Family Pandemonium
When the family moved into that 130-year-old two-story building in Colorado where we lived (and ran a business) for nine years, there was something that we needed to buy…. a lawnmower.
Although we were in the very center of town, the building came with a small backyard. And that fenced backyard had a lawn. (It also had some big, old trees.) I like to think that I am consciously aware when it comes to the environment. Over the years I have made numerous changes to my life that directly affected my ‘footprint’ on this paradise of a planet. I always try to choose environmentally friendly options. |
And so when it came time to purchase a lawnmower I chose to buy an electric one. I had read that gas lawnmowers are terrible polluters and I was trying to ween myself from the oil and gas industry and the use of internal combustion engines. I also didn’t want to drive to the gas station to fill up a gas can with gas.
What I did not take into consideration, however, and what I did not learn until I decided to mow the lawn for the first time was that there was no electrical outlet on the back of the building. I had a brand new lawn mower and a one hundred-foot extension cord but no place to plug it in.
When we first moved into the apartment on the second floor of the building our little family consisted of me, my wife, our daughter, and our kitty cat. While the wife went to work and the daughter went to her elementary school and the cat turned our apartment into her private castle, I worked on turning the first floor of the building into a bookstore. It is something I had always dreamed of doing.
When that old building was first built back in the 1800s there was no electricity. I am not sure when electricity was added to the building but when it was there was not much added. The entire downstairs only had four electrical outlets. The bookstore needed every one of them as well as surge-protector outlet extensions for each of them. There was not a single free outlet in which to plug in the lawnmower.
Standing in the backyard looking up at the back of the building, I looked intently at one of the windows of the two-bedroom apartment upstairs. It was a tall window of the bedroom where my wife and I slept. I knew there was an electrical outlet on the wall just below that window. And that was the only electrical outlet in the entire building that was not in use.
So I took the 100-foot extension cord upstairs to my bedroom. I opened the window fully and then, with a screw driver, I made a little hole in the window screen. The hole was just big enough to fit an extension cord through. I then fed that extension cord through the little hole in the screen down to the ground and then plugged the remaining end into the electrical outlet underneath that window — which just happened to be right next to the bed where my wife and I slept.
I then went downstairs and out into the little backyard, plugged in the electric lawn mower and mowed the lawn.
What I did not take into consideration, however, and what I did not learn until I decided to mow the lawn for the first time was that there was no electrical outlet on the back of the building. I had a brand new lawn mower and a one hundred-foot extension cord but no place to plug it in.
When we first moved into the apartment on the second floor of the building our little family consisted of me, my wife, our daughter, and our kitty cat. While the wife went to work and the daughter went to her elementary school and the cat turned our apartment into her private castle, I worked on turning the first floor of the building into a bookstore. It is something I had always dreamed of doing.
When that old building was first built back in the 1800s there was no electricity. I am not sure when electricity was added to the building but when it was there was not much added. The entire downstairs only had four electrical outlets. The bookstore needed every one of them as well as surge-protector outlet extensions for each of them. There was not a single free outlet in which to plug in the lawnmower.
Standing in the backyard looking up at the back of the building, I looked intently at one of the windows of the two-bedroom apartment upstairs. It was a tall window of the bedroom where my wife and I slept. I knew there was an electrical outlet on the wall just below that window. And that was the only electrical outlet in the entire building that was not in use.
So I took the 100-foot extension cord upstairs to my bedroom. I opened the window fully and then, with a screw driver, I made a little hole in the window screen. The hole was just big enough to fit an extension cord through. I then fed that extension cord through the little hole in the screen down to the ground and then plugged the remaining end into the electrical outlet underneath that window — which just happened to be right next to the bed where my wife and I slept.
I then went downstairs and out into the little backyard, plugged in the electric lawn mower and mowed the lawn.
* * * * *
It was soon after the grand opening of the bookstore that our little family very suddenly grew. A dear old soul showed up one day and forced her way into our family. She was a wolf-dog.
Although I did not know it at the time, she was 84% Siberian Husky and 16% Gray Wolf. At the time she was almost two years old.
I was taking the trash out. I came downstairs from the apartment carrying a bag of trash. I then opened the back door of the bookstore to go out into the backyard and walk to the very back of the yard to the gate that led out to the alleyway where the trash dumpster was. I was about to take a step out the door when I stopped myself after seeing a big ball of fur on the porch just in front of the door.
