Animals – Page 5 – the Dig and Flow

Autumn Layers

2015-10-02 20.36.52 — Layers in early October

2015-10-29 01.08.23 — Layers at the end of October

I find myself wielding a machete behind the barn in my pajamas. Maybe this is not the perfect tool for this job, but it feels right. I am a ninja, swinging my heavy blade. I am an Amazon woman. I am a Jedi knight. Regret this tomorrow, I will.

It is a grey-sky, damp-air day, warm for November. A breeze touches the tall grass and dead goldenrod as I whack them. Without leaves on the trees, the underneath layers of the farm seem more complex, more beautiful. The wetland stands out, green-bronze below, topped with silver branches. The ground I am clearing undulates, perhaps deeply rutted from past heavy equipment, so it has escaped the bush hog. It is surrounded by half-naked trees and rusty-tufted sumac and leaning, disconnected fenceposts. I am hacking a path for the electronet fence.

Our laying hens’ dissatisfaction with their current accommodations has inspired my madness. A week ago, I exerted Hurculean effort to push their A-frame tractor uphill to fresh pasture, thinking they had exhausted the fun and nutrition from their enclosure on our defunct tomato patch. I thought they’d be grateful. I underestimated them.

First, they were loathe to leave the garden area, where we’ve rotated their house all summer. After prolonged, humiliating coaxing, most of the chickens crossed the road. Seven refused, deciding the gravel of our driveway was the devil. Six of these allowed me to scoop them under my arms and carry them across the Driveway Styx. Beardo did not.

Beardo, an Americauna with the dark whiskers of a lumberjack, required a slide tackle. In the process, Stella nicknamed her Roadrunner. I would’ve thrown up my hands and wished her luck finding the flock on her own, but a red-tailed hawk cruised nearby, and we needed leave to pick up Sam from school. With both of us muddy when she was finally under my arm, Beardo and I had words.

Since the big move, the hens have been flapping out of their electronet fencing several times daily. They prefer the garden, with long-dead sunflower stalks and bare dirt, to the pasture, with more exposure and no vertical structures. In the new location, Stella observes, the wind blows their butts wide open.

2015-11-11 22.04.09 — Rewards for my troubles

These birds now have no qualms about breaching the driveway to run all over the place. I don’t begrudge them their freedom, but it separates them from their food, water, and nest boxes, making them more vulnerable to predators.

This morning, I look out the kitchen window and see half the chickens down in the garden, with several hens scratching towards the road. Fine, ladies. Fine. I stuff my feet into muck boots and head outside to lure them back to safety—except Beardo, who I refuse to chase this time—and to move their house and yard under the trees.

Careful to keep my attentive dog behind me, I grip the machete, swinging from my shoulder. Knees bent, feet apart, I lean into the moment. I feel a little stiff. There are other things I should be doing. My coffee is definitely getting cold on the kitchen table, but I’m having too much fun to go back inside.

2015-11-11 17.19.48 — Today: the rogue Beardo. Skip wonders what the heck is wrong with this unherdable bird.

She Sees Inside The Dog

In the morning, Stella refuses my offer of crayons, snacks, books, stuffed animals, and amusing herself in another room. She insists on watching me spay our puppy. “If I get scared, I’ll hide behind the wall,” she tells me. She has always known herself this well.

So we follow Skip, tugging on her leash, into the clinic. I press my stethoscope to Skip’s chest, with Stella at my elbow. She watches carefully as I draw some pain medication and a sedative into a syringe and inject it into Skip’s muscle. She stands close as I shave a small patch of hair on Skip’s forearm and place a catheter into the vein.

I juggle my two hats—mom and veterinarian—describing each step to Stella, in a light voice, before it happens. She is poised, ready for each next moment. She closes a drawer I absentmindedly leave open.

Stella never flinches as Skip relaxes, then slides into sleep during my next injection. I curve a tube past Skip’s adult incisors and puppy canine teeth, into her trachea. The technicians shave her belly and vacuum it. Stella follows us into surgery.

My technician friends roll a tall chair into the room. Perched there, Stella holds her own council. Often chatty, she observes in silence, missing nothing.

Where does this fit into her four years of experience? Stella collects subtleties and figures things out. She understands more than what we tell her. She has seen dog sickness, injury, death, and, now, anesthesia in dogs. Today, she sees inside her dog.

While I close the body wall, Stella helps to arrange soft blankets in a cage, complete with a pillow. She squats beside me as Skip awakens with her fluffy head in my lap. As I carry Stella into preschool that afternoon, the powder from inside my size 6 ½ surgical gloves lingers on my wrists.

When Sam and I pick up Stella from preschool, she tells him that we spayed Skip today. He is awestruck and horrorstruck that she watched it.

“How did it look?” Sam wonders.

