КАТЕГОРИИ: Архитектура-(3434)Астрономия-(809)Биология-(7483)Биотехнологии-(1457)Военное дело-(14632)Высокие технологии-(1363)География-(913)Геология-(1438)Государство-(451)Демография-(1065)Дом-(47672)Журналистика и СМИ-(912)Изобретательство-(14524)Иностранные языки-(4268)Информатика-(17799)Искусство-(1338)История-(13644)Компьютеры-(11121)Косметика-(55)Кулинария-(373)Культура-(8427)Лингвистика-(374)Литература-(1642)Маркетинг-(23702)Математика-(16968)Машиностроение-(1700)Медицина-(12668)Менеджмент-(24684)Механика-(15423)Науковедение-(506)Образование-(11852)Охрана труда-(3308)Педагогика-(5571)Полиграфия-(1312)Политика-(7869)Право-(5454)Приборостроение-(1369)Программирование-(2801)Производство-(97182)Промышленность-(8706)Психология-(18388)Религия-(3217)Связь-(10668)Сельское хозяйство-(299)Социология-(6455)Спорт-(42831)Строительство-(4793)Торговля-(5050)Транспорт-(2929)Туризм-(1568)Физика-(3942)Философия-(17015)Финансы-(26596)Химия-(22929)Экология-(12095)Экономика-(9961)Электроника-(8441)Электротехника-(4623)Энергетика-(12629)Юриспруденция-(1492)Ядерная техника-(1748) |
Dog we have never seen before and have no 1 страница
No, son,I wanted to correct him, some strange knowledge of is sad. But I just pulled my maga- zine higher over my face, following the advice of the immortal Richard Milhous Nixon: plausible deniability. The jet engines whined and the plane taxied down the runway, drowning out Marley’s dirge. I pictured him down below in the dark hold, alone, scared, confused, stoned, not even able to fully stand up. I imagined the roaring engines, which in Marley’s warped mind might be just an- other thunderous assault by random lightning bolts determined to take him out. The poor guy. I wasn’t willing to admit he was mine, but I knew I would be spending the whole flight worrying about him. The airplane was barely off the ground when I heard another little crash, and this time it was Conor who said, “Oops.” I looked down and then, Marley & Me once again, stared straight into my magazine. Plausible deniability. After several seconds, I furtively glanced around. When I was pretty sure no one was staring, I leaned forward and whis- pered into Jenny’s ear: “Don’t look now, but the crickets are loose.” C H A P T E R 2 2 In the Land of Pencils ❉ We settled into a rambling house on two acres perched on the side of a steep hill. Or perhaps it was a small mountain; the locals seemed to disagree on this point. Our property had a meadow where we could pick wild raspber- ries, a woods where I could chop logs to my heart’s content, and a small, spring-fed creek where the kids and Marley soon found they could get excep- tionally muddy. There was a fireplace and endless garden possibilities and a white-steepled church on the next hill, visible from our kitchen window when the leaves dropped in the fall. Our new home even came with a neighbor right out of Central Casting, an orange-bearded bear of a man who lived in a 1790s stone farmhouse and on Sundays enjoyed sitting on his back porch and shooting his rifle into the woods just for fun, much John Grogan to Marley’s unnerved dismay. On our first day in our new house, he walked over with a bottle of homemade wild-cherry wine and a basket of the biggest blackberries I had ever seen. He intro- duced himself as Digger. As we surmised from the nickname, Digger made his living as an excavator. If we had any holes we needed dug or earth we wanted moved, he instructed, we were to just give a shout and he’d swing by with one of his big ma- chines. “And if you hit a deer with your car, come get me,” he said with a wink. “We’ll butcher it up and split the meat before the game officer knows a thing.” No doubt about it, we weren’t in Boca anymore. There was only one thing missing from our new bucolic existence. Minutes after we pulled into the driveway of our new house, Conor looked up at me, big tears rolling out of his eyes, and declared: “I thought there were going to be pencils in Pen- cilvania.” For our boys, now ages seven and five,
