When grieving, I have found that my body and my mind want to spend all sorts of time on the past. I think for the sake of remembering the good times in life, rather than the “shoulda, coulda” absolutely wasteful thoughts of guilt. My mind knows I did my absolute best to care for Mom, and I did my absolute best to get back to Tegan before she passed, too. But that sneaky fear factory that lives in my brain and fans my anxiety is a right a**hole, and she has been trying to push me around the last few weeks. Let’s call her Debbie. I think you know where I’m going with that.

How do I combat this, you ask, and keep from curling up in a ball and hiding out in my room until they come to take me away? Well, I am learning to allow myself a lot of time to just sit and breathe. I tell Debbie to sit down and shut up when she tries to list all the other things I could be doing. There is a seemingly never-ending list to the business of death and dying. Still, I put Debbie in the corner in a time-out, and reach for the best memories I can think of from anywhere in my life.

Lately, my mind has been returning to New Zealand a lot. I think this is probably because I have had more time to process Tegan’s loss, and therefore, it’s easier to visit those memories than to face the ones about Mom. Those are still a bit too raw. Though, I am using certain good memories to throw back at Debbie whenever she tries the old, “You didn’t do enough” lecture again. She is such a downer and I need to do better for myself from here. I only have myself to rely on and myself to blame. It’s a strange feeling.

The first memory to pop into my head this morning was of New Zealand, on a boat chasing sperm whales around the Kaikoura cove on the South Island. I could smell the sea salt in the air, and feel the crisp winds over the water, and the hot sun shining down on my hat and making my head hot. These memories just popped back to the surface while I was having my quiet time, something I now do while having morning coffee and again in the evening before bed.

I sit in mindfulness meditation first, and then once my ten to twenty minutes is up, dependant on how much anxiety I am facing that day, I reach for a good memory and follow wherever it leads. Today, it conjured the greatest whale watching tour of my life. to date, and I have been on quite a few around the world. But, Kaikoura, New Zealand, like almost everything else there, is one of a kind. And it wasn’t just whales we would meet.

It was a beautiful summer day on the South Island of New Zealand’s East Coast. I had taken the ferry over from Wellington the morning before, rented a car, and driven a couple of hours down the coast to Kaikoura. Making my way slowly, incredibly slowly, since I kept seeing rookeries of sea lions with babies on the rocks along the coast most of the drive. A lot of the areas have walkways with railings to keep the stupid humans off the rocks. It doesn’t really work. Still, every time there was a place to stop and watch, I would stop again. I loved getting to see the females coming and going from the pups, who were being watched collectively by a few of the females while the rest went out hunting.

Eventually, I rolled into the village of Kaikoura. The very first thing I did was stop at the whale watching station to look at their latest research updates, and make sure everything was all set for my sperm whale watching tour. They told me to arrive about a half hour before the tour the following day for an orientation, before we boarded the vessel. I was so stoked about this trip. This was one of the things I had chosen to do as top of my list from the books I had combed through on the country while prepping for travel. Kaikoura became a non-negotiable experience while in the country. There are so many amazing things to do and see in New Zealand that it’s hard to choose, and you will never run out of things, nor see them all in just a few months. Trust me, I tried. I was there for two and a half months, and only scratched the surface.

But, Kaikoura is the only place for sperm whale watching, and this was one of those things I decided topped the list of musts. Mainly, because there are only a few remote places in the ocean to see the world’s largest predator. Most of them, like New Zealand, are remote, so I figured this was going to be my one and only shot to meet Moby Dick. And of course, I knew there would be no sperm whale attacking us, and no hunting. I refused to miss the opportunity to see these whales that had captured so many imaginations the world over, and I’m thankful I pushed myself to go, even though it was a very long trip from Hamilton on the north part of the North Island, to Kaikoura about halfway down the South Island. It turned out to be the adventure of a lifetime, and it wasn’t just because of the whales.

I barely slept that first night while waiting for the trip the following day. I was up early and raring to go, I couldn’t sit still at my Air B&B one minute longer, so I went into town and bought myself a new sun hat with a tie for under my chin. I looked like Weird Tourist Barbie, but I didn’t care. I was prepared for anything. They said it would be very windy out at sea and my fair skin would need as much cover as I could get. I was told to wear long sleeves and pants and sunscreen under my clothing if I didn’t have the UV blocker kind of fabrics. Their ozone layer is one of the thinnest spots on earth, through no fault of their own, but it means the threat from over-exposure is very real.

I am proud of my fisherman’s cap. It has served me well on many a boating and hiking adventures since. In my mind, it made me feel like I was casting myself as the next Scarlett Johansson on that recent cinematic adventure boat looking for whale dna, so it was worth the cost. Even with my shopping task, I showed up about an hour early for our tour. I spent the time reading some of the letters from past visitors about their whale watching experiences.

After a bit of an orientation, where the captain, crew, and research techs were introduced to us all, and they went over all rules and explained how things would run, we began to board our three story speed boat, fully kitted out with video and enlarged computer screens. We could see what the researchers were doing, if they were tracking and viewing one of the animals we encountered, or following sonar and mapping the area underwater. I would have kept my eyes glued to the research information, if I wasn’t learning so damned much that I didn’t know about sperm whales from the tour guide. These whales are even more fascinating than I thought.

First of all, the sperm whale has the largest brain on earth. Their brain is the size of a basketball. A basketball? It is four to five times the size of the human brain and has a cerebral cortex that shows the capacity for higher intelligence, and complex communication, though their brains evolved very differently from humans. The big rectangular head they sport is not simply for that big brain, though. This area also houses what is called spermaceti oil, which helps regulate their buoyancy and heighten their ability to echolocate while finding food in the darkest depths of our oceans. They can plunge from 3,000-7,000 feet in a single dive. In Kaikoura the underwater cavern is 2,000 feet deep, so the males who come there to fatten up in winter have fairly “easy hunting,” in comparison.

The spermeceti makes this incredible ability to dive possible, along with their ability to regulate their heart. Before each dive, they slow their heart rate and redirect the oxygen away from non-vital tissues and organs and direct it to the heart and the brain to protect them while they dive. This means that the blood flow that warms and makes the spermaceti oil more buoyant is suddenly removed, and the oil is cooled down and hardens quickly, helping the sperm whale sink faster towards the pitch black where they use their sonar and the signals that bounce back to be read by their massive brain and other specialized organs to track their food. Mostly they eat squid, but they will also eat other animals they find, stingrays, smaller sharks, larger fishes, you name it.

Another amazing thing is their ability to make these massive dives with one breath of air. They have been known to stay underwater for as much as 90 minutes in a dive, though the typical dive is around 45 minutes long. When they have caught their food, or are needing another breath, they reverse the process and direct the oxygen back out the the extremities, which warms the spermaceti back to its buoyant state, and helps the whale rise more quickly to the surface. I had no idea about this whole process of warming and cooling head oil to dive until I took the tour. This is what kept us entertained with whale information while we waited for the helicopter pilots to locate a surfaced whale. There are whole teams of people from several different businesses who work together to facilitate the whale watching.

When a whale is spotted surfacing, the helicopter pilots give out the longitude and latitude to the tour boats, who then take off at top speed to get to the whales location before they dive again. Sometimes, sperm whales will dive again only thirty minutes later. The guide reminded us to have our belts on and brace ourselves, as they took the boot much faster than I thought a boat that size could travel. It was like we were skimming the surface of the water and mostly hovering above it. My heart was hammering in my chest. I could not believe I was finally going to meet a sperm whale here in the only place on earth where they are regularly seen year round this close to the shore. What I didn’t know was that the Kaikoura population of whales are all males. Some still migrate back and forth to the tropical breeding grounds to fight for the right to breed a female. But, there are also quite a few retired older sperm whales who just stay in these prey rich waters, making it their geriatric destination.

We had the distinct pleasure of meeting the whale named “Holy Moly.” He was given this name due to the perfectly rounded and difficult to miss tooth hole on his fluke, or tail. He had this hole and so many scars all over his sides and back. It was really incredible that he was still surviving and thriving with so much obvious brutality he has lived through. All sperm whales have to fight for the right to procreate. This is why they head to the southern waters in the world for the rich blooms of food that happen during their summer in New Zealand. And the bottom being shallower, if you can call 2000 feet shallow, makes it easier to fatten up and expend less energy for a time before returning to the breeding grounds to take on other males again. Holy Moly had taken on and apparently won his fair share of mates over the years. He would not have even been sexually mature until around the age of fifty. The females mature at around 30 years. They only give birth to one calf about every five years, so procreation is slow and populations rarely grow. With all the other human pressures involved, sperm whale populations are struggling.

When we got near Holy Moly, they turned the boat motor off and let us drift closer to him slowly. All of us had climbed up onto the roof of the boat to take photos while the researchers scribbled their data on clipboards and the tour guide told us all about Holy Moly and his particular history in Kaikoura. This guy is the famous one in the area because he doesn’t mind the tourist attention, and in fact seems to enjoy it. He lounged around and showed off a bit for us for well over an hour before he decided it was time to dive again. I have so many blurry photos of his back and the weird shape of his head on the surface, but we were way too far away to get anything decent without a really good telephoto lens, and sadly I just had my iPhone camera. My other camera took a crap right before the trip, and I didn’t have the money to replace it after paying for the trip itself. But, I have my memories, and a fairly decent photo of Holy Moly’s fluke, which I caught on our second encounter with him a couple of hours later.

One of the things I really loved about Aotearoa New Zealand is their way of practicing loving kindness for all living things. I think this is rooted in the Maori people who have now fully integrated into the European settler populations, and the country is actively trying to make reparations to the Maori, as they should. The indigenous people of the islands do use whale bone for the making of their sacred objects and some of their weapons, but they have never hunted nor killed a whale. They find this practice reprehensible. So how do they get their whale bones? Well, since older male whales make their home here, eventually another one beaches ashore after its death. When this occurs, the Maori have the legal rights to the carcass and no one else. But rather than desecrate the whole body, they only take the bones from the whale’s jaw, and then they bury the rest underground, believing this ensures the whale’s ability to rest in peace. They could be greedy and tear the whale apart, use everything, but they have such reverence for wildlife and the earth, and they have learned to live in harmony with their natural world. They told me that they believe taking more than their needed share from the whale could result in bad things happening to their people, so they chose reverence and only take what they need.

This kind of empathetic thoughtfulness permeates their environmental education programs and tours. Every tour I went on talked about ways they work to lessen the impact of the visitors on the wildlife, and the overall impact of all people on the wilds of their country. In this case, the tour boats for the two companies that run tours have a rotating schedule of areas of the bay. While we were on our whale rotation, others were with the spinner dolphins closer to shore. and vice versa lessening the number of boats in a single area of the bay. We also went closer to the shore for a parts of the tour until we got word that another sperm whale had surfaced. It was breeding season for the spinners and they were on the go, jumping and chasing and playing and having an orgy. It was a riot to watch. Here is a quick video of one guy showing off and a quick look at a close up pair of spinner dolphins swimming past.

There is even a period of an hour where all boats must leave the spinner breeding grounds entirely so the dolphins would not be stressed out by too many boats, and since no more whales had surfaced yet, our captain took us further inland still during this period of rest for the spinner dolphins. We headed into the edges of the brackish water for a shot at seeing one of the world’s rarest dolphins, only found in this one place on earth, like so many things New Zealand.

These little dolphins we were hoping to find are called Hector’s dolphins, and they are tiny, for marine mammals. In fact, they are one of the smallest dolphins on earth. The guide explained that we would be moving through the area keeping a close eye on the water to see if any would zip past our wake. But, he also explained that these dolphins generally stay in very small family groups, and they keep hidden in the murky water to stay safe from the orcas and sperm whales. I can’t say I blame them after seeing a sperm whale’s teeth for myself. It was also Hector’s dolphin breeding season, as well, which made them even harder to spot, since this also takes place in very brackish water.

I had met this woman named Linda and her mother who sat beside me on the boat. Linda and I had alread learned that we both knew what we were talking about when it came to marine mammals, so we had enjoyed chatting while we were on the tour. We decided to go place ourselves on the front wake to watch the water intently. The guide had directed anyone who spotted a dolphin to call out so the captain could slow the boat. There was not much to see in the murky parts of the water, but just as we were crossing back into the open water, Linda and I pointed and called out at the same time when a group of about ten small dolphins zipped into the wake, and one of them was obviously pregnant, like, ready to pop a gasket any minute. Both of us said, practically in unisons, “She’s pregnant!”

The captain slowed the boat, but kept us running with a wake, as this group of Hector’s dolphins with two pregnant females, youngsters of all ages, and another couple of adults kept zipping in and out of the wake and under and around the boat. The researchers were scrambling to direct underwater cameras, and one of them was on the radio relaying coordinates to tell the on shore research team what they were witnessing. Everyone was obviously excited. Us, because we were seeing these rare dolphins, and them because this was a new behaviour that they didn’t think had been recorded before. Even the researchers did not know that these dolphins had nursery groups of this size, and they had never seen them in a group like this, obviously teaching the kids how to swim with the boats safely. I got SO many pictures.

One of the researchers came over when the dolphins moved on and the excitement died down a little to thank Linda and I for spotting and calling out the find. He admitted that he thought we were wrong about the female being pregnant until he got his eyes on her himself. He asked us how we both knew, to which Linda explained she was a former marine mammal keeper who now worked at the London Zoo. She was on vacation with her family. I had to laugh as I explained that I had worked at the North Carolina Zoo and the Dallas Zoo before that, and was a total animal nerd who loved getting behind the scenes tours at every marine mammal facility I could find. He laughed and said that maybe they ought to hire some zookeepers to join the research team since we had such good eyes and knew what we were seeing. I made it clear I would seriously be up for that plan. Alas, he didn’t seem to be serious, or perhaps there were no positions open.

Once the quiet time for the other areas of the cove were over, and the boats were allowed to go back out to the deeper water where the whales were, we returned to whale watching, though the guide said as it got later in the afternoon that we might not spot another one today. I was trying not to be disappointed when Holey Moley made a liar out of them and chose to surface again, near the last coordinates, and we were not far away, since they knew he might still be in the area. We ended the day with another forty minutes of time hanging out with the big guy while he rested and geared up for another dive. The whole process must be exhausting. I wondered how many dives they could make in a day and was told its an average of about forty-two dives in one day. Most of them are “only around 500 feet deep.” I wondered if the man even heard himself telling us that. Only 500 feet is pretty damned deep to be diving over forty times a day. No wonder they are so mellow when they come back to the surface.

The female sperm whales are all living closer to the temperate waters of the tropic line. where they have abundant good all year round, and it is a safer place for them to birth and rear their calves. So the males not only have to fight for their shot at breeding, but they first have to travel halfway around the world to even get to the females and begin their campaign for the year. The whole thing just boggled my mind, particularly each time a got a better look at the hundreds of scars slashing across Holey Moley’s body. He obviously has lived a brutal life, and still managed to survive it well into his retirement years. And consider that the things he hunts are often quite deadly, as well, like the giant octopus, or large sharks, even orcas can become the sperm whale’s prey. And yet, when he rests on the surface of the water and eyes the humans curiously, his behaviours made him seem like a gentle giant. The scars told a very different tale. Captain Ahab was one crazy fictional character for hunting this species, of all the whales.

When Holey Moley said his goodbyes, making some clicking noises, and diving back under the surface. our captain turned the boat towards the docks. I felt a bit bereft to be ending the tour already, even though we had spent hours out on the water and seen so many amazing animals, including my first glimpses of royal albatross flying around in search of any whale hunting leftovers to share, I was not ready to leave yet. But, the researchers had one more video to share with us for the ride back to shore, and it was truly incredible.

Did you know that sperm whales sleep vertically in the water? The research team shared footage of a pod of sperm whales sleeping together that had been recorded in 2008, when this was first discovered. The footage was getting ready to be released in an upcoming documentary about sperm whales. The whale watching company had been given copies of the footage, as had many whale watching researchers the world over, so they could see the behaviour for themselves and be able to show it to their visitors. This behavious was only discovered in 2008 and still not much is known about why these whales sleep differently from so many other species of marine mammals. There are many theories as to why, but none that have been names as a definite reason.

I could not believe my eyes as the footage came on the large screens on the boat. The whales sleep together in pods of five to seven adults to help guard each other from predators. They often make gentle echo-location clicks while they are sleeping, most likely their way of scanning the area of danger. They “stand” in the water, heads pointed up, only about thirty to fifty feet below the surface, and take power naps, each nap lasting about ten to fifteen minutes, though they can last for up to several hours at times. Because sperm whales are “conscious breathers” meaning they have to think and regulate their own breathing, it is thought that they have a way of resting only about half the brain at a time, leaving the other half awake and conscious enough to breath and watch for predators. It looked like some sort of magical trance the whales are standing in, and the soft sounds they made had chills running up and down my spine.

As we pulled back up to the docks and began to disembark, the captain took time to speak to myself and Linda and thanked us again for spotting their new Hector’s dolphin find and the footage they were able to take of the nursery pod racing in and out of the boat’s wake. I left the entire experience feeling like some sort of Jacque Cousteau-esque discoverer. Just like everything else in New Zealand, Kaikoura was magically fabulous, and mysterious, and I will never forget our amazing day on the ocean with sperm whales and dolphins. Click the purple words below to see BBC video footage of sperm whales sleeping.

A Pod of Sleeping Sperm Whales

Thanks as always for being here. I hope you enjoyed your virtual whale watching tour. Have a lovely Labor Day Weekend. See you here next week, same time, same place. If you are enjoying my writing, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. A portion of all proceeds I bring in through my writing and art go to reputable conservation organization in the wild.

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Summer here always has the effect of making me miss New Zealand. Who am I kidding? Pretty much everything makes me miss New Zealand. I visited there for the winter months of 2019 and 2020. But, rather than a White Christmas, I got one on Waihi beach, opening presents in our bathing suits and shorts, while the surf crashed in the background. The Christmas tree was made from driftwood they had recycled off the beach. It was the height of summer.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t care for extreme temps, and cold makes my bones ache nowadays, so I was keen to enjoy the surf and sun while hiking around the country. Pondering all of the legion of stories I could tell from NZ, I was trying to decide which to share today. I asked myself, what was the most magical and unique place there? Easy. Milford Sound. You literally experience four seasons in one day. I was so sure that was an exaggeration, that I scoffed and told myself not to get any ridiculous ideas. No place has four seasons in one day, right? Oh boy, was I wrong. And that only scratches the surface of incredible things to experience in Milford Sound.

Known as the Land of a Thousand Waterfalls, it is not an easy trek to make, not even once you are in New Zealand. I traveled by car the entire North Island from Hamilton, crossed the ferry over some of the most turbulent straights on earth, and drove most of the South Island on some of the most remote roads on earth. I loved every second of the drive and saw so many unique places along the way. I opted to take a glass-topped tour bus for the final stretch of the drive from Queenstown to the sound. I wanted to be able to take photos and see the wonders all around me without having to also drive a car on the wrong side of the road.

It was pouring down rain that morning, as we left Queenstown. All of us on the bus had been chattering with excitement, but also worrying that the rain might make the whole trip miserable. The tour guide kept telling us this was the best way to see Mildford Sound and not to worry, that the rain would clear up and we would have time with all four seasons in our day, including a sunny, hot summer. I thought he just didn’t want a whole bus full of complainers and was placating us. I took it with a grain of salt. Once again, I was so wrong.

After several hours driving through massive stretches of wilderness protected for the native species, at last we drove our glass-topped bus through a very long, dark tunnel, deep under a giant mountain, the only road into the sound. When we emerged back out into the pouring rain onto the steepest switch-backed road I have ever seen, it was to find the huge cliffs all around us covered with thousands of thin waterfalls running down the craggy rocks. This is simply the runoff from the alpine forests far above us running down to Milford Sound at the bottom of the fjord. The rain makes thousands of waterfalls all around the cliffs on all sides. Many of them disappear soon after the rain stops, while others remain and form some spectacular water-works all through the area from the 300 inches of rain they get annually.

I was a bit disappointed that the well-known car inspectors were not out on the roads like usual. I had seen many videos of keas walking right up to the main road, stopping the cars and buses, and climbing around on them to quarry the visitors about their snack hauls. Since these are very endangered parrots that only live in this one remote spot on earth, I was disappointed when they chose to stay dry, and none of them were out on the roads. The bus driver saw me craning my neck trying to look down to see if any stragglers were about, and asked what I was doing. When I told him my concerns, he told me once more not to worry, that I was bound to meet a kea at the stop-over we had planned on the way down the mountain.

Our first stop inside the fjord was a paved hiking trail to one of the raging rivers inside the forest about halfway down the mountains toward the sound. It was still pouring rain when we pulled into the lot, but our bus driver suggested we make the hike with our umbrellas, regardless, saying we didn’t want to miss the chance to see the magic of these alpine forests. Though I was skeptical, since it truly was pouring, I was one of the few who opted to go ahead and take the rainy hike to the river. Since there were so few of us willing to wander through the forest, and I was the only one of them carrying a bright rainbow-colored umbrella, I’m guessing I got a more magical opportunity than most while on that trail.

