Thankful for Animals

Imagine a world without animals, be it without pets, livestock, or wildlife. How would we comparatively dull humans entertain ourselves?

I like going to sleep knowing that my pets are safe, warm, and cozy in their barn stalls and that they will be well-rested the next day to make me laugh and to cuddle alongside me. Likewise, I know that while I sleep, the raccoons are just awakening and stepping outside their holes for a night of play, hunting, and general ruckus. I think about the fact that while we sleep, on the other side of the world in Africa and India, rare wild beasts--ones I'll never see in my lifetime--are emerging from their dens, nests, and coral holes from where they will announce the morning and begin their day hunting food and guarding their young.

Without animals, we would all wake up, not to the singing and chirping of the birds, but to tree branches quaking, squeaking eerily in the wind. And the movement of the trees would be the only activity catching our attention. I can't imagine waking up without seeing the squirrels chasing each other, leaping from one branch to another. Mornings would resemble death where nothing but silence reigned?

I often imagine the wild places on Earth, devoid of human control--merely under the auspices and dominance of animals--in places so remote that hardly a human intrudes on the natural setting. Without humans shaping all to serve their needs, the wild and the animals within such a world must prosper, without fear of slaughter or the hunt. Though the prey-predator relationship exists, a world without human interlopers is ideal; it it natural.

This Christmas I am grateful to know that animals are a part of my world--whether or not that world is unseen by me or other people. Of course, my own pets have made me who I am--have formed my honest personality. My horses carry me, mostly willingly, for rides around the farm and to a few parks, and I appreciate that, too. My pigs I love because they are determined to do things they feel are important, regardless of my needs. Pigs can divorce themselves from the human condition, and for that I admire them.

This Christmas we should all be thankful for our pets who love us unconditionally and for the wildlife that entertain in much more subtle ways. Life is good because of our pets and the life flitting, scampering, and calling beyond our windows. They are our most valuable gifts this Christmas season.

Merry Christmas!

Make Your Own Bird Suet

We all take special care of our cats, dogs, bird, horses, and pot-bellies during the winter months. Freezing temps and lack of running water and plentiful food, however, is hard on wildlife as well. People like to feed the birds, but who wants to spend tons of money on these suet cakes? Well, you can make your own cakes--all at one time--ones that'll last you for most of the winter. It's easy!

Ingredients: big can of Crisco or lard; big can of cheap peanut butter (preferably crunchy style); medium-sized bag of corn meal (at grocery store in baking section); large bag of bird seed with sunflower seeds included; saran wrap; and freezer bag.

Put equal amounts of Crisco or lard and peanut butter (you don't need to measure--just guestimate) in a huge pot. Add a whole lot of seed and mix those three ingredients. Next, pour in corn meal until the whole thing stirs fairly hard. See if you can form a square without your fingers sticking to the whole mess. When the mess stirs and sounds gritty and has become stiffer, you're finished. Add more corn meal if when you try to make a cake, it really sticks to your fingers. It will, ultimately, be sticky, but you can flour or coat your fingers in corn meal to prevent a big mess.

Making the suet patties: On your kitchen counter tear out a bunch small sheets of saran wrap. Take a few spoonfuls and mold the stuff into a square. Then place the square on a plate and pour more corn meal over it, turning it around so that there's corn meal on each side and the edges. Fold up the saran wrap around it.

Form all the patties, wrap them up, and store in freezer in a gallon freezer bag. If you have a suet holder from a store, just reuse that. Or, you can simply put the suet in a crack of a tree, on a branch, or on a stump--if you don't have dogs. The simplest is to first purchase a regular suet square from a Home Depot and use the wire container for your homemade suet.

You'll have many hours of enjoyment watching the birds eating your own suet cakes, and you'll feel better knowing you're helping the wildlife stay warm while you are saving money at the same time. And the birds love this homemade recipe much more than the store-bought stuff.

