Other Critters
In the course of drawing the lives of insects, I’ve occasionally included critters like birds and squirrels, or even invited a human to join the cast of characters. Right now I’m trying to draw a credible cow butt for a dung beetle drawing and am finding it quite tedious.
Many years ago, when our son BJ was young, we adopted three cows as pets, but Carol, Lisa and Bubbles have all passed on, and so I have no live models and must rely on that great educator, Google.
Speaking of adoptions (great segue right?), I find that there are many ways to adopt something. (Keep reading – I’ll reel this back in.) A few things I’ve adopted include:
- A 15-pound black rescue cat, Cornelius Aloysius, and Cooper, a 70-pound Golden Retriever
– just the latest in a long string of dogs and cats
- A gracious attitude when faced with really rude people (they HATE that)
- A giant cockroach named Rasheed when our son BJ moved to China
- A sympathetic understanding of why some members of the Silent Generation might have an attitude: (Brain thinks you’re 25; body insists you’re 80.)
Cornelius and Cooper
Over the years, many of the critter adoptions were not planned – they sort of showed up at the door.
I think it was because we were somewhat visible in our small community. For 16 years I owned the weekly newspaper, and my husband wrote an outdoor column in addition to being a local police officer. Plus, for many years he provided an incubator full of chicken eggs to a local second-grade class project. So people just assumed we would know what to do with duck eggs and other critters.
Early on we used a box with wood chips to house various critters that were dropped off when someone mowed over a quail’s nest, or “saved” what they thought were orphaned owls that mama was actually teaching to fly, or baby ducks whose mother went out for food and a swim (hey, moms are entitled to some break time).
We hatched the eggs and tucked the babies under a lamp clamped to the side of the box. Local residents were welcome to bring their kids to the newspaper office to see the new babies before they went to the wildlife center for reintroduction back into the wild.
I was actually adopted once myself by a baby wood duck who hatched in a table incubator as we labeled and mailed the newspaper. She had come to us as a rescue egg, along with two others that didn’t make it. Yacky lived under the lamp until she feathered out, then was adopted herself by our farm chickens. She waddled around after them for weeks, and they let her.
One day she just decided to fly, surprising the chickens and us as she soared out of the henhouse with no warning, so off she went to live at a local nature preserve with other wood ducks.
One batch of quail chicks lived in the box for a short while and were a big hit with everyone, as they look like little bumblebees when first hatched. You had to watch them, though, as they could escape if they got worked up, and it looked like zombies in one of those movies where they climb over each other to scale a wall. Cute and creepy at the same time.
Then there was Rasheed, the giant cockroach that was my only insect adoption (see, I’m bringing it back around to bugs). He was quite the gentleman. I knew his intelligence was deep, as his antennae were quite twitchy.
BJ acquired Rasheed as an entomology student working in one of the Purdue labs, and kept him in a glass fish tank filled with wood chips, empty paper towel rolls for hiding, and an overhead heat light.
Rasheed lived in the newspaper office in a bookcase that faced my desk, with the aisle between us. Everyone had to walk by him on the way to the kitchen and a few employees were a little skittish, but he was always quiet and never attempted to make a break. He lived for about a year before he went to cockroach heaven – which I’m sure resembles the smelliest, moldy kitchen imaginable.
hi my name is radar
Our latest – albeit temporary – adoption came in the form of a 4-pound Chihuahua found sleeping in the middle of a street the other night. No collar. My husband was on duty so he tucked him into his heavy police coat to warm him up – it was 43 degrees – and drove around for awhile, thinking the owner would call and report him missing. It was too cold to take him to the town’s outdoor shelter.
No call by 1:30 a.m., so this tiny guy with tall ears – I dubbed him “Radar” – came to our house, and Don went back to work. I figured the little guy was exhausted, and I had not slept much the night before, so I just plopped him on the bed, intending to go back to sleep. Then he started to scratch.
Well crap. I was not in the mood for an infestation, so I got as many fleas as I could off Radar with a flea comb and then made a little towel bed for him in the bathroom, figuring he’d fall asleep.
Of course he wasn’t happy – which I completely understood – and barked, cried and scratched at the door. From the living room Cooper (darn his acute dog hearing) whined and cried, too. So when Don got off shift at 3:30 a.m., Radar got a flea bath and was then tucked into a towel warmed up in the dryer. I was edging toward 24 hours of being up by then and was so awake that I needed either carbohydrates or medical intervention to sleep, so Radar and I cozied up in a recliner with microwaved potatoes and late night TV.
Around 5 a.m., we finally dropped off to sleep, and at 8 a.m. dispatch reported that his frantic owner had called and little Radar went home.
I didn’t really connect the fact of our visibility to these constant critter gifts, “finds,” and adoptions until one Christmas Eve many years ago.
BJ had just returned home from living in China for several years and happened to pick up the phone when it rang. “Are you those people who know what to do with chickens?” the caller said. BJ thought for a moment and said, “Sure.”
The caller said he had found a crinkled paper sack on the sidewalk that contained a live chicken, so he called us. So BJ checked with the sheriff’s department to make sure no one had reported a missing chicken (such was our reputation as a critter drop-off house that the dispatcher didn’t laugh), and then set up a box with water and feed until we could get the chicken to our small farm to join the flock in residence. Henry the rooster was acclimated into our chicken coop, where he fit in just fine.
Henry the rooster
BJ said he finally realized that we weren’t – nor were we ever going to be – a normal family. Being called on Christmas Eve to deal with an abandoned chicken seemed like a sign.
So maybe we aren’t normal, but our critter parade has provided many stories at family gatherings, and promises to provide much fodder for absurd art. I’ll take the ideas in any way I can.