wideeyedfunk

Category: Pets

They are all completely unpredictable.

  • We sure class up the Park.

    That’s right. When the WideEyedHousehold hits Buffalo’s historic Delaware Park for walkies on a Sunday afternoon, the classiness level escalates. As it should. Olmsted designed this park for promenading. For nodding at neighbors. This past Sunday was cold and rainy. The wind slashed and our rain gear rustled. I made my standard comment, “This is just like weather the Aleutians!” Usually we have the park to ourselves in foul conditions, but after the Big Storm people were out running, skating, strolling like it was a sunny summer day.

    Miss Tibbit displayed her manners and deportment for everyone by hooting and baying at a big, white pony-sized dog, an ancient Golden Retriever, a large piece of blowing trash (no one has ever claimed she is smart), a brownish dog, and a yellow lab who ran past with a ball in his mouth. Each time she heaved her 35 pounds against her little pink harness and jumped around on her hind legs while caroling out her high pitched psychopathic singing yelps. “Cookie?” I asked each time. Her butt plonked to the ground. See, classy.

    I smiled at passersby, all of whom seemed particularly eager to meet my eyes. I wondered if my new mascara sample along with my bright green coat made my eyes stand out. Maybe it was my relentless good cheer despite the nasty weather. It didn’t matter, I was happy with the world and smiling like a maniac all over the park. Then, “why is your zipper down?” the WideEyedSpouse asked me as we stood in the kitchen after walkies. I snapped my eyes down to look and hands down to feel. Sure enough, below my tidily belted waistline, my jeans weren’t zipped. All those maniac smiles to all those strangers meeting my eyes…you can’t buy that kind of class.

    Hamish the Dignified and Well-Mannered Corgi found himself a French fry wrapper along the walkies. I only noticed when I heard strange snuffling noises. He had forced his nose deep into the empty packet to lick any remaining molecules away. The little french fries printed on the packet wiggled and squirmed with his efforts. Miss Tibbit crept over to get some tastes. Hamish snarled out of the wrapper and bit her. Noisily. She cried.

    Yipping, snarling, trash-eating, and ineptly clothed. That’s just how we roll here.

  • The dogs will not have the last peanut butter cup.

    The vastiness of the cosmos has been replaced by wonderment at the intricacies of mammalian interiors around here lately. The WideEyedLaundry is full of gored up shirts and khakis. My mind, in moments of distraction, traces ropey muscles, rubbery tendons, and white bones rather than the sparkle of faraway stars and dark matter. I imagine muscles flexing, tendons pulling, and mighty bison hooves stomping on dusty ground.

    A buffalo died at the zoo a week or two ago. The strange nature of my job calls on me to transform this creature from fur and flesh to clean, white skeleton. The process involves waterproof shoes, a U-Haul van rental, several students, many scalpels, and protective gloves.

    BisonDefleshing a bison used to be normal. Well, not yesterday normal, not for me. But most of our human past required the ability to make dinner from something that used to be walking around. Personally make dinner, not abstract-grocery-plastic-wrapped-into-a-frying-pan-dinner. Now, it’s a little strange for most people.

    I just can’t help but notice the way things go together in there, under the skin. I can’t help but marvel that it all works. I can’t help but realize that the bison and all of the creatures who passed through the lab before it this past year smell like food. Except the woodchuck. He had been on the side of the road for a bit too long and he smelled greenish. Not grass greenish. Bile greenish.

    Smelling dinner all day, being up to my elbows in what is now biological waste rather than forthcoming meals, makes me want to dine on things that didn’t once have perceptions.

    Yesterday after the bison I was standing in line at Trader Joe’s buying pizza dough, cheese, and beer. (Not, you’ll notice, plastic wrapped meat). My eye fell on the impulse buy shelf at the checkout: “Perfect for the ride home!” the little sign said. I peered closer – ah, a little bag of dark chocolate peanut butter cups. Perfect indeed!

    20141104_191555This evening there was one left. One. I poured myself a glass of wine and shuffled the little guy out of the packet. I don’t know what happened but it flew out of my hand. I heard it ping against the microwave door, knock against the front of the fridge. I saw a gleam of the foil wrapper as it spun to the floor. To the Dog Zone. That peanut butter cup is safe in my belly now, but I’m telling you that there was an ugly period of fending off Miss Tibbit and Hamish and scrambling around to beat them to it. We won’t discuss that further.

    For better or for worse, I know what the inside of a bison looks like. Therefore, I, not the dogs, get the last peanut butter cup.

