Animal Magnetism

by Rita Mae Brown

  Surrounded by the natural odor of sulphur gas from some of the waters, sweet-smelling flowers, heavy salt scent from the sea, I had no one to teach me. I can’t say I loved the environment as I loved and continue to love the Mid-Atlantic, but I was fascinated.

  My salvation was the local library, a small building downtown on Middle River that I believe had once been a house. It felt like a house, anyway. Mom or Dad would drop me off, or sometimes I’d walk. It was four miles away. Other times I’d take the bus. Once I was there, I read and read.

  I also went out and observed the natural world firsthand, and I can still vividly recall what I found.

  Swamp foxes darted about, along with many forms of wild felines, including what we called the Florida panther, a sleek, fast-moving creature that could startle you. Sand sharks swam around the canals using their tails in a manner that fascinated me. Most big fish have powerful tails, but the sand shark’s seemed extra flexible. Like their bigger brethren in the ocean, they look fearsome. Among these ocean sharks, the hammerheads stood out, never failing to startle with those strange eyes. The sand sharks left us alone, though. I never tested the ocean sharks by being in the water with them.

  The creature that fascinated me most was the manatee. “Manatee” first came into the English language in 1554 according to my Oxford English Dictionary. An aquatic marine animal, this wonderful creature is sometimes called a sea cow.

  I observed my first manatee on a little bridge that stretched from Fort Lauderdale into Wilton Manor on Northeast Fifteenth Street. A little curve in the water there allowed all manner of aquatic creatures to fiddle and faddle.

  Manatees are large, brown, and oddly shaped, kind of like a flattened beanbag. They eat plants—no flesh—and they like shallow waters. They can dive, though, and they can move with fair speed, given their shape and size. They weigh around a thousand pounds and they have a few natural predators including sharks and alligators. But frankly, people are their main problem. Manatees can get cut up by outboard propellers. Someone not a Floridian or a person interested in nature would see one and scream bloody murder. Fortunately few of these folks owned guns or harpoons. Occasionally the police would receive a call about manatees. I often wonder what they said to the panicked soul on the other end of the line. Eighty percent of police calls are nuisance calls, I would imagine, and twenty percent must be horrible things.

  Anyway, my fascination grew. I’d ride up Fifteenth Street on my trusty blue Schwinn with the balloon tires, go down the embankment, and sit by the canal, wondering if I’d see one of my beanbags. Often I did. Once one came close to enough give me the once-over. I guess I didn’t pass muster, because he turned around and left me flat.

  The manatee’s maneuverability impressed me. One of my classmates reminded me of this aquatic mammal. He didn’t look like a brown beanbag but he resembled a block. No shape. However, he was fast and played left tackle. Left tackles are smart. He played through high school and college, and when he came back home he started a turf business. Underline “successful” three times.

  As long as we protect manatees they’ll be successful, too.

  Sea turtles astonished me. Once a year the females would clamber up from the Atlantic, dig, and lay their eggs. They’d twirl around on their bellies once they’d pulled sand back over their future offspring. Then they’d slowly amble back to the ocean. They were huge. And I marveled at the fact that I was looking at animals who were probably seventy or eighty years old. I don’t know if they can breed at those ages, but you’d see the turtles who didn’t come onto shore waiting in the shallows for their companions.

  Age impresses me in any creature. Part of it is luck, but it also means that animal is wise. We place so much emphasis on book smarts that we miss emotional wisdom, wisdom about the self, the ability to read the environment. Long-lived creatures have figured these things out. Many scientists will tell you an animal has no sense of self, of its own individuality. Bunk. And prudence isn’t fear. There are prudent animals.

  The A-plus students, the Oxford scholars, often lead lives that are emotional disasters, but the kid who somehow has the sense not to drink and drive, marries the right person, finds work that keeps the heart full, that prudent kid keeps going and going. He or she may never be lauded for excellence in their field but will be well-rounded and successful in life.

