Nearly Famous Chickens

My chickens are now minor local celebrities.

Last week I received a phone call from a reporter from our regional newspaper asking me if I would be interested in being interviewed for an upcoming article on people who have small backyard poultry farms. Normally, being the reclusive nutjob I am I would have politely refused, but this man had called me early in the morning and while I might have successfully hidden from him- in my voice- the fact that I was snuggled under the blankets in bed with Edison and that he had just woken me up, deep inside my body my brain was not at full operating capacity (and wouldn't be for several more hours) and thus I agreed to have him come out to my house. He asked if he might bring along a photographer to take some shots of the chickens and me and for that, at least, I was lucid enough to request no photos be taken.

Being a person who enjoys her solitude, I fretted for days over my rash decision. I even contemplated canceling the interview, though in the end I went ahead and did it like a Big Girl. I may prefer to be alone in my studio working, but I'm by no means a shy person, so I told Griffin to keep an eye on me and if I started to get too chatty and thus begin to look like a bit of a loony, to please step in and stop me. Some people, I have found, don't get my humor, and as it turns out, this reporter was one of those people.

He asked me a great many questions about chickens as he knew nothing about them and he completely ignored my ducks as they weren't to be included in this article. For the most part I remained fairly guarded, not running off at the mouth and only keeping to the facts about the birds. We joked about a few things, but nothing particularly outrageous, and then he asked me about egg laying. When I explained that the birds need 12-14 hours of daylight a day to lay a single egg and thus come winter production slows down considerably, leaving David to have fits when I buy carton after carton of eggs at Whole Foods for holiday baking and to bemoan the fact that we have a barn full of little freeloaders, I figured the man realized I was being humorous. (Granted, David does hate the fact that we have a barn full of virtually eggless chickens several months of the year, and yes he has referred to them as "little freeloaders" but it's all very lighthearted, I swear). So when the article was published last Sunday morning, I was surprised to see my innocent little tale taken literally and David having been characterized as something of a curmudgeon who is (and I directly quote here) "infuriated" when we have to buy eggs at the market. Well, I guess this puts us a bit further up on the celebrity meter than we've been thus far by not only being misquoted but being made to look like we have personality issues as well. Cool. We should be honored. The two men who were also interviewed for the article only spouted facts and very dryly at that, but being a woman and, well, being me, I came off as a bit too folksy and funny. And maybe a tad odd, which I had been desperately trying to avoid. Hmm.

The reporter also came without a photographer per my request, but did come with a camera of his own and tried to get me to appear on-camera in a video segment that was published both on the local news feed as well as utube, to which I declined (Griffin tried very hard to talk me into it, but I held fast to my guns). I did, however, consent to having some close-up video shot of my girls ambling about on the lawn and in the gardens, provided no mile markers of my property were visible in the frame. I know this sounds very Reclusive Crazy Mountain Man, but I have had some issues in the past with my birds' safety and prefer to not have it public knowledge that I have a barn full of potential targets. The birds are not at all visible from the road, my neighbors know, my friends know, but everyone else need not know and I feel that having less people know about their existence will hopefully keep my girls safe and snug out there. I explained in detail to the reporter what had happened in the past and why I wished to remain anonymous and he said he understood, then published within the paper the exact street addresses of all three of us who were featured in the article, myself included. So much for anonymity.

In the end, it was fun to see my girls featured, albeit for the briefest moment, in a video online and to read about them in print (which wasn't published by me, for a change) but if I were called again to do this, I would honor my deepest instinct, which would be to say "thanks, I'm flattered, but I'll pass." There's a reason why I prefer to remain a recluse and this experience was it. Live and learn. Live and learn.