The big ball of fur suddenly jumped up and unfurled itself, spinning around to face me.
My first thought was, “Holy shit! It’s a wolf!”
The wolf-dog had apparently jumped the fence into the yard and had been taking a nap right up against the back door. It was quickly wide awake and looking at me with its loving brown eyes as if to say, “Hi. It’s me. We’re finally back together again.”
There is a whole long story about how the wolf-dog came into our lives but I will leave it for another time. I am trying to tell the story of the day our entire family erupted into a state of profound pandemonium…..
Although I did not know it at the time, she was 84% Siberian Husky and 16% Gray Wolf. At the time she was almost two years old.
I was taking the trash out. I came downstairs from the apartment carrying a bag of trash. I then opened the back door of the bookstore to go out into the backyard and walk to the very back of the yard to the gate that led out to the alleyway where the trash dumpster was. I was about to take a step out the door when I stopped myself after seeing a big ball of fur on the porch just in front of the door.
The big ball of fur suddenly jumped up and unfurled itself, spinning around to face me.
My first thought was, “Holy shit! It’s a wolf!”
The wolf-dog had apparently jumped the fence into the yard and had been taking a nap right up against the back door. It was quickly wide awake and looking at me with its loving brown eyes as if to say, “Hi. It’s me. We’re finally back together again.”
There is a whole long story about how the wolf-dog came into our lives but I will leave it for another time. I am trying to tell the story of the day our entire family erupted into a state of profound pandemonium…..
* * * * *
I already had a family but what I did not realize that day is that I was being reunited with a soul-mate. That wolf-dog and I spent the next sixteen and a half years together. And by “together” I mean that we were never apart for more than an hour or two. Never. I was married to a human female at the time the wolf-dog came into my life but I consider my sixteen and a half years with the wolf-dog to also be a marriage. It turned out to be one of those special relationships that really was, ’til death us do part.’ (My marriage to the human female turned out not to be.)
The wolf-dog followed me where ever I went. She was like some kind of appendage or something. It was not long before every single morning at ten minutes until ten-o’clock in the morning (ten minutes before the bookstore opened up) she would go sit next to the door leading downstairs to the bookstore. She was more precise than any clock in the building. She was ready to go to work.
She was, without a doubt, the very best employee I ever had in that bookstore. Of course, I mostly ran that bookstore by myself. I did have one other employee — a human one — but she knew that she was always outranked by the wolf-dog.
The wolf-dog was my assistant manager and she took her job very seriously. She greeted every single customer that came in the door. She showed them into the bookstore and if the customer had a child or children with them the wolf-dog would babysit the children while the adults browsed the book selection.
Yeah, there were occasional customers who were mortified by the sight of a wolf-dog greeting them as they entered the store but those customers were few and far between and I always rushed in to assure them that all was okay. Eventually, my bookstore became known as the bookstore with the wolf-dog. We had many, many customers who came into the bookstore with a doggie treat hidden in their pocket. And we had some customers who came in only to spend some time with the wolf-dog and never looked at the books. She was a very healing wolf-dog and people were drawn to her. Some customers would come in and immediately sit on one of the benches in the store. The wolf-dog would quickly go sit on the floor next to them so that they could pet her. They would pet her and love her for fifteen or twenty minutes and they would leave utterly refreshed and happy. I was blown away by this.
The old building which the bookstore was in had no air conditioning. Way up in the mountains of Colorado we really did not need air conditioning but in the summertime I would leave the back door open in order to bring some breeze into the bookstore.
In her mind, the bookstore was the wolf-dog’s domain and she was the queen of that domain. I was the alpha male of the domain. Together, it was our domain; our sanctuary of love.
In the summer if business was slow, the wolf-dog would go sit or lay at the opened doorway leading out to the backyard. From this place she could oversee both the bookstore and the backyard. While the bookstore was her domain, the backyard was an extension of that domain. It was not just the place where she peed and pooped but it was territory that she was in charge of keeping free of squirrels and birds.
(Although she had originally jumped the fence to get into the yard she never jumped it to get out of the yard. And she was an extraordinary jumper.)
Something my beloved wolf-dog and I had in common is that we were both bird lovers…. but in a very, very different way. All my life I have been a bird freak extraordinaire. I can’t help it but I have always loved birds. Heck, my name, White Feather, is a bird-related name. My totem animal is a bird (the whooping crane) and I have had countless spiritual experiences with birds. My favorite sound in the entire world is birdsong. I love birds!
