What's a Cur For?

 

I will admit that when I brought Curtis home from Columbus Humane Society’s Animal Shelter, I did not know what I was getting into. I knew he was smart, intuitive, handsome and kind. I didn’t yet know what he was, and I didn’t know what he was made for. 

Literally one of the first of 10 million photos I have taken of this dog.

 

It’s important to know what a breed was made for. I had lived in the lap of luxury with Chet Baker, Boston Terrier, for almost 12 years. Because Boston terriers are made for lovin’,  keeping people company, and making them laugh. They weren't bred to kill anything, herd anything, guard anything...they were just bred as fun little pals. Chet hung on my every word and move, and he believed his highest purpose in life was to keep me company. (here, he's helping me sign books at a show). Boy, did I need that then. He was the perfect dog for me, a busy mom trying to keep my career afloat while caring for three other people. Chet never wore a collar because he never strayed far enough from me to need one. The only time he was ever on lead was in town, and that wasn’t very often.

Photo by Jenny Bowman at the Midwest Birding Symposium, 

Lakeside, OH, 2013. Bandana by Jen Sauter!

 

Because I hadn’t yet figured out Curtis’ breed, or if he even was anything other than mixed, I didn’t know how to work him. Work, as in David Byrne, asking, “Well, how do I work this?” I decided to trust him, and I let him out of the car without a leash on his first approach to his new home, and he peed on the forsythia bush, where he pees to this day, and walked up the sidewalk to the front door as if he understood perfectly that here he would live for the rest of his life. That night, I took him out for a pee before bedtime, and he perked up his ears and headed into the backyard, me close behind with a flashlight. And he was gone, running pell mell through the ruined orchard, crashing and leaping. And that, as Lyle sings, was when I made my first mistake.

 

I called and yelled and hollered and he didn’t come back. Oh boy. I’ve done it now, stuck my foot in it bigtime. He eventually appeared, eyes glowing in the flashlight’s beam, a wide grin on his face. 

Runs After Things in the Night. Check.

Ignores Frantic Calling When Running After Things in the Night. Check.

Needs to be Leashed After Dark. Check.

 

By the next afternoon, I’d done some thinking about how to work this animal. I had to know what he was made for. I decided he was far too delicate in structure to be a pitbull mix. I thought he looked like some kind of southern cur-dog, so I started by Googling Catahoula Leopard Dog, then “brindle cur.” Bingo!  I had a Mountain Cur, more specifically Treeing Tennessee Brindle. I had never even heard of the breed, but it seems I had rescued a hunting dog! Well, dip me in chocolate. Wonder what that'll be like?

 

Being a hunting dog means a lot of things. First, he’s a fine companion, and he seems to be able to read my mind. He loves to go out into the woods with me, but he doesn’t  stick close by my side, the way Chet did. He leads! He has a job, and that is to find edible things. Things made of meat.  Curtis might have written the line: “If God didn’t want me to eat animals, why did He make them out of meat?”

 

Now, this strike-out-on-your-own tendency Curtis has normally manifests with a lot of chasing and very little eating; high, excited yelps; crashing through briars; stripping himself of collar attachments such as tags, bells and trackers; and a resultant need to wear said tracker at all times. As I look back, I have been remarkably sanguine about the possibility of losing this dog. Something in me has known from the very start that he’s too smart to run willy-nilly, in a straight line, headed for the next county. That’s not who he is or what he's made for. He does, however, run after meaty things. If they can climb, he trees them, and tells me with excited barks just what he has and where it is.  Being human, I have been slow to awaken to the part he wants me to have in all this, which is to come join him, raise a gun and shoot the coon, possum, squirrel or what-have-you that he’s found for me. Then, in Curtis’ ideal world, we feast.

 

It is said that this is the breed that helped settle America; part hound, part Staffordshire terrier--which is where the brindling comes from--, part Indian village dog--which is where the brains come from. The mountain cur was bred to track and hunt anything, his highest mission to put food on the table for his family. And so when he trees a squirrel, he circles the tree, harassing and herding it around to my side, to give me the best shot. And still I don’t shoot. Poor Curtis must think I am either very stupid or very well-fed, because he keeps trying; it’s in his DNA to try. He wants to work with me, wants to be a team, but I just walk along with my head in the clouds, binoculars on my chest, and a trek stick in my hand, when I should be packing a thunder-stick.

 

I like to think I hold up my end of the pact pretty well, even if I don’t dispatch his quarry. I do take him out every morning without fail, and we are rarely gone less than three hours, rarely roaming less than three miles, either. He, of course, traverses far more ground than I do. I will linger in certain places, gazing around, and that’s when my wonderful companion invariably takes off. But only yesterday did I figure out why this happens again and again. I think that in stopping to gaze, I'm inadvertantly sending him the signal to go find me something to shoot.

