Best Bosses

I’m guessing a good number of readers in my age group, folks entering their 7th decade, grew up as I did, believing humans were intended to boss their pets. Over time, as I have, they’ve reinterpreted those early views and accepted that four-legged companions actually run our houses. 

A friend stopped to visit the other day. After we spent a couple hours catching up, she observed my little terrier sitting on my toes, staring intently at me. Unbeknownst to her, he was informing me it was nearly 3 p.m., aka his dinnertime. Noting his wrinkled brows and unblinking gaze , I excused myself to mix up his bowl of kibble. She teased that he had me well trained. I answered, “You have no idea.”

I’ve reluctantly acknowledged she stated pure truth. A fourteen-pound, thirteen-year old-canine dictates my actions from first thing every morning to mid-afternoon and just before bed. As soon as I awaken, his no nonsense path to the back door directs my mission to let this little guy and his furry, white sidekick outside for their morning constitutional. If I’m slow to respond, the toe-tapping pee- pee dance encourages me to attend to business. There’s no tolerance for this human to dress or brew coffee.

As the day goes on, my pointy-nosed guard dog perches at the edge of the sofa to survey the backyard. If he observes anything out of the ordinary—say a visiting German shepherd sprinkling his chain link fence or a brave squirrel creeping onto the grass—he races to my lap and implores me with sharp yips and pitiful whines to let him out to handle the situation.

Once he’s driven off the invaders, he directs his fuzzball partner to bark until I let them in. Once through the door, he examines the kitchen floor to see if I’ve dropped anything while he secured the premises. Usually, that’s a no, so he gives me the sad eye to tell me he’d really like a snack. If he happens to catch me eating a cheese stick, he plants himself at my feet until I give him and his begging buddy a nibble.

How this unschooled pooch tells time, I’ll never know. But he does. Once I wash and put away lunch dishes, he monitors house and yard--that is--until the little hand creeps close to the three and the big hand to the 12. Then this bundle of energy paces back and forth between his bowl and me. By 2:50, my self-ordained tyrant situates himself in my lap and begins a world-class stare down. If I haven’t looked at the clock, I know it’s officially doggy dinnertime.

If I want to read a book or write, I’m forced to serve my dictators . Both critters follow me to ground zero and strategically place themselves so I can’t leave the room until I’ve set their filled bowls before them.

It’s ironic I thought I’d train these dogs when they first moved in. I understand now that they meant all along to whip me into shape using those deep brown eyes and pitiful whines. I can’t imagine better bosses.

I Nearly Didn't Make It

Those who live far from four lane highways and interstates must consider a new issue when we travel to distant appointments. In the past, you could figure a mile a minute on open highway in good weather. Tweak that for town speed limits and stoplights. Only during harvest season did you expect to deal with slow moving, oversized vehicles. Nowadays, travelers heading south down Highway 183 from Phillipsburg anticipate a slow jaunt not behind just one wind tower or blade in tow, but several. Fortunate drivers will cruise at a crawl until they pass those behemoths.

Recently, I’ve experienced instances heading to an appointment in Hays where I found myself thrilled that my family trained me to leave well ahead of time no matter what the reason. Here’s the dilemma. How early does one need to depart when caravans of wind turbine carriers take over a road designed for 65 mph traffic and roll along at 40 to 50 miles an hour?

The other day, my dentist worked me in for an emergency appointment at noon. I calculated mileage and slowdowns through the five communities along my path. Under perfect conditions, I’d arrive in 1 1/2 hours. In less than optimal circumstances, I’d need another 15 minutes, so I left 35 minutes early. You can imagine my chagrin when I spied slow-moving vehicle flashers at Glade.

Initially, I figured I’d pass the warning vehicle, turbine truck, and the pickup ahead of it with blinking yellow lights before Stockton’s city limit sign. No worries. I had yet to note two additional long, white, ultra-wide pillars and their escorts. My hopes sank when those became visible once I reached the region’s highest hill. Darn! I counted fourteen vehicles trapped ahead of me amongst these diesel tortoises’ creeping procession. I looked in the rear view mirror and noted at least four agitated drivers behind me. Nineteen of us were murmuring unkind thoughts about the economic benefits of wind generated electricity.

At Stockton, my bladder announced the arrival of that morning’s coffee. I’d passed one turbine team so there was no way I’d listen to nature’s irritating call. By Plainville, that organ screamed on high alert, but by then, I’d overtaken the other two units. Uncomfortable beyond belief, I writhed in my seat and set the accelerator for the speed limit plus tolerance once I exited town.

