My buddy Shed: a tribute

Some day I may write about Shed, the dog I got from a classified ad in 1977 when I was 19.  I had returned from one year at Antioch College and was attending McHenry County College in Woodstock Illinois, living on my parent’s farm, and working on a construction crew.  “German Shepherd Puppies, $15.”  I didn’t ask or discuss the purchase with anyone, I just went straight over.  I was told by the owner that these were pure bred Shepherds.  The mother appeared to be, and the other pups could have passed for Shepherd probably, but it was the one big black fuzzy friendly one that came straight over to me, I thought almost like an adult would do.  She wasn’t a fully Shepherd pup, clearly, but I picked her up and that was all it took. Her name was Shed.

Some of the stories about Shed, which I might elaborate on, follow:

EARLY YEARS

Introductions

I showed her to my folks the next morning, and they were gracious in accepting this little bundle into the household.  I admit that I was a very attentive owner and Shed, who I also called “buddy,” was, for the next many years, probably my best personal friend.

Naming of Shed

Yes, she took a long time – I thought – to learn where to defecate and pee.  So, many accidents and mop-ups later, I called her Shithead, affectionately of course, and the name stuck.  I sometimes said it meant SheDog, but it didn’t.  There was nothing not to love about that little puppy, and I don’t believe anyone ever was really offended by that name.

Fell in a Well

Mom was working in one of the outbuildings (the farrowing barn) and had removed the heavy square concrete floor-plug from the well, leaving exposed a hole 1.5 foot square over the well that was maybe 8-10 feet deep.  The well was not filled with water, but it had pipes and valves and concrete blocks at the bottom of it.  Shed, trundling around the building, tumbled in without a sound in the falling, or afterwards.  When a flashlight was rounded up, there at the bottom she sat, looking up with interest at the faces appearing in the little square frame of light way above.

Freezing Storm

I was forgetful one night after letting her out before bedtime, and there she stayed.  She was just several months old.  It was a bad winter storm, but instead of seeking shelter she had huddled by the back door all night on the concrete stoop, fully exposed to the wind.  By morning she had melted a small hole in the ice which was more than half inch thick, all the way to the concrete pad.  She was so happy to see me and tired, but not troubled at all.

Exhausted

As a small pup, maybe 8 weeks old, I was surprised how eagerly she followed me on a quick jog around the farm.  She didn’t show any sign of fatigue so I didn’t slow down, and she raced after me through the high grasses, in the tire tread of the tractor lanes.  It must have been about 20 minutes and I was concluding that her stamina was endless as I approached the farm buildings and headed toward the house.  But as soon as she realized where she was she threw her legs out to all sides and collapsed flat out.  I realized that she had probably been afraid I was leaving her behind, and had been running for her life.

Lost her First Tooth

Some of my books said training could begin at three months, so that’s what I attempted.  First, I thought, she should learn to walk on a leash.  She though it was great fun to bite the leash instead, and once I gave it a tug to pull it out of her mouth.  It was a braided leather leash and one baby canine tooth had gone into a gap in the braid.  It snapped off clean and she made a facial expression I’ll never forget.  She didn’t yelp or howl, bark or growl.  She didn’t seem to blame me, or make any noise at all.  She just gave a long wince and her little puppy mouth turned into a little round hole in the front as if she was mouthing “owwwwwwwwwwwwwww!”

Training

I spend a good amount of time training Shed.  I’d bought a half-dozen books or so, but then just did what seemed right.  She could heel very well, and “heel close” meant stay right there, when we were crossing the street, for example.  I wanted her to trust me so when I went for a jog on our Pioneer Road sometimes I'd tie her along the way to a road sign.  Then I would trot nearly out of sight … and then return. In retrospect I should have left a note with her so no one “rescued” the poor abandoned dog, but traffic was very light at that time and it worked out well.  I think it had the intended effect, and this confidence in me worked out well at college later.

So she learned that I could be trusted; it breaks my heart now to think how it must have been, at her age of 6, when I went back to SIU for my master’s degree and did not take her!  At the time I was distracted by my own life and did not fully appreciate her loss.  But this is always balanced by knowing how well she was cared for by my folks -- who generously offered to take her on – and also knowing that she had the run of the farm, with all its little smells and animals, changes, and little mysteries.

At one point I wrote down all the commands or words that I knew she understood, because she would react to them -- and there were easily 50.  I taped the paper to the kitchen cabinet but did not make a copy of it though I wish that I had.  

Come/heel/sit/stay/stick around/go over there/no/yes/good/ok/treat/let’s go/get in (the car)/other side (go around to the other door)/wait/drop it/jump/over/go under/toy/leash … these were just some of them.  I would often put her through the paces, which she seemed to enjoy.

Chickens

When quite young she killed a few chickens.  They ran freely around the yard at that time, and it really upset me because I thought that was a deal-breaker for me being able to keep her. You can't have chickens running free and a dog that kills chickens; and the chickens were there first.  So I was more forceful in my training about chickens than I had been about anything prior.  I took a dead chicken and jammed it in her mouth and then punished her harshly.  From that day on she killed no more chickens.  But she would never again accept anything from my hand.  If I were to offer her a piece of meat, even, she would turn her head and tear up .. to her final day.

My Pillow

Another incident that happened once only was when we were both very tired and napping on the floor of my room.  I put my head on her as a pillow and we both slept soundly.  After a time I roused myself enough to crawl over to my bed to get a better sleep.  I was surprised to awaken and find that Shed had climbed onto my bed and wriggled herself under my head as a pillow still.  I’m sorry to say that my reflex was to chase her off the bed with a quick scold.  She never let me use her as pillow, ever again.