And so did my beloved wolf-dog…. except that she loved to kill them! Killing birds was one of the greatest joys of her life. It was the only point of contention between us.
I once watched her jump seven feet straight up into the air to snag a low-flying bird right out of the air. It truly blew me away to see it. Every bird that she saw was a potential trophy.
And the truly horrific part of that is that whenever she killed a bird out in the backyard during work she would then carry the dead bird in her mouth and bring it into the bookstore and up to me at my desk and lay it on the floor at my feet. She would then look up at me with her heart-melting brown eyes as if to say, “Look, I killed a bird for you!”
Once she killed a woodpecker that was the size of a full-grown chicken. She brought it into the bookstore and laid it down at my feet. Like a girl, I screamed. I could not believe how big the woodpecker was. I was sure it must be an endangered specie. But nothing I could say to my beloved wolf-dog would convince her that killing birds was not okay with me.
And this made that fateful, horrible day when full pandemonium broke out in my little family all the more cataclysmic.
The wolf-dog followed me where ever I went. She was like some kind of appendage or something. It was not long before every single morning at ten minutes until ten-o’clock in the morning (ten minutes before the bookstore opened up) she would go sit next to the door leading downstairs to the bookstore. She was more precise than any clock in the building. She was ready to go to work.
She was, without a doubt, the very best employee I ever had in that bookstore. Of course, I mostly ran that bookstore by myself. I did have one other employee — a human one — but she knew that she was always outranked by the wolf-dog.
The wolf-dog was my assistant manager and she took her job very seriously. She greeted every single customer that came in the door. She showed them into the bookstore and if the customer had a child or children with them the wolf-dog would babysit the children while the adults browsed the book selection.
Yeah, there were occasional customers who were mortified by the sight of a wolf-dog greeting them as they entered the store but those customers were few and far between and I always rushed in to assure them that all was okay. Eventually, my bookstore became known as the bookstore with the wolf-dog. We had many, many customers who came into the bookstore with a doggie treat hidden in their pocket. And we had some customers who came in only to spend some time with the wolf-dog and never looked at the books. She was a very healing wolf-dog and people were drawn to her. Some customers would come in and immediately sit on one of the benches in the store. The wolf-dog would quickly go sit on the floor next to them so that they could pet her. They would pet her and love her for fifteen or twenty minutes and they would leave utterly refreshed and happy. I was blown away by this.
The old building which the bookstore was in had no air conditioning. Way up in the mountains of Colorado we really did not need air conditioning but in the summertime I would leave the back door open in order to bring some breeze into the bookstore.
In her mind, the bookstore was the wolf-dog’s domain and she was the queen of that domain. I was the alpha male of the domain. Together, it was our domain; our sanctuary of love.
In the summer if business was slow, the wolf-dog would go sit or lay at the opened doorway leading out to the backyard. From this place she could oversee both the bookstore and the backyard. While the bookstore was her domain, the backyard was an extension of that domain. It was not just the place where she peed and pooped but it was territory that she was in charge of keeping free of squirrels and birds.
(Although she had originally jumped the fence to get into the yard she never jumped it to get out of the yard. And she was an extraordinary jumper.)
Something my beloved wolf-dog and I had in common is that we were both bird lovers…. but in a very, very different way. All my life I have been a bird freak extraordinaire. I can’t help it but I have always loved birds. Heck, my name, White Feather, is a bird-related name. My totem animal is a bird (the whooping crane) and I have had countless spiritual experiences with birds. My favorite sound in the entire world is birdsong. I love birds!
And so did my beloved wolf-dog…. except that she loved to kill them! Killing birds was one of the greatest joys of her life. It was the only point of contention between us.
I once watched her jump seven feet straight up into the air to snag a low-flying bird right out of the air. It truly blew me away to see it. Every bird that she saw was a potential trophy.
And the truly horrific part of that is that whenever she killed a bird out in the backyard during work she would then carry the dead bird in her mouth and bring it into the bookstore and up to me at my desk and lay it on the floor at my feet. She would then look up at me with her heart-melting brown eyes as if to say, “Look, I killed a bird for you!”
