February 18, 2005

• What’s normal?

  If I knew that, I might be able to say that things are getting back to

  normal.  All around me, the usual things are going on:  Yukon

  Quest, the world’s toughest sled dog race, could be won today or

  tomorrow.  The days here are so much longer now that it’s still

  not dark at 6 PM — we’re getting over nine hours of daylight and can

  actually feel warmth on skin when the sun’s shining.  I’m in my

  ergonomic office seat at the desk between the back of the couch and my

  jewelry work table that used to be a dining table.  Doug is over

  on the couch, using the PS2.  It’s a lot like it was this time

  last month, but not quite the same.

  One small thing that makes a big difference is the gray and white

  kitten that keeps pouncing on my hand as I move the mouse, or on my

  fingers at the

  keyboard.  Doug and I picked her up from Greyfox’s cabin on a

  quick trip to town the same day the PC went down, January 24. 

  Greyfox had not succeeded at sexing his four kittens, wasn’t sure who

  was a boy and who was a girl.  Doug and I had decided to take the

  girls, but not the boys because old crotchety Granny Mousebreath was

  likely to beat up on any strange males we’d bring into her house. 

  When we first moved in here, she had driven away my beloved Webley, her

  own grandson, when we brought him in.  She made his life miserable

  and he hid behind the clothes dryer until we took him back to the old

  place to join the feral colony over there.

  Greyfox was determined to keep Honer, whom we were all pretty sure was

  male.  His plan had been to wait a day or two until he knew that

  his latest knife order was at the post office, then put Dingus,

  Buckyball and Fullerene in a bag or bags and haul them up here for us

  to determine their genders and keep those we would.  I checked the

  mail that Monday, found a pickup notice for three large parcels of

  knives, and called him to suggest that Doug and I come get the kittens,

  stopping to pick up the knives on our way in.  He was practically

  ecstatic at that idea.  He got his knives in plenty of time for

  the Winter Carnival and would get rid of some kittens without having to

  drive up the valley.  We liked the idea also because it would traumatize the kittens less than the first plan.

  Greyfox finished some grocery shopping he’d planned to do for us before

  coming up here, and we met him at his place and exchanged our load of

  kinves for his load of food.  If I’d had a way to blog at the

  time, you would have been subjected to all the details of how we got

  more knives, swords and battle axes into my car than my car would hold

  – just my usual ten-pounds-of-sugar-in-a-five-pound-bag trick, nothing

  special.  Since at the time I still had only one headlight and had

  already been stopped and warned by a state trooper, I was in such a

  hurry to offload and onload and make it home before sundown, that I

  neglected to tell Greyfox about the comp crash.  He found out that

  night at our usual phone time after the cell minutes became free of

  charge.

  We had all been disappointed when Doug determined that there was only one

  female in the litter of kittens.  I’d misjudged Dingus at first, so Greyfox

  ended up keeping three male kittens.  After my first attempt at

  sexing and assigning names, Greyfox had confused Buckyball and

  Fullerene.  The female we brought home was the kitten Greyfox had

  been calling Buckyball.   Within a few days, her brother

  formerly known as Fullerene was being called Pinky for his pink nose (and the late great Pinky Lee),

  and the former Buckyball had earned a new name, Hillary, for Sir Edmund

  the climber.  She climbed inside Doug’s trench coat as soon as we

  were under way, and spent most of the ride down one sleeve or the other

  or inside the coat on his shoulder or draped across the back of his

  neck.

  She rides his neck and shoulders a lot even now, when she’s not zipping

  around at speeds faster than light, attacking the plantlets hanging off

  my spider plants, or Koji’s tail.  She’d happily play with that

  end of the dog, but when he notices it, he turns to face her and she

  doesn’t like the front end of him at all.  She gets her hackles

  up, arches and hisses at him, and then he backs down.  He would

  love to play with her, but she’s not going for it… except for the

  tail.

  So the kitten makes one difference.  Another major difference may

  have more

  weight in one sense, but it’s difficult to define.  I’m

  different.   Maybe I haven’t changed a lot.  My

  perspective has changed, and to me I seem different.  It started

  with that moose in our yard stomping on Koji.  I saw my dog buddy

  go down under its hooves, heard him yelp and then scream and then go

  quiet and still, and all I did was cover my eyes, turn away from that

  little window in the door and scream.  I screamed and

  howled.  Hearing a muttered response from Doug, who had been

  asleep back in his room, I yelled to him that a moose was stomping

  Koji.  I couldn’t bear to watch any longer as the moose mangled

  Koji’s body (as I imagined it).

  This is not the way I usually handle crises.  Not until I saw Doug

  walk into the kitchen with Greyfox’s .44mag in his hand did I even

  think about grabbing my .357mag, and by then I didn’t need to. 

  Doug headed straight for the door and I intercepted him.  I said,

  “wait.”  I was thinking that Koji was already dead and it would be

  better not to have the moose turn from him and charge Doug.  But

  when I stood on tiptoe to see out that little window in the door again,

  Koji was up, on three legs, holding one forepaw up and dodging the

  moose as it repeatedly rose on it’s hind legs and came down where it

  thought the dog was.

  At the full extent of his chain, Koji was ducking first one way then the

  other, behind a tree and then behind a tall stump.  I moved aside

  so Doug could see.  He watched a few seconds and then he opened

  the door and stepped out.  I saw him holding the revolver up in a

  steady two-hand grip before the door shut.  When I looked out that

  window again, Doug, Koji and the moose were all out of sight, too near

  the side of the house for me to see them.  Then I heard the

  shots… one, and after a pause two more, then another pause and a

  fourth shot.  After that it was very quiet.

  Doug had seen the moose go around the tree to get at Koji.  In
  trying to evade the moose, Koji had wrapped his chain around a tree so
  that he could no longer dodge its hooves.  That was when Doug
  stepped out and fired a shot into the air to try and scare off the
  moose.  At that, it turned toward him.  Doug was beside the
  house, near the door.  Koji was slightly farther from the house
  and closer to Doug than the moose was, but too close to the moose for
  Doug to be able to release him from his chain and get him to
  safety.  When the moose moved toward Koji, Doug fired at it. 
  When it then turned and moved toward him, he fired again and the moose
  went down.  The last shot was an accident, into the ground, as
  Doug was releasing the hammer that he’d cocked in preparation for
  another shot.

  The next sound I heard (not having seen any of the action after Doug
  stepped out) was an, “Ow!” from Doug.  That was enough to impel me
  from where I was cringing inside the door.  I opened it just in
  time for Koji to drag Doug, who had hold of his collar, into the
  house.  The exclamation from Doug had come as he was trying to
  unclip Koji from his chain.   The dog was lunging and
  straining so hard to get away from the dead moose that Doug had torn a
  thumbnail on the clip.

  When Koji reached me, he stopped and leaned against my leg.  I
  started checking him for injuries.  The paw he was holding up was
  tender and he didn’t want me touching it, but I managed to determine
  that there weren’t any broken bones.  Two of the claws on that
  foot were smashed, broken off short, but otherwise there was no sign of
  injury, no blood anywhere.  He was in a panic, though, his eyes
  showing more white than I’d ever seen before.  He trembled and
  leaned against me, and I held onto him, probably showing a lot of white
  in my eyes, too.  Doug just looked stunned.  I reached for
  the gun, took it from him and laid it down.

  to be continued…
  after I get the pictures set up,
  don’t know when, maybe later today….

  • 6:21 pm
  • 12 Comments