Remember, I wrote earlier about how Tango, the lab seeing eye dog-in-training, broke me in as a test blind person, wearing glasses that completely obscured my vision.  Here's what happened after the panic attack gave way to real panic:

After about two minutes being pulled along like a dead cow by Tango, it suddenly all became too much. "Stop! Stop!" I cried. "How do I get her to stop?"  It seemed odd. I had been shown how to go forward but that was the last thing I wanted to do right now.  It was like driving a car then finding out that no one had showed me where the brakes were.  I was told to just say "Halt!", so I did...and sure enough my wonderful guide dog immediately stopped.  Thank God; I needed a moment to regroup.

I was feeling ridiculously emotional and out of control.   And at the same time I felt so bad for this dog, who must have wondered what the problem was.   Did I mention this was all being captured on film?  Great!  Now everyone can see me lose it, I thought.  I took a deep breath and, grinning like a nervous chimpanzee, struggled forward again.   Suddenly, I became aware that the harness was not rigid under my hand but swayed back and forth so that I was very aware of Tango's body movement.  I was very conscious of her rhythm.   It suddenly reminded me of when I was being taught dressage riding by a German instructor who would not allow us any stirrups, reins or vision.  "Close your eyes!" he would scream like Frau what's-her-name in an Austin Powers movie.  "You need to be one with zee horse!"  I suddenly felt that way with Tango, and it was as though a weight was off my shoulders.  Tango immediately sensed the change in my psyche.  She walked faster, my pace picked up and I almost started to enjoy the walk. She took me across a road, around a puddle (I saw all these afterwards) and kept me in the middle of the winding path, which interestingly enough I had thought was straight. Even though I had seen the path before donning the glasses, I had no recollection of its curves

"Tell her, left, left, find the bench," said the instructor.  I did so and before I knew it I was instructed to reach down and find Tango's nose, and two inches in front would be the bench. It was. I sat down gratefully and took off my glasses with a great sense of relief. It had been an incredible emotional roller coaster. But the strongest feeling was how amazing, how truly awesome, in the correct sense of the word, this beautiful dog was. How did she do all this? Of course many hours of skilled training but it was more than that. She had picked up my apprehension and somehow, in the space of about fifteen minutes, won my complete trust. I bent down with tears in my eyes in admiration and thanks to her. She lifted her lovely head and licked me on the nose. Wow!

Tango, you just owned my heart.

Martha Stewart the chicken, you may recall, had been crippled and nearly killed by Brer Fox, and then while recovering from her injuries, set upon by family and friends in a vicious attack designed to finish her off.  It was terrible to watch, sort of like something from "Dynasty" or "Falcon Crest."  Well, we have had an interesting turn of events in her life, and it should give all of us hope that life can be turned around no matter how low things sink.

About a week or so ago, I got another frantic "Can you help me, I've found a ______ and don't know what to do!" call.   These come in fairly often around here and always keep life hopping.  While still on the phone, I started to prepare the shower for the next contestant in the Game of Life. This time, the shower residents were four tiny, day-old chicks, found in a dumpster.   Sometimes, I want to scream at people!  This was no accident. This was premeditated murder. No only do babies of this age need food, water and 85-degree warmth continuously, but any predator (and chicks are beset by a never ending list of them) could swallow them whole.  Also, this had been no ordinary dumpster.  It was a compactor.  The next person to close the lid would have would caused the compression machine to activate and we would have had...well, chicken paste, I guess. The rescuer, God bless her, climbed in, pulled them out and called me.

Can we save the damned chickens and start making Idiot McNuggets, please?   

Since chicken rehabilitation is a speciality of mine (how does THAT look on a resume?), they were settled in no time.   The problem was, what was I going to do when they were bigger?  They were too tiny to go outside, and when they did get big enough the Kelly Park Chicken gang (my pack of decidedly bitchy, unfriendly fowl) had already shown that no outsiders were welcome. Suddenly I remembered that Martha had always been a good mother.

I picked her up and put her in the shower. She didn't react to the babies with anything other then feigned indifference, but she didn't hurt them either. Yeah!  This might work. Within twenty-four hours, she was letting them sleep under her wings from warmth and had discovered that she did still have a purpose in life.  The whole bunch now lives outside in the dog run and M.S. mothers them as though they are her own. It's a nice ending and goes to show that even if your own family are assholes to you, maybe another one will come and teach you love, all over again.

Martha Stewart Comes Home

Martha Stewart Comes Home

Martha Stewart, special needs chicken, meets her new adopted brood in the shower, cheered on by April, the miracle cat who survived her 2006 tour through the clothes dryer. Never boring around here!

Martha and her new kids on the (non chopping) block

Martha and her new kids on the (non chopping) block

Two weeks after they met in the shower, Martha Stewart and her adoptees are happy residents of the dog run...and Brer Fox is nowhere to be found.

