Just some highlights. She had four previous placements. She came home with me in 2004. She passed after long suffering in 2012. She was my alternate school at-risk kid. One ear went up and the other went down and she wrote her own rulebook.
Superdog
From the upper road, she flew over the steep bluff to the beach, bounding only once from the earth back to the sky. She hit the ground at a dead run as Roger and I watched.
See her in action!
This was the farthest I’ve ever gone to avoid killing an insect. The insect in question looked more or less like the featured photo here. She or he was black, small, and a quick scuttler.
This time it was my kitchen sink. She or he was just sitting on the rounded porcelain surface in inert spider fashion. So we can presume she/he had somehow come up from the drain and made it to high ground. But the slope was too slick for actually getting out of the sink.
OK to make this tale easier to tell, I’ll have to assign a name. Let’s assign her female gender and let’s call her Fabulosa. “This time,” I told myself, “I won’t screw up.” Past screw ups haunt me – so many pitfalls – the phone rings and you come back and can’t find the spider again – you grab a plastic container and try to scoop the little victim up and brainlessly crush one of its legs – not this time. It’s a quarantine Saturday morning and time is endless – do it right for a change.
So I impulsively grab a plastic container and edge Fabulosa up the incline. She tries desperately to get some traction, but she can’t and keeps sliding back down. In Buddhist teachings, we learn about skillful vs. unskillful means in one’s efforts to be good. The container was unskillful and Fabulosa ends up on the tiny rim of metal around the gaping drain.
I deliberately take some time off to calm down and avoid unskillful repeated efforts. It’s imperative not to let her plunge down the drain. Luckily there is a plastic bottle cap about the right size to cover the drain, so I put it over the opening and chase Fabulosa around and around her little level space with a plastic spoon. She’s not having it. she scuttles just far enough ahead each time, so eventually I let her be.
Now we’re getting somewhere! I’m bolder with the spoon this time, nudging her around the cap. Can’t catch her; she disappears into the tiny gap under the bottle cap and she’s gone. There goes my karma. And hers.
OK. She got up the drain once without human unskillful interference. So on the desperate hope that she might do it again somehow, I make her a paper towel bridge so she can get traction.
With the elation and relief that come from innovation, I’m sure I’ve got it this time.I remove the cap so she can get out of the drain and back to her safety ridge. Then get her onto the bridge. One is shown here with the cap still in place; but I laid down four all around the cap. which I don’t have a photo of. Distracted myself for twenty minutes. She was back, not even breaking a sweat. Fabulosa! I should have just left her to her devices, but couldn’t resist showing her how wonderful the bridges were. Somehow I got her flipped onto one, about three inches away from the drain. Now we’re in business. But how can she ultimately get out of the sink? A big plus: this has taken up almost an hour of quarantine time. And she’s plunged down into the drain once since I started helping her.
Another inspiration: she needs a rescue towel to lift her up and out. I set it up and go away. When I get back about twenty minutes later, she’s gone. She left her cushy paper towel and fell down the drain again. Emotions take another roller coaster ride downhill. I take away the plug and give it up for the night.
In the morning, she’s on the towel! The Universe gave her three chances. I carefully transport her, towel and all, to the Christmas cactus where she’ll live the good life. Congratulate myself all morning.
So what have we learned?
1. As Winston Churchill said: Never, never, never give up.
2. Spiders can learn
3. Always have a towel
My first .mp4 Relatives on horses and ponies.
It may look like she’s smiling. She’s not because she never smiled. It’s a yawn.
Sexy Sadie, what have you done
You made a fool of everyone
You made a fool of everyone
Sexy Sadie, ooh, what have you done
Sexy Sadie, you broke the rules
You laid it down for all to see
You laid it down for all to see
Sexy Sadie, ooh, you broke the rules . . .
Sexy Sadie, you’ll get yours yet
However big you think you are
However big you think you are
Sexy Sadie, ooh, you’ll get yours yet. . .
