The Never-ending Song

We named her Bridget. She was 4 months old when we picked her up- a sweet little white goat who had been treated as a pet by the older lady who owned Bridget's mother.  I think Bridget had spent the majority of her early moths inside the lady's house and not in the barn with the other goats, for she was most unhappy when we put her into our barn. An unhappy goat makes a great deal of noise--"MAAA--maaa"-- screams splitting the air which sounded like a child in pain.  Perhaps she was a child in pain, away from the home she had known. We were determined; however, that Bridget would become comfortable in her nice stall with a burro next to her for company. One day we let her loose in the pasture with the burro.  We had electric fence around the field which kept the burro safely enclosed.  There was lots of grass (for the burro-goats prefer briars!) and an old apple tree for shade.  There was also an old claw-foot bath tub which served as a stock tank filled with coo

When I moved into my little cottage in North Carolina which had stood vacant for two years, I discovered vacant only referred to humans.  Immediately I found signs of mouse residents.  I love  mice--have a collection of  "mousy"  things--but not in the house: especially not in the kitchen!  My Siamese kitty, Carrie, seventeen years old when we came South, had no interest in the mice. The final insult was when I opened the drawer with my silverware and discovered a nest made of insulating material which had not been there the day before.  Inside the nest lay four wee pink baby mice. No sign of the mother, but she was likely not far away.  Still what could I do?  They could not stay there, and I just could not bring myself to dispatch them.  So I decided to let nature decide.  I put the nest containing the pinkies out on the lawn, hoping the mother might somehow find them and NOT bring them back in the house!  Nature decided their fate within minutes.  A Blue Jay swooped down f

Meg had lost track of exactly how old Yellow Yeow was.  The big friendly cat had been hers since she had found his mother with two kittens huddled on the side of the road near the pine forest.  The mother cat immediately approached Meg, so we knew she had been someone's pet and had been "dropped off" when she had made herself persona non grata by having kittens.  Meg was in high school when she found the cats.  We named the mother cat Gypsy and let her move in with the barn cats.  We found a home for one kitten and Meg kept the other.  She named the kitten Jade for his green eyes. Jade was never a very ambitious cat.  He much preferred lying stretched out on Meg's bed or in the sun on the lawn to  cavorting with the barn cats or seeking mice in the tall waving grasses of the fields.  So he spent the majority of his first years while Meg finished high school and attended community college just being her buddy. Meg's sister was living in the south.  She had a nic

It happened early one Spring morning just as the sun was beginning to spread a golden haze on the horizon and the late frost twinkled on the leaves before melting. The doe was leaving the field where she had enjoyed her meal and heading to the forest where she would spend the day resting  in a copse of brush.  Perhaps she looked back at her fawn who was following. Perhaps she was distracted for a moment by the distant sound of a barking dog.  Whatever the cause, she stepped out onto the  shoulder of the road just as a fast moving pick-up truck rounded the bend.  The fender barely hit her-just a glancing blow to her skull, but it was enough.  The truck never slowed. The doe fell where she stood.  One ear twitched a bit, then she was gone.   Not much later another vehicle came along the quiet country road.  Seeing the deer on the side of the road, the driver pulled over and stopped.  He approached the still animal slowly, not sure of her condition and being aware that the razor-sharp

Just before sunset on a summer evening as I sat on my porch awaiting sunset over the little pond and hills across the road, my phone rang. "Can  you come over to Halburton Road right away?  I hit a huge bird and I think his leg is broken," the anxious voice said.  " Do you know what the bird is?  Was it flying when you hit it?"I asked, trying to obtain as much information as possible before going on a rescue mission.  "Big, really big and sort of blue.  It was walking across the road."  From this I decided it was probably a Great Blue Heron.  They can be dangerous to handle. Their beaks are powerful and can inflict terrific wounds.  Also they have a tendency to strike at eyes.  So I grabbed my catch pole and took some heavy elastic bands to slip onto the bird's beak to keep it closed.  My ever-ready black bag had emergency supplies and was always freshly stocked.   SAying "I'll be back" to my Aussie, Heather, I hopped into my Jeep Che

He was born on July 6th, only son of John Holmes Smith and Willimee Katherine Barrows Smith, and named Russell Holmes. He was the apple of his mother's eye and possibly a bit spoiled by his father. As a young child he spent many hours in church with his mother, who attended every service and bible study, taking "Sonny" with her.  As a teenager he had an Indian motorcycle and a Boston Terrier dog named Judge who rode on the bike with him. Russell had a best friend named Henry.  Together they built an airplane which looked beautiful but never made it far above the ground before hitting a fence causing severe damage.  Russ worked for a time as a young chap caring for some horses, but that was about all the animal experience he had.  He attended Northeastern University in Boston after graduating from Attleboro (Mass.) High School.  His major was Civil Engineering.  After two years he married his high school sweetheart, Jeanne Sarson, and left college to earn a living. Thi