this was a near deal breaker. Given the name of the state we were adopting, both of them arrived fully expecting to see bright yellow writing imple- ments hanging like berries from every tree and shrub, there for the plucking. They were crushed to learn otherwise. What our property lacked in school supplies, it made up for in skunks, opossums, woodchucks, Marley & Me and poison ivy, which flourished along the edge of our woods and snaked up the trees, giving me hives just to look at it. One morning I glanced out the kitchen window as I fumbled with the coffeemaker and there staring back at me was a magnificent eight-point buck. Another morning a family of wild turkeys gobbled its way across the backyard. As Marley and I walked through the woods down the hill from our house one Saturday, we came upon a mink trapper laying snares. A mink trap- per! Almost in my backyard! What the Bocahontas set would have given for that connection. Living in the country was at once peaceful, charming—and just a little lonely. The Pennsylva- nia Dutch were polite but cautious of outsiders. And we were definitely outsiders. After South Florida’s legion crowds and lines, I should have been ecstatic about the solitude. Instead, at least in the early months, I found myself darkly ruminat- ing over our decision to move to a place where so few others apparently wanted to live. Marley, on the other hand, had no such misgiv- ings. Except for the crack of Digger’s gun going off, the new country lifestyle fit him splendidly. For a dog with more energy than sense, what wasn’t to like? He raced across the lawn, crashed through the brambles, splashed through the creek. His life’s mission was to catch one of the countless John Grogan rabbits that considered my garden their own per- sonal salad bar. He would spot a rabbit munching the lettuce and barrel off down the hill in hot pur- suit, ears flapping behind him, paws pounding the ground, his bark filling the air. He was about as stealthy as a marching band and never got closer than a dozen feet before his intended prey scam- pered off into the woods to safety. True to his trademark, he remained eternally optimistic that success waited just around the bend. He would loop back, tail wagging, not discouraged in the least, and five minutes later do it all over again. Fortunately, he was no better at sneaking up on the skunks. Autumn came and with it a whole new mischie- vous game: Attack the Leaf Pile. In Florida, trees did not shed their leaves in the fall, and Marley was positively convinced the foliage drifting down from the skies now was a gift meant just for him. As I raked the orange and yellow leaves into giant heaps, Marley would sit and watch patiently, bid- ing his time, waiting until just the right moment to strike. Only after I had gathered a mighty tower- ing pile would he slink forward, crouched low. Every few steps, he would stop, front paw raised, to sniff the air like a lion on the Serengeti stalking an unsuspecting gazelle. Then, just as I leaned on Marley & Me my rake to admire my handiwork, he would lunge, charging across the lawn in a series of bounding leaps, flying for the last several feet and landing in a giant belly flop in the middle of the pile, where he growled and rolled and flailed and scratched
and snapped, and, for reasons not clear to me, fiercely chased his tail, not stopping until my neat leaf pile was scattered across the lawn again. Then he would sit up amid his handiwork, the shredded remains of leaves clinging to his fur, and give me a self-satisfied look, as if his contribution were an integral part of the leaf-gathering process. Our first Christmas in Pennsylvania was supposed to be white. Jenny and I had had to do a sales job on Patrick and Conor to convince them that leav- ing their home and friends in Florida was for the best, and one of the big selling points was the promise of snow. Not just any kind of snow, but deep, fluffy, made-for-postcards snow, the kind that fell from the sky in big silent flakes, piled into drifts, and was of just the right consistency for shaping into snowmen. And snow for Christmas Day, well, that was best of all, the Holy Grail of northern winter experiences. We wantonly spun a Currier and Ives image for them of waking up on John Grogan Christmas morning to a starkly white landscape, unblemished except for the solitary tracks of Santa’s sleigh outside our front door. In the week leading up to the big day, the three of them sat in the window together for hours, their eyes glued on the leaden sky as if they could will it to open and discharge its load. “Come on, snow!” the kids chanted. They had never seen it; Jenny and I hadn’t seen it for the last quarter of our lives. We wanted snow, but the clouds would not give it up. A few days before Christmas, the