God's Eye Is on the Sparrow -- and Also the Killdeer

My husband Mike has a penchant for bringing home orphaned or abandoned animals. When he and my son Wyatt came in with a closed cardboard box, and Wyatt asked, "Guess what's inside?," I couldn't.

Inside the box was a baby killdeer. Mike explained he and Wyatt saw the chick standing alone on the road after a hawk had swooped through. The parents weren't around so Wyatt picked it up. "Let's call him Larry," Wyatt suggested.

"Why Larry?," I asked.

"Larry Bird," my basketball enthusiast son explained.

Killdeer are plentiful here in southeast Minnesota. Mike was familiar with the breed. They wouldn't eat grain, but instead needed live insects or worms. Mike turned on the garden hose and ran water into the parched soil. No worms appeared. And the bird refused to eat the insects Mike caught for him. 

"You probably should have left him on the road," I said.

"I know. But I'm an old softie," Mike admitted. 

He persuaded Larry to swallow a few mouthfuls of water. Then Mike prepared a hot water bottle for Larry's box. The bird spent the night in my studio, away from curious cats.

The next day we contacted Oxbow Park in Olmsted County, a wildlife manager at Rice Lake State Park, and a person with the Rochester DNR. They all suggested the same thing: try to get a killdeer family to adopt the chick. 

Mike and I got into his truck and slowly drove around. After awhile we found a spot where a couple of killdeer circled. Mike took Larry and placed him on the ground, as killdeer spend most of their time there. We drove down the road a ways so we could watch if the adult killdeer accepted him. They didn't.

"I don't know if Larry could keep up if someone did adopt him," Mike said.

We went back to the cornfield to retrieve Larry.

We went back to the cornfield to retrieve Larry. I held the bird in my cupped hands to warm him. Protruding bones felt like bumps all over his body. He was as fragile as an empty walnut shell. 

“I don’t think he’s going to make it,” I said, as Mike continued driving.

We passed a barn, a cornfield, and a farmhouse with a fundamentalist warning posted above the mailbox. I read the sign.

“Jesus is coming. Are you ready?,” I asked Larry.

“His eye is on the sparrow. But not on the killdeer,” Mike remarked.

We circled the block. Usually, killdeer mates dart back and forth anywhere you care to look. Today, none could be found.

Mike and I thought about the options for Larry. A swift bullet through the heart? A quick twist of the neck? We didn't have the heart for any of them. "We'll probably end up putting him through college," I said.

Back at home, we mixed up a batch of sugar water. Mike held Larry’s beak to the cup  and he drank several mouthfuls. Larry’s lethargy gave way to a sugar high. Later in the day, Mike figured out how to feed him worms. He pureed them.

“In my blender?,” I asked warily.

“No, I used a small canning jar. The blender blades fit in the bottom of the jar.” I didn’t ask any more questions after that.
 

Despite my initial trepidation, I looked forward to sharing stories about Larry as he grew and feathered out. Releasing him in a few weeks when he could survive on his own. Singing “Born Free” as he circled the skies and came back to visit us.

The next morning was 10 degrees cooler than the previous morning. Mike opened the box. “Larry’s dead,” he said. We were both silent. 

“At least I tried. I didn’t just leave him there.  He got an extra day,” Mike said.

He got an extra day, all right. An extra day of safety and comfort, because an old softie stopped on the road and couldn’t pass by. And for Mike and me, our biggest worry for a few hours wasn't money -- but keeping a chick alive.

Maybe God’s eye was on the killdeer, after all. 

The Story of a Little Goat with a Black Coat and a White Spot

We're taking an elite crew of three goats with us when we move. Over the years we've stopped breeding goats because we realize we're not farmers. Real farmers don't say, "We can't get rid of the bottle babies. They're bottle babies." Or, "We can't split them apart. They're a family." Or, "We have to keep the littlest ones. They need us."

So we're taking three goats: Cupcake the bottle baby, Molly the runt, and our first goat ever, Molly's mother Baby Girl.

These photos from several years ago depict how Cupcake became a bottle baby.

Our dairy goat, Buttercup, had only thrown (or given birth to)
single kids with white coats.



Like Bluebonnet, who had been thrown the spring before.

The next spring Buttercup threw two kids, one with a white coat
and a smaller one with a black coat.

To Twinkie: "You may enter." To Cupcake: "Not so fast." 

Cupcake is busted!

