Twas in the Hours as Wee as a Mouse

     It's very early Christmas Eve, into the wee hours, and all the creatures are stirring, because of the Mouse.

     Robin Cat had carried Mouse into the cabin and set her on the living room floor to play the cat versus mouse game.  Lily Cat hurried over to join in, usually the more avid hunter.  This is approximately when House Security noticed the policy violation and began closely monitoring the situation.  Though largely keeping her cool, House Security began to experience a threat level approaching mild human panic.  Even bouncers have their limits.

     To initiate the games, Mouse ran off a short way.  Lily immediately cornered Mouse beside the Cat Jail and carried her to the bathtub and hopped in.  Robin followed and all three were soon in the tub, just standing there on eight little and four tiny feet.  The tub is the usual Mouse repository and destination when Robin or Lily can sneak one indoors past House Security, and, for the moment, all was still, a prelude, but to what?

     By now they were being observed closely by the House Detective, who doubles as  House Security.  There was no panic.  She knew exactly the risks and what to do, though was a bit leery.  However, without hesitation, in a closer brush with Mouse than preferred, she lifted Lily and Robin one at a time out of the tub and removed them from the tiny bathroom and shut the door.  Thereby Mouse's life was preserved.  It would also give House Security and the House Detective time to think.  Meanwhile, the cats paced impatiently nearby, adrenaline flowing through their dilated vessels.

     After quick deliberation, Mouse 911 was called.  First, there was no answer.  "Answer your phone!" reverberated soundlessly through the ether.  A second phone number is tried, and contact is made.  The stage is set.  Soon all the actors will be in place.

     Mouse 911 arrives within minutes and discusses the situation with Ms. Mouse 911.  As he's expertly briefed, his vision sweeps the room.  He notices Robin is detained in Cat Jail, a kennel in the general population area.  He notices the bedroom door is closed and assumes Lily is in isolation.  "Good call", he thinks.  He's worked with House Security before and is impressed with her threat assessments and general first responder professionalism.  There had been, however, that "bird flying around house" disturbance, but birds are another threat level entirely for Ms. Mouse 911 and her security team.
|
     The briefing having been completed and a couple of wildly hopeful plans having been floated, Mouse 911 enters the diminutive bathroom and closes the door behind him to the sound of bullfight trumpets flaring in his head.  He's brought gloves and a cardboard box and is ready for anything, perhaps even a mouse, but Mouse has other ideas.

     Where's Mouse?  How did she climb the tub walls?  Isn't that impossible?  Mouse 911 scans the bathroom for clues to her whereabouts.  There are no stockings she could be hiding in, hung with care or not.  There are several places she could be nestling in though, snugly at that, but there was no clatter to help settle the matter and nothing to his wondering eyes did appear.

     Mouse 911 now searches the bathroom more methodically for clues.  Where would Mouse 911 hide if he were a Mouse?  His gaze fixes upon the corner behind the sink.  He lifts the small pink pail there.  There she goes, running along the baseboard back toward the tub, a furry gray streak with her winter coat fully grown in and a long mouse tail!  She's cute!  She's gone!   She's become invisible again.  Moving the small metal shelves near the tub away from the wall, there's her tail!  Now gone again!

     Having looked and relooked pointlessly for 20 minutes for a rather invisible Mouse, in the litter box, on the shelves, in the medicine cabinet, under a plunger, inside various small pails, and behind the toilet scrub brush holder, and moving everything movable at least three times, Mouse 911 is beginning to doubt his senses.  Though usually not one to give up or get discouraged, he admits to himself Mouse is too smart for him and calls for Plan B to be activated.

     Ms. Mouse 911 agrees and stands down House Security and releases Robin and Lily back into the community without restriction.  They head straight into the bathroom, and the door is shut behind them.

     Robin is a sleek lithe part-Russian Blue athletic danseur of a cat, a handsome serious young man with strong communication skills, who strongly resembles Mikhail Baryshnikov if Baryshnikov had somehow been turned into a sharp-clawed patrol cat.