Climb tree

When she was young she actually tried to follow me up a tree and did get up the lower two branches, which surprised me.  I don’t remember which tree it was but my recollection is that it was quite a feat for a dog.  I had to help her down.

MIDDLE YEARS

Personal Characteristics

I never knew what it was of Shed that wasn’t full German Shepherd, but later when I got another dog I tried to find a match and settled on a Groenendael (Belgian Sheepdog).   It’s unlikely that Shed’s father was a Groenendael because they are rare; but whatever he was seemed to soften and sensitize her personality somewhat, compared to a fullbred Shepherd.  It also left one ear drooping while the other stood up.  This bothered me at first for aesthetic reasons and I even had taped a toilet paper tube in it when she was a puppy, to stiffen it – to no avail.  That failed trick came from one of my books.    Later, she and I would sit side by side in the back 20, overlooking the creek and her one ear would be trained to the distance, the other left for local sounds.  I found that if I mimicked her panting, pausing alertly just like her, I could experience the Back 20 something like she did.  The chirps, the creaks, the croaks --  I heard more of them with Shed beside me.

Water

She hated to be bathed, and suffered through it only under command and only (to my knowledge) by my hand.  I did not bathe her often.  Nor did she like to swim – but she would ride happily in the canoe, stock upright, still, and alert right in the middle, but she would not get into the water unless (on rare occasions) she thought she was being left behind.  This sometimes happened when we would canoe down the Nippersink Creek. She'd run along the bank and sometimes jump into shallow water to get to the canoe.

Bones, toys, and birds

She would protect her bones and toys in an interesting way.  If I whispered “I’m going to get it!  Iiiiiii’m going to get it!, and slid the tip of my finger from her forhead to near the end of her muzzle, she would curl her lips back until just  a little pad of skin was attached, just at the top of the tip of her muzzle.  It’s hard to describe, and I do have a short video of this somewhere.  I toyed with her instincts this way often, as I think she liked it.

I thought it was interesting to see what she did when I gave her a rawhide bone.  She absolutely loved that, and I wonder why I didn’t give her one more often.  But watching from the kitchen I saw the oddest behavior.  She walked slowly around the yard in the same odd circuitous path four times, then suddenly broke from the path in a fast trot, straight to the garden where I could almost see her from the window burying the bone and stamping dirt over it.   I went to garden to dig it up (I thought it a waste of bone), but I could not find it anywhere.  Since then I have seen very similar behavior in another dog.

She would chase birds in the field, but never catch them. It seemed to make her proud (or at least very happy) just to see them scatter. 

There was something nice about Shed that I never taught her, which I now think is quite unusual.  She would only defecate and urinate in tall grasses.  There was never – to my knowledge – a problem with poop on the lawn at the farm.  I don’t doubt it happened but I don’t recall a single pile.  I found out later, only with other dogs, that urine leaves dead spots on the grass.  I think there were none – neither at the farm nor outside my 4-room dorm at SIU where Shed stayed for 2 years.  In her later years this good habit ended, and as an elderly dog she would even poop while walking – once, I remember, she dropped a load like a horse, as she strolled passed someone’s picnic party. 

Fireworks

Many dogs are afraid of fireworks, I know. But not Shed. You could hardly restrain her when the sizzling, hissing, shooting, and explosions began.  She would lunge into a string of firecrackers growling and snarling, and sink her teeth in if she could, and then she would strut around proudly – you wanted to pin a medal on her.  This came as a surprise and there were nearly some accidents early on before I learned to tie or hold her.

Sleeping

Shed would wander pretty widely at the farm in her prime.  She’d often roam at night and sleep much of the day under the kitchen table.  One morning she came in, took her place under the table and fell asleep. Some time later she stretched and yawned, and when she opened her mouth it was just as if a skunk had squirted in the house.  In fact, one had somehow shot neatly into her mouth during the night.  Every time she opened her mouth it I was the same. I took her to the bathtub and washed it with tomato juice. That helped quite a lot.

When she would find and eat some carrion (yes, she had an iron stomach) you would know it by the rumbling and gurgling from under the table, and the moans (or were they sighs of satisfaction?).  She would often run in her sleep – you could tell by all four legs twitching, with little bursts of barking puffing through her sleeping lips.

She slept soundly under the table, but her favorite place to nap was on the picnic table just outside the house.  There she could keep one eye open for whatever interesting  might happen.

Doorbell

Neighbors across the way claimed that very late one night their doorbell rang and they found Shed on their front porch.  Apparently she wandered across the road and had rung their bell.  I was not happy about the crossing the street part, but impressed by the bell.  To my knowledge it only happened the one time.

Kicked by horse

Shed was probably 5 and didn’t bark much, but she did enjoy chasing horses and birds.  One day, in the corral, dad saw one of the larger horses catch Shed under the jaw with a solid kick, and Shed flipped through the air and landed limp on the ground.  I was nearby and didn’t see it happen, but came quickly.  I kneeled over Shed to check her injuries, and pressed my head against hers.  She suddenly awakened, got up, and walked quietly to the house.  I don’t think she bothered the horses quite so much after that day.