I was taking my time, trying to figure out how to hold my umbrella over my camera and snap photos of the gorgeous plants that are so different from any I had ever seen, when a sound of something fairly large moving through the underbrush startled me. I had visions of being home in Virginia and having a bobcat or a bear come blundering out of the woods, never a fun experience if you aren’t prepared for it. I forgot I didn’t have to worry about large mammals or predators other than humans in NZ. I had no idea what to expect though, and my hind-brain said most likely a bobcat, known for being out on rainy days in my Blue Ridge Mountains. So, I badly wanted to run. I had to rely on my zookeeper training, stay still and breathe deeply, to stay calm. I was reminding myself that you never run from a wild cat in Virginia, unless you want to be hunted in truth. Of course, my brain did not offer up the information that there are no wild cats in NZ.

What came waddling out of the underbrush instead was a large kea, who marched right up the trail to stand at my feet. She wanted to gaze up at the rainbow colors of my umbrella from underneath. It was ridiculous how excited I was to meet her. I was shaking, and I nervously almost fumbled my phone trying to get a decent picture of her before she decided to walk back into the forest. The kea was surprisingly patient with me, and seemed fine with a bit of showing off. I swear she was posing, though the rain and the low light meant the photos were not great. But, this kea didn’t seem to mind that I kept jostling the umbrella. She watched it and me with what I think was an amused expression.

Keas are truly amazing, and I kept thinking how this bird in front of me only lives in that one area where I was standing. I kept remembering feeling awestruck that I was meeting a wild one at last. Keas are one of the rare parrots that lives almost their whole life on the ground. Because these islands are so remote, there were no mammals at all living in New Zealand until the first Maori people arrived in their boats in the early thirteenth century. The islands were not discovered by the Western World until Abel Tasman and Captain Cook discovered them in the 1700s. Milford Sound itself was not discovered until Captain Grono found it in 1812. The pass into the fjord is so far inland and so narrow, that Captain Cook and his surveyors missed it on every pass they made to map the coast. Grono named it Milford Sound after the place of his birth in Wales.

I cannot go on without mentioning how white-centric so many of the names are, including the name of their whole country. All of the famous places in New Zealand also have Maori names that far predate the ones these white men gave to name everything after themselves. The Maori call New Zealand Aotearoa and Milford Sound is called Piopiotahi, after the pio birds you can hear singing in the fjord. It’s good to learn both names for things, and not just continue to go by the names white colonizers gave these lands much later, though Maori people are also colonizers in this case. Still, I think the sheer amount of time the Maori people have lived on the islands gives them more naming rights than anyone else.

Back to the reason so many of the bird species have evolved differently here, and it is due to the fact that there were no indigenous mammals. The island was populated with mostly all bird species, who flew in and then evolved to fill the niches that would otherwise be filled with small mammals, reptiles, and other species. This is why keas evolved to be mainly terrestrial, though they are strong fliers. Flighted, they flash their bright red under-feathers which are spectacular to see. When on the ground, they appear to be all green. You don’t see the red at all until they spread their wings.

Keas are not only one of the most endangered species on earth, but one of the most intelligent of the non-human animals. They are known for being one of the largest species of parrots, and for their evolution to mostly terrestrial. They are often described as bold and gregarious, which I can assure you is absolutely true, since one boldly walked right out of the forest and up to my feet. She spent quite a while hanging out with me and posing for pictures. Best of all, she watched me with a deeply intelligent gaze.

Later, when I looked up more about the species, I found that research has put these parrots on the same intelligence level as a human four-year-old, or a chimpanzee. They can problem solve, and also understand how to reason and plan enough to get themselves whatever they need. For instance, one of the research subjects of kea intelligence, a male kea, figured out that if he brought fire wood to the people at the camping cabins near his home, and also knocked on their door to deliver said firewood, he would be given food as a reward, He then taught other of his friends and family keas to do this. This behavior is still ongoing long after the study was completed. Now that I have met one in the flesh, I am not even surprised by this level of intelligence.

My new kea friend definitely knew to wait until I was alone on the trail. She saw that I was carrying a bag that probably would have food inside. If I was the average tourist, surely I would be willing to feed her in return for some fun camera poses, and because she was cute and she knew it. Unfortunately, for her, I am one of those who knows it is never a good idea to feed the wildlife. And I swear, when I apologized to her and explained why I wouldn’t feed her, I felt like she understood what I was saying and opted to forgive me, since she hung around for a few more photos, anyway. Eventually, I had to say goodbye and head back for the bus. I wished her a good life and told her I hoped she had somewhere dry to hang out until the rain stopped.

I spent the rest of my tour of Milford Sound in a quiet kind of awe. We wound our way down the mountains and eventually left the rains of typical spring behind and started experiencing the fall season, with its cold mists and fog. It was hard to see the buildings when we pulled up to the parking area by the Milford Sound docks to meet our boat. The tour of Milford Sound included a meal abound and several hours of sailing from the dock out to the Tasman Sea and back.

It was chilly and misty, but no longer raining as we boarded the large vessel with three stories and both inside and outside seating for the sail. I was marvelling at all the larger waterfalls at the bottom of the fjord, so much more massive than all the thin ones running off the cliffs above. We slowly began to make our way through the fog in the harbor. As we sailed away from the docks, the fog continued to thin, and it became easier to see the rainforests that grows up sections of the steep cliffs, until the tops of the cliffs become thickly forested throughout.

The water was black and murky, so there was no looking for sea creatures on this voyage. I was a little disappointed, knowing whales and dolphins often swim in these waters. They would have to break the surface to be seen, the water was that dark. Before long, we began to see rookeries of fur seals on the rocks along the edge of the water. The captain pulled the boat closer so we could see the tiny newborn pups among all of the adults. They seemed totally fine with the cold. In fact, it was growing colder and colder the closer we got to the ocean.

By the time we made it through the narrow gap to the sound and into the entrance to the Tasman Sea, it was literally snowing. Not just flurries, but honest to gods real snow. Winter had arrived, and snow was beginning to stick to the rocks around us by the time we pulled out into the Tasman Sea. Then, as they turned the boat around and headed back towards the sound again, the snow began to slow, and it was not nearly as cold by the time we returned to the narrow gap.

Around that same time, the rain stopped, the clouds parted, and the sun came out. It was suddenly warm, but a bit windy. The birds were beginning to sing all around us, when we passed back through the narrow gap. Crossing back into sound proper to the heat of a full-blown summer day made me feel like the angels should be singing, because Mildford Sound in sunlight is absolutely breathtaking, stunning beyond words. My photos from the trip don’t do it justice.

Our next stop at a little research center on the property, where we were able to disembark and visit their displays and information kiosks. I learned why the water in the sound is so black. Unlike the fjord lakes I had driven past where the watern was the most bright turquoise, clear color. The water in Milford Sound stays black all year round. This is caused by the amount of tannins that run off from the plants in the rainforests at the top of the cliffs everyday. It makes a very dark color of water on the surface of the sound that can go as deep as 100 feet. The one and only regret I have from this fabulous time in New Zealand was missing the opportunity to explore Milford Sound in a glass bottom boat, because I learned that you can ,once again, see other species here that cannot be seen easily anywhere else on earth.

The dark water tannins in the water filter out a lot of the light, makong for conditions underwater that are dark enough and cold enough for some of the deep sea creatures to come into the sound from the Tasman Sea to find food. It is not uncommon to see right whales, humpback whales and orcas here, too. But, if you take the glass-bottomed boat, you won’t see the usual sea turtles and coral reefs one is used to on these kinds of tours. Instead, you will see black coral that is usually only found at well over 200 feet deep. Also, there are sea dragons, and snake stars, brachiopods, sea pens, anemones and all sorts of deep sea fishes. They have even seen the occasional octopus on these cruises. I was so sad to find out they were all booked until after I was leaving the country. It pays to prepay for your tickets.

All this is to say, don’t miss the chance to experience Milford Sound for yourself. It is remote, but every bit of it is so magical and unique that it is well worth the time and effort to get there. When you read the brochure and speak to the tour guides, don’t scoff and expect people are exaggerating. I am here to tell you that every word of every outlandish claim that was made to me about Milford Sound was absolutely true. It was the most incredible day of my life to date. And for me, the most incredible part of all was my close encounter with the kea female who walked out of the rainforest and welcomed me to her home.

Once again, thank you all for reading. I hope you enjoyed your tour of Milford Sound. If you ever go to New Zealand, don’t miss it. Ten out of ten, definitely recommend. The painting above is one of my most prized works. I drew it for Tegan and then she added the color work. It was amazing to see her paint with such limited range of motion, and her watercolors are stunning.

You are most welcome here and can always read for free, but if you would like to support my work and insure I can continue to write and paint and give back to animal conservation in the wild, please consider upgrading to paid. This year, a portion of the proceeds are going to The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, and the Jane Goodall Institute. See you back here next week, same time, same place.

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One of my favorite pet sitting gigs is at a house that belongs to some of my best friends. It’s a beautiful home on acres of property in Mount Kisko, New York, beside the waterways that provide the drinking water for NYC. Which means, there are strict rules about keeping the waterways clean and free from human toxins and debris. The whole area is simply gorgeous and populated with the types of people who the neighbors keep protected, because they know these people need to be safeguarded from fans who would make themselves a nuisance if given half a chance. I only knew the names of a couple of the famous neighbors, and I too learned to keep that information to myself.

One neighbor has a whole collection of exotic animals on his farm down the road. The farm is located on the corner of two main neighborhood streets, so the farm staff created pull-offs by the front two fields, so people can stop and visit with the herds of llamas who live there. I generally took carrots and made extra time every time I needed to make a run to the grocery store to stop and feed and chat with the friendly llamas.

There was one particular pair of females who seemed very enamored with each other, and kept their little romance for two apart from the others most of the time. I wondered if they were definitely females, or if one was a male and they were pair bonded. It’s not easy to see through all that thick, curly hair to find out what sex you are dealing with from any distance. But, I found out that pair bonding is not a thing in either llamas or alpacas. I’ll get to that in a sec.

On a bright and sunny winter day, I was all wrapped up in wool and making my first run out to the store after a week of snow, because it was finally warm enough on this day for the roads to actually start melting off. I got myself loaded up into the jeep, and headed out to pick up all the things we were running out of at the house.

When I got up to the corner, the farm guy, or grounds keeper, or animal caretaker, or whatever his title was, stopped at the pull-off to toss bales of hay into the field for the llamas. I took the opportunity to introduce myself. I was hopeful that I might wrangle and invite to meet the other animals and the owners of said property. My secret dream was to be given a job as one of their animal care takers. My plan was to tell him all about my zookeeper career and hope it would get me invited to meet the owners, and perhaps a farm sitting gig when they needed to cover or better yet an open position for animal care. After all, I am fully qualified to take care of even their large carnivores and large mammals, should they house them.

Unfortunately, the farm guy, who never did tell me his name, explained that he was not allowed to bring anyone onto the property without the express permission of the owners, who did not take kindly to strangers showing up, since they generally only wanted a chance to snap photos of this famous person’s private estate. I can’t say that I blame them, since I know the lengths the paparazzi will go to get photos. Farm Guy was not inclined to give my information to his bosses, perhaps wanting to be sure he kept job security.

Farm Guy did, however, confirm for me that the two llamas were his “lesbian girls,” who are not at all interested in the boys when they are given access for breeding. But the girls always performed what they call a “spit-off” where the females would scream and spit at any males who tried to mount them. Nice tactic. Scare the sex drive right out of them and then totally ruin the moment with unexpected bodily fluids. It’s a fantastic plan these females of all llama species have perfected. The observation of these “Spit-off” behaviors is used at most breeding facilities to both tell if their females are preggers, because then they are not receptive to males either., They can also tell if any females are receptive for breeding when they choose to perform the ritual laying down flat on their stomach and moving the tail aside to tell the male they are prepared for the upwards of an hour coupling that has to take place for a llama or an alpaca baby to be born. This behavior is called “cushing” referring to the female’s willingness to lie down and be mounted or to cush.

I was a little skeptical when Farm Guy mentioned the “lesbian” word. I figured he could be conflating some of their pair bonding and pecking order behaviors as “sex,” but in the end it turns out I could have been very wrong. Regardless, the Farm Guy told me that gay was a fairly common occurrence among llamas and alpacas. When I asked about pair bonding, I was informed that they don’t have any pair bonding rituals, because the females’ cycles are dictated solely by the sex act itself. It triggers ovulation. One of the reasons for the needed length of the act. Which is why males are always housed separately, to prevent the girls from being bred into oblivion. Apparently, both llama and the smaller alpaca males don’t know when to stop and will push every boundary. They will continue to mount the ladies until the females actually keel over from the overuse of their reproductive organs.

This means that female friendships are very important within these herds, and yes, there are regular things these females do that could be considered “sex” but are actually just signs of displaying dominance and/or friendship, like mounting and grooming. I was thinking that friends who groom each other are not actually lesbians as I drove away. Farm Guy had been nice enough to tell me about an alpaca farm not far from us that was open to the public and gave guided tours, including letting people pet, feed, and photograph the alpacas. When I got back to the house I called the farm and made my appointment to visit some alpacas and pick another farmer’s brains later in the week. I had all kinds of questions and I was looking forward to getting more perspectives on the whole lesbian llama issue.

I arrived at the farm on a Thursday morning to meet the tour guide, who also happened to be one of the two owners. I was one of about ten people who were booked to go into the alpaca yards that day. We were invited to visit with the entire herd of females inside their yards. We were also able to visit with the smaller herd of males at the fence across the farm road in another field.

The boys were not trustworthy enough for us to actually go into their fields with them. They had been separated from the females for a while, which was making their drive to breed pretty strong. When they are not allowed to follow that instinct, it makes them cranky. Sound familiar? Nobody wants to deal with a cranky, horny, male anything. Least of all this lesbian. But, definitely not an alpaca who kicks and spits and can be downright nasty when they decide to give the male their “spit-off”.

I quickly learned about the farm’s two actual lesbian females, named Mardi Gras and Layla. They turned out to be my kind of alpacas, completely and totally in love with each other, in a long-term and committed lesbian love affair, and in no way straight. No really. The owners confirmed it, but then I saw the whole thing in real time with my own eyes, and even got a few photos. I had to agree that they were, in fact, copulating. I felt a bit crass for taking pictures.

The owner confirmed that cushing behavior is normal among alpacas, too, for the same reason as llamas. However, it is generally not a permanent thing. Some females just are not mentally or physically prepared to breed that year, so they choose to bond with another female, temporarily, to help each other get the boys off their backs, literally. But, as for Layla and Mardis Gras, these two alpacas were actually lesbians in a long-term relationship. They had been together for over ten years. In that time, they had zero interest in any of the boys, nor any of the other girls, either.

These two performed the entire breeding act with each other often. Not just the cushing, but also the one doing the topping would make predominantly male sounds when they are at is, which is called “orgling.” Males do this during copulation to stimulate the females. So, like two serious exhibitionists, not caring if strangers watched, Mardi Gras and Layla have full-on sex with each other on the regular, complete with orgling . Since I actually saw them engage in sexual acts with my own eyes, I cannot dispute it. These alpacas are not just bi- curious or biding time, they are absolutely and totally devoted to each other.

The owners have gotten really good at discussing this with their visitors. I loved that they did not shy away from the lesson that gay occurs in nature all the time, quite naturally, and cannot be passed off as merely situational. So, there I was watching two lesbian alpacas have sex in front of us, which was actually quite awkward at first, until the farm owner started explaining to the two families with their kids what was happening with humor and kindness.

I tried to be thoughtful with how I phrased my questions, to be respectful, but I made sure to state that I too was a lesbian, and it was probably obvious that I found the whole thing charming. These two were very much enjoying the act, and both parties were involved in the humping, not just the dominant one. Later, the owner murmured to me when the other visitors were not paying attention, that she and her wife were very happy to have another lesbian on the grounds. She asked me to come find her once we went inside the fiber arts shop so she could show me something she thought I would appreciate as a fellow lesbian.

What she wanted to show me turned out to be skeins of the most beautiful gray spun alpaca yarn. By the way, alpaca and llama hair is called fleece or fiber rather than wool, since neither have actual wool coats. I mentioned that I didn’t see this color of gray alpaca in the group. Turns out this beautiful yarn was a combination of fibers from both Mardi Gras and Layla being spun together to form the yarn. The lighter brown and darker brown with white fibers mixed to make this gorgeous gray.

I was so stoked to have lesbian alpaca yarn that I bought myself enough skeins to make a pair of gloves and a matching hat even though alpaca skeins are very expensive. I still love and wear my lesbian alpaca gloves proudly. I tell everyone who comments exactly whose fleece made these gloves and often tell their story, too.

I’m always pleased to observe that gay is not unnatural in any way. Especially now, when I hear people spewing hateful propaganda and misinformation about us almost daily. After witnessing homosexuality in many species myself, I can say with confidence that, yes, there are reasons beyond being homosexual in the animal kingdom to explain some behaviors, but, there are also those animals like Mardi Gras and Layla who make it abundantly clear that gay is just as natural as straight and anything in between.

In fact, there are over 1500 animal species that have been proven to have actual homosexuals living among them. These 1500 species do not fit any of the only situationally gay explanations. It’s nice to know this as fact, when I have to tell homophobes, once again, that their arguments explaining the behaviors away have been completely debunked by science, as well as my own personal experiences. Sorry, not sorry.

We lesbian, gay, and transgendered people, and all the alphabet soup of letters that go under the queer umbrella, have been around since the dawn of time. We were born this way. It happens quite normally in our genetic makeup, most likely, in all animal species, including humans. It is absolutely not a choice, nor an abnormality or sickness. We queers will remain long after all religious and cultural propaganda against us are well and truly gone. Love is love is love, and it doesn’t matter who you love, just that you do.

Thanks so much for reading. Above is the time lapse of the llama digital art. You can see it took me a bit to get the feeling and texture of the fleece right. But, it was so much fun to find all of these photos and make art from several of them. You can visit my Online Gallery below, and if you enjoyed this, please consider engaging with the post. A comment, questions, likes, and shares are great. Reading is always free, but if you would like to help me give back to animal conservation in the wild, you can upgrade to subscriber, and you will get some extra perks along the way, too. A portion of all proceeds always goes to wildlife conservation.

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See you next week, same time, same place.

The most important job that never ends for a zookeeper is cleaning up shit. And let me tell you, elephants shit a lot. So do all animals. But none quite so spectacularly as elephants. It took four full-time keepers at work each day to clean up all of the elephant dookie from all of the barn stalls, yards, and exhibits. And it took a full day of work to get everything clean and ready to scoop more poop the following day. It takes loads upon loads shoveled with large, snow-type shovels, into a John Deere Gator hauler. Poop piled into a mountain of dung and driven to the horticulture area, dripping a stream of poop juice as an odoriferous trail all the way there and back.

It’s not just because of their size, that elephants poop so much. Did you know that they are one of the greatest germinators in the world and critical for maintaining the integrity of their ecosystems? They literally keep the forests and grasslands of Africa and India green and healthy. They travel miles and miles in a given day, grazing on plants along the way, and because they are built to geminate, they only digest about 40% of what they eat, and the rest gets partially broken down in their stomachs, which germinates any seeds and poops them back out into their dung which is spread far and wide.

An African Savannah Elephant can carry and disperse seeds for 65 kilometers, and a single elephant can deposit up to 3,200 seeds in a single day. Not to mention, their viscous poop is excellent for the soil and fertilizes the very seeds they have pooped out, coaxing them to sprout and grow more quickly. The lands where elephants live will certainly no longer grow and flourish as they do now if elephants become extinct. Several continents of people will then be left without many of the plants they use to survive and thrive.

The composting and fertilizing qualities of elephant poop explains why I said we hauled the elephant poop across the zoo to our horticulture department several times a day. There, the staff turns it and mixes it with soil and other things like coffee grounds and bat guano, to create our highly sought after Zoo Doo. It is one of the best fertilizers on the market and the money raised from the sale of it helps fund the zoo to continue caring for the animals. So, even the poop at the zoo gets reused and recycled, something I am extremely proud to report.

The NC Zoo, and in fact most reputable zoos, do not just talk conservation out of the sides of their mouths, they actually strive to make conservation a reality, often practicing what they preach to their visitors. And yes, it is part of a zookeeper’s job to advocate for the animals and for conservation, looking for ways that they themselves and the park where they work can make a difference to the environment at large.

While we are on the subject of cleaning up after elephants, I should mention that they are quite fond of slinging poop and having poop parties when it’s really hot outside. Their poop is soft and a bit like cow patties only bigger, and they will happily scoop it up and spew it all over their bodies to coat themselves during the hottest parts of the day. This helps keep them cool, keeps the bugs from getting to their skin, and protects them from sun burns. In captivity, when poop parties take place in the barn, it covers the walls and ceilings, not just the floors, so the entire barn, and often the elephants themselves need to be hosed off each day when the day is over so they are not absolutely filthy. And did I mention the amount they can poop. A single elephant will poop twelve to fifteen times a day and in a year can produce twenty tons of poop. When I worked at the NC Zoo, we housed four elephants. They now house double that number. That’s a whole lot of poop per year.