We could keep the subterfuge up only for so long. Mike brought Cupcake into the house, where we bottle fed her for three weeks. Her hooves clickety-clacking on the wooden stairs earned her the nickname "Cupcake the Tap-Dancing Goat."

We call her Cupcake because of her black coat and the white spot in the middle of her belly: just where the cream filling of a Hostess Cupcake would be.

Today, she's a happy and healthy outdoor goat

but is a housegoat at heart.

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Oh, Mercy! Part Two of a StoryAbout an Amazing Chicken

Author's Note: This story from several years ago is about a chicken hen who became caretaker to a flock of guinea chicks, or keets, during a summer when foxes were rampant. Part One ended with a fox sighting, Mercy with tailfeathers missing rounding up keets, and the guinea hen gone.

Mike grabbed a small plastic bucket and gathered up what keets he could find. He counted nine. Mike brought the bucket into the house, and by that time I arrived home with our son Wyatt. As Mike filled me in on what happened, we heard still more keets, their alarmed cheeping in the tall grass sounding like frog peepers.

Mercy continued to collect babies. I grabbed a cooler and put in a layer of bedding, a feeder, and a waterer. The keets from inside the house went into the cooler. So did the keets that Mercy was collecting. There were fifteen in all.

Finally, there was only one keet cheeping out in the grass. Both Mike and I tried to grab it but it seemed to vanish into thin air. We decided to get the cooler from inside the house and bring it back outside, hoping the sound of the keet’s brothers and sisters would lure it in.

But there was a problem. While we looked for the last keet, the babies in the cooler would be sitting targets for the fox. So Mike laid a screen on top of the cooler. He laid a small flatbed trailer on one half of the screen, providing security and also allowing ventilation. Then he stacked three spare tires on top of the trailer. If you wait long enough, there will be a use for that junk you have lying around in the yard.

A Fox and a Ph.D.

“Will that keep the fox out?” I asked skeptically.

“Ohyeah,” Mike assured me. “That fox would need a Ph.D. to figure out how to get in.”

“He does have a Ph.D.,” I said dryly. “A Poultry Heisting Degree.”

By this time, Mike had to leave for a mowing job. Three times I tried to catch the keet, three times it eluded me, three times Mercy herded it back, stopping only once for a quick bite of corn. (I imagine she was getting worn out.) The best I could do was keep the fox away.

When Mike got home, he tried a different tack. Rather than trying to capture the keet,  he set his sights on Mercy. It was fairly easy to net her, and deposit her into an old dog crate. Within moments the keet ventured out in search of its surrogate mother. Seeing her in the crate, the keet slipped in between the bars to join her. Hearing Mike’s triumphant “GOT IT!”— by this time I could barely stand the suspense—I knew the mission was accomplished.

Now, the only thing left to do was unite “mother” and babies. Mike, Wyatt, and I deposited the keets one by one from the cooler into their new home, an empty rabbit hutch. Last came Mercy. As we closed the hutch lid, the keets’ alarmed cheeping turned immediately to contented peeping. Even without her tailfeathers, Mercy was able to cover all 16 babies. since the closest guesstimate of keets had been 18, the fox had only captured one—and perhaps none at all.

A Champion Among Chickens

Thinking of The Widow, who had lost her life after hatching a huge clutch against huge odds, I knew I would feel more kindly toward guineas. And I was especially grateful for Mercy. So many chickens of ours have abandoned their chicks, or lost them, or continued to sit on nests of eggs that had gone bad weeks before. Mercy was worthy of a solid gold nesting box.

On our little five-acre farm, it doesn't take much to create an afternoon of high drama. But then, it doesn’t take much to create a moment of sheer joy. Thanks to Mercy.

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Oh, Mercy! Part One of a StoryAbout an Amazing Chicken

Author's note: This story was written several years ago about a chicken we owned several years before that. She's still the yardstick by which we measure poultry. Today is Part One of the two-part story.

I love chickens, but am less enchanted with guineas. Mike likes them because they eat the worms that destroy apples. Guineas, or at least the adults, are too aggressive for my liking. Last summer I tried to return a baby, or keet, that had lost track of its flockmates and mother. My reward: a sharp peck on the hand.

This year, as the summer waned, Mike and I noticed fewer and fewer roosters crowing. It wasn’t something you noticed from day to day. But by August, the inside of the chicken coop looked like a ghost town, young ducks turned up missing, and the yard grew eerily silent One morning, our miniature horse, Macy, charged across the pasture, chasing a streak of red fur.