Apparently, a cat named Suki is expected to make a full recovery from a turn in a front-loading washing machine in Australia.  The feline was napping on a pile of dirty laundry (haven't we all done that?) when the busy mum threw her into the machine by accident.  Upon emerging limp and lifeless, Suki was rushed to a veterinary hospital, warmed and then placed in an oxygen humidor, and apparently is pretty much back to normal.

I bring this up because I've been there.  I wasn't present for the strange event, but by virtue of the sort of "animal weirdness halo effect" that I apparently radiate, a cat in my family once took a near-lethal spin in a laundry device.  In 2006, our cat April inadvertently crawled into the clothes dryer and went for a high-heat spin, coming out hyperthermic, brain damaged and basically barbecued. I was in Orlando at the book conference where I met my eventual co-author, Tim Vandehey, and got the news by phone by virtue of a screaming, panicked teenage daughter—not what any parent wants to experience.  

Fortunately, thanks to the quick actions of my eldest daughter (who just became a mommy for the first time a week or so ago, so she has excellent training should Mason ever crawl into the dryer), April was cooled down, revived and saved...and is still with us.  In fact, as I relate in the book's Introduction, she's a much nicer cat now than she ever was before.  So to the owners of Suki, chin up.  You may in fact have stumbled upon the greatest cat attitude rehabiliation system ever known: Laundry Therapy.  I think all elected officials in Washington should be required to take a spin, don't you?  The really stupid ones can go on high heat. 

You may have heard about the tragic story out of Cleveland, OH, where a 24-year-old man was killed by a captive black bear as he was opening its cage for regular feeding.  Well, now the bear has been put down at the request of the man's family.  You can find both stories here and here. 

That's two tragedies in a single story: the death of the young man and the death of a bear that, if left to its own in the wild might still be alive.  This is why I'm always on about the ridiculousness of people who think they can safely keep wild beasts at their personal residences like enormous fluffy pets and why I regularly get on my soap box against allowing animals to be treated like saleable commodities, whether they're bears, chimps or cougars. 

In the Cleveland case, the owner of the property where the animals were housed had a regular menagerie: four tigers, a lion, eight bears and twelve wolves, at last count.  Though some stories have called his property a "refuge," the fact is that it was in a residential area and the neighbors were constantly complaining about the racket made by the critters. Bottom line, this was a bootleg operation run by someone who may love animals but does not appreciate the kind of environment they need to thrive.

One problem is that unlike dogs or cats, domesticity is not bred into the bears, tigers, wolves, chimps and other creatures that tend to occupy these makeshift preserves.  Such animals can be docile for years and seem perfectly safe, as the unfortunate bruin in this story seemed to be, and then suddenly lash out as their predatory instincts take over.  These will never, ever be domestic animals or pets, and to treat them otherwise is not only incredibly foolhardy but ultimately destructive. 

Then there's the fact that the gent who runs the pseudo-sanctuary was letting people pay to wrestle the now-dead bear.  This is what raises my hackles.  This isn't a damned carnival act...it's a beautiful, dangerous creature that should be treated with respect, not paraded before the public like a clown!  A lack of respect for the beauty and power of nature, and a self-delusional attitude about what it takes to care for big creatures safely and with optimal results for the animals' health, leads directly to terrible outcomes like this one.  If the sanctuary owner winds up having his operation shut down, the remaining animals may well end up scattered to the four winds—some housed in the private homes of idiots who think it's neat to have a pet lion, others in preserves or zoos, and some even killed so their parts can be used to make dubious Asian aphrodesiacs.  Everybody loses. 

Plain and simple, keeping wild animals in residential areas is wrong.  Playing zookeeper without training and a background in biology, zoology or animal husbandry is wrong.  Treating animals like sideshows is wrong.  I wonder how many more animals will pay with their lives before we figure that out. 

It's a terrible feeling when you are trying to count ten little piggies and keep coming up short. You wonder if Maria has a flat Wilbur under her immense body but as she doesn't want to move looking under her is not an option. And then Joy! You realize you simply can't count and all are present and correct for role call. So that's twelve pigs in total, one sheep, twenty five assorted cows, six chickens, three cats, two birds..... It's off to try and count the fifty-two fish....

Maria popping out her first newborn

Maria popping out her first newborn

Maria the pig becomes a proud mama after 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days of pregnancy.

Wow.  The miracle of birth is no less amazing when it's happening to a pig than to a human.  In fact, it's more amazing because there are no epidurals, obstetricians, pushy nurses or doulas exhorting the mother to "push."

The newborn gets its bearings.

The newborn gets its bearings.

Talk about disoriented! You're just out of the womb and your biggest worry is that your mom will squash you into pork rinds with her bulk. And you thought your mornings were tough.

Talk about disoriented!  You're just out of the womb and your biggest worry is that your mom will squash you into pork rinds with her bulk. And you thought your mornings were tough.

The babies are HUNGRY!

