Vincent became a frequent visitor to our place. Dad hated him even more than he had disliked Daniel, but Vincent's approach was entirely different. He brought over all sorts of gourmet food for Eliyah. Eliyah loved the brie cheese, the delicacies....it was hard for him to snarl at a man bearing such gifts. Vincent would bring the food over and vanish outside to hang out with me while Dad was stuffing his face. When Eliyah was rude or yelled at him, or aimed a loaded pistol at him, Vincent just shrugged it off and kept being his eccentric, wacky self.
And then Vincent went back to his job in Post Falls, laying asphalt. He wrote frequently, and the writing was hard to read and the thoughts wandered around a lot, but I was happy to have a friend and to receive letters. Meanwhile, I kept busy on the farm. Dad ranted a lot about Vincent, and there were a few times when I suggested that I would still be interested in Daniel, a thought which he quickly jumped on but of course, never followed through with.
The goats numbered 15 now; I had acquired a Pygmy buck for free, along with Abraham and my three does. I spent a lot of time tethering them all out, checking on them vigilantly so that they would get enough to eat and to avoid any more strangulations like Cinderella's. We were still churning out the puppies and selling them. They were cute with good temperaments from a nice sire- Corky. And then the parvo virus hit..... The deaths were heartbreaking. The first symptom was a depressed puppy, followed by profuse, evil smelling diarrhea, far more of it than anyone would have guessed a small puppy could possibly produce. The puppies depression deepened into a hopeless look of despair as they went downhill. We tried everything we could think of, except for taking them to the vet, of course, but every single puppy that got sick died. Right about this time, we found Corky shot dead alongside the road. He'd never wandered, had never run deer....he was a homebody. Mom speculated that it was Buddy and Joyce from the business venture gone bad...because Corky had always hated Buddy....but of course there was no proof.
One of Dad's cop friends gave him a German Shepherd puppy. It was black with brown markings, and seeing her romp around took some of the ache out of all the deaths of the others, a pain that was compounded since there was nothing of Corky left except for Laddie and Toby, a gentle male from a subsequent litter that Mom kept.
One morning I went outside to do chores to find my kitten, Missy damp and half frozen to the late fall ground with the german shepherd puppy and the older dogs clustered around her. I thought she was dead, but she moaned or moved just the tiniest bit. I'd saved a lot of half frozen puppies and kittens already, so I rushed into action. I called for help, and spent the next hour or two submerging her in a 5 gallon bucket of the hottest water I could stand to put my hands in, massaging her body and moving her limbs. The first bucket went lukewarm right away- she was that cold- and my helpers changed out the water as soon as it wasn't hot anymore. We went through several buckets of water, lifting her from one bucket of merely warm water and quickly submerging all but her head into a fresh bucket of hot water. Soon her moans were more frequent and louder, and although she was still weak, she began to move more, too. When it seemed like she'd make it, I dried her thoroughly and rolled her up in a towel to conserve her body heat. I didn't want her to get cold from the water after all that work to warm her up. I sat with her by the woodstove, heating towels on the top of the woodstove and wrapping her up in them until she was thoroughly dry and still warm. She lived.
Eliyah blamed the little German Shepherd puppy for Missy's near demise. She was his puppy even though we all played with her, and she hadn't been trained to speak of at all; she just hung out with the other dogs. I don't think she necessarily meant to hurt Missy even if she had been the ringleader- probably she was just mouthing and harassing Missy, "playing" with her a little too roughly. She wasn't much bigger than the cat and had no one her own size to play with, having just left a litter of puppies. But Eliyah wasn't one to consider reasonable solutions or to try to look at something from an animal's point of view. I can still remember the shots. He was standing on the porch, aiming his .45 pistol. The German Shepherd puppy was yelping and running this way and that, some 40 or 50 feet away, under the big Ponderosa pine tree with the tree house platform. None of the shots were clean, and every time he happened to hit the puppy, she would scream and try to run away, until after several successful hits, she was dragging her mangled body around, still crying. When he was done, he turned calmly, ordered Raphah to pick up all the pieces and went inside. Raphah went silently, numbly, obediently, with a plastic bag, and gathered what was left of the puppy and threw her in the trash in the back of the truck, along with the rest of the trash and all the puppies who'd died of the parvo virus. Nobody ever said anything about it. I feared more than ever for Laddie and was relieved that he seemed to be afraid of men, always darting underneath the floor of the shop whenever Eliyah or my brother were outside.
Before I knew it, Vincent had proposed to me. It was late fall/early winter. We were going to be married, to travel to meet his family and then mine. He instructed me to bring only nice things to wear for traveling, that we'd return for the rest...and of course, for the goats and Laddie. Laddie never did warm up to him, always made himself scarce when Vince was around.