Once she killed a woodpecker that was the size of a full-grown chicken. She brought it into the bookstore and laid it down at my feet. Like a girl, I screamed. I could not believe how big the woodpecker was. I was sure it must be an endangered specie. But nothing I could say to my beloved wolf-dog would convince her that killing birds was not okay with me.
And this made that fateful, horrible day when full pandemonium broke out in my little family all the more cataclysmic.
* * * * *
By the “end days” of the bookstore my daughter was no longer a little girl. Through unavoidable human alchemy she had turned into a teenager. It is an inevitable transformation every father must face.
One of the things I am most happy about in regards to “raising” my daughter is that, even though she was an only child, she had two sisters to grow up with; the kitty cat and the wolf-dog. As a beta-female to my alpha maleness, my beloved wolf-dog considered my wife, my daughter and our kitty cat as the wolf-clan that she was duty-bound to serve and protect. The customers in the bookstore were an extension of that clan.
She took her job as beta-female very seriously. In wolf society, the beta-female is the babysitter. They take care of the children and they serve the alpha male and the head beta-females (and any alpha females if there are any) and they will give their lives to protect the clan. When the males and alpha females of a wolf pack go out to hunt it is the beta females who stay in the den to take care of the young ones.
My beloved wolf-dog saw it as her role to help me raise my daughter, as well as to “raise” the cat, and to help in any way the head beta-female (my wife) as well as to love and protect any friends of the family (or customers of the bookstore). It was her job, embedded in her DNA, and she never questioned it.
I felt profoundly secure in knowing that my beloved wolf-dog would do anything to help and love and protect my teenager. And to my delight, my teenager and my beloved wolf-dog were extremely close. They really were like sisters.
And then came that aforementioned day of pandemonium. My beloved wolf-dog and I were working in the bookstore when my wife and teenager came home. They parked in the back and came through the backyard into the bookstore, said hello, then went up the stairs to the apartment above.
My beloved wolf-dog did not even bother clocking out or saying good-bye. She just immediately followed the teenager up the stairs. (Whenever she ‘followed’ someone up the stairs she always ended up at the top of the stairs first.)
That was okay. The bookstore was scheduled to close just twenty minutes later. After I closed the store and turned everything off I went up those stairs. When I opened the door to the apartment is when I stepped into an unbelievable pandemonium….
One of the things I am most happy about in regards to “raising” my daughter is that, even though she was an only child, she had two sisters to grow up with; the kitty cat and the wolf-dog. As a beta-female to my alpha maleness, my beloved wolf-dog considered my wife, my daughter and our kitty cat as the wolf-clan that she was duty-bound to serve and protect. The customers in the bookstore were an extension of that clan.
She took her job as beta-female very seriously. In wolf society, the beta-female is the babysitter. They take care of the children and they serve the alpha male and the head beta-females (and any alpha females if there are any) and they will give their lives to protect the clan. When the males and alpha females of a wolf pack go out to hunt it is the beta females who stay in the den to take care of the young ones.
My beloved wolf-dog saw it as her role to help me raise my daughter, as well as to “raise” the cat, and to help in any way the head beta-female (my wife) as well as to love and protect any friends of the family (or customers of the bookstore). It was her job, embedded in her DNA, and she never questioned it.
I felt profoundly secure in knowing that my beloved wolf-dog would do anything to help and love and protect my teenager. And to my delight, my teenager and my beloved wolf-dog were extremely close. They really were like sisters.
And then came that aforementioned day of pandemonium. My beloved wolf-dog and I were working in the bookstore when my wife and teenager came home. They parked in the back and came through the backyard into the bookstore, said hello, then went up the stairs to the apartment above.
My beloved wolf-dog did not even bother clocking out or saying good-bye. She just immediately followed the teenager up the stairs. (Whenever she ‘followed’ someone up the stairs she always ended up at the top of the stairs first.)
That was okay. The bookstore was scheduled to close just twenty minutes later. After I closed the store and turned everything off I went up those stairs. When I opened the door to the apartment is when I stepped into an unbelievable pandemonium….
* * * * *
It turned out that my beloved wolf-dog and I were not the only bird-lovers in the family. It turned out that the kitty cat was also an avid bird-lover.
Like any other normal kitty cat, our kitty cat liked to spend hours sitting on window sills watching birds. One of her favorite window sills to sit on and watch birds was the one right next to my bed. There was an old giant tree just outside that window that was often filled with birds. It was the window which had the little, tiny hole in the screen through which the extension cord for the lawn mower went down to the backyard.