  • My work colleagues are dogs. And no, I’m not a sheepherder.

    Miss Tibbit the Useless Little Black Dog and Hamish the Corgi work with me all the day long. And they work hard on their dog chores. Miss Tibbit holds the cushion down on the chair. Hamish holds the chair in position. They sigh and stretch and mumble over their tasks. Every now and again, Hamish has to squirm into a better holding position, Miss Tibbit must squeeze herself tighter into her little dog-round position.

    Today Miss Tibbit worked in the window seat in the front parlor. Hamish occupied himself with holding down the old red settee.

    Dogs

    I was so lonely. The keys wouldn’t type right on the keyboard. The words wouldn’t come in my careful writing. The day was bleak.

    DogcolleaguesNow we’re back up here for the evening round of work. Sweet Tibbit is snoring and twitching with her full post-dinner belly and Hamish looks like he may have actually passed out. And, sure, the WideEyedSpouse is across the room, sighing and creaking around in his chair doing mysterious Spouse office things.  But he’s with me in here only a couple of hours a day. My real work colleagues are over there on the floor and in the corner chair.

    Sometimes I think it might be smart to haul myself up to the University to work. There are people there. It is just barely possible that I would benefit from some human interaction in my puzzling life.

  • Chickens three ways.

    Chickens. The WideEyedSpouse won’t let me have any. We have the space for a microflock and someone has to eat all of those extra worms in the worm bin. Which, if you recall, was also forbidden by the Spouse. He believes he has some power over the goings on of the WideEyedHousehold. Funny.

    Chickens were in my life three ways today.

    Chicken1The Caribbean chicken spends most days with me. I carried that one from his home rolled in a tube. I took the Caribbean chicken to a frame shop here in Buffalo and I’m pretty sure that when we unrolled the canvas, sunshine and cheer glowed out at us. The framer laughed, couldn’t help herself. Sometimes I worry that I brought only one Caribbean chicken home. There were a dozen or more – we were left in the back room of a little gallery to flip through the canvases and pick which chicken would be moving to Buffalo with us. Do the others miss our little red chicken? Have they moved to homes in Paris, Kansas, Toronto, Heidelberg?

    The next chicken in my life today simultaneously was glorious and wretched. Chicken 2, yeah we’ll call it Chicken 2, was a well-picked over carcass reeking of Myron Mixon’s smoked chicken rub. Except that that happy delicious reek which originated in our backyard smoker was overlain by the stink of rotting meat. And visually, I can’t even begin to explain the nightmare of the appearance of Chicken 2. See, Chicken 2 currently resides in the flesh eating dermestid beetle colony in the lab at the university. We’ve taken to roasting whole chickens around here so that I have food for the little beetle guys when our road kill supply runs low. They ate the Canada Goose and we haven’t skinned the raccoon yet, so bony little carcass Chicken 2 is squatting in the tank under a shroud of moving black beetle carapaces. Looking at it is mesmerizing, like watching the tide but less comfortable than that. You can really feel them creeping around on your own person, a gift that keeps giving for hours of psychological twitches. So that was Chicken 2.

    Probably the last chicken in my day, Chicken 3, arrived just before dinner. I sort of hope this is the last chicken of the day, because otherwise we are moving into weird territory. Chicken 3 is printed on a chair in the Anthropologie catalog. I instantly wanted it. If I can’t HAVE chickens, I should be able to SIT AMONG chickens, right? This makes perfect sense to me and perhaps you can understand why the WideEyedSpouse’s life is made complicated sometimes. Chicken 3 is going to haunt me and there’s a good chance that when I have the new yard sale settee recovered, it’s getting chickens.

    Settee

    Yeah, chickens.

  • Sweet Tibbit gets her money’s worth out of a jelly bean.

    Hamish the Corgi and Miss Tibbit can’t stop thinking about jelly beans.

    DogsI’m looking at Sweet Tibbit now and she’s laying on the window seat gazing into the middle distance. She seems vacuous, blank-eyed, awaiting stimulus. I assure you she is thinking about jelly beans.  Hamish is lounged on the sofa, chin propped and contemplative. He is also thinking about jelly beans.

    Because they are dogs, they both like, or rather, don’t dislike, every color jelly bean. I believe that there is a slight preference for pink, red and purple jelly beans over black, orange, and green. It is hard to tell with Hamish because he crunch-gulps so swiftly that the experience is over by the time his Corgi brain has the opportunity to form an opinion.