The Truth About Rabies--Boiled Down

One morning about five years ago a stray cat appeared, starved, on our front porch. He was desperately thin, with a rangy coat; he had an anxious look in his eyes. The first thought I had was that he must be incredibly hungry. So, I ran for a can of cat food, but, for some reason, he wouldn’t come near the dish. This was one frightened cat. That’s when I decided to offer him a small dollop of food from the end of my fingers. He looked at me, searched for an escape route, and backed slowly away—very leery. But I was a good human, I thought. I had to show him I was not like all the other humans he has likely come across in his life.
This was a young cat—a teenaged, skeletal-skinny feline. He trusted no human. I lowered my eyes, crouched down to his level, and held out my hand with the food low enough so that he didn’t feel threatened.
Suddenly he leaped at my fingers, grabbed the spoonful of food and with it a good chunk of my hand. I stood up, howling. In his frantic attempt to get the food, he had accidentally bitten my hand. I went inside, stopped the bleeding, and put on a band-aid.
Later in the afternoon I went searching for the cat. There, behind the house underneath a hemlock it lay dead. I scooped him up in a shovel and buried him in the woods. Poor thing—hadn’t had much of a life.
I looked at my hand and wondered.

“No. I’m certain he didn’t have rabies,” I said to my usually calm doctor. “Well, I don’t know for sure, but he was just so starved, he accidentally bit me. Yeah, I know it wasn’t the smartest thing for me to do.”
In minutes everyone around me--husband, parents, doctors—were freaking out. They were worried I might have rabies. I assured them the stray was just emaciated and hungry, that he didn’t appear to be rabid, and that it was my fault for doing a stupid thing like trying to feed him from my fingers.
My doctor talked to Edgar, and, together, they decided I should dig up the cat’s body, cut off the head, and send it to a lab to be tested.

“Where did you bury the cat?” Edgar said, a shovel in his hand. I knew what he was about to do, and I didn’t want the poor cat’s body being dug up and then decapitated.
“I’m not telling you,” I said firmly.
An argument ensued, one in which I was given a choice: send away the cat’s head or go through the series of rabies shots—those awful ones they give in the belly or something. I said, “Well, you’re not going to find the cat cause I’m not telling you, so I guess I’ll have to get the shots.”
“I can’t believe you!” my husband said.
“Yeah, well. That cat was just emaciated, maybe sick with something else. I don’t think he was rabid. But we’re not digging him up.”

So, off to the hospital we went. I was escorted to a chair within the ER, and the nurses and doctors stared at me and talked behind their masks as though I had some sort of pox or something. I stared back: they didn’t understand country life, me, or struggling felines thrown out on the street to fend for themselves. They didn’t know I was certain I hadn’t been bitten by a rabid cat. Let them stare and gossip—I didn’t care.
In a few minutes I had the first of probably around thirteen or so after-exposure anti-rabies injections—in the arms, not the belly. They were no different than allergy injections—didn’t hurt, no reactions. The worst part was the driving time to get the shot.

I never did get rabies, but my stubbornness could’ve taken my life.

Today, several years after this event, I read an article about rabies. I’ve summarized the most important facts here. These facts aren’t the usual hysterical advice garnered through the Internet. These facts have been gathered by the American Veterinary Medical Association. I’m going to keep this list salient and short.

Rabies is a virus that attacks the nerves, and then the brain of an infected animal. It is usually transmitted by a bite. One rarely can get the disease simply from having an open wound contacting a rabid animal’s saliva.
Only mammals get rabies. Birds, fish, reptiles amphibians do not. The main rabies carriers are skunks, raccoons, bats, coyotes, and foxes. The reason cats are the most risky of the domestic animals is because most cat owners usually don’t vaccinate their cats for rabies. After the cat, rabies occurs next in dogs and cattle but rarely in horses, goats, sheep, swine, and ferrets.
Rabies vaccines are available for cats, dogs, ferrets, horses, cattle, and sheep. And wildlife can be given oral vaccine.
Signs of rabies in dogs, cats, ferrets: fear, aggressive behavior, massive drooling, difficulty swallowing, staggering, and seizures.
Humans are not at high risk if they vaccinate their animals, stay out of the way of suspicious-looking wildlife, and, if bitten, submit to the rabies series treatment.
Steps to take in dealing with rabies:
Get dogs, cats, ferrets, horses, and livestock vaccinated.
Avoid letting unvaccinated animals roam free. Let unvaccinated pets enjoy playtime outside that is supervised, caged, and spay and neuter pets to prevent roaming.
Pick up garbage and other foods lying around outside—foods that may attract raccoons and other wild animals.
Don’t go near a nocturnal wild animal who is exhibiting strange, erratic behavior during the day. Call the game commissioner.
If someone is bitten by a suspicious-acting unvaccinated domestic pet or a strangely-behaving wild animal, see a physician as soon as possible, and follow his or her advice. That advice will probably be to go through the treatment program for rabies, the injections of which—from my standpoint—were no different than having a bunch of flu shots. If the animal who bit someone is a pet, officials will likely just order home quarantine for ten days.