Well, after eight or nine years that little tiny hole was not so tiny anymore. Inexplicably, through the years the hole had slowly grown larger. The extension chord was still the same size but the hole in the screen had grown big enough for a kitty cat to reach its paw out of and snag a little birdie that might be sitting on the branch of the giant tree that grew right up alongside the old building. When the wind blew, one of those tree branches would bang up against the window screen.
Well, there was no wind that day. Not even a breeze. I can only guess how long the kitty cat sat on the window sill waiting for a bird to land on that branch next to the window.
And then one finally did. The kitty cat reached her paw out the hole in the screen through which the extension cord passed and she snagged that little birdie and she pulled it into the apartment!
I came into the apartment into a scene of utter pandemonium. Walking into the living room I saw the teenager sitting on the couch with her feet up off the floor and her arms around her legs. I then saw my wife walking around in scattered directions, her arms flailing and a flyswatter in one hand. She looked at me and yelled, “What the hell are we going to do?”
I should point out that the upstairs apartment had fourteen-foot ceilings. That is one of the things I loved about it. All the doors between rooms had transoms above them and after moving in I had taken all the windows out of the transoms in order to open up the rooms and the air flow between rooms. I loved open areas and had wanted to take the doors between rooms off their hinges to create a door-less living environment. The wife and teenager vetoed that idea, though. It was all about privacy. The bathroom needed a door for privacy, the teenager needed privacy to her bedroom, and when the wife and I made love we also needed a door to close.
And that is when I realized that there was a bird flying around our apartment. I am not just a bird freak but I am also a plant freak. With those fourteen-foot ceilings our apartment was like a jungle. I had several trees growing in our apartment, including an eight-foot tall lemon tree and numerous ficus trees, as well as stephanotis vines growing in the window wells and all over the walls. And there was ivy growing everywhere and plants sitting in the empty transoms above the open doorways.
I then spotted the bird sitting on a top branch of the lemon tree. “Oh, what a beautiful bird!” I exclaimed.
The teenager looked at me and said, “I think it’s some kind of chickadee.”
I laughed. “Some kind of chickadee,” was a private joke between my daughter and me that related to a recent geography test that she had taken with which I had helped her. It was a test about state capitals and state birds. (Several different kinds of chickadees are the state birds of several different states.) Looking more closely at the bird I realized that it was indeed a chickadee.
The wife yelled out, “This bird is driving the animals crazy!”
I then realized that the wolf-dog and the kitty cat were at the base of the lemon tree looking up longingly at the chickadee inside their domain. The bird then flew from the top of the lemon tree to the top of a ficus tree on the other side of the room. The wolf-dog and the kitty cat were immediately at the base of the ficus tree looking up at the bird, drooling in hopes of catching it. I was suddenly very fearful for the little birdie.
The wolf-dog then stood on her hind legs, placing her fronts paws on the edge of the pot that held the ficus tree. Suddenly, the pot in which the ficus tree lived came flying off the table it sat on and crashed on the floor. The pot broke into a millions pieces and potting soil scattered all over the carpet.
The bird flew off the ficus tree before it fell and it flew to a transom above the entrance between the living room and the hallway. On that transom I had placed a little wicker basket full of seashells. Somehow, the little chickadee managed to knock the basket off the transom and suddenly the hallway was covered with little broken seashells.
The bird then flew into our bedroom. The wolf-dog and the kitty cat immediately followed it in there. Then the bird flew into the bathroom and the wolf-dog and kitty cat followed it in there. The birdie flew into the teenager’s room and then into the kitchen and then back out into the living room. The wolf-dog and kitty cat followed it at break-neck speed where ever it flew, knocking over what ever was in their way.
It was like I had opened the door to the apartment and invited a tornado inside.
Plants were falling, bric-a-brac was crashing to the floor, and our apartment had become a scene of utter pandemonium. The wife was screaming and foolishly waving the fly-swatter. I stood watching it all in utter disbelief.
Finally, the teenager yelled out, “Dad, do something!”
Ah, my queen! Her voice is my command.
