The moth was floating on top of the water bucket. She looked so beautiful her lacy wings spread thin, almost translucent, on the surface of the water.
I wanted to take a picture, but by now I know that just because they are not moving doesn’t mean they are dead. So instead I floated my finger tip gently under the water, under the moth, and lifted her out.
It was only moments before she started to pull her wings in then release her drowned antennas.
I gently slid her off my finger onto the fencepost where she blended perfectly with the weathered wood.
Today a friend told me that her father used to catch flies in a glass and put them outside instead of killing them. I use a fly swatter, wouldn’t have thought of doing that.
And yet….
By now the sheep were baaing and the donkeys were impatiently pushing the sheep around, because they could. Zip was pacing in front of the gate and the chickens were clucking, reminding me they too wanted to be fed.
So I didn’t wait to see her fly away, but I know, from experience, that eventually she did.
I know I take Fanny and Lulu for granted sometimes.
I just expect them to be in the barnyard healthy and happy whenever I visit. But of course that could change any day for so many different reasons.
I wonder if it would have made a difference to ten-year-old-me to know that the older I got the happier I’d be and that donkeys would be a part of my everyday life.
When I was about 10years old, I wanted a horse so bad (like so many little girls) I had an imaginary one. Her name was Star and I’d hold her imaginary lead and walk her around. She felt so real to me that it seemed as good as having an actual horse.
I don’t ride the donkeys or even walk around with them. But I brush them and clean their hooves and ears. We sit together and communicate without words.
I suppose the silent agreement is that they guard the farm and be good to the other animals and people who live here and I make sure they always have food, water, and shelter.
Then there is the love.
Not that Fanny and Lulu would necessarily think of it that way. But they do like attention from Jon and me. Enough that they ask for it by quietly walking up to us when we are in the barnyard, or nudging us with their noses, or braying at the gate.
People have lived with donkeys for thousands of years. That connection may be forgotten if not tended to, but I believe it lives deep inside both humans and donkeys.
It has been reawakened in me. And I only hope that if I get to grow old, I will be able to do it with Fanny and Lulu. They will be forty (the life expectancy of a donkey) when I am eighty. Perhaps it’s just a fantasy, like my horse Star, but at least I can still imagine the reality I desire.
Zinnia and Bud sleeping in the doorway of my studio
Bud got a good night’s sleep after yesterday’s rat.
But he was back hunting today outside my studio. I saw him nosing around in some leaves by the fence. In moments he pulled his nose out of the leaves and had a mole in his mouth.
Unlike a cat, Bud wasn’t interested in playing with mole. When he dropped it on the ground it didn’t move. I was wondering if he would eat it, but instead he bit it in half, left the two parts on the ground and walked away.
When I told Jon about it he said that was how Boston Terriers kill rats. I guess it’s a good way to make sure they’re really dead.
I told the mole I was sorry and put it in a pile of leaves on the other side of the fence. I didn’t need Zinnia eating it and throwing it up at 3am.
I know that Bud hunts, but I’d never seen him catch and kill an animal before. I was both horrified and impressed.
When we got Bud I didn’t think of him as being a good farm dog. But I feel differently about that now. Even if he’s still trying to dig out of the yard, he helpful in other ways. Including being good at snuggling.
I finished the last Cat Face Pillow. It’s the last one because I used up the fabric. I have a few cats left over that I’m going to make in to Potholders. I started working on those today, but didn’t get far.
I’ll have one or two of these pillows for sale in a couple of days. I’m just waiting to hear back from someone who asked about them.
I love how they wove their way into my class at The Mansion today. That’s how ideas work. One leads to another. The only thing I’ve found is that if I don’t act on an idea, it withers along with what would have grown from it.
It often happens that when I’m working on something in my studio, I convert the idea into a class for The Mansion.
This time it was the cat faces from the Cat Face Pillows I’ve been making. I wanted to show how by altering a few lines or shapes you can create different expressions.
