Richard Wolkomir & Joyce Rogers Wolkomir

 

 

We heard about a cool incident on an airliner, posted on Facebook by Wendy Battino.
 
You can check out Ms. Battino's first-person account here—  https://www.facebook.com/wendy.battino/posts/pfbid02XBBD8AkYBDrAsPtb7ETN6QgrWSsL82yxC37uToAuQrBt1V7gMoZBVW6eJfoKKd9yl.

We found this story so amusing and touching, we wanted to pass it along, for those who missed the original account. So here's an abbreviated version—

 

After a sojourn in California, Ms. Battino says, she boarded an Alaska Airlines flight back home, with her two Siberian huskies, Artie and Moon, kenneled in the airliner's cargo hold. As she walked back to her seat, from the hold below, she heard a tremendous howling.

 

It meant: "Where are you, Wendy Battino?" Knowing the howling would continue unless she howled back, Ms. Battino knelt in the aisle and prepared to howl.

 

First, though, a flight attendant asked her to hold off, while the attendant used the PA system to alert the other passengers.

 

After that, Ms. Battino howled.

 

Down in the hold, Artie and Moon went silent.

 

Everyone on the plane laughed.

 

Then the flight attendant made a further announcement: "Would anyone else like to join in one more howl to let these dogs in the hold know that we care?"

 

Just about every passenger on that plane howled. 

 

After that, says Ms. Battino, it was an upbeat flight home.

 

--Joyce and Richard

 

 

 

 

When the national and international news becomes too scary and mean, we look out our window.

 

We see a little park, with a pond and pathways, and a meadow, and a mountain range beyond. Down in the park we see people, but not just people.

 

Yesterday, we saw one of our favorites, Ella Bella Socks, on one of her walks. She is a medium-sized dog of indeterminate ancestry, black, with white feet and stockings, a pretty sight.

 

Also, farther down the path, we saw our friend Ryan, on his ride-on lawnmower. He is a member of the maintenance team here, and another of our favorites…but not just ours.  

 

Socks saw Ryan, and instantly leaped forward—her human companion dropped Socks' leash, and Socks ran, as fast as a dog can run, full tilt toward Ryan and his tractor.

 

He turned off the machine, waited a second, and then Socks—with a tremendous leap—landed atop the lawnmower and in his lap, clearly ecstatic.

 

Later, we asked Ryan about his relationship with Socks.

 

"She loves me," he said. "Whenever she sees me, her owners just drop her leash and here she comes, fast as she can go."

 

Troubling news, yesterday, on the tv and internet and newspapers. It's always troubling. Out our window, however, the headlines were uplifting—

 

"Dog Loves Man!" "Man Loves Dog!"

 

Go ahead, Socks. Do it again. Make our day!

 

--Joyce and Richard

 

 

In case you missed it, we just saw a CNN story that hit a chord, and we want to share it.

 

Cinnamon, a goat, and Felix, a 1-year-old bulldog mix, are totally buddies.

 

They hang out full-time, eating, playing, and sleeping.

 

They came to the Wake County Animal Center, in Raleigh, North Carolina, on March 13, 2023, because they each needed a home, and they found one—together.

 

Now they're BFFs, because a local family, with a history of fostering homeless animals, has taken them in. They now have a small herd of goats, for consorting, pastures for romping, and—of course—each other.

 

Animals, we believe, are sentient, like us, with awareness and emotions, a belief based on really smart and caring dogs we've had in our lives.

 

Plus, a bit of back story—when one of us (Richard) was a child, his dog was an exceptionally bright border collie (mix), who took it upon herself to watch over a boy she considered incapable of looking after himself.

 

Richard had a friend up the street who also had a devoted animal in his life, Clover, a goat. Goat and dog became good friends, and when the two boys played together, so did the animals, fun for all.

 

Only sour note: Richard's mother looked askance at a goat in her house, prancing about on sharp little hooves.

 

--Joyce and Richard 

 

 

Now it is March, which is northern New England's season of impatience.

 

Four months now we've had snow and ice, and slippery roads, and frigid Canadian winds. We're ready for crocuses and incoming robins singing cheerio. But that's not yet.