Lost in Rainstorm

One of the most impressive events occurred when I was asked by a family friend  to watch his house while he was on vacation.  Lou was an architect and the impressive house stood on a hilltop across the highway in Bull Valley, more than 9 miles from the farm. Shed went with me, of course, though I’m not even sure I told Lou that she would.  She slept in the house but stayed outside when I went to work – this was just something she could routinely be relied upon to do.  But, one stormy evening I went out with some friends after work and returned home at 10:00 or later.  Not only was I very late, but the storm was heavy and it went on and on.  Lots of wind,  in a heavy Midwestern downpour, for most of the night.  Shed was nowhere.  I called and whistled, and left the door open (a nice overhang made this possible) and I left food out.  I slept just a little as the rain fell and Shed did not appear.  I remember listening to Leonard Cohen’s Ballad of the Absent Mare and I think of this incident every time I hear the song still today.  The song (quite beautiful) ends with the mare appearing to the rider: 

Oh the world is sweet
the world is wide
and she's there where
the light and the darkness divide
and the steam's coming off her
she's huge and she's shy
and she steps on the moon
when she paws at the sky

And in the early morning, while my grief was solidifying I got a call from home: “Guess who is soaking wet and sleeping under the table?”   Shed had run all the way back to the farm in the dark, in a bitter rainstorm, 9 miles, a on a route that she had traveled once, in a car,  and to my recollection she hadn’t been paying particular attention on the drive over.

Hit by car

I was in Mexico traveling when Shed was hit by a car in front of the house.  She'd probably been chasing a rabbit I think she hit the car rather than the other way around.  She was bruised and limping but she recovered fully with just some scratches on her muzzle.  I came back early from the trip anyway.

Traveling

I did travel quite a bit with Shed, around the county, to and from SIU, and on road trips.  Wherever I went, she went, for the first 6 years of her life.  She would ride in the passenger seat, upright and alert.  She turned quite a few heads riding like that.  At one rest stop I recall a busload of Japanese tourists photographing her, very amused and impressed.

Harmonica

I played the harmonica back then, with more enthusiasm than skill probably, and it was fairly unusual instrument in the day.  I'm probably the only Shed had ever heard doing it.  I and a bunch of friends were hiking through the Shawnee Forest once when Shed disappeared for a while and then reappeared, high in energy like something really cool had just happened.  A short time later we came upon a small campsite with another group of guys and they shouted out "who plays the harmonica?"  I did, I told them and they all burst out laughing.  Apparently one of them did too, and Shed had charged up absolutely sure that it was me.  They had read the situation correctly.  

Sense of Smell

It wasn’t always apparent but Shed must have had an extraordinary sense of smell, judging from the following event.  I was visiting Jack in Maryland about 1982.  He lived in the country where he and his friend had built a kiln – there was a kiln-firing or party of some sort one day I was there, and – being a bit of an outsider, after a while and for no particular reason I decided to take a little walk down the lane away from the compound.  Shed didn’t see me go, but I knew she would both behave and wait for me.  The little hike lasted longer than I had expected because when I wandered off the road into a forested area I found what seemed like a natural amphitheater -- tall trees formed a fairly complete canopy overhead. There were low shrubs and grasses but very little understory.   I walked quite a ways in, checking some interesting patches of grasses, some abandoned vehicles, etc. – mostly just enjoying the stroll.  I decided to return to the road, but circled back to see more on the way.  The whole wander was at least a quarter mile.  As I approached the lane I saw Shed racing down it toward me.  On a whim I froze, having heard that dogs detect movement well but can’t make much out of still figures.  Sure enough, she got to the place where I had entered the glen, entered it herself (as if someone had told her where I’d last been seen) and, in full alert, searched for me.  I was in plain sight, maybe 40 feet away, but she gave up quickly, threw her nose to the ground and set off at a full run retracing my steps over the entire path I had taken.  I saw the entire thing because with no low trees the visibility was excellent.  I’m sure I had left no visible trail.  By the time she came up to me she was very happy and out of breath and I had gained new appreciation for her extraordinary sense of smell.

SIU

I found an off-campus dorm at Southern Illinois University, which I shared with three roommates who told me very clearly that they did not want a dog in the house.  I moved in without  Shed in September  and for the first Thanksgiving I went home and returned (with their permission ) with Shed for just the few weeks until I took her back for Christmas vacation.  Just before we packed up for the holidays, I was approached by all three roommates who asked me if I would bring Shed back to stay.  It worked out wonderfully for nearly two years.  It only became a problem when, a year on, one roommate graduated to be replaced by a someone with a feral, disobedient dog.  He argued that he should be able to keep his dog in the house too, so we had to allow it. But that was an entirely different matter.  Poop on the lawn, saliva on the walls, mud all over, smells, and no obedience whatsoever.

Perched on Fence

At Southern Illinois University in the late 70’s dogs were tacitly allowed on campus, and I was able to leave Shed outside any building with the command “stick around.”  Here’s where the training  came in handy because “stick around” meant I would reemerge eventually from the same door I had gone into.  Even if I had not been in a particular building before I could trust her to hang around as  I always made a point to exit the same door I had entered.  She would not hover and worry, but would wander and explore, and always close enough that I could summon her with my dog whistle.  One day, after lunch in the Student Center, I came out to find a small group of students trying to befriend her, amused that she seemed not to care about them whatsoever.  She was never one to seek affection from strangers.  I was heading another direction, so started off and gave a whistle.  Shed snapped to attention, full alert, but couldn’t pick me from the crowd.  Instead of running toward the whistle, she turned and raced up a nearby concrete ramp and lept, at half-story level, onto the concrete railing just like a cat might do.  Then she saw me, turned and raced back down the ramp and up to me.  It was exhilarating to watch, and she did impress and astonish quite a little audience that day.

