Cats on a walk

Zoe is kind of out of shape. He’s the only one of the cats that pants.

Zoe panting

You can hear him. It’s kind of funny in a way, and kind of sad, too. We think he might be training for race walking, because his gait is pretty funny. Mark says he’s doing a steam engine impression — choo-choo-choo. At least he’s trying. He seems to have a better disposition now. He’s on arthritis medication and something for his kitty IBS (lots of throwing up and diarrhea in the not-too-distant past; he feels better and so do we). He’s also on some expensive glaucoma medication, but we don’t think he actually feels any better because of it.

Once back at the house, it takes him a while to recover.

This floor is cool

Lucy with her Lucy-sized peanut butter bong

Zeke and his Zeke-sized peanut butter bong

We make them work for it. It’s messy work, but they seem to like it. It’s pretty much the only work they do, except for barking at foxes.

Of course dogs like a lot of things. Like chicken, fish, hamburger, bacon, steak, steak fat, baked potatoes, french fries, bread, apples, not oranges, not to mention treats made specifically for dogs. And they like ice cream. A lot. And it turns out that they like marshmallows a lot, too. We found that out when Leah bought a bag of giant marshmallows — each one is a meal! The dogs gather around with an expectant, imploring look, which is usually enough for me to pull a little bit of mallow out of my mouth and give it to them.

But cats and marshmallows? Never.

Smokey tries a marshmallow

Well, OK, maybe one little taste. With Zeke watching and hoping that he doesn’t like it.

Actually, he didn’t like it all that much. More for me and the dogs!

Last weekend we saw a fox in the back yard. Since our fox started limping, we had become used to having her run at the sight of one of us, or the sound of Zeke barking. But this one sat down and watched me. I went back in and got a camera.

Our fox, acting like old times

I took a few shots, and then the fox laid down and rested for a while.

The fox at rest

It seemed content to watch me as long as I watched it. I eventually went back inside, and eventually the fox left. Later we saw a fox eating from the catfood dish in the driveway. I opened the door, and it looked up warily. It was acting more cautious, like we have become used to. So I pretty much convinced myself that the fox in the back was a different one, probably the mate. But when I opened the picture to edit it tonight, I realized that the fox in the back yard was not putting its weight on its left foot. If you look back at the first image, you can see that the left foot is folded under, and the left leg is being held at an awkward angle. So this is the injured fox, after all.

The good news is that she’s still with us. The first post about the injured fox was in late April, so she has held on for more than a month using only three legs.

Zeke escaped off the deck Saturday night and chased the fox around. He came back to the driveway after a while, but took off again barking. A few minutes later I heard the fox barking in the distance. I think the fox is still able to make a fool of Zeke, even with only three legs.

Eyedroppin’

Zoe has been surprisingly cooperative when I give him his glaucoma eyedrops. The vet says glaucoma could lead eventually to blindness if not treated, and we think we can already tell that he is not seeing very well. We are not sure what to do, since the drops are not cheap, and it’s hard to give him just a single drop per eye twice a day.

Mark here: Leah doesn’t like to manhandle (cathandle?) Zoe, and that’s pretty much what it takes to get the drops into his eyes. I’m surprised at how well he takes this, though.

An even dozen?

I think there are 12 but I’m not sure. I am sure that there are at least 11. I numbered them but it’s hard to see. The questionable twelfth is at the center (labeled 12?). I think I see a tail sticking out from behind No. 11. We used to have the feeders suspended from a post on the deck railing. We had to put the rocks that you can see in the foreground on the deck railing to discourage cats from poaching birds.

Here’s a couple of closer shots.

Two hummers

A single hummer

At first this year it looked like we would have a lot of hummers again. And then they seemed to disappear. We put out a full feeder and it went down so slowly we had to dump about half of the sugar water after two weeks. We seem to get one or two at a time now. Where have they all gone? We don’t know.

For those of you with a good hummer population who are plagued with yellowjackets hogging the feeder, we found a solution. This is what our feeder looked like a few years ago towards the end of the summer. There was no way the hummers could feed.

Yellowjackets hogging the feeder

We read online about yellowjacket traps with bait suspended over water, but it turned out that a simple bowl of water with a drop or two of detergent attracted them.

Drowned yellowjackets

These are all suicides. I assume they were attracted to the odor of the detergent, and when they lit at the edge they fell in. The detergent “wets” them and they sink beneath the surface of the water, where they drown. We had to dump the bowls at least once a day for a while before the yellowjacket population was reduced sufficiently that the hummingbirds could feed.

Update: I don’t know where the hummers went, but, wherever it was, they came back. We are just now seeing a fair number, and the feeder level is dropping nearly as quickly as in the good old days.

Lucy is not sure

I walked right past the turtle and didn’t notice it until Zeke fell behind enough to pull on the leash. He investigated a little but lost interest. Lucy was afraid of it.

Nothing to be afraid of here

The turtle wasn’t particularly interested either. He stayed like this the whole time.

We walked on, and then it occurred to me that the only place this turtle could go is across the road. It was on the uphill side of the road, and there was a steep bank about 10 feet high and way too steep to climb. I didn’t know where it was going, but I thought it was too dangerous to let it cross the road by itself. So I put it on the downhill side, and hoped that was where it wanted to be.

Layers of green

The world turns a luscious green, from the lowest moss, to the dogwoods and persimmons, and all the way up to the tallest oaks, poplars and hickories. The layers of green fade into the distance. It’s almost like being under water, especially when the humidity is high. But things begin to dry out after a week or so of high temperatures and no rain. That’s why I was pleased to hear we would have rain on Sunday.