Other People's Dogs

It's amazing the cool dogs you can meet when you take your own dog for a walk. Walkies in our house is a big deal to Edison because he gets to get out there in the fresh air, he can chase squirrels up trees, terrify unsuspecting birds who are attempting to grab a quick earth snack and thus causing them to scatter to the four winds, and if he's especially lucky, rustle up a rabbit in the grass as well. Which is all very amusing as two of these three creatures are bigger than Edison. But to me, walkies means ogling- and occasionally lusting after- other people's dogs. I love most dogs, regardless of the breed, size or color (there are exceptions to this rule: dogs with jiggly jowls that I just know make for a giant mess when they eat and cause excessive and gooey nonstop drooling and dogs with really lush, heavy coats are not to my liking). But my heart skips a beat and I go all weak in the knees when I spot a little dog (the tinier the better) who is sporting a short and neat coat and a pointy little face.

The exception to the pointy face rule is pugs. I love pugs. I love their personalities and I love their little mushy, snorting, laughing faces. And the little curly pig tail they sport is adorable. The other night on our walk we met a young little female pug named Princess Diana, fawn with a black face. I was practically on the ground canoodling with her, much to David's chagrin. Even Edison, who is known for his extreme lack of interest in mingling with other dogs, jigged around her and back and forth. While I would love a pug, I'm not sure in living with one every day I could get around that jowly, gooey face thing. If I could rent a pug for, say, a weekend and see how I dealt with it, that would be great, because then I would know if I could handle the wet bits and the snoring and wheezing.

And while today I was technically in a car and not on foot at the time, I have to mention the tiny little black chihuahua I saw jigging along the sidewalk with his owner. It was both the teensiest and the happiest little dog I have seen out walking in a long time. His joy at being out for a walk in the big world was palpable. I only wish I had been walking too so I could have said hello to him and met him in person, given him a pat or let him give me a kiss. Still, watching him from a distance gleefully greeting every person who passed him on the sidewalk was one of those delightful dog moments I cherish so much.

***And a very big thank you to my friend Jo who lives in England for allowing me to use her photograph of her adorable little pug for this post. That photo up there above my words is of Doris, a very charming, award-winning little girl who not only has the looks, but clearly also has a fair amount of fashion sense as well with that ultra stylish cardigan she's sporting. Doris, you're one cute little doll face!

O-Possum!

We have a new visitor to our porch every night in the form of a young opossum. David was coming home from the train well after dark the other night and I heard him coming up the front steps with his bike but then he never came into the house. Moments later the phone rang and it was David telling me to come to one of the front windows. There, balancing on the edge of one of the trash cans was a little opossum who couldn't decide whether it was more important to keep an eye on the guy standing quietly behind him at the top of the steps or the girl's head now poking out of the open window that was talking to him in a soothing baby voice.

After David went back down the steps and came in through the back door, Griffin got an apple and took it outside and set it down for our new little friend, much to David's chagrin. He and I have never agreed on whether to feed the wildlife that lives in our midst and we most definitely never will. He adheres to the "absolutely not because it encourages wild animals to live too closely to us and takes away their drive to forage for food" ideology whereas I am of the belief that supplementing a wild animal's regular diet helps to keep those creatures living in very close proximity to us stronger and hopefully healthier, thus exposing we humans and our animals to less diseased and hungry animals (especially in winter) and hopefully keep most of them out of my gardens. This has proven to be the case with the exception of one very obstinate rabbit and one gluttonous woodchuck (see previous post). And besides, animals are cute and I like to feed them.

So the manky little opossum ate the apple and moseyed off. He's been back every night since and tonight as I was bringing out a handful of grapes to have them waiting for him when he arrived, it turns out he came by early (I guess opossums either don't have clocks or can't tell time) and I startled the hell out of him. He came back later though and ate all the fruit I left for him. David thinks he's started to come closer to the house looking for food because David inadvertently took his food source away last weekend when he cleaned up the lawn under our apple tree of all the dropped fruit (our friend's sheep adore them). The opossums love the drops, too. You can't pull into our driveway on late summer or fall evenings without seeing at least one opossum feasting at the base of our apple tree.