     Lily is a compact beauty, a sweet Holstein-marked black and white fireball spitfire sweetheart, alternatingly cuddly and commanding, a lighter-than-air gymnast who in much of her spare time seems to be comprised almost entirely of one tightly flexed muscle ready to uncoil.

     The two are longtime companions and intermittent sparring partners.  They are best friends and sometimes sleep spooning one another and wake up fighting.  It works for them.  They also between them have two expert noses and are an experienced Mouse-hunting tandem.  Mouse's chances of evasion have slimmed greatly.  She'd probably take a plea at the moment.  "Let me walk out of here, and you'll never see me again.  I swear!"

     Peeking in, Mr. and Mrs. Mouse 911 right away see that Robin and Lily have converged on Mouse, who is hiding, not behind, but under the toilet scrub brush holder in its corner.  Mouse 911 makes a mental note of that.  Mouse 911 now reenters the bathroom and closes the door behind him, clearly hearing a rousing chorus of Olé!

     Four of the five known mammals in the house, not counting any living within the walls who would no doubt be listening attentively to the proceedings, are now squared off in cramped confrontation, with Mrs. Mouse 911 on the outside reconfiguring her security arrangements and hoping at least one of the four knows what they're doing.

     Mouse 911 takes and holds a breath and lifts the toilet scrub brush holder.  Using his jaws, Robin instantly snatches Mouse from the floor, head first, with only her tail sticking out of his mouth.  Now what?  Open Robin's jaws and grab Mouse with gloved hand?  Or pick up Robin and carry them both outdoors?  Since there are two sets of sharp teeth involved in the first option, Mouse 911 opts for the more logistically challenging cat lift, though unsure if it's ever been successfully tried before.

     With history possibly about to be made, Mouse 911 picks up Robin, holds him out in front of himself, steps out of the bathroom, and Mouse, lively and quick, immediately escapes Robin's jaws and suddenly appears standing sideways across the back of Robin's neck.  Robin, still being held up in mid air, is stymied and left hanging, literally.

     Robin's untenuous position aside, Mouse 911 faces a moment of truth.  There are a hundred safe hiding places Mouse can find within seconds.  Any second now a vigorous cat squirm could occur and Mouse could escape in a squeaker.  Mouse faces her moment of truth too, but Mouse 911 is the first to act.

     Robin is quickly set down, and before he can execute a danseur's grand jeté, with Mouse riding sidesaddle on his neck, in a lightning reflex, a flash, a twinkling, a gloved hand gently but firmly enough closes around Mouse's soft abdomen and neck.  No one wants to be smushed or bitten, and Mouse didn't ask to be brought indoors in the first place.  Mouse 911 is merely in the process of restoring nature's balance, and no mouse has been truly harmed in the process of this story unfolding.

     Mouse 911 looks down at this little life in his hand.  She's small but a bit chubby and plump.  He laughs when he sees her in spite of himself.  He can feel her warmth, her essence, through the glove.  She's no doubt in shock, scared, but not witless.  She feels.  She breathes.  She submits.  She waits.  This is self-preservation.  She's merely working out the timing and factoring in the guile and agility required.  She by no means has given up.  One way or another she hopes to survive.  She'll soon know.

     Now with the end-game at hand, Mouse 911 begins to experience a threat level approaching mild human panic, but it's more of an upbeat variety of the kind that develops when positive steps are being taken that could very well end in success, as in "This just might be crazy enough to work"!  Security!  Security!  Code Green!  As in Go!

     Following Plan B, Part 2, Ms. Mouse 911 runs to the back door, but Mouse 911 heads to the front door, now sans cat, wondering if Mouse can swivel her head around for biting purposes.  Ms. Mouse 911 notes Mr. Mouse 911's standard deviation from the plan and adapts quickly, running ahead to the front door and opens it.  Robin and Lily then notice Mouse 911 leaning out the open front door and wonder what the fuss is about before resuming their search for Mouse.

     Happy Christmas, little Mouse, and to you a good flight.  Dash away, dash away, and to you a good night.  May your scurrying be quick, your instincts clear, and your pursuers all thwarted.  You're a sweet little dear.

