Healthcare for REAL Minority Pets

Gates by David Bonomo: Southern Florida
*
It is nighttime. Woody has been sleeping in the living room lately on an ultra soft green blanket that looks like baby fine grass and not with me. His arthritis has gotten much worse and he walks with a slight shimmy and has a hunch in his back.
SO I was delighted when I heard a “tap-tap-tap” next to my pillow that night. “Oh, goody! You’ve come to bed.” I whispered and flicked on the light.
Hm. No Woody. I could see him, sound asleep in the next room.
I turn to punch my pillow and splayed out in the center of it – where my head just was – is a prehistoric beetle the size of a small bird.
“Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghghghaghghghghghghghaaaahghghghg!!!”
I am already out of bed in the split second it takes David to wake up.
“What the -?”
I am already pointing and doing a jig with my Scream face on but all that is coming out is some otherworldly screech.
“Jesus!” David yells, and lunges out of bed.
The jarring motion has awakened the Sleeping Giant and it scurries – toe tapping loud, this thing was so big!!! – off the bed and into the closet.
“Naaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhsasysyaghgajh!”
In a heartbeat – mine had just resumed – David dove into the closet and shoes started flying and the laundry hamper and belts and –
“I need a paper- I need a shoe- I need a shovel! Get me a shovel!’
Yeah, right. Like I’m running into the garage in bare feet now.
I run into the kitchen – Woody gives me a shocked look as I dash past him – and grab a – ladle? – and come rushing back into the bedroom, only to hear David growling, “Die! Die! Die, you fucker!” and the slamming of a shoe – my Nikes! Oh, to hell with it, the arches suck anyway…. And then, then… it was all over.
“I need some paper towels in here!” David says as emerges from the closet, holding the sporty murder weapon, wiping sweat from his brow. “I don’t think you’ll want to wear these shoes anymore.”
“Fifteen years together and finally we can agree on something,” I say, winded, handing him an entire roll of paper towels.
“You got any rug cleaner? It’s a mess in here.”
Ew.
I peak into the murder scene, and Coroner Dave yells, “Don’t look!”
So I don’t.
*
It took me a full week to get a full night’s sleep again. Just long enough for the Palmetto Bugs on Steroids to let me get comfortable. And then, the morning came when I woke up to a sunny room shaded only by the…
…PALMETTO BUG SCURRYING ACROSS MY FACE!
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHUIUIUFHGHJFGHUHNNJGHUNMNVJHUHMNNFJURINKDMFKLKAHHH!”
David comes running, pants at his knees, holding the newspaper he reads every morning on the crapper. “What?”
I am jigging again, shrieking in tongues. “Blahjhdjhdjfkjfkjjdkjkdjgkkkahhhhhhhhhghghghghghhhh!” I run my hands around my face. “---akjdkjdkjk ACROSS MY FACE AND AKDLSJFKHGJHGJHH ON MY PILLOW AGAIN AND MY FACEMY FACE!!!!“
“Shit.” He pulls up his pants and goes into the bedroom, traps the lobster in the shower drain and then you know what he said?
“Guess I should start shutting the bedroom window at night.”
“What.” My first English word of the day.
“The window. The screen is a little ripped and I guess the palmetto bugs are getting in that way.”

WOMAN KILLS HUSBAND OVER BUG DISPUTE
“He Tortured Me With Palmetto Bugs,” She Claims

(Couldn’t you picture it, though?)

Iguana!

There are Pet sitters in Hell
“IT’S OKAY, he won’t bite you,” Maryann, our neighbor says. David and I are standing in her small living room, watching her stroke the back of what looks to be a small stegosaurus, clinging to side of an enormous birdcage.
“Whoa,” David says. “Let me see.”
I take a step back. “I’ll watch.”
“Gila monster or iguana?’ Ranger Dave asks, as Maryann hands the reptile to David. His arm lurches under its weight. I take another step back.
“Iguana,” Maryann says smartly. Since she is a student at the North Carolina State Veterinary School, she knows the difference. Yay.
“So, I just need you to feed him twice a day all next week. I’ll be home Sunday, very early in the morning. You can leave him out of his cage. He likes to hang around up on the curtain rod.” She points to an iron ramp above the bay window. “Oh, and here’s his food,” she says, and holds up a bag of baby greens, the kind I pay 6.99 a pound for at Whole Foods.
“David? David. Maryann’s showing you his food.”
“Whoa! What’s this growth on his face?” David marvels and pivots around with Cyclops on his arm and all I see is a scaly golf ball protruding from the iguana’s face. It looks like a second, albeit smaller, head. I notice his ribs as he breathes, hard.
“Dude. That thing is huge!” David says, grimacing, and slowly pivots the double-headed creature back to Maryann’s arm.
“Oh, that’s nothing. Just a growth. I’m hoping it will eventually fall off,” she says brightly. I have edged back into the kitchen now.
“And do what with it? Play eighteen holes?’ David asks, wide-eyed.
“No, silly. Study it, probably,” Maryann says.
Oh, gross.
“Oh, yes, and one more thing. Dara, make sure you – “ she holds her hand to her mouth and whispers – “sorta stay away from him if it’s, like, you know, that time of the month. He gets a little… aggressive.”
“’kay!” I shriek, and smile, and hightail it to the door. “Ready David I’m gonna go?!”
David is in a genuflect/crouch, studying him. “Damn. Are you sure he’s okay?”
“He’s fine,” Maryann says. “See you in a week.”
*

