Tag Archives: animals

Way Out Here in Texas

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photoOld Hands

Been out in weeds, in the way-back forty,

Tumbling along by the dry mesquite,

Rambling and ambling the afternoon by

With nary a stop to rest or eat

This is the way the daytime passes,

Angus at left, longhorns to the right,

A couple of dogs at our heels to steer them

Until we whistle them in at night

Some things change on the range with passing

Time and tide and the phase of moon,

With years and advances and techno-wonders,

But none of this here’s like to change so soon,

And why should it do? We still will mosey

And saunter our way through the rolling plain

As long as the longhorns and the Angus

And we need to too, we’ll all remainphoto

Wag if You Know What I Mean

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photoA Whiff of Happiness

While all you two-legs types are mired

And wallowing in wintry fear,

I see spring’s hints and am inspired

To smell the happiness from here

What gain or merit mankind finds

In only frigid, dormant joy,

When you could wag those sad behinds,

Dance forward, every girl and boy—

Hold on to sorrow if you must,

While I lap up those thrills made dear

By breaking through the frozen dust:

I smell the happiness from here!

Hot Flash Fiction 5

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The Duchess was inordinately fond of animals. Though her courtiers would never dare say so to her face, they imagined she ought to have been born a zookeeper, or at the very least a farmer. This idea was strengthened, especially, by the fact that it always fell to the housekeepers and servants to make the palace tidy enough for Her Ladyship’s dainty passage through life and to freshen the air when the royal menagerie had pranced, prowled or otherwise paraded through its rooms and left unseemly gifts along the way. The Duke, who was as allergic to all things animal as the Duchess was attracted, considered for some time whether he oughtn’t to have a team of expert taxidermists and artisans solve this problem once and for all, creating a large display of preserved zoological beauty that might be both lower maintenance and less powerfully scented than the living creatures populating his estate indoors and out, day and night.digital collageUnfortunately, the Duchess’s sisters who lived in the east wing of the palace did not support the Duke’s enthusiasm for the design, making noises of disapprobation at least as loud as the Duchess’s favorite dogs’ barking or donkeys’ braying. Perhaps, the Duke thought, he had been a little incautious in discussing this artistic concept with his secretary while within earshot of the sisterly ladies-in-waiting, for they both appeared quite ready to dash off squealing with rage to their unsuspecting sibling, or at the least, to imitate the household fauna in some other impolite fashion.digital collageAs it fell out, the Duke, however incautious he may have been in heat of the moment, was not without the wit born of hard experience. Working swiftly with his retainers, was able to resolve the situation quickly and suitably merely by shifting the subject of the new art to a slightly different one featuring the Duchess and her sisters. As an added benison of this resolution, it was discovered that he wasn’t allergic to winged or four-legged pets after all. The palace staff found maintaining the menagerie surprisingly less onerous afterward as well, even with the added curatorial duties of dusting off the Duchess and polishing her sisters from time to time.

Final Residing Place

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graphite drawingResidential Issues

The beaver builds a dam-fine house,

The mouse, a hole-in-one,

The moose and goose, while on the loose,

Take shelter in the sun;

The pigeon curls up in her nest;

Raccoon believes his den is best.

It seems that every one abroad

Creates his ideal home,

Yet every head at last, when dead,

Will end up in the loam.

Therefore, I say, enjoy your port,

Your burrow, hovel, cubby, fort,

And be advised that what you’ve prized

Won’t be your utter last resort,

But rather you’ll take company

With all the beasts moved on

To their reward under the sward,

And to the dirt begone!graphite drawing

Best Hardware-Software Combo Ever

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digital collageWhat? People. Easy-peasy. People, people. The most productive combination of ideas and imagination with the support structures to bring them to reality that was ever created. And hey, the human machine is able in turn to create further things. Yes, like hardware and software, among many-many-many others. What a strange invention is the human, the first ‘learning computer,’ yet so prone to errors and malfunctions and full of operational bugs that if we’d been a product, our inventor would’ve gone bankrupt in a cosmic instant.

Despite our messiness, though, we remain marvelous and surprisingly elegant machines. The thought of building structures that are not only composed entirely of living cells that, in health, constantly renew themselves and rebuild but are also able to contain and generate and synthesize and communicate intangibles like belief and imagination is quite astounding. That we creatures are able, as well, to imitate our own invention by being creative ourselves is nothing short of bizarre and miraculous.

How lucky we are, how blessed, to be–despite our fragile and somewhat freakish nature–able to be powerful and lovely in our creative ways too. How grand that we can appreciate this loveliness. And how rich and potent, above all, that we can still recognize how small and fleeting all of this goodness is in the greater scheme of invention that embraces us, our fellow living things, our world, our galaxy, our universe–and all the marvels that are yet unknown to us. We are tiny, we are mighty, and we should always be in humble awe.digital collage

Animal Behavior

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Little Beasties’ Escapade

Raccoon, Armadillo and Possum set sail

In a galvanized bucket, the teeth of a gale,

On the reservoir lake in the midst of the night,

Under cloud-obscured stars and without the moon’s light,

For they were on a mission requiring the dark,

At imperative speed, wildly searching the spark

Of a glimmer ashore on the lake’s farther side,

Where they’d scramble the banks and find somewhere to hide–

And what was their mission, to act like scared squirrels?

