Treasure/Tuxedo

This is probably the last re-post of my fave stories. I'm going to put up the rest that I feel comfortable with as archives. Please keep in mind that my sisters currently read my blog if you choose to leave comments (thank you).

One of my sisters moved to Arizona two summers ago. Things did not work out for her exactly as she had planned, and she was scrambling with those last minute details. I got a call from her the day before she and her fiance were planning to drive across the country, asking me to take her cat, Treasure. Treasure is a sweet black girl kitty with white markings on her face, neck, belly and feet.

I told my sister, "of course". I’m an animal lover, I already have cats (who hate the dog). Taking in one more cat for my sister’s sake was not a big deal (as long as no one told the landlord). Treasure is one of the sweetest, shyest little skitty kitties in the world. I adore my sister, she took in my son when I was so f’d up that I didn’t know what I was doing. I probably owe her a million favors, not that she’d ever call me on them.

I figured Treasure would just hide out in the basement until she got comfortable. I put food and water down there for her, and I knew my kitties would never give her any trouble. As long as she hung out in the basement, the dog wouldn't give her any trouble, either.

My cats are indoor only cats, exclusively. I live on a very busy street, my cats are fixed, there is no need for them to go outside ( although they sometimes try). Anyway, I assumed Treasure was an indoor only cat, also – especially since she was such a scaredy-cat!

For the first couple of days, Treasure would meet me at the top of basement stairs, and let me pet her. I thought this was a milestone of her affection, considering she hardly ever even acknowledged my presence at my sister’s house. My niece told me that her friends thought she was making up the cat, because no one ever saw her!

A couple of days into Treasure staying with me, my landlord said he needed to change the filter on the furnace. I let him in through the hatchway. At the same time, I needed to take out some rugs that my sister had given to me and vacuum the hell out of them in the driveway. I never thought anything of it, until I realized the next day that Treasure had not greeted me at the top of the stairs that morning. Nor did she, the next day, or the next. I was Flipping Out! Turns out Treasure actually did go out from time to time when she was living at my sister’s house. No one ever saw her go out, but she was no longer in my basement…

For a few weeks after, my son kept telling me that he saw Treasure around the neighborhood, when he was taking the dog out for a walk. Obviously, he could not get close to the cat with the crazy dog on the leash in his hand. Every time he tried, the cat would run off, and he wouldn't see her again for days.

One evening, he came home telling me that Treasure was right up the road. We ditched the dog, and I drove over to the house, thinking my son could hold her in a towel while I drove, in case she was freaked out. We could not just walk her home that way (across the very busy street). I drove up very close to the yard where she was. I got out of the car, gently, so as not to spook her. I very sweetly crooned over and over, “Hi Treasure, baby, hi, do you remember your Aunty, I was so worried about you, sweet baby”, all the while very slowly creeping forward with my hand out in front of me, to pet her head, and her sweet nose, and ears.

The cat responded as I expected her to, cautiously, then warming up to me, until I could pick her up. I picked her up, and pet her, and kept crooning. She was still highly agitated, so I chose not to hand her off to my son, but to just put her in the car and drive the 5 houses up the road with her in the backseat. I figured we would just deal with it when we got there, rather than my son getting scratched.

As I was basically throwing the cat into my car, this lady came running out of the house I was parked in front of, yelling, “Tuxedo, Tuxedo!”. I was so incredulous at the time; it seemed to me that she was running in slow motion, “Tuuuuxeeeedoooo, Tuuuxeeedoooo”. My mind could not grasp what was going on.

It turns out that I was stealing her extremely friendly cat, who was lounging in her front yard and was willing to get in my car with me. Whatever – don’t judge me ;). I really thought I was doing the right thing, at the time. I grilled this woman about when she had gotten the cat, was she sure it was Tuxedo and not Treasure, etc. It was more than a little embarrassing, especially when I found out Tuxedo was a boy. You just can't fake that part. I’m pretty sure my son did not want to be seen around the neighborhood for a while after that.

We never saw Treasure, again - :(

And now, courtesy of the our family home of really bad jokes:

“What if she had called the cops on you? Do you think you could have gotten arrested for stealing pussy?”

ba-dum-ching

Dolphin Lab

When I was in my early 20's, I decided to go back to community college part time. I had been working for the same insurance company for a few years, and they agreed to let me go part time at work. I moved back in with my mother to save money, and get some education. In the second semester I threw in one class that had no reason for being on my agenda - Ocean Sciences. I've always been drawn by the ocean, but it also terrifies me.

I have to say I was enamored with this semester. I was getting tutored by a friend who was in the same algebra class I was in - and it finally started making sense to me in a way that it did not when I was in high school. My brain has never been able to comprehend math, and I was doing it, and passing. Also, I was doing exceptionally well in my honors level creative writing class, and also in Ocean Sciences - much to my surprise!

