6

(Sample chapter, letter, and photo plate)

Fun and Humor With Animals

The Skill of Cartoonists

           Over the years we have marveled at the skill of cartoonists to put the antics of animals into action pieces, mainly for children, (oh, yes) For example:

           Cartoonists portray an animal walking up a fence and then walking down the other side. A baby goose, gosling, will come to a bucket, literally walk up the side, swim across, and walk down the other side, instead of going around the bucket.

Observation

           Rabbits, especially bucks, will run around their cage for exercise. Suddenly they are tearing around the vertical walls and finally they run up one wall, across the top, and down the other side, only to do it over and over again.

           We have seen a pig, loose from its pen, march across the yard with its snoot in the ground like a plow. Nothing stops its movement. He even plows a groove through a hardened driveway or path or anything else in his search for another tasty root.

           To entice him back into his pen, I have taken a potato and dropped slices before him. He would follow the trail, eating each piece, right back into the pen.

           We have seen a gander use a stick to root out ants and grubs from the matting on a palm tree. The really funny part is that there was an animal behavior specialist claiming they didn?t eat ants nor would they use a tool and before us, almost as a demonstration, the gander did his thing with a stick. They also eat snails, too, and that isn?t in their book, either.

           In one case, Geraldine weeded the strawberries regularly until one day she bit into one and liked them. That was the end of her weeding. She even tried to nibble the strawberries off of Fern?s dress pattern. I had to build a fence around the strawberries.

Animals and Sexing

           Geraldine and Killer were our first geese. They were named after the antics of a TV comic, Skip Wilson, who portrayed these characters in a sketch on his show.

           The funny part of this was that I had to wait for the owner?s friend to come by to sex the geese so we could buy a pair. He selected them, sexed them, and pronounced them a mating pair, and we bought G and K. That guy blew it, they were both females.

           The Rabbit Broker came by one day with a new story. One of his customers had been sexing his rabbits from the way they held their ears! We had a good laugh over that one.

           Sexing rabbits is one thing you must get good at. You have to keep back both sexes to replenish the herd. Mostly, you keep back females. Well, anyway, 15 years after having the rabbits, I tried to sex kittens. I got two males instead of two females we wanted. Females make the best hunters and these were to be barn cats. I had lost the skill.

Chickens

           Chickens and turkeys have to be the dumbest creatures in the barn yard. You have to teach turkeys how to eat and drink.

           Chickens on the other hand, will eat anything that comes before their eyes, even each other. When one chicken is pecked by another, all the rest will peck on the loser also. (Henpecked).

           A chicken will run into a wall and instead of backing off they will just continue to bump into it. They are like all animals otherwise. If you condition them to a bell or other sound, or a call, they will all come to be fed.

           I conditioned the pasture animals to come when I waved to them from the barn. Now and then, my neighbors questioned my sanity when they saw me out behind the barn, waving urgently to get the herd?s attention. It beats going out to drive them in, except for the neighbors? stares and doubts.

Wild Birds

           The mirror film on the windows created their own set of problems. The sliding door to the patio was especially a problem. A Roadrunner would go by and see his reflection. He would soon return and leave some twigs or a few grubs as a gift. He would go into his mating ritual and then crash into the window trying to get to his prospective mate.

           If we opened the door, he would run away. Then he would come creeping back, each time with a better gift, and cautiously look into the glass, only to see that she was still there. Finally he would give up and leave.

            We could always tell when a roadrunner had been there by the pile of worms, grubs, and other choice tidbits.

           Upstairs, the balcony was actually a brow to shade the lower windows from the sun. It was also a bird roost. A Hawk would fly to the roost and sit and watch for prey in the garden and orchard. If he turned, he would see his reflection and try and mate with it. If the window happened to be the sliding half, he would tear up the screen to get to his new mate.

           We have even seen him bring back his mate to see the other bird reflected in the mirror. I never did figure out that one.

           For a long time, early in the morning, we would hear what sounded like horses galloping across the roof, then silence. One morning at sunrise, I heard the horses and the silence and then I saw the shadow of the Great Horned Owl fly off the roof. They would sit up there waiting to see breakfast below then they would gallop across our flat roof to get a running take off.