A fox.

Our poultry had always been free range. But sadly, we realized it was kinder to pen them instead of leaving them unprotected. So Mike constructed a chicken run between our chicken coop and Poultry Towers: a high-rise poultry roost made from the old Kerrick School monkey bars, wrapped with chicken wire and topped with a tarp.

The War Against the Foxes
It was during the War against the Foxes that a guinea hen rose to prominence on our farm, along with one amazing chicken hen, resulting in an afternoon of high drama.

We purchased a pair of guineas at the Sturgeon Lake chicken swap in hopes they would breed some nice gentle keets. The rooster eventually had to be dispatched because he had killed a couple of ducklings. But he had served his purpose: the hen had laid a sizeable clutch of eggs, and began sitting shortly after her mate’s demise. The hen, who we simply called The Widow, chose a corner in an empty stall in the barn, just off the main aisleway. There was a little red chicken hen nearby, bigger than a bantam but not a large bird by any means. Perching on her roost, she called to mind a bellhop waiting to be pressed into service.

In July we rented the services of a miniature donkey, Little Joe, to breed with Macy. The aisleway in the barn was their preferred place to rendezvous. At one point Little Joe stepped right in the middle of The Widow’s nest. She escaped, barely missing being squashed. With wings flapping, she chased the donkey, the horse, and all three goats out of the barn, finishing with a loud chatter that was probably guinea language for “AND STAY OUT!”

An Angel of Mercy
It was a miracle that any eggs hatched at all. But hatch they did. First I saw three keets. Then seven. Then – oh, there must have been a dozen and a half. That many little puffballs won’t stay still long enough for you to count them. The widow did her best to herd them. But keeping an eye on so many babies was hard for one hen to do. Remarkably, the little red hen stepped up. She helped herd the keets, directing them with gentle clucks. She spread out her tailfeathers like a fan to hide the babies from nosy onlookers. She gathered them under her feathers. She even helped clean up the eggshells, which are a source of protein for poultry. I started calling her Mercy, as an angel of mercy, or perhaps a New England midwife.

After three days, The Widow led her babies out of the stall and outdoors. With all the barn traffic, it was inevitable that one should be trampled. But after the loss of that one unfortunate keet, the others became quite adept at avoiding the equines and goats. With Mercy bringing up the back, mother and babies disappeared into the tall grass, as guineas are wont to do. We knew the keets would be in good hands.

A few days later, while I was running errands and Mike was out doing chores, he heard a peeping and found a lone keet. He gathered it up and placed it by Mercy, since The Widow wasn’t around. Then he noticed Mercy was rounding up additional keets. Her tailfeathers were missing. And The Widow was nowhere in sight, the last sign of her being an agitated squawk a few minutes before.

The fox had struck again.


To be continued...

Greatest Goat Photo of All Time

Smile, you're on Caprine Camera!

A Happy Home for Our Horse and Mule

As we prepare for our move, the foremost concern in our minds was to find good homes for the farm animals.

My husband Mike found a home for Oreo, the goat he called Devil Goat because she'd bedevil us by weaseling her way through the electric fence. Mike met a couple at the chicken swap who took Oreo, and he asked if they were in the market for a class B mini-horse and mule. They were.

Macy and Sourdough, 2006. Sourdough was about 12 hours old.

It was important for us to keep mother and offspring together, so not only did we give Macy and Sourdough to the couple, we included a stipend so Sourdough could get her hooves trimmed. Mike knew how to trim horse hooves but had no experience with mule hooves, didn't want to cause damage, and just about all of the mule farriers we contacted were out of business. Happily, a mule farrier lives next door to Macy and Sourdough's new home. So the mule can get a mani-pedi anytime she needs one.

The Genesis of a Mule

The proud parents, Little Joe and Macy May.

A mule is a hybrid between a female horse and a male donkey. (A cross between a male horse and a female donkey is called a hinny, which comes into play later.) Sourdough was sired by a mini-donkey named Little Joe, who summered at our farm for a couple of years. If Little Joe were an animated cartoon character, he'd have the deep baritone voice of Lou Rawls. In this photo, taken at the end of their pasturing, Joe looks like he's singing "You're Gonna Miss My Love" to Macy.

Macy and Sourdough now live on 19 acres with several other horses, a sheep, Oreo the reformed Devil Goat, a llama, and a hinny. A large buckskin-colored horse refused to let Macy and Sourdough become part of the herd. So the owners found a new home for the buckskin. They tell us that Oreo is the sweetest goat imaginable. And their grandkids regularly take the minis for walks.

