ODO the Odometer

This morning, after I settled my dog in the back seat and started my Toyota Yaris on the way to our morning run (the dog and I go for the run, not the car, which simply waits for us patiently), the dashboard displayed a character I hadn’t seen before—ODO.

ODO stood there, his hand on his hip, the other pointing to the gas gauge, directly at the half-full point.

Now, I DID appreciate the heads up, as I generally strive to keep the car’s tank at least half full, but this was the first time I’d seen ODO. Granted, at 11,709 miles the vehicle is still somewhat new to me, and the fuel gauge, built from eight dark bars piled atop one another that suddenly disappear as the fuel is spent, does take some getting used to. I actually prefer the old gauges, as the dark bars can vary from 30 to 80 miles traveled, but still, I thought I had adjusted.

I took another sip of coffee. I’m a morning person, but as I also tend to work late and too much, I’ve learned from teaching many eight o’clock classes that a little more coffee can work wonders.

Then I took a closer look. I collect bills on the dash, just under the center-mounted display assembly, so that I remember to pay them promptly. Reflected on the display’s clear plastic was the “Printed on recycled paper” logo from my phone bill, the logo neatly forming ODO’s head atop the image of a gas pump, the nozzle and hose forming ODO’s hand on his hip, the dark triangle indicating the midpoint of the gas gauge suggesting ODO’s other hand, pointing to the half-full tank. His name appeared to the right, just over the digital mileage.

This is not the first time something like this has happened.

One night, not long before midnight (as I discovered later—and a very late hour for me), I was suddenly awakened, and slowly focusing my eyes, glanced at the digital display of my alarm clock.

Alarm indeed. The display read “hE:ll.” Huh? While used to the tyranny of time, this was the first time a timepiece had been so poignant about it. Then, less than a minute later, the display changed to “SE:ll.” Now, I do have some investments, but they are primarily in mutual funds in my 403(b) and Roth IRA accounts, not instruments I need to anxiously track as a day trader. Still, all investments entail risk, and I was moved that my clock felt so strongly that it took the time to wake and warn me.

Just one minute later, the display warned “9E:ll.” I didn’t understand, but I was slowly moving from groggy sleep brain to thinking, waking brain. When the display changed to “LE:ll,” I sat up to examine the clock, and by “8E:ll,” I realized that one or both cats had raced through the room, overturning the digital clock (and disturbing my sleep). Since neither cat knows much about finanacial markets (indeed, they can't even SPE:ll), at 11:39, I righted the alarm, and by 11:40, I was drifting back to sleep.

I am comforted, though, knowing my clock (and my cats) would take the trouble to warn me in the case of a financial emergency. No doubt it’s taken its successful sentinel role rousing me each morning (not to mention the cats) to heart, and seeks to expand its responsibilities. No harm in hard working ambition!

However, I’m often not at home—and frequently in my car. Nice to know ODO will be looking after me during those times.

Writer

Wolf, Pig, Pup, and Woodchuck

The local paper couldn’t help but catch my eye with a large color photo splashed across the front page—it seemed exactly my dog, a white husky mix, chewing on a cell phone.

But this was an Artic Wolf at the zoo. A toddler had thrown Mom’s cell phone into the wolf exhibit. Zoo officials retrieved the remnants of the phone. “I was just worried the wolf would be hurt by the small parts,” reported Mom. The headline? “Call of the Wild.”

Not everyone is so concerned, even when owning the animals in question. On my way to the trails to walk my dog, I frequently have to stop for a pet pig in the road, the woman who owns it leisurely strolling out to retrieve it after a bit. Matter of time before one of the cars that speed along this road in the summer hit it—not to mention someone else’s geese just a quarter of a mile later, again, always in the road. People on another street made a nice sign for their ducks, “Please excuse us,” but again, people speeding along are going to take them out eventually. I remember a young employee at the local store who confided one day that she had unwittingly run down a neighbor’s chickens. “Why don’t you just slow down?” I asked. She just looked at me.

Animals in the road are hardly a surprise here. Deer, beaver, quail, turkeys, rabbits and more are a daily occurrence. A few weeks ago, I even saw four coyote pups. Cutest thing—they paused at the side of the road, the lead pup with one paw raised; as I slowed, it reconsidered and turned into the field, followed by its siblings. A few days ago, I could see road kill ahead as I approached the same spot, although it turned out to be a raccoon (raccoons don’t flee—they just stand there contemplating what’s happening).