The clouds began to gather on Saturday and It got dark earlier than normal. Things looked good as we walked the dogs.

Leah and Luci, as the sky and woods darken

There was not much blue in the sky by the time we got home.

Layers of gray

There were even a few very low clouds, lower than our house, scudding along just visible above the treetops. There’s one just to the left of the lower center of this picture. And then the clouds banked up against Lavender Mountain and began to pour through the trees in our back yard.

Clouds are coming

Sunday morning came. It rained hard to the west and to the northeast of us, but not here. Maybe next weekend.

Last Tuesday at around 8 pm he climbed the fence and disappeared. A neighbor told us she saw him running that-a-way, but we had to go to the phamarcy for glaucoma eyedrops for Zoe (the son of Satan), so we couldn’t look for him. After we got Zoe’s eyedrops (I certainly hope he looks better after using them; they’re expensive.) I saw Zeke lying at his ease in the neighbor’s yard. I got a leash and went after him. He took off. I called and told him “No!” in what I thought was a convincing tone of voice. He looked at me over his shoulder and continued on his way. I followed. hobbling along kind of like Chester on Gunsmoke, but by the time I got around the curve of the road, there was no sign of Zeke.

Around 10:30 he eventually dragged his sorry *** back into the yard. And then we noticed that the side of his face and his upper right shoulder were covered with blood. Oh, great, I thought, he’s killed the fox. Our good neighbor Allie called and asked about him because she saw the blood and was worried. I got about five gallons of warm water (Not the hose with cold well water. I’m a good dog owner, aren’t I?) and started washing blood off. No sign of injury, so that was good. And then he shook his head, and blood started dripping onto the driveway. There was a lot of blood. It almost soaked a big handful of paper towels, and then another. I finally found the wound. If you looked carefully with a flashlight, you could just see a slight abrasion along the edge of his ear. I wouldn’t have believed it could bleed so much.

So we applied an adhesive bandage.

Zeke recovering with bandage, not chastened, with peanut butter bong

Zeke is a good dog in most ways …

Chloe and Dusty

Chloe sometimes comes with us when we take the dogs for their last longish walk of the evening. Her coloring is just about perfect camouflage for the pine bark behind her. Her son Dusty never walks with us. He looks a lot like one of the rocks we use in the landscaping. Lying around like a rock is what he does mostly, when he’s not eating or running away from something.

Here’s a nice one, from March 1972:

Dear Mr. Parris (sic),

Thank you for the nice write up in the paper.

We had a lot of visitors and I think we made some new friends. Everyone talked about how nice the article was. One even wanted us to put our names on one for her. The first time anyone ever wanted an autograph from us. Some said they had never seen anything like this setup for the martins. All had tried to attract martins to their places but only a few had ever had any to nest with them and thought we might could help tell them if there was anything else they could do. We gave away quite a few gourds. Maybe that will help.

Have a good day and thank you very much for all the nice things you said about us and our place for the birds.

Mr and Mrs. ***

P.S. The best yet for my scrap book.

And now you know as much about the article I wrote as I do. I assume I wrote about purple martin nests they made from gourds. It seems to spark some weak memory, but I’m not sure whether I’m just making it up now, 41 years later. I have a fairly large box full of old clippings. Maybe I can find the story.

I regret to say I don’t think I ever wrote a note back to them. They seem like nice people. I imagine that they are dead now. A quick check online found a lot of people with their last name in the community where they lived, but no one with the full name.

And then there was this letter from September 1975:

Dear Mr. Paris,

While reading your article in the Augusta Chronicle on demand growing for wood stoves, I became very infuriated by some of your remarks you made about the “poor country people.” Let me say that I live in the country, and I feel that I’m one of the richest persons in the world. We may not have a bank full of money, but God has certainly blessed us in so many other ways.

You may not believe this, but even though we live in the country, we have central heat and air conditioning in our home. Let me say that if the need arises for us to get a wood stove I believe we could afford to buy one, and I feel sure we could get the wood to burn in it. I don’t think “poor country people” have to burn boxes and other household trash any more so than city people. I guess you have realized by now that I think you need to get out and busy yourself to find something more interesting to write about next time.

If you can’t say something nice about country people, just don’t write about us at all.

Thank you,

Mrs. ***

I remember absolutely nothing at all about the article, but I do remember feeling injured, because, as I recall, I thought I was not implying that all country people were poor, but that some poor people who happened to live in the country were using wood stoves. I am pretty sure I was quoting a wood stove salesman about what some poor country people might burn in their stoves. I also regret that I never wrote the author back to try to apologize and explain.

I remember getting another letter from an engineer who took issue with my spelling of the word mill in reference to property tax. I think I spelled it “mil” which he said was a unit of measurement. He was irate. I have to say in my defense that the copy editor should have caught that, but the ultimate responsibility is mine. I still wonder why it offended this guy so much. I did not keep his letter.

I have one more letter on the positive side.

 Hi Mark,

Just a note to let you know we were thrilled to see (their daughter’s) picture on the front page of the Augusta Chronicle. It was such a surprise!

I think it was so nice of you to take such an interest in someone you didn’t know.

If we can ever do a favor for you, let me know.

Thanks again,

From all the writing I did, as far as I can tell, four people were moved to actually write me. These letters make me think. I guess most of the writers are dead now, or maybe in nursing homes, or invalids in their own homes. I touched their lives in some way, large or small, and at the time I didn’t understand what that meant. Based solely on me, I have to conclude that twenty-somethings can be pretty dense.

It has taken me a long time to realize that what you do in what seems the simplest way can have such a big effect on people. If I had understood more, maybe I would have done things differently.

It’s a lesson I continue to have to learn.