Sense of Adventure

It’s a deathmatch!

OK, not really. Grackles can fly. Emma Dog can’t. Those big birds better be glad.

I cleverly spilled about half a cup of Emma Emma Chow on the back porch when I brought her in. I left the interior door open because it’s warm. A minute ago I saw my big orange TJ Cat (the Pack Alpha) sitting by the back screen peering intently out. And then I noticed half a dozen or so big old grackles congregated on the red-brick back porch, obviously scarfing the spilled dog food.

TJ desperately wants to go outside. Much as I hate to thwart his heart’s desire, he doesn’t get to. One of these days when I got to PetsMart for more Emma chow I’ll have to remember to get him a kitty-sized X-harness so we can try walking. But beyond that, no.

As I frequently tell him, “Everything that lives outside would kick your ass.” Which on one level he heeds, because (despite what his Uncle Joe confessed yesterday was the way he liked to think about his boon pal Teej) TJ is not valorous. He’s incredibly smart, perceptive, loving, and perpetually solicitous of his annoying sister, Squeak, whom he raised from a mere four-week old black scrap. But valorous he ain’t.

And in truth the grackles are some big sumbitches. I wouldn’t fancy his chances if they decided not to fly away from his charge.

But as I say, TJ is not permitted to charge creatures outside, no matter how tempting they are. Or impudent.

But Emma, in charge of security for the premises as well as the pack and my person, is a different story. Although lying on her fleece on the couch she noticed impertinent birds invading her domain. So with a guttural buff she materialized at the back door, ready to go.

So I let her go. Unfortunately at her apparition the grackles went. But it gave her the chance to race around the yard and bark and in general show the world she’s a Black Sharpie who means business. So that’s all good.

Even if the grackles just sit in the trees and mock. That’s how they are.

Emma is such a good girl.

We went to the vet for the first time today. Nothing dire: when I went to Archon in September of 2004, Emma boarded with a nice woman from the shelter I got her from (which I won’t name because, although they treated Emma and me quite well, they are currently screwing over my friend Scott), who gave Emma a three-year rabies vaccine. And subsequently Em’s gotten her other annual shots when I took her to Corrales Kennel over Archon.

This year, of course, Archon happened in late July. It was too early to get her vaccinations then.

So I made an appointment for us today at Río Grande Animal Clinic with Dr. Holly Meuser. We owe Dr. Holly and the Clinic eternal gratitude because back in August of ‘05 she saved TJ and Squeak’s lives when they went into liver failure from not eating. They’re good people.

I was a bit concerned how Emma would react. She seemed a little subdued from the time we went in the door. When we got called back I warned the tech who helped us, a young woman named Alex who wasn’t all that much bigger than Em, that she’s suspicious of strangers. Aside from acting a bit reticent Emma didn’t really respond, though.

We got her weighed - they now have a rubber mat on the floor in the corridor, probably with piezoelectric sensors below, so that owners can just walk their dogs right on it. Which makes tons of sense. (So to speak.) Emma weighed in at 97.4 pounds, which amazed me. I thought she was about 85.

She did not like being in the examining room. I’m guessing she has bad memories. But again, instead of getting defensive with Alex and Dr. Holly Emma got even more subdued. I’m guessing she went into her Total Overwhelm Mode (I’m surely doomed to die a horrific death now; such is the lot of a dog.) She even refused treats offered by both Alex and the doc.

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Emma Dog and I just got back from a walk along the clear ditch by the Río Grande Nature Center. Beautiful, warm, clear autumn afternoon.

As we turned down the path back to the end of Candelaria the pumping station there, which I think gives water seeping down from the city’s storm drains its final kick to the Río Grande, belched loudly and then released this vast, gurgling slosh. It sounded … obscenely biological, but on a truly industrial scale. It put me in mind of some kind of subterranean Chinese dragon suffering a seriously liquid gastric upset.