  Of course, some academics and left-brain folks get it. Survival, I mean. But this sinks in later in life. The convention is that stupid people cause trouble. Some do. They usually wind up dead or in jail. I think more trouble is caused by people who may be experts in one field but are dolts about life in general.

  Animals don’t suffer these problems. The dumb ones are killed off early. They don’t get to pass on those dumb genes. The unlucky ones perish early, too.

  Due to air travel, diseases that affect animals can be carried to our country literally on people’s pants legs. That, too, kills people and animals. Witness the West Nile virus.

  Our future well-being and that of other creatures now depends on the human ability to correctly assess a threat and react swiftly. Remember the dreadful slaughter of cattle in England as a result of hoof-and-mouth disease? Someone dawdled. That’s all it took. The cost in lives, livelihoods, and grief can never truly be calculated.

  The human animal must now “be sober, be vigilant,” as Muriel Spark once put it. When you factor in cultural differences it seems inevitable that in the future, thousands if not millions of certain animals (chickens, for instance) will die, and millions of us may die with them.

  Florida couldn’t prepare me for this. Nothing could. But Florida and its creatures taught me adaptability to new weather conditions. They also taught me that beauty is only skin deep. Thank you, Miss Manatee.

  Godzilla is a character. She rides this ATV daily. She’ll sit in it for hours, waiting for a driver to show up. Her philosophy is simple: What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine. She belongs in Congress. Photo by Judy Pastore.

  Don’t Judge a Dog by Its Appearance

  Once we moved into the “pink palace” in Florida, Mother made good on her promise of a cat and a dog. As it turned out, the dog was never to be mine, but the cat was.

  We visited the SPCA. I’d never been to one. The visit upset me, all those sad eyes, all those abandoned animals. Mother swore she’d never take me back, but I did adopt a white kitten with a few black spots and named her Skippy.

  The dog, however, had to be well bred. Where did Mom get this bee in her bonnet? I wanted a foxhound. Forget that. Her comeback was that at seventy pounds, a foxhound is too big. Not as a big as a Great Dane, I’d reply to no avail. She read up on the different breeds and found a breeder of miniature poodles. The word “miniature” is misleading because they are the size of a Schnauzer (a fabulous dog). Dad traded in the Chrysler for a Plymouth whose tail fins made me think of the fish I’d been watching so closely. Mother borrowed the car, driving along at her usual blistering pace. The breeder in the northwest section of town kept a tidy place. Mother picked out a black male puppy without consulting me. Well, that was okay. Mom had an eye for conformation with dogs, but I actually think that even then, mine was better. She did pick the best pup in the litter, handed over a lot of money (a couple of good days at the track). Home we drove with the puppy in my lap.

  Sunshine turned into the light of Mom’s life. The training fell to me. At first I was mortified to be seen with a poodle. Thank God she never gave the dog a show cut. I would have put a paper bag over my head. Then I read about poodles, discovering that they were hunting dogs. Maybe he wouldn’t be but so bad.

  Smart, clean, eager to please, and what an easy fellow to work with. I did like him, but he was clearly Mother’s dog. He liked me, too, but dogs are like people. There is special chemistry, and those two loved each other. He’d escort her on all her walks. He’d shoot into the car to ride shotgun. She couldn’t take him to the tracks, as dogs were forbidden. He didn’t attend church servi
ces. But other than that, they were inseparable.

  Her lifelong love affair with poodles began with Sunshine. She bought herself dresses with poodles on them, poodle purses, poodle costume jewelry. At least she didn’t buy glasses with poodle appliqués.

  By now Aunt Mimi and her family had also turned their backs on the ancestral breeding grounds to move to Florida. The two sisters couldn’t function without each other. Butch, the legendary Boston Bull, had passed away. Aunt Mimi, needing to be different, wouldn’t have a poodle. Instead, she bought a Pekinese.

  Dear God, now everything was Chinese. Chin, the indulged Pekinese, inspired my aunt to shop for clothing and jewelry in the same way that Sunshine inspired Mother. Our fear was Aunt Mimi would go all the way and we’d sit down to supper at her house only to be handed chopsticks.