Escaping, of course, from the amorous girls

Of the possum, raccoon and ‘dillo persuasions.

Run and hide’s all one can do on just such occasions.digital artwork from drawings

Rancho Romantico

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digital painting from a photoIn a Sentimental Mooed

Oh, pretty little heifer cow, I think you’re cute but know not how

Appreciation paid in full to such sweet charm could seem but dull

Poor compensation for my plain bland bullishness; am I a drain

Upon your dewy calf-eyed ways; am I so silly in my craze

For you, adorable and fine, that I’m a fool to wish you mine?

Nay, let us frolic and cavort and caper ’round for joy and sport,

Let us delight in being calves and neither shrink from fun by halves

Nor ever find we’re short of hay in pasture, or get sent away,

Or be penned up, for these things, too, would make a poor calf cry Moo Hoo!

No tragedy besmirch our wooing and leave us sadly this way mooing;

Let us, instead, just take a vow to stay together, bull and cow.

Question: What are Saturdays?

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My answer: Saturdays are for both horsing around and embracing my dogged pursuits. Laziness and productivity. Rambling and re-energizing. Drawing on my strengths and, well, just drawing.

graphite drawing

Some of Saturday should be for just horsing around . . .

So I’ll try to get a few useful things done (chores: Check! exercise: Check! planning for the week ahead: Checkmate!) and I’ll also relax and indulge in those forays into the fantastic that make all of the useful things possible. What is Saturday to you?

digital collage

. . . and some should be for showing my dogged devotion.

 

Hot Flash Fiction 3

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graphite drawingA Menopausal Mini-Mystery

‘OutRRRRRageous!’ she purred, ‘I’m only a lady who has fallen prey to the sentimental desires of A Certain Age to visit my old acquaintance!’ Still, her counter-suit of police Profiling would have been more plausible if she hadn’t been spotted in that location and in such a compromising position. The acquaintance in question, quivering in the doorway behind Madame De Léopard, was still squeaking with shrill accusation as the neighbors began to gather and fling catty remarks back and forth like batted feather lures. When the arresting officer demanded a sobriety test and detected that an illegal quantity of West Country Farmhouse Cheddar had been dabbed behind the lady’s ears, pandemonium erupted and many of the surrounding crowd were convinced that there was a far more nefarious explanation for her appearance on the scene than middle-aged maundering.

Vulture Culture

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Bird-watching is easy in countryside where there’s a lot of flat land, a lot of sky and plenty of clumps of brush or trees here and there for roosting and cover. Our recent expedition to Texas Hill Country was a great occasion for it, especially since the fences, power poles and trees that line freeways are both the perfect lookout points and display pedestals for local hawks and grackles and doves. Most distinctively regional among those winged wonders catching my eye as we drove down and back were the marvelous black vultures.

I love watching them, from the graceful, majestic soaring swoops and loops they draw across the broad planes of the sky to their awkward huddling in flocks on the massive transformer towers, to those rare and delightful closeups where I can get a better look at their funny mix of magnificent feathered eagle-like bodies with those wrinkly, wizened looking little heads and their bold hooked beaks. The sudden whuff-whuff as a large bird, unseen above my head on its light-pole perch, dove over me in a low arc to switch poles was like being fanned by the wing of a passing angel the other day. Clearly my intrusion on its territory wasn’t so distressing to the buzzard either, as he opted to land on the next post over and then sat surveying our party placidly even when my husband and I came and stood directly below to gaze on the magnificent creature. He felt exceedingly well fitted for the place, letting the cold drafts ruffle his feathers just a little as he sat gazing out at Canyon Lake under the lowering skies of the first of the year.

I call that a very good Texas omen.digital painting from a photo

Stratospheric Eventualities

Calm and measureless heights of azure Texas sky

Rise streaked with silent foaming white,

The broad hot blue patterned with these delicate

Ambling clouds that stretch to cover great distance at

A leisurely, attenuated speed, always slipping noiselessly

Across branch-tops, over the brazen sun, and into

The realms of seeming outer space, asleep

Though it should be at lazy midday
digital painting from a photoSuddenly this easy traffic is crossed

By a soaring, circling pair of

Dark metallic wings, the steely black of one

Great vulture passing through to catch

The updrafts and to cycle down, surveying

His kingdom plat by plat—he’s joined, soon enough,

By would-be kings, the other buzzard princes of

The wide blue air, who comb the same

Field of clouds with their own

Gunmetal-dark brace of wings
digital painting from a photoAnd after a time, these too are scattered abroad at the dash

Of two, then three, sharp triangles of louder, faster, sterner steel,

As fighter jets flash by in succession,

Pull together into a tight

Formation from their first sharp linear slash, and make

A single force with which they will unzip

The sometime quiet of that great wide skydigital painting from a photo