     And Robin and Lily and The Mouse 911's, after their interesting night of unpredictable fun, would settle in for a long winter's nap, with no kerchief or cap though with a cat in a lap, as their adrenaline recedes after their Christmas Eve flap.

    This was a tiny Christmas Eve miracle that was coaxed away from becoming a debacle.  With the New Year approaching, it's good to have a reminder that as history unfurls, Mouse-sized and larger, unpredictable though it can be, it can be kind, inventive, and with a good outcome for all, and that the future is not something set in stone but can be modified by the power to think, say, and do, and most of all care.  If we dare.  And this means me and you.

     Now tis the night after Christmas, and all over the house, not a creature is stirring, not even Mouse.

                                             #

 Love is a Force
Freely Given and Received

Love holds us together.
It's a bond and it's real.
Not mysterious. Not imaginary.
Not theoretical. Not a dream.
Nor a wish.  Or a hope.
Love is real. Love is a force.
It has power. We have power.
Do you want power?

You've got it.

Evening's Fox in The Urban Primeval

     I'd seen raccoons longingly press wet noses against a sliding glass door

      Possums playing dead at my feet, ambling through the night like a slow ground meteor

      A doe grazing along, leading the family to safety, bolting like lightning, looking you in the eye

      A buck lowering its rack to fight, diving magnificently off a low cliff into the water and strolling supreme almost unchallengable through its hinterland

      Spotted fawns hiding and quiet, hopping along innocently behind mom or auntie

      A newborn black fawn from 20 feet away, and incrementally through youth into adulthood

     Coyotes alone or in pairs, exuberantly zigzagging along a neighborhood street, crossing a creek, stalking the scent of prey with a periodic overnight signal howl to the dispersed pack

     A dead nutria with four-inch yellow-orange incisors, dragged up with pride by my dog

      A deer's liver and maybe its heart fetched by my dogs after a fresh coyote kill by the creek

      A tiny tan fawn on its side hunched-over Don Quixote-like in silence, a coyote portion buried in memoriam under a protective and sacred rock cairn

      A small doe washed up beside the creek after a thunderstorm deluge, a back leg broken, under its own rock cairn

      A dead pregnant doe hit by a car, with the unborn dead fawn's leg sticking out the birth canal

      A squirrel, once fed blueberries by hand, dead on the road, its partner standing grieving nearby

      Rats in trees, a mouse ouside on a windowsill grooming, one living inside the back of the fridge

     Snakes sneaking in the open front door and curled in coitus in my coiled water hose

      A six-foot rattlesnake pregnant with lunch stretched out asleep in the sun on our little pontoon dock at the lagoon (in April three years in a row), and you know it senses you watching

      A baby gecko pressing flat against the stucco, assessing its world

      Lizards in bushes, buckets, under chairs, everywhere, in silhouette on windowscreens hiding

      Big creek turtles who know where they're going venturing deep into the woods

      Big creek turtles laying eggs where they see fit, digging holes through solid rock-like dirt

      Black frogs the size of pinky fingernails, by the hundreds after hard rains, hop hip hop hurray

      Bigger frog cousins living in holes under rocks, dug into outdoor potted plants, waiting for night

      Huge long-legged loudly croaking bullfrogs making sex froggy style in the shallows

     All manner of beautiful striking everpresent birds, all sizes, many kinds, moving, always moving

      Cardinals red and tawny, their varied repertoire songs a songfest, jays with their sqreeeeds

      Circling osprey expansive white wingspread, eagle face, its loud calls echoed commands

     Tiny wren protects its nests, harasses and chases ospreys, buzzards and hawks high into sky

      Birds with sweet songs to soothe the hottest day, busy titmouse all business and a'twitter

      Blue and white herons glide by with unexpected squawks that would startle a pteradactyl

      Screech owl flies in picks off daddy long-legs from the deck, dive-bombs your head

      2-ft-tall hoot owl suddenly radically turns head instantly staring giant EYES into your wide ones, shivers

     Until today though, just after sunset this evening, I'd never seen a fox in our woods.  I had seen them previously, about eight to ten times, sometimes around sunset, but only when one would cross the road in front of my car's headlights.