A Happy Ending for All

New horizons lie ahead for Sourdough and Macy.

Mike had plans of training Macy and Sourdough to harness, but the plan never came to fruition. The fact that we were able to successfully breed a horse and donkey is an accomplishment in itself. I haven't decided if I want to see Macy and Sourdough before we leave. If they're happy in their new home and are well taken care of, that's all that matters. And finally, a big thank you to Lynn Moore at Acres for Life for her encouragement and advice during the placement process.


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Dogs and Beavers and Water Don't Mix

Open swimming at the pond has been slapped shut by a couple of beaver tails.

And I'm lucky that my dog Jerry wasn't seriously injured or worse.

The pond on the 80 acres across the road has been low for the past several years, leaving the entrance to the beaver lodge high and dry and the structure uninhabited. After this year's snowy winter and rainy spring, the swelled pond called to more critters than swimming dogs. The exiled beavers returned.

My dog Watch wasn't a swimmer, so I'd never been to the pond when the beaver lodge was occupied. A few days ago I watched the top of a bony brown head skim through the water, followed by a ker-thunk of the surface. Jerry swam out to see what was causing the commotion, navigating the 350-yard circumference of the pond. I was thrilled to find an activity to burn up the Weimaraner's boundless energy. I took Jerry for two and three swims a day.

Sometimes the dog and the beaver would swim straight at each other, other times Jerry followed the beaver. When it dove underwater,  Jerry would swim to where the beaver disappeared. I watched with uneasy fascination. The action resembled this video. You can't help but hold your breath when you watch it.



Real beavers don't resemble this video. They're not benign, befuddled critters who chatter away with a lateral S. A real beaver is a three-foot-long rodent with nonstop-growing teeth.  Beavers have disemboweled or killed dogs in defense of their home or their young, I learned with a Google. Thus, open swim sessions are now closed.

With a territorial porcupine to the west, a bear's den to the north, and beavers to the south, the eighty acres across the road is shrinking.

But since beavers mate for life, who's to deny them their lifelong contentment.

Media sources: photo from The Wilderness Classroom, film clips from loubagel1982's and CalypsoDogs' YouTube channels.

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The Disneyfication of Wildlife

All Good Dogs Deserve Ice Cream

I just love this idea: a community event where dog owners get to socialize their pets, and good dogs get rewarded with a free dish of vanilla softserve. An ice cream social for dogs, with people as chaperones. If it's been a hot summer for people, just think of how hot it's been for our pets.

This particular Dogs' Night Out takes place at Blast Softserve in Owatonna, which is about 40 miles from Rochester in southeast Minnesota. The summer event is sponsored by the Owatonna People's Press and is held on the first Tuesday of the month from 5:30 to 6. (Including tonight.) Every well-behaved dog on leash gets a free doggy-sized dish of vanilla soft serve. If you and your dog will be in the area tonight, here's the map.

Does your city or town offer similar socializing opportunities for dogs and their owners?

The Disneyfication of Wildlife

On a back-road trek to the Bruno Thrift Store this morning, I stopped the car as three deer darted across the road. The smallest one, a yearling, kept on running. The two adults not only didn't run, they took a step closer to the car. Their eyes traveled from the front end to the rear, probably wondering what this jazzy little yellow thing was doing in a world of two-ton pickup trucks.

I put the car in idle and wished for my digital camera, as I was close enough to the deer to see the pattern of their nose leather. When one of the deer lowered its head, my reverie was replaced by the reality of what deer can do at this close range. They can charge. They can do extensive damage. I continued to town.

It's easy, even when you live in the middle of the woods, to engage in the Disneyfication of wildlife. Had I turned on my heel the moment I'd seen that porcupine, instead of watching it as if Rex Allen would start narrating at any moment, my dog Jerry may have been spared a snoutful of quills.

Queer Eye for the Bovine Guy
When the animated movie Barnyard came out several years ago, it irked me to see the main character, a foolhardy young bull named Otis, with udders. As if children wouldn't be able to identify a cow, or more properly a bovine, without them. I fumed about it all the way home. "Mom, it's just a movie," my son Wyatt reminded me. Apparently I'm not the only blogger who raised objections to the gender-bending bull.

I'm guilty of the same practice, that is referring to bovines as cows, even the males, because the terminology is more readily understood. But a lack of precise knowledge about livestock and wildlife, in my opinion, is what results in children in zoos getting injured because they want to pet the nice animal.