There are many uses for elephant dung besides compost and fertilizer. It is used in many nations as a natural, chemical-free mosquito repellent. You just light the dried dung on fire and it will burn long and slow, producing a lot of smoke that repels the often diseased and deadly pests like mosquitos. Elephant dung is also used to make paper in many countries, saving forests from being cut down for the wood pulp that is commonly used as fiber in most paper making.

Elephants only digest less than half of what they eat, and their poop is mostly fibrous with lots of cellulose in its make up, which makes it the perfect replacement for wood pulp in paper making. Their dung makes a thick and durable, high-quality paper product that is made and sold in countries around the world from both wild and captive elephant dung.

And of course, there is “Black Gold.” Have you ever been offered the very rare and expensive “Black Gold” coffee? It sells for $500 a pound and is often served at some of the most prestigious restaurants in the world. It is literally coffee beans that have been growing directly in elephant poop. The beans are then picked and cleaned off and when roasted produce a coffee that is much less acidic and has a robust chocolate and cherry flavor to it. Or at least this is what I’m told, I have not had the honor of trying it, but I do hope to savor a cup some day.

Questions about elephant poop, believe it or not, are one of the most common questions we zookeepers get from everyone, of every age and every nation. People are way more fascinated and amused with poop than I ever thought possible. But it took a career in cleaning up the stuff for me to realize the full potential and biological importance of poop to this fully interconnected planet we all live upon. And if any species is to be awarded the gold-medal for the best pooper on the planet, it should go hands-down to the elephants. The next time you see one pooping or slinging their poop around, take the time to thank them for helping our planet grow and stay green and healthy.

As always, thanks for taking the time to read, and I hope you enjoy a good cup of coffee even if it isn’t Black Gold. If you enjoy what you read, please do me a solid and like, share, comment, or subscribe. Have a fantastic end to your summer. See you back here next week.

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Trigger warning: this post deals with dementia. death, grief, and loss.

Mom’s rose bush is almost dead. It’s the one in the front yard right by the front door. She planted it in honor of Gramma after she passed. It has been a huge, beautiful bush, five times larger than it was when it was planted, and covered almost year round in pink blooms. The only time it has gone dormant is in the two coldest months of the year. The last time mom was able to sit up and look out her favorite window, she commented on how pretty the roses were. Weirdly, it was in late January. The bush went dormant right after mom passed on February 7th, and lost all of its blooms for the first time in ages; I didn’t think anything of it. But, today, I walked outside to find most of the branches looking completely dead, with just a few last ditch leaves and black looking rose hips desperately clinging on for dear life. It makes me unbearably sad.

It’s not just the rose bush that has lost its mojo. We have a giant camelia bush that was planted by my great gramma ages ago. It is also covered in gorgeous pink blooms most of the year and never goes fully dormant here. It was covered in camelias the week mom passed. I know because I made her a little mini bouquet of them to sit beside her hospital bed in our living room. She smiled weakly at me when I showed them to her. But, within a couple of weeks of mom’s passing, the camelia bush had dropped all of its flowers, and now, it too looks like it’s dying. We did have lantern flies last year, and I treated everything with my horticulture friend’s suggested treatment. It seemed to take care of the flies, but did it? I understand their toxic saliva can kill plants at their roots, and I am very much afraid that is what’s happening, even though there are no more lantern flies in the yard..

Yesterday was my friend’s birthday, and what started as a friendly call on the day of her turned into me crying and telling her that mom is mad at me. I have been unable to cry until now. Things are apparently starting to bubble out. I have mostly been able to handle some of the loss in a calm fashion, which would be best, but not every day is great. So, there I was crying because, and I loosely quote myself, “mom has taken all of the plant magic and growing juju with her to the great beyond.” It sounds completely melodramatic, even to my own ears. I can feel my Great Italian Meltdown looming large, and I want so badly to stop from raining it all over my friend. But, even the giant oak tree that looms over the house is so laden down with acorns that I fear it will be unable to bounce back from its crop. I have never seen it so weighed down and barren looking. Now, I face having to leave this house next April, knowing no more of my relatives will live here. That’s hard enough without literally watching it die.

That oak tree was planted by Thomas Jefferson as one of the marker trees on the property lines for his summer home, Poplar Forest, just down the road from us. Our property was actually bought from Jefferson by my however-many great grandfather. I have taken to walking outside every day and placing my hands on her, giving her a little reiki energy, hoping to help her stay alive and telling her I’m sorry if she feels she has to leave us. I will miss her so much. Probably almost as much as I will miss my mom and Tegan and all the other losses down through the years. That tree has loomed large over our lives for literally two centuries. I wonder if I can take a cutting and make a new tree? Ha! Who am I kidding. I have a seriously black thumb. Animals, I’m your go-to. Plants, not so much.

You would think I wouldn’t care, since I was forced to sell the house to the church behind us. Mom obviously did not have access to advocates, and must have run out of money while paying for gramma’s eight year stint in the dementia ward in town. She didn’t tell any of us, and since she was probably already beginning to suffer from low-level dementia, I don’t think she was in her right mind at the time that she reverse mortgaged our house. Sadly, it was long enough ago that I cannot prove she was unfit to make such a decision. Even if her own dementia wasn’t affecting her decision making skills, the stress of caring for an Alzheimer’s mother certainly caused the same issues.

I moved back here to help Mom take care of Gramma, and it was hugely stressful. The eight years of hell left both of us with trauma that I still grapple with today. Gramma was one of those people who became belligerent and downright mean by the end of her life. She said terrible things to us daily. It was hard not to take them personally, and so frustrating that you could explain the truth until you were blue in the face, and she would argue that the sky was magenta or whatever nonsense she became fixated on next. Often it was conspiracy theories about how mom and Chillie were out to get here, and they were in cahoots with the nursing home staff. In the middle of all that, mom literally ran out of money, having used all that Gramma had left and all of her own savings, too, if I can hazard a guess, trying to pay off the astronomical cost of nursing home care.

Imagine my surprise when mom was diagnosed with vascular dementia several years later, and I quickly became responsible for everything in Mom’s life. As it turned out, her partner, whose memory was not always any better than mom’s, had been doing a spotty job of paying all the bills, but it was keeping us from knowing how bad Mom’s memory really was. He was still taking her camping for weekend trips in the state until right after she was diagnosed. That fateful weekend, she left the RV to find a public restroom and could not find her way back. I got one of those nagging bad feelings and called Gene to talk to mom. He informed me she wasn’t with him, and she had been gone for nearly an hour. He said he was just starting to wonder where she was. This was the point when I realized Gene was not able to take care of mom, either. I had to tell him to take the RV and go drive around until he found her. If he didn’t call me back in the next twenty minutes, I planned to call the area police to begin searching in earnest. Luckily, mom had realized what was happening and had sat on a bench on the main road of town, so Gene found her easily. She had walked totally in the opposite direction from the RV.

By the time I realized how badly Mom was masking, and she took her first cognitive test, her short-term memory span was down to ten minutes or less. It went all the way to zero very quickly, and stayed at zero for another five years before dementia finally took her. It drained her of life liter by liter, and pound by pound, until she was skin and bones and looked so much like my grandpa at the end, I could not believe it. He passed away with a body ravaged by bone cancer. Dementia left mom just as ravaged. And now, I am the only one left behind, and I’m still having to do everything, pay for everything, handle everything that comes up, and keep on working as if none of this is actually tearing my guts apart from the inside.

And still I cannot cry. I have cried very little since the actual day mom passed. I just feel like a corked bottle that is ready to blow, and I am holding onto that cork by the razor thin edges of my fingernails. The plants in the yard dying, particularly the ones that were planted by my ancestors or in memory of them, is just one thing too many. It feels like it might break me. It’s so very hard to be the last one standing in this house with so many memories and so much history. I sit in the quiet and marvel at all of the ghosts’ voices I can hear as I think across the years. Not to mention, the actual ghost, which I am fairly certain is Gramma, pulling her occasional antics. I have to abandon them all. I know in my head that I am not abandoning anyone, but try telling that to the rest of me.

Going through all of the things everyone left behind, so many things, and getting them all ready to be evaluated by an estate specialist has been taking up a good portion of my time, still, months later. There was a full attic, two full crawl spaces, many large walk-in closets, and a garage, not to mention two out buildings full of everyone’s stuff. And so much of it are things I don’t want or cannot afford to take with me when I leave. I have given away the things I can to family and friends, but still people ask me for things that I cannot afford to give them. I need something left to sell, so I have some money left to live on. You see, as much as my family worked to hand money and property down to their children, mine were not able to leave anything behind, thanks to paying for three generations of dementia care. So, I am going to be pretty destitute and possibly homeless come next April, when I have to vacate the house and find somewhere else to live. Will the ghosts move with me, or will they simply haunt me in the afterlife for leaving them behind? I’m not sure.

My friend, the birthday girl, reminded me that my mom loved me. She said, “Mom would never be mad at you. She was crazy about you. She loved you more than anything else.” Those words have helped me cast off some of the negative voices that are trying to convince me I didn’t do enough, or I didn’t do things right, or whatever negativity I can foist upon myself. I am like all the other women of my family who have come before me. We excel at self-shaming. My zen practice has taught me to recognize these stories I tell myself, and to stop letting them hook me. I know how important it is to return to my breath and look at the facts whenever I hear those negative thoughts. I frequently stop and make myself focus on what is happening in the present moment just randomly when it pops into my head, too. I wear malas that I have made for myself, and whenever I happen to touch or feel it, I will take a moment to practice mindfulness. I feel like it helps train the brain muscles, or matter or whatever helps us form new neural pathways.

Zen practice has been the best thing I have ever done, because it forces me to learn how my mind works, and too take a good hard look at my thoughts, even when they are uncomfortable, so that I can recognize truth from fiction. The truth of the present moment is that I am not homeless, yet. I have four squares and food in the fridge, I have a comfortable bed, I have friends who have offered to take me in, if needed, in April as backup. I am not destitute and alone, and most likely I won’t ever be. But, the fact that the rose bush is dead and the camelia bush is dying, I have a hard time believing anything good is coming. Even the garden is grieving, Ugh! There it is again. See what I mean? A few sentences later, my negative Nancy is already interjecting her crapola. Stop. Breath. Count. Return to the present. Keep breathing. Keep Counting. Rinse. Repeat.

Thank you all for being here, as always. Next week we will return to more animal stories like the lesbian llamas and Buddy the leafbird. Stay tuned every Wednesday morning for more. If you have been enjoying what you read, please like, share, drop a comment, all the things, to help me grow my audience. You can always read for free, but if you upgrade to paid, you will be helping me give back to animals in the wild by funding reputable conservation organizations, plus you get bonus content and even some early bird deals on my art. Hope you will join our growing Animanity group, to explore the state of being animal together.

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Unbroken Circle

Then:

Tiny hands like porcelain
the color of fine blush china curl.
Fist pumps, face growing hot,
her cries becoming stronger,
louder with each 
howl. 

One tiny fist latches on
to a long digit with maroon
on the tip. A hand envelopes
the fist, cocooning it in
kindness.

She is lifted up,
cradled close to a slow-moving,
warm breast that soothes all her fears,
quiets her discomforts. Rise and fall,
rise and fall, steady and sure, 
safety in each 
breath.

Now:

Porcelain hands, pale and thin,
are lined with delicate veins that show
through my ever-thinning skin.
The blood within them slow,
sedate. 

A voice speaks softly
arousing me from slumber.
I know that voice, better
than I know my own. My mouth 
moves to form words. 
The only sounds I can make
through the parched moon
of my mouth
rattle. 

A maroon-tipped hand offers
sweet nirvana. Small sips
of coke from a sponge
like the coke I fed to her when
she was six years old for amoebic 
dysentery. 

Painfully reaching up, I wrap
a bony fingers to circle around a single
digit. I give her a weak squeeze,
clinging to her warmth 
a while longer, desperate for
connection. 

Pulse calming, breath slowing,
in and out, slower and slower; 
I hear, “Rest now, Mamacita.
Sleep. You are safe with me.”

The unbroken circle remains.
My fingers hold on tight 
until my world
sleeps. 
.
                     -    Amanda C. Sandos

Let me leave you with some smiles before I send you back out into the world. Thanks again for being here and for your support. Below are some of my favorite shots from the recent photo shoot we did in my new studio. See you back here Wednesday morning. Will it be leafbirds or llamas? I don’t know yet, so it will be a surprise to us all. I have both partially written. They are neck and neck to the finish line, now.

The studio staff you see pictured with me below are the infamous Charim and Cottonelle (aka Cotton) and Elliot is the pooch pal. Thanks again to Anna Soete for her spectacular photos.

See y’all here next week.

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Animanity in Art Site

I was sitting on the screen porch, sipping my lemon water while three rowdy dogs panted on the cold stone tile beside me, directly under the ceiling fan. They had just been running all around the backyard, and chased a doe, who was obviously lactating, out into the frontyard. But, this deer was not about to back down. She ran up the fence, luring the dogs away from where her fawns were obviously stashed under the boxwoods directly across from the porch. The boxwoods have grown a bit out of control right now, so the fence was inside the bush at one corner making it hard to tell which side of the fence the babies were located.

The dogs had started a mass chorus and enlisted the entire neighborhood dog watch brigade, even getting a few howlers into the mix from down the street. Meanwhile, I saw the female bound over the fence into the frontyard, and then circle around and run back up the outside of the fenceline. As soon as she had all three dogs away from her fawns, she turned and fearlessly stood up on her back legs kicking out at the fence, literally daring them to come over so she could gut them. You may scoff, but a deer can kick a big dog’s ass, no sweat. Three dogs, though, and it was unlikely to go well for Mamma Deer. My heart was racing, as I tried to figure out how to get the dogs to come to me before we had a horror show in the backyard.

The dogs are all three incredibly smart working dogs, and two of them are mostly trained. The standard poodle is a 9 month old puppy, the biggest problem of the bunch. Poodles are seriously good hunters, regardless of their size, and most of them have a over-developed hunting drive from the very start that is hard to curb. The Australian Shepherd is an older gentleman most of the time, and very well-trained. So well trained, in fact, that I wondered if he had been a working dog at some point and was retired. But, occasionally he is stubborn. Danni, the American Pit Bull, is also still a puppy, only an older one, who runs like a bullet, is seriously muscle-bound, and has selective hearing.

I called the dogs in my best low, serious tone that means, “Stop, Drop, and get the hell over here.” By some miracle, all but the poodle returned to the porch, lured by the stern command. I think they were also just hot and happy to come in out of the blazing, bone-deep heat. I fear I may have fried my brain permanently from being outdoors that day, and I was only out for short periods, as were the dogs. The temperature with humidity was up over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. We were going out ten minutes at a time, every hour or so, to keep them happy enough to settle down when inside, and to keep them from overheating while they acted like heathens outside. Danni will run until she drops, and the poodle pup is happy to be the rabbit in their fun new running game, while the obviously most intelligent of the three, Whiskey, had been sitting in the shade and watching the show like he was at the races.

Once I had Whiskey and Danni inside the porch, I walked calmly out to Oscar and hooked him up to a lead, while Mamma Deer was still stamping and chuffing. I had growled out my command at the dogs with my boom voice. The one I only use for times like these, when things are actually dangerous for them if they ignore me. It’s a necessary skill with animals to have the ability to at least startle them into focusing on you when they are having zoomies without regard for safety. From the moment my voice boomed out to the moment I leashed the poodle and walked towards the house with him, Mamma Deer glared at me so hard, I’m surprised I wasn’t completely charred black. I kept saying, “I’m sorry Mamma. I’ll keep them inside for a couple hours while you relocate your babies.” I never take promises I make to the animals lightly, so I began at that moment to consider how I could work around the fawns and the dogs in the same backyard. I was hopeful Mamma Deer would move them somewhere else.

Once I got the rambunctious dogs inside, we sat quietly out on the porch for a long while to be sure Mamma knew I was keeping my word and keeping us all inside. I sat at the little four seater tea table with the dogs sprawled as widely around me as possible. I read my book while listening to the calls of the birds. I was enjoying the cool breeze under the giant fan on an otherwise scorching day as much as the dogs were.

Suddenly, I heard a chuff, and I startled, looking up to find Mamma Deer glaring at me and the dogs. It was like those stone angels in Doctor Who, blink and they move closer. She was way too close to me, and I had not at all heard or noticed her approach. By this point, the dogs were napping, so they didn’t notice her standing right outside the screen. I said hello to her like I always when I see this one. She has been leading a sizable herd of female deer on this property for years. I can always tell her from the others because she has a dark gray mask on her face. “We are just going to stay here,” I whisper promise to her.

She looked at the bush with her fawns, then back at us and cocked her head a bit, as if to say, “You are still too close.” I noticed also that she looked sweaty and hot and done with our sh*t. I woke the dogs, luring them into the house for their favorite chew bones. Once again, I apologized to Mamma Deer and promised her I would warn her next time the dogs had to come out in the yard, just in case she could understand English. I took the time to explain that I had no choice but to use this door for the dogs this week, since the other door to the backyard was being repaired and currently could not be opened. She looked at me rather grievously. It looked to me like she just wanted me to shut up and move on.

As I was heading into the house behind the last dog, I looked back and saw she was panting even harder, with her mouth open, she was so hot. She had been standing in full shade, right across the fence in the front yard, and had not moved at all for about ten minutes. I decided right then that I was going to break my cardinal rule. After all, I had seen the Mamma with her fawns out front the day before, so I could not claim that I didn’t know they could be out back. As far as she is concerned, I let the dogs try to turn her fawns into squeaky toys. I felt like the least I could do was offer her some grapes and other water-rich fruit, so she could get some energy and some hydration. I don’t know how these deer manage in the summer heat, especially when raising not one, but two tiny fawns. So,I told her to hang on a minute, while I ran inside and got her a bunch of cold, red grapes and some melon from the fridge.

I slid myself back out the door onto the porch to find Mamma deer standing in the exact same place, painting and patiently waiting. I slowly opened the screen door, not sure what she would do if I stepped outside with her this close. Once outside the porch, there was a sturdy fence between us in case she chose to attack. She startled a bit when I stepped out into the yard, but calmed down when I started talking softly to her, assuring her it’s only me and she doesn’t need to be afraid of me. I tossed her the fruit pieces, scattering around the ground near her, while also taking a few bites of the fruit to show her it was safe to eat. She still looked at me suspiciously, but she came over and licked one of the melon pieces. Once she tasted the goods, all bets were off and she literally scarfed the whole bunch in minutes. I just smiled and told her we would be inside, leaving her in peace.

I kept my promise, which is key when you deal with animals. They hear your words, of course, and I am fairly sure they understand. Even if they do not know what the exact words mean, there is some sort of understanding of trust that happens, which can so easily be broken by the smallest faux pas. Integrity, bravery, honesty, and calm are key to dealing with wild animals, in my humble opinion. Speaking of humility, that should be another key to dealing with animals. I never approach them as if I have the right to because I am human. I never treat them as if they don’t understand what I am saying. I always speak quietly to them, unless it becomes clear that my voice is frightening them more. But, usually, it seems to calm skittish animals down.

This is not the first time I have been able to come to an unspoken agreement with a wild deer. Offer them help once or twice, and I’m fairly sure their whole herd suddenly accepts that you are friend, not foe. But, if you are just going through the motions, trying to trick them into trusting you for nefarious reasons, they will also know this nine times out of ten. They will be done with you well before you can complete whatever dishonest thing you were planning. I almost think prey animals have such a good sense of smell, one of the ways they avoid predators, that they are somehow able to smell your intentions or your emotions. Anyway, I made a promise, and I was going to abide by it.

Later that afternoon, after three hours of me begging the dogs to settle down and let me work, I finally knew I had to let them back out for another potty run. I cannot handle three full-grown dogs, two being exuberant puppies, on lead, so walking them out front where there is a busy road was not an option. I headed to the side porch, slipped outside, stuck my head out of the door and called out, “Watch out for the dogs.” Then, I let the dogs onto the porch for a while, so the deer in the area had time to smell, hear, and see them before letting them outside.

The first couple of times I tried this, no deers were seen or rooted out by the dogs. Later that evening though, as it was getting dark, I called out my warning, and Mamma Deer quickly appeared out of their bush and stamped her foot, giving a chuff. I took this to mean she was not ready to deal with dogs, as she once again seemed to be glaring at me. Perhaps she was getting ready to wake her kids and let them nurse. I thanked her for letting me know, and went back inside to wait another hour.

That was about the time I think our unspoken agreement was made. I would warn her every time the dogs came out, and she would show up quickly if she or her fawns were in a vulnerable situation, letting me know to wait. Still today, if Mamma Deer comes to the screen and waits patiently, I understand that I am expected to bring out some more of that yummy fruit for her to sample. She really likes that part of the agreement. I pay my tithes to her without guilt, knowing I am doing the right thing giving her the ability to keep nursing in this hot, hot weather we are having.