She made a fool of everyone
Sexy Sadie
However big you think you are
Sexy Sadie
Songwriters: John Lennon / Paul Mccartney
What makes us decide to set out one day and get a dog? Forces greater than ourselves of which we are only dimly aware. One day I decided Roger needed a pal. He needed somebody to body slam when he ran like a cannonball across the beach. I concocted a theory that he had a long-lost brother, not unlike Snoopy. Like most of my dogs, Roger was a behavior problem. Roger owned the world and everything in it. To jump on person or dog, to hump, to body slam — why isn’t everybody as happy as I am? Up and down the trail, hikers fought him off, sometimes threatening a good solid caning with a hiking pole. But more about him in a later blog, now on to Sadie.
The Wylie Animal Rescue Foundation (WARF) had some appealing photos, so I took Roger up to Kings Beach for a meet and greet. I didn’t know until now, all these years later, that WARF rescued animals from the euthanasia holding rooms of local shelters – death row inmates.
Connie Nowlin , who I believe was director at the time, arrived soon. We were to take walks with Roger leashed to me and the little ex-convict of the day leashed to Connie. The first two candidates were a total bust. I can’t distinctly remember one of them. The other had looked pretty good in his online photo which was a face shot which did not show his body. But in person he turned out to be a cringing, skinny, semi-Afghan type with long, thin, droopy hair. The type Roger would bully into a corner. A short walk with me almost falling to my face on the rock-lined hilly path, trying to hold Roger back, was a deal breaker. The underdog stayed close to Connie and there was no interaction with Roger.
Back to the shelter, we strolled down the line of cages and a black and white caught my eye – not because I saw any particular virtue in her, but because black and white does capture the eye. After the long drive up the mountain, I didn’t want the trip to be futile. I requested another walk.
“That one?”Connie was aghast. Masking her incredulity, she leashed the animal and we went back outside. The minute we cleared the door, the two dogs turned on each other in snarling fury and a tangle of leashes. I know better than to intervene in a dogfight and I have the section of thigh enhanced with scars, to remind me not to stick a leg between two dogs in full combat mode.
I’ve been around for plenty of these introductory bouts. They happen when two dogs meet and the first order of business is to decide who is alpha. It’s usually over in a few minutes with no real injuries, and once is enough. If their people can’t stand by and let them work it out, and get agitated, the people will turn a formality into a worse fight.
Connie was visibly distressed. I was delighted. This dog had what it took. They stopped tangling after a while and the walk progressed. Turns out she was named Sadie and that was Sadie #4 because it’s such a common dog name. I only found out later she’d had at least four placements and the last had been death row.
We decided not to attempt driving home with both in the car, so I agreed to pick Sadie up the next day.
Story to be continued. . .
He’s been around for a few years. I can’t remember when I first saw him. My office is in the basement where I face a ground level window as I work. Over the years, a procession of animals show up, peer at me and I peer back, usually both parties with great surprise. The window is unconscionably dirty, but here it is:
The most magical meeting was in 2011 as I prepared for a legislative hearing about commercial trapping. It was sometime at night and a raccoon, my spirit guide animal, was there staring at me. We did prevail at the hearing, further proving that this particular raccoon was a messenger from on high.
These days the traffic is mostly Robert, who floats by at sunset, also a smaller black cat I call Puma, and a muscular tabby I call Meena. I’ve arbitrarily assigned genders to these beings.
I call him Robert because he’s almost as big as a bobcat. Clearly somebody is feeding him; he’s been this size for at least three years. He appears to make the rounds in the neighborhood. I don’t feed him, but he’s around so much that when night temps dropped, I worried about him and gave him a pile of blankets on my back patio. Sometimes I’d see him out there, but also the other two. I think they were sleeping in shifts, sharing the blankets.
This winter it was obvious from clumps of hair that he was hanging out on my porch furniture. I gave him a rug, a fleece jacket, a flannel sheet and a cat bed donated by a friend. Didn’t seem he used it much. Yesterday morning it was all dumped on the patio floor as though he had made a hasty departure and kicked it all away. Haven’t seen him for a day, but that’s not unusual.
