Northern Lights from Rusty's Mom, Brenda Rose
Now that the days are longer and Rusty no longer needs to go out into
the coyote-infested darkness of rural Nova Scotia for his late-night
pee, life has become more relaxed. That's not to say there aren't
any challenges. They just aren't life threatening.
Let's take the crows, for example. Crows are usually large but these
Atlantic birds could be used as cargo movers, their wing span often
wider than that of the local ravens and hawks. But their size is
definitely dwarfed by their cleverness.
Take the case of the disappearing frisbee, for example. Rusty's
favourite game is chase the frisbee and he used to spend most of his
outdoor hours trotting around the property, hoping I'd see him all by
his lonesome and take pity on him with no one to play with. But at
some time in April he seemed to have abandoned the game - almost as if he'd lost interest in it. Silly me jumping to conclusions, as he
hadn't lost interest in his favourite toy at all. He'd actually
lost the frisbee.
The first time I discovered it on the outside of the fence I just
assumed he'd tossed his head and it had flown out of his mouth.
After all, his underbite is fairly pronounced. But several days later
when once again I saw him wandering around with the same sad face I
went looking for the misplaced frisbee and found it a good 150 feet
past my fence line, and no matter how favourable the prevailing winds might be there's not a greyhound in the world who can manage a toss of that distance. So the mystery continued, until . . .
One afternoon when I was working in the garden I happened to look up and what did I see flying over the house? Yes, one of our enormous
crows, only this time it was carrying . . . (wait for it) . . .
Rusty's frisbee! Yes, the sneaky bird had clearly decided that what
could be more labour-saving than to have a pre-formed base for his nest?
But sometimes they bring unexpected joys as well. Take two weeks
ago, for example, when I was doing up a few dishes and happened to
look out the window to see what Rusty was doing and I saw him on one of the hills in the yard, busily gnawing on one of his red toys.
Awww . . . I thought, until I remembered that he doesn't have any red
outdoor toys. Time to investigate, and when I finally got to him I
saw that he wasn't chewing on a toy; he actually was deeply engrossed
in . . . a lobster claw? A COOKED lobster claw? And he wasn't doing
too badly either - had the claw mangled to the point where he could
actually get to the meat! The mystery continued until I was down at
the local dock one morning arranging to buy a few lobsters for my own
consumption and I happened to tell the story about my dog finding a
cooked claw in my field.
That's when one of the lobster fishermen told me the story about the
cauldron that the men had set up on the dock on May 1st, the first
day of the lobster season in this part of Canada. Apparently it's a
local custom for the men to come back to the wharf on the first day
of lobster season and cook up a feed of lobster, celebrating the fact
that the lobster are here for another year. But this year there were
onlookers . . . yes, you guessed it. The crows! And while one man
was stirring the pot, taking the freshly boiled crustaceans from the
scalding water, the entire murder of crows went into full flight,
creating a diversion while the most fleet-beaked of the flock was
able to make off with a few portable parts.
I'm still wondering whether Rusty's waiter just dropped the claw by
accident - after all, we're only a mile up the coast from the wharf -
or whether it was an attempt to make amends for having stolen his
frisbee.
On another subject, I'm always just a bit jealous when I hear about
the play dates all Rusty's mid-western friends have at Lambertland so
this month I decided to do something about it. There's only one
other greyhound here in Antigonish County, a lovely fawn female named Nova, so I invited Nova, her 'brother' the Basenji and her 'cousin' the Swiss Entlebucher and we had a play date of our own. Granted, it wasn't nearly as lively as your own get-together but we did have lobster so perhaps that makes up for our diminished guest list. In any case, Rusty de
cided that as the party was happening at his house, he should be allowed the first dip of the season. Fortunately the other three dogs weren't interested in getting wet because he wasn't getting out of his pool for anyone. "My house, my rules," is what he appears to be saying.
