First off, Oliver’s opening segment on TDS had me in tears, so west coast folks, set your alarms. If Stewart never comes back, I wouldn’t care. Oliver is just that funny.
Speaking of funny, I was talking to my neighbor and we both started laughing about the various town dogs that have roamed around, and two favorites came to mind. The first was Sandy (and I had to call mom to remember her name), who was just this stray who was terrified of everyone. She basically lived underneath the pine trees in the Miller’s back yard right next to my parents, but everyone on my block fed her. She was basically the best fed stray in the history of the universe.
So this went on all through the spring and summer, and everyone kept trying to approach her and failed, because she would just run like hell. At the same time, everyone on both sides of the alley on the block was feeding her. So she just stayed there, afraid of everyone, but pretty well fed and with tons of people to adopt her. Eventually, the fall and winter came around, and still she would not let anyone near her, and she was still living outside.
So, something completely normal for this type of community happened. Mr. Mitchell, the neighbor on the other side of the alley from the Miller’s where Sandy stayed, rustled up a bunch of wood, went across the alley onto the Miller’s property, and spent a day building a dog house for Sandy. And everyone was happy. Eventually, Sandy broke down and let humans near her, and she was adopted.
Story #2- There used to be a town beagle named Barney. He was actually owned by Rusty, but he was kind of a town dog. We have leash laws, but Barney was kind of exempt because he was such a good dog. Plus, he was kind of timid, he’d been dumped on a backroad and Rusty and family nursed him mentally and physically back to life.
Barney had daily routines and a circuit he took. One of his favorite early and then again late afternoon stops was at Millie’s. Millie was a mainly blind and a little bit deaf elderly Jack Russell Terrier (who also was kind of exempted from the leash law) who lived across the street from me. I guarantee at least ten times I was driving down the street to my house, and Millie was sound asleep in the middle of the street, and I would have to get out of the car and move her out of the street before I could put the car in the garage. She was also a yippy dog, always barking at the imaginary things she couldn’t see or hear.
The best thing about Barney, though, is that since the town is kind of like brigadoon right smack dab in the middle of good Appalachian woods, we have loads and loads of deer. Barney was a deer chaser, so everyone who didn’t have a fence loved him, because he would chase off all the deer and save their gardens. My friend Bill, of Bill and Jill/Ills notoriety, swears that his garden is 1/2 as productive since Barney died.
I have no pithy ending, I just thought these were funny stories.
jonas
Just moved to a new place — two adorable fawns and their mom live in our back yard, which is enormously cute/charming to our two school-age daughters, but they (the deer — ok, also the kids) also clearly devastate any attempts at maintaining decent landscaping front or back. Must we choose between bucolic cuteness (spotted fawns napping in back yard) and the prospect of ever having decent landscaping and (heaven forbid) a vegetable garden?
Redshirt
Do you live in Mayberry?
John Cole
@Redshirt: Pretty much. If you spent as little as one or two nights here you would never want to leave.
Punchy
I missed the first 10 mins of TDS. What was the bit?
Narcissus
There was a deer in my backyard today, eating leaves. We watched him for a while, and eventually scared him off, inadvertently. In one step he bounded over a six foot fence and into my neighbors yard. He (or she) had to have cleared ten feet. It was amazing.
burnspbesq
@jonas:
Yes. Deer are big vermin.
MikeJ
@burnspbesq: And if you’re on the east coast deer bring ticks, which bring lyme disease.
burnspbesq
US vs. Panama in the Gold Cup final on Sunday.
reality-based
well, do your town dogs have last names? In the town I was raised in here in North Dakota – where I’m now back, doing ElderParent care – all dogs bore the last names of their owners, and were referred to that way in conversation.
The beagle was “Lucky Smith”, the agressive mutt was “Shag Jones”, the little yappy pug was “Gypsy Johnson”, our St. Bernard was “Brandy mypatronym.”
The town cats, oddly enough – while equally known to all – were called only by their first names – as if in recognition that cats are the owners, not the owned.,
We didn’t actually have any stray dogs – coyotes can survive NoDak winters, with a warm pack and a cozy den, but a dog without at least a warm barn won’t make it. But it was as impossible for a local dog to misbehave anonymously as for a local teenager – somebody ALWAYS told your mom!
Culture of Truth
I liked it yesterday when the horse “mingled” in the pub in Britain.
Bobby Thomson
@jonas: They don’t call them rats on stilts for nothing.
Suzanne
So we have a split-entry house, and the rail that separated the upstairs living area from the stairway was really ghetto and shit and wobbly. We demo-ed it this summer, and built a new pony wall with a glass divider on top. Remounted the baby gate, and it looks great. Except now our giant fat cat can’t get upstairs. The glass divider means she can’t jump on the wall, and she’s not graceful enough to jump and land on top of the gate. So last night, my husband and I were absolutely pissing ourselves laughing as we watched her try to figure out what to do. She finally managed to pour her giant furry ass under the gate. Just hilarious.