  The effect these dogs had on the ever-competing sisters was not lost on their husbands. Uncle Merle and Dad learned before I came into this world that if you make a woman happy, she makes you happy. Uncle Merle found Aunt Mimi a gorgeous Chinese silk dress, the kind with a high collar. As her figure was lovely, before we knew it, Aunt Mimi’s wardrobe rivaled Mrs. Chiang Kai-shek’s.

  Mother fumed. One could find only so many poodle dresses and sweaters. She had a small black poodle painted on the driver’s door of the car, embellished with her initials, J.E.B., underneath. Her straw hat, a real Montecristo, was set off by a red hatband with black poodles embroidered thereon.

  I was finding out that animals can affect people in ways I never considered. And I sure learned the value of keeping a woman happy. Pay attention to her and do what she says. How exhausting that seemed to me. But back then I didn’t fathom the payoff. That occurred to me later. How smart Dad and Uncle Merle were! And how spoiled were Chin and Sunshine, along with Aunt Mimi and Mother.

  Mother always said, “If you love someone you’ve got to spoil them a little.”

  This quip usually was pronounced when I was performing a hateful chore like washing the jalousie windows.

  “When do I get spoiled?”

  She’d take a drag. “When you find the right man. I’m not going to spoil you. Bad for your moral fiber.”

  Florida was turning into a different kind of education. I also learned to eat egg rolls and wonton soup and never, never to criticize the beloved Chin or Sunshine.

  While awash in Mother’s poodle paraphernalia at home, Sunshine taught me that preferences are preferences and not to judge a book by its cover. He was a real dog and he could hunt.

  When we moved to Florida, I missed the horses terribly. But thanks to the kindness of one of my classmates, a girl who was a member of the Juniorettes, I was invited to spend time with her family’s Quarter horses. Now I have Quarter horses of my own. Photo by Judy Pastore.

  Humans Learn to Compromise

  I spent my formative years in Florida trying to figure out the dividing line between animals and humans—what made us different or special, how we ended up in charge.

  I still don’t know the answer, though most humans are convinced they are at the top of the food chain. Back then, I was learning over and over how each species had adapted to the environment, often swiftly. Humans seemed to be much slower at this, although everything I read kept telling me how wonderfully adaptable humans are. I didn’t find that to be the case. Most of the people I knew were like butterflies with a pin through them. They could flap their wings but they weren’t flying. They were impaled on belief systems that bore no correspondence to reality, caught up in dead-end relationships, alcoholism, and the worst vice of all: self-righteousness.

  On the other hand, I observed something about humans that alligators, sea turtles, flamingos, dogs, cats, horses didn’t share. Humans could compromise. Compromise is only possible when both parties can recognize, in some small way, the validity of the other party’s concerns and arguments. Animals never compromise, though they do submit.

  While I was trying to understand the world in which I’d been dropped, I blasted into my teens. Wasn’t so bad. Mostly it was marvelous fun, kind of like when your puppy turns six months old. From six months to two years in a dog’s life corresponds to our teen years: falling over our own feet, bubbling with enthusiasm, sulking off, committing one blunder after another, cavorting like crazy with other puppies our own age.

  Backtalk appears. So do regular slaps in the face, usually richly deserved. This, too, is like rapping your pup on the rear end when it tears up that new blouse you’d put on the chair. Poor Mom. She bore the brunt of it but she gave as good as she got, coming out on top.

  One girl at school, a member of the Juniorettes (I was an Anchor Club member), lived in Davie and her family had Quarter horses. My experience had always been with Thoroughbreds and Percherons. Through her kindness in allowing me to visit her, I could study another type of equine. Kept me out of trouble.