I’m not naïve—deer and rabbits invade my garden and orchard, for example. Raccoons sometimes carry rabies, although that hardly means every raccoon is rapid. Coyotes rarely get rabies, the vet tells me (my dog strayed into coyote territory as a pup and got chased home), but people do have reason to otherwise view them with concern, as they can be bold and invade suburban neighborhoods. I live in the country, so coyotes are to be expected. I lost an outdoor cat once—it was always waiting in the driveway when I got home. But one day it wasn’t. Could be coyotes. She did roam—I once saw her and picked her up on my way home, two miles from the house. Could also have been a car. Could also have been the cruel teens in the next town caught nailing cats to crucifixes for kicks, or dousing them with gasoline and setting them on fire. Maybe she was found and kept.

On my way home today, a pickup truck quite deliberately swerved into the other lane in a smooth curve for no reason other than to kill the woodchuck sitting there.

Writer

“I am a Lineman for the Kitty…”

My dog saw it first—a cat sitting on top of the utility pole just outside my home. The cat sat calmly atop the pole, while my dog jumped up periodically in enthusiasm, if to no avail. I called off said dog and tried to coax down the cat, a grey, short-haired cat I’d never seen before—also to no avail.

I can, at least, see WHY the cat climbed the pole. This was the traditional post of a red-winged blackbird, a clear and welcome target. Every morning I’d walk out to his incessant “Chit! Chit! Chit!” call. Over time, I realized that he was the look-out (and what better place?), warning that I was in the vicinity, even tracking me as I worked about the place. One day, as I got too close to a nest 100 feet away, this guy smoothly but swiftly glided down just two feet over the nest, let out a single, soft, musical note—and the female took off immediately. Beautiful teamwork. Once I realized that, I fretted for a nest another year when the male disappeared, fate unknown. Sure enough—a week later the nest had been overturned, no sign of its former contents.

Anyway, the feline pole sitter remained, and eventually I called my vet’s office for advice. They had no ideas other than the ones I’d already tried, and suggested a wildlife nuisance expert. I called. He listened patiently. “OK, look,” he started, in a very nice voice, “I don’t mean this harshly. I have four cats myself.” I listened. “You just don’t find cat skeletons in trees. We get calls like this all the time. Chances are, we’d climb one side of the pole, and the cat would run down the other. When it’s hungry, it will finally come down. It got up there; it can find it’s way down—probably when things quiet down.” Reluctantly, I had to agree. I’d just wait.

My dog certainly wasn’t helping, spending the bulk of her time guarding the pole, intently watching the aerialist intruder (“and I want you more than need you…”). The cat certainly had things to do, other than occasionally changing from sitting to lying atop its perch. After all, my cats LOVE watching birds from their vantage point inside my windows, so just imagine from the top of the utility pole! And not just red-winged blackbirds—robins, sparrows, finches, and much more so frequent that vicinity that every morning at 5 a.m. brings a cacophony so raucous that sleeping in can, at best, mean rolling over and going back to sleep, even over the purr of the air conditioner and fan. A cat’s dream (“I hear you singing on the wires…”). Indoors, I’ve seen cats sit for several hours, calmly waiting out a mouse. Or perhaps the cat was just practicing Zen, but “Zen for Cats” is essentially meant to be funny, and I find cats don’t really get humor. Additionally, as one cartoon depicted with a cat sleeping on a poor reader’s open newspaper, “cats don’t read, and they don’t want you to read either.”

I called my dog, and she happily bounded in to dinner, her shift over, oblivious that we didn’t have a night shift. She curled up at my feet as I worked. I looked out the window. Cat. When I finally went to bed, late that night, I looked out—dark shape atop the utility pole. So it continued, me anxious, dog watching, cat unmoved (“I know I need a small vacation…”). At least it didn’t look like rain. I started to feel the strain.

On the morning of the third day, I looked out, and the cat was gone. I rushed outside for evidence of what happened, but found nothing. No sign of egress, descension, ascension, recinsion, or any other kind of cension. No tracks, no fur, no claw marks, no carcass, no skeleton, no nothing.

I guess you just need to know…

…which cats are linemen…

Dunno. But I’m still on the line. Another overload.

Writer

The Great Green Whale

Ahab had it easy. At least once you kill the whale, it stays dead.