Leaving was hard. I worried about the goats, because Rachel didn't milk her own doe regularly (I often did it for her, feeling sorry for Sylvia's distended udder) and Sarah just wasn't into goats much. I promised Laddie, Lily, Sannah, Snowdrop, and my cats that I'd be back for them before they knew it. Sarah cried as we left. And as I sat beside him as we pulled out of the drive, Vincent said gravely, "We are never coming back". And I never did return, at least, not while any of that was still there.
And then Vincent went back to his job in Post Falls, laying asphalt. He wrote frequently, and the writing was hard to read and the thoughts wandered around a lot, but I was happy to have a friend and to receive letters. Meanwhile, I kept busy on the farm. Dad ranted a lot about Vincent, and there were a few times when I suggested that I would still be interested in Daniel, a thought which he quickly jumped on but of course, never followed through with.
The goats numbered 15 now; I had acquired a Pygmy buck for free, along with Abraham and my three does. I spent a lot of time tethering them all out, checking on them vigilantly so that they would get enough to eat and to avoid any more strangulations like Cinderella's. We were still churning out the puppies and selling them. They were cute with good temperaments from a nice sire- Corky. And then the parvo virus hit..... The deaths were heartbreaking. The first symptom was a depressed puppy, followed by profuse, evil smelling diarrhea, far more of it than anyone would have guessed a small puppy could possibly produce. The puppies depression deepened into a hopeless look of despair as they went downhill. We tried everything we could think of, except for taking them to the vet, of course, but every single puppy that got sick died. Right about this time, we found Corky shot dead alongside the road. He'd never wandered, had never run deer....he was a homebody. Mom speculated that it was Buddy and Joyce from the business venture gone bad...because Corky had always hated Buddy....but of course there was no proof.
One of Dad's cop friends gave him a German Shepherd puppy. It was black with brown markings, and seeing her romp around took some of the ache out of all the deaths of the others, a pain that was compounded since there was nothing of Corky left except for Laddie and Toby, a gentle male from a subsequent litter that Mom kept.
One morning I went outside to do chores to find my kitten, Missy damp and half frozen to the late fall ground with the german shepherd puppy and the older dogs clustered around her. I thought she was dead, but she moaned or moved just the tiniest bit. I'd saved a lot of half frozen puppies and kittens already, so I rushed into action. I called for help, and spent the next hour or two submerging her in a 5 gallon bucket of the hottest water I could stand to put my hands in, massaging her body and moving her limbs. The first bucket went lukewarm right away- she was that cold- and my helpers changed out the water as soon as it wasn't hot anymore. We went through several buckets of water, lifting her from one bucket of merely warm water and quickly submerging all but her head into a fresh bucket of hot water. Soon her moans were more frequent and louder, and although she was still weak, she began to move more, too. When it seemed like she'd make it, I dried her thoroughly and rolled her up in a towel to conserve her body heat. I didn't want her to get cold from the water after all that work to warm her up. I sat with her by the woodstove, heating towels on the top of the woodstove and wrapping her up in them until she was thoroughly dry and still warm. She lived.
Eliyah blamed the little German Shepherd puppy for Missy's near demise. She was his puppy even though we all played with her, and she hadn't been trained to speak of at all; she just hung out with the other dogs. I don't think she necessarily meant to hurt Missy even if she had been the ringleader- probably she was just mouthing and harassing Missy, "playing" with her a little too roughly. She wasn't much bigger than the cat and had no one her own size to play with, having just left a litter of puppies. But Eliyah wasn't one to consider reasonable solutions or to try to look at something from an animal's point of view. I can still remember the shots. He was standing on the porch, aiming his .45 pistol. The German Shepherd puppy was yelping and running this way and that, some 40 or 50 feet away, under the big Ponderosa pine tree with the tree house platform. None of the shots were clean, and every time he happened to hit the puppy, she would scream and try to run away, until after several successful hits, she was dragging her mangled body around, still crying. When he was done, he turned calmly, ordered Raphah to pick up all the pieces and went inside. Raphah went silently, numbly, obediently, with a plastic bag, and gathered what was left of the puppy and threw her in the trash in the back of the truck, along with the rest of the trash and all the puppies who'd died of the parvo virus. Nobody ever said anything about it. I feared more than ever for Laddie and was relieved that he seemed to be afraid of men, always darting underneath the floor of the shop whenever Eliyah or my brother were outside.
Before I knew it, Vincent had proposed to me. It was late fall/early winter. We were going to be married, to travel to meet his family and then mine. He instructed me to bring only nice things to wear for traveling, that we'd return for the rest...and of course, for the goats and Laddie. Laddie never did warm up to him, always made himself scarce when Vince was around.
Leaving was hard. I worried about the goats, because Rachel didn't milk her own doe regularly (I often did it for her, feeling sorry for Sylvia's distended udder) and Sarah just wasn't into goats much. I promised Laddie, Lily, Sannah, Snowdrop, and my cats that I'd be back for them before they knew it. Sarah cried as we left. And as I sat beside him as we pulled out of the drive, Vincent said gravely, "We are never coming back". And I never did return, at least, not while any of that was still there.
posted by chamoisee at
3:33 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home