Goats

           Goats were something else. Early morning, they would play. They would butt the fence, each other, play with the toys I provided, and then bang into the corrugated steel of the barn. The banging would finally crease just before I went down to the barn with the milking pail. Then they would all be waiting inside for their turn to be milked.

           Goats love to play and when they aren?t playing they are thinking about how to get into mischief. They are loving animals and they do have a sense of humor.

           They are often shown butting someone. Our goats never did that. Later, at a friend?s goat place, I discovered that adult rams were generally feisty and one did not venture into a buck?s pen or pasture. Sounds like the stories of being chased out of a Bull?s pasture, doesn?t it? When they are young, they are all full of fun and a delight to watch.

           Our friends kept the lambs and the kids together in a special pen. Lambs have a way of running, more like a stiff-legged hop. It?s fun to watch them bounce around the yard. In this case, there was a single kid in with the lambs and he only did what they did. It was something else to see this goat bouncing around as did the sheep. At some point the sheep lose this bounce, but the goat never lost it. When the goats were out in the pasture playing you could see him, bobbing up and down while the others ran like normal goats.

           We can?t imagine having animals without enjoying their behavior, knowing them and loving them, except for possibly chickens. In this case, you really have to love eggs.

Birds

           Birds liked our place and besides, we watched them and kept track of their comings on goings.

           Our bird book lists sighting dates for many years and several species come by our place within a day of the same date each year. We have seen this in Ontario, Encinitas, and now in Oregon.

           I checked and there was no way they could see the calendar from a window.

           In Encinitas, our acre was a bit crowded and it wasn?t far from the Studio to any where else on the property. It usually meant a trip through the orchard. This wasn?t always agreeable to the birds. We have been dive bombed by humming birds when they were nesting nearby, we have been harassed by Jays.

           Dive bombed? When you hear a buzzing sound that keeps getting louder and suddenly there is a blur by your head as a humming bird pulls out of a dive to gain altitude and do it again, you have been dive-bombed. Jays just squawk a lot and never get very close.

           Now, with the cat, she almost didn?t want to go outside, they were such a bother, even landing on her back and grabbing some fur. Well, she caught one Jay and spread his feathers all over the yard. They never bothered her again.

           Who ever said birds were dumb?

          Geraldine and Killer were stunned for the first few days after arriving in Oregon. They were faced with more grass than they had ever seen in their lives. Once they realized that they were protected by a six foot chain link fence around their acre, they set about to eat their way through it all. When it rained, they would flap their wings and run in excited circles. From San Diego County, rainfall was more or less new to them, too.

          When you're a kitten and you are adopted by a goose, and you don't know another mother, it is a normal thing. She followed the cat everywhere and stood watch over him, even when he was grown. It put a handicap on his performance as a barn cat, whose duty it was to control mice. Finally a fox got him and she grieved until we got another kitten.

          During winter with snow and the temperature close to zero degrees F., why not stay in the water where the temperature is above 32*F, above freezing? That?s what they did.  Even with this luxury, they would go for a bucket of heated water. I carried one down to them every day, along with a bucket of COB, the corn, oat, barley mix that the cows ate.

          Can you imagine having spent your life up to now, hunting for a bit of grass, and then being confronted with this? It really wasn?t hard to get used to a goose heaven. They tried real hard to eat it all. We had Geraldine and Killer for 28 years.

Now, a letter from the book:

Mohawk Valley

September 1, 1990

Dear Friends and Family:

            If I start this now, you may get it by Christmas. At any rate, we think of each of you all through the year. And besides, up here, everyday is Christmas.

            This is the year of the Garden. Well, actually it is more of a landscaping than a simple garden idea. Early this year, or maybe it was late last year, we got out the tape and made a scaled layout of this place so we could see what we have.

            Whow! Probably the most shocking thing was the 20,000 square feet of flower beds. That's a half-acre. Well, the truth is we weren't too happy with the gardens. Since it's all flat, things get lost and we can't really see way back there from the house.