Animal Control

I would ride my bicycle to campus, about a mile, and Shed would run beside.  I never carried a leash.  Whatever class I took, she would wait outside.  She would busy herself chasing squirrels and birds, wandering about, but she never went far.  She didn’t care for other dogs so was not tempted away, and she was indifferent to friendly strange people as well.  One day I took my first karate class in the Arena  -- a large building on a different side of campus from where I usually attended.  It was surrounded by mowed fields so there were no trees or squirrels and  -- for Shed – probably of very little interest.  When I came out, almost 2 hours later, She was nowhere to be found.  I called, I rode around the vicinity, I whistled, I went home and got my car and drove through campus, calling and asking about her.  I felt terrible. My last resort was to call animal control on the outside chance that they had nabbed her.  But she had had a collar with my name and number and no one had called, so I had little hope about that. 

Indeed, Animal Control had a dog that matched her description but they said she looked sick and had nearly put her down.  The dog they found was foaming at the mouth, as rabid animals do.  When I heard that I knew it was Shed as she had not been raised with other dogs and was nervous around them.  She foamed and drooled and lost all self confidence.  I rescued her immediately.  It turns out that someone had removed her collar.

Cold on a Camping Trip

One winter day at SIU I thought I would go on a solo camping trip, so I set off with Shed to the Shawnee Forest.  It was much slower going than I had anticipated because of the foot of snow on the trail.  No one had been in the woods before me and was a pristine as you might imagine, with all the crisp winter sights and sounds.  We slogged through the forest happily enough until night time.  I pitched the tent, ate a cold can of soup, fed Shed and tried to sleep.  Then temperature dropped (I had been reckless – at the time I thought adventurous – by purposefully not checked the weather forecast).  Surprise me!  But it was COLD.  I was freezing in my sleeping bag and Shed, next to me in the tent, was shivering too.  So I unzipped the bag, pulled her inside, and zipped it back up, barely.  Normally she would never have allowed that, and she was a little wet, but we warmed immediately and slept like babies all bound up like that.

Fleas and Tics

One thing that didn’t bother me as much as it should have was the fact that Shed got fleas and tics when she was in Carbondale.  Neither seemed to bother her much – in fact I was hardly aware she had fleas.  But one summer when I vacated my room to stay for free in the trailer park (watching a friends’ trailer), the flea eggs hatched and the fleas multiplied.  According to my landlady it was as if the floor was carbonated with fleas jumping, thousands of them.  She had the place exterminated.  I’m afraid that when Shed and I stayed one night at Cary O.'s apartment in Chicago we infested it with fleas as well.  As for tics, they were just a matter of course.  As long as she was in southern Illinois, if I looked for tics in her thick fur, they were there.  Dozens, often many dozens of them.  I remember pulling them off and tossing them on the sidewalk, all grape-like with clamp-mouths full of flesh.   Shed didn’t seem to mind one way or the other.

Tucson

The longest road trip she took was with mom and dad, out to Tucson and I came down from the University of Washington in Seattle, about 1987.  They were caught in a snowstorm and took a motel in the pass one night.  It was a great surprise to see her, and I did get some video of Shed on that trip as I had a video camera by then.   Again, when I left, I said goodby to Shed and the intense poignancy of the moment for her was somehow caught in a photo Ellen took, I lost, but will always remember.  I was smiling, young and off on my own.  She was looking at me intently and, it seemed, with dread. 

I believe we took her out to Tucson another year, as I have a photograph which I think was from 1983, the year Chuck, Deb, and I hiked the Grand Canyon – Shed was not allowed in the Canyon of course, because of the wildlife and burros.  I don’t remember her on that driving trip but she was so much a part of my life then that of course she was there. Only the photo proves it.

LATER YEARS

The Farm

I was not around much for Shed’s later years, but she couldn’t have hoped for a better place to live than Pioneer Farm.  She lived both inside and outside, enjoying the warmth of the fire and the changing of the seasons.  Mom and Dad, as always, were in constant motion and – while they weren’t the same sort of buddy to Shed that I had been, they were good friends and excellent caretakers.  I understand Shed followed Mom, in particular, wherever she went.  It’s not always easy caring for a dog and I will always remember their generosity toward Shed, and toward me by taking her in.

Saw a Deer

She used to love to chase rabbits, especially from the hill a large grassy field away from the farm buildings. Apparently from that angle she could see them well and there was no shelter except the trees and shrubs way across. Off she'd go -- she'd give those rabbits something to think about, that's for sure but to my knowledge she never killed one.

Shed was not young when Dad and I were driving back along the trails, Shed in the middle of the bench seat in the cab of the truck, when we saw a deer.  We were traveling  10 miles per hour maybe, but Shed shot straight over me, cleanly through the open window, stretched out in the leap like a deer herself, hit the ground and disappeared into the woods.

Run over by tractor

Mom was taking a group of girl scouts on a wagon ride to the Back 20 and Shed followed along as she did at that time.  She was 14 years old.  At one point she was distracted by something in the road and was caught by the narrow front wheel of a large John Deer tractor.  On this tractor the wide back wheels fell in the same track as the front ones, and Mom couldn’t break until both wheels had gone over.  Miraculously, Shed got up and returned maybe a half mile to the house, on her own.  She was in no mood for a wagon ride with young girls.  As it turns out, she had a broken spine and her intestines had been pushed through her diaphragm.  Mom and dad took her to the surgeon, at great expense I am sure.  She was repaired and her mobility was only slightly impeded for another good three years.