    Tibbit (2)Sweet Tibbit, she savors a jelly bean. She snuffles the bean with her strangely mobile little black nose.  If it proves acceptable (and it always does but certain colors are approved more quickly), if acceptable Sweet Tibbit takes the bean with her tiny front nibble teeth and pursed lips. It disappears into her maw. Her catfish-like whiskers twitch as she repositions her prize to her molars. This is a mistake Sweet Tibbit makes every time. Really, every time.

    The bean embeds into Miss Tibbit’s molars.

    We all watch Miss Tibbit make rictus faces and chew with great exaggerated jaw movement. Her awkwardly too-big-for-her-mouth tongue flaps around. She pauses and looks at us. Makes a little test chew. Nope, not done. The rictus, chewing, flapping tongue scene starts again.

    Hamish feels an injustice has been perpetrated. He glances from Sweet Tibbit eating her jelly bean to me to the jelly bean bag. His meaning is quite clear. Miss Tibbit’s jelly bean was obviously better than the cheezy little one he got.

    As I reach into the jelly bean bag for another one, Miss Tibbit abruptly stops chewing and looks pointedly at my hand. She is trying to demonstrate that she is ready for another bean.  I hold my hand in the bag for a moment. Tibbit stares. I wait. I can see her lips trying to pull back into a rictus for more chewing. She is forcibly restraining them. I wait. Ricuts, flap, flap flap of the tongue.

    Miss Tibbit gets more out of a single jelly bean than anyone I have ever seen. Sweet Tibbit, so simple, so sweet.

  • Three’s Company, Two’s Just Awkward

    As it turns out, Miss Tibbit the Useless Little Black Dog and I don’t have all that much to say to each other. Hamish the Corgi was in the dog hospital yesterday. This left Miss Tibbit and I alone in the house.

    Hamish left early in the morning, and Miss Tibbit sat on the bed and stared out the window at the Pathfinder as it left the driveway. When the truck was out of sight, she turned to look at me over her shoulder. I shrugged at her. What could I say? Hamish went somewhere and she didn’t.

    Morning walkies were weird. Miss Tibbit didn’t pull at the leash. She didn’t bark at other dogs. She sniffed everything twice as hard as normal, lingering over the little hedge branch that sticks out too far and rubs against EVERY dog who walks past. I think she sniffed the bark right off of it. She kept aiming quick little glances back at me.

    Tibbit (2)The office situation was even odd. I sat at the desk, clacketing away as normal. Miss Tibbit sauntered in and sat, sort of sideways, and looked at me from the corners of her eyes. She seemed to have something to say but wasn’t comfortable enough to break the silence. We made accidental eye contact over and over again. It was awkward.

    Evidently Miss Tibbit and I just aren’t all that close. Hamish the Corgi is my best friend. He is Miss Tibbit’s best friend. But Tibbit and I seem to inhabit an acquaintance kind of friendscape. We realized yesterday that while we do spend a lot of time together, we are spending that time with Hamish not with each other.

    I tried to make it better, like you do when you are in an uncomfortable social setting, “uh, good girl,” I told her and patted her on the head. She went along with my attempt to form a connection, but she yawned with a squeak at the end. Grasping at any distraction, I suggested we go downstairs for lunch.  I figured if we were doing something it would be less noticeable that we didn’t have anything to talk about. Well, that lasted about 30 seconds. Once her lunch was gone, we were at the same impasse. A lot of time and no real interest in each other. We stood in the kitchen, whistling to ourselves and faking absorption with the fridge magnets and the nutrition information on food wrapper labels.

    “Well,” I said, fed up with the whole thing, “now we know.” Miss Tibbit tried to look agreeably insightful. It wasn’t easy, she was stretched up on her hind legs trying to lick the butter dish on the counter at the time. We went back up to the office. I typed and clicked the mouse. Miss Tibbit napped in the chair. We ignored the space on the floor between us where Hamish usually lays and waited for our uncomfortable day to end.

  • Lemme me see the other side.

    I’ll tell you what. I have lived in Minnesota. I know what cold feels like. I spent a couple of winters in Anchorage. I know what big snow looks like. I grew up at the South Jersey shore.  I am familiar with bone cutting, sand carrying, January winds that administer the midseason microdermabrasion treatments. Stings a bit when the feeling comes back into your cheeks.

    Now I’m in Buffalo. And I am becoming expert in the wintry mix. Sloppy.  Gusty. Raw. The Christmas pine garlands are flopping all over the place. And dog walks are wretched.

    “Yeah.”