HELL FREEZETH OVER
“The iguana doesn’t look so good,” David tells me, shaking his head. It is Day 2 of his Iguana Pet Sitting Service for Maryann.
“How can you tell?” I ask, making a face.
“Well, when I opened the door, he was sitting on the curtain rod, but then the wind blew the door shut and – Thmph! – he just fell to the floor.”
“Did he run away?’ I ask. The hair is standing up on the back of my neck just thinking about that thing running.
“I wish. He just stayed there.”
“Maybe you startled him. He probably can’t see around his second head.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says. “He won’t eat or drink anything. Watch him keel over.”
*
Lo and behold: the next day, he did.
“Shit!” David says. “The iguana’s dead.”
“Shit!” I agreed. “Are you sure?”
“I’m pretty sure. He’s stiff as a board.” And then: “I think I’ll run over him with my truck, just to be sure.”
“What?! You can’t run over someone’s pet with your truck!” I yell.
Woody trots out of the room.
“Sure I can. What if he’s suffering?”
“David. Maryann may want to see him, or bury him when she comes home. Plus, you’ll flatten that [I gag a little here] growth she wants to study.” Uck.
“Trash pickup is Friday. I was just gonna throw it out. Although, recycling is tomorrow….”
“You can’t recycle it! Or throw it out! Plus, that dinosaur will never fit in the recycling bin.”
“Well, I’ll figure something out,” he mutters pensively.

Less than an hour later he returns, looking relieved.
“What did you do?” I ask.
He beamed. “Froze ‘im!”
“You- what?”
“Froze. Him.”
“You stuck Maryann’s pet in the freezer.” Oh God. I whirl around to our freezer door.
“Not our freezer. Her freezer,” he says. “It’s in a bag.”
“Did you, uh, label it?”
“Hell, no! Believe me, it’s expired!”
“David.”
“What.”
“You must go over there the minute she gets home and tell her what happened.”
“No fucking way. She gets back at like, four in the morning. I’m not getting up that early.”
“Well, leave her a note then. What if she finds it?” I have visions of an early morning snack gone terribly, irreversibly wrong.
“That’s her problem,” he says. “She never should have left me in charge of Golf Ball Boy. He obviously was sick.”
“But… the freezer?”
“So he won’t stink,” he says.
“Oh.”
Maryann arrived home bright and early – and famished.
She never spoke to us again.
*

I make an appointment with a realtor to go browsing at houses back in peaceful, safe, pleasantly boring Cary. I find one on a quiet block, not far from our old house. I tell David about it and he says, “Oh, yeah, about that. “
Uh-oh.
“Remember that huge remodel and cabinet job I bid on in Key Biscayne?”
“Florida?”
“Duh! Yes, Florida!”
“What about it?”
“They accepted my offer.”
“And?”
He takes a breath. All at once he announces, “Bin it, Baby! We’re movin’ to the Golden State!”
“We already lived there,” I say, meaning the Golden State of California. “Don’t you want to try somewhere new?” He can’t be serious.
“Okay, wait a minute,” he says, and leaves the room. I pick up Woody, who is suddenly shivering.
He reappears. “Bin it, Baby! We’re movin’ to the Sunshine State!”
He is holding up something: a check with a lot of zero’s on it. “Deposit it and weep. This is only their down payment.”
I look up close. “Wow.”
“An entire kitchen for the very rich and an entire remodel and bath for the even richer. And lots more to follow.“
Woody shivers again. My baby. My old baby. He’s cold.
“Why not?”

Health Scare

He ran up the full flight of stairs, like he does every day after our afternoon walk. That’s all. Just like every day.
Woody ran into my office to rug surf while I went into the kitchen to break a single Pupperoni treat into little pieces, just like he loves, like I do every day.
The sound I heard as I stood at the counter made my knees buckle: a high-pitched wailing. The agonized plea of a rabbit dying.
My Baby.
I ran down the hall and flew to my office floor where Woody lay, still, so still.
“No,no,no,no,no,noooooo….” I hunched over him, my hands shaking up and down so violently I was afraid if I touched him it would be a slap. I scooped him up supporting a rag doll dog head and pummeled down the stairs to David’s workshop.
“DAVID! DAVID!!!”
David stood at his saw table and half smiled and then his face fell. I lowered Woody onto the cool concrete floor of the shop and resumed my shaking hand tai chi movement over his lifeless little white body. “No, no, no, nooooooo!’ was all I could say and then David crouched down, too, and said, “Wake up, Little Buddy. C’mon, Dude, wake up.” And then to me: “Give him some air, you’re crowding him,” and I think I moved back a little bit and made my crazy hands fan him with air. I tried to stroke his head and his belly with my cold hands and my voice was some nervous breakdown Lady’s, shivering and rocket-pitched and all I could say was, “NOOooooooooo….”
“He’s coming to!” David yelled. And Woody woke up.
“Oh!Oh!Oh!” was all I could say, hands still flailing, afraid to pick him up, afraid to leave him there on the hard floor and certainly never, ever, able to let him go….