While the wolf-dog and the kitty cat were running through the apartment like they were in the movie, Jumanji, on acid, I took a deep breath and then commenced to remedy the horrific situation. I managed to scoop up the kitty cat and I took her into the bathroom and closed the door. Then I rounded up the wolf-dog and took her into the bedroom and closed the door. Sure, because of the open transoms the bird could still fly where ever it wanted but the two animals were trapped in their respective rooms.
I then opened the door leading into the stairwell that led downstairs. I then went downstairs and opened the door leading out to the backyard (and the freshly mowed lawn).
Coming back upstairs I then focused my attention on the little chickadee. As I watched it fly around the apartment I thought about how cool it would be to have a bird living with us. Heck, our apartment was like a jungle. It would be perfect.
Except, of course, for the wolf-dog and the kitty cat.
I grabbed a broom. Between my broom and my wife’s fly-swatter we finally managed to get the cute birdie to fly into the stairwell leading downstairs.
It took us almost an hour!
I went into the stairwell and closed the apartment door behind me. I was hoping it would not take me another hour to get the bird out of the bookstore and into the freedom of the backyard. Luckily, it only took me about ten minutes. I closed the back door and headed back up to the apartment.
Once in the apartment I realized that the wolf-dog and the kitty cat had been freed from their respective rooms of containment and they were now running around the apartment with the same fervor as before as they tried to find the bird. They ran around like crazy looking for that damn bird.
In the living room, my wife was picking up pieces of broken pottery and seashells and bric-a-brac and the teenager was still sitting on the couch with her legs up and her arms around her legs.
She turned and looked at me and asked, “So what’s for dinner?”
Teenagers.
(Notice she asked me and not her mother.)
“I’ll figure something out and I’ll make it quick.”
As animals continued to stampede through the apartment, Jumanji-style, the teenager calmly asked, “We rented a movie. Should we go ahead and start it?”
“Yeah, go ahead. I can miss the previews. I know it’s late.”
I went into the kitchen knowing that I had a strange family to feed. The wife and teenager could wait. I knew that I had to first feed the animals. It was the only way they would finally calm down.
I have no memory of what I cooked for dinner but I know that it was a quick fix. I brought their dinners out to my wife and teenager and then I went back to get mine. The movie was well underway when I finally sat down with my dinner. I have no memory of what that movie was.
As the credits at the end of movie began rolling I clicked it off and looked at the couch. The teenager was sound asleep and the wife’s head was rolling as she teetered at the edge of sleep. The wolf-dog and the kitty cat were sound asleep in the middle of the living room floor. As they so often did, they were spooning. So often they slept together like that.
I took my dinner tray into the kitchen and then went to the door leading downstairs. The wolf-dog was suddenly right there. She knew the drill.
I took her downstairs and then outside into the backyard so that she could do her business. While the wolf-dog fertilized the lawn I stared up at the moon. And I thought about what a wonderful life I had.
Back upstairs, I stuck my head into the teenager’s room and said, “Nighty-night.”
This was greeted by a soft moan. Gone were the days when I would tuck her into bed, read her a bedtime story then softly kiss her good night.
After finishing my nightly ablutions I turned off lights and then got into bed. Before getting comfortable I closed that bedroom window with the hole and extension cord running through it. I left it open only an inch or two; too narrow for the kitty cat to get her greedy paws out that hole in the screen to grab another bird. I promised myself to fix that hole in the morning.
All that pandemonium just because of a damn extension cord!
I then got comfortable in the bed, lying on my back. My half-asleep wife rolled over and put her face on my shoulder. I then dropped my right hand off the side of the bed. My beloved wolf-dog immediately licked that hand and I then petted her head. She always slept on the floor just off to the side of the bed where I slept. It wasn’t always the best place to sleep when I had to wake up in the middle of the night to pee but that is where she slept and nothing was going to change that.
I then tilted my head up to look out that window next to the bed that was at the root of the evening’s pandemonium. I saw the crescent moon up in the night sky and I smiled. I then thanked God for my wonderful animal/human family.
And then something crash-landed right on my belly. It was the kitty cat. She then walked up my body and then made her self comfortable atop my chest. She dug her claws into my chest ever so slightly. It was her way of saying good night. She got comfortable then she licked herself for a while. I scratched her ears and petted her. I loved her so much. I have no recollection of which of us fell asleep first. We were both exhausted from all the pandemonium.