Emma jumped right up in the air and spun around to glare in the general direction of the noise. At that moment a man emerged from the path to Candy: a skinny old gent in shorts and tennies, with RGNC badges and patches on his ball cap and vest. He resembled an extremely elderly bloodhound. I think he was one of the Bird Nerds who volunteer to answer questions from visitors.

Immediately Emma transferred her alert stare to him. Clearly she suspected he was responsible for the awful gurgle, and hence a Bad Sorcerer.

I told her to cool it. First, he probably wasn’t a Bad Sorcerer. Second, there will be no maiming of Bad Sorcerers, or anyone else, without my permission. Third, in the unlikely event he really was a Bad Sorcerer, messing with him would probably be a bad idea. If Emma and I turned up back home as field mice, the cats might get ideas.

Poor Emma. She’s my self-appointed bodyguard. She takes the job extremely seriously. And she’s totally convinced that every time we venture forth we encounter myriad lethal threats I don’t take seriously enough. (”No, sweetie, I really doubt the old lady in the wheelchair we just passed is going to whip out a MAC-10 and fire us up. You can’t hit squat with one of those things at this range, anyway.”)

Slowly I assert control over my yards, fore and aft. I’m conquering the weeds and preparing to put in some form of landscaping.

What I want is xeriscaping. Not just because it saves on water, although practically it’s a concern. I happen to think it looks cool.

What I’m not so clear on is: okay, how exactly does a xeric plant differ from a weed?

Case in point: I was surveying for a final season-ending orgy of weed-whacking when by the north front corner of the house I saw exploding from the tip of what I took to be a Noxious Weed a spectacularly beautiful blossom, with deep red-purple petals surrounding a bright yellow head.

Well, weed or not, I wasn’t purging it. It’s too dang pretty. One of the prettiest flowers I’ve seen, in fact. Moreover, as a couple days have passed, it’s been joined by similar blooms.

Driving back along Griegos from walks with Emma Dog (notice the subtle way I work her in here; she draws more traffic to the site than I do) I’ve noticed similar flowers blooming in a number of yards, some from pretty respectably-sized plants (mine are a tad on the, well, weedy side.) They’re obviously incorporated deliberately into designed xeriscapes, not just happy accidents like the ones by my house.

I looked for them in my sundry books on xeriscaping and couldn’t find them. Then I finally turned up my new copy of The New Mexico Gardener’s Guide: Revised Edition, which I stumbled upon and snapped up at Costco last month. My good pal Larry, who’s shaping up to be a pretty hotshot xeriscaper himself, gave me the original edition as a gift a couple years ago, which is excellent. This version is even better, rewritten and with these big, clear color plates.

And a couple/three pages into the listings I found myself staring right at the culprits. They’re Cosmos. Cosmos pinnatus, in polite company. Which these hardly are, to be sure.

How these beauties came to sprout in my somewhat blighted front yard is a mystery to me. But I’ll nurture them, and be sure to grow plenty of them deliberately next year.

I’ve been wondering what flowers I wanted to grow in the beds by the house and the fences. Now I know one for sure.

Indeed do many things come to pass.

Actually, it came to us of its own accord. And thereby hangs a tale of terror, appropriate to the remorseless approach of Halloween.

As recounted in my previous post, When Great Sky Demons Attack!, my Black Sharpie, Emma Dog, is terrified of hot-air balloons. She’s afraid of Round Monster Heads as it is. When they’re great big and fly and roar and breathe fire - well, how would you expect a girl to react?

Even a Tuff Chick like Emma, who is in almost all ways a most valiant defender of Daddy and Pack.

Once, walking along the lateral ditch that runs south of Montaño to the clear ditch, Emma and I encountered a stout, elderly Lab-cross dog running frantically the opposite way. Usually I’m upset by loose dogs; I’m always concerned they might get frisky with Emma, and issues ensue. In this case, no: the poor beast was puffing hard and clearly scared stumbling.

Her owner, a pleasant young lesbian (the haircut, the bulky sweatshirt - just give me this one, okay?) came trotting in hot pursuit. “She’s trying to get home before the Moon comes up,” she explained in passing. “She fears the full Moon. She thinks it’s a hot air balloon.”