“His heart stopped,” the vet tells me.
I cannot stop petting him. “It’s called a syncopatic episode -” she said, searching for my eyes, which I can’t take off Woody, a silly half smile on my face. M’boy. He’s here. We still have time –
“- and there will be more of them. I’m putting him on heart medication, a third of a pill. He has to take this every day for the rest of his life.”
I am beaming, can’t stop petting him. He’s here. He’s alive. I – can’t.
“Dara, you must prepare yourself. This will happen again.” She looked at me and searched for my eyes some more, since I’ll admit, I am avoiding hers.
Finally I look at her, my eyes burning. “Thank you, “ I choked. “Thank you.”
*

But Cats and Dogs Learn to Get Along in North Carolina

There are no kittens in Hell.

3:45 P.M. on a Wednesday

Ding-dong.
I scoop up Woody and when I open the front door, two little boys, I’d guess around 8 or 9 years old, are looking up at me.
“Hey, I’m Carter. This is Matt. We’re your neighbors.”
“Well, hello there. Nice to meet you, “ I say. Woody squirms in my arms.
“Can we pet your dog?”
“Sure.” I put Woody down and they pet him gently.
“He’s cool,” says Matt.
“I think so, thanks,” I say.
“We have a dog. A Boston terrier,” Carter says.
“She’s black and white,” says Matt, rubbing Woody’s back. “She looks like a cow.”
“She doesn’t look like a cow,” scoffs Carter.
“Well, I’m sure you love her very much,” I say.
“Yeah, she’s cool,” says Carter.
“My Mom won’t let me have a dog,” says Matt, stroking Woody’s back with little feather fingers. “Maybe she’d let me have half a dog, like Woody.”
“He’s small, but I guarantee you, he’s a whole dog,” I say. “But, hey, you never know, your Mom may change her mind someday.”
“Doubt it,” says Matt.
“Well, you can come play with Woody whenever you want to,” I say.
“‘Kay!” they say.

*
Ding-Dong.
The next day: 3: 40 p.m. sharp.
I scoop up Woody and swing open the door.
“We found a cat,” says Carter.
“Yeah, and she has kittens,” says Matt.
“They look like little tigers and all they do is squeak,” adds Carter.
“Aw. Does she belong to one of your friends?” I ask, lowering Woody to the floor for his petting. He leans back with his butt up in the air. Attack mode.
“Oh, you want to play?” asks Matt, and starts shaking his sleeve. Woody growls softly and does a wheelie. He loves this.
“No, Silly. She lives up in the cemetery.”
“Really,” I say.
“Yeah, and she’s really nice,” adds Matt, “but we think she’s sick.”
“Yeah, she’s like, hungry all the time,” says Carter. “She likes potato chips,” he says proudly.
“And chocolate milk,” adds Matt, prouder.
“Oo. I don’t know if you should give her chocolate milk. “Hold on.” I ran into the kitchen and filled one of Woody’s little plastic bowls with milk.
“Why don’t you see if she likes this?”
“Okay!” says Matt, psyched.
“I can carry it!” Carter says.
“No, let me!” cries Matt.
“You both can carry it,” I say gently.
They each held onto opposite sides of the bowl and carried it awkwardly down the front walk.
“But be careful crossing the street,” I call after them.
Woody and I watched them carry the bowl together, all the way up to the old cemetery, hidden on top of the hill where our street ends.
The next day it poured, and the day after that. Woody and I looked out the window for them at 3:45, then again at 4:00. “Maybe tomorrow,” I said, and he cocked his head to one side the way dogs do, as if to say, “Why?”
*