Like any other normal kitty cat, our kitty cat liked to spend hours sitting on window sills watching birds. One of her favorite window sills to sit on and watch birds was the one right next to my bed. There was an old giant tree just outside that window that was often filled with birds. It was the window which had the little, tiny hole in the screen through which the extension cord for the lawn mower went down to the backyard.
Well, after eight or nine years that little tiny hole was not so tiny anymore. Inexplicably, through the years the hole had slowly grown larger. The extension chord was still the same size but the hole in the screen had grown big enough for a kitty cat to reach its paw out of and snag a little birdie that might be sitting on the branch of the giant tree that grew right up alongside the old building. When the wind blew, one of those tree branches would bang up against the window screen.
Well, there was no wind that day. Not even a breeze. I can only guess how long the kitty cat sat on the window sill waiting for a bird to land on that branch next to the window.
And then one finally did. The kitty cat reached her paw out the hole in the screen through which the extension cord passed and she snagged that little birdie and she pulled it into the apartment!
I came into the apartment into a scene of utter pandemonium. Walking into the living room I saw the teenager sitting on the couch with her feet up off the floor and her arms around her legs. I then saw my wife walking around in scattered directions, her arms flailing and a flyswatter in one hand. She looked at me and yelled, “What the hell are we going to do?”
I should point out that the upstairs apartment had fourteen-foot ceilings. That is one of the things I loved about it. All the doors between rooms had transoms above them and after moving in I had taken all the windows out of the transoms in order to open up the rooms and the air flow between rooms. I loved open areas and had wanted to take the doors between rooms off their hinges to create a door-less living environment. The wife and teenager vetoed that idea, though. It was all about privacy. The bathroom needed a door for privacy, the teenager needed privacy to her bedroom, and when the wife and I made love we also needed a door to close.
And that is when I realized that there was a bird flying around our apartment. I am not just a bird freak but I am also a plant freak. With those fourteen-foot ceilings our apartment was like a jungle. I had several trees growing in our apartment, including an eight-foot tall lemon tree and numerous ficus trees, as well as stephanotis vines growing in the window wells and all over the walls. And there was ivy growing everywhere and plants sitting in the empty transoms above the open doorways.
I then spotted the bird sitting on a top branch of the lemon tree. “Oh, what a beautiful bird!” I exclaimed.
The teenager looked at me and said, “I think it’s some kind of chickadee.”
I laughed. “Some kind of chickadee,” was a private joke between my daughter and me that related to a recent geography test that she had taken with which I had helped her. It was a test about state capitals and state birds. (Several different kinds of chickadees are the state birds of several different states.) Looking more closely at the bird I realized that it was indeed a chickadee.
The wife yelled out, “This bird is driving the animals crazy!”
I then realized that the wolf-dog and the kitty cat were at the base of the lemon tree looking up longingly at the chickadee inside their domain. The bird then flew from the top of the lemon tree to the top of a ficus tree on the other side of the room. The wolf-dog and the kitty cat were immediately at the base of the ficus tree looking up at the bird, drooling in hopes of catching it. I was suddenly very fearful for the little birdie.
The wolf-dog then stood on her hind legs, placing her fronts paws on the edge of the pot that held the ficus tree. Suddenly, the pot in which the ficus tree lived came flying off the table it sat on and crashed on the floor. The pot broke into a millions pieces and potting soil scattered all over the carpet.
The bird flew off the ficus tree before it fell and it flew to a transom above the entrance between the living room and the hallway. On that transom I had placed a little wicker basket full of seashells. Somehow, the little chickadee managed to knock the basket off the transom and suddenly the hallway was covered with little broken seashells.
The bird then flew into our bedroom. The wolf-dog and the kitty cat immediately followed it in there. Then the bird flew into the bathroom and the wolf-dog and kitty cat followed it in there. The birdie flew into the teenager’s room and then into the kitchen and then back out into the living room. The wolf-dog and kitty cat followed it at break-neck speed where ever it flew, knocking over what ever was in their way.
It was like I had opened the door to the apartment and invited a tornado inside.
Plants were falling, bric-a-brac was crashing to the floor, and our apartment had become a scene of utter pandemonium. The wife was screaming and foolishly waving the fly-swatter. I stood watching it all in utter disbelief.
Finally, the teenager yelled out, “Dad, do something!”
Ah, my queen! Her voice is my command.
