Animal Magnetism

by Rita Mae Brown

  Deirdre ’s fulminations became tedious and she began to lose her position. She wasn’t shut out, but she wasn’t embraced either. Meanwhile, Mother, welcoming to most, kept her iron lock on the county. She deserved it. She was a natural leader.

  My chicken, unloved except by me, hung in there, too. She lived a long life, always on the outskirts, still under the chicken house where she’d burrowed herself a deep hole. When the first frost came, around October 15, I’d lie flat on my belly and crawl under the coop to fill her hole with straw. Maybe she lived so long because she was hardened to the elements. Some of the other chickens, committing offenses unknown to me, were pecked to death over the years.

  None of the ladies in Mother’s circle pecked one another to death, despite their fine feathers.

  Today I have my chickens. There’s a serial killer in my coop. She hops into other nests to peck open the eggs. She eludes me. I think I know who it is and yet I’m not sure. I didn’t encounter this as a child. Surely my chickens know who this is. So far they’ve done nothing.

  I’ve never caught a chicken thieving, but other birds certainly do it, and dogs are expert at it.

  Cowbirds, on the other hand, aren’t much for stealing, but they’ll lay an egg in another bird’s nest, thereby avoiding paying college tuition. Think this strategy would work for us?

  Me at three, with Aunt Mimi’s Rags.

  Love Restores

  A cloud of disgrace hovered over me. I’d put goldfish in the baptismal font. Since God created the world and all the flora and fauna within, I felt the beautiful Georgian church where our family had worshipped since 1622 should host life. Originally the church was a log cabin. As the colony boomed, religious architecture followed suit.

  A call from the sexton alerted Mother to my deed. Down the steep hill she roared, full accelerator, the only way Mother drove. Back came Mom, back came the goldfish. I was grounded for a week. Sacrilege was the verdict.

  This was much worse than the time I threw Baby Ruths into a distant neighbor’s fancy swimming pool and a rumor circulated that my Aunt Mimi had pooped in the water. On that occasion Mother had affected horror and Aunt Mimi had pitched a fit. But even at the age of eight, I knew that this goldfish incident was far more serious.

  I knew what sacrilege meant: no freedoms, no pay for my farm chores. City kids were given an allowance, and maybe they earned it. But in the country, we only received our fifty cents or a dollar (a practice that usually began by the age of ten) when our chores had been completed to satisfaction. “Satisfaction” meant some adult checked your efforts. Correction came swiftly but wasn’t necessarily ugly. We were expected to do a job and do it right. If you heard the word “half-assed,” you knew you’d have to start all over again.

  Sacrilege was much worse than half-assed. I’d figured this out months ago when my cousin flipped the bird at another acolyte and Aunt Mimi blew up like Mount Vesuvius.

  Both sisters possessed strong faith, a gift they bequeathed to me. However, Aunt Mimi was far too enraptured with church dogma. Added to this was her tendency to always want to be right. If you’re spouting the Word of God how can you be wrong? She was Catholic. Mother and Dad came from different religious backgrounds so they compromised by being Lutheran (Episcopal in a pinch). Aunt Mimi reproved them regularly as to their grievous error.

  When you entered Aunt Mimi’s home, decorated to a T, you were in danger of decapitation or at least eye-gouging from low-hanging rosary beads. Then, too, she’d show you her autographed copy of the New Testament. At least, that’s what Mother would joke about, behind her big sister’s back. Mother’d be sitting at the kitchen table, Chesterfield blazing, coffee steaming in the cup, taking a much-needed break with one of her many pals. When all other ideas for frolic failed, they’d laugh about riding over the hill to witness Jesus’ signature. This is one joke I actually believe everyone kept from my far-too-religious aunt.

  So I knew that when the word “sacrilege” reached her bejeweled ears, there would be hell to pay. There was, in the form of a lecture about the sacrament of baptism, followed by a sermon about proper deportment for a lady of a certain background. The very act of putting goldfish in the baptismal font would someday obliterate my chances for a suitable marriage. She may have had a point there, for I have yet to acquire a suitable husband or wife.