Death

Shed died at the age of 17, much older than dogs her size.  I dug her grave outside the house just where her picnic table stood while she watched – of course she didn’t know what I was doing but the memory of that is burned in my mind.  At that time I thought she looked OK, not ready to go.  But it wasn’t much later, as I was in Athens visiting Chuck and Jean, just before Isaac was born, when Mom found her standing with her head in the corner of the garage.  She was so weak and old that flies had laid eggs and her poor skin was infested with maggots.  Mom cleaned her up as best she could, and she and Dad took her on a last ride to the Back 20 which she loved, and then had her put down and called me.  I loved her enough that now, 25 years later, parts of her story still choke me up.  Her friendship changed my life and still means a lot to me.

Insects vs. Insects -- My photographic arthropodous

Out of college for the first time I became City Editor at the Richmond Gazette, a weekly newspaper in northern Illinois. I was the only reporter, photographer, copy editor, and layout guy.  I carried a camera, shot black and white in ASA 400 or 1600 if the light was dim.  I developed my own pictures in trays in a darkroom.

One year I won best sports photography from the Associated Press, for a picture after a high school football game.  The little team no one had heard of had somehow  been winning like crazy all season and was about to go downstate and vie for the Illinois title.  They had one last game at home to cap it off -- an easy win, more of a send-off celebration than an real contest and the whole town turned out.  But they lost.  My shot was of the bench, four muddy guys crying into muddy towels.  The caption: "... the Rockets will be staying home."

That camera was a Nikon, someone stole it just as things went digital and Nancy gave me a Panasonic Lumix, an autofocus that fit in my pocket.  It had a Leica lens.  In my tinkering I discovered an amazing macro on it and I started shooting flowers in her wonderful garden.  Despite the rich colors, beautiful petals, and extraordinary detail it was still a point-and-shoot camera; the skill was really all in the gardening, not in the photography.

One day a fly landed nearby, a green fly, a long-legged fly, and I shot it.

New Paltz New York

What startling details!  I immediately went after flys and bugs, and saw the strangest thing I had never known.  What was that ball of water in that housefly's mouth?  What was that spider doing on that dead grasshopper? That Box Elder Bug was actually wrapped up in a spider web!  That ant, what jaws!  These became armored vehicles -- legs covered with spikes, mouth parts that shot out, feet like icepicks, eyes wrapped all around... It's like pokemon, like predatory aliens, like so many micro robots with Artificial Intelligence ... but real.

From then on I used flowers as bait and backdrop. When I shot one I didn't recognize I identifed it the old fashioned way: I googled "flat faced hairy black fly with white eyes," or "shiny black wasp with purple abdomen," sifted through the images and nail it down from there. I started posting hits on an Entomology Facebook group where, if I couldn't identify them, someone certainly would.  Judging from the speed and specificity of the response there are savants in that crowd I'm certain.  The requirements for an amateur like me was that I say where it was taken, I had to have taken the pictures myself, and I was encouraged to add the Latin name if I could find it because common names are for ... normal people.

All pictures in this Blog were  from Chicago Illinois, unless otherwise noted.

When I posted a video of 1,000 baby garden spiders fleeing their fetal spider-ball someone called it "a whole lot of No No No!" which I thought was funny but she got shut down immediately by a crowd which has no tolerance for jokes of this kind.  And you must say where it was found.  Once I said I shot a stink bug in Chicago, then corrected my self later -- no, it was in Michigan -- and got a bunch of likes for the correction.

So I've been hooked; I've taken thousands of arthropidic pictures -- insects and spiders mainly.  I lost my first Panasonic sadly (with a whole lot of pictures on it, too!) but bought two more on ebay.  It's a DMC-Z53 to be exact.

So many jaw-dropping pictures I wouldn't know where to start so I'll focus on a theme within a theme: bugs eating bugs.  Many of these were accidental shots, the horror of which I didn't realize until later...   And that's enough talk.  This post is about pictures.

... like this one of a Spider Wasp, probably, (Auplopus carbonarius, Pompilidae)  which bites the legs off of a young orb weaving spider (Neoscona crucifera) before taking it alive back to its nest to feed its young..  Woooohahaha.

.. Later I saw another one before the snipping began...

  ..  before you get too upset with the Spider Wasp, look at this one, in the mouth of a Robber Fly (Dysmachus trigonus).

I actually saw this Cicada Killer Wasp (Sphecius speciosus) take the Cicada (Cicadidae) down in flight.  After a wrestle and a sting, off to the nest we go.

Millipede (Diplopoda Julida) that came to a sorry end in a cellar spider's web.

Ok, it's not an insect eating an insect, but at least these two American Dog Ticks (Dermacentor variabilis) still have chunks of my dog Anicca (Canis lupus familiaris) in their mouths.

This Gray Cross Spider, Bridge Orbweaver (Larinoides patagiatus) wove an orb and caught a Gray Sunflower Weevil (Smicronyx sordidus LeConte).

A Yellow Paper Wasp (Polistes dominulus) enjoying the core of a young Orbweaving Spider.

... and another Orb Weaver (Araneus diadematus) with an ambitious project ahead; a Lightning Bug (Lampyridae).

I'm throwing this one in for comic relief.  The Bumble Bee (Hymenopterais Apidae Bombus) is quite alive, it's a defensive posture I'd never seen before.   I wonder why?



Maybe it's the Felis catus.

Jumping Spider (Salticidae) that I saw jump and catch this Midge (Chironomidae).

Here's another, a different day.

... and by now we know what's going on here...

Cellar Spider (Pholcidae) with a Crane Fly (Tipulidae latreille).

Orb Weaver with something -- a June Bug? (Phyllophaga?) -- apparently wrappen in celophane, for later.

Here is a Carpenter Ant (Camponotus pennsylvanicus) with a pillbug (Armadillidiidae).