     Curiously, each previous sighting happened on the same 100-yard stretch of sharp S-shaped curves while driving down a steep slope only three-quarters of a mile from the long driveway to our cabins.  So I'd thought it would only be a matter of time before I'd be able to stand in the same general patch of ground as a fox, but didn't think it would take 20 years to do so.

     What impresses me most about foxes seen through the windshield is how low they crouch while dashing so quickly, a fast-moving low-profile gray blur in the gray twilight, out of sight between tree trunks that hug the road before it dawns on you what you've seen.  Fox seems to estimate an observer's expectation of its height and then manages to duck just below that threshold.  It's quite a trick.

     Standing finally now on the same ground about 25 yards away, each aware of the other, I'm surprised how casually the fox esteems my presence at first, confident, even cocky, about its ability to elude me.

     My cat had been sitting upright on the roof of my car, with me standing facing him, both of us enjoying what the evening respectively brings.  I love the cool air and the day relaxing into the more subtle and quiet night.  Tsavo too but may concentrate more on the evening's signs, opportunities, and secrets.

     He'd been sniffing the air and soon craned his neck to get a better look at something behind me. He might have heard it even before he smelled it.  It was the fox, reddish-gray as best I could tell in the faded light, the most common color fox for my area.

     It was a small adult, walking slowly, and its very bushy tail stretched out behind it parallel to the ground and seemed even longer than its lean furry body.  Its smallish triangular head turned our way briefly before its pace accelerated and it vanished in about two seconds stage left behind a tumble of two-ton boulders.

     Tsavo craned his head further to see where it had gone, but there was only air where the fox had been, though cat eyes might have picked up swirling dust particles just beginning to settle toward earth.  That had been that.  The quick red fox.

    An hour later, from the deck of the cabin, I see a waddling possum move stealthily across the extensive stone patio, disappearing into the dense rim of the woods in slow motion.  The slower it moves, the less likely it draws attention to itself, making lemonade out of genetic lemons, a very effective evolved trait.  Playing possum is a leap or two further from the stealthy waddle, demonstrating how evolution is on a continuum, with logical leaps.  Fox evolved differently, a waddle versus the fox blur.  A habeas corpus versus near-invisibility.

     Another hour later and I'm outdoors hoping to spot Tsavo's eyes reflecting in my flashlight beam.  I want to bring him indoors, as I'd heard coyotes in the nearby wilderness area from early morning.  It's a couple of hundred acres of hilly forest with a creek, rills, and limesotne outposts where they den and from which they follow the creek upstream and access neighborhoods.  It's just across the road from us, and now that it was night it was more likely they might come hunt around the cabins.

     There's Tsavo now.  Will he approach and greet me with a head butt as he loves to do and that I cherish, or will he try to preserve his outdoor privilege a while longer in hopes of finding a mouse while staying on the upside of the predator game?

     Luckily for me, he approaches, tentatively at first, then more openly, and brushes his head on my pants leg.  I squat down, lower my head, and he gently bumps his head against mine a couple of times.  We exult, as usual, rolling on the ground, brushing heads.  It's everyone's birthright to belong somewhere.  I pet him for a moment or two, and then gently wrap my hands around him, scoop him into my arms and rise to my height.

     Within only a few seconds, from across the road and from up and over a rise come the happy buoyant howls, yelps and cries of a coyote hunting party, probably after a deer, or maybe a lost dog.  There'd been a new poster on a telephone pole out closer to the highway, a pit-lab mix maybe, looking lost.  Poor thing.  It would never before have felt death's sanguine threat, unlike deer who live with it every night.  Deer live the culture of and practice the skills for escaping.  At first, a dog may think it's making friends.

     Tsavo hears the coyotes too, no doubt more quickly and much clearer.  It's real to him, he knows the score, but only from one side of the equation, and despite his own skills and savvy, I know I've made the right choice, and we'll start the whole process again in the morning, and hope for the best as always.  For now he relaxes in my claiming embrace, with longing for whatever he will have missed yet brushing foreheads with me a few more times before we step onto the deck and enter the cabin.