That 24 miles to Hays was miserable. Side roads called me to pull over until I glanced in my rearview mirror to see the bright orange end of that huge pillar trailing behind. In response, I squinched around until I found a tolerable position and maintained speed. No way was I letting either that convoy or a trooper slow me again.

By the time I reached Wendy’s, I had just enough lead for a pit stop that would permit me to stay ahead of my nemesis. I reached the dentist with two minutes to spare. That’s a close call for someone who’s been taught to arrive at least 10 minutes early to all life events.

A Belated Sort of Ghost Story

Compared with the thin-veiled night of October 31, the more flamboyant July 4^th doesn’t seem much like a time to expect a haunting. That may be true in normal circumstances, but when you live in Ellis County where you’ve heard stories about the Blue Light Lady roaming rolling hills southwest of Hays, one day is as good as another to encounter disembodied spirits. Our grown daughters still recall the scare of their lives on rise overlooking old Fort Hays.

The little girls’ holiday began with bags of poppers and sulfurous snakes that stained our sidewalk black for months afterwards. After they shrieked at those exploding, powder-filled tissues and lit licorice nib-size buttons that wound into stinky coils, we cooled off at the swimming pool. Later, we cranked ice cream, fried chicken, and baked chocolate cake while my husband patrolled Cedar Bluff. He promised to get home in time to watch Hays’ firework show.

Early July means the sun doesn’t set until after nine, so our sunburned blondes were tired by the time their father came home. Hearing the door open, they wrapped themselves around his legs, hollering, “Fireworks!” He stalled them long enough to grab cold chicken and cake before piling in the car.

Instead of following the highway, my hubs told us he’d drive the back way, south of Ellis. Eventually, he took a dusty country road that eventually overlooked the festivities below our lonely hilltop. A game warden, he’d driven these county roads and knew exactly where we’d have the best view. As neared our destination, a niggling memory inched from the recesses of my mind. I recollected students writing essays about spotting the legendary Blue Light Lady near our targeted parking spot.

Those teenage stories often included realistic encounters with a wandering spirit. Despite suspecting that many such sightings were designed to trigger scared girls to leap into brave boys’ arms, I didn’t want to meet this ghost.

My husband dismissed my concerns with a big grin, and big ears in the back seat begged to watch the show from Blue Light Lady Hill. Apparently, all my loved ones were game to meet a disembodied spirit. I, on the other hand, had encountered a ghost or two and wasn’t eager to hang out with ectoplasm.

We put the car in park just after dusk and lowered windows to catch evening breezes. Immediately, mosquitoes telegraphed every nearby bloodsucking insect, alerting them that dinner had arrived. While smacking buzzing torpedoes, we talked about the nurse who cared for cholera patients at the fort and succumbed to the disease herself. According to the story, she convinced her husband to bury her near the hill where she wandered the prairie every day. All of us were sad to think about her short life, but the irritating drone of invading bugs and the first flashes of early fireworks preoccupied us.

As darkness deepened and exploding diamonds punctuated black skies, my daughters and I stared transfixed at the magic of gunpowder combined with colorful chemicals. Perfectly timing his treachery, our driver cried, “What’s that?”

Our eyes flashed to his corner. Horrified, we spied a monstrous hand covering the windshield. We shrieked like actresses in monster movies. The instigator laughed hysterically. He’d pulled a good one on his gullible girls.

He laid the groundwork by taking us to Blue Light Lady Elizabeth Polly’s old haunt. Then he encouraged our ghost story recollections. In the dark with showers of descending sparkles to distract us, the rascal slipped his long arm out the open window, wrapped it over the glass before him, and scared the peewadlins out of his daughters, wife, and a horde of mosquitoes.

I’m guessing Elizabeth Polly’s ghost laughed heartily at our expense that night. If we’d have quit screaming, we’d have heard her chuckles accompanying sounds of exploding fireworks and droning insects.

A Turkey Thanksgiving

It’s the time of year when turkey producers dream in dollar signs. In a few months, their products will be bagged, tagged, and on sale in the frozen food department of area grocery stores. Cooks in charge of Thanksgiving dinner will be saving tasty recipes picturing birds roasted to golden perfection and surrounded by a platter of colorful accompaniments. Diners who prefer wild turkey to farm-raised stock are eyeballing native flocks to see where they feed daily and roost at dusk. While humans plan their upcoming feasts, camouflage –toned Rios and Easterns are living in the minute, enjoying a banner grasshopper crop.

This spring’s ample rains nurtured fields, yards, and ditches full of cultivated plants and weeds, favorite hopper foods. Hungry, leaping insect hordes explain why roads, fields, and yards in our area appear animated. If you ramble around your yard or a nearby field, you’ll rustle up at least a hundred prickly-legged characters who spring shoulder high from the ground and dangle from the fibers of your shirt or cling to your hair. It’s enough to make a finicky person gyrate like a 70s disco dancer.

