they are all better in the languid warm of long summer evening.

    I smiled out into the evening air, crumpling my reusable grocery sacks tight to me.  My heart felt full and light and easy. Buoyant. Which was nice because there hasn’t been much joy in the WideEyedHomestead since my pal Hamish the Corgi died a few weeks ago.

    It’s my big question, my conundrum again, from where does this mad joy come? And why do I feel it best when I’m faced with the outrageous complexity of life in this world?

     

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  • Cats and Plants

    Maranta 2017Yep. That’s a Maranta leucomeura. A scraggly specimen, too. The WideEyedSpouse espied it lurking on the back of a table at the Home Depot. “Special Buy” the tag said. I snorted. What a mess.

    The Maranta lives in the WideEyedHousehold now.

    You may be unimpressed by this prosaic moment. So would I be except for one extraordinary and upsetting fact. The Maranta can live here because Ancient Wiggins the Cat no longer does.  Old-struck, life-weary, that creaky, foul-tempered and steadfast pal of mine left the building on Saturday morning. By Sunday afternoon the Maranta had moved in, that opportunist.

    For eighteen years the household could harbor no plants without inevitable hoorka, hoorka, hoorka noises and slimy green piles on the carpets. Always on the carpet, never on the tile. Eighteen years of raptor intensity attacks on even ears of corn from the farmer’s market left unguarded on the counter. (We once hid them in the oven to prevent the hoorkas, forgot them, found them two weeks later moldering, warm, soft.)

    “As soon as that cat goes, I’m getting some plants,” I may have said, staring dark thoughts at his whiskered and smug face. On Sunday I stood among hundreds of lush limbed and tasty looking leaves. My heart ached – I couldn’t do it. Choosing a plant meant admitting that Ancient Wiggins was never coming back. Pathetic and saggy, the Maranta was desperate and sorry enough to be admissible.

    I don’t look directly at the Maranta. I approach it sideways, water it here and there, move it around from table to counter back to table because it keeps getting in the way. The Maranta hasn’t made it more than six feet into the house.

    This morning several shoots appeared under the torn up, mildew speckled leaves. New growth.

    Wiggins for Blog

  • Taller fencing.

    When my neighbor’s daughter giggled at me, I thought to consider our situation.

    All I did was flap my hello-hand at her when she got into her dad’s car less than 10 feet away from me and Miss Tibbit – who was taking an eternally long sniff at something along the fence line. She found half a sandwich there about a month ago and she can’t let the memory go. Miss Tibbit found the sandwich, not the daughter. The origin of the half a sandwich remains unknown.

    It was 10pm walkies and the entire WideEyedHousehold was outside, except Ancient Wiggins the Cat who could be heard yowling for a snack in the kitchen.

    I waved my hello-hand and the daughter said hi but she said it through a sort of shocked-involuntary giggle. Weird.

    I pushed the side flap of my furry bomber hat out of the way and looked around a bit to see what was funny. The dogs weren’t up to anything. The WideEyedSpouse was…oh. The WideEyedSpouse was standing in the driveway in his own (matching) bomber hat, blue yard coat, blue long underwear, and crocs. His glasses gleamed at me. He looked, well, interesting.

    I took stock of my own self. Fuzzy bomber hat, glasses, blue yard coat (matching), leggings with umbrellas printed all over them, crocs (matching).

    Sigh. You can’t buy that kind of style.