Dog vs. Rabbit

Posted on August 11, 2015 by admin

After a recent rain, the dog was really eager to go into the back yard, so before long I opened the door for her. Just then I noticed a rabbit idling on the grass near the back fence, which is fairly far from the door. Instantly the dog dashed out and made a beeline — which really ought to be a dogline — toward the rabbit.

For a long instant, the rabbit seemed to notice nothing. At least, it didn’t move. At what seemed like (to me) the last possible moment, the rabbit took off in the direction of the fence, which has undergrowth obscuring much of it this time of the year, and both dashing animals, smaller and larger, disappeared into the greenery.

About five seconds later, the dog emerged empty-mouthed. The dog was fast; the rabbit faster.

The Great Grill Collapse of 2015

Posted on May 20, 2015 by admin

The dog, she is fond of newly cut grass. I didn’t manage to get a picture of her rolling in it, but I can assure you she does.

When moving my grill to mow the grass under it, I heard a pop and one of the tripod legs had snapped completely. Chalk it up to old age. The ovoid tumbled to the ground, narrowly missing my foot.

The grill and I, a Weber by brand, have a history. Eight years ago, I wrote, “We visited our friends near Coal City, Illinois, on Saturday, and down that way a subdivision was hosting dozens of garage sales at the same time. So naturally we went, and the prize catch was a black ovoid grill for $5. Not new, of course, but in much better shape than the one we’ve been using since we moved here in 2003. A leg fell off of it a few days ago, fortunately when it was cold. Its bottom is partly rusted out, too.”

Here are pictures of the grill in action, when I had a mind to burn parts of our 2009 Christmas tree: “It took a little doing to get the tree alight. I needed to use a piece of paper as a starter. But once it got going, it created a fast-burning needle fire with some cool popping and crackling sounds to go with it, plus the unmistakable smell of burning evergreen.”

I don’t feel like learning soldering or welding — not sure which of those it would take — to fix it, so it’s time for a new one. Doubt if I can find one for $5. That was just luck.

Opening Notes of Spring

Posted on April 13, 2015 by admin

The opening strains of the northern Illinois spring symphony have begun. The grass greened up almost overnight last Thursday after a sizable amount of rain. Large puddles were left over, too, though that’s not necessarily a harbinger of spring.

After a few days, it was merely a soggy, muddy patch. The dog enjoys the mud. She’s been with us two years now.

We took a walk with the dog at the Poplar Creek Forest Preserve on Saturday, and I heard throaty frogs awake and (presumably) singing for a mate. On Sunday, I heard the faint strains of “Turkey in the Straw” from my office, and went to the front door to take a look. Sure enough, it was an ice cream truck.

Speaking of spring: A note to Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Hillary Clinton, and Marco Rubio (so far): I don’t want to hear about your efforts to become president. It’s the spring of 2015. I don’t even want to hear about it in the spring of 2016. It can wait till the fall of that year. Except maybe the candidacy of Vermin Supreme.

Thursday Olio

Posted on March 26, 2015 by admin

A recent sunset. Still pre-leaf.

Not long ago I overheard two young women ahead of me in line. A bit of their talk went like this, more or less.

The One: Don’t end up being the stupid girl with the stupid tattoo.

The Other: Only one friend of mine has a tattoo, Sonya, and she’s the stupidest person I know.

One: Why are you friends with her?

Other: Well, our great-grandparents were in a displaced persons camp together, and our families have been friends ever since.

The other day I wondered what dogs would come up with as their traditional measuring system. Or at least some dogs — say, the dogs of the British Isles, which they later took to many parts of the world. Provided, of course, dogs could do that kind of abstract reasoning. Assume they can for a moment.

Let’s stick with units of length. The paw would be the basic unit. Four paws to a snout, eight paws to a tail (four is important to dogs; in fact, they use Base 4 for counting). A dog mile — I don’t have a word for that yet — would be 800 tails. What would these be in human measurement? I don’t feel the need to work that out just now.

In modern usage, the snout’s mostly obsolete. And the rest of the traditional measurements are in danger of disappearing. During the revolution, Jacobin dogs in France came up with lengths supposedly based on 1/4,000,000 of the distance from the equator to the North Pole, but I’ll leave that for another time.

Oz Day ’15

Posted on January 26, 2015 by admin

Early Sunday morning more snow fell here in northern Illinois. About as much as in the pictures of subtropical Texas with snow posted yesterday — which is to say, not much for this part of the country. Not even enough to cover the grass completely. On the whole, it hasn’t been so snowy this winter, unlike last. But there’s still time for that.

Snow doesn’t deter the dog from checking for the sight, sound, and smell of intruders on her domain.

Australia Day’s rolled around again. We could use a bit of that Southern Hemisphere summer about now, but not the aridity. Years ago, I had access to National Lampoon’s Tenth Anniversary Anthology, 1970-1980, which included japery by the young PJ O’Rourke, originally published in the magazine’s May 1976 issue: “Foreigners Around the World,” subhead, “A Brief Survey of the Various Foreign Types, Their Chief Characteristics, Customs, and Manners.”

More than 30 years later, I remember parts of it. So I found it online. The entire thing is linked here. It isn’t for the easily offended. From the section on Australia:

AUSTRALIANS: Violently loud alcoholic roughnecks whose idea of fun is to throw up on your car. The national sport is breaking furniture and the average daily consumption of beer in Sydney is ten and three quarters Imperial gallons for children under the age of nine. “Making a Shambles” is required study in the primary schools and all Australians are bilingual, speaking both English and Sheep…

Proper Forms of Address: Steady there, Cool off, For Christ’s sake, not in the sink, Stay back, I’ve got a gun!

