I posted the next three paragraphs on Facebook the other day. I have had a few nights since to think of more dumb things I have done to that poor innocent child.
Button, button, who's got the button
Why is it that when you are desperately trying to go to sleep, your brain remembers all the stupid things you have said and done. Of course, like Charlie Brown, in my case it takes more than one night.
When Bronwyn was a toddler, we were visiting her Grandma L and she found a small button. Her mother said "Don't put that in your mouth". I said so her mother wouldn't hear, "No, stick it up your nose".
Apparently small children have no sense of sarcasm. The upside was I learned in ER how to immobilize a child sitting on your lap.
Bronwyn loved the Jolly Jumper we had firmly anchored in the ceiling. She had a three foot circle of pounded barf in the shag rug. One day she stood on a needle and it broke in her foot. We hauled her the 100 km from Cumberland House to the doctor in Nipawin. We should have gone to the vet. He gave her 10 mg Valiuminstead of 5 mg (child dose) to put her out while he removed the broken needle.
The doctor warned us to be careful when she was waking up as she would react to sounds in strange ways. So I quietly went Aroo, arroo in her ear. Sure enough when she woke up she howled like a dog for several minutes. Cool. Her mother who didn't know of my experiment said she must have heard the dogs howling. I agreed, sure that must be it.
Another time, on that same road to Nipawin from CumberlandHouse, to entertain her, I "stole her nose" and then "put it back". Then I threw her "nose" out the window. Not smart. I had to stop the car, turn around and go back and get it before she would stop crying. Her mother was not impressed.
December 31, 1979, Kindersley this time. She was 3 and a half. Put her to bed late, wished her Happy New Year, kissed her goodnight and said, "This is the last kiss you get from me this year". Ooooh, yeah. You can imagine. That took a while to work down to a dull sniffle. Her mother was even less pleased.
But in spite of my best parenting efforts she turned out marvelously well. And by the time the fourth one comes along you realize if you just leave them along and feed them once in a while they turn out well anyhow.
In keeping with my last two posts and at the suggestion of my friend and colleague Blair, here for your listening pleasure is Uncle Walter Goes Waltzing with Bears. I think the song is about my friend Ed, though he only goes running with bears.
My friend, Ed, grew up on a farm north of Meadow lake, on
the far northern edge of farmable land, up against the northern Saskatchewan
bush country. He claims the next farm due north of theirs speaks Russian. It is
also black bear country. Ed is a marathon runner and rans at least 10 km every
day from when he was young. He said the wolves and bears got o know him and
ignored him. Even today when he goes for a visit, he runs and it is nothing for
him to see wolf packs in the bush along the road and several bears. He has had
to slow down a few times because a mother and cubs were on the road ahead of
him.
It was Ed got me interested in learning more about bears.
He does not consider black bears dangerous. He says if you leave them alone,
they leave you alone. His sister has comfortably picked berries in the same
bush as a bear was feeding on them. Cartoons and ignorance have given bears a
bad name.
If you run across a bear or
find one in your yard, advice is to stand and face the bear directly. Slowly back away while keeping the bear in sight and wait for it to leave. Never
run away from or approach him. Make yourself look as big as possible by
spreading your arms or, better yet, a coat. Make as much noise as possible by yelling, banging pots and
pans or using other noisemaking devices. If the bear does not leave, throw objects, wave your arms and make noise with a whistle or air horn. Prepare to
use bear spray. If you are near a building or vehicle get inside as a precaution.
I have ‘Liked’ several bear pages on Facebook which is
where I get the pictures I share. And where I have learned a great deal more
about them. Pages include: Cool stuff by 8 Bears Forever, We Love Bears,
Yellowstone Bears, Bear with Us – Centre for bear rehabilitation, education,
sanctuary, and Bear Creek Exotic Wildlife Sanctuary. There are lots more if you
look. Several of them post useful background information about bears,
especially the sanctuary and rehab places.
Black bear cubs become orphaned when they are separated from their
mother or when their mother is killed. In most cases it´s illegal to kill a
female bear with cubs. But is happens again and again because it´s very
difficult to see the different between a female and a male. Mother bears send
their cubs often on top of trees, when they search for food or when they feel
danger. A single bear does not mean that the bear has no cubs around. Mother
bears are killed because of human threats. Infrastructures like streets and
trains, illegal poaching, regulated and unregulated hunting and human-animal
conflicts separate and kill bear mothers.
Humanity is growing, and so the space they need grows too. Habitat
fragmentation (agriculture), less habitat to live and the decreasing of
resources drives bears closer to humans and they go on properties and into
cities to find food (for example: garbage, bird-food). As a result,
human-animal conflicts occur. Bears are killed or rehomed. The cubs stay
behind.