Even now, a month later, Mamma often shows up when she can find me alone out front or on the porch. When the weather went back to regular temperatures, she no longer came around and waited for treats, which made me sad on one hand, but also glad that I had not taught her any bad behaviors that could make her vulnerable to other humans. That is the true danger of feeding wildlife. You train them that it is safe to approach humans, when most likely that is not the case. But Mamma Deer was desperate for help, and I am glad I was able to provide it.

It feels like there is a true bond of friendship between us, now. So much so, that last time she had the fawns up and walking around the front yard, I stumbled out to my car I had parked by the large tree for shade and walked right into the middle of the entire herd. I froze and looked around until I found Mamma and again said, “Sorry. I didn’t know your were out here.” She simply walked over to plant herself in front of her fawns, but did not bother to run and hide, visibly calming them when they got nervous. The rest of the herd decided they could go back to grazing. Perhaps, now I am a full-fledged member of the Randolph House Herd, but, only time will tell. Regardless, I am glad Mamma Deer decided to forgive me for accidentally setting the dogs on her. I will forever be honored by her friendship and her trust.

Thanks to all of you for reading and meeting my little deer family. I am sure there will be more photos and I am working on a painting currently of Mamma Deer. I may add her two fawns but I won’t know until I get further along. I’ll be sure to show it off once it’s ready for public consumption. I hope your summer has not been too hot, and that you are staying safe while the world is literally on fire. I will be back here next week, same time, same place. Stop by for some serotonin boosts. There will be more fabulous animals stories to come. If you are enjoying my work, please consider upgrading to paid, which not only helps me, but a portion of all proceeds from my art go to reputable wild conservation organizations.

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Sweet summer is back in all her glory, and apart from the higher than average heat, and the afternoon daily Florida-esque thunderstorms, it has been a glorious and unexpectedly nostalgic time. First, to address the elephant in the room, Happy Late 250th Birthday, America. May you remember the words engraved on the Statue of Liberty, and may we all do better to make everyone equal in the eyes of us all, May everyone know what it’s like to finally breathe free. The Statue of Liberty’s base is famously engraved with a stanza from the sonnet called The Colossus by Emma Lazarus:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

But, our nation’s history, the good, the bad and the ugly is not at all what was glorious about this past couple of weeks. It was simply the small moments of summer enjoyed with three glorious pups who are all “related.” They would be cousins based on their human parentage. Danni is one of my regular clients, and we spend a good deal of time together each month while her family travels for work. She is an angel and has already found herself some true fans online, without even trying, just by grudgingly allowing me to photograph her and post her pictures. I also happen to be painting a portrait of her just now, as well. Danni is an American Pit Bull. She is the kindest, gentlest, most loving companion I have ever met. Her cousins are a bit younger and a bit more rowdy.

Whiskey is a gorgeous Australian Shepherd. He is a bit stubborn, and always hoping to gain the upper hand at every opportunity with his smarts. Thankfully, he is also well trained and wiser in years than his brother. He mostly listened and complied when asked. Mostly. Oscar, the nine month old standard poodle cross looks and acts exactly like a standard poodle. He is prone to following his older brother in all things, so when Whiskey decides not to listen, Oscar decides listening is now off the table for everyone for the remainder of the day. I think Whiskey is just loving instigating chaos and then sitting back and watching what arises.

The weekend was complicated by a most wonderful surprise. There is a thriving herd of deer who make this property their home in the middle of Lynchburg, and several of them have fawns they hide in the hedgerows around the backyard, some on our side of the fence. And there are young rabbits about the grounds at night, and there are many crows who nest in this garden, as well. It’s a large, fenced oasis in the middle of town, but not too far from the James River, so we get tons of birds coming and going.

I love sitting on the side porch at this house with the overhead fan running, just watching the birds in the nearby trees and bushes. They don’t seem to care or mind us being out there, as long as we stay inside the screen porch. They seem to understand that they can’t be reached. They just go right on about their businesses right outside the screens. My mom used to come over to Randolph House to meet me when the last family lived here. ( I have been caring for all the animals who have lived in this home. for the past fifteen years at least, and have cared for several families who have served as president of one of our local colleges.) Sitting outside this weekend, smelling the honeysuckle wafting in from the neighbor’s yard, I began to filter through so many memories over here of dinners and parties and friends and colleagues and a whole lot of history on all fronts.

Thanks to a few scents, some old John Denver tunes my mom loved on the phone, and the taste of strawberries I was hit with some very visceral memories of mom. It was almost like she was sitting on that porch with me again. We would share quiet dinners on the side porch while I stayed here with the dogs just so we could have our weekly girl’s night together. We even shared a Christmas holiday meal here once while I was petsitting. I had to work most holidays if I wanted to make ends meet. So, it was not uncommon for me to be living here, or there, and having my family come to me for time together. Those were the days before I had to do all of the cooking. Before mom could no longer drive anywhere. Before she could no longer walk, no longer talk, no longer swallow, no longer….just before.

The Fourth of July is one holiday weekend I dread the most. It is the one I rarely spend with anyone but a passel of someone’s terrified pets, who hide from the torture cannons that shoot bright things into the sky and make the sky fall. At least, this is what I imagine my fur friends are thinking every time they go through another attack. This is why I hate fireworks and don’t partake in watching them at all. Frankly, I’ve had a hard time celebrating us as a nation for quite some time, and it’s even harder than ever now. Chaos and terror is the overall theme of our country, now. Plus, the world is on fire, literally. It’s all over the internet, of course, and I have been so caught up in its web that I have forgotten to pay attention to so many of the little things, the good moments of my life here in the old US or A. I had forgotten to even see or taste or smell them. And this weekend, the strawberries brought it all back.

I promised the dogs that I would go and buy them some “fancy cookies” that Danni likes from the Fresh Market, because then I have an excuse to buy myself all the things I don’t allow myself to buy most of the time. No idea why I do this to myself. That is a conundrum for a therapy session. Apparently, I need the excuse of going there for someone else in order to feel okay with the prices, even though the food is generally much better. On this particular run, I indulged in some organic strawberries. I also got the only single strawberry shortcake they had left and used that as my “cream” to dip the berries into. Not that they needed anything, but their own sweet, juicy, burst of red on my tongue.

The first one, I ate all by itself. While I was struggling to open the box and grumbling about why they make everything impossible to get into these days, I saw this flash of my mother doing and saying the exact same thing many years ago. We were camping at Virginia Beach as a family. I can still see her so clearly, standing there in her blue jean shorts, one of her islet shirts with colorful embroidery across the shoulders, and a red and white bandana tied around her head to keep her long, straight hair back out of her face. It was like we were outside our little VW Bus we had back then, under the awning that you could set up beside it. She was standing and I was sitting at the little eating table.

Mom had summoned me there to help cut the strawberries into bowls for the cream. This was one of my mom’s all-time favorite things. She looked forward to strawberry season every year, and we always ate them with such joy and exuberance, because of the joy she radiated over these tiny bits of fruit, especially if it was home grown or locally sourced. My mom was practicing buying local and homegrown long before it was cool. If I could ask her to tell y’all what her thoughts are about homegrown produce, she would happily sing you the “Homegrown Tomato” song, every word of it. In fact, a couple at a local restaurant used to have mom get up with the band and sing it with them whenever we went there to support their music.

All of these thoughts, and I could almost smell the sea breeze that was blowing her long hair around her back. It was like I was sitting beside my mom once more, in that past time and place, like I was inside the memory reliving it, if you will. It felt powerful, visceral and a little bit frightening. It pinched at my heart hard, making me suck in a deep breath, startled back to the present moment. Because I practice meditation, I could recognize how my fear was rising up to take me down a meandering path of negativity. I realized I was breathing heavily, as if I had been walking fast when I was sitting on the porch. My dark side was shoving her way into the conversation. She is a right b*tch, my dark side. She likes to tell me that this will be the last clear memory of my mom, that they are bound to fade with time, that I won’t always be able to taste a strawberry and be transported to her side.

I know that isn’t true. My mother never forgot her mother. Not a single day of her life, even through all of the dementia. She never forgot me, and she never forgot her mother. I like to think that is our strong caregiver link that connects us through the years of all our lives as caregivers for dementia mothers. I reminded myself, yet again, that things like taste, and music, and art, and love, and nature can reach our brain on a whole different level. These memories are often stored in a whole different part of the brain than those affected by dementia. Often, people who cannot even remember their own names will remember all the words to a favorite song or what their favorite type of cake was, or how much their mother loved all things strawberry.

Apparently, this past weekend, I needed to remember my mother. So, I did the scariest thing I know right now, I sat and meditated. I faced the memories head on, and I met the darkness when she showed up trying to taint them with worry and anxiety. No what ifs and no what will bes. I just sat there and let the memories come. I also spent hours watching one of the mother deers come and go to feed her hidden fawns in the bush right next to the screen porch. When she realized I was going to be bringing dogs out that side door, she chose to move them further away. As an apology for disturbing them, and because it was so ungodly hot here every day that week, I fed the mamma dear fresh, organic grapes to help her keep hydrated while she is feeding two growing babies. Normally, I don’t condone feeding the wildlife, but extenuating circumstances do exist and lactating moms cannot afford to dehydrate in the heat. They have mouths to feed.

After the first couple days of awkward trepidation, I believe Mamma Deer and I have come to an accord. She comes to the side porch outside the gate and waits until I call the dogs inside. She just gives me a look that says it’s time for her to come into the yard. She waits politely right outside the gate for me to bring the dogs back in, and then I keep them in for a couple of hours to give her time to feed and move her babies again. We even have an unspoken plan for if I am letting the dogs outside. I just call out to warn her about the dogs, and she comes out from wherever she is hanging and chuffs or stomps if the babies are out. If so, I will wait until she can usher them back into hiding before I let the dogs out.

I’m not sure how to explain how we came up with this plan. It was basically through trial and error first, and then through body language and mutual understanding, as the week went on. More on that story later. Eventually we came to this workable arrangement and it has been working well for everyone concerned ever since. Between us, we have managed to keep her fawns safe from the mediocre hunters that thankfully all three dogs turn out to be. Because of Mamma Deer, and this period of needing to slow down and wait for her, I could no longer rush through letting the dogs out and get on with my day. I was forced to take time to sit and wait, time to really smell and taste the strawberries. So thanks Mamma Deer for helping bring my mother back to me.

As always thank you so much for reading, and for following, liking, sharing, commenting, all the things that are helping me steadily grow and audience. For those who have upgraded to paid, we are now able to give monthly to both Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and the Jane Goodall Institute, on top of having rescued three more baby elephants in the past two months. The count was up to ten but some of them had already been on the list for a year, so I have to reup them to make ten again. That will be happening this week. I so thank all of you for helping me to give back to animals in the wild from a portion of the proceeds. You can always continue to read for free, but if you would like to be a part of helping, and also get some extra goodies for being in the paid tier, do join us when you can. Have a lovely great rest of your week.

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Animanity in Art Website

I am currently accepting commissions again if you are interested in having a beloved pet or favorite animal painted for yourself of a loved one. You can go to the Commissions page for more information. I would love to paint one of your memories.

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Hello, again. So happy to have you here. This week, I am delving a little bit into my love of all things corvid. I even have a crow as my website icon. But. I also actually have live corvids show up all around me all the time. It doesn’t matter if its country or city, rain or shine, it is not unusual for anyone with me to feel shocked at the amazing amount of corvids who seem to be keeping track of me in various places around town. Each place I frequent, if I see any corvids I always speak to them. They are proven to be intelligent beyond our imaginings, and I learned a long time ago never to piss one off. You can read all about that crow in the second post of this stack, Abracadabra, Caught an A’Lala.

Anyway, it’s been a bit rough around here this past month. Lots of cleaning out of crawl spaces and attics and the like, getting the house ready to take on it’s new owners. I have a bit longer, so I’m not going anywhere just yet. I still have loads to do. I even moved my studio home just to be able to squeeze in my art between house clean-out duties. Slow and steady wins the race, and assures that Amanda doesn’t end up in traction. In the meantime, I have this amazing family of covids hanging about. I decided to use my poetic voice this week, or maybe it’s more like my poetic voice chose to use me this week. The images are all my art or my photography.

Before we move on to the poem, I will give this advice:

Befriending corvids is a little bit like befriending a gang. Be nice to them and don’t cause any trouble, and they will take good care of you. Simple as that. Be wary of gift giving, unless you have already been given a gift by said corvid, in which case, it is only polite to give a gift in return. I do not feed the crows. That way lies madness. But, I always speak politely to them and tell them I’m glad to see them, and I swear they have told every other crow in town. I’m on the nice list, and I plan to keep it that way. An elephant is not the only one who doesn’t forget. Hope you enjoy the corvids.

The Familiar

If I knew every word in the language,
I would tell a more masterful tale,
but I find the words hard to speak out
when there are no words that can actually nail 
the simple wow, of how 
the birds guard my life.

I tell you my story of Corvids
because it is a beautiful truth, 
alas, I have found my familiar
who accepts me despite my youth.
She guides me and gives me her wisdom,
proves daily her loyalty lasts.
It is not just one crow who stays with me,
but the family of corvids en mass. 
I have magpies and blackbirds a plenty,
Even blue jays, who just seem quite crass.

There are grackles, not one, more like twenty,
who are my eyes, ears, nose, heart, and mouth. 
All these birds that gather around me
to follow me north, west, and south.
Feathered friends watch over my life, now
to remind me I’m never without.

But, it's the raven who is my familiar.
A rarer corvid I’m not likely to find.
She is bold and she’s brave and she’s clever
in the bittersweet depths of my mind. 
She is the friend I lost to depression,
who ended her life years ago. 
She is the partner I was planning to marry
who was lost before vows could be spoken.
She walks on beside me without legs,
spreads her wings to sooth and to save.
She is my sunshine when days are their darkest.
She is the darkness that fuels all this rage.

She is the mother I lost by inches
Who crumbled in front of my face,
while the raven gathered more family,
flocked to me, left behind in this place.
She reminds me that life can be lovely, 
that there are less who are cruel than are kind.
She is the voice that I hear when I’m lonely
that guides me through pain and through strife. 

She is the heart that I know lives inside me,
the raven who will help me take flight.
The girl who is stronger for living,
who is bolder but still fears the night.
She gives me wings when the storm’s full-on raging,
keeps me calm when winds batter my flight.
She shows me behind every black cloud,
I will always find a little more light.
                                                               -Amanda C. Sandos

Thanks for stopping by for a read today. There will always be more on crows, so never fear, if you are a fan. You are looking at the work of an ultimate bird nerd who loves ravens and crows the best of them all. If you would like to continue to support my work, and you can afford it, upgrading to a paid subscription helps me to keep creating art. Know that I always give 30% of all earnings off my art to help fund reputable environmental organizations. This year, Animanity in Art is giving to The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust to feed orphaned baby elephants, and the Jane Goodall Institute to fund their world-wide educational programs. Do know that you can always read for free here, but if you don’t mind doing me a solid. could you give this a heart if you enjoyed it, and a comment or a share would just be icing on the cake. Have a great rest of your week.

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The thing about sloths is they have that endearing perpetual smile on their faces, and a serenity that permeates from their very souls. I think even if they didn’t move at excruciatingly slow paces, they would still look like the happy stoners of the animal kingdom. They just keep hanging around, man. They don’t want any trouble. They are also your granola gardeners of the forest, too. They share their coats with a whole biome of creatures, including algae that turns them green so they can hang in the tree leaves and be virtually unseeable. For stealth, they also must remain slow. Not one pep in their step if they don’t want the entire tree to shake and give away their location. Best to just relax. My kind of animal.

Luckily for them, pep is not something the tree sloth typically musters in any mode. It doesn’t matter if they are the two-toed or the three-toed variety. They are made for the slow life, having officially been named the slowest mammal on earth. It takes them over 25 minutes to copulate. So, the males will remain chill even in the hottest of activities. Sloths roam the earth at a maximum speed of 0.15 miles per hour. Yes, a little over one tenth of a mile per hour. And as they lounge around eating leaves extremely slowly, they continue growing the most amazing gardens, one in their fur and the other inside their gut. Sloths literally contain worlds.

They have always fascinated me for this reliance on and participation in symbiosis, or the interactions between two or more very different organisms who work together to create healthier living for both parties. I have met a few sloths in my day, but have never had the pleasure of working with or holding one. I did have a three-toed sloth hold my hand once. She just reached out from her keeper, and without a second thought, I reached out my hand, and she wrapped her long, three-clawed fingers around it. Then, she just held on for the longest time, while the keeper gave us her best sloth spiel about their habitats, their diets, and so on. That one simple gesture of friendship is what always comes back to me whenever I think of sloths.

There are so many really cool facts about sloths. A whole lot of facts, actually. I was having a hard time choosing which ones to write about. For instance, did you know a sloth has extra vertebrae in their neck that allows them to rotate their head 240 degrees to see all around them without having to move much? Not even giraffes have extra neck vertebrae, just really big ones. Sloths are the only mammals with extras. They have nine to our, or a giraffe’s, seven.

Since I have moms on the brain right now, having just lost mine recently to vascular dementia, I have decided to focus on sloth moms. Because, sloth moms are supremely amazing. They go through what I can only assume is a painful estrus cycle when they are ready to breed. I say this because they literally scream at the top of their lungs to call the males to their location.

When I found out it takes over twenty-five minutes for a male sloth to get the job done, I wondered if the females were screaming about the lazy men they have to put up with, who take forever to arrive, and even longer to get things done. Probably neither, actually. It is more likely just a call that travels great distances through dense foliage to insure it reaches a male’s ears and produces another smiling sloth man to coax into a little more robust activity than the norm.

Once the lengthy copulation is complete, the males just crawl off into the sunset. It’s bound to be awkward between them for the first hour or more of his leaving, since again, he only travels a maximum speed of 0.15 miles per hour. She, however, is probably exhausted from the activity, mostly the screaming that may have gone on for a very long time before it produced a man.

The females continue to hang around their favorite trees, all in one area of the forest, but reaching all levels of the canopy. Sloth moms deliberately move to different areas of the forest and to different levels of their trees for different parts of the year. And the females will continue to mate with as many males as they can find or call in until they are pregnant.

Since they move around, sloths do need several types of habitat and a fairly good chunk of woodlands or forest to thrive. What they don’t need is much time on the ground. In fact, all time on the ground puts them at dire risk, since their limbs have evolved for hanging. They have different movement muscles than the ones needed to walk on all fours. Sloths even sleep hanging from the trees, absolutely and entirely built to be arboreal, which gives them strong limbs, but very little core strength. Any time they come to the ground, that lack, along with an inability to move fast, puts them in seriously dangerous situations. They must come to the ground at least once a week to urinate and defecate. Otherwise, they only come down in extreme circumstances, as in to find water if there is a drought, or to move through un-forested territory if their forest is being invaded or destroyed.

To show you what a total animal nerd I am, I could easily go off on a long-winded dissertation about the two-toed versus the three-toed sloths and their evolution. But, alas, I will keep it short, though it seems important to know a little. I thought both varieties of sloths were regular descendants of each other, but instead, these two similar species belong to two whole different families. Both of the species evolved similarly to fill the same environmental niche, but they did so independently of each other entirely for millions of years. The two-toed sloths are Bradypodidae and the three-toed sloths are Megalonychidae. The proof of this mostly lives in the genetic materials collected off the living species, so they can look at their microbiology. Which means, the science is extremely accurate, if invisible, so the rest of us are supremely hard pressed to believe it.

There are some differences but way more similarities. Mother sloths of both families go above and beyond for their children. A sloth mom will usually carry only one baby in the womb for the first nine to eleven months until she gives birth. Then, she carries the baby around with her 24/7, clutched to her side or her belly, until the baby learns to crawl around and move from gripping mom to getting a grip on the trees. Mom will confine her baby’s movement to just one or two trees, while she teaches her baby sloth climbing safety.

Somewhere, around their seventh month of life, the mother will begin to broaden her territory and move the baby around to different zones of the forest, so they can learn to navigate unfamiliar territory, though not at all for the reasons I thought. What comes next is the really cool part. When the babies are ready to be on their own, at around nine months, the mother leaves her home territory to find another one, bequeathing her home and all her slothly possessions to her child. She even shares some of her algae.

While moving them around, the mom has been scoping out a new home for herself, while honing her baby’s skills as best she can for when she must leave. Here is what I find most incredible about sloths. Not only do the moms move away from the trees they have lived in comfortably when their baby is grown, but they will move to an entirely different level of the forest canopy, at a whole different zone of forest as the younger sloths.

This behavior is thought to have evolved to keep sloths from competing with their own offspring for food. Males also tend to hang in different zones and levels of the forest than females and the young sloths for the same reason. And speaking of eating, these animals eat very little. They only need a few leaves a day to sustain them. One of those leaves will take a month or more to travel through the sloth’s digestive system. This is why they only poop once a week, due to the slow metabolic breakdown of the food they are digesting.