            I guess it started last fall when we planted a small bed outside the dining room windows. We wanted color as soon as we could get it after winter. Crocus, which comes up through the snow, or when it's still frosty, narcissus next, and tulips. Oh, glorious, brilliant tulips! In proportion, the bed became five by forty feet. We planted over two hundred bulbs in there and did we ever get color!

            Later, some of the five hundred-plus marigolds (seed from last year's flowers) that Fern started in the greenhouse were set out in the bed and they have continued the splash of color. The rest of the marigolds have been scattered here and there. We also traded marigolds for about seventy feet of petunias for border. Otherwise we are concentrating on perennial throughout the yard.

            A windfall, which ended our connection with Encinitas, gave us a small tractor, complete with hydraulic loader bucket, grading scraper, auger, roto tiller, and I have built a manure fork set which goes on the bucket and a hoist which goes on the back for lifting the boulders.

            Oh, the boulders! In March we bought 30 tons of black basalt boulders from the Springfield Quarry. With the tractor, we have moved all of them to various places in the yard and greenhouse to form raised beds. The black rocks go with the emerald lawn and the brilliance of the flowers above them.

            Eight truckloads of bark, sand, compost, etc., ago, we began to mix a 'planter mix' with the tractor. I spread out a layer of each in a strip- tractor-wide. With the roto-tiller on the back I can thoroughly combine the mix. The wonderful mix, without clay in it, goes into our raised beds. We'll use another 15 tons of boulders to finish the job. They will also line the pond edge.

            Oh, the Pond! Living out here in the country, our water source is the well- which is great. But we have power failures. No water. I wanted a quantity of water above ground for emergencies such as a fire, to feed the animals, etc. We already had an engine-driven pump from drilling our second well for the greenhouse warm water heating last year. The pond is about 1800 square feet and four to six feet deep- nice size, for a garden pond, about 75,000 gallons.

            Well, a pond should have fish, and it certainly should have plants like lilies, water iris, etc. and we need a way to aerate the water, Fern's wall fountain will do nicely. It's eight feet tall and water cascades down over its surface. And the large-mouth bass want warmer water (if they are to mate), so a solar panel will be included. Maybe another fountain will complete the picture. And, of course, it should be lighted. . .. I had to move irrigation pipes, and add a few: that took 400 feet of trenches. Oh, there had to be an overflow drain. . ..Whew!

Aside from the garden work, we hosted the Weaving Guild Annual Picnic and Fashion Show in May: the new back porch is ready for cabinets, the wood shop out in the barn is taking shape, I've added telephones to the studio and soon in the barn.

            Canning, freezing, drying and food for the winter is progressing. We have an apple crop this year and plums galore. Birds got the cherries, but blackberries, blueberries, raspberries abound. The dirt from the pond hole will cover the root cellar and become a landscaped hill in the garden. I have also used some of it to grade a 150 ft road to the barn.

            Oh, the root cellar! It came about when we discovered the space and had all that dirt and. . ..

            We just sold three yearlings, 1626 pounds-worth of beef, and kept another one for the freezer. A friend has already spoken for half of our Angus heifer. We bought four more calves and we have been bottle feeding them for almost a month.

            Next year's fertilizer and compost is assured. The winter hay should be delivered shortly. To have grown that big, those cows had to have eaten over eight thousand pounds of grass in the pasture plus what else I fed them.

            You probably noticed the laser printer's product in this letter. Fern and I just completed another book:

            WHAT? A Touch of Humor For Those Who Wear Hearing Aids. . . .Soon to be published. (Fern turned out over fifty cartoon illustrations for it.)

            The novel is in the hands of another agent; no word yet.

            And Fern has made considerable progress on her weaving design book, as yet untitled. She made great progress this year on the research to go with her experiments in natural plant dye-stuffs. . . another book, someday.

            Just something to keep from having idle hands. . ..

            We continue in good health and high spirits. Our best wish for each of you would be to have had as exciting and rewarding a year as we are having. Good health and our very best to all of you.

Love,