     We're all pioneers in our own neck of the woods, the urban primeval, in a boundaryless realm of clashing and compatible cravings and needs, in an age when the frontier, this time, has found us.

     Oh, to be as quick as a fox, as engaging as a blur when needed, and as true to ourselves as a cat.

     In a parallel world, winter is approaching, and galaxies of fabled rappelling caterpillars are fast asleep in their cocoons and chrysalises in trees, having inched countless miles upward, dreaming finally of wings, and gathering strength and an appetite for spring.

     We sit in front of the screen, still for once, wondering what's next, the screen a two-way sieve.

The fox photo is from stock and was taken near Bastrop, about 40 miles east of where I live.  The fox's fur that I saw tonight was a lot bushier, its winter coat.

Larry Piltz
Indian Cove
Austin, Texas
12/12/2014

The Joyful Heart of a Dying Friend

     "Yet she still goes through the doggie doors with her sideways, town-drunk gait in and out around and around the rooms of the house and all over the yard."  That is from my friend, Larry, of Gulfport, Mississippi, tonight, about his friend Missy, on the occasion of the passing of their mutual long-time companion, Super Scout, who like Missy is a border collie and 14 years old.

     My old dear dog gal pal, Mir, at almost 17, had forgotten who I was due to a stroke and in her last few months had to confront and manage her apprehension and distrust of me.  This demanded considerable fortitude on her part, of which she had plenty.  I was now a stranger.  She had only her wits, legs, and teeth, plus considerable aches and pains despite medical and alternative therapies.

     The vanished intimacy was a larger debilitation though and a great loss, for us both, as Mir and I had known each other since only an hour or two after the moment of her birth.  In fact, Star, her beloved mother, had passed away only four years earlier, and by then we had all been each other's closest companions for 13 years.

     Luckily, Mir's even very diminished appetite would help melt away her distrust for a while each day, and I'd cook or buy something that smelled so good that her aversion to food would usually be overcome.  She'd lap up the Campbell's soup or chomp up the moist deli brisket or similar from a bowl I'd be holding at snout level.  I had to feed her in this manner because the stroke had wreaked havoc with her balance, strictly limiting her walking ability to tight left-turning circles, but also causing her to lean and swoon leftward even when standing still.

     So when feeding her, I'd be squatting down in a kitchen corner by the stove and holding the bowl with my left hand while gently but firmly pressing her left shoulder against her determined leftward swoon with my right hand.  Thereby she was steadied and could concentrate on her food.  She did take notice of what I was doing and learned to allow and depend on the assistance, as she enthusiastically went about loving her new foods in a way that said, 'This is the best menu of my entire life!"

     These were quietly joyful, poignant, and tender moments that happened two to three times each day, watching so closely her pretty elder face, with its white elder's eyelashes and fur, and gratefully enjoying her savoring of the meals, even when sparsely eaten, and they served to strengthen her and lengthen her life.  Her enthusiasm re-energized both of us, and her eagerness told me she was still plenty glad enough to be alive.

     With intense concentration and practice, Mir did manage to learn to walk a straight line again.  We would take brief walks at first and I would hold a tight short leash, keep her to my right side, and, as she'd inevitably quickly arc leftward into my right leg over and over again, she'd have to learn to straighten her path to keep moving forward, until eventually, after a couple of weeks' training, she could walk a straight line on her own, only starting to circle again from time to time and would then be easily reminded to focus on walking straight ahead again.  She had learned to reestablish domain over her consciousness despite the neurologic injury she'd sustained.  This was Mir's beautiful mind at work, and I was elated to the core of my being that it had worked.

     It was a true thrill for me to see her regain her pleasure of walking and probably the best thing I have ever accomplished in my life.  You could see her countenance change from one of harried confusion and extreme distress and duress - driven to exhaustion and despair by the dreadful relentless circling - to contentment and confidence.  She again began holding her head high and looked forward to every new step.

     She could explore her woods again, her world that she'd known so well, and began to become reacquainted with it and with how it felt to be a part of it, more whole.  And though she'd always had the intelligence and relational comprehension to remain off-leash when walking with me, she adjusted easily and gladly to short happy walks with enough ease to reexperience her intimacy with her surroundings.