Foster Home Found for Abandoned Puppies

As sure as God made little blue heelers, when you live in rural Minnesota, count on crossing paths with an abandoned puppy or two or three.

The fact that their savior was located 120 miles away in Chaska was something, however, I’d never counted on.

My husband Mike brought home three puppies that he found on the roadside when he was en route to Cloquet. There was no mother, no people, and no houses -- just empty vacation properties. The puppies were a whitish-yellowish mix of Golden retriever or Yellow Lab. A zaftig little girl and two smaller boys. We made a home for them in an empty 55-gallon fish tank. 

“We’re not going to keep them. We’re not going to name them,” Mike warned me and our 14-year-old son Wyatt.

Jerry's Kids

Of course, we did name them. Jerry’s Kids, as our Weimaraner Jerry took them under his wing. A rescue dog with issues, Jerry was showing the puppies the care he hadn’t received as a pup. It was a lovely moment, but in retrospect not a wise moment. 

Despite abandoned puppies being infectiously cute, they can also be acutely infectious. 

As we put out calls to rescue agencies, we learned that canine parvovirus, a devastating intestinal disease, was rampant. Jerry is fully vaccinated, but apparently there’s a strain of parvo that can make its way past adult vaccines.

Because of a tight budget, keeping even one puppy was out of the question. At a Cloquet rescue agency, we were told to start in Pine County, where we live. Connie at the Pine County Guardian Angel Shelter explained that the shelter was a giant-breed rescue facility and not suited for puppies. She told us we'd be contacted by a woman named Jean, who volunteered at the Carver-Scott Humane Society, a sister agency to the Pine facility. The intricate network made me think of the Twilight Bark from 101 Dalmatians.

Moving Day

Jean called us on a Sunday. She was headed to Albert Lea with a puppy on a pre-adoption visit, and asked if we could drop off the puppies with her husband. Mike arranged to meet him at a strip mall about 20 miles away. The idea of someone driving over 100 miles at a moment's notice to pick up abandoned puppies from total strangers amazed me.

Pine County isn’t affluent. In rural areas like ours, it’s not unusual for pets to be euthanized with a bullet to the brain, a practice which I realize sounds barbaric. But when an owner is faced with a suffering animal, a veterinary clinic that’s closed or is fifty miles away, and a treatment bill beyond their affordability, it’s the most merciful alternative.

Jean explained that the puppies would be given a health check, microchipping and spaying or neutering. She would provide a foster home until they were adopted at a Pet Adoption Day at the PETCO store in Chaska. Adoption sales help CSHS raise revenue, as do donor contributions and an annual walk.  The agency receives no government funds.

Jean explained that she’s been volunteering for four years, and has fostered several hundred dogs and puppies. She said she’s driven to Wisconsin to place a puppy, and her sister-in-law drove halfway to Colorado to deliver a staghound to the man who was adopting it.

As I worked on a huge writing project, I tried not to get irritated by the whining and yapping. The big female puppy, who we eventually named Bertha, tried to climb out of the fish tank. There was a piece of plywood on top of the tank and Bertha knocked it to the floor. At the sound of the noise, Jerry barked loudly. The puppies cowered. I imagined the conversation: “All right you guys, knock it off!” “I didn’t do it! She did it!”

But when the puppies were gone, the house seemed eerily quiet. Even Jerry walked over to the fish tank to see where his charges were.

A Clean Bill of Health

On Tuesday night I called Jean. Thankfully, the puppies tested negative for parvo, but they did have worms and numerous tick bites. Jean is fostering them until they find homes at a Pet Adoption Day. There’s one coming up on May 7.

Minnesota has a huge network of animal rescue groups. Start at the humane society or rescue agency in your county. If that group can't help, they'll connect you to someone who can, like the Guardian Angel Animal Shelter in Pine City or Red Lake Rosie’s Rescue. 

While politics creates rural/metro divides, puppies help bridge them. As do the  volunteers who give of their hearts and weekends. You give hope to pet lovers and Minnesotans everywhere.

The Carver-Scott Humane Society's 2011 Walk Fur Love  is Sunday, May 22. Raffle prizes include a 40" LCD HD TV, $200 in gift certificates, and a Blu-Ray DVD player. You need not be present to win.


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Jerry's Kids

It's been a busy 24 hours, dogwise, at our house.