3:20 p.m.
The following day.
Ding-dong-Bang-Bang-Bang.
I scoop up Woody, who is kicking with glee, and open the door. Nobody.
“Over here!” I hear a loud whisper. Carter.
The boys stood on the driveway and pointed to a petite, malnourished cat that was obviously nursing, who paced around them. “Mew,” she said, and looked at me with the most beautiful aqua green eyes I have ever seen, even on a cat.
“Where are her kittens?” I ask and deposit Woody safely back inside – for now, at least.
“They’re gone,” says Carter. I slowly walked over to the cat. She timidly approached me but quickly ran back to the boys.
“We think they washed away in the rain,” says Matt. As if agreeing, the little cat mewed again and approached my outstretched hand. “She’s so skinny,” I say and then, “Hold on.”
I ran inside and came back out with a paper plate topped with tuna.
She inhaled it.
“Mom says I can’t have the cat,” Carter says, stroking her back. She kept eating, and glancing up at me, petrified, in between mouthfuls. “My Mom’s allergicked,” says Matt.
*
Ding-dong.
3:30 pm, next day.
I open the door. It’s the cat.
“Just in time,” I say, even though I hear the boys laughing in the bushes. “I was just about to open a can of tuna. Won’t you join us?”
*
“Hell smells like mouse dung.”
Opened the silverware drawer this morning to make some breakfast and was very unpleasantly surprised by the sight of M-O-U-S-E droppings.
At first I didn’t know what they were – had no idea, in fact, or maybe it was just some deep-seated denial kicking in. I even – oh God!- picked one up and examined it, rationalizing: ‘Must be charred remnants of last night’s barbeque’ – and thought of ways to blame David for the mess. (I am a mouse turd).
But then I saw more. And more and more and more of them as I rummaged through the utensils we eat off of, for crying out loud, laying in some rodent’s toilet.
I’m not sure what hit me the hardest: the actual realization that these were, indeed, mouse turds (oh God it better not be something bigger and furrier I am going to a hotel right now with the dog oh God) or the fact that I picked one of them up with my bare hands and almost – gulp – tasted it, in fact.
Like lightning, I slapped on the ol’ Rubbermaid’s – so quickly, in fact, that my sweaty palms made it nearly impossible to pull them all the way on. Hastily I dumped some baking soda down my wrists and yanked them on. Which did wonders for the little nicks on my knuckles from gardening this past weekend, since baking soda is basically salt. Yay.
The will to survive was my morphine, though, and I went to work: I threw handfuls of silverware in the dishwasher along with the turd-tainted silverware holder. Gingerly I opened the cabinet door to retrieve the dishwasher soap, and flooded with relief when I saw not a kernel o’ crap in sight. Figures. Even the mice are smarter than humans and pets and won’t go near all those toxic cleaners we keep under there.
With Trojan hands, I carried the veggie peel bag out to the compost house Martha showed me how to make. I eyed that with suspicion – even Martha told us, if not properly filled, “It could attract vermin.” I threw the peels on top and shivered.
“Mew.”
“Why, hello, Kitty,” I cooed, and then, “C’mon, Kitty, do your thing. There’s a mouse – oh God I hope it’s not a rat – and you can have it for lunch!”
Ew.
“C’mon, I know you can do it. Go for it!”
“Mew,” she said sweetly, and rubbed against my leg. Not the snarl for blood I was hoping for.
The Jones’ cat is too fat to catch anything besides fleas, so that’s out.
I sprinkled baking soda on the carpets and vacuumed everything in sight, as Woody looked on with a curious cock to his little white head. “No mouse droppings for you!” I admonished gently, though I know even the dog wouldn’t try to eat mouse turds like his mama almost did.
Satisfied that at least it wouldn’t smell like a mouse was here, I punched in David’s cell phone number, still with rubber hands and not very easy to do.
“Yeah!” That’s contractor speak for, “Hello?” in case you were wondering.
“It’s me. We have a [shiver] mouse.”
To someone else David says, “I don’t know, put it down over there, Ben. I’ll be right there. What? Well, what do you want me to do? I’m in Raleigh, working.”
“There are turds on the silverware. I’m washing everything in sight as we speak. The dog is frightened. I cannot cope with a mouse in this house. What should I doooooo?”
“Wait. A mouse, huh?”
“Yes? Hello? M-o-u-s-e,” I sang hysterically.
“Hmph. Must be getting in through the dishwasher.”
Respiration: ceasefire.
“What.” I have visions of rodent flotsam caught in the riptide of the dishwasher, where every dish, pot, and piece of silverware we own is at the moment. “I’m calling an exterminator,” I choke.
Wait a minute. It’s all coming back to me now: Night before last, sitting and drawing in front of the TV. It was a blur, out of the corner of my eye. Disappeared under the bookcase. Woody barked. David bitched, because he was trying to sleep. That was it. The gray blur. Oh God, it’s been here for two days – or more – in my house at night while I sleep, probably frolicking with venomous filthy paws with Woody while I am fast asleep. Noooooooooo.
“I’m not paying their fees for putting a trap down. I can do that myself.”
I am reaching into the dishwasher for a sparkling clean dish and pull it and it is caked with mouse fur….
“Yeah. ‘kay,” I say, and hang up. With shaky rubber fingers, I thumb through the phone book and….
*
“You don’t understand. I have a phobia of bugs and rodents. It goes way back…”
Bill the Bug Guy chuckles a little and nods, “Yeah. Everybody does.” I heard the part he didn’t say:” ‘specially the lil’women of the household,” but I didn’t care. He was right.
“No,” I said, searching for his eyes, “you don’t understand. The fur – agh, I mean hair – on the back of my neck stands up so high it looks like I’m wearing a ponytail. I cannot function when I know – even suspect – that there are bugs and/or mice around the house. If there are bugs outside I stay in. If there are bugs inside, I leave. Vanish. Kaput.”
“Well, I’m sure your husband will be happy with our service, then,” he says. I didn’t want to tell him we aren’t married yet – haven’t had the time what with all this moving going on, and plus, that little fact doesn’t go over well here in the Bible belt. And I needed Bill. Today. Now.
“By the way, you sure it was mouse?”
“It was either that or the fastest moving lint ball I’ve ever seen!” I shrieked.
He thought this was hilarious. I did not.
“It was small, gray?” he asked, clipboard poised, feet apart, probably to balance the enormous vermin-tool belt he wore.
I nodded quickly. “Whiskers, beady little eyes. Tail,” I added with a yelp.
“Sounds like you got yourself a field mouse. Some people call it a ‘house mouse.’”
“Not this ‘house mouse’,” I said.
He thought this just as funny. I was starting to dislike Bill the Bug Man.
I led him into the kitchen and pointed accusingly at the lower drawer of the stove. “I found…droppings.”
“Small, hard-?”
“- looks like barbeque? Yessss.” Don’t laugh, just kill.
He laughed anyway and went to work.
He pulled out my heartshaped muffin tin and rattled it: perfect cup holders for Shitting Mickey dung.
I threw it out.
He held up my little corncob pan and shook that. I dragged the garbage can over to him and said, “Please.”
“You’re not going to throw these out, are you?”
“There is no way on God’s green earth I will ever eat anything that comes out of those pans again.”
“Suit yourself,” he said.
“So what’s the plan? What are you going to do?”
He pulled a triangular shaped black box out of his wonder belt and said, “Bait ‘er.”
I didn’t like that he called Shitting Mickey a “her.” Like sinking ships and hurricanes and aircraft that drop bombs.
“Her?” I gulp.
“Sure. It’s probably a female. She’s been searching for food for her babies.”
Gag-choke-gulp. “There’s more than one?”
“Noah had two of everything on the ark!” he said, cheerfully.
After an entire diatribe on the toxicity of mouse crap, Bill the Bug Guy left, a couple of strategically placed black boxes in his wake. He even braved The Black Hole – the back half of the house, and told me, “You gotta do something with that. That’s a rodent magnet in itself.”
Gee, thanks, Bill.

