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bones of contention
Saturday, April 15 2017
It was gorgeous sunny day and warm enough in the sun to sit outside to drink our Saturday morning coffee. Soon thereafter, Gretchen left for Manhattan by bus to participate in the tax-day march on Trump Tower to demand the release of Donald Trump's tax returns. Gretchen would have a great time in a crowd of 25,000 among two inflatable Chinese chickens resembling the nation's most garish president ever.
Meanwhile Gretchen had reminded me that I have another menorah I need to building within the month, so[REDACTED] I loaded up the dogs and drove out to the Home Depot on 9W, where I somehow ended up spending $200 on things. A good $70 of that was just for the copper necessary to build a menorah. But I also got a gallon of Glidden Bright Teal satin-finish paint, as my supply of Sherwin Williams Jargon Jade is almost exhausted. At $26, the Glidden is half the price of Sherwin Williams, though it might not hold us as well as a floor paint either. Since the color wasn't a perfect match, I'll only be using it to repaint shapes in the dimly-lit low-overhead areas on the east (and possibly west) sides of the laboratory.
I naturally found an excuse to make a detour out to the Tibetan Center thrift store. I soon found things I wanted: a complete set of ratchet wrenches in Imperial sizes, a plastic art supplies box, a water detection alarm that I thought someone had already scooped up, a two-tablespoon plastic measuring spoon (for metering out my one-tablespoon kratom dosages), and a box of plastic 3D printer filament. The plump youngish cashier had no idea what that last item should cost, so I said it would probably cost about $25 new, and she offered $8, which was a little expensive by the standards of the Tibetan Center but what the hell. The set of wrenches, for example, was only $6. In total, it came to just under $20, which was a record for my spending there. The cashier was curious about 3D printing, so I explained how objects could be made with internal structures that would be impossible to make any other way. Who knows, maybe I'll get back into printing objects some day.
It was such a glorious day that it would've been dog-tending malpractice to not stop at the West Hurley Park. The dogs were whimpering in anticipation the moment I turned off 28A onto Dug Hill Road. Our walk didn't get far before Ramona had doubled back to a deer carcass that had caused a lot of trouble several visits ago. Back then, all that remained was the skeleton and the hide. Since then, someone (coyotes, I imagine, but perhaps also porcupines) had eat the hide while leaving most of the fur. The skeleton was also still there, with only the thinnest, tiniest bones eaten. While a coyote might have better sources of food than an old deer skeleton, for weekend carnivore dilettantes like Neville and Ramona, it was as if they'd just been allowed into Disneyland. They immediately began chewing on separate parts of the skeleton. Last time they'd been at this carcass, it was of a high enough quality for them to growl at each other over it. This time, though, they seemed to be content in their separate parts. Neville was concentrating on the skull area and Ramona was crunching off the thin spinous processes from the lumbar vertebræ. It was immediately clear that I was going to have deal a serious disappointment to the dogs if I ever wanted to go home again. I went to grab part of the skeleton, and Neville growled at me as viciously as he ever growls about anything. But, perhaps using a stick, I managed to get a part of the skeleton and begin dragging it through the shallowest part of a nearby swamp to the edge of soccer field that I would have to cross to get back to the car. Though Neville kept growling the whole time, I was making good progress. But then something happened, I'm not sure what, but Ramona and Neville got too close to each other and a fight broke out. Nobody was badly injured, but I had trouble disengaging Ramona's mouth from the base of Neville's left ear, where Ramona's teeth had left a couple superficial injuries. Since Ramona had committed the actual aggression but wasn't being as threatening to me. I momentarily abandoned Neville and dragged Ramona back to the car. She already seemed to be chagrinned over what she'd done to her brother.
When I returned to fetch Neville, he was initially hard to find. The skeleton was now in two pieces, and Neville had dragged a part of it closer to the car (though still hidden behind an artificial badlands of old asphalt piled up along the north edge of the soccer field). Using a stick, I was able to get the skeleton up in the air over Neville's head and use it to lead him back to the car. I put him inside and the partial skeleton on the roof rack.
I went back and got the rest of the skeleton and through it on the roof rack as well. The thinking was that once home, I'd let the dogs out of the car one at a time and give them each half of the skeleton. As I was dragging the half skeleton back to the car, I came upon some guy walking his own rescue pit bull. I said "hello" without feeling the need to explain the skeleton.
Neville and Ramona with the deer skeleton where they found it in West Hurley Park. Click to enlarge.
On the way home, I managed to salvage a mid-sized (~80 pound) piece of hickory that was so long that I couldn't close the Subaru's rear hatch.
My plan for making the dogs happy without any further competition over the skeleton worked well, at least initially. Neville dragged the skull and vertebræ through the pet door and jealously guarded it on a dog bed in the living room, whereas Ramona chewed her part of the skeleton outside. Eventually Ramona grew weary of the chewing and went upstairs to sleep on the bed. Not long thereafter, Neville dragged part of what she'd been chewing on back to his dog bed and then lay there grimly next to his hoard. He had no interest in chewing any more, but he didn't want anyone to steal his bones either.
I was in the bathtub when Gretchen returned from the city. Between the two of us, we managed to get all that we knew of bones away from Neville and into the back of the Prius. This broke Neville's hoard-based psychosis, and he soon returned to the sweet non-belligerent dog that he normally is. (We've noticed that he actually seems to be relieved the moment some much-desired bone is removed from his world, because then he doesn't have to obsess over it any more.)
This afternoon in among dealing with the bones and looking for a briefly-vanished Charles the Cat (he'd hidden under a chaise lounge in the teevee room), I painted a blue jay on a credit card. Here is the result:
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