 

South of here, March is when spring finally opens its eyes. Here in the north, it's when spring gives us an occasional sexy wink, to soften us up, then blows more snow in our face.

 

So, here we are, looking out our west-facing windows at the horizon's mountain range, white all the way up the flanks to the peaks. There's a meadow below our windows, rising to a knoll, all buried under a foot of snow.

 

Gray sky, looming clouds. More snow forecast.

 

We stare out the window glumly. After all these months, winter lies heavy on the mind.

 

But what's that, coming up the meadow knoll? It's a woman, bundled in a parka and heavy mittens, and at her feet prances a small mahogany-furred presence, performing ballet moves in the snow.

 

It's Walter!

 

He's a Pembroke Welsh corgi, with a huge personality, but short legs. Walter can't walk through the snow, with those short legs, so he prances through it, jumping, pirouetting, burrowing, leaping up in a geyser of white—having a blast.

 

Walter's endured the same four frozen months as we have, and now he's out in it with no parka, no mittens, no boots…but he's not glum.

 

Walter is joyfully alive, relishing the white stuff in which he prances, gleefully using his snout as a shovel, to throw up powdery white clouds.  

 

Presumably, we should learn from Walter—take what life gives you, cold or warm, find joy, prance.

 

Yes, it would be nice. However, that's not how it is. Our sky's still gray, our meadow's still  mineral white, it's still gusting cold.

 

We watch Walter prance back down the knoll and out of sight, leaving just a memory of exuberance.

 

We're still staring out the window, looking at another month of winter.

Yet, not quite so glumly as fifteen minutes ago.

 

Thanks, Walter.

 

--Joyce & Richard 

 

 

 

I once worked at a zoo, as keeper of the bear-cub pit, overseeing twenty-eight orphaned baby bears, all roughhousing in their enclosure. I've been a bear fan ever since.

 

So the other day, on national public radio, I tuned into a Fresh Air interview with science-writer Mary Roach, author of a new book, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law. She got my attention right off, because she said "bears."

 

She talked about bear home invasions.

 

She said bears have learned how to use door handles to open doors. Sometimes they do break the door down, but they can be thoughtful about it. For instance, one bear knocked down a house's front door, then carefully picked up the fallen door and neatly leaned it against the adjacent wall.

 

My favorite bear crime was ice-cream theft. Mr. or Ms. Bear breaks into your house, bee-lines for your refrigerator, opens the freezer, and takes out the ice cream containers. However, says Mary Roach, the bears have become particular about ice cream.

 

They ignore supermarket-brand ice creams. If it's not Ben & Jerry's or Haagen-Dazs, or some other gourmet ice cream, they just leave it in disgust.  

 

Often, though, before lumbering out with their haul, they politely shut the freezer door.

 

Thanks for the bear uplift, Mary Roach. I'll be reading your book!

 

--Richard

 

 

South Hero Island, in Vermont, offers stunning views of Lake Champlain. It also offers "Birdhouse Forest."

 

Driving north, toward Canada, you pass a sign: "White's Beach." Look to your right.

 

Most travelers stop here, where a swamp borders the road, unsure what they're seeing.

 

Every tree sports a birdhouse, each in bright flower colors—rose, lilac, daisy, buttercup….

 

This might be a fairy city.

 

Even a few dinosaurs roam among the trees.

 

All this began when two neighbors learned tree swallows eat huge numbers of mosquitoes. Living beside a swamp, they had mosquitoes. So they decided to craft twenty swallow houses and put them up.

 

Swallows came, and flew through the swamp on mosquito hunts. So the neighbors put up more birdhouses, and more, and more….

 

Twenty years later, Birdhouse Forest is a swallow city, with 800 brightly colored birdhouses. For an added frisson, they installed carved wooden dinosaurs. Probably the reptiles wouldn't scare away mosquitoes, but still, worth a try.

 

Keep a lookout, driving America's back roads—you never know what you might see.

 

--Joyce

 

 

One July afternoon, when I was ten, a classmate and I bicycled through the hills outside of town.

 

We rode through a tippy landscape of slopes and valleys, where brown-and-white Herefords grazed in green meadows, and maple and sycamore leaves riffled in the breeze.