whole family piled into the minivan and drove to a farm a half mile away where we cut a spruce tree and enjoyed a free hayride and hot apple cider around a bonfire. It was the kind of classic north- ern holiday moment we had missed in Florida, but one thing was absent. Where was the damn snow? Jenny and I were beginning to regret how reck- lessly we had hyped the inevitable first snowfall. As we hauled our fresh-cut tree home, the sweet scent of its sap filling the van, the kids complained about getting gypped. First no pencils, now no snow; what else had their parents lied to them about? Christmas morning found a brand-new tobog- gan beneath the tree and enough snow gear to outfit an excursion to Antarctica, but the view out our windows remained all bare branches, dor- Marley & Me mant lawns, and brown cornfields. I built a cheery fire in the fireplace and told the children to be pa- tient. The snow would come when the snow would come. New Year’s arrived and still it did not come. Even Marley seemed antsy, pacing and gazing out the windows, whimpering softly, as if he too felt he had been sold a bill of goods. The kids re- turned to school after the holiday, and still noth- ing. At the breakfast table they gazed sullenly at me, the father who had betrayed them. I began making lame excuses, saying things like “Maybe little boys and girls in some other place need the snow more than we do.” “Yeah, right, Dad,” Patrick said. Three weeks into the new year, the snow finally rescued me from my purgatory of guilt. It came during the night after everyone was asleep, and Patrick was the first to sound the alarm, running into our bedroom at dawn and yanking open the blinds. “Look! Look!” he squealed. “It’s here!” Jenny and I sat up in bed to behold our vindica- tion. A white blanket covered the hillsides and cornfields and pine trees and rooftops, stretching to the horizon. “Of course, it’s here,” I answered nonchalantly. “What did I tell you?” The snow was nearly a foot deep and still com- ing down. Soon Conor and Colleen came chugging John Grogan down the hall, thumbs in mouths, blankies trailing behind them. Marley was up and stretching, bang- ing his tail into everything, sensing the excite- ment. I turned to Jenny and said, “I guess going
back to sleep isn’t an option,” and when she con- firmed it was not, I turned to the kids and shouted, “Okay, snow bunnies, let’s suit up!” For the next half hour we wrestled with zippers and leggings and buckles and hoods and gloves. By the time we were done, the kids looked like mum- mies and our kitchen like the staging area for the Winter Olympics. And competing in the Goof on Ice Downhill Competition, Large Canine Divi- sion, was... Marley the Dog. I opened the front door and before anyone else could step out, Mar- ley blasted past us, knocking the well-bundled Colleen over in the process. The instant his paws hit the strange white stuff— Ah, wet! Ah, cold! — he had second thoughts and attempted an abrupt about-face. As anyone who has ever driven a car in snow knows, sudden braking coupled with tight U-turns is never a good idea. Marley went into a full skid, his rear end spin- ning out in front of him. He dropped down on one flank briefly before bouncing upright again just in time to somersault down the front porch steps and headfirst into a snowdrift. When he popped back Marley & Me up a second later, he looked like a giant powdered doughnut. Except for a black nose and two brown eyes, he was completely dusted in white. The Abominable Snowdog. Marley did not know what to make of this foreign substance. He jammed his nose deep into it and let loose a violent sneeze. He snapped at it and rubbed his face in it. Then, as if an invisible hand reached down from the heavens and jabbed him with a giant shot of adrenaline, he took off at full throttle, racing around the yard in a series of giant, loping leaps interrupted every several feet by a random somersault or nosedive. Snow was almost as much fun as raiding the neighbors’ trash. To follow Marley’s tracks in the snow was to be- gin to understand his warped mind. His path was filled with abrupt twists and turns and about- faces, with erratic loops and figure-eights, with corkscrews and triple lutzes, as though he were following some bizarre algorithm that only he could understand. Soon the kids were taking his lead, spinning and rolling and frolicking, snow packing