Honey farms and bee yards are a major source of human-bear
conflict. Bears love honey as Winnie the Pooh will tell you. Saskatchewan’s
honey industry is canola based and canola is grown in the Parkland area which
is home to many black bears as there is good bush cover closely available.Most beekeepers fence their
bee yards with three strand electric fence to keep the bears out. The bears
have to be trained to the fence, so they know it hurts. Hanging open sardine
cans from the top wire will entice the bear to touch the fence. One touch and
they are trained not to do that again. If the bear is not trained, it might
just run through the fence before it feels anything and then they are a danger
to other bee yards. It is legal to shoot bears within one mile of a bee yard.
I have only seen a bear with cubs once years ago at Fort
Carlton with a Grade Seven class on a camping trip. The bears ambled along the
river bank a few hundred meters from our tents. We were thrilled and also
worried as we didn’t know that the mother would not charge us for no reason, so
the kids stayed close to the campsite.
Current Black Bear Range in North America
This mother bear has a litter of five cubs
The cubs as yearlings
Triplet cubs
Quads litters occur more frequently in Black Bears
than Grizzlies judging from the number of photos posted anyway
Grizzly 399 is a very famous female bear from the Grand Teton National Park located in Wyoming, south of Yellowstone. She was well known in the area but came to international attention by NOT killing a high school science teacher who accidentally spooked her and her three cubs back on 2007. She charged him, he tripped, and she planted one front foot on his back and bit him in the butt twice as a warning. He was rescued before she did any more damage but he said it was his fault not hers.
Because of this encounter, millions of people stated coming to the park. 399 is comfortable in the developed area and so is easier to sight along the highway. She carefully teaches her cubs to navigate traffic as the highway to date has no animal overpass as does Banff. This has created many a traffic jam requiring Park Ranger assistance to sort out as people stop their cars and jump out to get pictures.
In the spring of 2020, at the age of 24 years, she emerged from her winter den with quadruplets a very rare occurrence with Grizzlies. And then took them down south of the Park to Jackson Hole, a deep mountain valley and noted ski resort, for the summer. There was a great sigh of relief when the five of them showed up in late December back in the Park and headed for their winter den. Sometime this fall she will abandon them to their own devices having raised them and taught them as much as she can. She will den up for the winter and if a miracle happens, become pregnant again next season and have a new litter in January 2023.
This article:https://www.grizzlytimes.org/single-post/2020/06/04/grizzly-miracle-grand-teton-s-399-emerges-with-quadruplets. provides more information about her and her four cubs as well as the dangers bears face both in the Park and especially outside the Park where they are viewed by Wyoming Game and Fish (WGF) as a nuisance. of the Grizzlies which die every year, 80% are shot by hunters or officials. 399 has had six litters of which three were triplets and this last one quads. But only one of her daughters, 610, has successfully raised a litter.
We had to put Volk down today. He had congestive heart failure and was not going to recover. He was 13 years old and until the last week was still going strong. Maybe a bit slower but on our 4 km walks he sniffed and peed as good as any young dog. Then he quit eating and because the weather was so cold, we brought him inside. His breathing was fast and shallow. I'd take him out to do his business and he was mad we were not going for a walk. Then three days ago he collapsed and I had to carry him home.
After that I would carry him out and back. Last evening he couldn't do that. We'd had the vet out to look at him and put him on antibiotics, diuretics and heart pills but it was too late. So today we said it is time. Never an easy call. Volk was one tough bird; he fought to stand and walk to the bitter end.
Volk and Bobik at 2 months of age
Volk was born of purebred Fox Terrier parents which belonged to Tanya's friends in P'yatikhatki. They had two males left, so in March of 2008, we bought them for the princely sum of 1 Hrivna each (to make it "legal"). I named the dark one Volk (wolf) and Tanya named the lighter one Bobik (mutt). They were outdoor dogs from day one and had lots of fun as puppies, play fighting with each other and hunting in the grass and reeds as we went for walks. I loved walking the two dogs on or off leash. We had fun.
Age 6 years
They were hunters and had no interest in toys. Throw a stick and they look at you like you are missing marbles. Chickens and cats were fun to chase when they were pups and couldn't catch them. It wasn't fun anymore when they started catching them and Volk was the terror of neighbourhood cats all his life.
Play fighting got serious when they matured. They were evenly matched so there was no top dog. They should have been neutered but were not. Not my idea. They were jealous of each other and fought to kill at the drop of a pat on the other dog. Once they were separated and cooled off they licked each other's wounds.
In spring and fall we tried to keep them locked up but they were escape artists. They would disappear three days at a time and one or the other would eventually come home beaten to a bloody pulp. They would tag team other males in the neighbourhood but then would turn on each other. Bobik was a climber and it cost him. In 2014 while I was in Canada, he was climbing over a 1.8 meter fence to meet his girl friend. Once too often. He slipped and caught his collar. I still miss him.