  (For those of you who think you know something about me, you probably don’t. I’ve fought for better treatment and rights for many groups including gay people. I’m not the least bit put off to be called gay. In fact, I take it as a compliment. However, I have a whimsical disregard for gender.)

  Anyway, the thunder rolled. Shame on me. Actually, it rolled right over me because I didn’t give a fig. The barb that harpooned me was a blunt pronouncement from both sisters. They leveled their lustrous gray eyes at me, the electric silver streaks in their hair already prominent off to the left side of their widow’s peaks, and said in unison, “That was a cruel thing you did.”

  “I put them in water.”

  “That water doesn’t have bubbles. They would have suffocated.” Aunt Mimi sniffed.

  As far as I knew she didn’t care much for fish except on Fridays.

  “People dip their hands in the water.” Mother sucked down a lungful of smoke. “Dirt’s not good, you know.” Then she burst out laughing. “Wouldn’t you have killed to see Boody Caswell stick her fingers in there to make the sign of the cross and see four goldfish?”

  “Think she’d have screamed, or passed out?” Aunt Mimi tried not to laugh, correctly gauging that this would lessen my shame.

  “Scream first, then hit the floor.” Mother giggled.

  “Oh, Juts. She’d break a floor joist.”

  They could contain it no longer, for Boody was humongously fat.

  However, I felt bad. I wouldn’t choose to hurt any animal unless it was wild and charging me or in pain and dangerous. I’d seen animal cruelty. Well, I’d seen people cruelty, too, but animal cruelty affected me more. Unless directed at children too young to grasp just why they were on the short end of the stick, at least humans knew why they were being pummeled, even if the act was wrong.

  That summer three boys from neighboring farms caught a garter snake and fried it—while it was still alive—in a tin can. I hated them for it. Might be a snake but it didn’t do anything to them. Plus Mother said snakes are a farmer’s friend, especially a blacksnake in the hayloft. Snakes usually get out of your way, and while four of the five poisonous snakes in North America reside in my state, they really do slither away.

  Whenever I visited PopPop Harmon I would pass a man who kept a brace (a pair) of beagles. They were chained up and living in filth. Covered in sores, filled with parasites, their ribs sticking out. I’d stop and throw them the sandwich Mother had made for me, dividing it in two. They wagged their tails at me.

  One fall afternoon, a Friday, I was allowed to go visit PopPop. Aunt Mimi ran me over to his little farm. All his foxhounds got along with his cats (mine, too), and one of the big ginger cats was sleeping on a chair with his four paws tucked under him.

  “Means cold weather ahead,” PopPop said.

  Sure enough, that night a cold front came in, the wind rattling the farmhouse.

  The next morning we took the foxhounds out to hunt on foot, passing the beagles, who were shivering. They had no doghouses and not enough fat to warm them.

  Later, sound carrying that evening, we heard PopPop’s neighbor cuss them and heard them cry out. Tears ran down my cheeks. PopPop said nothing, but he awakened me in the middle of the night. We crept over to the neighbor’s house, PopPop armed with heavy bolt cutters. He cut the chains, and the little things were so weak we had to carry them back to his house. The first thing he did was feed them some warm gruel. Then we set to bathing them and toweling them off. We fluffed up an old blanket in the corner, where they gratefully slept.

  The next morning PopPop wormed them, which was a mess because we couldn’t let them o
ut lest the owner see or hear them. As it was, we needed to hide them and get them out of there as soon as possible.

  “Dad will help.”

  “I know he will.” PopPop smiled.

  As far as we knew, the owner hadn’t searched for them, but he was capable of being as big a drunk as PopPop was, so maybe he was still sleeping.

  Dad arrived and put PopPop’s old blanket in the back of the car, along with me and the two beagles. When we got them home, Mother, who didn’t like dogs in the house (she changed her mind later), fussed for all of three minutes and then set to work. More food. Grooming.

  Tuffy, the tiger cat (Mickey had passed away by now), huffed with disapproval. Within a month the two hounds sported shiny coats, bright eyes, and happy temperaments.

  How could they forgive humans? Since then I have worked with many abused animals. As I write, there are four on the farm that wandered in or were dumped here.

