Published on May 29, 2008
in birds.
The chicks are turning into chickens.
I felt a little odd about raising them to eat until I thought of James Dean: Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse. No harm in a short life, I thought, so long as it was really great. So I’ve been adding chicken toys to the coop.
They have a stump to crow on, and a ramp to climb up.
They have a tunnel to walk through, and Sam just made them a swing to swing on.
I’m all for environmental enrichment for the chickens, and they seem happy as can be.
I’m in Vermont for five days, and Bob and Sam have no problem but the dog falls apart. When I’m gone she spends her days moaning under my bed, mourning my absence until I return. Bob suspects that someday she’ll expire from overexcitement at the airport.
Bernese mountain dogs are farm dogs that understand property management the way bird dogs understand pointing. The females bond with one person that they use as their reference point, and they do whatever they’re told; Jessie hasn’t needed a leash or collar for years. She keeps deer, bear and turkeys out of the gardens, she makes it safe for me to hike alone, and she is ardent in her devotion.
“When a dog isn’t on task,” announced Sam, “it’s only job is to conserve energy.” If he’s right that explains Jessie’s behavior: without the object of her affection she has no task, so the only thing left for her to do is to sleep.
I have a friend with an African Grey Parrot. He’s a nice parrot with lots of tricks, and devoted to his owner. But when my friend travels, the parrot plucks the feathers from his chest. By the end of a long trip the parrot looks so sad and abused that he’d make a good PETA exhibit. That small grey bird and my big dog have more in common than you’d think.
After we cleared the roof, there was another big storm. So much snow fell in town that there was no place to put it. City government shut down, and so did the schools and the airport. I mentioned before how hard it is to show the scale of deep snow, since it falls everywhere.
Here you can see that the snow is over six feet high at the side of the road, but that is moved by machine. It’s the handwork that takes so much attention.
This is the path from the house to the barn.
Remember, this is a big dog.
There is really a lot of snow here.
Gone skiing.
One of my favorite things about having teenagers around is that we use up a loaf of bread a day, so I have a daily stop at the bakery.
Does every organic bakery look the same? It seems like you can travel thousands of miles and walk into a bakery that looks just like this. My dog always comes and sits exactly outside the door; in the summer she holds the same position when the door is propped open. I don’t know when she learned this trick, but it seems like she has always been a bakery dog.
Some girls will do almost anything for treats.
Published on January 8, 2008
in dogs.
My old dog and I often hike with a friend and her strapping young Newfoundland.
He’s a beast,
and she’s a faded beauty.
It has been snowing all day, and these magpies perched on the top of the tallest tree beside the stream.
Count ‘em–six!–and one flew away.
I’ve noticed that when men look at a landscape, they want to climb to the highest point. They don’t want to walk along a stream; they want to be at the top of the mountain. Women are content to hike through a valley, but men want a different vantage point. Them and the magpies in the storm.
I was trying to get a decent shot of the stream when I realized I was on top of new ice.
It’s my dog’s job to rescue me if I get in trouble in the wilderness. But she’s an old dog now, and is lying around in the snow.
People with old dogs shouldn’t walk on thin ice.
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