New Buffalo, Michigan.

The spider of unknown species furtively emerged to feed on this live and tethered Horsefly (Tabanidae).  It went on for hours.

A Robber Fly with a hapless Green Bottle Fly (Lucilia sericata).

Here's that Boxelder bug (Boisea trivittata) in trouble.   Maybe wondering what comes next...

A Yellow and Black Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia) with a Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus).  The web ladder is the Garden Spider's signature reinforcement -- apparently they especially enjoy the larger prey

So it's about the start of a new season and I'll pay special attention for mayhem in progress.  Spring starts with ants and flies, then spiders come out and they dominate the summer. Summer brings all forms, from the pestilent Japanese Beetles and the legion Boxelder Bugs, to the bald-faced hornets, creepy plastic Earwigs, the centipedes, butterflies and moths. The smaller they get, often the more bizarre.  Most of the summer, try stopping what you're doing for a moment and get down low,  You'll find something fascinating.

I'm happy that I don't live at their scale -- I simply wouldn't stand a chance ...   but seriously, how can you not really really like bugs!?

A Canine and Feline friendship ... a Memorial

A pet is not like a real child, I’ve had some of each so I can say that with certainty.  But anyway there’s something special about your animals, maybe even more dear when you raise them with children because there are so many memories woven together.  I’ll tell you a story about my dog Anicca to commemorate her death on Nov 1 2017. 

It’s actually a story of Anicca and her brother Cloud who was a male kitten we acquired around the same time.  Anicca was a Groenendael – a Belgian Sheepdog – and she looked like any Groenendael, an unusual breed in the states.  Something like a collie/shepherd mix, long hair and all black.  Agile, smart, devoted, sweet, and beautiful.  In Chicago I used to run on the beach with her and she would heel close on the sidewalk and sit at intersections with rapt attention.  When we hit the beach she’d be “on call” as I jogged down the shoreline.  

It takes a little patience and training, but there is absolutely nothing like a well-behaved dog.   I was a good dog owner, and she was certainly a good dog. Technically, I suppose leashes were required on the beach but we would go on off-hours and she was on a verbal leash -- she’d come immediately when called.   

All the subtle communication aside, if I were to simply  count the commands I suppose it would be more than 30:  Anicca, hello, good dog, good girl, inside, outside, ok!, no, do you want?, I love you, bad/wrong, come, come!, wait/stay, lie down, lie flat out, where-is/bring me, toy, kong, sit, go over there, go way over there, hungry?, goodbye, heel, look around, you’re free!, treat, water, pee, hungry, cat, go for walk, beach, and more.

On the beach, because she really knew come, heel, sit, no, ok, and stay, I could also teach her “you’re free!”  Then she’d explore, track squirrels and play with other dogs ... always with an eye out for my next communication.  Even in the depth of winter, 20 below, she would love to hear the word “Beach!”

In the house she would sit then hunt for treats, find her kong, fetch a toy … all the normal dog games, and she loved to play hide and seek.  I’d throw a toy a few times for fetch and then suddenly hide – I mean really hide – like third floor in the closet hide … and she would not give up until she found me.  What fun, for both of us!

One day, when she was about nine, I noticed she was slipping in her responsiveness, not listening so well.  It was really a joke when I thought “what, has she gone deaf?”  So I said “BEACH” just to test that ridiculous hypothesis and to my amazement … nothing.  “TREAT.”  Nothing. 

She was deaf and I mean stone deaf.

For months I mourned the loss of my connection to this wonderful creature until I suddenly realized ok she was deaf ... but she was neither blind nor dumb.  Coincidentally, I had taken a class in American Sign Language just because it's wonderful.  So I taught Anicca, in ASL, all the commands she once knew.  Inside, outside, come, stay, treat, walk, love you ... everything.  She learned it all again, and fast.  We were back in business!  

Now a bit about Cloud, my son Aidan’s cat.  One of the family ceremonies we created was the “big boy celebration” at the age of five or so when they could read, add, ride a bike, etc. (we had a fun little list that included "going on a boat.") ... and then they got to choose a pet.  Isaac chose gerbils so I built a little PVC track running from their main cage to a vacation home mounted by his bed, and Captain and Cuddle-Captain would run back and forth to get treats and such.  Aidan chose birds but a series of tragedies led to him picking out the next family cat.  He selected a sick little white kitten which fell so ill we had to take it back for transfusions.  Anicca, a pup herself, was concerned and licked and licked and licked this poor creature like a mother would lick a pup.  Cloud, a stoic little tissue of a kitten, leaned into the loving. 

Cloud not only survived, he turned out to be an athlete and quite a character.  There are so many, but my favorite story about Cloud is when he prowled intently into the living room, tracking a fly that was bumbling along about three feet off the ground.  Cloud leapt into the air, caught the fly between his paws and landed on his haunches.  Staring, he slowly opened his paws like a book.  The fly escaped.  I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.

So Anicca and Cloud grew up together, nothing like your normal cat-dog relationship.  Two free spirits and unlikely friends.  When Anicca went deaf it didn’t matter.  But at 12 or so Cloud fell ill again and this time he was diagnosed with something more serious -- feline diabetes. The vet gave him a week and a half to live, or we could admister daily insulin shots and blood draws to manage his blood sugar.  We discussed it and chose palliative care instead.  Too many shots, too much pain.  

Cloud stopped eating almost immediately but lasted more than a month.  As he lost his weight he spend his days in the yard under a large-leafed plant and then he’d come in for the evening and sleep with one or the other of us. While he was wasting away, he was always purring.  Visit him under his bush?  Quietly purring.  Touch him at night?  Faintly purring. 