As with most mammals, there is a whole symbiotic microbiome living inside the sloth’s stomach that will ferment and break down the food over time. Interestingly, this means as temperatures climb, the sloth must eat more and defecate more, since the fermenting begins to speed up. And when it’s cooler in the forest, they eat less and move around less for the same reason, more like reptiles than mammals in this way. And while they are hanging around chilling most of the day, they contain a whole universe of symbiotic species that live inside their fur. And here is where you meet a sloth’s best friend -algae. Their hair is perfect for growing particular types of algae. That algae will save their lives many times over.

Of course, the algae does provide some nutrients. The sloth grows the algae that literally feeds its own gut biome. Their coarse hair also hosts all sorts of other algaes and bacteria, too. Sloths often self-groom and eat the algaes that provide extra nutrients and the moisture they need to keep their stomach biome happy. In fact, the algae used in their stomachs for fermenting leaves is one particular algae that only grows on sloths and nowhere else in the known world.

Apparently, what grows only on sloths are strains of trichophilus that are particular to each sloth family. The algae itself changes from family to family , and from sloth to sloth, and, in particular, is shared from mother to child. Mom willingly gives her child their first organisms to start its own universe garden. Talk about cosmic connections. Her sloth child will grow the exact same type of algae she does, such a perfect match that the algae can be used as a kind of fingerprint to know each sloth’s lineage.

The growing of these algae patches on sloth fur is not just about nutrition and moisture, though. It also keeps the sloth from burning in the hot sun and from becoming dehydrated. It camouflages the sloth along with the rest of their fur garden so they can hide from predators while moving through the forest. Many of the algae and bacteria that grow on sloths have known healing applications, so there are theories that mother sloths may have grown their own medicine cabinet to treat themselves and their kids. I mean, how fantastic is that?

The presence of these healing algaes may also prevent some of the bad algae and bacteria from being able to grow at all on sloths. In fact, there are all kinds of mutual benefits being passed back and forth between sloths and the many members of their body’s ecosystem. So, though it can be said that a mother sloth does all of the work to birth, raise, and teach all sloths how to sloth, she does not do so alone. It takes a large village to raise a sloth. Though, it is a very tiny, unseen village that keeps them the happy, chill, smiling creatures that we love.

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Here are a couple of my previous posts in case you missed them. Thanks again for being here. I appreciate each and every one of you for taking the time to read.

In Case you are stopping by for the first time here is a little bit more about me:

Hello. If you are new here, my name is Amanda
and I am a retired career zookeeper and caregiver
writing about animals and our relationships to them.
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This year, I am giving to the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
‘to feed orphan elephants, and to The Jane Goodall
Institute to fund their educational programs.

See you next week, same time, same place.

When I started at the Sante Fe Teaching Zoo, in Gainesville. Florida, and I was still learning how to be a zookeeper, I was like most people, mistakenly afraid of bats. My fear was unjustified and I knew it. My dad tried his best to endear them to me whenever he got the opportunity, and eventually it did take, but not until I was able to see them up close when they were not spitting mad. They definitely live by the tiny but mighty mantra. If they are afraid, they will make themselves as scary as bat-ly possible to hopefully drive their predators away.

When I was about nine, we had a colony of bats take up residence in our attic, and several of them found their way down the chimney and into the house one night while we were eating our family dinner. Three bats were flying all around the dining room in erratic patterns. They seemed like they were dive bombing our heads, but in truth, they were just confused by the way their echolocation was reacting to being trapped inside a giant box. After a few minutes of flying around, they began to stay up high as far from all of us humans as possible.

Luckily for me, my dad knew what to do. He had me run upstairs to get two tennis rackets from one of the closets. I brought them down, and he showed me how to catch the bats between the rackets to take them outside for release. He showed me their little furry bodies, and had me later help him identify them as big brown bats. They would have had cute, tiny faces, if they weren’t bearing every single one of their teeth in threat. Their ears were huge in comparison to their heads, which was cool. But, all the ones dad showed me were still terrified and had no other option than to try and scare the crap out of us so we might let them go. I came out of that experience not as afraid, sure, but still supremely wary of bats as a whole.

Dad decided he should have me help with the steps of keeping the bats from using our attic for their new cave. He said their guano could ruin our ceilings pretty quickly if we left the bats to poop in our belfry. We waited until it was dark the next evening, so the bats would all be out hunting, and we went up into our attic and found the vent they had been using to access our house. We covered it up with mesh on the inside, so the colony could still get up under the vent slats and hang onto the wire for shelter, but they could no longer get inside the house. Dad also brought home all the stuff for us to make a proper bat box, which we constructed ourselves and hung in a nearby tree. It soon became the colony’s new home. And that is when I finally fell in love with bats. I spent a lot of time sitting on the porch at dusk and watching them come out to hunt for insects in the street lights. The way they rarely missed their prey was impressive.

Fast forward many years to zoo school, where we got to take a tour of the Lubee Conservancy in Gainesville, Florida. Ever notice that there is a tiny bat emblem on every bottle of Bacardi rum? This is because the head of the Bacardi family, who was CEO back then, was a huge lover of bats. He decided to open a non-profit conservation organization focused on teaching people, particularly students, to understand and hopefully respect the bats rather than fearing them. They housed all kinds of bats, and it was amazing to see some of their wild and furry faces, crazy noses, and furry bodies up close and personal.

My favorite bats I met that day were not the big, adorable ones that look like their namesakes, the “Flying Foxes.” The fruit bats that live in Australia are usually everyone’s favorite, since they get all the good press, and yes, they are adorable. But, my favorite bat was instead a tiny, unassuming brown bat that turned out to be the most endangered bat of Central America, the evening bat. I obviously see the appeal of the adorable fruit bats, since I chose that species for my first bat painting.

The fruit bats are indeed impressive, so I chose to paint the supercute bats first, so they could use their superpower for good. They simply have to look at you with those big brown eyes and you are suddenly less afraid. I felt so very lucky when I got to work in the children’s zoo with the fruit bats for a couple of days as a fill-in. They had an adult female who would bring her baby right over close to show it off to me as it clung to her side. I was immediately a goner, of course, totally smitten from the get go. So, I decided that was the memory I would make my first bat painting.

The evening bats, however, had me fascinated after that day at Lubee. It kept me wondering about them. They are endangered in their entire range across Central America still today. So I might have never known any more about them than what I learned that day, except I apparently have good bat luck. An opportunity to get to know my favorite bats literally landed at my door. A professor and researcher from Purdue University, who found a whole colony of evening bats in an abandoned barn close to my mom’s cabin in Indiana, knocked on our door one afternoon with his intern. They asked if we would allow them to set up mist nets in the creek behind the cabin for the next few evenings.

They were looking for the best place to catch and band the nearby colony. They were trying to identify where and if evening bats migrated throughout the year to identify areas they should focus conservation efforts on. They were also researching the species physically, taking blood and saliva samples from some of the bats to try and identify why their numbers might be dwindling so quickly.

I mentioned to the professor that I was home on break from zoo school, and he said he would be glad to have another set of hands to help him net and band the bats. So, unexpectedly, I spent a few days assisting in evening bat research. They are tiny little bats. I felt I might squash them as I was holding them still to be banded or whatever the researcher had planned to do with each captured individual. It was truly amazing to sit beside the creek on the high bank and watch the little ones streak down to the creek for water or to hunt insects near the water. They flew in quick, erratic patterns that would have made me nervous, had I not seen the bats flying in our home. Dad also taught me about echolocation all those years before. Bats can do some seriously cool maneuvers with their sound wave maps.

Whenever one of the tiny little fur balls got caught in the net, they began to make a steady clicking sound that got louder until we removed them. Then they generally began trying to bite us to make us let go. Never handle a bat without some thick work gloves to avoid their tiny, but still rather impressive fangs. The researchers would only hold the bats in hand for three minutes, which was timed, and then they were released back into the night. If we didn’t get all of the individual’s samples done in that time, then we aborted and would try again with another bat. So, it was rather invasive, but I also felt like the team was doing their best to minimize stress and damage to the colony.

Many years later, while working at the North Carolina Zoo, I got a unique experience to meet and make friends with another evening bat. My supervisor had rescued one that had lost its ability to fly. One wing was damaged beyond repair in some sort of accident. The little guy was found grounded and unwell. They nursed him back to life and my boss had set him up with a fantastic little home inside her house. There were white sheets hung throughout the cage so he could climb around at all levels and hang comfortably to sleep or hide.

The best part of taking care of the little guy was feeding time. He ate best if we hand-fed him his bugs. By this point, it was common for me to be handling live mealworms, waxworms, and crickets for the NC Zoo birds. The bugs for most captive animal diets, bats included, get coated in supplements made specifically for the animal we are feeding, and the bugs are also fed said supplements to make them into more nutritious meals for the animals. I have no idea what was in a bat supplement mix, but the little guy was thriving on it. He did not like to eat on his own however, since he was unable to fly and catch his food as nature intended.

Instead, he was most comfortable when we could tuck him down into a breast pocket, where he was warm and could see up to the human feeding him. Then you handed him his bugs one at a time. I’m not going to lie, those teeth when he opened his mouth to snatch a bug from my fingers made my heart quicken every time. They did not look like anything I wanted to come in contact with, but this little man was always polite. He would take the bugs from my hand without ever making contact with me, and then throw his head back, mouth pointed straight up and enthusiastically chew it until he could swallow it down. His little face looked like it was grinning the whole time, and his eyes said he was extremely happy to be eating another meal.

After he had his bat dinner, I would sit with him for hours, watching TV. The little bat loved to crawl around on me, climbing up onto my head for the high view, or going into my hoodie, or my sweatshirt pocket to explore. My favorite moments were when he would climb up under my hair and settle himself right against the side of my neck to snooze. Such a sweet little guy, with the sweetest little miniature fox-like face. What’s not to love? It was great to see that one who had been so brutally and permanently disabled could still learn to trust others and was able to live a good life and thrive thanks to the dedication of my zoo colleague.

Personally, I think bats are exceptional beings. I mean, the echolocation alone makes them exceptional. According to the National Parks Service, bats navigate and find insect prey using predominantly echolocation. They produce sound waves at frequencies above human hearing, called ultrasound. The waves emitted bounce off objects in their environment. Then, the sounds return to the bats’ ears, which are finely tuned to recognize their own unique calls.

Scientists can even identify bats by recording their calls with specialized microphones and recording devices. The bat calls can be translated into forms humans can see and hear. When hunting with echolocation, the clicks get closer together until the clicks turn into what is called a “feeding buzz.” A bat detects an insect it wants to eat, it produces a rapid series of calls to pinpoint the exact location of its prey, then it uses the sounds and their echo back to swoop in and feast. Bats can even change their calls for different purposes. They have different searching, feeding, and social calls. And each species of bat has its own unique call pattern. Listen to the Pallid Bat calls below and see if you hear the difference in all of these calls.

I have become even more of a fan of all things bat over the years. The more I know, the more I like them. I follow every story I can find on bat research and discovery. I still grimace at so many of the horrible photos people take, holding a bat’s wings out and capturing them spitting mad and ready to bite. It only feeds the fear of these animals, which is already high due to their strange looking wings, their often weird faces, and their erratic flight patterns. Not to mention, they can carry rabies, so that does nothing to make them more popular. Some of them even eat blood, though it should be noted they don’t eat human blood, mostly only livestock and horses. And they don’t kill the animals they drink from. The poor vampire bats got the worst bad press when they were named after vampires. It’s not a wonder they scare people.

Most don’t need another reason to dislike bats, so I really wish photographers and artists would not show them attacking so often. I deliberately avoided doing so, while searching for royalty free images. I am glad to see a growing number of more reputable organizations showing bats in their natural state, even if that footage is extremely hard to get. I do realize that my experiences with bats make me a very privileged person, and I fully understand why my feelings for bats might not mimic those who have only been shown the worst of them.

I just hope that my stories about the ones I have met might help others begin to be curious, and want to learn more about these incredibly fantastic creatures who do so much to help our environment. Their guano alone is one of the best fuels for plants. The same plants that make our oxygen. Bats also do a whole lot of germinating of plants, growing even more forests to make even more oxygen. In short, they are tiny little miracles that help our symbiotic planet to keep growing and thriving. They deserve to be loved, or at the very least, to be thanked for their service.

If you would like to help with bat conservation, Here is an article by the US Fish and Wildlife on how and if you should install bat boxes near your home.

Thanks as always for reading. If you enjoy what you are reading here, please consider hitting the like, share, or restack buttons. If you would like to support my work, while at the same time giving to reputable environmental organizations rescuing animals in the wild, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. This year, I am giving a portion of all proceeds from my art and writing to The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust to feed orphaned baby elephants and The Jane Goodall Institute for their conservation programs around the world.

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The thrush is one of my favorite spring and summer birds here in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I particularly like their melodious song that rings out through the forest during the warmer months. But, there is another bird who does an amazing job of mimicking the wood thrush, and many other species. In fact, they have an estimated 1,100 calls in their song repertoire, which is extraordinary. The wood thrush’s song sounds like someone is playing three to four notes from a very expensive flute. You know that rich quality that a good flute can give? That is the wood thrushes song. But, if I don’t listen carefully enough, I will be absolutely fooled by the brown thrasher, who is in no way a thrush. They are a member of the Mimidae family, the same family as catbirds.

For further identification confusion, these thrashers actually look quite similar to a wood thrush, as well. They are the little brown birds “that could,” so often under-rated. They have been fighting bad press due to their relations, the catbirds, cowbirds, and the northern mockingbirds. All of them have a reputation for brood parasitism. They will happily foist their own eggs off on others to raise without a single qualm, so I get why they aren’t too popular. Brown thrashers have been reported to do the same, but I question this, since I have watched the thrashers in my yard closely for years, and have yet to see one of them who isn’t raising their own brood of chicks with their partners. Seems unlikely they are also laying extra eggs elsewhere.

Anyway, back when I lived in North Carolina, I made “friends” with a beautiful brown thrasher mom and her whole family in my side yard. At least, I thought of them as friends. At the time, I was living in a tiny spot on the road called Farmer. It is quite a ways outside of Asheboro in the country, just the way I like it.

The old farm house no longer had the farm to go with it, only a large backyard and the old decrepit barn that was barely still standing. It looked like it was held together by duct tape and prayers. We also had an old abandoned school across the road that had closed many years before due to asbestos. There were only a few families on our entire road, and two of them were people I worked with at the zoo. We zooies made our little village of three and we were happy about it.

One of the best features of said farm house was that it attracted tons of birds, even if you didn’t feed them, thanks to all the places to find shelter, make homes, and safely hide. The second best feature was “The Green Room,” dubbed that due to its 1970’s green walls and ceiling. It was also The Green Room because it was built onto one side of the farm house to be exactly that, a green room for plants. There were huge glass windows along two walls and it had an all glass storm door.

Right outside, where the first window of said Green Room met the house, there was a sizeable bush that grew gangly in the spring and summer. I always joked that it was an alien trying to take over the whole yard. We left it bushy during the warm season and cut it back only in the fall, so that more of the plethora of birds could use it to nest and find shelter. The second year I was in that house, some of the gangly alien bush had grown out in front of that window and crawled up against the glass.

I kept hearing a “wood thrush” singing under that bush for weeks, and I wondered what one was doing this far from a proper forest. They don’t usually come too close to the humans, and this little bird was obviously on the ground under said bush, up against the house somewhere, so well camouflaged that I could not see it at all through the window. When I got home from the zoo one day, I finally solved the mystery of the weird wood thrush living in the wrong place.

I saw a brown thrasher fly into the alien bush that afternoon carrying a bunch of nesting material. When I got inside to check the bush from the windows, there was already a nest being built right up against The Green Room glass. I found I could easily peek right into the bowl shaped center. I backed off and left quietly, trying not to disturb the pair too much, so they wouldn’t abandon it. By the next day, there was a Thrasher butt sticking out of the nest. Eventually, we got to know the tails sticking out as having slightly different coloring, so we could tell which was the male or female on the nest. They are a species that both parents build, incubate, brood, and care for the chicks.

A few days later, we found three little speckled eggs down in the bowl. Again, I backed off, but I took to checking the nest every few days like we did at the zoo, to make sure none of the babies were in distress, and to know when they hatched. It helps to be prepared for the day when you will be hosting tiny fledglings while they attend their first flight lessons. It is good to know when not to mow the grass and trim the hedges if you want to care for birds in the spring and summer.

When a bush has a nest in it, unless it is actually detrimental to someone’s health, just let the birds have their peaceful nesting period, free from stress and fear. They deal with enough of that throughout their short lives. I regularly frustrate my yard helper, Stanley, because I’m often making him leave vines and bushes much longer than he would like to save a nestling and its family. Sorry, not sorry.

About two weeks after we found the eggs in the nest, we came home to find three tiny pink babies, all breathing a bit fast, and snuggled down into the bottom of their nest out of sight of everyone who was not standing in my Green Room looking out. For the first couple of days we didn’t see the parents off the nest to look again. When they finally left to hunt, we found the babies thriving with one being a bit smaller than the rest, but all of them had started moving around a little, and they looked pink and healthy. They even raised their little yellow rimmed mouths to the sky in case we had brought them bugs to eat.

I told myself I was just being a friend by continuing to check the nest every couple of days. At this point, I was just being nosy, though, since I knew all of the babies were okay and were being cared for by their parents. One of the times I came out to check about halfway through the chick’s journey towards fledging, I was soundly scolded by the mother, who had returned and caught sight of me right up against the glass peeking down into the nest. I was literally caught with my face in the cookie jar. and mamma thrasher was immediately pissed. She began acting highly aggressive, flying right towards the glass and hitting it with her tiny feet to try and move me back away from her babies.

I left as quickly as I could, afraid she was going to injure herself or abandon the chicks. I worried about those tiny babies all night, but there was an adult tail sticking out of the nest in the morning. I told myself I would only check them one more time when I got home from work that day. I planned just one more quick look to be sure all three chicks were still alive. The moment I got home, I found something unexpected and extraordinary instead.

When I pulled up out front, I caught sight of the female thrasher, flying toward the bush carrying what looked like a fairly sizable piece of paper. I hurried inside to take a look at her nest from our hidden spot and see what she was up to. I caught her shoving a small, flat section of a Kellogg’s cereal box between the glass and her nest. She had figured out a way to block us from medaling in her business. If I hadn’t seen her put that blind in her nest herself, I would never have believed it. I would have figured one of my zoo roomies had done it. But, it turns out Mrs. Thrasher didn’t need our help to make it clear she wanted her darn privacy and she was going to get it however she had to, even if she had to do a mass reno on her house to get it.

That day, I started thinking of her as, “The Bashful Thrasher,” even though she was anything but bashful. In hindsight, I should have named her Artemis or something closer to the truth. She was like an avenging goddess when she caught us outside the house anywhere near the side yard. She would start her scolding again, and the male would usually join her right away to start dive bombing us until we left the area. The species is actually known to peck people hard enough to draw blood when avenging their nestlings. That’s pretty damned fierce for a tiny passerine. Our Bashful was also very wise of the ways of the world, obviously, and a great problem solver, to boot. This was one of my early lessons in never underestimating the intelligence, ingenuity, or craftsmanship of birds.

Once several more clutches of eggs were reared and hatched from Bashful’s nest, I came home later in the summer to find our thrasher under the bush near her nest perched and singing some of her immense song repertoire. Not only did she have a flawless wood thrush flute, she also did a spot on northern mockingbird, a cuckoo, a bunch of more common songbirds, even a few warblers. She had a seriously impressive vireo song. They are extremely hard to mimic, because, like the thrasher, they have what is called “two voices” meaning they can sing more than one note at a time and harmonize with themselves. It is what helps the brown thrasher to be one of the best mimics in the business.

But, in the 1001 song repertoire of other bird calls, brown thrashers have a truly lovely song of their own that sometimes meanders all over the place, and even when mimicking they combine their own call and weave it in and out of other bird songs. They really are one of the best singers of the bird world. And due to their little brown, dull bodies that help them hide really well in the underbrash of the forests, and their downcurved bills that make them look a bit like they are frowning, they are not very popular birds. Not to mention they live with the worst of the worst obnoxious relatives like the cowbirds who put their eggs in other species’ nests and then scarper off to live the high life, while their kids use up all the resources of the other bird’s family like the worst entitled brats.

This summer, there is another brown thrasher family raising their chicks outside my studio window up in the Japanese Maple tree. The nest is up far too high for me to be nosy again, but seeing them bringing food and fiercely scolding me when I’m at the pool and far too close to their tree, reminded me of Bashful and the lessons she taught. She and her hubby continued to nest in our yard for several more years, though they learned their lesson well, and never again built a nest right up against our window. I’m fairly sure that was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I am incredibly grateful to have closely observed the raising of brown thrasher chicks in the wild from the comfort of my own home.

Thanks, as always, for reading. If you are enjoying A Zookeeper’s Memoir, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. This not only supports me being able to continue to create content, it also will go to helping save animals in the wild. I donate a portion of all proceeds for any of my art and writing to reputable conservation organizations like The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and The Jane Goodall Institute to help save wild animals and teach others on the importance of doing the same. If you cannot afford to upgrade, do know I will continue to offer free content here for as long as I am able to continue. Please do give it a like, share, or leave a comment. I’d love to hear from all of you.