 

I was standing at the overlook, the mile-long trail to which I have laboriously cleared this winter, enjoying the shifting light as it broke through high clouds and started raking the snowfields. I was peering, looking for the castle my neighbors are building to the east. It was vanishing in and out of the morning mist. Curtis, of course, had just ditched me, gone on a toot. Suddenly, the wooden fireworks of a startled flock of wild turkeys exploded deep in the valley to the east. Three, four, five, seven, they flapped noisily and then planed out over the holler. It was a stunning sight. For maybe ten seconds I simply stared at the silvery sunlight hitting off their bronze backs. They were too far away and I had only my phone, but I dug it out of my pocket and hit Video anyway. And so it was that I had my iPhone SE out of my pocket, turned on, and horizontal, even! when THIS happened.  

Of all the videos I've taken recently (and ask my laptop and it'll respond with a small, choked sound that means "a lot"), this is my favorite. It's perfect, perfectly focused, and perfectly unrepeatable. And I have Curtis to thank. Because it was NOT an accident that those five wild turkeys flew right the hell past my face. It was Curtis' plan. His design. This is how this dog works, and I have been too dumb, to asleep, to even know that.

Here he came, immediately on the spurred heels of those turkeys.

Had I had a gun on my shoulder, or even a goshawk on my fist, we would have eaten for a couple of weeks. 

Curtis tries, again and again. It's what he was made to do, and he is damned good at it. He emerged from the brush, glanced at me, knowing I would have blown this PERFECT SETUP AGAIN, WILD TURKEYS FIVE OF THEM MY GOD WOMAN WHY DON'T YOU SHOOT?? then shook off his disappointment and came to join me. Imperfect, clueless me, who he somehow manages to love anyway, because I love him so much. 

I'm no Annie Oakley, but we're a pair. 

Real Life, Served Hot

When you see a sopping wet gobbler walking on a new-mown path, you know there's been too much rain. Wild turkeys hate hard rain. They hate getting their feathers soaked, for good reason--they can get chilled and die. So they resort to meadows and even lawns--anywhere they can go and not brush up against wet vegetation--when it's cold and rainy. I know to look for them in the meadow on such mornings, and am often rewarded.

It's especially nice when they come close to the deck, and I can creep ever so softly out and photograph them through the railings. Nice beard on this one. It's the height of turkey season here now, and there are more hunters in the woods than usual because they're bored and not working. I'm sure any hunter would like to bag this gobbler as a trophy. It seems so dumb to me,  get all excited about how long a turkey's beard is,  or how long his leg spurs are, but people do what they do. They're always counting coup on wildlife, lying in wait and calling them up, spreading corn in the woods, trying to kill them, then setting up ways to measure how "good" a gobbler is. To me, if he's out there and alive, he's good. He's no good dead, unless you're hungry. He won't get shot on my 80 acres, if everyone behaves himself.

I'd no sooner finished photographing this gent than another showed up on the other side of the meadow. Phoebe spotted him and sent me scrambling to get in position again.

You can see he's got a livid red engorged wattle, so he's probably been displaying down in the woods. 

He was headed for Bill's grave, which is the dark patch to the right, and backed by a blizzard of dogwood, and he stopped to gobble right there! If you click on the photo you can see the gobble posture: head thrown forward, a little awkwardly.

I like this shot because it says so much. The dogwoods tell you it's late April. The lone pine where Bill decided he wanted to rest. His grave to the left. And in the foreground, a crummy looking little shrub. That's got a story to it, too. The whole time we were living here, Bill was buggin' me about digging a pond out in the meadow. He wanted a pond smack dab in the middle of the meadow so he could watch for ducks and solitary sandpipers and yellowlegs and snipe and the like. Bill was a goal-oriented birder. 

Our argument hinged on the inescapable fact that this pond would be at the high point of a dry ridge. I told him, again and again, that I had no desire to look at a dry hole or a mud puddle, because I could guarantee that thing was gonna dry up every summer. Where's the runoff? I'd ask. 

So he had a test hole dug by our friend Mr. Crum when he was out here doing some bobcatting with his little dozer. And it holds water...sometimes. In spring. Some springs. And because you can't mow a hole, some shrubs sprang up and there they are to this day. With a hole. With a few inches of water at the bottom. That, I guess, is Bill's pond. That's as far as he got. I'm frankly glad it isn't a couple acres big with shrubs all around it. That's what I'm glad of. You can't mow a hole.

I've been watching jays. I have a lot of jays this spring. I watch them like some kind of addled eagle, all day long (when I'm at my desk). Because if I watch long enough, I might catch something like this.