Countee Cullen wrote in a poem many years ago:  "poor little pigs, they see the wind" I was never sure what he meant. We have "seen" the wind the past few days, well not the wind itself, but what it was up to.  Tearing off loose shingles, sending light weight porch chairs flying across the lawn, removing dead branches from the trees- even some of the trees themselves, and ringing wild clanging melodies from the wind chimes on the porch.  Happily I noted this morning when the air was once again calm, that the large dead tree on the hillside where the Turkey Vultures gather has withstood the onslaught. I like wind, unless it becomes destructive.  There is something primitive, an inner stirring the power of wind can create.  It almost always heralds a change in weather, as it has this week. We went from very hot and humid followed by heavy down pouring rain to the cool, dry air, blue sky and sun.  In came the winds to dry up the large puddles, the swampy lawns

Answering the urgent sounding rap at my back door one afternoon, I found my neighbor with a towel wrapped something in his arms.  "Star brought this home", he gasped. Star was his part Husky dog who roamed free in the woodsy areas surrounding our properties.  " Well let's see what you've got", I responded, lifting the towel package from his hands. I unfolded the towel to discover the very cold, very still, body of a young opossum.   It was very hard to discern any breathing; however there was a wee movement of the tiny chest every once in a while.  Where his long bare tail should have been there was only a bloody stump. The stump was no longer bleeding.To all appearance the little creature was dead.  But this was an opossum, and while he was certainly in some amount of pain, he was mostly "playing possum."  Possums have the ability to fake death when in danger.   They are so good at it that often the attacker will think it dead and no longer ha

Before the advent of artificial insemination of dairy cows, every farm kept a bull.  Artificial insemination was a wonderful advance in the history of dairy farming for it not only provided the opportunity for the farmer to upgrade the quality of his animals by offering choices of sires for the future herd members, but it also created a much safer environment for the farm family.  All bulls of the dairy breed, no matter how gentle and well mannered they may seem, are huge, potentially dangerous critters.  They can be dangerous simply due to their size alone, even if they have no mal-intent towards their human care givers.  On our farm we had a very large Holstein bull.  We called him Mac.  Mac dwelt in a box stall at one end of the barn near the door where the ladies (my Dad's cows) entered and exited.  Most of the time Mac paid little attention to their comings and goings unless one of them should switch her tail and give him the "Hey there big fella" eye.  His huge he

Once upon a time there was a tiny laboratory at the Harness Track in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. where the Standardbred horses were blood tested before each race and the top three place horses had their urine tested after the race.  I was at first a technician and moved up the line to assistant director when the director and assistant left.   We seldom found any major infraction in the use of drugs on the horses being raced.  The most common one was an oral medication given for lameness.   One evening one of the techs found a specimen which showed an incriminating amount of codeine. This was in itself unusual, but it was a drug and we had to notify the judges.  A second blood sample was drawn from the horse and quickly run again.  It too proved positive.  So the horse was scratched from the race-meaning he was not allowed to race that night.  There was a sad tale behind it as we later found out that the horse in question was an older horse, the only one an elderly local couple had.  The m

Today is the 75th anniversary of D-Day.  This is Bedford, Virginia, home of the national D-Day Memorial. This town was selected for the honor of hosting the memorial due to the ultimate sacrifice of 20 of it's boys in this battle.  Nineteen were in the same unit and all died that day, making Bedford, Virginia the town which lost the most of it's military young men that day.  They are called  "The Bedford Boys".  The lamp posts down town are decorated with flags, each bearing a name of a lost young man.  I have no idea at this point how many people came here from across the country today. It has been a lovely day, if a bit hot, with sun and clouds and a cool breeze.  The Vice President arrived mid-morning and gave a short, very well done, speech.  (I guess you all know that PresidentTrump is in France where all this actually occurred.). Joseph's Dream, where I reside, is on a hillside overlooking the Memorial site.  A group of us gathered on the slope behind one

The dog days of summer are fast approaching, if not already here in Virginia.  Many of us humans relish a dip in the pool in this weather.   Many of our canine companions do too,  though there are some who just think of any water as a bath--aah the dreaded bath! I used to live quite near the beach - Emerald Isle in North Carolina.  Dogs were welcome on the beach.  I used to take my Border collie, Daisy, pack a raisin bread and cream cheese sandwich for me and some Milkbones for her along with a big jug of water and cups, sunscreen for me and a sunshade for her and head off to spend an afternoon in the warm sun and salty breeze.  Daisy loved water and after her first introduction to the idea of waves, she would race down the sand and trot in.  There was a girl who was often there who had a Chesapeake Bay Retriever who was a great swimmer.  The girl would throw a big floating disc far out into the surf and her dog would dive right through the incoming wave to swim out and retrieve

There are many stories of animals helping to care for one another.   This was the first time I ever saw a bird caring for another adult bird  which was not one of her own offspring.   One winter with a moderate snowfall, ( a couple of feet in upstate New York) there seemed to be an unusual number and variety of birds coming to the feeders.  Among them were many ground feeders who were finding it harder than would ordinarily be the case to locate a source of seeds.  So we put out a large flat tray with a few small holes punched in it to allow for melting snow water to drain.  We nailed the tray to a windowsill and filled it with black oil sunflower seed.  Black oil sunflower seeds seem to be preferred by almost all variety of seed eating birds.  Also they are large enough not to fall through the drain holes.  The large flat surface encouraged birds who normally fed on the ground and who did not eat from the typical seed feeder to land there.  For a time it seemed that all the birds