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Below are some of my other bird articles posted over the past year for your reading enjoyment. In case you missed them.

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Welcome back. I hope I say it enough, how happy I am to have you here. This week begins my summer staycation, and I have old friends from the zoo here visiting. One of them I havn’t seen in ten years. We sat up very late last night chatting, when I was supposed to be doing my final edits on today’s post. I always miss something. Isn’t it obnoxious how our eyes and brain want to see what we thought we wrote instead of the typos and missing words. Anyway, our beloved Hondo the chimp came up, and the story about how he and I went from suspicious contempt to family forever, with just one small gesture of kindness. It’s a story I don’t think has been seen by enough eyes yet, so I have decided to reshare it here, to see if it might fly a bit farther this time around. I hope you enjoy, and have a lovely June week, wherever you are.

Hello there and welcome back. Since last week, we talked about my time with Jane Goodall, I thought it was time to share one of my chimp stories. Hondo and Jonathan’s story is one of my favs. This particular story was published previously in The Canary Literary Magazine. Thanks to Gail Entrikin, the editor there, who published quite a bit of my creative non-fiction and poetry over the years. She helped me beleive that I did have a little bit of talent as a writer. It’s always so important to have someone believe in you, particularly when you first start trying to publish. Anyway, without further ado, I give you “Bonding with Hondo.” Enjoy.

Hondo was one of the largest chimps I had ever seen. A commanding male, he ruled his troupe at the North Carolina Zoo with a king’s presence. On more than one occasion, when Hondo was taking out his frustrations on his unruly family, I watched from a distance in absolute terror of his power and the expressions of anger and hostility on his face. I had to work very hard not to show him my fear, but somehow Hondo knew, and he seemed to relish finding new and interesting ways to scare me. He made loud noises, threw things, or spit on me. We shared a mutual dislike that I think was caused by a mutual misunderstanding of each other.

I made numerous mistakes with Hondo in the early days of our acquaintance. I avoided him and never gave him a proper and respectful greeting as troupe leader. I also had a difficult time masking my frustrations with him as our relationship deteriorated, and although I tried hard not to react, I had a hard time schooling my facial expressions. I made my dislike clear in a hundred small ways, like lifting my eyebrows or creasing my brow. Then along came Hondo’s offspring, Jonathan, and my relationship with Hondo changed drastically.

Jonathan chimp was born to a first-time mother, who was unable to nurse him. In the absence of another nursing female, the choice was made to hand-raise him. But because the regular chimp staff was short-handed, the non-primate keepers in the park, such as me, were asked to volunteer time to help feed him. Of course, I jumped at the chance to cuddle a baby chimp.

Jonathan was a tiny thing with enormous ears twice the size of a normal chimp. We fed and cared for Jonathan in the cage adjoining the troupe to help teach the females care skills by watching us. This minimal contact would also help integrate Jonathan back into the troupe when he was weaned. I was extremely nervous about entering the cage next door with only a large, metal grate separating me from Hondo and the others. So on the first day, I hesitantly walked in and sat in the plastic chair beside the mesh, waiting for the keepers to bring Jonathan and his bottle to me.

I remember distinctly being grateful that the chimp troupe was outside and none of them seemed to notice me. I had visions of the amount of spit and urine I would have to shower off myself before the afternoon was through. But, when they placed that tiny, furry chimp boy in my arms, none of that mattered. I was completely spellbound by his little, pink hands that grasped at my fingers just like a human infant, and his beautiful little face framed by those enormous ears. He gazed up at me with saucer-sized eyes and took the bottle for me right away. I felt a sense of peace fill me up, and I rocked him gently while he ate. I was bent forward over the baby crooning to him, encouraging him to keep eating, when I felt something on my neck, blowing my long hair.

A chill shot down my spine when I looked up to find Hondo seated with his side pressed up against the mesh cage door. I had to fight the urge to jump up and run. The only thing that kept me planted in my chair was worry that the precious baby would be frightened. When I looked back at the baby, Hondo blew gently at my hair again, and I realized he was blowing my hair out of the way to see the baby. I moved my hair back behind my shoulder and sat up straighter. I did this mostly so I could watch Hondo out of the corner of my eye.

Hondo remained quiet and my heart rate eventually slowed to normal. I opted to turn my chair and move it closer to the mesh bars. The look of surprise on Hondo’s face was something to behold. I don’t think the other keepers had offered to bring the baby closer to him, or perhaps he had not asked since he already trusted them. Regardless, my decision changed our entire relationship.

It became normal for Hondo to meet me whenever I was feeding the baby. We even sat with our shoulders touching against the mesh sometimes, once I learned to trust that he would not grab at my hair or pinch me through the bars. Hondo never again treated me with anything less than respect and affection. We eventually graduated to grooming each other through the bars, which indicated that he accepted me as a member of his troupe. I often brought him treats, and he sometimes brought me items too, things he found in his exhibit. Hondo gave me a rock one day. That piece of slate is one of the greatest gifts I have ever received, more precious to me than any gemstone.

In all the years since, I have never been forgotten by either Hondo or Jonathan. No matter how much I change, every time I visit the zoo both males come across their large exhibit to greet me with obvious joy. The zoo visitors often find it exciting that the chimps know me, particularly when Jonathan throws his arms out and gives me a mock hug and kiss against the glass like he used to do as a child. Every time this happens, I feel a tightening in my gut that we can never again hug, and I remember how he would let me rock him to sleep with his head on my shoulder. But the boy has grown to nearly Hondo’s size, so we must be separated by bars, glass, and fences now. I realize this is best for my safety as well as his, but it doesn’t stop the longing or the sadness.

Above is an image I painted of Johnathan being held by a chimp mother, which would have happened in a perfect world. But, as it is, he has grown up to become the silverback gorilla at the NC Zoo, who is raising a family of his own. He is a fair and loving father and leader, so I guess we all did okay by him. He was lucky to have Hondo as his role model for so many years before he passed. Thanks for reading. Hope to see y’all again next week, same time, same place.

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Thanks as always to all of you for reading. I’m getting this one in under the wire. It was really hard to write, not surprisingly, but also feels cathartic to have gotten it out of me in some small way. You will understand what I mean if you continue to read.

The other day, a friend gave me some wise advice, and it got me thinking. She said, “Grief has its own agenda.” So true. I will add that it seems to be different for each individual who grieves. But also, grief is different for each friend or family member you lose. I thought I knew what to expect when mom passed, since I am already grieving the loss of my partner, Tegan, who passed very suddenly, and we lost my grandmother back in 2010 to Alzheimer’s. So, I knew a thing or two about grief and also what to expect when mom was diagnosed with vascular dementia. But, for the past three months since mom passed, things have not gone at all the way I expected.

I should also explain that as a pet sitter and a zookeeper, I have lost many animals I have loved over the years. Sometimes, I seemed able to compartmentalize losing them at work, and though I am always sad to lose them, these times felt like grief lite. Then others, like C’sar the elephant and Buddy the leaf bird devastated me. I remember sitting on the ground against my car in the parking lot outside the aviary uncontrollably sobbing after we found Buddy’s body. That little bird just got inside my heart and when we lost him, it twisted me up inside for weeks. I got teary-eyed every time I was driving to work. I remember my boss saying something like she didn’t understand why this had upset me so much more than the others. I had no answers for her. Maybe I do now, after all these years, or maybe not.

When Tegan passed, she was in a hospital bed in Hamilton, New Zealand, and I was staying at a pet client’s house way out in the boonies from my home near the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia. I remember when they called to tell me what was happening, it was early in the morning here. They had waited to call me, but that turned out to be a mistake. Though, I would have done the same thing in their shoes, since Tegan had not even been showing signs of serious illness. It seemed like she only had another cold, but with her disease, they always had her checked right away to monitor her weakened lungs.

Less than twelve hours into her hospital stay, her lungs began to shut down entierly.. She had limb-gertle muscular dystrophy, a rare form of degenerative disease that affects all of the muscles in the body. The staff of the hospital had already tried to put in a ventilator and were unable to insert it, so they could not prolong her life in any way. They would have only done so to allow her time to say goodbye to loved ones. She had a do not resuscitate order in place. She was clever like that, knowing that she didn’t want to live the rest of her days in a bed on machines.

I remember when they told me what was happening over Facetime, my back hitting the wall, my legs turning to mush. I slid down to the floor in the hallway of my client’s home. They put Tegs on FaceTime, and I remember saying things like “I love you” and “I am going to miss you” while in my head I was screaming NONONONONO. She could only smile a little and look at me as if she was trying to memorize everything about my face. I was doing the same, while freaking slam out inside. For her sake, I managed to stay fairly calm on the outside.

I think that was only from the shock of having talked to her the night before, and her telling me she thought she was getting another cold, to her actively dying in less than a day. She was barely able to whisper “I love you, too” before her lungs quit functioning entirely, and she was gone in a matter of moments. She didn’t even get to say goodbye to her father and sister, who were on their way but didn’t get to her in time. I remember her father coming into the room right after she was gone. He picked her up out of the bed and held on tight, sobbing into her neck. I just sat there and quietly cried. Eventually I turned the phone off, as I wanted to give her parents time to process her loss. I couldn’t talk to Tegs again, anyway. Ever.

I called my mom, and my best friends to tell them she had passed, while I was still sitting on the floor in the hallway. I told my bestie where I was and she told me she was on the way. She offered to stay a few nights with me so I wouldn’t get stuck out in the country alone. She brought me an entire chocolate cake to scarf, and all my favorite comfort foods when she arrived. I can never repay her for the kindness she has shown me over the many years of our friendship, but particularly during this time. I was already grieving hard, just stunned and sick to my stomach and crying without sound. My body was simply sloughing of sorrow for many weeks after that, I would be driving somewhere and the tears would just roll again. I got used to carrying lots of tissues to make it through the day.

What I didn’t really realize until looking back on that day, is that I was grieving not one, but two devastating losses from that same day. My mother had been getting more and more confused and forgetful. But, her dementia had not been diagnosed, yet. Until that day, I just thought mom was suffering from normal old age issues. But, when I called her and told her what had happened and asked her to come, she seemed to freeze. She was completely unable to create a sentence. I had to have her put Gene, her partner, on the phone, so I could give him the address and ask him to drive mom out to see me. I wanted nothing more than my mother to hold me in that moment.

It took Mom and Gene hours to find a house my mother had been to several times before, when I was out of town and my client needed help. The drive actually only takes twenty minutes. Mom kept calling me and cutting me off from speaking with Tegan’s mom who was trying to explain more about what happened. I eventually just told Gene to head back home. Of course, he didn’t listen. Eventually, they made it to the correct neighborhood and asked a few of the neighbors which house until they found the right one.

Mom came in still looking stunned and glassy-eyed. She did give me a brief hug, but it was more robotic than heart-felt. Then, she sat down on the couch with me, but didn’t seem to know what to say or do, and she kept getting confused about what was happening. My best friend gently told me she thought I should have mom’s cognition tested again, due to our family’s history. So the day of Tegan’s death was also the very same day I found out my mom was no longer able to take care of me. Something was very wrong, and I already knew what the problem was, since I had cared for my grandmother for eight years. There is this confused look dementia patients get that, to me, seems different than any other look. But, I can’t seem to put my finger on how to describe it. It’s like confusion, fear, and apathy combined.

Her behavior that day was a total one-eighty for my mother, who always knew how to calm my anxiety and deal with my emotional turmoil. She always knew exactly what to say, and how to say it in times like these. I used to call her each time I lost an animal and cry on the phone, and whenever one of my own fur babies died, my mom was right there with me at the end of their lives helping me hold them until the end. She would never leave me alone to grieve the loss of my partner. But that day, I was easily able to convince her that she and Gene should go home, since I had Andi there with me. It was clear mom was becoming more and more confused by the minute.

The very next day, mom was diagnosed with dementia. The doctor explained how this type of dementia is not the same as Alzheimer’s, which was a relief. Vascular dementia attacks only the frontal lobe of the body. That means her short-term memory was already being affected. She eventually only had about one minute of short-term memory, if that. You could tell her she had just come back from going to the bathroom, and she would insist she hadn’t been in hours. She would argue until we took her again, because Lord knows, you will never be able to win any kind of an argument with a dementia patient. They fixate easily on things, and then it is very hard to get them back off of whatever idea they are fixated on, regardless of the truth of their idea. Of course, all of these symptoms slowly came into play over the five years that followed.

The day we went to the doctor, he said Mom was probably already at only ten minutes of short-term memory, before her brain deleted anything that did not get shuffled into the long-term section of the brain. Her memory degenerated to less than a minute by the last year of her life. But, the truly frightening thing for me, as her sole care provider, was the fact that this disease was going to shut down the muscles in her body, much like muscular dystrophy had done to Tegan. Unfortunately for mom, it mostly affected her legs and her balance. She began to fall and injure herself, and I quickly had to rearrange the entire house to put mom in the downstairs wheelchair accessible room that had belonged to my gramma and grandpa, and me up to the upstairs room. I hired a company to help me, but they paid by the hour and then informed me upon arrival that they would only move the major furniture, rather than moving the entire rooms for me as promised. I packed up everything else and unpacked again that same day. It was absolute insanity, but it had to be done. Mom was now officially a fall risk and stairs were no longer possible for her.

Then, there came the lawyers and the bankers and the doctors and the health care facilities, and all the things that go into caring for a dementia patient, who has also named you her power of attorney. None of the official paperwork for my mom was done. I guess she thought she would still have plenty of time to do that since my gramma lived for more than ten years longer than mom and didn’t get Alzheimer’s until she was in her nineties. I was lucky to have my best friend keep carping at me to get all of the paperwork done quickly, so that I could make all of the necessary decisions for her legally and not get into trouble. When the bestie carps, you listen.

Mind you, I was handling all of this while I had just very suddenly lost my partner. And the truth of the matter was I was already starting to grieve losing my mother years before she was gone, because the person this disease left behind was unrecognizable most of the time. She became very timid and quiet. She sat and stared into space a lot. It was a good day if I could get her to read the same page of a magazine to me over and over and over, as if it was the first time she was telling me.

Dementia is rampant in this country, and yet health care providers seldom seem to know what the fuck to do around someone with little or no short-term memory, a continual frustration. This problem was made more tricky most of the time, because Mom’s long term memory was still fairly good. But sometimes, even that was hard for her to recall. For example, once when I took her to the ER for a broken wrist in the middle of the night, the nurses who met the ambulance at the door would not allow me to go into the hospital through that entrance. They insisted I had to go tell the people at the desk out front and then wait there for someone to come get me. I was livid the longer I was made to wait. Finally, about fifteen minutes later, a nurse came to get me because mom had told them a birth date that did not match her records on file.

It would be nice if I could say they didn’t know about the disease, but I heard the driver tell the nurses bringing her in for evaluation what she was suffering from, so they already heard she had dementia and no short-term memory. And yet, they let my mother sit in her little cubicle alone and not understanding what the fuck was going on for fifteen minutes. Longest minutes of my life. By the time I was allowed in the back with her, we had to call the nurses back, so I could tell them what actually happened, because they had taken my mom’s word for everything. She had concocted a good story so she could mask her memory loss. She even told them she wasn’t in much pain and nothing was broken. She hadn’t even shown them her obviously broken wrist.

This is just one instance of similar issues I have experienced at various hospitals and clinics. It happens all the time. Doctor’s offices often wanted to take her back to testing and radiation without me, where she would quickly become agitated and uncooperative. Often, they would take her word for things over the phone and make incorrect assumptions based on her confused fibs. We eventually had to restrict her phone use so all calls came through me. And yet, all these people were told about her dementia. There is never a time that any health care facility of any kind should be separating a dementia patient from their advocate, except for things like surgery, where she would not need to communicate, anyway.

So, I was grieving Tegan, who I was engaged to, and we had been planning a life together in New Zealand. Due to her health care, she needed their far superior health resources and would not be safe trying to move here to marry me. We were in the process of applying for my visa when she passed. She had also just finished building me a beautiful little house and studio on her property, so that if I got sick, I could stay there and be quarantined, since her immune system was compromised. We were so excited about starting our lives together, and the doctors had recently done all of her testing and reported that based on her ongoing rate of decline, they thought we would have at least another ten years together before her major organs began to fail.

Through all of this change and upheaval with mom, I had to learn how to be her sole care-provider and her advocate, while I was also trying to grieve the loss of not only Tegan, but the life we had been building together. All of that was gone in an instant, and now I was looking at a very different and daunting path ahead of me, with no way of knowing how long mom’s decline would be, nor what to expect, because dementia is different for every individual, too. Mostly, the doctors could only give me possible ideas of what to expect, always followed with, “Your mother may experience this disease very differently from others.”

After a day of cooking, cleaning, shopping, dealing with health care appointments and medication refills, and a hundred other things each day, I would head upstairs to my room, fall into bed and cry my eyes out, sometimes for several hours before I could sleep. And when I slept, I was plagued with worry dreams. For five years this went on, and now, I’m once again in the weeds of another loss, and I don’t even recognize myself sometimes. Nor do I understand why this time, the grief feels so very different.

Grief for mom’s loss feels even more enormous, now, when added to the grief I am still weathering. The fact that tears feel stuck inside me worries me more than it probably should. I do understand that you don’t have to cry to grieve. There is no right or wrong way, but I am usually a crier, and this is how my body deals with everything from sadness, to anxiety, to anger, you name it. Emotional upheaval of any kind usually equals tears in my world. So the lack of them has really been stressing me out.

The thing that frightens me most about losing mom, is that apart from the few moments after she had taken her last breath, I have not been able to cry at all. I feel like it’s all rolling around in my stomach. Every now and then, it rises up to my throat, but it won’t come all the way out. I am not actively shoving it down. In fact, I keep trying to let the roiling emotions go to no avail. My friend said, and my therapist agreed, that my body has been working in survival mode for so long that it needs to protect me from this newest trauma for a while longer. She maintains that when my body is ready, the storm of tears will come.

I have always described the grief that rolls over me at times about Tegan’s loss as a tsunami. You don’t see it coming. Everything feels tranquil and normal and then suddenly this giant wave rises up out of nowhere and totally swamps you. I have ended up literally back on the floor sobbing more than once. So, the fact that I still have not had any tears for mom feeds my anxiety on the regular. It’s like this predator watching from the shadows, waiting for the right moment, ready to pounce.

All this is to say, grief sucks. While I am learning first-hand how different it can be to grieve for each individual, I remind myself that it is also exactly the same. Maybe that’s my Zen practice showing. Zen did teach me the understanding that two opposing things can be true at once. Grief is a true paradox. I keep reminding myself of this when I sit down with my thoughts each day. I work not to attach myself to any expectations about this seemingly never ending grief journey I am on. I also work to recognize and stop feeding the fear story that I tell myself on the regular.

But, when my friend said that grief has its own agenda, it really resonated with me. That one little sentence has calmed the anxiety a lot, knowing that when grief and my body are ready, the storm will come. There will be no stopping or slowing or manipulating that storm. It will be what it will be. It will happen when it happens. I have already weathered so many storms. I will just have to survive another one. I’m going to have to be okay with not knowing when and where to expect the giant waves until the winds of grief blow through my body once more.

As always, thanks so much for reading. Please consider supporting me and my work by upgrading to a paid subscription. Or, you can like, share, and comment to help me grow my audience. A portion of all proceeds will go to organizations helping to save our planet and all the animals who live here, ourselves included.

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Hello. If you’re new here, I’m Amanda. I spent 32 years as a zookeeper, and the animals changed me in ways I’m still discovering. A black leopard once chose not to attack me. An elephant grieving her sister was irreparably traumatized while the park still opened on time. These experiences are why I paint and write, because animals deserve to be seen for what they really are, creatures who think and feel like us. Thank you for reading. A portion of everything I earn from paid subscriptions goes directly back to the animals, this year through the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and the Jane Goodall Institute.

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Below are a few of my previous posts in case you would like to read more.

When I was fresh out of school, a baby zookeeper, way back in the late 1980s, I got a fantastic opportunity to work a weekend at the Brookfield Zoo in the suburbs of Chicago. It was the place I had set my sights on working, and I kept telling myself it paid to have connections, plus volunteer time there looked good on a resume. One of my zoo school friend’s moms happened to be Dr. Raab’s Personal Assistant. He was the Brookfield Zoo director back in those days. And, of course, connections did get me a whole bunch of behind-the-scenes privileges, and it also got me a weekend shadowing the keepers that I am sure helped land me my first keeper job at the Dallas Zoo. Sadly, I did not land a job at Brookfield. Although, looking back, having to work outside caring for the animals in Chicago winters sounds painful. So, perhaps I am grateful to have ended up working in warmer climes.

The thing I most remember about that long-ago weekend was my chance to meet the highly endangered southern hairy-nosed wombats, who lived in the zoo’s renowned Australia House. This exhibit had a nocturnal viewing area and Australia House holds the distinction of being the first place outside of Australia to successfully breed and raise wombats. I did not even know such a creature existed before that long ago day. But, when I met one, I was instantly a total fangirl.