Much like the cats on the linen towel I used to make the pillows, but even more basic.
But before we began I passed around my last unfinished Cat Face Pillow so people could see what I was doing and where the idea for the class came from. I also told them the rat story from yesterday.
“Oh rats are so cute.” Susan said. And no one was really surprised. Susan likes all animals and insects. She was the only one in the class who thought it was a good idea that I let the rat go.
After that I handed out paper to each of the people sitting around the big round table in the Activities Room at the Mansion. Earlier in my studio I had drawn four squares on each piece of paper. I’d also drawn some examples of cats with different expressions on their faces.
Next I showed everyone how to draw the basic cat face shape and demonstrated how to express the emotions with simple lines.
Then they began…
One of Cladia’s cats
Some people made only happy cats. “I’m feeling happy,” Rachel said, “so my cats are happy.”
Rachels Happy Cats
Jennifer surprised us all. I knew she was a good artist, but she drew with such confidence and experience. Jennifer was a ballet dancer into her early twenties. She gave it up to have a family. But she said she was always good at art.
Jennifer’s Cat Faces
Ellen was the only one to draw her cats with colored markers. We all realized, when she was done, that the colors matched her blouse.
Ellen drawing her cat faces
When I mentioned to Mary that her cats didn’t have whiskers, she said it was because he shaved them.
Mary’s shaved catsSomehow I missed getting photos of all the drawings. But we had a full table. And Robin and Paryese were there to help as always.
Most of Claudia’s cats were happy. But I loved the expression on the one below. As if she was trying hard to be happy, but was also acknowledging the realities of life.
There was a frost this morning. Enough to make a slushy layer of ice on the dog bowl outside, but nothing the spring flowers can’t handle.
I did see two barn swallows swoop into the barn circle around and fly out again. I know I startled them. I wonder if they know that Zip is around yet.
It’s early for the swallows, they usually come the first of May. But it was a warm winter. So warm that a few stalks from last years kale that I grew in my garden is growing leaves.
One day about two weeks ago a constant bird call got my attention. It was so consistent I wondered if it wasn’t tree frogs. But then I saw the birds circling over the pasture. They were Killdeers who come to the farm every year, although if they stay long, they are so well hidden, I barely see them.
This year, as far as I could tell, they didn’t even land, just circled overhead. That was the first time I wondered if they’d got news of Zip who prowls the tall grasses where the Killdeers make their nests.
I heard that birds know when a new predator has moved into an area. I don’t know how they get this information, but I do hope the barn swallows decide to stay.
Flo used to the hunt in the barn and hay loft. I’ve seen the barn swallows dive bomb her more than once.
I understand if the barn swallows choose not to stay. I’d hate for Zip to hunt them. But I will miss them if they decide to go to another farm and another barn.
I made one and a half Cat Face Pillows today. I didn’t get to putting the backing on the second one and stuffing it.
As long as the rat is really gone, I should be able to get this pillow done tomorrow. One of them may be spoken for, but then I’ll put the other one up for sale in my Etsy Shop. The pillow is 15″ square with a 4″ border. They are $90 + shipping.
I’m also working with Sara Kelly on making my Meditation Tree into an 11×17″ poster. We’re trying some colors for the border, but I haven’t made a decision yet.
And if I can’t find a backing for our refrigerator, (the one that Bud shredded trying to get rat), I’ll be making one out of cardboard. Seems it’s a more important part of the refrigerator than I would have thought.
Every time Bud barked, Jon got up and went downstairs to see if what was going on with him and the rat. I heard Bud bark too, but I decided to leave it to Bud till the morning.
Around 5am, there were sounds coming from downstairs that I hadn’t heard before. That’s what got both Jon and me up.
When I got into the kitchen, the refrigerator was moved away from the wall enough for Bud to have shredded the cardboard backing that covered the fan and motor. Dryer sheets that I had put on the floor to keep the rat away and bits of cardboard were scattered all over the floor. And one of the metal tubes (I don’t know what they are) was actually sticking out of the back of the fridge.