“Red.” Stella is matter-of-fact, but doesn’t want to give him many details. This experience is hers to keep.

“What was your favorite part about spaying Skip today,” I ask Stella.

“When you listened to her heart.”

Truly, that’s my favorite part, too—my daughter’s soft hand on my thigh as I kneel with my stethoscope. I can sense Stella’s neurons firing—curiosity and attentiveness. I can feel her big heart beating.

Our Place in the Family of Things

You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

The dishes can rot. The laundry languishes, washed and dry. Each morning, I make the bed and updump the basket onto it. My optimism is freshly piled as high as those clean clothes—all wilting by nighttime, when I scrape the pile back into the basket, then fall into bed. Will my failures outlive any good work I have done?

You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves.

My son is tardy again this morning because I cannot uncurl his warm limbs from my arms, where he sought comfort from some fear that finds him in the night. When I open my eyes at last, the sky is aflame, so I run into the yard in my pajamas, camera in hand. Then the chickens need to be released from coop to run, and the light, splitting across the garden makes them glow so fiercely that each of their feathers demand my attention.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

October is cool on my skin, warm in my eyes, and feels like all of the places I’ve left behind. The shrinking daylight crescendos its intensity—the autumn sky making love one last time to the passionately dying leaves. There is a soft poignancy. How did it happen that I am this age in this place? Why am I still distant from so many that I love?

I peel my son from my bed, rousing him towards French toast—the only consolation I can offer him for forcing his instinctive self into such prescriptions of waking, walking, sitting, eating, and learning by the clock, a condition of growing up. Beside my bed is a wooden crate, stacked with prose and poetry that I turn to whenever I ask myself, “And who will take care of me?”

Meanwhile the world goes on. / Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain / are moving across the landscapes, / over the prairies and the deep trees, / the mountains and the rivers.

The beauty of this season stands me still, gasping. The hills burn red, orange, yellow, brown, green—bright on sunny days and strong, with depth, on clouded days when the wind carries my breath dancing across the hayfield with the leaves. Everything is restless. I see birds normally hidden, deer grown bold despite being hunted, small furry creatures gathering for the coming lean times.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, / are heading home again.

Their calls percuss the morning, making a racket over our farm. They lift from the lake at the end of our road each morning and throng over the treeline towards us. Evenings, they honk back across the sky and swirl down—hundreds of them? A thousand?—to our neighbor’s hay field and the lake he calls his wildlife preserve.

Such numbers in flight, choreographed to move as a whole, make me think swarm or school, but these are Canada geese, averaging eight pounds with five foot wingspans, not bees or small fish. These ordinary, unflinching birds carry weight alone and together. Soon they will move on.

We hurry to the lake one evening and park by the road. The kids tumble out, racing across the field. “Stop! Wait!” I yell. “Those geese will chase you.” They’ve dashed amidst a small group of geese who seem unperturbed, still resting and grazing. I catch up and see that I am fooled. Delighted, my daughter embraces the nearest decoy, hoisting it high and twirling through the grass. The real geese call from their safe floating beds on the lake.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, / the world offers itself to your imagination, / calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting— / over and over announcing your place / in the family of things.

Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”

We spin apples on our new gizmo, which peels and cores and slices them. “Where have you been all my life?” I ask this gadget, as it fills the dehydrator in minutes, then creates a mountain of uniform, peeled slices that we toss with sugar and cinnamon, top with butter and oats and more sugar, and bake into a crisp. The kitchen is warm apples, wriggly puppy, kids making a racket louder than geese. I have cracked a window so that I can hear all of them this evening, inside and out, announcing our place.

Why I’ll Always Keep Chickens

Sam takes his job seriously. He is our flockster, in charge of chickens. The chickens provide affection, drama, intrigue, and comic relief. Sam has conditioned them to enjoy petting and holding and, in the case of the Silkies, to tolerate being stuffed up his shirt to peek out at under his chin.

2015-08-31 19.41.52 — Two small chicken eggs. Two large, white duck eggs.

Feeding and watering them is a team effort, but Sam spearheads the latest task: egg collection. Our hens have been earning their keep this summer by providing hours of entertainment for our kids. Now, they’ve added to their job description. Blue-green and light brown eggs have begun to appear in our freshly hay-bedded nesting boxes. Mostly no longer than my pinky, these are eggs from teenagers, just practicing for adulthood.

The chickens roam within an electro-net fence during the day, scratching and rolling upside-down for dust baths. They siesta in the shade of two trees in their enclosure. At dusk, they meander into their moveable chicken tractor, roosting safely for the night.

