Day: September 5, 2024

The Nanny Birds

/ animar64 / 12 Comments

RDP Thursday: AGENCY

ARTIST UNKNOWN

When my dog was a puppy and we started to take longer walks I would reward him with little dog treats for his ‘pop quiz’ training moments.

The treats were about the size of an eraser on a pencil so you could load your dog up and not really worry about over feeding them- a small bag used to last us forever so I always had them on me.

One day I noticed that a crow seemed to always be sitting on a fence post when we walked by, so I took that as a teachable moment for Hamish and I used work on Hamish’s ‘forward’ command.

When I tell Hamish to come forward, it’s NOT  like when you tell your dog to come and they sort of run up to you .

Hamish has to come forward and sit right in front of me- he can’t stand in front of me, he isn’t suppose to go to my side. He was to come forward and sit right in front of me. When he’s there and properly placed, he can’t look around or fidget. He has to sit forward with his eyes on my face and if Mount Rainer blows it’s top it doesn’t matter. he can’t move a muscle.

Hamish is really good at that command because we’ve worked at it under a lot of different scenarios- case in point.

The crow on the fence.

The crow would watch Hamish not pay attention to him and if you thought the Crow might do things to break Hamish’s concentration, he didn’t.

When I would release Hamish I would start our walk and I gave him  a treat. I started to leave one for the crow too.

Photo of Hamish Macbeth by A.M. Moscoso

Hamish executing his forward command.

The crow and his friends started to show up on me and Hamish’s walks. They would sort of put themselves in his line of vision and he always let them be. I think his behavior amused them. I would give Hamish his good boy treats and I left a few ,  not many,  for his crows too.

A year or so later  a new person showed up on our walks. One day she walked right by us and for reasons that I will never understand this Murder of Crows lost their collective mind.

We walked by people and other dogs all of the time and the Crows never acted the way they acted that day.

They raved at this woman, they buzzed her, they swooped at her, they surrounded her and it was like she was walking in a black fog.

The weird thing was she didn’t seem surprised at their behavior and she always had this weird smile on her face. It chilled my blood a little.

I wrote about Hamish and his Crows and someone suggested that the woman had somekind of happy clappy bond with the Crows and that their behavior reflected that. Hamish and I ran into this person off and on for about four months and there was nothing pleasant about the crow’s actions.

Hamish’s crows  followed Hamish on his walks ( some of them had started to hang out with him in our backyard  ) and the only time I ever heard them call was when they headed out for the evening and it wasn’t a loud thing. It was normal.

The last timeI saw this woman on our walk, she stops near us,  she leans over and asked if she could pet Hamish and before I could say anything she reached for him and a crow flew between me and Hamish and the woman. She backed up with that stupid grin on her face and she  then she walked away.

Hamish of course, never barked at his Crow but his  hackles were up and he watched her walk away and he didn’t relax until she turned the corner and was gone.

We never saw her again.

Next Stop

/ animar64 / 6 Comments

FOWC: Divest

AI Artwork by Cursejourney

Sometimes Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Even Dumber sit  near me on the train and spew their views on politics and world affairs and their love of Military Operations.

Their conversations, I have to say are divested of reality. Sometimes I’m amused but most of the time i am NOT amused.

Yesterday, because they ALWAYS seem to talk louder about Black politicians or Black District Attorneys  is  when there are no Black People sitting in our car, and the coast was clear that afternoon, they decided to impart their ‘facts’ to anyone around them that Kamala Harris has, ” no RIGHT ” to say she is from Oakland, California  because ‘she went to a rich kid school and grew up in Montreal’.

That like Obama they loudly proclaimed  she had an absent Father and that is what ” Democrats ” do. They push  Black candidates with absent Fathers because they win races on ‘sympathy’.

They were both on their phones looking up information about where Kamala lived to prove that she has ” no RIGHT ” to say she was from California- oh they said, she lived in California and but she lived in Berkley which apparently does something to negate her  zip codes.

I suppose they  loved using the phrase ‘no right’ because they are some how feel ENTITLED to grant rights to, well hey- black women.

On this day, in our happy little corner of the Universe,  there was a young woman speaking Spanish on her phone .

She was sitting across from me and to be honest even though she was on speaker phone with HER MOTHER it was a relief that she was loud so that she drowned out some of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumber’s conversation. Anyway when she got up at her stop and left they looked around and one said to the other, ” that’s the bull shit I’m talking about, she’s in American- SHE NEEDS TO SPEAK AMERICAN.”

” Want to know what she said? ” I broke in and said  what I hope was a conspiratorial whisper.

They shrugged and said ok. They leaned towards me. They were hooked.

I leaned over and  told them, ” she was talking to her Mom about the two scary guys who kept looking at her boobs. ”

I don’t speak Spanish, I mean I know few words. But my blended family blended me to the point that it’s pretty hard to tell what group I belong to by looking at me. Think of me as a Calico Cat.  I get mistaken for for being  Latina a lot.

My point is they believed me and BOY were they mad.

This is the direction I took  away from our conversation. For real. They felt victimized. She was sitting right there and lying about them and there was nothing they could do about it because that little minx ( my word ) was speaking Spanish.

They didn’t deny the boob thing, which you  know, made me wonder.

Look, I wasn’t going to change the Dumb and Dumbers ‘minds’ by sharing my point of view,  their hatred is baked into their bones.

But that doesn’t mean that I can’t, in my own way, feast on those same bones with relish.