So Cloud was prostrate on the couch, skin and bones and I was fixing a screen when Aidan called  from college.  I chatted on Skype a while and then asked if he’d like to see Cloud.  Yes, of course ... 

But Cloud was not on the couch; he wasn’t anywhere. He was in no shape to jump out the open window so I searched the  house.  Then I looked again -- I looked every place a cat could possibly crawl into to die.  Finally -- although I couldn’t believe he could get to the window then jump to the deck --  I looked in the yard.  The entire garden, under every plant, every crevice and corner.  Twice.  Then a third time with Aidan, on Skype.

Cloud had simply disappeared.  I scoured the chain linked fence to verify there was no place to crawl through.  The only possible thing I could imagine is that Cloud had gotten up, climbed to the window, fallen to the deck, and had been carried away by a hawk. 

The next day was Monday, no Cloud still and I had to go to work.  As a last resort I turned to my deaf dog and asked “where/find/bring me”  “cat” … “where/find/bring me”  “cat,"  though "cat" was not a word she used often.  To you that would just be palms-up-pulling  … pinch-and-pull an imaginary whisker … palms-up-pulling  … pinch-and-pull an imaginary whisker.

Anicca got excited, she was on full alert!  She scanned the yard and sniffed and then suddenly honed in across the fence to our neighbor’s yard, like a pointer.  And there was Cloud, struggling and stumbling across the grass.  Somehow he had climbed to the window, survived the fall to the deck, clawed himself to and over a 4 foot fence, and survived all the nighttime carnivores.  

I jumped the fence and scooped him up. Aidan got to say goodbye, and so did Nancy and I.  

Cloud died in our arms that afternoon.

Then Anicca died, also in our arms, last fall.

Teaching My Amygdala a Lesson!

Robert Sapolsky, in his recent book Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (2017), has quite a lot to say about the amygdala, that small, very old, bit-of-an-almond-shaped unit found on either side of the brain in all mammals. It’s right under the temporal lobe.  The popular joke is that it triggers the three F’s: flight, fight, and sex ...but it’s fundamentally about fear and anxiety.

The amygdala receives direct sensory input -- vision, olfactory, tactile, etc. --  and it also has complicated relationships with other parts of the brain.  It sends signals to other areas and it can be influenced by the other areas too -- most important for my purpose, by the rational prefrontal cortex which, as Sapolsky  puts it, encourages you to to the harder thing, when it's the right thing.

In a prophylactic sort of way thoughts from the prefrontal cortex can moderate the intensity with which the amygdala attaches meaning to sensory input.  It's as if the cortex can coach the amygdala, but the amygdala takes the first swing at incoming signals and that starts the mind off in a certain direction.  We're talking about a fifth of a second.

The amygdala goes a long way explaining our natural sorting into Us's and Them's.  That sorting, Sapolsky explains, is generally along two dimensions: warmth and competency.   For the true Us's (high warmth and competence) we feel pride.  At the other extreme (low warmth and competence), disgust.  Low warmth/high competency evokes envy, high warmth/low competence, pity.  (It gets even more interesting when the categories change, p 413).  My point here is that the amygdala sets in motion some perspectives that can have real emotional ramifications.

After the amygdala takes its first whack the other parts of the brain kick in with their assessment, possible adjustments/corrections, and perhaps an emotional/behavioral response.  For some people that initial intuition becomes quite a guide for behavior; others prefer to later think things through.  The key for my purpose here is that the amygdala is a direct  recipient of sensory input, is the first-processor of it, and it operates within a fifth of a second before we are consciously aware.

That makes it a potential enemy, as the algorithms it has developed are less relevant now in the modern world.  If someone or something in the thicket looked dramatically different from you 50,000 years ago there's a pretty good chance that it might be an immediate threat, you should be anxious, you should feel threatened, and maybe you should react.   But unfortunately in the world we live in now the amygdala remains (or, Sapolsky suggests, has become) highly sensitive to race.

Quoting Sapolsky: “A hugely unsettling sensory cue concerns race.  Our brains are incredibly attuned to skin color … We may claim to judge someone by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin. But our brains sure as hell note the color, real fast.” (p85)

Sapolsky again: “Threatening faces produce a distinctive change … in under two hundred milliseconds.  Among white subjects, viewing someone black evokes a stronger [threatened] waveform than viewing someone white.” (p 86)

Other things activate the amygdala too.  Gender, age, and occupation often trump race (p 408) and social status also is used sorting Us's from Them's. (p 388)  Facial expression is processed too, but only for people already identified as an "Us". (395)   In most situations, most of these attributes matter less today, you would think.  And so "we feel positive associations with people who share the most meaningless traits with us." (390)

Because it works before our awareness we can't be blamed for the amygdala's behavior .. that is, until we learn that we can override its suggestions, and even prime it with thought.  Sorry about this: we can.  A few hundred milliseconds after that first amygdala hit, messages start merging from the frontal cortex which can dampen or begin to correct that primitive impulse.  Also good: the amygdala can be influenced by a little advanced processing.  "Race as a salient Us/Them category can be shoved aside by subtle reclassification." (p 408)  For example, when subjects were shown pictures of vegetables and asked to guess whether people would like them, the amygdala wasn't activated by those people's different races!

These thoughts were playing in my own brain as I walked through the Newark Airport recently.  I have found airports to be extraordinary places to think about people.  When foot traffic is high I often marvel at how the human rushing flow finds its own patterns with rivulets of more hurried travelers finding smooth ways around the slower groups, constant merging and diverging at intersections, large moving masses easily flowing around sudden obstacle -- all without any rules or instructions or enforcement and without the frustration and rage you might get on a real road.