*
Later that night:
“C’mere, Kitty Kitty Kitty…. I have some TUNA for you! Here, Kittykittykittykittyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!”
David is in the kitchen vacuuming the drawers of any poop I might have missed before the dry heaves made me stop. I am on the front porch with a soggy paper plate of premium tuna fish, searching for the cat, who is quickly becoming ours, while intermittently shouting hyperventilating instructions at David.
“Don’t forget the skinny cabinet next to the-!”

Rrrring.
“Get the phone!” he yells from under the sink.
“Hello!” I shout into the receiver.
My sister.
“Oh, hi, Jen. Look-we-have-a-mouse-gotta-go.”
“Oh –Jesus-I’ll-let-you-go-call-me-later-or-whenever-it’s-gone!”
Click.
This fact affects her as if by some telepathic fear of Mouse that bonds our psyches. I know she will be checking her own cupboards with increasing alarm all evening.
I ran back into the kitchen just as David is pulling the now empty stove drawer off its track and out completely, revealing an absolute smattering of feces beneath it.
“Jesus!” he exclaimed. I made the sign of the cross or flailed my arms or something and, I guess, started speaking in tongues because he turned to me and scowled, “Why don’t you go watch TV or something?”
Rrring.
“Hello?” A choked whisper from YoursTruly.
“Hi, Honey. What’s wrong?” Mommy.
“Mom…we…-”
“What, honey? What is it?”
“-hhhave a mmmou-“
“Oh, Mother of God! Okay, okay, stay calm you’ll be fine is David there I’ll call you this weekend don’t worry call an exterminator and go to a hotel-“
Oddly, her hysteria calms me.
“Mom. David is here. The exterminator set traps. It’s under control,” I say, that last part shaking a bit.
I hear my mother cup the receiver and say to my grandmother, “No, Ma, she’s fine. Really. Everything’s fine. It’s a M-O-U-” I hear my grandmother shouting some very fast Italian words. “No, David’s with her. She’ll be fine.” And then back to me, “Okay, so David’s there?”
“Yes, Ma, he’s –“
David yells from what sounds like the inside of the stove, “Where the hell are the paper towels?”
“Oh, Ma, I gotta go, he’s cleaning it up –“
“Cleaning what up?” my mother shrieks, and then my grandmother starts yelling a torrent of Italian prayers and …
“Do you want me to clean this up or what?” David is yelling from the kitchen. Woody barks at him.
“’kay, Mom, gotta go, really,”
Sound of skull on stove.
David: “SHIT!”
“Mom, I’ll call you this weekend.”
“Okay, okay, oh. Your grandmother’s all upset. Ma, calm down. We’ll say a prayer to St. Jude, don’t worry, you’ll be fine-“
David: “C’monnnnnn!’
Me: “Okay, love you, gotta go, bye.” Click.
St. Jude, by the way, is the patron saint of hopeless cases.
*
I call it RAD: Rodent Affective Disorder.
“Rat”, “mouse” and “snake” were dirty words in my house and those of my relatives. If any word of “that kind” was essential to the telling of any story, it was never, ever to be spoken, but spelled out in soundless, exaggerated letters.
It’s hereditary. It can blossom into the more severe form: ARAD (Amphibian and Rodent Affective Disorder) or the more severe AARAD (Aviary, Amphibian and Rodent Disorder). I an aunt with that one. All I can remember of a family trip to the Reptile House in Sea World was my aunt with large black sunglasses on being led around by the elbow by my uncle, like a blind person and, all that moaning … it was u-g-l-y. And my mother: the mere sound of my parakeet’s flapping wings could send her into a maniacal departure right out the front door.
Reminds me of the original trauma, years and years ago….