Though he's quite clean, he is one mangy-looking little guy. As David says, opossums aren't known for their good looks. They all basically look half-finished and undercooked, with sparse gray fur and lots and lots of pink skin. And they aren't exactly known for their intelligence either. But regardless, I'll keep feeding him as long as he keeps coming around or until more apples pop off our tree and he goes back to his original foraging spot. Or until David ties me up so I can't get to the food or the front door.

Nighty-night, Mr. Opossum.

The All-You-Can-Eat Woodchuck Buffet

My son came to me the other morning and said he saw a furry brown animal in my vegetable garden but he wasn't sure if it was a woodchuck or a beaver. Well, even though we have a wetland very close to our house, and while beavers could in theory be living within its vicinity, I seriously doubted that it was a beaver eating my veggies. We do have a rabbit, which is also brown, who lives beneath our barn and who last year decimated most of the echinacea in my field garden. (Not to get completely off the subject here, but for some reason the rabbit chose only to eat the most beautiful and colorful of my coneflowers: the nearly neon pink and orange ones that I paid quite a bit of money for and which to no one's surprise, by the same token, chose to completely ignore the more traditional and commonplace purple ones that were given to me by a friend and which of course cost me nothing).

So now it's later in the day and the sun is setting all fiery orange and red and as I stood at the kitchen sink, and I asked David if it was possible for Griffin to not be able to tell the difference between a woodchuck and a rabbit, and as he was about to reply, I could see the greenery part in my vegetable garden and a rather large furry, brown mammal of some sort settle in for a nosh. It's timing couldn't have been more impeccable. Now the vegetable garden is quite a distance from the house, and David's eyes are better than mine, so I said, "Quick! Look out the back door window and tell me if that's the woodchuck." He did, and it was. The bastard! (the woodchuck, not David)

Now I thought it would be nice to get a photo of the little thief caught in the act of stealing my tomatoes, but the woodchuck was having none of that. When I went outside he was standing on his hind legs, whistling a merry tune (he was literally whistling a song in some sort woodchuckian form of bliss) while he happily gobbled up tomato after tomato. And then when he decided that I wasn't going to get any closer to him, he turned and headed for the hedge to make his getaway. But right before he ducked through the bushes, he turned and looked at me with one very ugly expression on his little face and I swear if he'd had arms, he'd have shaken a tiny fist at me before turning and making his exit. Like I have some nerve interrupting his freeloading ass filling up on my vegetables.

I was thinking that it would be nice to catch him so I could have a nice little chat with him, Chuck to Woman, just to let him know that I don't appreciate his stealing the best of my beautiful veggies, but it wouldn't matter anyways because the garden is now completely ruined for me for this season. There's no way I'm eating anything that comes out of there because I just know that even if he hasn't has his mouth on everything out there, he's most likely touched everything with his dirty little woodchuck feet while carefully choosing which tomatoes and peppers were the juiciest and most tantalizing to his witsy bitsy little brain. And just that thought alone is enough to send me to the grocery store until the first frost. Damn woodchuck.

My Father and the Baboons

The male members of my family have a history of acting oddly (read: poorly) at the zoo. Growing up, my brother was just awful with any and all animals, from teasing a raccoon until the poor animal went berserk, reached into my brother's shirtfront pocket and stole a ballpoint pen which it then refused to relinquish, to which a zookeeper in turn went berserk because the raccoon had what amounted to a lethal weapon, right up to teasing a cage full of chimpanzees until one of those poor animals also went berserk and ripped a glass soda bottle from my brother's hand, thus sending yet another zookeeper into paroxysms of hysteria at the sight of a chimp with a sharp glass projectile. But to be fair, he came by this behavior honestly, having been taken to the zoo many, many times by our father.