And then my world came crashing down around me when my brother died on March 28, 1993. The only class I went back to was Ocean Sciences, because another teacher in the same department had started a little program called Dolphin Lab. If you signed up for Dolphin Lab, you had to pay a large fee, but they took care of all the details for a week long working vacation in Florida - for which you got 2 credits. I had originally hoped my brother would have been able to go on this trip with me, he would have really loved it. I decided to do it anyway, alone.

The fee included air fare both ways, a dormitory style sleeping arrangement, and meals. Best of all, we interacted for 5 of the 7 days with dolphins at the Dolphin Research Center, DRC, on Grassy Key, Florida.




DRC, was home to the 6 dolphins that played Flipper on the television show. This is one of the most humane places that a dolphin can live. While many of the dolphins are born there, many came from places where they had been neglected or abused, or they needed medical treatment that only DRC could provide. One old girl had been a Navy experiment, quite a few had survived shark attacks in the wild.




This facility does not keep their dolphins in captivity, in the traditional sense of the word. Each enclosure has a low fence that allows the seawater, and fish, to come and go freely. Those low fences could not possibly keep in a high diving dolphin, should they choose to leave. The fences are there mainly to keep out sharks.

If a hurricane is coming in, the staff opens the fences and encourages their dolphins to swim out to sea where they have a better chance of surviving. Most of them return, although when I went in 1993, one had not returned from the last hurricane. There were reports of an incredibly friendly dolphin in the area for months after, but she eventually joined a wild pod and moved on.

They try to keep their enclosures as close to what they would have out in the wild. The biggest enclosure is for mothers, teenage females, and the very young. Other enclosures have a couple of adolescent males, as they would do in the wild by going off on their own in twos or threes; or a matriarch on her own not wanting to be bothered by the youngsters.





There are so many amazing things about dolphins that I learned on this trip. One is that they name themselves. They have what is called a "signature whistle". A female is able to give herself whatever whistle name she wants for herself, although it is very often similar to her mother's signature whistle. A male, on the other hand, adopts his mother's signature whistle for his own. That way, in the wild if a couple of boy dolphins come across a pod of females, and they're all like, "how YOU doin'?", once they find out each other's names, they're all like, "ew, you're my brother", or "ew, you're my mother".





Dolphins don't do incest. The really interesting part is that they are the only mammal other than humans to have consensual homosexual relations. The adolescent boys break off into those pods of two or three, and if they don't meet up with any hot dolphin girls, they use each other for target practice. In the words of one of my teachers, "it's really long". In the words of one of the trainers at DRC, "do NOT touch them DOWN THERE!". They are highly sexual creatures.

I really wanted to know what would happen if I Touched Them Down There, but I didn't. I was afraid I would get kicked out and be stuck in Grassy Key, Florida. Which is 90 miles south of Miami, and 54 miles north of Key West.

I learned so much while I was down there. They taught us how to treat the dolphins with such respect - not that it was hard to do. Each one has their own personality, shy, playful, mischievous, funny. And they are attention hogs! They love to be talked to, or sung to. They chatter at you, and show off. They are amazing, intelligent creatures. If you ever want proof, see the video at the bottom from the beginning of the movie, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

We learned how to approach them, how to hide vitamins and pills in their food, how to feed them, how to give them hand signals and commands. Best of all, we got to touch them and be affectionate with them and love them - and get in the water with them. I fell utterly and completely in love! There is so very much more to say about that trip, and DRC in general. I could just go on and on, but I won't.









The second I got home, I started planning my move down there. I quit my job, pulled all my money out of my 401k and started packing. I kinda lost my mind after my brother died, and for some reason I really felt at peace when I was down there. I decided I was going to become a marine mammologist and work at DRC and live happily ever after. More on that another time.

My mother almost got us kicked out of Monkey Jungle

When I was about 8 years old, my parents took us on a trip to Florida. My father had an old Citroen station wagon that I thought was the coolest car. It had a hydraulic lift system, and jump seats in the back. I really loved that car. It never looked as good as the following picture, it was a dull white (probably spray painted!) with a green hood.



In the end, it looked a little more like the following picture. My father never could get rid of a car until one ex-wife or another sent it to the junkyard. He's a bit of a pack rat.



Anyway, Kouf got to stay home because she was old enough, so my parents loaded the four younger kids and all of their wordly possessions into the Citroen. As my mother couldn't really read maps, Horhay made poor Bouf sit up front and be the map reader. I've done the trip to Florida with my father as his map reader as an adult, and it was brutal. As awful as that job was, however, there was another one that was worse. Because the trunk was piled so high that my father couldn't see out the back window, they smushed Jimmy in between the luggage and the hatchback door so he could see if it was okay to change lanes. For 3 days down and 3 days back, in the middle of winter, where no heat could reach him.