Recently, we visited friends in the country who share their property with a number of hens, gobblers, jakes, and poults. It’s a thrill to drive up their road and spy ungainly birds wandering over pastures and into the farmyard. If it isn’t mating season, it’s eating season and these walking drumsticks have big appetites. You can count on watching them scratch and peck at any seed or insect in their vicinity. This year, grasshoppers reproduced like crazy, so plenty exist to fatten feathered foragers.

Since my friend and I enjoy gardening, I hoped to check out her little oasis. She quickly apologized, explaining how hoppers had decimated both her vegetables and flowers. I understood exactly what she meant since I had stems in my own flowerbed sporting well-gnawed leaves that looked like poorly woven fish nets. As we stood outside lamenting the sad fates of our spring dreams, part of her turkey flock wandered near, heads bobbling up and down as they gobbled grasshoppers.

In an area with so many delicacies to choose from, those poor birds struggled to decide which bug to eat first. Once they swallowed their prey, they intently moved on to the next crunchy critter. In a matter of minutes, they wiped out more than my friend and I might have squashed in a day of smacking and stomping. We quietly cheered on this squad of hens and mostly-grown poults. In the distance, gobblers worked the edges of a field, leaping into the air like a hovering  basketball rebounder to snag an escaping hopper.

Perhaps some of the turkeys I watched this summer will end up as the main course of a Thanksgiving dinner. Whoever enjoys that banquet should know that turkey scored a feast that lasted for months. In fact, area gobblers heading to roost struggle to attain lift off with their stomachs full of once-leaping protein snacks.

It’s All in the Perspective

Last week I wrote about my gardening efforts to encourage black swallowtail butterflies to lay eggs. My hopes were that these would become caterpillar hordes that would munch my fennel and dill until bare stems remained. We’re almost at the naked stick stage, and I’ve learned that folks don’t always see things my way. We’ve had friends and family drop by to enlighten me about my insect cultivation practices.

The first visitor happened to be a farmer. His view of caterpillars in quantities great enough to wipe out the fern-like fronds of a fennel plant in a couple of days doesn’t jive with my dreams to expand this specific butterfly population. He tossed out a few agricultural terms that I’m pretty sure equate with killing pests. At first, I was traumatized to think anyone would consider my green, yellow, black, and white decorated worms as nuisances. However, I didn’t have to think very long to see why our friend might have this attitude. 

In another setting, I’d see these creatures much the same way. For instance, I don’t encourage tomato hornworms. In fact, when they show up in my garden, I’m on a determined mission to turn those vine-stripping monsters into premium fresh chicken food. I pour over my plants from top to bottom removing any sign of these destructive fiends. Ironically, they are closely related to the caterpillars I’ve been intentionally feeding. 

The giant worms that aim to destroy my tomato harvest happen to be the result of sphinx or humming bird moth pairings. Those big old fluttering things that trick our eyes into believing we’ve got a hummer sipping at our flowers lays its eggs on tomato plants. When those little ovals hatch, the result is that nasty green hornworm that can wipe out a garden in no time. The bottom line is that black swallowtail butterflies and sphinx moths are in the Lepidoptera order—cousins I’d say.

Our next visitor who rattled my perspective was my mother, an avid fisherwoman. She’s also an ardent gardener who doesn’t tolerate anything that damages her beloved plants. As soon as she got out of her car, I led her over to my half-eaten fennel plants to show her my 50 plus soon to be swallow tail pupae. The first words out her mouth were, “Are they good fish bait?”

Using these decorative bugs to catch fish hadn’t crossed my mind.  However, I have seen some lures at sporting goods stores that are every bit as brightly decorated as the guys currently devouring the greens I planted to tempt them into my flowerbed.

When I planted fennel and dill, I wasn’t planning on any lessons other than learning firsthand about the life cycle of black swallowtail butterflies. Despite this intention, this exercise has reminded me that nothing in life is simple. Everything we do is a matter of perspective, and that can alter something as unassuming as the mere change of a plant or the purpose for a worm. In my case, fennel is expendable. Tomatoes are not. Black swallowtail caterpillars are not fish bait. Earthworms are.

Pickin’ Potato Bugs ‘n Livin’ the Dream

Deep in every woman’s heart, no matter how practical she is, lives a die-hard romantic. That’s the reason commercials promote products displayed against a field of wind-blown wildflowers, stunning sunsets, or white sand beaches bordered by intensely blue waters. All the while, a simple but sweet tune plays behind the scenes if it’s a TV ad. These commercials aren’t designed for men. Trust me.