The most significant thing anyone can do to avoid another’s contracting rabies is to vaccinate pets and livestock.

Rain

Those of us in the Mid-Atlantic states who have been suffering the recent drought have awakened, refreshed and positive, this morning.

It is raining.

I took a morning walk this morning in the light, but steady, drops, and though this picture really doesn't show the little puddles on our path, those pools, so familiar in spring and late fall, were like renewed acquaintances, like friends I hadn't appreciated enough in former times.

During the past few weeks of this drought, nature carried an edge, knife-sharp, on her shoulders: the landscape turned army-drab, the Irish moss scriveled and nearly disappeared, even the trees whose roots should have been deep enough to withstand the lack of water, were drooping, their leaves curled like an old woman's back. The viney plants in the vegetable garden languished, their octogonal leaves lolling like spent tongues from their stems: panting plants. My perenial garden looked stiff, with razor-sharp leaf-edges, and even the flower petals had frizzled. All the vegetation lay brutalized in the sun and scorched air.

My cats must have felt as alien as the landscape, too, for they lay out, legs spread apart--furry stars--on the desiccated walkway. When I passed by, they regarded me with irritation. And I patted one and said, "It's not my fault." The pigs disappeared into their pens to sleep away the drought--nothing outside in the grass worth snouting around for. All the worms, fresh grass shoots and other juicy delectables in the ground had either died or scriveled to nothing. There was nothing juicy anywhere--so a pig shouldn't waste her time looking. The horses, too, were miserable in the sun-under heat coming into full furnace by ten in the morning. So, each morning after their pasture breakfast, I brought them inside to their darkened stalls where the flies couldn't suck them drier than they already felt. On went the flock of fans, after which I hauled out the hay and filled water buckets to their rims. I winced even thinking about riding Bo and Lola in such heat. The horses and I glared at each other: the heat wasn't my fault. In such conditions I cared for our animals meticulously, yet I worried. I worried about all the creatures beyond my care.

The wildlife. How were the squirrels, the spiders, the deer, the ground hogs, the fox, and the other creatures of the field and forest coping and keeping themselves alive on this devil-designed stage? Things weren't right with nature in this extreme heat and desiccation: all seemed aggravated, on edge, nervous, jittery--all of which I could only quantify through my own instincts. I believed that the unease around me resulted from the heat's ultimate threat to creatures' survival.

But this morning's walk in the rain refreshed my spirit and cleansed my worry. With the rain trickling down my face, I could feel the relief--the immense sigh in the landscape and in the animals around me. A strange peace mist-coated the air, which before had been knife-sharp with every breath. The moist air softened the atmosphere, puffed up and filed down the edges of the dried-out echinacea petals. A graceful lace rain coverlet blanketed my stone pathway and the woods beyond--assuring nature's creatures and flora that she had, indeed, not deserted them.

Words cannot truly describe the immense rush pervading everything as the rain fell. This morning's rain brought the spiders back to life--daddy-long-leggers tramping back to work from a too-long, dusty rest beneath the wimpering weeds. The grass would need more time to regenerate, but already the elephant ears looked greener, fuller, stronger--bolder. And the change in the animals' demeanor was obvious. The cats, who ordinarily flee the lightest raindrop, ran out in the steady fall, danced and spun, darted after one another, and, realizing all was going to be okay, skipped back into the house out of the wet. The potbellies came from their houses and nosed the ground in search of bugs and grubs arriving to take part in the watery communion--all was not lost, all was not dead. The horses, too, neighed from their stalls--snorting, sniffing the wetness: asking to be let outside for a rainfall massage.

Joyful: all. I stood on the stone path, the raindrops scattering on my skin, and I smiled at the puddles forming on the stones. Not for a very long time will I curse rain. Rain is the life-blood of all living things. Rain renews, refreshes, cleans, restores. And it soothes the physical and emotional self unlike any substance.

Yes, indeed: rain soothes the souls.