Queens, NY
1969
“Mommy, I thought Mickey Mouse was black,” my little sister says.
“He is, honey,” Mom says, as she tucks the pink satin edge of my favorite blanket under my chin in the bed next to my sister’s.
“No, he’s not,” says my sister, from under her favorite blanket.
“Yes he is, Honey.” Mom reassures her tenderly.
“Well, then, why is that mouse gray?” Jen sits up in bed and points a dimpled little finger to a spot about a yard away from where Mom is standing.
There could have – should have – been a springboard under Mom’s feet. But of course there wasn’t. Like tiny mothers who lift automobiles off their children; like the resurrection itself, Mom was suddenly possessed of some otherworldly power that catapulted her up to my bed … WITHOUT BENDING HER KNEES.
Years later when we were teenagers, Jen and I watched The Bionic Woman do the same thing. Jen pointed at the screen and said, “Look. Mom with the mouse.”

“Ooooo! Look! He’s soooo cute!” Jen squealed.
Mom was doing the Riverdance around the foot of my bed.
“Hey, don’t step on me, Ma!” I whined.
“Neil! Neeeeeeeeilllllllllll!” Mom moans. I never heard her sound like that.
“I’m getting car sick,” I say, holding my mouth.
I hear Dad’s Marine Corps footsteps coming down the hallway. “What.” He ordered.
My mother, still weakly marching at the foot of my bed, points to the old iron radiator near my bed with one hand, touching her cheek with the other.
My father, after saying a very fatherly, “Shit,” grabs a go-go boot from the floor and launches into an arm flying staccato seizure of sorts, as did my mother, all to no avail.
“Don’t hurt him, Daddy!” Jen cries. “Let him live in the boot with Mother Huvvard!”
“You - mean – ‘Mother - Hubbard’, “ I say, holding on.
“Mother Huvvard needs a pet mouse to eat the scraps!”
“And she doesn’t live in a boot,” I say, my voice bouncing.
“Why can’t she?’ Jen cries.
“Because … everybody knows mice aren’t allowed to live in boots.”
Jen grabs her sand pail and hands it to my dad. “Here, Daddy. Maybe Mickey would like to live in here.”
My older brother George appears at the doorway, holding a View master. “What’s the problem?” he asks. Even at seven he was cool.
“Your mother – shit! – saw a f—mouse!” Dad growls.
“I want a ride, too!” Jen cries and hops onto my bouncing bed with my mother and me.
George shakes his head and saunters over to the radiator. “See? This wouldn’t be a problem if you had just let me get the snake I wanted.”
My mother moans a word I never heard her say before.
“Or the kitten I wanted!” I say.
“Like Tom and Jerry!” says Jen.
George puts his View master down, takes the pail and traps the mouse.
“Don’t hurt him!” screams Jen. My mother is in a slow, exhausted march. “I don’t feel good,” I say. My father throws his hands up and leaves. “I’ll bring him outside,” George sighs.
“Where are you going with Mickey?” Jen says, running after him.
“Back to Hollywood where he belongs.” George says and sets Mickey free.
***


We named our new cat Rebecca, who, like Woody, was a character on the old sitcom, Cheers. If you’ve ever been a fan of the show, you know Rebecca was more easygoing than Diane - dark-haired, a bit obnoxious, certainly misunderstood – and wickedly funny.
That’s our girl.

Dogs Love Michigan. Cats? Not So Much....

“I met the neighbors,” David said, as I helped him step out of frozen jeans. He has been working for a builder of log homes, near Lake Interlochen.
“Jeez, I wonder if these jeans will stand up by themselves,” he said, and tried. They actually “stood” for a split second before collapsing, nearly crushing Woody, who scampered over to watch. He took a lick of the crumbled jeans, and backed warily away.
“And?” I asked, running my fingers under hot water. “I think I got freezer burn from your fly.”
“He’s Dick –”
“That’s not very nice.”
“That’s his name.”
“Oh.”
“When he goes deer hunting, he uses a bow and arrow.”
“Lovely,” I said. “You should wipe the icicles out of your nose before they defrost.”
I handed him a tissue.
“Hey, at least it’s a fair fight,” he said, wiping snow flaked eyebrows and blowing his nose.
“Sure, if the deer has a bow and arrow.”
“He’s from Massachusetts.”
“Really? Hallelujah. A Nor-easter. How bad could he be? He’s seen Boston!”
David walked away.
I followed him into the bathroom.
“Where is she from?”
“I don’t know. Texas, I think.”
Woody is lapping up the puddle that is forming on the rug beneath David’s pants. He backed away, cocked his head to the side, and wagged his tail.
“What’s the matter, Boy? Got a mouthful of rug?” David asked. “That’s m’boy! “
“You’re gross,” I said.
“”Hey, he’s fixed. At least he can get some oral gratification.”
“I believe the rug is happier than the dog right now,” I said.
“Anyway, his wife told me to tell you to stop by and have a cup of coffee with her some afternoon.”
“What’s her name?” I asked, scooping Woody up. He coughed.
“Her name is Annie.”
*