Update June 21, 2020. Haven’t seen him in months. From vague posts to our neighborhood Nextdoor website, I suspect somebody made a pet of him. Puma helped herself to his territory; I think she nests in the rabbit brush on the south side of the yard. She cruises by the window as Robert did, but she’s far less interested in me than he was. Whenever I enter the yard, she jumps over the fence – she clears six feet in one jump every time.
Although I highly approve of the TNR program (Trap, Neuter, Release) and even volunteered briefly, I don’t want to be nanny to all the neighborhood cats. For those who don’t know, Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR) is a program by which feral cats are trapped, spayed or neutered,vaccinated, and then released into the environment. Left ear is cropped to show a cat has been through the program. Rather than immediately reducing numbers through removal, TNR practitioners hope to slowly reduce populations over time. The trapping is not remotely like commercial cruel trapping. Rather, the traps are box traps. The TNR volunteer monitors the traps, puts a blanket over the trap once a cat enters, to keep him from panic, takes the cat to the shelter where he/she is sterilized, then released back to the neighborhood. TNR programs include a neighborhood volunteer caregiver who oversees the welfare of local stray or feral cats.
Here a raccoon rests in comfort after liberating herself from a carrier in the back seat and making her way to a cozy spot on the front seat floor as we drive to the mountains.
Recently I read a blog post which referred to raccoons as “trash pandas”. This was meant in good-hearted jest and it was written by someone who in fact respects animals and has devoted his career to them. Nevertheless, it’s been on my mind for a while and I feel compelled to address the implications of this term.
Because people take an interest in animal-centered posts and blogs and because they deserve accurate information, and because I was lucky enough to raise a baby raccoon to adulthood, it’s time to speak up for the raccoons. Raccoons have had a dirty deal in so many ways – worst of all they are victims of fur trapping – and they are nothing more than “varmints” under the law with no legal protections – the world needs to find out that this is a brilliant creature fully worthy of awe, admiration and love.
Here I cite some articles that make my point. My comments are in italics, otherwise these are direct quotes:
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5 Reasons Raccoons are smarter than You: From https://www.biotechpestmanagement.com/article.cfm?ArticleNumber=13
It is unfortunate that this spot on article comes from a “pest management” company, which would indicate raccoons are “pests” but nevertheless it pinpoints raccoon brilliance and presents convincing reasons that they are far more than “pests”.
a. IQ
They rank above cats and just below monkeys on the mammal IQ scale. Monkeys are generally considered to score just below humans and great apes on IQ scales, which means that raccoon intelligence is not as far behind us as we might like to think.
b. Evolving Intelligence
Based on several experiential studies based in Canada, scientists saw that raccoons tended to use situations to advance their intelligence. A series of trash can lids were developed with the intention of keeping raccoons out, and with each progressive round, they managed to figure out the contraption and eventually open up the trash can. This indicates that as humans have evolved into more urbanized settings, raccoons have evolved with them, and are able to learn and store information from new experiences.
My personal experience: I worked for a while with an animal rescue. They set box traps for raccoons who were getting into a family’s cat food. Several cats were trapped, but no raccoons. Raccoons did learn how to steal the bait, though. I transported a raccoon to more suitable habitat in an airline-type animal carrier. We started with her in the carrier in the back seat. After a few minutes, she was in the front of the car, sitting on my feet, and the carrier door was neatly opened, screw by screw.
c. Domestication
Raccoons have proven capable of domestication, which is no simple feat for the average animal. Not only are they able to be domesticated, once they are domesticated, their owners are often able to teach them skills the average human toddler would possess. One such raccoon, Melanie, has learned how to ride a bike, clap, dance, and ring a bell.
Mine groomed me nonstop with his busy little hands. My teeth and hair were the most interesting to him. He was fiercely loyal and affectionate.
d. Lab Rat – NOT!
Raccoons were once considered alongside rats, mice, and monkeys as the ideal animal for lab testing due to their notable intelligence. However, they were determined to be too strong-willed and even too smart for lab testing purposes. They would often outsmart the lab techs and escape to hide in air vents, and turned out to be very defensive when they felt threatened.