into every crease and crevice of their out- erwear. Jenny came out with buttered toast, mugs of hot cocoa, and an announcement: school was canceled. I knew there was no way I was getting my little two-wheel-drive Nissan out the driveway John Grogan anytime soon, let alone up and down the un- plowed mountain roads, and I declared an official snow day for me, too. I scraped the snow away from the stone circle I had built that fall for backyard campfires and soon had a crackling blaze going. The kids glided screaming down the hill in the toboggan, past the campfire and to the edge of the woods, Marley chasing behind them. I looked at Jenny and asked, “If someone had told you a year ago that your kids would be sledding right out their back door, would you have believed them?” “Not a chance,” she said, then wound up and unleashed a snowball that thumped me in the chest. The snow was in her hair, a blush in her cheeks, her breath rising in a cloud above her. “Come here and kiss me,” I said. Later, as the kids warmed themselves by the fire, I decided to try a run on the toboggan, some- thing I hadn’t done since I was a teenager. “Care to join me?” I asked Jenny. “Sorry, Jean Claude, you’re on your own,” she said. I positioned the toboggan at the top of the hill and lay back on it, propped up on my elbows, my feet tucked inside its nose. I began rocking to get moving. Not often did Marley have the opportu-
nity to look down at me, and having me prone like Marley & Me that was tantamount to an invitation. He sidled up to me and sniffed my face. “What do you want?” I asked, and that was all the welcome he needed. He clambered aboard, straddling me and dropping onto my chest. “Get off me, you big lug!” I screamed. But it was too late. We were already creeping forward, gathering speed as we began our descent. “Bon voyage!” Jenny yelled behind us. Off we went, snow flying, Marley plastered on top of me, licking me lustily all over my face as we careered down the slope. With our combined weight, we had considerably more momentum than the kids had, and we barreled past the point where their tracks petered out. “Hold on, Mar- ley!” I screamed. “We’re going into the woods!” We shot past a large walnut tree, then between two wild cherry trees, miraculously avoiding all unyielding objects as we crashed through the un- derbrush, brambles tearing at us. It suddenly oc- curred to me that just up ahead was the bank leading down several feet to the creek, still un- frozen. I tried to kick my feet out to use as brakes, but they were stuck. The bank was steep, nearly a sheer drop-off, and we were going over. I had time only to wrap my arms around Marley, squeeze my eyes shut, and yell, “Whoaaaaaa!” Our toboggan shot over the bank and dropped John Grogan out from beneath us. I felt like I was in one of those classic cartoon moments, suspended in midair for an endless second before falling to ru- inous injury. Only in this cartoon I was welded to a madly salivating Labrador retriever. We clung to each other as we crash-landed into a snowbank with a soft poof and, hanging half off the tobog- gan, slid to the water’s edge. I opened my eyes and took stock of my condition. I could wiggle my toes and fingers and rotate my neck; nothing was bro- ken. Marley was up and prancing around me, ea- ger to do it all over again. I stood up with a groan and, brushing myself off, said, “I’m getting too old for this stuff.” In the months ahead it would become increasingly obvious that Marley was, too. Sometime toward the end of that first winter in Pennsylvania I began to notice Marley had moved quietly out of middle age and into retirement. He had turned nine that December, and ever so slightly he was slowing down. He still had his bursts of unbridled, adrenaline-pumped energy, as he did on the day of the first snowfall, but they were briefer now and farther apart. He was con- tent to snooze most of the day, and on walks he tired before I did, a first in our relationship. One late-winter day, the temperature above freezing Marley & Me and the scent of spring thaw in the air, I walked him down our hill and up the next one, even steeper than ours, where the white church perched on the crest beside an old cemetery filled with Civil War veterans. It was a walk I took often and one that even the previous fall Marley had made without visible effort, despite the angle of the climb, which always