Kashtanka
To prevent Volk from getting lonely we adopted a stray red female which we named Kashtanka (little chestnut) and had her neutered. The three of us went on many walks. I had to keep her on a leash as she chased people on bicycles. Kashtanka died in February 2020 from a tick borne blood parasite Which is particular to Europe. The winter was so warm that the ticks never died off. We had no idea. By the time we realized how sick she was it was too late. We have since been treating our dogs for ticks every month. Volk sat by the gate and cried for a month after she died. Today I let Lucky see and sniff Volk's body so he would know that Volk was gone and not go looking for him or cry waiting for him to come back.
A couple months after we lost Kashtanka, Volk was diagnosed with heart-worm. So we treated him for that all summer and he recovered totally. Like I said, he is one tough bird. He was getting cataracts but could still spot a cat crossing the road at 100 meters. We think he was getting deaf but he always listened like a two-year old kid so it was hard to tell.
Lucky, about 1 year
Lucky joined us in October 2019 as a starving 6 week old puppy in very poor health. We nursed him back to health and after Kashtanka died we put him in the dog yard with Volk. Lucky wanted to play and Volk was old and cranky. They got on fine. I would walk them five km per day five days a week. Tanya would feed them and play with Lucky to make sure he ate as Volk would try to keep Lucky away from both food dishes. Lucky loves to play with toys. He will come when he is called (Volk NEVER did) and will sit when Tanya tells him to. She feeds him, he obeys her. Me too.
Volk would occasionally tune Lucky in, even though Lucky was twice his size. And Lucky would not eat unless Tanya was there to keep Volk away. Then Lucky got jealous of Volk and would attack him savagely. Volk never backed down and every fight looked like one for the ages but...they NEVER drew blood. No serious biting, just serious sounds. Regardless, it was still not something we encouraged, I can tell you.
Tanya made winter coats for the dogs out of people vests. Much cheaper than buying doggy coats in the pets stores. We took them off on warm days and put them on when the nights were below freezing. They had a dog house, inside a room in our outbuilding but she worried. And we were never sure if Volk let Lucky sleep in the doghouse. So when the weather got really cold last week, we brought Lucky into the back porch. A few days later was when we brought Volk inside and when his heart gave out. The three of us had our last 4 km walk together about a week ago. I did not ever think it would be our last.
Goodbye my friend and companion. I hope you meet up with Bobik and Kashtanka in Heaven where all good dogs go. and may there be lots of cats and chickens to chase but never catch.
Some things strike me funny. Actually most things but I shouldn't admit that.
After Wednesday's Bay of Pigs, people are resigning and running as fast as they can. The rats are leaving the ship they helped to sink. "Trump? I hardly knew him. I think I met him once. Just a low level subordinate who brought us coffee sometimes".
And people like Cruz and Hawley and of course, Trump, saying, "We had nothing to do with the invasion of the US Capitol Building".
Yeah, right. It reminds me of a story. Actually everything reminds me of a story but anyhow...yes, I've told it before. I can do that. I am old.
Business was so good in Madame Lucretia's Bordello that she decided to build on and double it in size and uh, seating capacity. Construction was proceeding rapidly and the Church across the street was mortified. They prayed long, loudly, and publicly that God would prevent the construction and indeed destroy the building.
Wouldn't you know it, during a hot summer's night, lightning struck the Bordello and burned the place to the ground. Madame Lucretia sued the Church for destroying her business. The congregation defended itself by saying that in no way were they responsible.
The judge found himself in an awkward position. As he said, "On one hand we have the owner of a brothel fervently believing in the power of prayer and on the other hand we have a Church claiming it is all bullshit".
And so 2020 comes to an end, not with a bang but a whimper, as the poet wrote. There has not been a year like this since the Spanish flu (more rightly called the Kansas flu, as that is where it originated) over 100 years ago. And this pandemic is not done yet.
Modern medicine and safety precautions such as have been observed have prevented a large death loss from becoming overwhelming. Experience and new technology permitted the development of several vaccines in a miraculously short time but it will take at least this year and a gigantic logistical effort before billions of people receive it and the virus disappears. If it does. I am curious how the people who don't believe in evolution can explain the mutation of viruses (or bacteria, for that matter).
Governments that can, are or ought to be, economically supporting individuals and small businesses affected by the pandemic, while they do everything in their power to bring the disease under control. There is no choice between controlling the pandemic and saving the economy. People ARE the economy.
So Tanya and I are alone this New Year's Eve. Lina was here briefly yesterday afternoon, picking up food and dropping off my Christmas gift from Tanya, a lovely painting done by a local professional artist whose husband does the engraving on granite tombstones for Xaron company where Lina works. I grabbed a very quick hug. Tania stopped in last evening to pick up food and drop off empties. First we had seen either of them for weeks.
I hung it over my office desk
There are people all over the Earth for whom this will not be a happy new year and those of us whose lives even approach some sort of stability need to remember them and help those you can.
So I wish all of my readers a safe and healthy New Year.