And what a trip it was! On the way down, Virginia and the Carolina's got hit with an ice and snow storm. Apparently in 1979 they shared one plow and one sand truck between all three states. And no one had ever taught anyone in any of those states how to drive in precipitation other than rain. Oh my god, do you mean to tell me that it can freeze? I remember hanging on to my mother for dear life in the back seat while my father stubbornly forged on in his trusty and reliable Citroen, dodging cars that were at a complete stop in the middle of a lane on an interstate highway!

I truly do understand that they were woefully unprepared for what turned out to be a devastating storm for them. Why would they be prepared for something they never expected to have happen? And really, why would they be prepared for Horhay to be driving through it like a mad-man, not willing to stop until "the next planned stop" on our itinerary, dammit?

He carried around a little notebook, and marked down gas prices and mileage, and how long before we were allowed to go to the bathroom, again. I'm sorry, but a little act of God like a major ice storm just didn't fit in with how many miles we HAD to travel that day.

So we got there, all in one piece, and I think we all actually enjoyed ourselves. My father's parents had a trailer in Jensen Beach at the time, and we visited with them, and did a day at the beach. Then we went on and did Disney, and Parrot Jungle and Monkey Jungle.

I remember Parrot Jungle being fun, I have pictures of myself and my siblings posing for pictures where they line the parrots up and down your arms. I was actually a little terrified, I had no previous experience with birds, and quite frankly - they have sharp little beaks and are not against taking a nip out of you. Birds have too much free intellect, and are just a different species altogether. Give me a simian over an avian, any day.

Monkey Jungle was right up my alley. They had many habitats that were wide open, except for nets overhead . The whole thing was amazing to my 8 year old eyes. The best part, however, was that they had people walking around with monkeys. Nowadays, they try very much to show you how cute and cuddly the animals are, but don't let you touch them. Mostly for the animal's sake, but also because of liability issues. Back then, however, they were much more interactive.

We came across a man with a baby spider monkey - In A Diaper! I thought I had died and gone to HEAVEN. This was better than any Betsy Wetsy doll Santa had ever brought me. This was a real live baby monkey, and I wanted to love it, and hug it, and stroke his hair backward and name him George. This was my first real estrogen rush, and I could have easily sacrificed every estrogen rush in my future if I could just bring this baby home with me. Apparently, I was not the only one. Look how happy my brother, Jimmy, looks in this picture.




(And really, good lord, get a hair cut, Mr. 1979 monkey keeper! Barry Gibbs you are not!)

After this picture was taken, the baby monkey kind of crawled up my arm. I don't know whether he was tired, or hungry, or what, but he started sort of suckling my arm. I didn't know what was going on, I was 8. It didn't hurt or anything, it sort of felt like what I later realized a hickey would feel like. Not a big deal, to me. But to my mother, holy crap!

Apparently she thought the wild crazy monkey was trying to eat her youngest daughter. And She Started Hitting It! Hitting and slapping a baby monkey in a diaper, yelling, "get off, get off". Which is why they probably don't let their patrons touch their animals, any longer.

My mother is probably the only person in the history of Monkey Jungle not to get kicked out for slapping their baby monkey while yelling, "get off, get off". And if any one is here because of a really dirty search - HA-HA on you, you pervert.

I bottle fed a baby raccoon

When we moved from Buffalo to Connecticut, we lived in a very old house in the middle of nowhere. My mother made friends with a lady up the road who lived on a farm. I don't know if they were friends before or after my sisters started dating the lady's sons, but whatever. I was only about four years old at the time, and I don't really care.

The farm had a hen house, and the hen house was being raided on a nightly basis. I don't know if just the eggs were being taken, or if it was worse than that. I do know that they were a blended family with at least 5-7 children to feed. It was not a loss that they could afford.

One night, the man of the house heard a ruckus in the hen house and went out with his shotgun. A huge raccoon was raiding the hen house and he shot her. As she was dying, she gave birth to a bunch of little helpless baby raccoons.

The man of the house was not a bad man, he was protecting the food that they needed to survive. He asked around to find people who were willing and able to take on the baby raccoons, instead of killing them also. My mother has always been a sap for babies and taking in strays, and we took two of them.

Wasn't I cute?

We bottle fed the baby raccoons. We were never able to domesticate them, they remained wild animals. One of them died, despite our efforts. The other one could not get along with our cats and dog. We gave him away to one of my oldest sister's hippie friends. This was 1976. I'll never know what really happened to that little guy. The story I was told is that the hippie friends had him in a car with the windows rolled down, and he freed himself while they were shopping.

Before we gave him away, though, I brought him to my kindergarten's Pet Day. My father and one of his friends brought him to my school that day, and I won "Most Unusual Pet". I also got my picture in the local paper. Thank god it was a very rural town - read "Very White Town" - or I think my family may have had some trouble afterward.

I honestly did not know any better, I was five years old at the time. When the man that was taking my picture asked me my pet's name, I told him straight out, "his name is Tyrone, Tyrone the Coon."

Thanks, Mom and Dad, for ensuring that the only time I've ever been in the paper in my life is when I am uttering a racial slur.