First, Mike found three abandoned puppies on the road near some deserted vacation property. Two scrawny little boys and one zaftig little girl. We're keeping them in an empty 50-gallon fish tank until we find them homes.

I placed one of the males down by Jerry, ready to snatch up the pup if the Weimaraner became hostile. Instead he went into Mrs. Dogfire mode, tending to the little guy. Intending to take some photos, I took Jerry out for a quick walk first. But the first porcupine of the spring cancelled the photo shoot.

Now that Jerry is home from the vet, freshly de-quilled, I finally had a chance to take photos.

One of the little boys has found a friend in Jerry. 

Grandma Was Right:Dogs Like Carrots

Having a dog with anxiety issues, I was intrigued by a recipe called Calming Diet for Your Anxious Dog. You make it with cooked turkey, cooked barley, chamomile flowers made into tea, parsley, olive oil, and cooked carrots.

I could picture my grandma telling her mother, "See, I told you!"

This is one of my favorite stories of Grandma's. It takes place in southwest Detroit in the late 1940s. Grandma would cook carrots for her dog, Tiny, using a small pan only used for the dog's meals, and adding a touch of butter as the carrots cooked. One afternoon Grandma had to take the streetcar downtown, so she asked her mother to feed the dog. "Remember, she likes a little butter with her carrots," Grandma said.

When she got home, she saw that not only had Tiny left the carrots uneaten, but had spit them out on the floor. "Did you cook them in butter?," Grandma asked Baba.

"Butter!? For a dog!? I should say not," said Baba, a strict Slovak-born woman.

So Grandma gathered up the carrots, heated them in Tiny's pan, and cooked them with a pat of butter. Tiny gobbled up every last one and licked her dish clean.

"Nuh! Now I've seen everything," Baba said.

Grandma was right. "Eat your carrots" applies to dogs, too.

I wrote more about my grandma, Mary Pontell, in a guest blog for Brandon Lacy Campos at  My Feet Only Walk Forward. 

God Knows I Love My Dogs

"Did I dig WHAT hole?"

I found a lovely song called “God and Dog” by Wendy Francisco and posted on Blue Collar Daughter’s blog. Listen to it and try not to think about all of the dogs in your life.

You know about Watch and Jerry but not about my others.

Stoney was a Doberman with uncropped ears and a propensity to dig.

"I chew, therefore I am."

Crunch, a Rottweiler/Australian Cattle Dog cross, once ate a box of raw chocolate Malt-o-Meal.

"Get this kid off of me."

Tipper was a Black Lab/German Shorthair cross. When we lived in Minneapolis, she played a key role in rescuing a woman next door being held at gunpoint.

Dogs love us unconditionally. They wait patiently while we’re at the computer. Jerry has waited long enough. Enjoy your weekend and your dogs!

"Am I the Cutest Canine Or What?"

Round 5 of the Star Tribune's Cutest Canine Contest begins at 10 am CT today, and Jerry's among the entrants. I entered my favorite photo of him; it's my favorite because of the spirit in his eyes that wasn't always there, and because he's chewing something that he's supposed to. Not a book, not my bifocals, not a sofa cushion.

Jerry turned one year old this month. My husband Mike and I are unsure of his exact date of birth, so we chose Groundhog Day. He saw his shadow that day, which meant six more weeks of laying on the couch.

Round 5 voting begins at 10am Friday and ends 9am Saturday. There are plenty of cuties, so I don't have any unrealistic expectations. But Jerry has sparked a connection with many of my readers, so you never know. If you'd like to vote for him, here's where you can do it. The voting system is kind of clunky, and you need to log in or create an account if you don't have one already. You also have to hit "save" after you vote.

Round 4 ends at 9am today. Watch made that round. If you search for the name "Watch," you'll get six entries. His photo is the sixth entry on the second page.

There's a #FF and or blog follow in it for you. Maybe even a guest blog. Jerry and I both thank you!

Jerry's First Christmas

On Christmas Eve our family left the woods of northern Pine County and ventured down to southeastern Minnesota. Mike's parents live there in a hundred-year-old farmhouse on the edge of the prairie. It was the first extended road trip for our rescue dog Jerry, the first road trip that lasted longer than a trip to the vet's. The eight-hour round trip made me realize how far Jerry has come in the past three months.

When I first started taking Jerry for on-leash walks, he was afraid to walk past my husband Mike's Dodge Ram pickup. Yesterday Jerry clambered right in and lay quietly beside me, bright-eyed and alert.