    Sorry, that was Miss Tibbit interrupting us. This afternoon she pranced onto the back porch, got blasted in the face with a sleety snow, and turned around to come back inside. Wasn’t worth it. No thank you ma’am.

    Buffalo winter means that Hamish the Corgi and Sweet Tibbit come home from walkies with salty wet feet. Hamish’s undercarriage is a cindery mucky mess. Every time. (The cat just sneezed in my wine by the way. Just saying. Nice moment.) If I leave the dogs alone I have mud on the sofa, salt foot prints all over the house, maybe a sick dog because I guess they aren’t supposed to lick that rock salt.

    So. Every day, several times a day, we do the lemme see the other side routine.  The dogs know and when it is gross outside they climb the first set of steps and wait for me in the hall landing. I unglove, unshoe, unhat, uncoat, unscarf, grab the dog towel, and crouch down. Hamish stands stiffly in front of me and presents his near foot – usually port side, held high in the air. I wipe it, rub his chest under there. Let go. He steps forward and balances his weight on the starboard side. I wipe the back foot, wipe the belly, let go. Miss Tibbit, who is anxious that this isn’t going fast enough, pushes past. “Lemme see the other side,” I tell Hamish.

    He steps forward a bit, performs a Corgi K-turn, hoves into reach and presents his starboard foot. Wipe. Forward. Wipe. “Next,” I say. Miss Tibbit appears in my face, one front foot in the air. Wipe. She steps forward. Back foot wipe. “Other side,” I say, like a train conductor announcing the stop. Tibbit steps away and carefully negotiates a turn, presenting the other front foot. Wipe. Forward. Wipe.

    The dogs assemble conveniently near the dog treat storage area while I drape the dog towel on the heater. It’s irritating, the dogs get rubbed with a warm towel after the Buffalo winter walks. What am I running here, a dog spa?

    Anyway, I rattle the lid of the treat jar and toss snacks into waiting maws. “Alright,” I tell them, “I’ve got work to do,” and we head back up to the desk. Oh boy, only a couple of hours until the next Buffalo winter dog walk.

  • Walking dogs in the fall has a certain frisson.

    The leaves changed in here Buffalo in that last week or two. An orangey road glow replaces the striking sun to shadow dichotomy of summer. Bowers formed by century-grown wrinkled and twisted tree branches, trimmed into arches over the sidewalks, allow a little more of the post autumnal equinox sun through so that there is a gloaming rather than pools of shade. Miss Tibbit and Hamish kick up leaves as they trot along, noses in the air to catch the damp scents.

    Fall dog walks joyously beautiful. They are peaceful. The fair-weather dog walkers have abandoned the parks and streets and Miss Tibbit has fewer dog friends to yowl toward. Hamish has fewer challengers to his tiny and vulnerable Corgi dignity. Yet, fall dog walks are fraught with danger.

    It is a social danger, sure, but no less frightening for that. It is all Hamish’s fault.

    As you may know from past chronicles, Hamish is a Master of the Craft of Display Defecation.  His joy in his craft is unsubtle. A car full of family returning home from a long day at work? What an excellent opportunity for a drive-side event. I stand and wait, blue bag on my hand, in a public demonstration of my intention to clean up. As Hamish finishes, he eyes me and smiles, steps forward and kicks with his ears up and his mouth wide in a doggie grin. His tiny back legs do a little stiff legged dance – left, right, left, right – pause – and one more time. I’m sure I’ve described it before.

    The practical effect of his charming act during these serene fall walks? He covers his deposit in layers of leaves, which are shaded just the same as his…well I don’t want to be overly vulgar. I think you know what I am implying. I am left with a car full of homeowners observing us and a yard full of brown, gold, orange leaves with something unpleasant to extract.

    I sigh, wrap the leashes tight around my free hand, and start pawing through the leaves. “Miss Tibbit,” I call, “Come help me find this.” She ignores me. Hamish is 15 feet down the sidewalk, already planning his next event. Hamish deposits , kicks, and moves on – job done. He sees no need to linger in the area. The longer I crouch in someone’s front yard, pushing leaves around, the less likely I am to find the prize. I can feel the family of observers losing confidence that I will provide a satisfactory conclusion to our so far benign neighborly transaction.

    I won’t tell you how adept I have become at “finding” what Hamish has left behind. I’m not proud of it. But sometimes a person has to make morally ambiguous compromises. The fall dog walkies are beautiful, but they are filled with peril.

  • 18 years together | 4,100 miles apart

    “It’s disgustingly hot and humid,” the WideEyedSpouse tells me. I can hear the barest hint of dogs panting in the background of the call. “Huh,” I tuck my cold feet under me and look out the wide window into a chill, gloomy, rainy fall afternoon. “I’m putting the a/c unit back in the window,” he says and I shiver.