TaMara (BHF)
When my dad was stationed on Cape Cod, we lived on this beautiful rural property, 1/4 mile from the beach, owned by the USAF. Deer would just wander through, as would quail, muskrats, skunks and bull snakes would sun themselves on the old barn foundation by the dozen. It was quite the experience for me, as I was a suburb/city kid up to this point.
I will never understand how the big bucks with their beautiful, full racks ever ran at full speed through the thick brush that is Cape Cod. It was like a magic trick.
Redshirt
@John Cole: I’m jealous. Who’s your Otis?
reality-based
@jonas: oh. deer I know. Only two solutions work in the long term: a sturdy, six-foot tall fence around your vegetable garden, or one or two largish dogs.
Deer or hostas. You can’t have both.
(actually< the deer-=off spray works kinda ok for just a season.)
Redshirt
@MikeJ: And Lyme’s Disease is painful, and so I’m contemplating burning down my forest and paving it. No more ticks, no more risks, and I can go on a peaceful walk. Or rollerblade!
Genine
Nice stories!
reality-based
@MikeJ: Actually, Lyme is everywhere – I got it – and babesiosis – here in NoDak last summer.
But it’s not just the deer -white-footed mice can also serve as hosts. (and yes, we have them too)
lamh36
TaMara (BHF)
@JohnCole – I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, but I put DAG radio on my Pandora. Happy girl now. I really like them.
SinnedBackwards
Our dear little scrappy kitty Pickles became blind and deaf in her old age. We asked the vet about our obligations to her and he asked “Does she eat? Does she purr?”
Since she did both with great gusto, we adjusted by building a concrete edger on the upper terrace so she wouldn’t keep falling off, and let her enjoy basking outside on nice afternoons.
One day, I rounded the corner to the windowed door to the terrace in early evening to see her chasing off a baby possum by her sense of smell She was sort of herding it; the possum seemed more annoyed than anything but was keeping going.
That made it all worthwhile.
Nerdlinger
You all bitch, but shit happens when you wipe out the wolf population.
PeakVT
Drum solo!
Citizen_X
Yeah, John Oliver’s been killing it all summer. Hope the “interim” gig becomes permanent.
TaMara (BHF)
@TaMara (BHF): Ooo, goblins in BJ tonight. I edited the comment, it showed up for a minute or two and then vanished.
Anyway, ETA that I also enjoy the “like DAG” artists they play, too.
J.Ty
I used to live in a weird little town in NorCal that reminds me of this. We’d have fundraisers at the bar when a dog got cancer and the owner couldn’t afford treatments. I managed to avoid trouble with deer by growing lots of cacti. Never did find a way to keep the damned wild turkeys from attacking my car in the morning, though.
And our deer had the presence of mind to take the sidewalk, oddly enough.
Vixen Strangely
My dad grew up in the East Falls neighborhood of Philadelphia as a baby boomer–he has like, the best stories about growing up I ever and I should probably make him tell them into a recorder and write a book about them or something. Anyway, one of his friends, Jimmy, whose nickname was “ralph”, had a dog, Brownie, who was like, the King of the neighborhood dogs. Jimmy’s nickname was “ralph” because that was what Brownie called him. “Rolf! Rolf!” The dog would follow Ralph around if he was doing anything interesting, or Ralph would follow him if it was the other way around. Although sometimes Brownie would disappear for weeks at a time, and then there would be litters of puppies that were brown middling-ass dogs whelped all over the neighborhood, or the city, because the dog got around.
Sometimes other dogs would follow Brownie as he made collections around the butcher shops and supermarkets. It wasn’t that he didn’t get fed–Ralph would share snacks with him, even bricks of cream cheese and ice cream cones–it was just that Brownie was a dog who liked to earn. So he worked the neighborhood. for meat and sometimes came home looking like he went a couple rounds and won all of them. And then one time he just didn’t come back, and they all guessed he was hit by a car or joined the witness protection program or something.
I never met Brownie, but he seemed like a pretty good dog.
Spaghetti Lee
@Nerdlinger:
Maybe the solution is to make wolves legal as pets. I bet John would buy one.
The Fat Kate Middleton
Re deer: You need to plant at least two hundred hosta plants, and then invite a mountain lion on to your property. Which we did – the lion appeared, the hosta are thriving, and we so rarely see deer that it’s a treat when we do.
NotMax
Never had any town dogs.
Did have several town bitches.
askew
@Citizen_X:
He’s been excellent. I gave up on Stewart months ago because I was sick of his smarm and false equivalency bullshit. I also love that Oliver seems to actually care about political issues especially immigration and doesn’t just mock people for caring.