A week later, I knocked on Annie’s door, holding Woody.
“Hi I’m Dara your neighbor this is Woody my dog. I thought I’d introduce you.” I speed-said. Hey, it took me a week to get up the nerve to knock on a stranger’s door, for crying out loud – I was a bit nerrrvous.
Annie was middle aged, with dark, wavy hair and glasses. She wore a big, burgundy sweater that looked hand-knit, a fleece jacket, and very fuzzy slippers.
Woody squirmed in my arms. She laughed. Not just any laugh: a throaty “Ho-ho-ho-heh-heh-heh.”
“Hi, I’m Annie,” she said, and gave Woody a tender caress of the head, which he miraculously let her do without biting her. He hates his head touched. Napoleon thing.
“I see you and David chasing him around our yards – ho-ho-heh-heh – every morning and I get a chuckle with my coffee. David is the best, with those long arms a-flyin’ and just when he gets close, that little doggy dodges away, heh-heh-ho-ho-ho, and the curses are all over the place. Do you like coffee? Come in, come in.”
She waved us in. “Bring the little guy, too, of course!”
I stepped inside as she led me to her kitchen. “It’s so cold in this house you’ll need some coffee. These high ceilings – our first gas bill was over three hundred dollars and so we try to heat with wood.”
Doesn’t anyone use modern heat around here??? I am thinking, but of course I say, “We do, too.”
She poured strong black coffee into two big heavy mugs. An obese cat eyed Woody warily and dove under the couch. Woody’s ears shot up and he wriggled like a fish to get out of my arms.
“Oo, hoo-hoo, let him down and see what he’ll do. That’s Casey. Maybe he can get that fat cat to go outside.”
“Is the black and white cat yours, too? I see him prowling around your pond,” I said.
“Pouncing on frogs. Yes. That’s Felix.”
“Felix the Cat,” I said.
“Ah, yes. That would be he.”

***
***
I went back the next day, sans Woody.
“Where’s the little guy?” Annie asked, ushering me in the front door.
“Oh, well, I thought Casey – and you – might like a break,” I said. Woody cried when I left him. I felt awful, promising him I’d be back to play in half an hour.
“Well, my goodness, go get him! A little bit of stress will do that fat cat some good. Maybe she’ll burn a calorie or two before dinner.”
And so I did.

We talked about everything, always over strong black coffee, which we both loved. We talked about her past and mine. She told me about her sister in Florida and how much Annie loved it there, but “Dick would rather die than live in that heat.”
And we talked about my family in New York and how I wanted to move back there but “David would rather die than live in that kind of heat: high taxes, traffic, the prospect of me getting a job in Manhattan and the possibility of me, making more money than him, blah-blah-blah.”
After the Cinco de Mayo blizzard melted, when the weather started to warm up and the muck became a dirt road again, Annie would walk/chase Woody around our yards with me, through pine trees, under big blue spruces:
“ He’s here! He’s on my end!” she’d yell from the other side of the skirt of a mammoth evergreen. I’d dive for him, with sunglasses on so as not to blind myself from the prickly evergreen branches, and she’d catch him from the other end – most of the time.
His favorite spot to poop was just inside the tall grasses of the mushy, marshy riverbank. Then one day, the inevitable happened.
“Oo-hoo-hooo!” howled Annie, just as my head whipped around, Alien-like, from the base of the tree Woody was just under, just in time to see a mini geyser- like spurt of water and hear the perfect “ker-plunk’ that his little body made when he slipped into the moving current. And when I ran and scooped him out, sinking and soaking and stunned in the sludgy riverbank, his little pencil legs rowing in overdrive, all I heard was, “Oh-ho-ho. Hoooo-hooo-hOOOoooo!”
Something like this happened every day. As soon as m’boy would relieve himself of the mighty double ounce Torpedo, he’d rear up on his hind legs and take off like a Tasmanian devil dog. Dick and Annie had a little arched bridge in their yard that Woody loved to race over. In Michigan, as you now know, it is icy even in spring. So it was a great source of amusement to Annie when I’d be chasing Woody down and he’d invariably b-line it to the iced-over bridge and scramble over it to a wayward patch of grass peeking out of the snow on the other side, slip-sliding and gathering his feet under himself and, with the chorus of Annie hee-heeing and hoo-hooing in the background I, inevitably, would make a spastic slide/scramble of my own over the shiny little bridge over to m’boy who, by then, was winded and wagging and waiting for me.