My father, a quiet and emotionally reserved man in virtually every area of his existence, for some reason known only to him, stepped wildly out of character and became a blathering lunatic when it came to baboons. Only the baboons, or as my mother refers to them, "You know, those monkeys with the blue bottoms and the long, striped noses?" My father would jump up and down, make faces, flail his arms madly about and make ridiculous noises until the baboons would charge at him and repeatedly fling themselves against their cage front in an attempt to stop him from making a complete spectacle of himself in a very public place. This was in the midwest in the late 1950's (thankfully predating my birth by quite a few years) and at one point the zoo actually closed for many months while the complete operation was moved to a brand new zoo on the other side of the city. And sure enough, when the new zoo opened and my parents and brother went to visit their favorite animals in their new home, those baboons, even after not having laid eyes on my father for many, many months, instantly recognized him and tried to attack him once again. To which, naturally, my father immediately resumed his bizarre taunting of them. I'm sure it was a mutual thing, with both sides getting something out of it and everyone involved finding themselves quite satisfied when all was said and done.

And so it is with no wonder whatsoever that my brother behaves so deplorably around poor caged animals. Look who his childhood role model was.

Fur Sucks (Unless it's Still on the Living Animal)

While PETA can often be accused of going overboard with some of their tactics and ideas regarding the ethical treatment of animals, the ad campaign, "Here's the Rest of Your Fur Coat" is brilliant by any standard. Not that the people who love fur and like to shove their "look-at-me-and-my-luxuriously-soft-and mad-expensive-dead-animal-coat" in your face will give a damn. When you wear fur you automatically don't care at all about the poor animals who gave their lives for your stupid rich people fashion whims, or how they suffered, and you certainly could give a shit what their bodies look like after being mangled for your own pleasure. But for the rest of us, the humane ones who would rather go naked than kill an animal to look hot on a night out, this picture speaks volumes.

Shelter Dogs

I've been searching through shelters for a dog who can be a best friend to my little Edison Jack, but so far I either haven't really found a dog that I like enough to want to spend the next decade or more of my life with, or I if I have liked a dog and think it could work out, Edison tries to tear its face off upon meeting it.

The thing with shelters is that they're very depressing to visit (so I can only imagine how awful it is to live there). No matter how clean and bright the environment, it's ultimately a dumping ground for unwanted animals, troubled animals or animals that have just been dealt a really shitty hand in this life and have never had anyone to love them. And all shelters look like prisons, regardless. I try very hard to not feel badly when I am actually in the building looking at the dogs because I know they can sense what I am feeling. I try to be calm and gentle and not be wearing my "oh these poor things" heart on my sleeve, but it's virtually impossible for me to get out of there without completely losing it.

This past week I met two dogs that I spent some time with while considering making them members of our little family. The first was a shepherd mix who had been run over by a car and left for dead. Not only had she been seriously injured, but she was also pregnant. She had been watched over for several weeks outside a police station in Puerto Rico (best not to get me started on what I really think about Puerto Rico and their stray dog "problems") where the men fed her scraps of food, yet no one thought to bring her to a vet or even get her out of the elements. By the time a good samaritan had brought her to a doctor, her babies were dead and her seriously broken leg had healed wrong so now she has a permanent limp. Many humans would have given up after having this happen to them, or at least be left suffering from some pretty serious depression, but this was a very happy little girl. She was gentle and sweet and her tail never stopped wagging. Griffin really liked her and she was a little darling, so I thought, "okay, let's do this" and then Edison, who clearly couldn't sense her sweetness or didn't even remotely care how loving she was, tried to bite her in the face several times. So much for dog #1.

The second dog was absolutely beautiful. A lab/boxer cross by the looks of him, black with white socks. This was a dog that has been in a shelter every single day of his life and for the first ten months of his short twelve on this earth was never interacted with at all. The people in the shelter in Arkansas where he came from ought to be flogged. This is now a dog who simply cannot allow a human to get close to him because he doesn't trust. No one has ever held him or patted him or kissed him. No one has told him what a good boy he is, how beautiful he is or played any doggie games with him. He'll let you walk him, and during the walk he'll even begin to stand a little closer to your legs, but try to reach down and pat him and he'll try to run away from you. There was nothing but terror in that dog's eyes. He'd give you a look like he desperately wanted to be loved and given attention, but when you made a move to show him kindness, it terrified him and he'd frantically pull away. He was afraid of Edison, who in turn was completely indifferent to this pretty boy. That's rather symbolic of this dog's whole life: if he hadn't been ignored so much he'd have more social skills and be very adoptable. For the person who is willing to give him the time he needs, this dog would make a lovely pet, but only if they lead a very quiet life. This is not an animal that you could take out in public, especially in any crowded areas, nor would he be good with company visiting at home. Most likely, this is a dog who will spend all his days in a shelter as very few people have the knowledge, time or patience to rehabilitate a dog this withdrawn, and that's unbelievably heartbreaking.