While the wolf-dog and the kitty cat were running through the apartment like they were in the movie, Jumanji, on acid, I took a deep breath and then commenced to remedy the horrific situation. I managed to scoop up the kitty cat and I took her into the bathroom and closed the door. Then I rounded up the wolf-dog and took her into the bedroom and closed the door. Sure, because of the open transoms the bird could still fly where ever it wanted but the two animals were trapped in their respective rooms.
I then opened the door leading into the stairwell that led downstairs. I then went downstairs and opened the door leading out to the backyard (and the freshly mowed lawn).
Coming back upstairs I then focused my attention on the little chickadee. As I watched it fly around the apartment I thought about how cool it would be to have a bird living with us. Heck, our apartment was like a jungle. It would be perfect.
Except, of course, for the wolf-dog and the kitty cat.
I grabbed a broom. Between my broom and my wife’s fly-swatter we finally managed to get the cute birdie to fly into the stairwell leading downstairs.
It took us almost an hour!
I went into the stairwell and closed the apartment door behind me. I was hoping it would not take me another hour to get the bird out of the bookstore and into the freedom of the backyard. Luckily, it only took me about ten minutes. I closed the back door and headed back up to the apartment.
Once in the apartment I realized that the wolf-dog and the kitty cat had been freed from their respective rooms of containment and they were now running around the apartment with the same fervor as before as they tried to find the bird. They ran around like crazy looking for that damn bird.
In the living room, my wife was picking up pieces of broken pottery and seashells and bric-a-brac and the teenager was still sitting on the couch with her legs up and her arms around her legs.
She turned and looked at me and asked, “So what’s for dinner?”
Teenagers.
(Notice she asked me and not her mother.)
“I’ll figure something out and I’ll make it quick.”
As animals continued to stampede through the apartment, Jumanji-style, the teenager calmly asked, “We rented a movie. Should we go ahead and start it?”
“Yeah, go ahead. I can miss the previews. I know it’s late.”
I went into the kitchen knowing that I had a strange family to feed. The wife and teenager could wait. I knew that I had to first feed the animals. It was the only way they would finally calm down.
I have no memory of what I cooked for dinner but I know that it was a quick fix. I brought their dinners out to my wife and teenager and then I went back to get mine. The movie was well underway when I finally sat down with my dinner. I have no memory of what that movie was.
As the credits at the end of movie began rolling I clicked it off and looked at the couch. The teenager was sound asleep and the wife’s head was rolling as she teetered at the edge of sleep. The wolf-dog and the kitty cat were sound asleep in the middle of the living room floor. As they so often did, they were spooning. So often they slept together like that.
I took my dinner tray into the kitchen and then went to the door leading downstairs. The wolf-dog was suddenly right there. She knew the drill.
I took her downstairs and then outside into the backyard so that she could do her business. While the wolf-dog fertilized the lawn I stared up at the moon. And I thought about what a wonderful life I had.
Back upstairs, I stuck my head into the teenager’s room and said, “Nighty-night.”
This was greeted by a soft moan. Gone were the days when I would tuck her into bed, read her a bedtime story then softly kiss her good night.
After finishing my nightly ablutions I turned off lights and then got into bed. Before getting comfortable I closed that bedroom window with the hole and extension cord running through it. I left it open only an inch or two; too narrow for the kitty cat to get her greedy paws out that hole in the screen to grab another bird. I promised myself to fix that hole in the morning.
All that pandemonium just because of a damn extension cord!
I then got comfortable in the bed, lying on my back. My half-asleep wife rolled over and put her face on my shoulder. I then dropped my right hand off the side of the bed. My beloved wolf-dog immediately licked that hand and I then petted her head. She always slept on the floor just off to the side of the bed where I slept. It wasn’t always the best place to sleep when I had to wake up in the middle of the night to pee but that is where she slept and nothing was going to change that.
I then tilted my head up to look out that window next to the bed that was at the root of the evening’s pandemonium. I saw the crescent moon up in the night sky and I smiled. I then thanked God for my wonderful animal/human family.
And then something crash-landed right on my belly. It was the kitty cat. She then walked up my body and then made her self comfortable atop my chest. She dug her claws into my chest ever so slightly. It was her way of saying good night. She got comfortable then she licked herself for a while. I scratched her ears and petted her. I loved her so much. I have no recollection of which of us fell asleep first. We were both exhausted from all the pandemonium.
* * * * *
Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved.