Happy Holidays All

After a year of stress and uncertainty, it's time to take a break and remember all the good that we are graced with. We count our friends among our blessings, and hope that you and yours enjoy a happy holiday season, and a prosperous 2009.

Be well!

A Prayer for Truffles

A bit of bad news. Not a bit really - more like a mountain. Our little Truffles has idiopathic encephalitis. Sorry for the medical speak, but we have lost three dogs in five years and have likely spent somewhere in the neighborhood of forty thousand dollars on vet bills in that time, so we have become accustomed to vet lingo. We knew something was wrong when she had what appeared to be a petit mal seizure and began circling left whenever she attempted to walk.




In layman's terms, there is an area of her brain that is swollen. We have not identified the cause, but it's more important that we know what we are dealing with. It took a few thousand dollars and a battery of tests to narrow it down: Now we are going through a painful process of elimination as it pertains to treatment. Since the cause is not known, the usual course of treatment does not apply. She has gone through four rounds of meds and we're not there yet.



So we treat, and wait, and hope. The good news is that she is holding steady; her condition has not worsened. She is a tough little cookie, and that huge heart of hers is brimming with love. Please send good wishes her way - throw her a bone in your prayers. She'll love you for it, as will we.

Happy Thanksgiving

Our best wishes to our friends, family and colleagues on this Thanksgiving. May you have a safe and joyous holiday!

And Now for Something Completely Different.

I'm guilty; we've been MIA. It's the job thing. Years of no free time have taken their toll, and I'm trying to find time to catch up.

But there is a change. A big one. We up and moved, to the (initial) dismay of the dogs. They like their routine, and we certainly broke that up a bit. The downside: they are fenced in. In actuality, Nigel is thrilled. He had to be leash walked until now, and he's happy for his relative freedom. But the ladies had been free to roam for years, and are not so happy to have boundaries.





They have yet to discover the good news. The house comes with a river. Winter has arrived early and the river is too fast for them, and will stay so until summer. We have not let them near it, and the river falls away in front of the house, while they are fenced in behind. They will forget about it until it's warm enough to keep the windows open, right about the time that the last snowbank has melted.

They have stopped pouting, and all seems right again. I ran downstairs to throw wood in the stove last night and noticed something on the side of the stairway.




Call me dog-centric, but it almost looks like it could be... : )

Autumn Wishes

As the holidays approach, we pause to take stock - and are thankful for so much.

Many thanks to regular readers, friends, family and colleagues. May you be blessed with all you wish for in abundance.

For those outside of New England, I thought I'd share a little love in the form of foliage...

Bear With Me

Well, there was.

Mrs. Author is a food pusher. Take a look around our home and you'll notice that most of us are well fed - perhaps too well. Once we have had our fill and cries of mercy emanate from the dinner table, Mrs. Author's love of feeding spills out of the house - to the joy of forest inhabitants that surround us.

A cursory glance at our back deck reveals a most unsavory sight. Bread, birdseed and suet litter the landscape like the remnants of a Roman feast. Look a little closer, however, and the workings of an entire ecosystem come in to focus. Squirrels, mice and the like flit about the rubble, cheeks exploding with new found culinary delights. Birds (the intended recipients of treats) dive bomb the crowd in a frantic effort to secure scraps. Raccoons sweep through the rubble, sending smaller creatures scrambling for cover. It's a bona fide feeding circus.

For months I have protested this feeding for fear that we might end up with larger visitors of the sort that evoke stories of evisceration, laceration, amputation - all the nasty tions. My protests fell on deaf ears. My fears were well founded.

The evening of July 27th found us parked in front of the tube catching up on local news. I was just coming down from a harried, hectic day at the office, content to spend quiet time with the family. Unfortunately, discontent was on the menu and heaping platter of it was served up to me as I wandered past the kitchen window..... and stared directly in to the eyes of a very large, hungry black bear.



I'll only go so far as to speak for myself here, but I think it safe to assume a sort of universal reaction to a near six foot tall, multi-hundred pound killing machine standing at your back door. I jumped behind my wife and screamed for my mother. Then I grabbed the camera.

Despite the foreboding sense that a multitude of tions were about to be unleashed on me, I steadied the camera in an effort to capture the essence of the magnificent beast that occupied our back stoop. The fearless creature took no notice, and went about the business of dismantling our birdfeeder to gain access to the heroin like substance that had called him from the wild: suet, with berries.

Lest you think suet with berries sounds harmless (or downright silly) consider yourself warned. You may as well throw a honey covered quarter of beef in the back yard. Either way, you are going to have company. The kind that ends up in the news. As did we.

The irony of this was not lost on me: the same hungry, opportunistic bear who interrupted my Friday night news viewing experience had me on TV the next night speaking with reporters. Mrs. Author was there too - fussing with her hair, pleading with me to stop mumbling about my previous protests against leaving food out for wildlife. We explained that the bear had spent around 45 minutes with us. I tried to convey to the reporters how unfortunate it was that my camera ran out of tape just prior to my having delivered a devastating left hook to the intruder. They weren't buying it.


*new- video footage!




After eating every crumb of food it could find, the bear wandered in to the yard of our neighbors and stopped in front of a large plastic ball left out by their child. Following a sniff and a nudge, he placed an enormous paw on the ball, immediately flattening it, the air escaping in a whoosh. Satiated and amused, he then meandered over to the pond, took a quick dip, and slipped away in the cover of the surrounding forest, never to be seen again. Yet.

I have considered asking Mrs. Author to walk the dogs at night. We'll see how that works out, but in the meantime, I can claim one accomplishment: our yard is a food-free zone. No more screaming birds, angry raccoons or nine pound chipmunks. And if things seem a little lonely- perhaps even boring, that's fine by me.

There is an upside to this story. The dogs witnessed these events from a safe distance.


Truffles: "Darn straight, I was under the bed!"

Sola: "Brownie points genius."

Author: I do seem to remember that. That's ok Truffles. Enjoy your evening outdoors...

Yes, that's suet.