  A tricolor Walker hound, starved and beat up, growled if anyone came near. Finally, I managed to get him to come home with me by opening a can of dog food. He followed the delicious odor and he did come into the house. Took two of us to get him to the vet for shots and a checkup. He wasn’t a nasty dog, but he’d growl if I got too close. He liked it when I talked to him, and if I left a toy on the floor, he would come pick it up. What a beautiful dog he was, wonderful conformation. Eventually, he’d follow me wherever I went. He’d trot along when I worked the horses, and if I opened the door of the truck, he’d hop in, but he still didn’t want to be touched. I never stared him down. I’d look at him sideways and I spoke in a soft, low tone.

  I called him Bruno. Smart, smart, smart, he learned his name in a day. Like most hounds he was fanatically clean. If only I could get them to do my housekeeping.

  This went on for two years. One day I walked up from the barn with Bruno beside me. I stopped because my deep pink rosebush by the back of the house had burst into splendor. He put his head under my hand. After that I could pet him, groom him, and sing to him. For whatever reason, he liked this, and I’ve since given each of my dogs a special song. They love it.

  Bruno and I were inseparable. He lived eleven years after I found him, and I expect he was two or three then. One day he looked a little off, and the next day, too. Took him to the vet and discovered he was going into renal failure, a condition that seems to be prevalent in big hounds. I brought him home. A friend who is our equine vet was coming to the farm that day, so he died at home. I hate to put an animal down at the vet’s. They’re already scared.

  Bruno left this earth surrounded by love. I miss him terribly. Not only was he my shadow, but that dog would have died to protect me. Once he gave me his heart he held nothing back. And maybe I loved him so much because the path to friendship took such a long time.

  So often people misperceive a dog, or a horse, as vicious when what they are is frightened or deeply mistrustful. Be patient. It won’t take too long to ascertain whether an animal is really vicious. I’ve met very few mean dogs and only one truly nasty horse.

  You’ve heard it a million times, but hear it once more: love works miracles.

  The beagles, Charlie and Cappy, taught me how love restores. They also taught me a bit about rabbit hunting, although I claim no deep knowledge there.

  Charlie and Cappy showed me that, for me, deep happiness comes from saving a dog, a cat, the occasional horse, even a cow. I’m not revealing this to make you believe how good I am. I don’t do it for anyone’s good opinion except my own. Anything I have done for animals has been repaid a thousandfold.

  Usually I can find the animal a home when it’s ready. Those that are too ugly and those that require too much maintenance to live anywhere else usually wind up on my couch.

  PopPop taught me so much, but this lesson was crucial: do what you must when you must. No one in our family sets much store by laws. When you see a creature in distress you can call Animal Control. Usually they come out. During hard economic times those people are so overwhelmed, and, I might add, underpaid. People abandon children during hard times. Animals they cast aside like Dixie cups. Act. This was pressed upon me over and over again in a variety of forms: Act. Don’t tell anyone what you’re doing. Don’t call the authorities unless the problem really is too big for you to handle.

  Our motto was “No man’s property or life is safe when Congress is in session.” This applies to animals, too. The laws against animal cruelty may seem sensible, but usually they aren’t. Again, these are attempts by people as sickened as I am but who aren’t country (for lack of a better description). Their efforts often do as much harm as good, particularly when those efforts take legislative form.

  If you play by the rules, first, you must prove neglect or cruelty in court. Get out your checkbook. Second, the accused now sees your face. And some of these people are only too happy to pass on their cruelty to you, maybe by burning down your barn with the horses in it. If you live at East Sixty-seventh Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan this has probably not occurred to you. But where I live, it’s all too plausible.

  Taking action on your own solves the problem, hopefully, for that one abused animal, but it doesn’t fix the overall problem. Ours is an overregulated country with pockets of freedom. Anyone can breed even if they can’t feed their children. Fine. Just don’t ask me to feed them. Anyone can have animals, too, and not take care of them until discovered.

  It’s funny, we interfere in an individual’s ability to earn a living, hogtie them with regulations, punish them with taxes, which are then grotesquely squandered. The more productive the person, the greater the punishment. Yet we allow brutality to roll along with nary a slap on the wrist: witness the still ongoing struggle over rape prevention.

