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Animal Advocacy 101
Animal Advocacy 101 (Excerpt from Let No Day Dawn that the Animals Cannot Share) From 1981 to 1985 I worked as a Field Service Representative (later, as a Field Service Director) for an animal welfare group based in Sacramento, Ca. It was right up my alley so most of the time I was in…
Scared Elephant
Scared Elephant (Excerpt from Let No Day Dawn that the Animals Cannot Share) She was a normal elephant in all ways except one. She grew up in an animal compound, so the proximity of “lions and tigers and bears” (oh, my!) upset her not one bit. Heck, elephants in the wild seem singularly unimpressed by…
Sneakers the Serval
Sneakers Sneakers (Excerpt from “Serval Son“) I first learned about serval cats—the “poor man’s cheetah”—during one of my courses at a wild animal affection training school in 1977-78. I was assigned to train a pygmy goat and to tame/affection train an adult serval cat named Sneakers. Sneakers (Before) Training a goat is child’s play.…
Sex Ed: Horsing Around
Sex Ed: Horsing Around (Excerpt from soon-to-be-published ‘Womb Man’ ) When I was eight, Mom and Dad decided to have our mare Stormy bred. And they decided it would be a good idea to let me observe the process, since I wasn’t asking the usual “where do babies come from?” question and they thought it…
Farm Pets
Farm Pets One of the first piglets born in Cle Elum on our new farm was immediately recognized as a “short timer” in the hours following his birth. I don’t recall what his malady was, but Mom and Dad knew he wasn’t long for the world. So of course I adopted him and took him…
Exotic Birds
Exotic Birds: Lively Multilingual When I was a veterinarian assistant from 1977 to 1979, I was given two exotic birds—one of whom was terminally ill. My instructions for him were to “love him to death”; that is, to love him until he died. But I have loved him ever since, too. He was a Salmon-Crested…
To Capture a Creature, AVOID These Tactics
To Capture a Creature, AVOID TheseTactics Twice in my early youth I did the unthinkable and inexcusable…out of sheer exuberant ignorance. When I was five or six, I threw a rock in the direction of a bird that was standing on a stump, thinking there was no way in the world I would ever hit…
Reptiles and Amphibians
Reptiles and Amphibians Anoles, Newts, Tadpoles and Salamanders Although dogs, cats and parakeets were my first indoor pets, my birthplace was Spanaway, a bedroom community of Tacoma, near Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest. I sometimes call western Washington State “the Pacific North-Wet” because it’s on the side of the Cascade Mountains where rainfall is…
My First Cat Timothy
My First Cat Timothy Mom and Dad brought the first pets into our home. Timothy was your typical tabby-striped cat. I named him after my cousin, Tim Smith. Timothy was neutered, laid back, imperturbable, and decidedly perfect for a first pet—when treated right! In fact, he was even perfect for a pet when perturbed, because…
First Dogs Puddles and Snazzy
First Dogs Puddles and Snazzy My first dog, Puddles, was a knee-high blonde-and-brownish-white mutt. We got her from fellow who put horse shoes on our horses), Gordy Woods. We originally named her Cindy but she quickly earned the nickname Puddles owing to the puddles she left on the floor before she was fully house-trained.…