got us both panting. This time, though, he was falling behind. I coaxed him along, calling out words of encouragement, but it was like watching a toy slowly wind down as its battery went dead. Marley just did not have the oomph needed to make it to the top. I stopped to let him rest before continuing, something I had never had to do before. “You’re not going soft on me, are you?” I asked, leaning over and stroking his face with my gloved hands. He looked up at me, his eyes bright, his nose wet, not at all con- cerned about his flagging energy. He had a con- tented but tuckered-out look on his face, as though life got no better than this, sitting along the side of a country road on a crisp late-winter’s day with your master at your side. “If you think I’m carrying you,” I said, “forget it.” The sun bathed over him, and I noticed just how much gray had crept into his tawny face. Be- cause his fur was so light, the effect was subtle but undeniable. His whole muzzle and a good part of John Grogan his brow had turned from buff to white. Without us quite realizing it, our eternal puppy had be- come a senior citizen. That’s not to say he was any better behaved. Marley was still up to all his old antics, simply at a more leisurely pace. He still stole food off the children’s plates. He still flipped open the lid of the kitchen trash can with his nose and rummaged inside. He still strained at his leash. Still swallowed a wide assortment of household objects. Still drank out of the bathtub and trailed water from his gullet. And when the skies darkened and thun- der rumbled, he still panicked and, if alone, turned destructive. One day we arrived home to find Marley in a lather and Conor’s mattress splayed open down to the coils. Over the years, we had become philosophical about the damage, which had become much less frequent now that we were away from Florida’s daily storm patterns. In a dog’s life, some plaster would fall, some cushions would open, some rugs would shred. Like any relationship, this one had its costs. They were costs we came to accept and balance against the joy and amusement and pro- tection and companionship he gave us. We could have bought a small yacht with what we spent on our dog and all the things he destroyed. Then again, how many yachts wait by the door all day Marley & Me for your return? How many live for the moment they can climb in your lap or ride down the hill with you on a toboggan, licking your face? Marley had earned his place in our family. Like a quirky but beloved uncle, he was what he was. He would never be Lassie or Benji or Old Yeller; he would never reach Westminster or even the county fair. We knew that now. We accepted him for the dog he was, and loved him all the more for it. “You old geezer,” I said to him on the side of the road that late-winter day, scruffing his neck. Our goal, the cemetery, was still a steep climb ahead. But just as in life, I was figuring out, the destination was less important than the journey. I dropped to one knee, running my hands down his sides, and said, “Let’s just sit here for a while.” When he was ready, we turned back down the hill and poked our way home. C H A P T E R 2 3 Poultry on Parade ❉ That spring we decided to try our hand at ani- mal husbandry. We owned two acres in the country now; it only seemed right to share it with a farm animal or two. Besides, I was editor of Or- ganic Gardening, a magazine that had long cele- brated the incorporation of animals—and their manure—into a healthy, well-balanced garden. “A cow would be fun,” Jenny suggested. “A cow?” I asked. “Are you crazy? We don’t even have a barn; how can we have a cow? Where do you suggest we keep it, in the garage next to the minivan?” “How about sheep?” she said. “Sheep are cute.” I shot her my well-practiced you’re-not- being-practical look. “A goat? Goats are adorable.” In the end we settled on poultry. For any gar- John Grogan dener who has sworn off chemical pesticides and fertilizers, chickens made a lot of sense. They were inexpensive and relatively low-maintenance. They needed only a small coop and a few cups of cracked corn each morning to be happy. Not only did they provide fresh eggs, but, when let loose to roam, they spent their days studiously scouring the property, eating bugs and grubs, devouring ticks, scratching up the soil like efficient little ro- totillers, and fertilizing with their high-nitrogen