On the right is a known jay from 2017 that I named Little Bit. See the little flash of white at the primary coverts? Unique. Nobody else has that.

In this shot, you can see the little bit of spangled white on Little Bit's brow, if you click on the photo.

I was under the impression that Little Bit was a male. In 2018, I had photographed it making a call that I thought was the male jay's "squeaky gate" call. 

Apparently not. Because LIttle Bit is getting fed by her mate here. I about fell over. Data points. Gathering them like a jay gathers acorns, all the time. Storing them away. Hoping to learn something. Learning every minute.

The real point of this post is to show you something wonderful. In mid-April, I answered a plaintive call from Geoff Heeter at the New River Birding and Nature Festival, based in Fayetteville, West Virginia. I have given a keynote without fail every Friday of that festival for the last 18 years. EIGHTEEN YEARS. I look forward to it sooo much. I love the festival, its organizers, Opossum Creek Resort (where it's held). I love the birds and mountains and wildlife. I love being around my old friends and making new ones. I love taking my dog, whether Chet or Curtis, to charm and entertain the people who come. Last year was Curtis' debut and he did not disappoint. 

I also love the fact that the festival raises money for an education fund that brings nature education into Fayette County schools. I really love that. 

But the festival had to be canceled this year, and we all hated that. 

Geoff wanted me to do a virtual keynote. Uh oh. I am real good at real life, at showing up and entertaining people. I am not good at virtual life, unless you count this blog as virtual...

So I thought about it, and decided to take my phone along and set it on VIDEO and just record a normal Zick morning on the bluebird box trail. 

And amazing stuff started to happen. 

One after another, amazing things happened. Was it because I was recording? Was it because life is just amazing, and when you make a video of it, you realize how jam-packed it is? I'm not sure, but I am so glad Geoff Heeter asked me to do this. Even though it took me most of a week to collect, edit, string them together, make transitions, and then consult with my kids to figure out how to present them in a goof-proof way for my "virtual keynote." Which actually came off without too much of a hitch, as long as you don't count the entire day I spent freaking out before we figured out how to put them all on a YouTube playlist for easy access. Virtual anything...bleh. These videos though...YAY!

Without further ado, I refer you to a series of five very short videos. Clicking this link will play them all in order. And you won't be sorry. It's a Day in the Life, Zick Style.

http://tinyurl.com/zicklife

Happy Birthday, Corey!

Ut-oh. I've never done a birthday post for someone who wasn't an official member of the family, or our dog. What could it mean? Well, today is Corey's birthday; I'm breaking my rule because he's 22 today I say I say I say he's TWENTY-TWO YEARS OLD and that, son, is not very old for all the things that boy can do.

Just picked up ukelele, then guitar, and he's already good at it, durn him.

Anyone who cleans and organizes my spice cabinet out of pity and a desire to introduce order to chaos has my undying gratitude. I try to keep it nice. But tonight I put a spice mix on the Unmixed  Spices shelf. I did that. You're going to have to come back and set me straight again. Soon, please.

But organizing cabinets is only one of his virtues. He has a romantic streak a mile wide, and he loves to surprise Phoebe, loves to keep her guessing. He showed up as a complete surprise once to take her to a formal dance at Bowdoin. She'd been planning to go with a bunch of friends, so she had a dress all picked out, but...sigh. He took a bus from Boston to Maine and texted her that afternoon, asking her to look out her dorm room window.

SQUEE!! Phoebe about keeled over. Needless to say, so did I when I got this from Phoebs.

CUTE or WHAT

He's teaching her to dance, the old-fashioned way. This is a Promenade. It's OK that there's no music, and we're on turf on Front Street. Just work with me here.

When he comes to visit there are pies, cookies, bars, arrghh. And they're all so good. We're helpless. He bakes. Lord, he bakes.

Liam adores him, and it's no wonder. Corey and Phoebe have always included him in whatever they do, never once treating him like a pesky little brother. 

 Saying goodbye after Corey's first visit to Indigo Hill.

July, 2013

Somebody's done a whole lot of growing since then!

January, 2017--Liam's taller than his honorary bro.

Also from 2017's visit, my favorite of a zillion favorite photos of Corey and Phoebe. He's caught her a New Year's bullfrog!

This gifted fellow has brought so much joy to our lives, in so many unexpected ways. He's like a bloomin' onion! peeling back the layers, to find yet another wonderful thing he can do.

Who could forget the lady bobcat Corey caught on trailcam a couple Julys ago? Probably James' mama!!