Trust that a defensive raccoon is not somebody you want to face! They put on a display worthy of an animal ten times their size.
e. Survival Abilities
Raccoons can survive and even thrive pretty much anywhere across the globe, so long as there is a source of running water nearby. They are found throughout Europe, North America, and Asia, and are well known for their ability to protect themselves and for their resourcefulness. This level of intelligence and adaptability is not found in many other creatures and is yet another characteristic of raccoons that makes them stand out.
They are omnivores. Mine preferred eggs and chocolate above all other substances.
They might not quite be smarter than humans, but they’re definitely not far behind.
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This has to be clarified for readers new to mammal taxonomy, and for me! It’s confusing, but here’s what I think I know:
Raccoons and pandas are distinct species with separate evolutionary histories. Looking at a picture of a red panda, it’s easy to see why some would think it’s a form of racoon. And some taxonomists have thought so. Nevertheless, the two are quite distinct, not to mention that raccoons developed in North America whereas red pandas live in Asia. Both are distinct from the Giant Panda . The Giant Panda also hails from Asia.
Google: The red panda has given scientists taxonomic fits. It has been classified as a relative of the giant panda, and also of the raccoon, with which it shares a ringed tail. Currently, red pandas are considered members of their own unique family—the Ailuridae.
Wikipedia:
The raccoon (Procyon lotor), . . . also known as the common raccoon, North American raccoon, northern raccoon, or coon, is a medium-sized mammal native to North America. The raccoon is the largest of the procyonid family, having a body length of 40 to 70 cm (16 to 28 in) and a body weight of 5 to 26 kg (11 to 57 lb).[7] Its grayish coat mostly consists of dense underfur which insulates it against cold weather. Three of the raccoon’s most distinctive features are its extremely dexterous front paws, its facial mask, and its ringed tail, which are themes in the mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Raccoons are noted for their intelligence, with studies showing that they are able to remember the solution to tasks for at least three years. They are usually nocturnal and omnivorous, eating about 40% invertebrates, 33% plants, and 27% vertebrates.
The red panda (Ailurus fulgens) is a mammal native to the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China. It is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List because the wild population is estimated at fewer than 10,000 mature individuals and continues to decline due to habitat loss and fragmentation, poaching, and inbreeding depression.
The red panda has reddish-brown fur, a long, shaggy tail, and a waddling gait due to its shorter front legs; it is roughly the size of a domestic cat, though with a longer body, and is somewhat heavier. It is arboreal and feeds mainly on bamboo, but also eats eggs, birds, and insects. It is a solitary animal, mainly active from dusk to dawn, and is largely sedentary during the day. It is also called the lesser panda, the red bear-cat, and the red cat-bear.
The red panda is the only living species of the genus Ailurus and the family Ailuridae. It has been previously placed in the raccoon and bear families, but the results of phylogenetic analysis provide strong support for its taxonomic classification in its own family, Ailuridae, not closely related to the giant panda, which is a basal ursid.
The giant panda ( Ailuropoda melanoleuca), also known as panda bear or simply panda, is a bear native to south central China. It is easily recognized by the large, distinctive black patches around its eyes, over the ears, and across its round body. The name “giant panda” is sometimes used to distinguish it from the distantly related red panda.
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Seeing the word “trash” in any context relating to raccoons is particularly painful for me. I know they are infamous for raiding trash. I also know professional wildlife managers have so little respect for this brilliant little fellow that they consider them “trash animals” not deserving of protection and subject to mistreatment and slaughter at anyone’s whim.
If everybody spent at least some time with a raccoon, the world would be a better place. They cannot be dominated, thereby teaching humility. If you’re into laughs, nobody tops the chuckling raccoon. I know the question of domestication is tricky and I hesitate to say they should be as prevalent as dogs in our homes, but I’m thinking about it. For now, the conventional wisdom is that they should remain in the wild, and they’re doing a great job of it. More on this in future, one of my favorite topics.