     Eventually pain in her hips and really throughout her entire body began to flare and never receded, and in order to rest and sleep she would be forced to again begin stiffly circling and circling for many minutes, grimacing, forced into this tiring painful routine to try and negotiate a comfortable descent and position in which to lie.  When she finally succeeded in spiraling into a landing, with all of her limbs outstretched awkwardly like a fallen angel and her head in repose just however it landed, she seemed already asleep as she would flatten suddenly onto the floor.  The circling had returned with an evident neurologic relapse and worsening.

     One cold night she walked out the front door onto the covered deck.  It seemed important to her, such that she had made a slow unaltering wavy beeline.  She then began circling for maybe five minutes, so tired, the neurological damage so demanding, and finally dropped into a fetal position immediately fast asleep.  I covered her with layers of blankets and winter coats to keep her warm while she napped an hour, before she awoke and I brought her back in for the night.

     Her challenges had become too severe, too painful, and too exhausting for my debilitated darling, and my own degree of intense emotional discomfort as her friend told me I'd have to finally call the vet.  Mir's appetite by then had decreased to almost nothing.  Walking ahead had become impossible again, and no active recognition or relief could arise from within her circle of discomfort and inner focus.  There was no pleasure remaining for her.  No relief.  Only the love from her loved ones who by that time could only watch with an equivalent emotional agony.  The decision came on a Friday, and midday Monday the vet and an assistant came to our home.  When she left, part of me strongly wanted to go with her..

     Instead, I swaddled her emaciated body in a blanket, let her rest on a bedroom table overnight, and then tucked her frail dear covered figure, whom I'd watched grow, play, age, and wither, into the ground next to Star, who today six and ten years later are represented by two large and wildly successful Mountain Laurel shrubs, currently conserving their energies for springtime's sweet grape fragrance and armfuls of blooming bright purple flowers.

     Prior to the stroke, Mir had been getting lost in the woods close to home that she had long been immersed in.  I would keep an eye on her but lose sight from time to time.  She would be tottering around dreamily, seemingly content, sore hips and all, happy with her freedom, but I remember how relieved she obviously was once when I found her by the creek, where she appeared to be on an amiable walk but actually had become nervously wandering and wondering where she might be.

     She'd been ambling ahead  in the sands and greenery of the flood plain bottomland as I approached her.  As soon as I'd appeared in her peripheral vision, she stopped and waited for me her head partly turned my way.  The long lingering hug and repeated eye contact were made more pleasurable and happy than ever by innate remembrance of our engaging times together and open acceptance of our present less familiar and daunting situation.  Our close moments were always worth letting the world spin on for a while without us.  The photo above was taken at this time.

     I once found Mir standing up to her upper chest in a cold muddy backwater slough.  She was scared and was crying out, cold and stuck.  It was such relief to find her before her temperature had fallen too low for too long, though it was heartbreaking relative to her mental condition.  Her soaked cold body and lightweight witheredness, but heavy with the water, were living metaphor for her aging and illness.  At times, her illness seemed to carry more weight than did her remaining life force.  I carried her home, holding her tightly, never wanting to let her go, worried and crying for my dearest friend.

     She was fully all heart by that time, her presence both reduced and elevated to simply love.  During her denouement, her random moments of  recognition of whom each of us had been to one another touched me deeply.  In those moments, she let me know that we're still here and that all was well again.  I can still see her smiling eyes from those times and in memory bask in her shared openness and happiness.  I could see these moments were also pleasurable for her.  They helped her relax into herself.  They helped balance the loss from her dementia and pain and punctuated her clouded days with bright penetrating rays of warmth and unspecified but vivid awareness of fuller days.

     It sounds like my Gulfport friend's Missy is all heart too, with her ambling rambling ways.  Sometimes heart is all you've got, and, if so, it's all that you need.  I wished my friend Larry as much dear time with his Missy as they both are allowed.  And I thanked him for letting me know of his friend Super Scout's passing.  It felt good to be included, and reminded.

     You can't replace 'em, Larry, our dear and intimate devoted friends, devout really, but you can still love 'em.  Forever and especially.