Wombats are burrowing creatures, and there were partially man-made burrows all over their exhibit, some with various sections viewable to the public through the looking glass. There was also a digging area the wombats loved to excavate and renovate on the regular. The keepers added new soil and leaf litter regularly. There was a trap door that opened at the far end of said digging area to retrieve them out of their holes when needed. So, my very first glimpse of a wombat in the flesh, who turned out to be a most adorable creature, was this tan, round, and furry ball. Turns out it was just his big, round butt sticking out the end of the hole, which is a common wombat defense. Their rears are incredibly tough, made of cartilage, fused bone, and skin. If a predator tries to enter their burrow, wombats will block the entrance with their backside and use it as their shield.

The wombat butt turned out to belong to Carver, who was very food motivated, so as soon as he realized the door behind his behind was not being opened by predators, but someone arriving with food, he wiggle-walked backwards into the open area. He immediately stood up on his keeper’s legs and began to use his long, clawed fingers to rifle through pockets and open containers holding food items.

Despite their waddling, and their short, round bodies, wombats can shockingly sprint at speeds of up to 25 mph to escape danger. Though, I sort of don’t believe the very robust Carver could have moved that quickly even if I had been a dingo at his door. He was a gregarious fellow back in those days, and he was also one of the older animals in captivity, having come to the zoo in the 1970s. He went on to be the longest lived wombat in captivity, passing at 34 years old.

The smaller, but no less adorable female named Tilly was Carver’s current lover. She came wobbling out of the warren right on Carver’s heels, but she was not sure what to make of me and my strange smells. She stayed back and walked tentative circles around me, giving me long sniffs from her partially pink nose, making those whitish whiskers of hers tremble and jump. If I moved at all, she would scurry closer to her keeper. She didn’t look too pleased with Carver for being all over me when he started climbing around in search of more goodies. In fact, I felt like she definitely wanted this human hussy away from her man. We were not destined to be friends, but she was adorable nonetheless.

I mean, how can you not love an animal who even has cute poops? Wombats are the only known animal in the world that produces cube-shaped feces. They need two weeks to digest their food, and that combined with a specialized intestine extracts maximum moisture and results in highly compacted, block-shaped droppings. Easy to clean up and adorable, as poop goes. I never thought I would type those words, but here we are.

Carver was such a sweet, gentle wombat back then. Maybe I just caught him having a good day, but he really melted my heart. There was so much intelligence in his eyes and he certainly knew how to work the humans for extra of all the things he wanted. And by proxy, his girlfriend also enjoyed his spoils. He always seemed willing to share with her, which also endeared him to me I have kept my eye on the species as a whole ever since. My latest oil painting is focused on the wombats and their extraordinary help during the Australia wildfires. Of course, some people have since tried to “debunk” this amazing discovery. I think they don’t want to admit that wombats are indeed smart enough to willingly want to help other smaller creatures during a fire.

One of the first responder organizations in Australia wanted to award wombats as heroes, but people on scene scoffed and stated that they didn’t think this was true. It went on record as being an exaggeration by some scientist or the other. However, they later found all the evidence they needed to prove the organization had been right and wombats had indeed saved many small animals from the fires. Why am I not surprised that nobody actually changed the narrative about that when it was discovered. If you look it up online, most places still say the wombats didn’t knowingly save other animals. But, though wombat burrows can be massive networks spanning up to nearly 100 feet, and some are so distinct they can actually be seen from space, these animals still have excellent smell and hearing and would not have just not noticed these creatures sharing their space while they were stuck in it. Also, they are very territorial, why would they suddenly be okay with sharing their home with strangers if the didn’t understand it was life and death?

After the theory of wombat rescues was “debunked,” there were all kinds of small mammals and reptiles found alive in the wombat burrows with the wombats throughout the fire rescue area. This resulted in many more saved lives than would have happened without the wombats willingly allowing these animals to stay in their homes with them during the fires. They were certainly able to force the smaller animals out if they chose to do so. They really should be thought of as one of the heroes of that time. But, alas, humans still want very much to make sure animals are thought of as lesser beings, and so humans often try exceptionally hard to debunk any evidence to the contrary concerning animal sentience and sapience, as seems to be the case here.

These little burrowing creatures, who are willing to share their homes in an emergency, have not just stolen my heart, but the hearts of many others. I first drew the illustration above of Tilly and one of her joeys as a gift for my friend who was giving birth in Tasmania, where she moved with her husband. I have been so jealous of her for getting to meet wild wombats, but I digress. It’s a watercolor and ink on paper.

Then, I decided I wanted depict a wombat in its burrow with sugar gliders and a kangaroo rat during the fires, which will help me tell people about wombat heroism when I show the finished piece. This work in progress is about half finished now. Oil paintings take much longer, as you have to paint in layers and then wait forever for each layer to dry completely before adding more paint. On top of that, with mom’s dementia and me becoming her full-time human caregiver, this work got shuffled aside for a few years, and I am just now starting to paint on it again. It’s nice to return to the wombats, and my memories of those two dear furry friends at the Brookfield Zoo Australia House.

Hats off to Tilly and Carver, who are both long-gone, but were a big part of captive breeding to save their species by keeping them alive in captivity and being true advocates for saving them in the wild. Wombats are notoriously difficult to breed, and that adds to their very slow reproductive rate, with 21 days in utero and then another 6-8 months in the pouch before they come out and become wombats in the world. So even in the wild, they only naturally produce one joey every couple of years. The Brookfield Zoo was able to produce twenty-one joeys during the years of Carver’s life. Not all of those were Tilly’s joeys, but most of them were probably Carver’s, as he was alive and part of the breeding program from 1974 to 2009. He is on record as the first successful male to breed in captivity outside of Australia. Also these numbers of joeys in Chicago are only the numbers the zoo produced during that time-period. So, these two wombats were very successful wombat parents. What more could a wombat want? Well, maybe to be able to live in the wild without fear. That is part of my overall mission, to show people that we are part of the animal kingdom who shares this planet, more like the other animals here than we like to admit, and we all hold equal stakes in the earth’s health and longevity.

This is what I do about it. I write and make art that shows sentience and sapience in all beings and provides a window through storytelling to show positive examples for change. I want very much to inspire others to find hope and help the earth any way they are able. I want to help animals like the wombats to be better understood and more cherished so they might survive and thrive alongside us on a healthier, greener planet. And like Jane Goodall always coached us, I will never lose hope, because every action counts. No matter how small.

Hope is a hard thing to find in current times, but I hold on to Jane’s inexplicable ability to stay positive and keep working towards her goal of a safer, healthier planet for all of us, every single day for her entire life. She was even advocating for our earth right before she passed away. Like her, I hope to make an impact on this earth one story, one painting, one action at a time. I hope Carver and Tilly might inspire some of you to take action in any small way to improve your relationship with the natural world.

Thanks as always for stopping by. I hope you will come back by next week, same time, same place, for more animal art. If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing, or like, share, and comment to help me grow my audience.

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Hello. If you’re new here, I’m Amanda. I spent 32 years as a zookeeper, and the animals changed me in ways I’m still discovering. A black leopard once chose not to attack me. An elephant grieving her sister was irreparably traumatized while the park still opened on time. These experiences are why I paint and write, because animals deserve to be seen for what they really are, creatures who think and feel like us. Thank you for reading. A portion of everything I earn from paid subscriptions goes directly back to the animals, this year through the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and the Jane Goodall Institute.

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Here are a few of my previous posts in case you would like to keep reading.

I didn’t meet my first fisher cat until I was staying at a friend’s house in Bath, Maine. I was taking care of their dogs while they were both on a holiday in Europe. I knew the couple because they used to live full-time here in Virginia, and now they split time between here and there. They wanted someone they could trust with their boisterous large dogs since they would be gone overseas for three weeks. I wanted to explore more of Maine. Until that point, I had only visited Bar Harbor once. So, it was a win/win and I enthusiastically took the job. Bath did not disappoint. I thought it wouldn’t hold a candle to Bar Harbor, thanks to our fantastic Puffin and Whale Watching Voyage there a few years before. But, I was wrong. You are probably wondering how that is possible, if I’m talking about being chased by a fisher cat, but, you just never know where animal watching will lead you and which animals will be your guides.

My friends live in a lovely colonial home just across the street from the riverfront in downtown Bath. You can actually see the Kennebec River from their window seats in the living room. I spent many an hour there watching the river and listening to the birds singing. Summer in Maine was much cooler than here, so I could enjoy having my windows open most days. The two dogs, Percy and Nellie, a couple of Wheaten terriers, loved nothing more than walks outdoors. There would never be enough walks if they had any say in the matter. I had agreed to take them on all kinds of adventures, particularly to places where they could run off-lead. I also agreed to walk them around the neighborhood and downtown several times a day. I had envisioned days at every beach nearby with them, but alas, in summer no dogs are allowed on any beaches in Maine except for a very select few. So I figured we could just focus on animal watching at the river, and I told my friends I was excited to hopefully meet some fisher cats.

My friends immediately warned me about the fisher cats living nearby on the riverbank rocks. They told me they had run into at least two while walking the dogs on their street at dawn and dusk. Neither encounter had been fun for anyone involved. I knew fisher cats were very aggressive, so I didn’t blame them for being worried for their dog’s safety. Like I said, I have never met one, and to tell you the truth, I was a little fat-headed about it, thinking, “I’m a professional. I can handle one fisher cat.” I was excited that I might get the chance to meet one, despite their reputations. I also assumed the fishers must be hanging by the river to hunt fish, since their name definitely suggests this, but alas, I learned they actually eat small land mammals and birds and rarely, if ever, eat fish. A fact I was reading about in a book from the library in downtown Bath, because when it comes to animals, I must nerd out and find everything there is to find to research them at every opportunity.

The first stop, besides going online, when planning these sorts of animal adventures is to hit the local library or bookstore where there are usually books about the local wildlife to read. No place better to soak up all the facts than a decent local library, and Bath’s is a whole lot better than decent. Since they don’t eat fish, I was wondering if fisher cats were mostly seen by the river because they needed the water. Upon more consideration, I realized one the size of a fisher cat does not just stick a snout in the Kennabec River and not get swept off down-river. I learned, instead, that the rocky shores of Maine rivers and estuaries are ideal places to hunt all manner of small land mammals, since everyone needs water, and many use the rocks to try and hide their presence from any of the predators in the area, including eagles and ospreys, which are plentiful. So, after more research on the facts, I was doubly careful when walking Percy and Nellie, not to go near the river rocks with the dogs. I definitely didn’t want anyone hurt on my watch, so I chose to go off on my own on fisher cat exploration walks a couple of times without the dogs. No luck.

For the first few days, while I got the lay of downtown Bath, the dogs and I spent most of our time bird watching at the local parks which was tons of fun. I was beginning to wonder, as I kept planning for this mammal stalking day, if I could find a place where the dogs and I could safely observe fishers together outside of town. Turns out, I really had not needed to make special plans to meet one after all. I met my first fisher cat when the dogs and I were driving back after dark from a long day bird watching at one of the lighthouses down the coast.

We turned down the street to their house, and there in the headlights was a fisher cat, the size of a beagle maybe, though with time and attitude, I may be conflating the size in my memory. When the headlights caught that little beast, it didn’t run, but instead stood up on hind legs, showing the car all its teeth and claws. Then, it began making a terrible racket of screaming and growling noises. When an animal is prepared to go full attack on a car, you know they are not an animal you want to corner outside of a car, even if you do have two large dogs with you. I just sat in the street and idled until the fisher cat got over its snit and slinked off into the bushes. We actually waited there in the street quite a while before I pulled into the driveway and got the dogs out of the car. I wanted to be sure the fisher cat didn’t come back and eviscerate us.

Later that night, I heard their distinctive and less peeved screech calls. One was calling near the house, presumably our new, not-friend nearby. The other one was answering further down the river, presumably calling territories to each other. From that evening, I decided to spend much more time walking the dogs outside of town in other dog friendly places. It turned out there were plenty of places where we could go enjoy nature that sounded amazing and most likely would not have a danger-weasel waiting under a bush to attack me. Plus, better safe than sorry with Percy and Nellie, because both of them would bark and offend the angry furball, and I didn’t want to have to explain how I let my friend’s dogs get attacked and slain by a fisher cat. Plus, the second and third sightings were no less aggressive, since I was always catching them in my headlights when returning home from whatever adventure we had been enjoying that day.

During the trip, I saw many more little shoreline mammals along the rivers and waterways, scurrying around the rocks. I started to think of them as “smaller fisher cats.” But it turns out there were no smaller fisher cats in Maine. What I had been seeing were the short-tailed weasels, and possibly some long-tailed weasels, though they are less common. The only Mustelids I had any previous experience with were river otters, so, I was excited to be learning and observing new mammal species in the wild. Little did I know, we were just getting started on what I began to think of as our Northern Mammal Expedition. For me, the most exciting of the Maine mammals were out at the end of one of Maine’s famous “fingers,” right at the tip a peninsula at an old historical site called Fort Popham. We went out there before dawn to watch the sunrise because it was closest beach that allowed dogs that time of year. The neighbors, by this time, knew of my quest to find more Maine mammals and recommended I go there because there was a large population of local wildlife mammals living on the Maine peninsulas.

We arrived at Fort Pophum in the dark, just before the sun started to make itself known for the day. I can close my eyes today and still see the rickety old dock, the stacks and stacks of brightly colored lobster traps lined up nearby, ready to be delivered back out into the ocean. There was a pungent smell of fish, probably coming from the two small fishing boats slowly cruising back towards the docks to offload their catches. There was a single light hanging from a hook at the dock, the bulb flickering a bit, casting a glow in the immediate area, but not wide enough to illuminate much, particularly in the misty, chill of the morning fog.

I thought what we started seeing on the edges of the light were otters, little triangular dark heads peering up out of the water watching us curiously. I kept the dogs in the car and tried to keep them quiet until the “otters” came closer. Once I got a better look at the two swimming towards the rocks with large fishes to bring ashore and eat enthusiastically, I knew these were not otters. At first I was thinking, “Look at that, all the books are wrong, and fisher cats do like fish after all.” Because, again, they are literally called fisher cats. Then, my rational brain caught up rather quickly and began looking in my guide about other mustelids in Maine, and, minks look most like the fisher cats and are around the same size. But, they are mostly aquatic like otters and are known to frequent the rocks all along the coast. Exactly where I found them, but not because I was looking for them. I was just in the right place at the right time in the hopes of walking the dogs on the beach side of this peninsula, well away from the dangers of the fisher cats.

Fort Popham Historic Area is very remote, open year round, and allows dogs to run free on the beach as long as it is not peak hours. I never did actually find any peak hours, since we were only there for sunrise each day. The minks alone would have hooked me into coming back, even though they are probably just as dangerous as fisher cat, but it turned out they were only a small part of our Maine Mammal Expedition. Though, I could have stayed in the car watching the minks all day, Percy and Nellie had been promised their walks. They were starting to get restless. The walk from the old fort looked a bit bleak and cold, just like the old stone fortress in the barely there light of the coming dawn. The sandy path leading away from the fort took us up over the dunes and down onto the beach.

When the path opened up to a gorgeous shoreline, I realized there was nobody else around but the fisherman and the minks behind us. I grinned and immediately let the dogs off their leashes so they could run and zoom and get all their steam out good and early. I had already learned it made for a much more pleasant day for us if I ran them and got them good and tired at least twice a day. This being our first visit to the beach, I was not sure what to expect, but it was gorgeous, with lots of rock jetties, and drift wood aplenty for a good morning seat to watch the sky show. I was just getting comfortable on my rock chair in the still, foggy morning, wondering if there would be any sky show, since we could only see maybe ten feet off the shore at first, but the weatherman said that the fog was going to break early and lift fairly quickly. They weren’t wrong. And boy what a surprise we found when the mist finally started to lift.

It was still only dim morning light with the sun just barely cresting over the horizon, when I heard a loud splash, and turned to find an adorable face looking up out of the water about ten feet off shore. It was the face of an obviously large harbour seal. Percy and Nellie saw him too, and they started to bark at this new curiosity. Imagine their surprise when the seal barked back. I remember literally jumping when a whole bunch of other faces surfaced around the first one, and I realized we had an entire rookery of seals hanging out with us. They were all curious about the dogs, and the dogs were equally curious about them. The biggest of them was the one who came closest, but the others came nearly as close to us by the second and third mornings out there.

As the sun began to rise further, and the fog continued to lift, I saw more and more faces popping up and heard more and more barks. I began to see flippers and tail fins flipping when they splashed around and dove after another breakfast fish. We were all laughing and barking and being rowdy as the light finally broke the last of the mist. I came to a lurching halt and was horrified when I realized that there was a professional filmmaker out at the very end of our rock jetty. He was filming the seals. I called out my apology when he waved, since we had already disturbed everyone. He just laughed and said he was filming without sound this morning, so it didn’t matter. Turns out, he had come back alone after the initial shoot to try and get better footage of the seals when they were most active. He thanked me and the dogs for getting the seals all stirred up.

The filmmaker, who introduced himself as Tom, said he got the best footage of his two weeks spent filming the seals for a Nat Geo documentary thanks to us. He asked if we might come back for the next two mornings and help him get more footage. And so we did. We actually kept coming back well after the filmmaker was gone home. I took the dogs there to see their new seal friends almost every morning for three weeks. And both the dogs and the seals seemed to want very much to get closer to each other. But, seals, unlike sealions, cannot get around easily on land, and so they rarely come ashore. Thankfully, the dogs didn’t seem inclined to go into the water, since it is always a huge mess when Wheatens get wet. Percy proved that on the last day when he finally took a plunge to get closer to his new buddy, but alas, the seal dove under and swam further away. Percy seemed frustrated with me when I caught his collar and would not let him swim out after his new friend. I reminded him that he was very much a land mammal. I don’t even know if he knows how to swim, but he was going to try so he could follow his new friend into the deep.

We also saw the minks at the fort area teaching fishing classes to younger minks several times, as well. We even had a pod of Minke whales come swimming into the harbor one of the days. I think they were also curious about all the barking going on between the dogs and the seals. It was just the most magical little hidden gem of a beach, where I never ran into any other humans but the one film maker and some of the usual fishermen who worked from that pier. It remains one of my favorite wild animal adventures of all my travels.

But, we never would have found or even looked for this gem of a place if it weren’t for a mad fisher cat, whose antics sent me looking for safer walking option for the dogs. And though I wouldn’t call minks all that much safer than fisher cats, they stayed away from the beach side of the fort. Mostly, it was just us and the seals and the whales and the beauty of a sunrise on the beach every day. This is the kind of thing that feeds my creativity and makes all the rest of life’s unexpected stresses worth it in the end. There is nothing quite like being in wild places and being allowed to become a small part of the wild community there for a few magical moments. These are the moments I cherish most.

Thanks as always for stopping by and taking time to read. If you would like to support my work, please consider liking, sharing, or commenting here. And if you would like to help me give back to animals in the wild, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. A portion of all proceeds made from my art goes to reputable conservation programs in the wild.

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Hello. If you are new here, my name is Amanda
and I am a retired career zookeeper and caregiver
writing about animals and our relationships to them.
I appreciate you reading and hope you will consider
subscribing to my substack. If you choose a paid
subscription, you will not only be helping me
continue to make art, but a portion of everything
I make from my art goes to giving back to the animals
in the wild through reputable conservation projects.
This year, I am giving to the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
‘to feed orphan elephants, and to The Jane Goodall
Institute to fund their educational programs.

Subscribe now

Welcome back. This week, I am delving into agency and starting the real work of taking up space in ways I have been resisting. But if you are to write a good memoir, there needs to be some self-reflection, and I think that means being willing to open up about yourself, particularly when it gets uncomfortable. That is where the magic is found. Thanks for dropping by to read my words, as always.

For ages, I have been reluctant to talk about my masters degree. I worked very hard for that degree, but it seemed every time I brought it up, particularly online, someone would counsel me not to be too uppity, or I might turn people off. Or, someone would actually say something trollish about, ‘You sure think you are all that, don’t you?” And not all of these messages were coming from men. I have had friends tell me to be careful about bringing it up too much, and these are not women who were jealous in any way. They generally had advanced degrees themselves, and they knew what kind of responses one opens themselves up to if they are a woman who dares to be intimidating and take up space.

Apparently, being driven enough to jump through all of the hoops of an advanced degree, and let’s not pretend we don’t all know they were hoops, and that anyone with enough drive and energy can get an advanced degree. Well, as long as they are independently wealthy, or don’t mind being in debt for the rest of their lives, that is, but I digress. What I am trying to say is that the friends were simply warning me that by looking too smart, or too driven, or too brash, or taking up any space, even if that space is only online, a woman has to develop a thick skin for the trolls who will be waiting to try and make you feel small.