But that day foot traffic was not heavy and I thought instead of how international airports are an amazing confluence of strangers.  Is there anything else is quite like them?  A shopping mall, you might think, but people there are more homogeneous and the crowds are generlly smaller and less hurried.  Sports stadiums are huge too, and full of strangers.  But there is a clear sense of shared purpose at a football game; there's the "Us" on this side against the "Them" across the way.  There's traffic on an interstate, all strangers there too, but far less dense or personal.

But in an international airport you will find people from all over the world -- all races, ethnicities, languages, classes, religions, and ages.  And aside from small traveling groups and employees everyone is pretty much a stranger to everyone else.  It's a nice place to think about strangers, I found.  That day I was trying to notice my amygdala sorting strangers into "Us's" and "Them's."

I remembered a trick I've used with some success  to sort in ways that are more meaningful than my almond-size amygdala is inclined to do.  I reasoned that race and gender are pretty much a given and they're not very revealing unless I want to draw on -- and perpetuate -- crude stereotypes.  But clothing is a choice.  Why not try to sort people on the basis of something they actually have some control over?  That man's suit suggests he's doing business right off the plane.  The woman with the scarf over her hair looks Muslim.  That child in the Buzz Lightyear outfit is carefree and cool, I have shoes like that, I'd never wear that sweater, and so on...  It seemed a more useful and realistic  sorting of Us and Them, I thought.  It took a lot of effort, it was an interesting exercise, and I could feel the difference.  I also tried it with facial expressions, noting "happy," "sad," "anxious," "confident" as another way to override my crass biases ...

But people wear different sorts of clothes for all kinds of reasons and facial expressions are fleeting and hard to read.  Are the sweat pants because they're cheap, or because they're comfortable?  Is that group laughing because they are happy or are they laughing at the homeless man?  She's anxious, yes, but just until she sees her gate ... not too useful.  So I asked myself again -- what is the most important thing about people, something fundamental and real that I can easily assess.  If I’m going to make a purposeful note of something to prepare, override, or dampen my initial evolutionary impulses, what would it be?

I may have found it, it’s a beautiful solution, it's very egalitarian, and it's super easy.  What’s the most important thing about people?  They’re there. They exist.

What's more, there is nothing particularly important about their proximity to me.  Just as the Earth is not the center of the universe, I am not the center of this airport.  Sure I do have a particular vantage point that limits my experience but the woman sitting at Gate 8 across the way is no more or less important than the man I'm passing.

I think my experience with Robert’s Rules helped me come to this.  When I was made chair of the senate it was, to be honest, in disarray.  It was considered a "snakepit" by some and there was a move underway to disband it.  So I read Robert's Rules, the Constitution and Bylaws and then simply treated every senator as equal, with an equal voice, equal right to speak, with a perspective of equal value, and with a perfectly equal vote.  It didn't matter that some would rather bully, interrupt, intimidate, or try to force their views, Robert's Rules required me not to let them.  No one had more or less of a role than any one else.  That approach, I found, had a leveling effect and after a time I felt it helped to dramatically heal and strengthen senate behavior and process.

So in the airport, just the same, I gave up the sorting hat altogether, gave up the goal of figuring out who might be more of an Us and who more of a Them.  I wanted to jam my amygdala with a predisposition which my prefrontal cortex can get behind: we’re equal.  Of course I didn't expect that everyone would suddenly be my friend, I was just trying to override those default, hardwired, outdated, quick  biases which jam me up a bit in the modern world.  One fifth of a second override, that was all I was looking for; relationship building can still come later.

My trick -- which may sound either brilliant or crazy -- was to replace every person in my field of vision, for a instant, with an identical marker: I used a stick but I suppose it could be anything: a dot, whatever, but all the same.  So many human beings, so many posts, so many equals.  I simply noted their number and their distribution.

This was so easy! Just a flash now and then, identical sticks, one per human regardless of age, gender, race, anything.  First hit: no judgment.  Just how many and where.

The result?  It seemed to make a difference on my outlook, I felt a little more informed about my environment, and the initial leveling was right in line with my egalitarian convictions.  I was just a stick too.  Then, of course, my prefrontal cortex came flooding in with its own observations, but it felt like a better place to start!

To make it a little more fun, though maybe to overextend it a bit, next I tried to notice something more, to add the next meaningful layer.  What is the next most important thing, once I know number and distribution?  Simple.  Next, tell people apart.  So the second layer of Environment Scan 2.0 was not faces (because so many new faces do look alike) and not race (because there just aren't that many different ones).  But those crazy red shoes! … that zebra-striped bag .. those baggy pants and sneakers…  Back to clothes!  But this time without any judgment, no sorting.  It took a little effort but clothing can make pretty good unique identifiers for total strangers.  And I actually surprised myself by later recognizing a few people I'd seen before, by that t-shirt or striped scarf.  Hey there’s the stick with the baggy pants again, there’s that stick in red shoes!  I’m joking of course, by that time they were fully human.

But I liked it! Ha! Take that, amygdala!

Here's a well known and highly respected "Implicit Bias" test conducted by Harvard, in which you can see your own by clicking "e' or "i" on your keyboard when you see pictures; they explain, it's easy.  Read about your results and their overall findings on this site as well.  Remember to select your letters fast if you want to test your amygdala.  If you take your time, like most of a second, that sophisticated prefrontal cortex begins to kick in!  

TAKE THE HARVARD TEST