So my search continues, which unfortunately means more trips to shelters, which never gets any easier. I would rather find our next little friend in one of them though, than to go through a breeder again, simply because the act of giving an unwanted animal a second chance at life and love is a very beautiful thing for the dog and for us. I guess I'll need to dig deep and find in me the motivation that keeps these poor dogs going in spite of all their own difficulties. If they can survive the horrors they have lived, then I can survive the horror of walking into a shelter and hearing their stories and hopefully giving one of them a long and happy life in a loving home.

Canine Couture

What is it that makes a normal and sane person (relatively speaking) suddenly start to do things they swore they never, ever would simply because they now own a tiny little dog? I have never been the type of person who has ever given a thought to dressing up an animal since I was about six or seven years old and routinely dressed up my poor cat in baby doll clothes and took her for a ride in my doll carriage, yet now I am doing it all the time (less the doll carriage of course). I even go shopping with the specific purpose of adding new items to my dog's already burgeoning wardrobe. Granted, I have on occasion seen little dogs being walked down the side of the road and have done a double take with an "oh my god that is so cute!" when seeing something outrageously adorable, like two miniscule yorkies being walked in teensy matching tutus made of lavender and pink tulle, but that's the exception. I don't believe I have ever reacted with more than an occasional "nice sweater" when seeing a larger dog strolling by in a hand knit. So why now that I own a small dog am I compelled to dress it to the nines every chance I get? Does this sort of behavior automatically become compulsory when one takes possession of a toy dog?

Don't get me wrong, I don't go for those silly little t-shirts with glittery slogans such as "spoiled rotten" and "#1 pet", the trailer park trash, bar whore outfits of the pet world. No, I'm more a hand knit sweater and ultra suede jacket type of person, with the occasional longing for an expensive Juicy Couture coat. Maybe it's because my dog is a male that I have managed to rein in my new and truly unexpected behavior with more serious clothing. What I need is to add a second dog, a female, to feed my newfound desire to dress a canine in frilly Pollyanna dresses and tutus of my own made of lavender and pink tulle, with maybe the occasional pair of tiny gossamer fairy wings included. Then all I would need to worry about (with the exception of my family riding my ass twice as much as they do now about the supposed indignity of it all) would be more closet space.

The Great Horned Owl

Even more exciting than the realization that my backyard had been transformed a few weeks ago into a turkey suburbia was the discovery of a Great Horned Owl in one of the trees at the back of the property. She might not be nearly as cute as a turkey (if you even would consider a turkey cute- I do), but she sure is a far rarer sight in this area.

She was there in the early morning when I went out to water my birds and she stayed straight through until dusk. It was amazing to watch all the smaller birds swoop down and dive in regular waves at her tree hour after hour, shouting and calling to drive her away. One little male cardinal was especially driven to scare her away, though he obviously had no luck. Neither did the dozens upon dozens of crows that taunted her and flew at her head for the better part of the day. The noise was extraordinary all day and could be heard clearly and quite loudly even inside the house.

And while there wasn't a single small mammal to be seen anywhere on the ground throughout that entire day, there was one poor, unfortunate little squirrel who was just feet from the owl and who had laid himself flat out on his branch not daring to move so much as a muscle for the full ten hours she was perched there in the tree. Poor thing, caught suddenly in the midst of his morning squirrel business of snacking and burying, he was stranded and paralyzed there for hours. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time and the terror of that day must have chipped years off of his already brief little life.

