The beginning of wisdom, as the Chinese say, is calling things by their right names. (E. O. Wilson, as cited by Elizabeth J. Rosenthal, Birdwatcher: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson)

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Where's the Stick?

January 16, 2010.  Saturday.
Situation:  This morning Moi was out early, and I was out in the morning too doing errands.  She gets home about 2, and since we’re both working tonight, I decide to take Mway out then.  Mway’s already down by the door as I’m suiting up.  Again, Moi comments that I don’t need a snow suit today; but I put it on just the same for the reasons I’ve mentioned already.
State of the Path:  I hear crows as soon as I step out on the back porch.  The snow is pretty much gone.  The only patches of ice I see are down around bug land, one or two across the path, and the rest within bug land itself.   The ground is still hard, but the surface has thawed a bit, and it is starting to get muddy, especially down the center of the path where Mway treads the most and around in bugland.   The weeds are as flat as I’ve seen this year, and I keep hearing various birds the whole length of the walk.
State of the Creek:  The ice in the creek has melted even more today; every where there’s rocks the water is flowing with ice crystals only around the banks.  Some places the ice has receded allowing a channel of water to flow down the middle of the creek.  Other places the ice is still thick, too thick to poke through with my walking stick, and here the water is puddling on top of the ice or flowing slowly over the top of it.
The Fetch:  Again, only two fetches today.  I have a theory that, since lately I’ve been taking Mway out before supper time and not filling her dish immediately after her walk, that maybe she feels she doesn’t have to work too hard at fetching her stick.  As she runs past me after her second fetch with the stick in her mouth, she gives me a look that seems to say “This is all I’m doing now.  You going to do anything about it?”   Back in the back yard, as I’m approaching the porch, I see Mway’s run off to the side of the house and doesn’t have her stick anymore.  I suspect that she senses the fat ground hog that I saw earlier out the kitchen window mosing around the side yard.  Before I go into the house, though, I want her to bring the stick to the back door so I can use it again.  I shout out “Where’s your stick, Mway?  Where’s the damn stick?”  It takes her a while -- she sniffs first at one that wasn’t the one we used -- but she finds it where she dropped it in the side yard, carries it up to the house, and drops it at the back door.

3 comments:

sisyphus gregor said...

M, regarding your comment from yesterday. Yes, well, I’ve put that book back on the shelf. You know, I found my copy of Ulysses, where you said it would be …Jesus, M, I know this might not be a good time to be critical of you, but -- loose pages under Moi’s bed, more under mine, the cover and the bulk of the book curled up between the sofa cushions!

Anonymous said...
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sisyphus gregor said...

The comment that I had removed above, I remember now, was from Moi. In it she said she didn’t know that Ulysses was in pieces but she remembered many years ago drilling holes into my copy of Finnegans Wake. She had used the book as a prop for some wood and at the time explained that if she got holes in the book she felt it wouldn’t make much of a difference. I think I removed her comment here because she also said something that called into question my whole enterprise here. After I removed the comment, I got the impression that she was no longer bothering to read my blog.