Been There, Heard That

Posted on October 2, 2014 by admin

From The Guardian yesterday, regarding the first U.S. Ebola patient: “Thomas Eric Duncan told a nurse at a Dallas emergency room that he had recently visited Liberia, which has been ravaged by the Ebola outbreak. But an executive at Texas Health Presbyterian hospital told a news conference that the information was not widely enough shared with the medical team treating Duncan, and he was diagnosed as suffering from a ‘low-grade common viral disease.’ ”

Just a hunch – mere speculation – but it seems entirely possible that the nurse didn’t know where the hell Liberia was. You’d think the name would be an instant red flag in that situation, but maybe not if you don’t know Liberia from Libya or Lesotho or East Jesus.

I went outside last night and noticed some intense cricketsong near the deck, which is a little unusual. I also happened to have my digital recorder in my pocket. What follows is 20 seconds of northern Illinois cricket, on October 1, 2014, at about 9 p.m. Cricket Oct 1 2014

That inspired me to record 20 seconds of the dog this morning reacting to people walking by in front of the house. She’s looking out one of the windows, and the scratching is her paws on the window sill. Dog Oct 2 2014

At about noon today, the wind was up, but it was fairly warm. I ate lunch on my deck, and listened to the wind, and recorded 20 seconds of it. Wind Oct 2 2014

Jazz Fest and Big New Head ’14

Posted on September 2, 2014 by admin

While I was eating lunch on my deck today — the opportunities for that will be rarer as the weeks ahead pass — the dog took a sudden interest in one of my lower pant legs, sniffing and snorting with gusto. I noticed a small black ant crawling on it. The dog had too. In a moment, she’d eaten the ant.

I’ve seen her chase flies and bees (and lucky for her, never catch any), but this was a first. It didn’t seem to be a biting kind of ant. Ants on the hoof, snack food for dogs.

Did some gadding about in Chicago over Labor Day weekend. On Saturday, Yuriko and Ann and I went to the city and met my nephew Dees, his girlfriend Eden, and an old friend of theirs, and eventually ended up at Millennium Park. Dees and Eden were visiting from Texas, staying with friends here. That reminded me a bit of the Labor Day weekends of my youth, when I usually went out of town — to Chicago (before I lived there), New York, Boston, and Washington DC — though one year (’85) my old friends came to me, and we gadded around Nashville.

There’s a new face near Michigan Ave.

It’s called “Looking Into My Dreams, Awilda,” by Jaume Plensa, the Spaniard who did Crown Fountain, the twin towers of alternating faces that spit water in the warm months, which isn’t far from the new sculpture. The Tribune says that “Awilda is 39 feet tall, made of marble and resin; the internal frame is fiberglass. She arrived from Spain in 15 pieces, then was bolted together.” It’ll be there until the end of 2015.

The Bean was as popular as ever.

We spent a while at the Chicago Jazz Festival at Pritzker Pavilion. The last time I went to the Chicago Jazz Festival was – 1996? Maybe. This time we left fairly early, but were around long enough to hear Ari Brown, Chicago sax man of long standing. At 70, the man can blow.

Still hot in the late afternoon, and a bit humid, but it was a good place to sit and listen. It helped not to get rained on, which was a distinct risk over the weekend.

Behind the stage rise the skyscrapers of the East Loop. I’ve always liked the view.

Dog 1, Oompa-Loompah 0

Posted on April 8, 2014 by admin

This is a good year to post WWI images, for obvious reasons. I’m not taken with its headline — how much or little Europe has changed hardly seems the point — but this collection of images is worth a look.

Also, here’s a recent dog picture, taken by Ann. Why? Because it’s been a whole year since she arrived at our house. She’s so completely a part of the family it’s hard to remember what the house was like before she came.

She’s still a healthy young(ish) dog with an appetite for doggish activities, such as chewing things. Recently I found this figure on the floor. A toy Oompa-Loompa. I think it was a promotion from when Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a new movie. Anyway, our hound clearly did some fang-work on it. From this side, mere flesh wounds. Turn it over, and you see this.

I don’t think any future Toy Story movie is going to depict anything quite like this. Or this.

Late Winter Dog Holes

Posted on February 17, 2014 by admin

More new snow out there, some four or five inches. Just waiting to be re-arranged slightly by me so that our auto-mobiles can made forward progress away from the garage. Or rather, backward motion out of our driveway.

But at least the snow didn’t come as part of a crippling blizzard. Even better, it’s supposed to be above freezing for part of the rest of the week. Slowly the Northern Hemisphere angles toward the Sun. Spring is nigh, and we can look forward to thunderstorms, mud, flood warnings, and the specter of tornadoes.

Meantime, the dog entertains herself by digging holes in the snow.

Go figure. Looking forward to digging in the mud, probably.

The Snows of Yesteryear Are Still Around

Posted on January 5, 2014 by admin

On New Year’s Eve 2013, snow started to fall in northern Illinois. Nothing dramatic, just steady snow that kept coming down, well into the new year. Good thing I didn’t have anywhere in particular to go around the turn of the year. For her part, the dog had to be content to bound around the drifts in the back yard.

It’s been snowing on and off since then, like a slow-motion blizzard. Word is that temps will be significantly subzero tomorrow, as low as it’s been here in 10? 20 years? Both schools have called off classes.

I’ve read that it was down to −27 °F in January 1985, the record low. We’re not expected to break that record tomorrow, but it’ll be unpleasantly close enough. Glad I wasn’t here for that low. Someone who lived through it once told me that when the temperature got back to zero, it felt almost warm.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: dogs