It's been such a long time since Mike and I traveled with a growing puppy, we not only forgot to bring Jerry's dog food for the day, we forgot his breakfast in the flurry of morning activity. We stopped at a McDonald's to order two hamburgers for Jerry, augmented by French fries that my son Wyatt and I offered him.

At one time Jerry cowered when anyone approached him. Yesterday he basked in the hugs, hand-fed kibble, and turkey scraps which he accepted delicately with a soft mouth.

As I related the story of how Jerry entered our lives to Mike's cousin Carmen, I realized, Jerry is doing well. Though he tries our patience at times with his chewing, he's a sweet dog. And despite whatever abuse or neglect he experienced early in his life, Jerry has never had a housetraining accident: not even after drinking the two bowls of water Aunt Evvie brought him, undoubtedly needed after the salty McDonald's fries.

When we finally said our goodbyes, we left through the front door of the farmhouse and headed to the truck, which was parked at the side of the house. Jerry, though, made a beeline for the side door of the farmhouse, ready to continue the visit.

First fast-food fries, first long road trip, first Christmas, first visit with extended family. Every day is filled with mundane moments that in some small way are exciting firsts. To you lovely readers who have stumbled upon this little blog,  I wish for you a year filled with those moments.

5 Favorite Memories of Watch

I’ve been avoiding writing about my dog Watch.
Sometimes you feel you shouldn’t talk about the loss of someone you love, even the someone is a dog. But I’d like to share this with you, my readers, because you barely had the chance to know him. And the time that our family had with him was a gift.
Here are my five favorite memories of Watch.


His first 24 hours with us  My husband Mike and son Wyatt found Watch abandoned on a back road nine years ago. Wyatt named the puppy after the Alden children's pet in The Boxcar Children stories. We fed Watch, bathed him, removed no fewer than three dozen ticks, and flea-dipped him. He slept for most of the first three days. It only took one "Watch, NO!" for him to learn that he was to go outside, not in the living room, for bathroom breaks. And that dining room tables aren’t for jumping up on.


Tooting his own horn Watch found an old bicycle horn on the ground, picked it up in his mouth and ran around the yard with it, biting down the bulb, honking as he ran. That was one of the reasons he earned…


The name “Doofus” Watch is the only dog I know who came to two different names: “Watch” and “Doofus.”


Clunking heads We have a small house, so two people can often see the same thing when standing at the front door and the back patio door. One day, with Watch at the patio door and Tipper at the front door, both saw the same squirrel. We let them out. They converged. And we could hear the "clunk" of heads from inside the house.


His love of the chain saw Watch loved to go with Mike on his jaunts to the woods to cut firewood. Hunting dogs get excited when their master picks up his shotgun. Watch would get excited when Mike picked up his chain saw. One Sunday afternoon Watch was asleep on the floor as I was listening to A Prairie Home Companion. Sound effects guru Tom Keith imitated a chain saw, and the sound was so authentic Watch jerked his head up, rarin' to go to the woods.

Though he tries my patience at times, I love Jerry. And loving a new dog doesn’t negate the existence of the old one. As the mother of one child, I know what women with several children mean when they say “I love all my children equally.”

Chew on this: a memo to Jerry

To: Jerry     
From: Your Owner     
RE: Chewing
Dear Jerry:
Chew on this.
Not on the snowboot that is now an opened-toe snowboot. Such footwear is impractical for Minnesota winters.
Snowboots help you enjoy scenes such as the one you see here.
Chew on that.
That is all.
Y.O.

Fox, Meet Fredo

Last month I wrote about our farm's No Mean Animals Rule, and what happened to the  guinea fowl  who violated it.

Tonight Fredo has company.

My husband Mike plugged one of the foxes who has been snagging poultry from our farm. Mike was outside working on The Pentagon, a five-sided chicken coop, and at the same time preparing his deer stand for the upcoming season. While taking a break he saw a fox run through the front yard with a hen in its mouth.

The fox was so intent on catching the chicken he didn't even notice Mike was there. Using a few choice invectives, Mike hollered at the fox to get away. The fox dropped the hen, who escaped. Mike was able to get his hands on his rifle, a Winchester Model 94 .22 Magnum. From 75 yards away he took aim at the fox. Down, instantly.

A few months ago on my Facebook page someone had posted photos of a dead fox, and they were the topic of conversation all day. So I thought I'd post one here. The fox was a full-grown male, having grown lean and strong on free-range chicken. The shot was so clean he looks as if he's sleeping. With those long legs and bottle-brush tail, it's amazing how such a beautiful animal could be so destructive.