    Yesterday was our 18th wedding anniversary and we were almost as far away from each other as we can be while remaining in the U.S. We weren’t the farthest apart we’ve ever been on an anniversary. That was in 1998 when I was living in a Eureka BombShelter tent on the north shore of Attu Island and he was in Madison, Wisconsin.

    The WideEyedSpouse celebrated our anniversary by walking the dogs in the park. As their gift to him, Hamish and Miss Tibbit produced a record setting 11 dookies in one day between the two of them. “Congratulations Boss!” they might have been thinking, “Many happy years to come!”

    ForksI celebrated by huddling at my makeshift desk, crafting careful language into formal documents. In a morning break from the labors, WideEyedFriend D. and I poked at the ever-entertaining frozen pig heads, examined the nori packages, and flirted with new teapots at New Sagaya grocery. WideEyedFriend D. selected a package of the smallest item at the store for closer examination and the bottom fell out. Ten thousand tiny forks scattered at our feet. We stood quietly watching them for a bit. I thought they would go away on their own. They did not.

    My anniversary lunch was miso soup, house salad, and bacon wrapped enoki on a skewer at Yakitori. Crunchy salty fat around fibrous chew. Interesting, and besides, after 18 years I figured I should shake things up a bit.

    5guysFor anniversary dinner, WideEyedSpouse had a Five Guys burger. He sent me a picture. I went to Aladdin’s with Friend D. to feast on perfectly prepared halibut followed by baklava.

    It was a relaxed and happy 18th anniversary. 4100 miles apart.

  • Miss Tibbit Takes Herself to Brunch.

    “I’m feeling peckish,” Miss Tibbit, the Useless-Little-Black-Dog, thought to herself this sunny Saturday morning. She was curled tight on the Big Bed next to the Person.

    She laid there for a few moments more, thinking through her options. The Person had coffee and a book, nothing worth asking for there. Wiggins the Ancient Cat now lives in a sequestered room and his food bowl was not accessible. Miss Tibbit had cruised the kitchen counters during breakfast two hours ago. Empty. Also empty was the Sesame Melba Toast carton abandoned by Hamish the Corgi on the living room floor.
    Miss Tibbit sighed and resigned herself to hungry napping.

    One ear perked. Miss Tibbit had an idea. An elusive memory tracked across her tiny mind. She felt that something wonderful sat on the kitchen floor, unguarded, far away from the Person, and certain to satisfy even the biggest snacky appetite.

    The Person mistrusts Miss Tibbit’s intentions as a matter of habit, so this had to be a cunning operation. Miss Tibbit made a plan.

    “Yaaawwnnn,” she said, with a cute squeak at the end. She stretched against the person and made her brown eyes limpid and relaxed as she assessed how deeply the Person was immersed in the book. Pretty deeply, Miss Tibbit judged. She stood, slowly, and jumped from the Big Bed. “Where are you going?” the Person asked immediately and suspiciously. Miss Tibbit dipped her tongue into the water bowl, thinking “see, just a little thirsty.”

    She stood staring at the water until she sensed the Person’s eyes were off of her. She casually tiptoed out of the room and stealth stepped down the stairs, pausing at the landing to listen, and into the kitchen.

    Miss Tibbit’s eyes grew wide and round. “Yes,” she thought, “I knew there was something wonderful here.” She approached the nearly full 25 pound bag of IAMS Naturals dog kibble that had been sitting next to the trash can for nearly a week. The Person and Hamish the Corgi brought it back from their trip to the shore. Miss Tibbit noted its arrival, but sort of overlooked it in the excitement of having them back. “Overlooked no more,” she said to herself, “time for some brunch.”

    IamsBagUsing the little nibble teeth at the front of her mouth, Miss Tibbit removed a tiny, barely noticeable she thought, section of the bag. She pushed her nose into the opening and sampled. “Oh yes,” she sighed. She dipped her head into the bag again. And again, faster and faster because after all, it isn’t everyday that a useless little black dog gets an All-U-Can-Eat brunch.

    Many minutes later Miss Tibbit stood swaying and belching as the Person harnessed her for morning walkies. Hamish sniffed Miss Tibbit’s breath. “Miss Tibbit,” the Person said, “why is your stomach distended?” Miss Tibbit belched again, wafting kibble aroma directly into the Person’s nose. “Brunch,” she smiled.

    FullTibbit