To be followed by Corey's latest unexpected gift: placing a longterm trailcam on our sanctuary. This is only the first of what I'm sure will be many howlers. Gack. I holler and whoop when he downloads his photos. As you have seen (remember the Owl on the Dingus?) He's got the camera running out there, and we're going to wait until he visits again to look at what he gets. This was from the test placement. Turned out to be a good spot!!

Derp?

Happy birthday, Corey Christopher Husic. You are a gift in every way. Thank you for gracing our lives!!

photo by Kris Macomber, atop the tower at Sweet Auburn.

And now, Phoebe's favorite fiddle tune: Maggie Mead, in a morning hoedown in our kitchen. What joy! What a boy.

Bill: I'm sorry about the legs. If it helps, I think it's cute. I like to watch Carmelita bounce as you strum. Had to get Corey's socks in there, Chet Baker looking for fiddlecrumbs too.

xoxoxox Co hurry back we miss you all the time! Love, Mai

Turkeys in the Straw, Geese on the Levee

In our birding safari, we proceeded from the Harmar Bridge in Marietta, Ohio, to the Levee, where Canada geese gather to stare out at the river, poop, honk, and wait for the people who feed them. This gentleman liked their lineup, and got down low to photograph them. It's not often I see people doing the things I do.

Several photos taken, he strode off.

I swung the lens around just in time to catch another smooch in progress. My goodness those young people do a lot of smooching.

I'm sorry. I can't help it. It's just so sweet. I'll leave you alone now. I'll go photograph somebody else. 

I found some hipsters taking pictures of each other. 

They were extremely skinny, and the guy had a big ol' bee beard. Somebody please explain to me the big ol' bee beard thing, especially when it's paired with super skinny cigarette pants and knit hats. I don't get it. Nah, that's OK. There's no explaining fashion to me. Fashion left me in the fog years ago. These people clearly know what they're doing. I'm wearing the same dung-colored clothes I've always worn.

We walked toward the confluence of the Muskingum and the Ohio, where it's legal to feed ducks and geese (they don't let people do that on the Levee. Too much poop.)

There was a young musician practicing guitar there. What a nice thing to see! On this murky warmish day, people were out doing interesting things. I love walking around Marietta. It's waking up in so many wonderful ways.

And there was Greta, Queen of the Levee! I love seeing my good old friends. She was looking strong as always. 

A pretty good looking black duck...but I had a feeling it had mallard genes, or it wouldn't have been sleeping on the levee with me standing right there. 

A sleepy mallard drake peeked at us, then closed his eye, then peeked. His eyelids are white. I explained to Liam how birds can sleep with one half of their brain at a time, and keep the other half engaged and peeking around for danger. I think I do something like that, too.

I was searching the levee's earthen slopes for a familiar shape. 

Mr. Lonely! the hybrid goose (Canada x Chinese swan-necked) who I saved from entangling monofilament back on Nov. 3, 2016. 

photo by Dorothy Lowe

I always fancy he remembers me. He looks like he does. I was pleased to see his feet healthy and unswollen once again. What a guy, what a goose. I love his spirit. 

He showed me how well his feet work. 

The next thing we did was drive across the river. We were driving along the flats in Boaz, WV, just across the river from Marietta, when we saw a zillion dark specks in a cornfield. 

We piled out of the car at an historic cemetery to get a closer look.

Ivy climbs the old oaks, and yuccas mark the graves.

I love cemeteries. Without this one, there'd surely be a housing development there. But such old cemeteries represent sacred ground, and nobody wants to mess with the people sleeping there.

We peered out of the trees at the massive flock of wild turkeys feeding on waste corn.

When they finally clumped together to adjourn to the forest, I counted 72--my largest flock ever.

I would not be surprised if this spectacular abundance of turkeys is a direct result of the periodical cicada brood of the summer of 2016. Every poult that needed something to eat got it, in spades.  The biggest flock I'd ever counted until now was 17 years ago, during the last cicada outbreak, and that was 41 hens and poults right in our meadow. And they were all eating cicadas.

Our last bird of the day was a rattling kingfisher, somewhere in the mists on the mighty Ohio.

Well, the time has come for another fiddle tune from the Talented Mr. Husic and the Talented Mr. Thompson.

This KitchenMusic tune comes with snap peas AND cauliflower, and a girl eating that cauliflower! Here's "Squirrel Hunters!" I love this one because Bill and Corey are nice and loose from an afternoon of sledding with Liam and Phoebe. I did not partake, for shingly reasons. I could not imagine sitting on a plastic sled, bumping over frozen ground at a high rate of speed. I may never be able to imagine that again.

 Please pardon my hillbilly hollering at the end. I get excited. I love having live old-time music in my kitchen!!!!! WOOOOO!!!