On a farm you don't celebrate killing as much as you celebrate survival. And a few more chickens will get to live out the year instead of being spirited off, which had to have been a terrifying experience.

When The Pentagon is completed later this month we'll find out for sure how many chickens have been lost this summer. The ones that were left gathered in a small circle as Mike laid the corpse out. If they could, the chickens would have sung "Ding Dong The Fox Is Dead."

Related Posts:
Where Have All the Chickens Gone?
"You're Dead to Me, Fredo."
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Smelly Bugs Are in the Air.Smelly Bugs Are Everywhere.

A few years ago I was raking leaves on a day very much like this one: unseasonably warm and sunny, except it was after the winter instead of before it. A cloud of Asian lady beetles surrounded me as I raked and grumbled, with this poem effortlessly taking shape:

Smelly bugs are in the air,
Smelly bugs are everywhere.
They look like ladybugs, I think,
But boy oh boy! Do they ever stink!
They fly, they bite, they cover the door,
They're like a carpet on the floor.
Smelly bugs, I hate them so.
I almost wish we still had snow.

Asian lady beetles have been known as smelly bugs at our house ever since.

The smelliness comes from a defensive reaction known as reflex bleeding, according to a  USDA fact sheet  that tells  you more about Asian lady beetles than you ever thought you'd want to know. The best way to trap them, says the USDA, is attract them with light, then sweep or vaccum up. Better still, keep them out by caulking exterior cracks and crevices.

But once you go out, they'll be waiting for you.

Flickr photo credit:  Burnt Umber  Poem was printed in the Askov American and appears here with editor Colette Stadin's consent. Read an Askov American column  by former editor Marlana Benzie-Lourey and reprinted in MinnPost. 

Where Have All the Chickens Gone?

The poultry from Poultry & Prose have been missing, I realize.

When I take Jerry out before daybreak, I enjoy hearing and feeling the stillness in the air. After the sun rises and all chickens should be up, the stillness is still there, and becomes unsettling. There should be a lot more clucking and crowing.

Predators have definitely set up camp here. Half of the eight feisty chicks I called  The Birds  are gone. The new rooster crows from the flock  adopted by  Mrs. Duckfire  have dwindled.

It's the invasion of the chicken snatchers. With nine-year-old Watch gone and six-month-old Jerry too young to be out on his own, the invasions are becoming more frequent.

One of the snatchers is a fox that we sight every two weeks or so. The last time my husband Mike saw it he was able to squeeze off a shot at it, causing the fox to drop the chicken he was carrying bewteen its jaws. The chicken escaped and unfortunately so did the fox. Later that morning, Mike saw a bird with a huge wingspan perched in a tree a couple hundred feet away from our yard. He thinks it was an eagle or an owl, a protected species. In those instances, shaking one's fist and cursing is the only recourse.

And Mike is sure that the huge pawprints on the dirt road in front of our house belong to a wolf.

It's difficult to express to a non-farmer the sorrow felt over loss of livestock, animals that were going to meet a demise anyway by ending up on our kitchen table. But when that demise would happen would be our choice. Until then, the plan is for the poultry to live a long and contented  life. Sunning themselves, taking dust baths, eating juniper berries, scratching for bugs. Most of our chickens are too old for anything but stock when we finally decide to dispatch them. Chickens are at their most succulent when they're six months old. To me, that's when they're just starting to enjoy life.

I hate to think of the terror that a chicken or duck or guinea feels when spirited off by a predator. Nothing has taken our Embden geese yet. But one year something bloodied up the gander.

There's a belief that people in rural areas "cling to their guns." For all the rhetoric surrounding the topic, guns are part of the landscape. Not out of love for them, but out of necessity. It would take fifteen to thirty minutes for a county sheriff to arrive in response to a 911 call, one of the town volunteer firefighters tells me.

Weighing the loss of poultry to predators against a loss of freedom to poultry is a decision every keeper of free-range chickens makes. We have finally decided they need a coop. Mike is making a five-sided structure that he calls The Pentagon. Right now it resembles a gazebo without walls. When it's done it will have two picture windows and a fenced enclosure linking it to the 1960s-era playground monkey bars we have in our yard. In past summers turkeys would roost on it overnight. We call the structure Poultry Towers.

Where have all the chickens gone? We know where they're going. Into lockdown.