After the early dating years, much of the romance that attracts lovers in the first place gets lost in daily survival. It’s hard to set a candlelit table for two when a ball game begins at 6 p.m. or cattle need fed before the winter sun sets. It’s difficult to maintain that passionate gaze that connected you and your sweetie back in your courting days while a toddler and infant throw their evening hissy. As a couple adds anniversaries, a few special occasions have to make up for a lot of get-through-the-day-chaos.

Despite messy, unpredictable reality, the essence of the sweet young thing who wanted Prince Charming to swoop her away on his white charger keeps fanning her ancient dream. Why else would so many women keep romance novelists busy writing and selling books enough to fill jillions of library shelves? Why else would Hallmark devote an entire channel to happy-ever-after endings? 

Folks, mostly female, reading those novels and watching those programs are typically between the ages of 30 and 54. According to one source, the Hallmark Channel’s family friendly programming was listed number 1 with 96% audience retention. Those viewers are loyal too.

So what’s a long-married guy have to do to add sizzle to his true love’s life? According to my husband, he should invite her potato bug picking. He’d tell you timing was important because both dusk and dawn add that special ambience. If you make it a contest, that really spices up your together time.

I guess it must work because we met in the garden the other evening for a round of insect collecting. I wasn’t familiar with the nymph stage of these hungry critters so he graciously showed me several of the little orange and black squishy bugs before the competition began.

Once I understood what to look for, we each took a section of potato plants and began searching. Remembering that I appreciate chivalry, he was ever the gentleman and let me have the area with the most obvious snacking creatures. While those were easy pickin’, I quickly learned to scan the undersides of leaves to increase my chance of winning.

He already knew this species is particularly fond of hidden regions of potato plant anatomy and had significantly more bugs in his jar. Seeing his half-full container inspired me to double my efforts. I swished potato plants so wildly that the objects of my hunt tumbled from their dinner table to the ground below. 

The extra time I spent searching for lost prizes gave my darling more time to increase his Kerr jar’s contents. Soon, I had to admit I’d lost the game. 

While that might have upset a more competitive woman, I looked up to see the moon rising against the fading blue eastern sky. Evening’s cooling breeze blew my hair away from my face and riffled through the oat field behind the garden, making rolling waves. Birds flitted past, adding their simple but sweet songs to our evening. While standing knee high in potato plants, I realized I was living the dream those advertisements promote with the best fella a girl could find.

When the Dog’s Away

When we lost our big yellow dog last August, it left a hole in our hearts and an empty space in the middle of the living room where he used to lie to supervise household activities.  We had Tucker for 17 years, and he was an almost perfect dog that took care of us more than we did him.  We are still discovering some of the caretaking duties he performed.

One of his jobs was maintaining order on the ranch.  Unbeknown to us, Tucker acted as a gatekeeper for critters that came and went in the yard.  I credited him with keeping coyotes at bay, but he apparently also made certain deer, turkeys, and hawks stayed far from his family.  Now that he is gone, these creatures visit with impunity. 

This trespassing offends our little terrier and make him wonder why he can’t maintain order like the big dog did.  It may have something to do with his shrill bark and small stature compared to Tucker’s deep roar and pony-sized body.  Even I got scared when Tucker barked, and I knew I was allowed on the place since I fed him.

We have enjoyed seeing occasional deer at a distance; we now have a regular deer thoroughfare in every direction around the house.  My husband nearly ran into one in the driveway as he drove home the other night.  The terrier and I had a stare down with two bucks in velvet and three does on our way to the mailbox the other afternoon.  Watching out the window morning and evening  guarantees we’ll see a doe or maybe a doe and her fawn.

Since we enjoy wildlife and they don’t seem to cause harm, we mostly enjoy this and think how busy Tucker must have been shepherding all these four- legged creatures away from the place all fifteen years he stood guard duty out here.

Sitting on the back porch last, I watched fireflies dance until the wee hours.  Suddenly, I heard  a racket from  the bushes and trees that border the backyard.  Keep in mind, it was dark, dark except for a sliver of light projected by the yard light into the back yard.   Straining my ears and eyes, I determined where the sounds came from and focused on the tiny bit of light in that direction.  Soon, I saw shadowy figures emerge from the trees—a doe and two older fawns.  Totally unaware I was sitting within fifteen feet of them, they browsed a currant bush and then meandered across the yard to try out some other greenery.  I realized why I frequently heard Tucker barking through the night. 

While I miss our old dog enormously, it has been interesting to discover how busy he was as a guard dog.  No wonder he napped so much when he was in the house. Bbased on what I’ve seen since he’s been gone, he had a full time job keeping critters away.