Twenty years ago, with little or no money in my purse, I turned not to the sea, but to the land—my land. After watching my rents continually climb until I could no longer afford them, and since I always wanted to live in the country anyway, I maxed out what credit I had and purchased what I could afford—three and a half acres of rolling meadow nestled in the hills, and a forty year old single wide. I was ecstatic—I was a landowner! I walked the grounds, singing “This land is my land, this land is my land, this land is my land, this land is my land…” It was a lot of land to manage on my own, without machinery (I couldn’t yet afford to drill a well at the time)—an acre was originally the amount of land a team of oxen could plow in a day—but I made a deal with a local farmer: you cut it, the hay is yours (nice hay, too, almost all timothy grass). [And to give Ishmael his due, a drainage ditch does bisect the plot, so technically, he’s still correct.]

This was the last year mowing would be so easy. [Loomings, indeed!] I wasn’t worried, though. First, I had no intention of cutting all that grass, just a half acre or so around the single wide, and second, I planned to plant trees, and they would keep the grass (and the winter wind) down. And plant I did—over two thousand trees, one year old seedlings available inexpensively from the state through Cooperative Extension: Norway spruce mostly, 8-10 feet apart, but also blue spruce, black walnut, black cherry, maples, red oak, Austrian pine, all with just a shovel in soil of heavy clay. These trees needed water during dry spells, hauled with a five gallon bucket with water from my newly drilled well. I also had to keep the grass cut at first around the trees, but quickly found I simply couldn’t keep up with what little time I had while working long hours at multiple jobs to cover all the credit I had tapped. Once established after that first year, I figured, the trees would survive on their own.

I was used to grass growing around my parents’ house in the suburbs—I wasn’t used to how grass grows in a meadow. In just a few weeks from mid-April to mid-May, the grass can shoot up to unmowable lengths—a few weeks more, and it’s waist high. Some weeds will reach six feet—makes for slow going with just a push lawn mower. The task was hopeless. But, my trees were surviving, and would one day grow about the meadow. Further, I was happy to just let nature go about her business, well, naturally.

I learned a lot about nature those first few years. I had grown up believing the “survival of the fittest” model, and at first I thought it true—one grass would flourish for 3-4 weeks, crowded out by the next grass, which would be crowded out by the next. The timothy grass field was gone. But the next year, I realized my error—rather than a continuous conquering by new species, the meadow is a ballet: the same grasses reappeared, coming and going according to their seasons, yielding to the next grasses in their seasons. I noticed something similar about insects—they would l leave my garden in peace, even into harvest—unless I didn’t harvest promptly. Then, they ravished the slightly too ripe vegetables.

I also learned just how naïve my views were about nature. When my dog and I took possession of the meadow, the ground hogs and deer decided they could find more hospitable loggings, but oblivious to my argument that the meadow and surrounding lands offered more than enough for all creatures, the mice took up residence. So did the rats. I got a cat. Then another cat. I trapped dozens of them, then finally turned to poison—which worked for a while. Rabbits chewed through the particle board skirting. I replaced it with aluminum flashing buried 18 inches, but this was a deterrent, not unbreachable. I got the message—the land must be kept mowed.

Easier said than done. Trying to balance this task with other chores and career obligations, I decided to cut grass for an hour or so each day, working my way across the land. The problem, though, is the grass just cut a week ago is already eight inches high, so I had to continually turn back and start over. I altered my goal to just reach the drainage ditch at least once each summer (singing Talking Heads' "Take Me to the River"--another point for Ishmael).

Then nature helped—one very dry summer, the grass simply behaved, growing much more slowly. I reached the far border, not once by twice. The whale had been conquered. And, the evergreens have thrived on the fertile ground, growing dense, bushy, and rivaling the telephone poles. In many places, they completely prevent grass, in others severely slowing it, and in still others, grass has been supplanted by moss. All welcome developments. Then the next summer, wet weather created such a lush jungle that I could only cut a third of the grass.

So this year, as soon as I could near the end of the term, I devoted several hours on consecutive days to cut, cut, cut, determined to get ahead of the resurrected whale before the grass becomes unmowable again. Or at least survive the encounter. If I can’t match Ahab, I’ll settle for Jonah.

I watched the teenager next door while I was moving away. His mom moved in last year, after the house had been vacant two years, so attacking their lawn (roughly an acre and a half) falls at last to them, instead of the realtor.