At which Emma and I could only shake our heads in amusement. Emma doesn’t fear the Moon, full or not. She knows it’s just an orbiting celestial object. Whereas hot air balloons are Great Sky Demons.

Nonetheless I dared entertain the hope I might wean Emma from this particular phobia (why, I admit, I’m not sure.) Until, that is, a certain afternoon early last winter. Or perhaps the winter before.

Emma was out in the backyard. Suddenly I heard her just totally fly into pieces. This wasn’t just barking; it was nigh hysterics.

I ran out, expecting Charlie to be coming over the wire. Or at the least the back fence. Instead I beheld, floating neither high up nor far off, the familiar inverted-fruit shape of a hot air balloon.

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Actually, they haven’t much this year. Yet.

Emma Dog has always had problems with monsters with giant round heads. Not long after I got her in May of 2004 we were driving down Candelaria in Albuquerque’s North Valley to our usual walking-place, the ditch that runs along the east edge of the fields of the Rio Grande Nature Center wildfowl preserve. It was afternoon, full summer by then, and hot. And walking toward us on the far sidewalk I saw a couple of people with a parasol. Oddly, that’s something I’m not sure if I’ve even seen before here in Albuquerque, although given the stinging - and burning! - quality of our UV-rich high desert summer sun, it makes all kinda sense.

And Emma did this Jim Carrey-in-The Mask eyes-stand-out-on-springs take. She clearly perceived this apparition as a horrible four-legged megacephalic humanoid monster.

According to the best and most sense-filled book I’ve read about dogs and their bizarre longstanding relationship with a certain primate, The Other End of the Leash by Patricia McConnell, dogs don’t really grasp things like clothing and accessories. Given their limited ability to think in the abstract and eyesight that doesn’t appear very detail-oriented, they seem to perceive your putting on a hat or a bulky jacket as actually changing your body shape.

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I try to keep Emma Dog supplied with rawhide bones. She tends to get bored - I’m just not real exciting company for a dog, our walks (still not regular enough!) notwithstanding. The bones keep her entertained for hours.

The other night her Uncle Joe noted she had what he thought of as “small” rawhide bones, and suggested bigger ones would last longer, hence be more cost effective. I buy them in bags at the best discount I can get, usually when they fall off the truck and wind up on the shelf at Costco. They carried some from a brand called Healthy Hides a couple years ago that just lasted forever.

Perhaps that’s why they don’t carry them any more.

It usually takes Em a few days to chonk through one of the bones I’ve been giving her. But I thought, Hey, maybe Joe’s got a point. He is the wisest man I know, after all.

So yesterday I went to PetSmart to get her a bag o’ food, and checked the rawhide bones. And my eye lit upon the Super Colossal Dinosaur Shinbone model. Aha! I thought. That’ll hold her.

So I got it, and bestowed it on her late last night. She accepted it eagerly. Then she dropped it on the living room floor and peered at it.

“Chew your bone, sweetie,” I said.

She looked up at me like, “Dad? How?”

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The real one. Here in New Mexico the seasons usually arrive on or about the first of the month they’re supposed to start: December, March, June, and of course, September. Despite what the bureaucrats say, the feel of the air, the nature of the light, the mellowing temperatures tell the tale. And I’m not the only person who thinks this way; Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy does too.

Usually I can smell and feel the approach of autumn by about the middle of August. This year, after again having a cool start to summer, we got a late-season heat spurt that kind of hung on. There wasn’t a lot of autumn advance notice.

But today when Emma and I went for our walk it was clearly beginning to be autumn in Albuquerque’s North Valley. My favorite time of year.

We walked the ditch that runs up through Tinnin. It’s a beautiful walk year-round. The yards are mostly a combination of immaculate lawn and well-designed and maintained xeriscaping (that latter’s usually the sticking point.) The houses are mostly gorgeous and well-constructed, as I learned when I got to walk through some of them during construction years ago, courtesy of my friend Chip, who was in the business.

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