There were also rat dropping on the floor.
I guess the rat thought it had a pretty good thing going when it found all those crackers and stored them in the back of the refrigerator yesterday. Maybe she was even thinking of making a nest there.
Bud did his job last night holding the rat captive in the back of the fridge. Now we just had to figure out how to get her out of it.
As soon as I let the dogs out, the rat saw her chance. “There she is.” Jon said as she ran from the kitchen into the bathroom.
Jon closed the bathroom door. “I’ll get it,” Jon said. He hadn’t gotten dressed yet, and armed with a broom and dust pan he went into the bathroom closing the door behind him.
After a bit of banging and clanging, I went into the bathroom too and Jon told me the rat had run under the baseboard heater. “There it is,” he said, pointing to the rats tail sticking up from the baseboard writhing back and forth, “Grab it.”
I was close enough to grab it, but there was no way I was going too.
There are some things that I’m squeamish about and a rats tail is one of them. “I’m not touching that,” I told Jon and he reached down to get it.
But the rat was too quick and now hunkered down out of sight.
That’s when Jon decided to take a shower.
I wouldn’t want to be naked in the bathroom with a rat, but Jon wasn’t bother by the idea at all. He actually had a conversation with the rat telling it he was going kill it.
When Jon got out of the shower, I went into the bathroom with a box. I took the cover off the baseboard and the rat ran out. We have a very small bathroom with no other place for the rat to hide or escape. I was able to throw the box over the rat as she ran. Then I got another piece of cardboard and slipped it under the opening of the box. I turned the box over and closed it up over the extra piece of cardboard, not giving the rat a chance to slip out.
Now I had the rat in the box, but I couldn’t imagine how we would kill it.
Jon said he would shoot it, but I wasn’t thinking straight and pictured Jon shooting the rat in the box in the house. Of course that makes no sense, but that’s the image that came into my head.
“I’ll take it into the woods,” I said. Jon suggested drowning her in the pond, but I knew I couldn’t do that.
I’m fine putting traps in the house that quickly kill mice and rats. I’ve done it for years. And I don’t mind taking them out of the traps once they’re dead either.
But I don’t want to kill them myself.
I just couldn’t imagine a quick death for the rat, so even though I know that relocating a rat doesn’t work, they just come back, I was determined to put this rat way out into the woods and hope she didn’t come back.
As I climbed up the hill and over the stream, I tired to imagine drowning the rat, my mind wouldn’t go there. Instead I thought of how the rat had survived the night, hiding from Bud and how scared she must be. I though of how the hunter in Snow White couldn’t kill her and brought back a boars heart to the Witch instead.
I silently spoke to the rat, telling her this was her chance to get away. That if she came back she’d be killed. And I felt like a hitman in a mob movie.
Over another stone wall and on the other side of a marshy pond, I opened the box and the rat jumped out and ran in the opposite direction of the farm.
Maybe I thought, she was a he, without babies to get back to. Maybe he would do what rats don’t and not come back.
As I got closer to the farm, I heard Jon calling me. He standing at the Gulley Bridge, rifle in hand and Zip at his feet.
I think that was more shocking than the whole rat incident. It was all so incongruous. Jon in the woods, with a rifle and cat.
But it’s also when it dawned on me that it would have made sense for Jon to shoot the rat while it was in the box and the box was on the ground.
Then Zip surprised me even further by walking over the Gulley Bridge to greet me as if he did it everyday. And I guess he does. I saw cat prints in the mud on the other side of the bridge yesterday.
I guess I don’t know as much about his territory as I thought I did.
I knew Jon was annoyed that I let the rat go. But by the time he got back to the farmhouse and wrote about it all (while I took a shower without a rat to keep me company) he was seeing my side of things and even loving me for it.
It was a wild morning. And when it was all done, I gave Bud a special treat and told him that he’d done a great joy and to get some sleep.
If the rat does come back I hope she or he does it quietly and stays out of the house.