Still, the visit from the owl was a simply magnificent gift. I cherish the chance to see such rare and beautiful birds in such close proximity to my home. Nature is a joy. Nature is perfect.

Cordelia Mabel Marks

Cordelia Mabel Marks
June 13, 1991 - December 3, 2007
Loyal Unto Death

Cordelia Mabel was the first dog I ever owned on my own as an adult and one of the all-time best dogs ever born. When Griffin was two I decided it would be nice to have a family dog so we headed to a local shelter to see what they had to offer. Among all the young and adult dogs were three little black puppies just a few weeks old, one of which had a cloudy eye and was believed to have sight issues. The little damaged puppy chose us before we even had the chance to crouch down to greet the litter. She came right over and jumped onto David's lap, gave him a sloppy kiss and our hearts were instantly stolen. On the ride home with our new child she was named Cordelia (the Mabel came later when she was such a naughty little dog she needed a middle name for emphasis when she was scolded). Cordelia: King Lear's youngest daughter, faithful and loyal until death.

Puppy issues aside (she ate rugs, furniture and even a pair of expensive leather florsheim shoes which didn't go over so well) she quickly became a second child to us and she thought so too. When David, Griffin and I would go for a hike and Griffin, who was barely three at the time, became weary and asked to be carried, Cordelia would too. And there we'd be, our small family of four: David carrying Griffin and me carrying Cordelia who was far heavier than a child but as David flatly refused to "carry a dog on a hike. How ridiculous is that? She's a dog" I did because I couldn't bear to see her begging to be picked up and whimpering when it was refused. After all, Griffin had been picked up, so why shouldn't she? She saw no difference between herself and our son. To her she was another child of ours. If Griffin had a sliced apple as a snack, I would give Cordelia an apple as well. The first time I did this, Griffin's apple was peeled, sliced and put in a little dish for him and Cordelia's was unpeeled and set on the floor. Cordelia flatly refused to eat hers. She looked at hers, then at Griffin's, then at hers, then at me and back through again and again. After asking her why she wasn't eating her apple, I finally figured out what she was telling me. I peeled hers, sliced it like Griffin's and put it in an identical dish and she sat happily with him and they ate their apples together. I never made that mistake again.

When Griffin was tiny and would dance when he heard anything that even remotely sounded like music (as most toddlers will), Cordelia would run over to him, stand on her hind legs, and throw her front legs around his neck and dance with him: she'd sway if he swayed , she'd perform dance steps if he did. In the beginning she was far taller than he, towering over his head as she led him around the floor on her hind legs, fully embracing his little body. But as Griffin got older and grew taller, those years were marked by how much taller he had become than Cordelia, until even on her hind legs she barely reached his waist. What a lovely way to mark the passage of time with a boy and his dog.

She learned to speak, almost too well. She was a startlingly good mimic of what she was hearing, and even though she often sounded like Astro on the old Jetson's cartoon when she spoke, speak she did. She even picked up a couple of very naughty words which when she would say them would have people laughing until they cried. And as she's a big fan of his, my mother taught Cordelia to say "Elvis" plain as could be. If she saw you with a treat in your hand, it didn't matter what the snack was for, or who it was for, she would sit and begin to go through her vast repertoire of words, without prompt, hoping to win the food.

She was a wonderful watchdog, protecting her family and her home. She alerted us once to a robbery in progress on our property one night many years ago, as well as when a carpenter working on a nearby construction site broke into our home through the kitchen door to gain access to our cellar to turn on our outside water source so the crew might steal it for mixing plaster. I was upstairs at the time and her incessant, violent barking brought me downstairs to see what was happening. She so intimidated the man, and even tried to bite him, that he panicked and crawled out through the bulkhead rather than attempt to come back through a house he had clearly thought was unoccupied during the midday hours. But the dog who hated intruders loved to have company come to visit. From a solitary friend dropping in for a short visit to a house full of dinner guests, Cordelia was in her element, mingling and soaking up the attention. When my uncle, the animal raising and animal loving cowboy who I hadn't seen in over a decade came from Arizona to visit, I told him not to worry, Cordelia loves everybody. Moments after he settled in she pinned him on the couch in the living room, teeth bared, mouth foaming, until we dragged her from the room and locked her upstairs in a bedroom, where she stayed for the remainder of his visit. Go figure. She may not have always been the best judge of character, but she certainly stuck to her convictions.