2015-09-07 00.42.13 — Silver-laced Wyandottes

Ever since we ate the last roosters for supper, life has been peaceful among our young hens. It was my fault that any roosters remained beyond chicken butchering day. I let romantic notions override my general rule: No intact, non-human male animals on the property. The roosters were beginning to crow, which added to the farm ambiance. They were becoming handsome, especially the largest one.

We could just keep one of the five roosters, I thought. One rooster would surely settle into his role and act sensibly. He might even help to protect the hens. Out loud, I accidentally said, “We could name that big guy Fezzik.”

There. When butchering day came, we had to carefully avoid Fezzik, named for the endearing giant in The Princess Bride, and therefore special. Within a few weeks, though, Fezzik was plucking our hens’ back feathers and dragging them around by the neck. This behavior took the shine right off him. I cannot abide a bully.

Neither can Sam. He spent hours stalking around after Fezzik, chasing him away from the hens, sometimes shaking his fist. One day, after hearing a hen yell, but not seeing which one had been attacked, Sam rushed me over to examine each hen, searching for the victim. He brought them to me, one by one, until I found a broken, bleeding neck feather. More fist shaking and angry reprimands ensued.

Then we switched tactics. We thanked Fezzik for growing so large, then excused him from the flock. We invited the neighbors that day and grilled the freshest, best-tasting chicken we’d ever had. The next day, we relished new, contented sounds from the chicken yard—croons and clucks, without the terrified squawking.

Few delights compare with a flock of cared-for animals making happy noises while running towards you. For a sensitive, five-year-old boy—squatting to receive his flock in open arms—this moment signals acceptance. It affirms his much-practiced gentle touch and soft voice. These skittish creatures have learned to trust him. He feels the strength that comes in tenderness, the power to draw an animal towards you because you are kind.

2015-08-19 02.43.42 — Ameraucana, a blue-green egg layer

Up a Creek

True to character, Sam will not release the crayfish, even while its pinch on his finger is making him howl. His persistence is one of his strengths, I often remind myself.

“Just let it go,” I tell him.

“No. Owww! I want it,” he says, juggling his fingers while the claws keep grabbing him until he manages the unpinchable tail hold, looks up at me, and grins.

We’ve been creek swimming with our kids since they were in diapers, across Alabama and Georgia. They grew up in sandy creeks, swamp creeks, creeks cobbled with multicolored stones. Now we’re dabbling in the shallows of Schoharie Creek, not far from where it joins the Mohawk River, our watershed here in New York, which lacks the South’s poisonous snakes and diversity of native freshwater mussels.

We’ve heard rumors of mussels in Schoharie Creek, and Andrew brought snorkels and a viewbucket to search for them here. He wades a short distance upstream from us, straps on his snorkel mask, then flops into the water. Our puppy, Skip, with the overactive sense of responsibility that plagues herding dogs, follows him up the bank, then plunges in heroically behind him, swimming towards his prostrate body. She reaches him, scrabbles up onto his back, and perches there, keeping watch while he searches the creek bottom for mussels.

These native mussels, not good to eat, offer a feast of biological wonder. They captured our hearts in the South, the global hotspot for mussel diversity. First, I loved their names: fatmucket, pistolgrip, heelsplitter, shinyrayed pocketbook, pigtoe, snuffbox, washboard, three-horn wartyback. Then, their reproductive tricks astonished me; they lure fish to host their parasitic larval stage. Also, they’re endangered, thanks to human-driven damages to creeks and rivers.

Freshwater mussels range in size from thumbnail to dinnerplate. They encase themselves in smooth or ridged or pimpled shells that are brown or black or yellow, some with dark stripes fanning across them, some without. Mussels always have a pearly lining—white, pink, deep violet.

This lining glimmers on the few shell shards that Andrew can find on the creek bottom, marking them as the remains of native mussels. Otherwise, this piece of Schoharie Creek seems mussel-less. A creek without mussel seems less alive to me, but the beauty here woos me anyway.

Forested hills frame some cliffs of angled stone, that has shed chunks of rock along the creek bank. Across from where the kids and I wade, the water pools invitingly, and Sam will later practice his own snorkeling there.

Just upstream of our crayfish and snorkeling spot, large rocks form a shoal, where the creek speeds up and thins over the rocks. Water pours over edges, curving into cracks and churning in holes. The water level, lower than average, allows us to wade across the creek on this rock pavement.

Sam and Stella monkey along, dangling from our hands and squat-scooting through the water. Skip worries, unable to follow at our heels, shivering as her fluff slicks against her surprisingly scrawny body. We carry her until she warily curls onto a warm rock, still vigilant as we swim.

This is how we play. We need hours like these, away from farm projects and jobs and the daily needs of everything. Our limbs loosen in the flowing water. The creek sings over the shoals, constant trickle-rush sounds that both invigorate and relax us. We can see our challenges as our strengths, our own pearly linings. We can watch each other laughing and jump in together.