 

In a small pond, on a floating log, a line of painted turtles sunbathed.

 

I took it in without noticing, the way we breathe.

 

And then, in a bush, a flash of blue—it startled me.

 

One sneaker planted on the road to balance, I stared.

 

I knew what it was, because my father had just returned from his annual session at furnace school, learning the new models, and he'd brought me a gift: The Golden Nature Guide to Birds, 112 Birds in Full Color.

 

I'd never particularly noticed birds. Now, having gone through that book, page by page, mesmerized by the golds and oranges and scarlets, and the sharp black eyes, I knew what I saw in that bush.

 

Indigo bunting.

 

Blue as the zenith.

 

In a moment, it vanished, deeper into the foliage, I suppose.

 

Many decades later, I still remember that indigo flash, so stunning it seemed a message.

 

Message received, but never fully understood.

 

Keep alert, I guess. That would be one thing.

 

Because, any time, you could pedal past a marvel, thinking about something else.

 

You'd miss it.

 

--Richard 

 

 

After he anchored his boat at the reef, the ichthyologist let us choose—Richard opted for aqualung, Joyce for snorkel.

 

Here, not far out from George Town, the Grand Cayman Island capital, we looked down through perfectly clear Caribbean waters at black bat shapes gliding across the white sand bottom.

 

A moment later, we swam among them. They looked like B-2 Spirit strategic stealth bombers.

 

Sting rays.  

 

We should have been frightened of creatures that looked so lethal. In fact, the Australian conservationist and zookeeper, Steve Irwin, died after accidentally disturbing one and receiving a sting to the chest.

 

Yet, we felt no fear. We felt charmed.  

 

As Joyce snorkeled near the surface, rays flew up and swam with her, gently flapping their huge wings. She felt surrounded by friendly dogs.

 

Richard, near the bottom with his aqualung, found himself escorted by a squadron of the black animals, each the size of a dining room table. One swam up from behind and wrapped its wings around him, scuba gear and all.

 

And what Richard would always remember, looking into those brown eyes—sentience.

 

Maybe humanity doesn't need to go as far as the stars.  

 

We can find intelligent alien life here on Earth, and in its waters.

 

—Joyce & Richard

 

Simon says: "Top O' the Mornin' to you!"

 

He wants everyone to see him in his St. Patrick's Day outfit. Mainly, he just likes everyone to see him. 

 

He's a Pembroke Welsh corgi, not Irish, but he feels that's close enough. 

 

He lives with our good friends in Virginia, Clarissa and George, who sent us this photo for him, because Simon has no computer skills. For that kind of thing, he says, "See my people about that." 

 

He also says, "Eat your heart out, poodles--cuter than this it doesn't get!"

 

--Joyce & Richard

 

 

 

We met a woman today who noticed the t-shirt one of us wore, with a picture of a Pembroke Welsh corgi on the front.

 

Our best friend, we said. He'd been astonishingly bright.

 

So she told us about her dog—also now gone—a Bernese mountain dog, with some collie mixed in.

 

"He was a genius," she said.

 

As evidence, she told us how one of her cats would escape, out to the meadow, where  danger lurked. Coyotes, for instance.

 

So she would tell the Bernese mountain dog: "Go find the cat."

 

Off he'd go, into the meadow, sniffing for cat. When he found her, he had no way to bring her home. So he'd gently place his huge paw on her and press her down.

 

Then he would wait for the lady to come and retrieve her imprisoned cat.

 

Later that day, our friend Eric visited us, with Murdock, a west highland terrier. We told him how impressed we'd been with that Bernese mountain dog's intelligence..

 

Eric looked unimpressed.

 

"Sometimes my cat disappears in the house," he said.

 

He stared down at Murdoch.

 

"Where's kitty?" he said. "Find kitty."

 

Immediately Murdock went hunting her. Is she behind the television? Under the bed? Did she sneak into the pantry?

 

This was our house, with no cat. However, Murdock diligently looked for her. Just like that Bernese mountain dog, he understood—"Find kitty."

 

So, double proof—some dogs know exactly what you're talking about.

 

--Joyce and Richard