***

Healthcare Bill for Woody

WOODY’S
A V E R A G E D A Y

BETWEEN 6 A.M & 8 A.M. : First Pee of the Day
Please put Fresh Water in his Water Dish
8 A.M. ‘til 4 P.M.: * NAP TIME *
{ Woody usually sleeps in the closet or near the heater in the bedroom…. Feel free to check on him throughout the day and flip him like a pancake in case he’s too close to the heater}.


BETWEEN 4 P.M. & 5 P.M.: FIRST (& usually the only) POO OF THE DAY

For this MAJOR part of Woody’s Day he’s usually ready as soon as you call him and show him his leash. He’s pretty stiff and rickety these days (he IS nearly 70 in Dog Years!) so you may have to click his collar on him while he is still in the closet (not as hard as you may think). I usually carry him down the street and let him poo near the store, but he will love to go anywhere you take him. He may be nervous, so if he skips a day, don’t sweat it. (He’ll save it all up for me – YAY).
When he comes in, he’s ready for FOOD!

BETWEEN 5 P.M. & 6 P.M. : D I N N E R T I M E !!!
One baggie of broken up Pupperoni treats + One plate of the Food I have stacked in the ‘fridge. You can warm it in the microwave for 20 seconds. Thanks!

BETWEEN 7 P.M. & 8 P.M. & LAST THING AT NIGHT: A quick pee out front.

PLEASE BE CAREFUL OF THE PIT BULL ACROSS THE STREET AND THE BOXER BEHIND US. BOTH LOOK VERY HUNGRY WHEN WOODY IS AROUND! THANK YOU SO MUCH! xxoo

Change you Can't Believe In

Traverse City, Michigan
“Country Music, 24/7”
Cinco de Mayo Swan Dive*
It is the Fifth of May in northern Michigan – sunny, Margaritas on the beach Cinco de Mayo in San Diego terms – and I am driving to work in a blizzard. Even with the heat blasting in the Escort, I am freezing, despite the fact that I am wearing my snow-bunny-pink and black ski jacket I bought back in California for frolicking on the sunny slopes of Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
That was two moves ago.
Now I am here, white knuckling it as the car slides and slopes and thrashes about on the muddy muck that was once the dirt road we live on. The holes in the road are like potholes the car skids into and I am doing everything they warned you NEVER to do in Catholic school: dreaming of adultery with a man far, far away from here (any man); murdering my spouse; and curse-praying I don’t get stuck in one of these friggin’ mud holes as each of my neighbors have before me.
In this land of camouflage coats and rusty pick-up trucks I look like a freak with this pink coat on, driving a gold Escort. But all I want to do is make it to work alive. I have seen the neighbors in knee-deep muck trudging home for a towline and another family member who, of course, also has a pickup truck to pull their mud-splattered vehicle out of the quicksand our home has become.
How in Hell did I get here???

***

“Have I got the house for you!”
He said, and arced the car down a bumpy dirt road alongside a river.
David’s big brother Kevin – and I mean BIG and TALL - is a realtor in Traverse City, so when we finally got there I spent three nauseating hours in the backseat of his bouncy old Buick, feeding Woody luncheon meat out of the wrapper, while Kevin took us to all the properties he wanted to unload.
The first thing I saw was the homemade “STOP” sign in front of a rusty mobile home. “That’s not it, is it?” I asked nervously.
“Nah!” said Kevin. He yanked the car between two rows of Christmas trees and said, “This is it.”
The dog burped.
The driveway was long and covered with dirt. Oh, it was dirt.
I am from Long Island. I had never seen a dirt driveway before.
“Oh,” I said, when I saw the water-stained wooden shoebox at the end of the driveway.
“Oo, look. Lil’ Hell house on the Prairie,” I say.
“It has a workshop!” Kevin beamed. He pointed to the Little Tiny Hell house on the Prairie, at the end of the dirt, I mean driveway.
“That’s a shed,” I said. I know this because the neighbors next door had one when I was growing up. Rabid raccoons raised their devil babies in there.
David gave me a dirty look and said to Kevin, “How much?”
“For you, fifty grand,” Kevin said.
“We’ll take it,” David said.
Woody began to whimper.
“But – aren’t we going to see the inside?” I asked.
“C’mon,” Kevin said, jangling keys.

**
A box.
An unheated box with a woodstove: that’s what we walked into.
I had never seen a real woodstove before, unless you count Old Bethpage Village, a recreated colonial village on Long Island. We went there for field trips in grammar school, and I thought it was “cool” then. At seven I also thought my Dad was the tallest man in the world, and making brownies from a mix was “hard.”
“It’s…pretty,” I said.
“It’s our heat.” David said.
“But… isn’t there a thermostat?” I asked.
“Why, when there’s no heater?” he asked back.
WHAT.
“But-“
“Deal!” David said, and slapped Big Bro on the broad shoulder.
“ I’ll draw up the papers tonight,” Kevin said, and slapped him back. “You won’t regret it,” he said.
Really.
Can I hold you to it? Like, at gunpoint?