Nerdlinger
@Spaghetti Lee: Don’t need to go that far. I propose we trap and neuter our population of hunters and trappers.
Spaghetti Lee
@NotMax:
Hey-yo!
JWL
Cole, it’s getting to a point that for every 1 substantial political post of yours, there are 3 or 4 that deal with “cute” animal stories.
I know, I know… I can hit the road if I don’t like it. But are pet stories the reason you created & sustain this good blog?
Tonight, for the first time in at least two years, I contacted my congressional representative. He’s a vanilla democrat. I told him to fuck-off about his “no” vote concerning the NSA legislation proposal (that was voted down).
I dig critters, too. I’ve loved a few.
But I’ve never feared them as dangerous, either to me, or mine.
Political animals do threaten me. That is, certain political animals, those that conspire against me and mine…
Again, I know. I can always hit the road.
trollhattan
Am made newly aware that you can have BADGERS in your yard. I’ll deal with the skunks and rats and squirrels, thanks, although they’re [“they” being the badgers] actually pretty cute, even if they don’t give a shit.
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/51862119
JCT
We live next to the Saguaro Nat Forest and just last week I saw my first deer on our property – a huge doe. Tons of javelinas, bobcats and coyotes normally .
When we lived back east our cat was the neighborhood cat. He used to follow the kids to school and visit tons of houses. We would often find him lounging on other people’s front porch. When our neighbors heard we were moving several offered to take the cat!
Wrye
BJers, if I never do anything else for you at least let me point you at John Oliver’s podcast,
the Bugle
241 episodes of wonderful madness. I knew exactly what to expect when JO took over TDS and I haven’t been disappointed. Just don’t grab one of their vacation time-filler episodes as your first taste.
FlipYrWhig
@Spaghetti Lee: John would never buy a wolf as a pet. He’d just be on some random country road, open his car door and one would run in.
CapnMubbers
I live in NorCal and the “cute deer” metamorphosed into “wretched ruminants” in short order. Gourmet deer; they disdain grass, avoid what I consider weeds, and concentrate on anything decorative or edible. They prune the fruit trees by standing on their hind legs, which means I can’t reach anything the squirrels, birds, and raccoons leave without an orchard ladder. Nature. Hrmph.
No sidewalks in this neighborhood, just deer paths everywhere.
Origuy
Lyme Disease? Import some Western Fence Lizards from California. The ticks live on them, but the lizards’ blood contains something that kills the bacteria.
Actually, there is some Lyme Disease out here, but the lizards are responsible for keeping it down.
DaveinOz
@Wrye: I second that. I’ve been listening since Day 1. Brilliant.
kindness
My garden is getting hammered by aphids this year. Bought a bunch of ladybugs & that worked for a couple days. Now I have the rest of the summer. Gonna have to crack out the detergent/water combo or something because there is stuff there that I’m not gonna touch now.
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
@JWL: The man just lost a beloved animal. Cut the brother a little slack, OK? Esp. since there are any number of other folks posting mostly-political content on the site.
I’m sure Cole’ll be back to his ranting-aganist-the-man self soon enough.
serge
This brings back fond memories as a kid in the mid sixties. Our dog Coquette, a large female standard poodle, would get bored most mornings after we had all gone to work or school. A girl next door was a crossing guard at the local PS, and Coquette would follow her to her crossing, wait with her and escort her to the school, and then turn around to come home. The return trip involved hitting every house’s garbage cans on the way, which endeared Coquette to no one. Invariably, every few days the dog catcher would show up at the house, Coquette would keep him at bay, and he’d honk for my mother to come out and write him a check.
Nowadays I would never let my dogs roam. Even in a sleepy beach community, some asshole in a Range Rover/Jaguar/McLaren Mercedes going fifty in a thirty-five would be on the phone and run them over. Plus, the fine for a loose dog is now $1,040 a pop…
Jebediah
My mom was a feeding station for a neighborhood cat. She made a bed for her in the garage, but most of the time she would deign only to eat the food. We knew that our neighbors on one side were another stop because in the winter she maintained a little path through the snow.
pseudonymous in nc
@JWL: Here, let me refund your subscription.
Oliver’s good, though I don’t want him to get the promotion and give up The Bugle. Not least because there are far too many Smurfs 2 jokes waiting to be landed on him.
Pluky
@jonas: Yes
Pluky
@MikeJ: Common misconception. While the ticks do feed on deer, the most common hosts of the parasites are small animals (e.g. mice, voles, rabbits, chipmunks). Getting rid of the deer would not solve the problem of Lyme disease.
Pluky
@Spaghetti Lee: Really bad idea. Wolves are not dogs that haven’t been housebroken. There are tens of millennia seperating the behavioral defaults of C. lupus lupus and C. lupus familiaris.