So for years, I opted not to take up too much space. I mean, I didn’t hide the fact that I had the degree, but I stopped talking about it, about the thesis I poured my heart and soul into, one that was not in just one but three disciplines, because if I put my mind to something, I am nothing if not an overachiever. So, I got my masters from Goddard College in the three disciplines of creative writing, studio art, and environmental studies back in 2011.

And yet, it’s now 2026, and I found myself uncomfortable talking about it here on substack with @Jeannie Ewing when she asked me to tell her more about my degree. I immediately shied away, telling her I would think about how to describe it and get back to her. That was not a lie. I did need to think about it, but also, as a regular meditator, I have learned the workings of my mind, and I do notice when things are firing from a place of fear. I didn’t want to respond from that place.

I have been sitting with my fear on this issue curiously observing it and occasionally prying my fear with questions to get to know it a little better, maybe find some understanding and common ground. After all, I have already realised that I have been staying small. Hiding has been the name of the game. I am tired of hiding. I started working on my memoir during my undergraduate work in my creative non-fiction and poetry writing, even in some fiction storytelling and illustrating, as well. No matter what medium, my art always returns to animals, often the animal friends I made at the zoos or met somewhere in my travels. It’s just what sparks my creativity, as it turns out, since I gave myself the gift of an art class at RMWC and ended up double majoring for my undergraduate in creative writing and studio art. Have I mentioned overachieving?

Anyway, it was clear that my graduate work would be about animals, and it would be multi-media, and it would be using art to bring more power to my words or vice versa. I have since learned that one does not outshine or outpower the other. Both these practices are equally powerful in their own rights. Put them together and that is where I find the magic. When I began to delve more deeply into these ideas with help from a fantastic cast of professors who guided me through my research, helping me to bring all of these disciplines in to begin writing very personal essays on how what I was learning or had learned already had come from my past, was changing me in the now, and exploring how these lessons might enrich my future.

But, at the start of this learning curb in graduate school, I was not prepared to start with me. I wanted to start looking as far from me as possible. But this is not the way. Or at least, it was not the Goddard College Way. So, I started at the very beginning, and I actually started to write my memoir in a much richer, more in-depth way. And again, I had the women in my life cautioning me to be careful just how much I was willing to open up and share. Because, if you are a woman and you attract any kind of attention, there will be consequences that are entirely different for a woman than they are for a man. These people were not wrong. They still are not wrong. It’s hugely frustrating to watch our country backslide and actively attempt to take our rights from us to keep us small even today.

You would think that in this dark time in our country, I would be shying away from actually starting to post the memoir I have been writing for years now. And, believe me, it was not easy to actually watch my posts continue to go live. You will notice that most of them are about the animals more than they are about me. I’m still uncomfortable delving too deeply into my more personal and vulnerable parts of the story. That will change as I continue to edit, revise, and write this project moving forward. I feel like a butterfly who has just come out of their cocoon, and their wings are still wet and too small to work properly. I have to stretch them and let them dry in the sun for a while, before I can actually take flight. But, nothing gets me revved up and ready to go against the grain than a bunch of white men taking my bodily autonomy away and talking about my body their choice.

The time is now. I will not cower, now remain small one moment longer. It’s actually, in my mind, not a possibility anymore. And knowing that it could literally get me killed, or worse, in America that is supposed to be so great again, I actually know I’m not safe. The truth is out of the closet, the cats are out of the bags, there is no going back into the dark for women, unless I want to get back in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant where these old men think I belong. This is when I start kicking and screaming and taking up space. There is a rage burning under my skin. And I have got to turn that rage into something useful, lest it eat me alive.

How to be useful is the question I’m grappling with now. I am no journalist, nor do I want to be. I am a Femenist, sure, but it’s not my specialty, and I am not driven to write about it. But I am driven to write about animals. This is where I can be useful. Nobody does animal care like me. And let me be clear. I do NOT mean I do it better than others. I mean, I am me, and my way of doing things is solely mine. Animals have taught me what it is to love and be loved unconditionally. They have made me more empathetic, less afraid, more able to cope with the world around me, more willing to get to know and communicate with beings very different from myself. Best of all, they have taught me how to lead with kindness because kindness matters. Especially when times are tough and others are being blatantly and horribly unkind. This is the time when kindness matters most.

Now, am I saying you shouldn’t want to yell at assholes? Of course not. My Roshi, or Dharma teacher, once told me “If someone is being an asshole, you get to tell them they are an asshole. You don’t have to be kind to your abusers.” I have kept that bit of rather obvious advice close to my heart and I often think of it now, when I am calling my absentee Congressmen to find out why they are falling down on the one job of theirs that is most important, which is upholding the Constitution. But, I will let others rant about that topic, and I will enjoy reading them and feel less alone. In the noise of the chaos and their ensuing rants that are simply all another way for the GOP to mask that they are stealing from the American people at every turn, I just keep returning to my animals, their stories, and the ways those stories have enriched my soul. It seems a prudent time to share them.

But what about agency? That was the first thing I asked my best friend. To which she answered by rattling off a whole bunch of my accomplishments that give me plenty of agency. I literally have years and years of caregiving experience with both human and non-human animals. I have a whole career as a zookeeper behind me, where I was blessed to have met so many amazing animals from all over the world. I have traveled all over the world meeting even more animals in the wild, as well. And, last but not least, I have an Interdisciplinary Masters Degree in Creative Writing, Studio Art, and Environmental Studies. Oh my. And here I was still thinking I didn’t have enough agency to write about myself and my experiences and share what I have learned along the way. It’s a horrible symptom of the even more horrible sickness that is Patriarchy. And it is so hard to recognize in yourself, and even harder to overcome and begin to work towards healing from such deep wounds that have left so many crusty scars behind.

And here is where I begin to flip the script back to a more positive place. Because, if I am going to practice kindness, I have to start with myself. I spend a portion of my day every single day fighting the Patriarchy and trying to save our democracy. I give as much money to these causes as I can. But, when it comes to my art, I am going to work from the places I know, and tell the stories I have lived, and begin to spread my wings and proudly take up space. Nobody is shoving me back into a closet. I don’t care how much money they have nor how much power they think that gives them. The best way for me to fight is to allow myself to take up space, and to honestly talk about the things I know, and my experiences.

In order to be able to create, to get out of bed each day and face the ongoing shitshow that is America, I am going to have to keep looking for the light and writing about where I saw it last, or how something gives me glimpses of that light in the darkest of times. It’s not me ignoring the darkness, nor is it me being complacent, as I am doing what I can daily to write and call and interact with our law makers and representatives. But, then, I turn my eyes towards my art, and the concept of Animanity, which simply means looking at the state of being animal, since humans are indeed also animals. Maybe if we act from a place of community with them rather than that of dominance, we can begin to make more positive change for all of our earth community.

Thanks as always for stopping by and allowing me to take up space in your busy lives. I am always grateful for every single one of you. If you would like to support my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Also, comments and questions are always welcome and encouraged here. See you next week, same time, same place.

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Hello. If you are new here, my name is Amanda
and I am a retired career zookeeper and caregiver
writing about animals and our relationships to them.
I appreciate you reading and hope you will consider
subscribing to my substack. If you choose a paid
subscription, you will not only be helping me
continue to make art, but a portion of everything
I make from my art goes to giving back to the animals
in the wild through reputable conservation projects.
This year, I am giving to the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
'to feed orphan elephants, and to The Jane Goodall
Institute to fund their educational programs.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Read more

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When I say that I left my heart in New Zealand, you should understand that it was not just my partner, Tegan, who passed away I left it with, but also the culture, the land, the wildlife, every single thing about NZ. Particularly, I’m enamored with their love of community and their culturally holistic view of the importance of restoring their wild places for the health of said community. It is such a contrast from our greedy and thoughtless Western culture of the US.

I spent almost three months in NZ back in 2019, and I would have stayed if they had let me, but sadly, that was not to be. Still, I have grown to love telling people about the country, about their ingenuity, and particularly about their gorgeous birds. I am nothing if not a bird nerd. And birds seem to like me, too. By the end of my first week in NZ, Tegan began to call me Snow White, because so many birds were showing up in her garden that she had never seen before. Including an amazing Tui who sat in the treetop next door and sang us awake with her awesome song every morning of my stay. I loved her so much that I got a Tui tattooed on my forearm. One of the greatest days of my trip to NZ was the day my friend Jobi took me to Zealandia.

Located in a Karori valley, just outside of Wellington, on the southernmost point of the North Island, it is one square mile of the first-of-its-kind conservation areas in Wellington, New Zealand. The project takes a long and patient view of restoration and has first created a pest-free wildlife area in which to begin. The area is fenced in, mostly as a way to keep the introduced Australian possums and other introduced mammals like weasels, rats, and stoats out, but the birds are free to come and go as they please.

There is a paved pathway that wanders throughout, taking the visitors in and out of the wooded areas, along a lake and marshy area, and up and down the mountainsides, even including some historical buildings on the property. The incredible number of species happily living within the sanctuary, probably drawn in by the free food, are most likely staying because they have finally found a safer place to live, free from the species who are decimating many of them to near extinction. Of course, some of the rarest species that once called the area home and were already eradicated locally, are being introduced back into the environment, as well.

The whole Zealandia project is an epic undertaking that started when a married couple of conservationists named Jim and Eve Lynch had been trying to find ways to help the rapidly declining native bird species of their area. Their studies were showing that more and more species were completely abandoning the Wellington area, and that the numbers overall of birds in the country were also rapidly declining. At the time, Wellington was just beginning to convert their water system to a new more efficient system, and there was a large tract of undeveloped land that had housed the fresh water lakes for Wellington’s older system.

I believe the country is now converting fresh water from sea water, but don’t quote me on that. They are definitely powered one hundred percent by wind, across the entire country, which is also a world first. Anyway, the couple, Jim and Eve, began to brainstorm ideas, as they wrote up a proposal to try a very ambitious conservation project, but first, they had to convince the local government, and then find investors to bring onboard. Lots of investors, as this was not a cheap or a quick kind of endeavor.

It may not seem like converting an already wild area of land into a sanctuary would be that difficult, but if NZ wanted to actually conserve the area, they had to do much more than slap up a few fences. And speaking of fences, not just any fence would do. The plan, which has grown and expanded over the years, is one of the largest and most ambitious of its kind. It has become a 500 year plan to convert entire areas of the NZ back as closely as possible to the original forests found there before the first Māori settlers arrived.

The Māori’s arrival began the decline of native species not long after they first came ashore as the first introduced mammals. It helps to understand that New Zealand evolved very differently from any other place on earth as a result of their long isolation from other land masses. Therefore, they had no native mammal species on the islands at all before the Māori arrived. And some of the most amazing and unique bird species on earth, ones like the kiwis and the keas, evolved quite differently from any other birds, filling the niches that would otherwise be filled by mammals and reptiles on other land masses in order to find food and land to call home.

But not just birds are unique in NZ. The wetta, an insect that resembles a giant camel cricket, evolved to fill in many of the niches that mammals usually fill, living in caves, or in trees. Some wetta are carnivorous and some are herbivorous. They are perhaps the only truly creepy species in the entire country. NZ often gets confused by the rest of the world as being a part of, or similar to, Australia. Not so, at all. They aren’t even close to each other, with an entire Tasman sea between them. There is not a single snake species in NZ and the country works very hard to keep it that way.

Unfortunately, many of the species of native birds, insects, and amphibians that did evolve on these islands are already extinct, starting with the world’s largest known eagle, the Haas eagle, reported to have been large enough to carry away a grown man, or the Moas, giant ground birds resembling cassowaries, but much larger. They were hunted into extinction by the Māori people for their main source of protein well before the English arrived.

With the English, and the notorious Captain Cook’s arrival, various mammal species like rats and mice, cats, stoats, weasels and others began to hitch rides to the islands, and these introduced species have also been hugely detrimental to New Zealand’s ecosystem. Perhaps the worst of them is the Australian possum, not to be confused with our own O’possum, though there are many similarities. There is a saying in NZ that “the only good possum is a dead possum” and people are being asked to run them over if seen on the roads, or to trap and call wildlife to eradicate them if they show up on farms and property.

This may sound harsh, but if this particular species is not contained, they may truly destroy New Zealand’s ecosystem entirely. The way they eat by browsing the main shoots, stripping bark from the trees, and digging into the root systems is killing large tracts of land because the plants can’t recover fast enough from the destruction, not having evolved to compensate for such a creature in their midst.

So, when the Zealandia Sanctuary was being dreamed into existence, it became clear that it would require a very large undertaking if the area was going to remain safe for native species by keeping out the introduced mammals. And most of you know how clever mammals can be, particularly when they think they can find an easy meal on the other side of any barriers we erect. However, Kiwis, as the NZ humans are now affectionately referred to, are nothing if not crafty and brilliant.

Local engineers who were interested in the project got together and invented a first-of-its-kind fencing system that actually keeps the majority of the island’s mammal and non-native species out of the sanctuary. The fence itself is impressive, and cost many millions of dollars to invent, test, and build. Today, it is being used in sanctuaries around the world, like those in the Hawaiian islands, that are working on ending the rapid extinctions by restoring some of the world’s most decimated forests back to their former glory.

I’m sure many would scoff at this and say there are more important things to spend millions of dollars on. But, I would ask, what is more important than the air we breathe? If trees and forests continue to disappear, along with all of the species who live there and keep said forests healthy and vibrant, where will we be getting the oxygen we need to sustain us on this earth? It’s the biggest problem we face, the actual reason for climate change, and not something we can continue to take for granted or put on the back burner, unless we literally want to burn up while also suffocating.

So, I am quite proud of the NZ people for their ingenuity of prioritizing conservation of their local forests, and for taking a holistic approach, one that takes into account the fact that the entire ecosystem of a place is a symbiotic relationship. You can’t just focus on each critically endangered species, and not focus on the entire ecosystem in which they live, as the loss of one species will affect and facilitate the loss of others until the very trees themselves are dying and the land is washing away entirely to leave rock behind. Don’t believe me? Go have a look at the history of Haiti, and the way the islands looked before and after the people who lived there overused and abused their lands.

Great things are definitely afoot at Zealandia, and in NZ overall. Things that the rest of the world has begun paying attention to, things that help all of us begin to heal the lands around us. As a result, perhaps there is still hope that we can reverse climate change, or at the very least, slow it down. Since hurricane Helene came ashore and decimated Western North Carolina, of all places, along with much of the states south of us, and even a whole lot of locals areas, it becomes more and more apparent that climate change is dangerous for all of us, creating larger storms, and radical weather that humans cannot hope to survive.

In all the frightening news, it’s places like Zealandia that restore my hope for our future. While on a single walk through their sanctuary, I learned an amazing amount of information about the ecosystem of the area and the native species, while at the same time seeing some of the most endangered and rare birds on earth.

The Zealandia birds were so comfortable in their environment that many would walk or fly right out and eye us curiously when we approached. I even saw one young Kiwi foraging around in a dark portion of woods trying to find bugs. The park ranger said the younger ones often come out during the day some to hunt as they have less competition from the Kiwi birds, who hunt at night, so this was a very lucky sighting. We also saw takahe and kakapos, highly endangered and very rare types of marsh birds, as well as tuis, fantails, wekas, Kereru, kakas, and so many more, as you can see from the images and videos. All of these sightings continue to inspire and inform my art and my writing, and have given me renewed hope and passion for saving our wild places.

With all of the decimation being seen around us, it’s hard not to feel like it’s too late, and to just give up, but the people of NZ have shown me that when humans put their heads together, the can and will find and create amazing solutions to very complex problems, even the problem of environmental eradication. My trip to NZ renewed my wish to be one of the human animals working to find viable solutions to conserving our wildlife and our wild places for the good of us all, as apart from continuing to be another part of the problem. Thanks NZ for leading us into the future. My gratitude and my love will always be yours.

As always thanks so much for being here. I would love to hear your thoughts, questions, and concerns. Drop a comment. I’ll meet y’all back here next week, same time, same place.

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Yesterday, while sitting on the condo balcony in Cape Charles, I opened my monthly email from The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust to a huge smile and another sign that I have chosen one of the best elephant rescue and re-release organizations on the planet. They do such an amazing job with rearing, raising, and acclimating orphaned baby elephants back to the wild. The program is successful on every level, including having ex-orphans raising their own young completely in the wild. But, this newsletter takes it a step further, since Toto, a neonate orphan was brought to the Tsavo stockades by four ex-orphants when he was only days old and completely milk deficient.

People often wonder why people don’t work harder to keep the orphans with the herd, but this is simply not possible most of the time. I know I have mentioned it before, but a mother elephant only has enough lactated milk to feed just one calf. That means, even if she gives birth to twins, which happens rarely, one of those twins is destined to die unless another female happens to be lactating but lost or finished rearing their own calf. Toto was not so lucky, as the only lactating female in his herd was in the middle of raising a calf, and though the herd will protect the baby, they cannot feed him.

Baby elephants are milk dependent for the first several years of life. It takes a whole lot of milk to feed just one baby, so it isn’t surprising that the mothers don’t make enough to feed others. This is why the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust has been stepping in and raising all the orphans they find. That is, of course, if that baby can be nursed through whatever trauma they have endured to come to any of the orphanages around Southern and Central Africa. And, let me tell you, most of these orphans have been through serious amounts of trauma that takes months or even years for them to get over, if ever.

In Toto’s case, he was only a few days old but was already emaciated and weak when he came to the orphanage. He was also very skittish and unsure about the humans. It took him a long time to bond with his keepers, and he is still incredibly skittish now, four years later. The newsletter was all about how Toto and his two orphan buddies who were all rescued around the same time, were scheduled to graduate to Tsavo National Park, where they will begin walking out into the bush to meet the other elephant herds each day. It is the last major step to reintegrating them back into the wild.

These boys spent the past four years being fed and cared for night and day by their lead keeper and one secondary keeper for each orphan. These keepers effectively become the mother elephant, not just feeding them and tending to their health needs, but also sleeping with them at night and guarding them, making sure they feel safe. And during the day they take the smaller orphan herds out into the bush for walk abouts with their keepers, so they can learn how to be elephants like the other older orphans they are being reared with. When they begin to become too much to handle, and are obviously ready for more, they graduate to one of the national parks in the program like Tsavo, where they will meet other wild herds, some with ex-ophans and some without, until one day, they choose a herd, or perhaps the herd chooses them, and then they walk off into the bush to begin their wild lives again.

Dame Daphne Sheldrick literally invented the milk formula that is fed to all the orphans with such a huge success rate. Before she figured this out, humans had no way to even begin to help orphaned elephants. Still, I say that the best sign of success of the programs is the fact that the ex-orphans and even the wild elephants have learned that these people are safe and will offer help. Not only have they brought numerous orphans to the stockades, but they have brought adult injured animals, even one of the largest bulls in the area, to help him remove a bullet lodged in his leg. Often the staff is able to walk right up to these animals and treat them, which is unheard of and points to the elephants communicating their trust to each other.

If you happen to be in Africa, do not try this, folks. I can guarantee that if a stranger who is not fully trusted by a herd walks right up to them, they are likely to find themselves trampled. Particularly if the elephants are scared and injured. Usually, they are so nervous and scared already that they can barely function. So to say that a fully grown, very large bull elephant allowed himself to be led to treatment by an ex-orphan, and then allowed the humans to treat him, and has since brought others back who needed help, means these people are nothing short of amazing. I will trust an elephant’s word before I trust anyone else on the subject.

Anyway, back to Toto, I was in tears to hear that these four ex-orphans literally brought a newborn calf to the park and dropped him off for help, when several of them had not returned in years. They remember though. They always remember. And they know who to trust and who is not trustworthy, and they will act accordingly. It is indeed the greatest honor I know of to be loved by elephants, for community is everything to them. And nothing is more precious to a herd than their newborns. Trusting the humans to raise one when you know your herd cannot is therefore, the pinnacle of compliments.

I would like to thank all of you who have upgraded to paid subscriptions, or offered donations to help out. I am more pleased than ever, on the tails of this latest update from Ithumba, that I am finally able to afford giving money monthly to The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Orphans Project on top of adopting five orphans for this year already on the fifth month. I cannot thank all of you enough for helping this astounding program continue to do their work to the best of their abilities. The program can truthfully be called elephant approved, and that means everything to me.

If you haven’t already, do go check out The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (SWT) and all of the amazing work they are doing to protect all wildlife in Africa. They are not only raising orphans, but also helping to fight poachers, literally with machine guns and war tactics to hunt, find, and bring them in for justice. Many have sacrificed their lives to keep elephants alive and safe for future generations.

You can sign up to receive their newsletter written by Dame Daphne’s daughter Angela every few months telling all the latest news and updates about the programs they run. I look forward to their newsletters, and most of all, my keeper’s notes that come to me from each keeper of whichever orphans I have adopted telling me all about their progress as they grow and learn how to be effective elephants out in elephant society,

Again, thank you all so much for reading. I hope you are enjoying the same beautiful, warm and sunny weather we are having here in Virginia. Happy May Days. I’ll meet you here next week, same time, same place. If you have not already, please consider a paid subscription. The proceeds will go directly to adopting and feeding orphaned baby elephants.

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