droppings as they went. Each evening at dusk they returned to their coop on their own. What wasn’t to like? A chicken was an organic gardener’s best friend. Chickens made perfect sense. Besides, as Jenny pointed out, they passed the cuteness test. Chickens it was. Jenny had become friendly with a mom from school who lived on a farm and said she’d be happy to give us some chicks from the next clutch of eggs to hatch. I told Digger about our plans, and he agreed a few hens around the place made sense. Digger had a large coop of his own in which he kept a flock of chickens for both eggs and meat. “Just one word of warning,” he said, folding his meaty arms across his chest. “Whatever you do, don’t let the kids name them. Once you name ’em, they’re no longer poultry, they’re pets.” Marley & Me “Right,” I said. Chicken farming, I knew, had no room for sentimentality. Hens could live fifteen years or more but only produced eggs in their first couple of years. When they stopped laying, it was time for the stewing pot. That was just part of managing a flock. Digger looked hard at me, as if divining what I was up against, and added, “Once you name them, it’s all over.” “Absolutely,” I agreed. “No names.” The next evening I pulled into the driveway from work, and the three kids raced out of the house to greet me, each cradling a newborn chick. Jenny was behind them with a fourth in her hands. Her friend, Donna, had brought the baby birds over that afternoon. They were barely a day old and peered up at me with cocked heads as if to ask, “Are you my mama?” Patrick was the first to break the news. “I named mine Feathers!” he proclaimed. “Mine is Tweety,” said Conor. “My wicka Wuffy,” Colleen chimed in. I shot Jenny a quizzical look. “Fluffy,” Jenny said. “She named her chicken Fluffy.” “Jenny,” I protested. “What did Digger tell us? These are farm animals, not pets.” John Grogan “Oh, get real, Farmer John,” she said. “You know as well as I do that you could never hurt one of these. Just look at how cute they are.” “Jenny,” I said, the frustration rising in my voice. “By the way,” she said, holding up the fourth chick in her hands, “meet Shirley.” Feathers, Tweety, Fluffy, and Shirley took up residence in a box on the kitchen counter, a light- bulb dangling above them for warmth. They ate and they pooped and they ate some more—and grew at a breathtaking pace. Several weeks after we brought the birds home, something jolted me awake before dawn. I sat up in bed and listened. From downstairs came a weak, sickly call. It was croaky and hoarse, more like a tubercular cough than a proclamation of dominance. It sounded again: Cock-a-doodle-do! A few seconds ticked past and then came an equally sickly, but distinct, reply: Rook-ru-rook-ru-roo! I shook Jenny and, when she opened her eyes, asked: “When Donna brought the chicks over, you did ask her to check to make sure they were hens, right?” “You mean you can do that?” she asked, and rolled back over, sound asleep. It’s called sexing. Farmers who know what they are doing can inspect a newborn chicken and de- Marley & Me termine, with about 80 percent accuracy, whether it is male or female. At the farm store, sexed chicks command a premium price. The cheaper option is to buy “straight run” birds of unknown gender. You take your chances with straight run, the idea being that the males will be slaughtered young for meat and the hens will be kept to lay eggs. Playing the straight-run gamble, of course, assumes you have what it takes to kill, gut, and pluck any excess males you might end up with. As anyone who has ever raised chickens knows, two roosters in a flock is one rooster too many. As it turned out, Donna had not attempted to sex our four chicks, and three of our four “laying hens” were males. We had on our kitchen counter the poultry equivalent of Boys Town U.S.A. The thing about roosters is they’re never content to play second chair to any other rooster. If you had equal numbers of roosters and hens, you might think they would pair off into happy little Ozzie and Harriet–style couples. But you would be wrong. The males will fight endlessly, bloodying one another gruesomely, to determine who will dominate the roost. Winner takes all.
Дата добавления: 2014-12-24; Просмотров: 439; Нарушение авторских прав?; Мы поможем в написании вашей работы! Нам важно ваше мнение! Был ли полезен опубликованный материал? Да | Нет |