  Is it me or does this seem insane to you, too?

  Again, I have learned to act with disregard for the law. I will continue to do so. I will call upon our sheriff (we are well served in Nelson County by our law enforcement people and by Animal Control and the Almost Home Shelter) if I need to. Otherwise, I go about my business. Our public servants in Nelson County are on overload. If I can spare them one more thing to do, I will. As an aside, the people that work in the courthouse in Lovingston are so helpful, plus everyone there has a slightly cracked sense of humor.

  You and I will not solve animal cruelty, child abuse, wife beating, rape, or murders based on gender. We can lessen it, though.

  I thank Charlie and Cappy for showing me I can do something useful in this life. I also thank them for teaching me that hunting a prey animal is different than hunting a predator. Down those two noses would go; the bunny would sit tight, since stillness is a major defense for prey. Speedy flight is the backup. How we’d work to flush our game, and off would go the bunny, zigging and zagging with two much-loved beagles in hot pursuit giving tongue. No, beagle voices don’t sound like the bells of Moscow, but a hound giving tongue is a peal of Mozart to me. What joy. What a thrill to be working together with another species for a common goal.

  By the bye, the brutal original owner of Charlie and Cappy died the following spring. He’d been dead awhile when one of the other farmers found him, drawn to his home by the terrible stink. When the ambulance came to pick up the body, his arms and legs came off. PopPop had seen enough of this in the Great War. When he heard about it he shrugged.

  What kind of life must it have been for no one to claim the body, no one to grieve, no one to even say a prayer? Charlie and Cappy certainly never grieved.

  PopPop said, “One less to worry about.” That was that.

  The other thing I learned from this was the power of a little girl’s tears. My grandfather, upset though he was, did nothing to help those sad little dogs until I cried. My distress brought out the best in him, and Charlie and Cappy brought out the best in me.

  As to the goldfish, they lived as long as little goldfish do, with a mermaid laid in their tank, the tiny bubbles spiraling upwards, the fake seaweed waving slightly. To this day I can never se
e a goldfish without wanting to make the sign of the cross.

  Local steeplechase races still give me a thrill. Photo by Danielle A. Durkin.

  Betting on Horses

  When I was growing up, racetracks dotted the Mid-Atlantic landscape. Big Thoroughbred stables trained horses on their own tracks. County fairs cleaned up their tracks for harness racing, and state fairs usually boasted excellent tracks as well. Standardbreds were as popular as Thoroughbreds. The big wonderful tracks like Pimlico and Belmont topped the high end for Thoroughbreds, but many tracks filled the niches in between, right down to the end-of-the-line tracks, which made me sad as a child and continue to do so.

  Harness racing touched everyone then. Flat racing (middle distance racing on flat terrain) and steeplechasing (longer distance racing with hurdles like fences and ditches) excited us all. But just about everyone, at least where I was raised, knew someone with a sulky, a light cart on two wheels with a single seat for the driver. A sulky is what you’d drive for harness racing. Driving in fine harness still held considerable social cachet. Today, many people have ridden a horse at least once in their lives. The ones who suffered a bad experience are quick to relate it, swearing they’ll never do that again. Pity. Would you stop playing baseball if you got beaned?

  But baseball is human versus human. Riding or driving is a human and horse partnership. Most people don’t know how to communicate with a horse. I’m not saying that everyone understood horses when I was a kid, but they enjoyed a much greater familiarity with them.

  Mother, who had a fabulous eye for a horse, was born in 1905. When she was born, roughly ninety percent of Americans lived in the country, ten percent in the cities. I was born at the end of 1944, and the ratio then was near to fifty-fifty. Today, ninety percent live in cities or suburbs and only ten percent of us dwell in the country. Country knowledge is shrinking. The effect on the animal population is disturbing and often unwittingly cruel. The effect on the human population isn’t very healthy either. We aren’t meant to sit on top of one another in rectangular cubicles peering out windows that don’t open, breathing canned air and subjecting our minds to routine jolts of stress.