She suffered from anxiety and fear aggression her entire life, which made it difficult to take her out in public, especially in large crowds. In spite of this, everyone she did meet thought she was absolutely adorable. We must have heard "look at that adorable face! What a sweet face!" a million times during her life. It was the same wherever we went. Everyone wanted to love her, and that was as it should be, given her very unloved and unwanted start in this world. And she had so much love to give herself. From that first moment at the shelter when she chose David, she was full of kisses and hugs. Especially for David. When we lived within walking distance of the train station we would often walk in the evenings to meet David's train from the city and as soon as all the people began to disembark, she would jump up and down on her hind legs trying to see David in the crowd, and when she did finally spot him, would squeal the most horrible, loud, shrieks of joy at the sight of him (those same screeches that would have shoppers looking at us like we were torturing our dog when one of us would leave her in the car to run into a store- you could hear Cordelia wailing from inside the shop, even when the car windows were up and closed- a deafening noise that would not end until you were safely back in the car with her). Everyone at the train station would walk by us laughing and shaking their heads at the howling, hopping dog but we didn't care because we found daddy. From that point in her life on, she always loved trains probably because she associated them with David. We would frequently walk the tracks and when a train came by she would jump on her hind legs and bark joyfully until it passed and if David was with us, she'd then jump on him in happiness. Trains and daddy were love.

We had some silly ritual games we played together from puppyhood. When she was very small and still had a pink puppy belly, she had on her tummy a nearly perfect map of the United States in white (it's still there under all that fur), and I would tell her to show me her belly. When she would lay down and turn her tummy upwards, I'd rub it and tell her what an intelligent girl she was as she had the whole United States on her belly. She'd get up and squeal and jump around me. She also liked to play the "piggy toe game" which consisted of me trying to put my feet on her feet, while she put hers on mine and she would try to play bite my feet to get them off of hers. While this game was fun, it was slightly less fun for my mother when Cordelia began to enjoy sleeping at the foot of my mother's bed. When my mother would move her feet in the night to get comfortable, and her feet would bump into the dog's feet, Cordelia, thinking the game was on, would bite her feet in a bid to win. That was the end of the piggy toe game until she was too physically feeble to get up on the bed, yet all those years later, she remembered the game when I began to play it once again.

She had her brushes with death, as anyone would if they lived as long as she had: the vet who performed her spaying lost her on the operating table but managed to miraculously resuscitate her, the day she slipped out the front door, before we could catch her, to chase a dog walking down the other side of the street only to be hit by a car in front of our home, horribly, right before our eyes and get right up with only a handful of bruises, or the time she got into over a pound of chocolate and ate the entire thing, foil wrappers and all and survived with only an upset stomach.

Cordelia Mabel lived a very long, very rich life full of joys and sorrows, good times and some not so good times, but always, always with absolute love. She loved us, her people, unconditionally and with a pure heart, and we loved her the same. To those people who abandoned her at that shelter so many years ago: thank you. Your indifference and selfishness gave us the greatest gift we could have ever been given. She was exceptionally intelligent, had a silly sense of humor and was an absolutely beautiful soul carried in a furry black body for longer than most dogs dream of living. She was a joy to be a companion to, as she was a joy to be my companion. And she was a joy to be our companion and best friend to all of us in the Marks house. Cordelia Mabel: faithful dog, faithful family member, faithful friend, unto death.

You are missed today. You will always be missed. You will always be loved with all our hearts, where you will be carried in the warmest embrace of love until the day we meet again. Bye bye for now, beautiful dog.