They’ve got a riding mower (they don’t have all the trees I do), but I’ve never seen anyone do such an incredibly poor job with one. I didn’t even know it was possible. The lawn looked like someone had attacked it with a weed whacker. His pattern of attack seemed almost arbitrary, and every 10-15 minutes or so, exhausted from his heavy labor astride the mower, he needed a break.

This went on for hours, with no better results. Finally, Mom came out. A conversation ensued. Mom took the mower herself, running the perimeter of the property, calmly smoking a cigarette while the grass took notice and lay behind her in neatly trimmed, golf course quality turf. She dismounted. Another conversation. Junior took the wheel again. He started mowing this time in back, and, while certainly no golf course, doing a credible job. He lifted his eyes, waved. I gave him a thumbs up. Then he took a break. By dark, he had finished cutting 1/3 of the plot.

He finished the next morning, again, a credible if not stellar job, and I continued pushing my aching muscles to strive to stay ahead of the rising tide of green.

Writer

Cat's Eye

When my neighbors gave me one of their orange tiger kittens, I could only think of Cat, the poor feline temporarily abandoned by Audrey Hepburn in Blake Edward’s adaptation of Truman Capote’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (until George Peppard comes to the rescue). Thinking also of Mickey Rooney’s role as Holly Golightly’s Japanese upstairs neighbor, I named my new addition “Neko,” Japanese for “cat.”

Neko was a wonderful cat (he died a few years ago), but he was prone to eye infections. Further, although he was generally sweet, he hated being treated, hated going to the vet, hated riding in the car on the way to the vet, and was large enough and strong enough to make his feelings clear.

The vet can’t simply prescribe eye ointment, since first the eye must be stained to rule out a scratch (in which case steroid ointments are contraindicated). So, the routine starts with stuffing said cat into a carrier, driving the 15 minutes to the vet with the cat yowling, probably vomiting, certainly drooling enough to rival any dog. An hour later, the vet hands over the medication, with helpful instructions.

“First, wrap the cat in a towel” to keep it still and preserve your flesh. Uh-huh. See, vets have a practical joker side. They’re in the office, laughing right now at all those poor souls striving to wrap a cat in a towel. Cats have no collarbone, allowing them to move in ways unthinkable to you and me. Further, they’re quick and stressed under the circumstances. You can’t call in a vet tech to help you. Towel indeed.

So, move on to more direct means. I like to sit cross-legged, wrapped carefully around the cat, trying to control it with one hand while manipulating the medication with the other. Does this method work well? No. But it’s all I have.

Once the cat is secured and calm—well, OK, relatively secured and calm—proceed with the directions on the ointment tube: hold open the cat’s eyelids with one hand and squeeze out a small line of ointment, dropping it into the cat’s eye. No, really. They’re apparently serious.

What they don’t say is “repeat multiple times.” First, “calmness” in a trapped cat lasts a few seconds at best. Yeah yeah yeah, calmly talk to your cat in a soothing voice, but your cat still knows it’s trapped, and doesn’t like it. Imagine.

Well, still, this IS your cat, and like me, probably, after repeated tries, you’ll successfully squeeze out a line of ointment as it slowly stretches from the tube to the surface of the eye.

Then, just as the ointment is about to touch the eye, the cat jerks away (at the last possible second).

Go back and repeat these steps multiple times. Monitor your blood pressure. [Incidentally, if small children are about, remove them from the scene, since you’re bound to spout profanity sooner or later, given the growing number of deep scratches from your cat’s claws.]

Eventually, just when you think the exercise pointless, a small amount of ointment will reach your cat’s eye. Yes, the cat will still jerk away, but at this point, you’ll think, “Close enough, damn it!” and proceed to massage the ointment over the eye by closing the eyelids. Continue this until your cat escapes again and you exclaim, “Fine. Go then.” Use the remaining ointment (which contains antibiotics) to treat your many wounds.

Repeat the next day. Sound like fun?

Seriously, I shared the idea for this post with one of my vets, Dr. Kolb, who, aside from a wonderful sense of humor (and asking me to send it), suggested I include the following. I think you’ll appreciate it, as did I.

While visiting a client with an equine patient, this eye ointment issue came up. “When I approach the horse with a tube,” Dr. Kolb’s client explained, “he freaks out and jumps away. So I just put some ointment on my finger and treat him that way—he’s used to me.” This set off a light bulb for Dr. Kolb, and he approved. I tried it with Neko. Success!

By the way, Dr. Kolb was wonderful during the last few difficult months of Neko’s life. Thank you Doctor.

Writer