  Quarter horses are built a little like fullbacks in football, or maybe more like baseball catchers. Their hindquarters are round and quite powerful, and so are their chests. There’s a joke among Thoroughbred people that Quarter horses have man boobs. Thoroughbreds, while they muscle up, present a more refined, elegant appearance. A Quarter horse can hunch down on his hindquarters to hold a roped calf or steer. They are handy, usually very kind and easy to work with. You might find one with a long stride and fluid gait, but here again they differ from the Thoroughbred, often moving in a choppier fashion. I learned to respect them.

  Having no tack, I’d hop up bareback using a hackamore (no bridle) and off we’d go. Linda had her own Western tack. I had nothing. She was a cowgirl. Florida was filled with cowboys because of all the cattle. Florida these days is God’s waiting room, but there are still some tough country people out there in sand spurs. I’d never seen barrel racing and couldn’t believe how low the Quarter horse could get, spinning around a barrel. They defied gravity.

  That and tennis kept me out of Mother’s hair. She’d haul me to her horse-racing jaunts. At Hialeah and Gulfstream we’d cruise the shedrows. The more I did this the more I wanted to do it. Once into high school, a mix of great fun and a couple of heartbreaks, I thought about college. I wanted to work with animals.

  Many young people who love animals want to become veterinarians. I didn’t. I’m not called to medicine on any level, and you aren’t going to be a good doctor unless you are called, just as a minister is called. What I wanted to do was breed Thoroughbreds and foxhounds. Obviously, I wasn’t going to stay in Florida. The Thoroughbred industry in Florida was just taking off in Ocala but there were no foxhounds. Actually, before my time, there was a hunt club in Coral Gables, and now there are many, including one of the best in the United States, Live Oaks. These clubs face quite difficult conditions: weather, heat, rampant development. The masters and hounds have risen to the occasion.

  I cautiously mentioned to Dad that I’d like to major in agriculture, specializing in animal husbandry. Dad knew how much I loved animals. He pretended not to know that Mother haunted the tracks but he knew I had an affinity for Thoroughbreds. He didn’t discourage me, but he gave me platinum advice.

  “Country ways are dying. You want to farm but you won’t make any money unless you own at least a thousand acres and rent more. If you want to make money you’ll wind up working for a large agricultural company. The big fish are eating up the small.”

  He didn’t need to tell me about how the urbanization of America was reordering political power. In short: cities get what they want. Country people get screwed. The votes are in the cities and suburbs. Those people can’t distinguish buckwheat seed from orchard grass seed, or a Walker hound from a coonhound. They know things I don’t, and I respect that. I’m not sure it works in reverse.

  One small example, minimum wage, reflects city business. In the county I can provide housing and transportation. I get no tax credit for this and I must pay a “city” wage. And hey, have you noticed the number of unemployed recently? There is a relationship. I can’t hire the people I ne
ed. I can’t afford it. So multiply my economic reality by thousands of farmers. What’s wrong with a two-tiered system of wages: one for industry, one for agriculture?

  Back to my career choice: Mother joined Dad. She didn’t mock all the career ideas I’d bandied about since I was tiny. The most unrealistic of these was an idea I came up with when I was around ten. I wanted to be a movie star so I could support everyone and have a stable as big as my Uncle Johnny’s. (He lost it before I was born because he made book. Now the state does it. It’s called off-track betting.)

  Mother said farming was hard work but she knew I was up to it. She had made sure of that by working my tail off. I’m eternally grateful. When your family sets high but realistic expectations they are doing you a favor. You learn to deliver the goods. You learn to be part of a team.

  “Mom, all I want to do is farm and hunt.”

  Dad chimed in, “That’s a good life, but honey, the only people who will be able to do that by the time you’re out there will be those with inherited wealth.”

  “Or those who hit it big,” Mother added. “Regular people aren’t going to make it. Stinks.”

  Dad, in that deep voice I can still hear, said, “You have a gift with animals, too. God gave you two gifts.”

  This was new to me.

  “Three. She can argue like a goddamned lawyer.” Mother exhaled the longest blue plume of smoke.

  Dad laughed. “You have imagination.”