The babies are HUNGRY!

The piglets get down on mummy's tummy—yummy! Sorry, I couldn't resist the rhyming.

The piglets go to town on mummy's teats.  They'll feed for hours each day and gain weight at a rate that usually requires Ben and Jerry's.  Hmm, I wonder if one of those things serves Guiness?

One Hour Later...

One Hour Later...

One hour after being popped out, the eleven new piglets (one was born dead, sadly), fill their little bellies.

One hour after being popped out, the eleven new piglets (one was born dead, sadly), fill their little bellies.  Maria, pooped after her Herculean effort at childbirth, rests.  I'm sorry, if you don't think this is cute, there's something seriously wrong with you.

One day, I looked at Maria the pig and thought she finally looked a tad larger then my 34-week pregnant daughter. They had been running more or less neck and neck, but finally, like a sailboat passing another a race, pregnant belly spinnakers flying, Maria edged past Christina.

Although she has shared her pen with Mini Me, the black pot bellied miniature pig, quite happily, I could hear his squeals from five hundred yards. As I approached their domain, I saw that Maria had built a very impressive nest. About two feet high, it consisted of hay branches, leaves, and anything else she had rummaged from the earth The piggy equivalent of dumpster diving, I guess.

She lay on her side, panting heavily, and as today was due day (pigs gestate for three months, three weeks and three days) it was looking hopeful. It's always exciting when there is new life joining us, mixed with trepidation of course as you wonder what might go wrong and how the hell are you going to do anything about it anyway. Pig veterinarians don't exist around here, and my own personal one hasn't done pig surgery since school.

I was anticipating a longish delivery; certainly I had time enough to go to work and maybe view the proceedings with a couple of brewskis. In the meantime, Mini Me was getting four hundred and fifty pounds of irate mummy ramming him in the side. I figured it was time to take him to new quarters. Fortunately, help had arrived in the form of Alan, staff member supreme who greets every command with a smile and an "Okay!" "We need to move this pig" I said. "Okay!" Easier said than done, but there is a trick to pig herding which I am not sharing with you as it's a trade secret. By that, I mean it only took us an hour. Not bad really.

I went to change into my "smart manager type dress" to go to work and thought I would totter on my high heels before leaving for the day, to see how Maria was progressing. I saw a little rat rustling in the hay. Gross. A rat. Wait a minute! Not a rat! A baby piggy! Tiny and black and pink and being ignored by Mommy pig. And another one...lying in the dirt. Bad mommy pig!
And then they started popping out with impressive regularity.

After the third (and largest), she settled down to let them all come to her, and in an hour and a half had had eleven little future pork chops, although one was dead and had been for some time as I discovered when I went to pick it up. I will spare you the details.

Nothing is cuter than a bunch of baby pigs. Nothing is more touching to see this gentle giant trying to maneuver her huge bulk without crushing her family (been there with my own!). With a sigh, it's off to work, leaving the happy piggy family to get to know each other.

Later...it's amazing to see how advanced pigs are compared to puppies. They are born with their eyes open and with voracious appetites. With a lovely assortment of baby pink, black and pink and a rather lovely gold and pink, they are up and running in hours. So, I had my beers, sitting in a chair as the sun set watching the babies and wondering at the miracle of life. Hey, there isn't much else to do for entertainment in the sticks!

Next morning...of course this is the one time Kent has taken off to go fishing, leaving me with ten extra bodies to be responsible for. It's a relief to go out there as dawn breaks and count the same number of God's creatures as you left last night--none of them eaten by foxes or squashed by mommy. Maria looked a little under the weather, not eating and panting hard. My first concern was infection. So I texted said veterinarian husband, whose wonderful return text was "Take her temperature." Seriously! Can you imagine trying to get a temperature of a huge beast that is mildly domesticated compared to most? Hmm.

The scary thing is, I did it...and I videotaped it. So if I were Kent, I would be afraid. Very afraid of me. Because if I can sneak up on a 450 pound pig and get a rectal temperature...just imagine.

From the WTF file comes a story from Scotland, where a brewery is selling a blonde ale packaged in—we are not making this up—a bottle that's been stuffed in the open-mouthed, stuffed carcass of a dead animal, like a squirrel.  Now, Lord knows we've both been known to tip back our fair share of malted yeast beverage, fermented grape juice and other tipples, but huh?  This buries the needle on the What The Hell Were You Thinking O-Meter. 

It gets stranger, if that's possible.  The beer is called The End of History, it's 55 percent alcohol (that's 110 proof; for perspective, Maker's Mark is 80 proof) and it costs $770 PER BOTTLE!  Let us get this straight: you want us to pay the cost of a coach ticket to Nassau for a beer served in the skin of an eviscerated marmot, one bottle of which will likely leave us passed out in a pool of our own vomit?  Capitalism has officially gone insane...but it's a hell of a PR ploy.  Read about the brewery here, if you dare.