All CreaturesMarch/April 2019的目錄

BEFORE YOU CONTINUE with this editor’s note, turn to page 20 and read the amazing story of the honor an African elephant herd bestowed on the man everyone called the Elephant Whisperer. If you had any doubt that certain animals possess the depth of emotion we often reserve for ourselves, those doubts will be dispossessed once and for all. Go ahead, I’ll wait. My first inkling that animals grieve as deeply as we do came growing up in a cat-and-dog household. Pete the poodle arrived first, big for a miniature but small for a standard. I got to pick him out. Pete enjoyed the rule of the roost, as it were, for a few years at least, until Tika came along. Blue-eyed Siamese Tika was a gift to my sister…

MY BOXER mix Sophie lived for adventure. She would dig her way out of my fenced yard—no matter how many times I filled the holes—and chase the squirrels on our block. One evening, Sophie went after the UPS truck and got hit. She died not long after we arrived at the vet. My precious girl was gone. She was only seven years old. I told the doctor that I couldn’t bury her or keep her ashes. I was too devastated. “We have a lovely place nearby where we scatter the remains of patients,” the vet said. I took her up on her offer. I cried for weeks. Then I ran into Beth, a friend I hadn’t seen in years. “I’m so sorry about Sophie,” she said. “How did you know?”…

BLUE. THAT’S WHAT CAUGHT my eye as I passed the room. It wasn’t like the other rooms I’d been shown at the animal shelter. These kennels were tucked away, almost out of sight. The cats in them cowered, pressing themselves far away from the kennel doors as I got closer. But the vibrant blue of one cat’s eyes cut through the gloom. It was January 2017—only the start of the new semester, but the stress of nursing school was already getting to me. I have generalized anxiety disorder and suffer panic attacks. It’s something I manage with therapy and medication, but with all the tests, labs, clinical practice hours and late nights studying, I felt overwhelmed. Animals had been a great comfort to me while I was growing up, so…

MY HUSBAND HAS A SOFT SPOT for strays. Driving down the highway one rainy day, we spotted a hulking mass of grayish-black fur, with paws the size of a bear’s, wandering along the roadside. “We already have two dogs and two cats,” I protested as he pulled over. “We can’t just leave him there,” he said. “No telling what will happen to him.” He opened the door and the dog climbed in. “Okay,” I agreed, “but we have to try hard to find his owner.” The dog seemed friendly enough, but there was a look about him that spoke of a wilder nature. We called him Gus and ran ads in the paper and on the radio, but no one claimed him. For the next year and a half, Gus…

I WAS WORKING IN THE GARDEN when something flew into my left ear. I shook my head, expecting a fly or a mosquito to come buzzing out. It didn’t. I tipped my head and jumped up and down on one leg, but the bug only waited for me to stop. I slapped my ear and shouted, hoping to scare the thing out, but nothing happened. I decided to sing. No one can stand my singing, except this bug. I dribbled warm tap water into my ear. Nothing. I paced back and forth—still nothing. The bug was beginning to hurt, and I was beginning to tremble with fear. I lay down on the couch to calm myself. Within a few minutes, a tiny red ladybug was crawling on my cheek, and…

Apache was really my son Scott’s dog. He was a beautiful white, gray and brown large mixed breed—part Alaskan malamute and part German Shepherd was our best guess (there weren’t dog DNA tests back in the mid-1980s). He joined our family immediately after the death of our beloved family dog. One of my friends convinced me that getting a new pet right away would help the children deal with the loss and took 12-year-old Scott and his 11-year-old sister to the animal shelter to pick out a puppy. I wasn’t ready to love another dog, but I went along with the idea for the kids. I met Apache when I got home from work that day. He was cute but jumpy—always hiding under something and frightened by noise. A few…

Struggling with your dog’s or cat’s behavior? There may be a pet product that can help. We’ve done the research so you can find the right one for your needs. Remember: Some behavioral problems have a medical basis, so be sure to report any concern or change in behavior to your veterinarian first. Your pet is anxious or afraid When you leave the house, does your dog bark or whine incessantly, or your cat yowl? One option for addressing separation anxiety is calming pheromones.Pet pheromones mimic a calming chemical naturally released by a dog or a cat. Pheromones can come in the form of a handy room spray or mist, a plug-in diffuser, or a collar or bandana. Some pets are afraid of loud noises. A snug anxiety shirt or…

Q I just got two hermit crabs that are used to living together. One has a scablike black spot on the end of his claw that wasn’t there before. I don’t think he’d fight with his buddy. What could have happened, and what should I do? —Rachel K., Franklin, Tennessee A To best determine what the spot on your crab’s claw is, I recommend that he be seen by a veterinarian knowledgeable in hermit crab care. These crabs are very social animals that should be housed in pairs or groups, but any animal can fight. So it’s possible the spot is from an injury. It could be from an infection or a growth, or it might be a normal pigment variation. Without having a veterinarian check out the…

IT’S 5 A.M. AND MY ALARM clock crows—literally. Lucky for me, I’m an early bird. So is my rescue rooster, Bree. I’ll never forget the day we met. It was a sunny April morning in 2017. I was working at the Wild Bird Fund—New York City’s only rehabilitation center for sick, injured and orphaned wild birds—when a woman called, claiming she had rescued an exotic bird. I asked her to text me a photo. It was a baby chicken! Not exactly exotic, but definitely an uncommon sight on the streets of Manhattan. The caller brought in the bird. The fuzzy yellow chick was peeping loudly. I scooped the baby, who the staff named Bree, into the palm of my hand. Our eyes met and I was smitten. Bree stayed at…

The miniature black horse with a white nose and a flowing mane trotted into a room in Nashville’s Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. Some of the kids were in wheelchairs, some wore masks, some were hooked up to IVs, but they all squealed with excitement. “I can’t believe there’s a horse in the hospital!” a boy said. On this day, instead of undergoing challenging medical tests and procedures, these kids got to have fun with Magic the miniature mare. Magic is a member of Gentle Carousel Miniature Therapy Horses, an all-volunteer charity, based in Gainesville, Florida, and run by Debbie Garcia-Bengochea and her husband, Jorge. Teams of therapy horses work with families who have experienced traumatic events. Each year, the animals interact with more than 25,000 people of…

Fiona Presly can often be found working in her garden in Inverness, in the Scottish Highlands, but she never imagined that a chance encounter there would change her perspective on the natural world and humans’ role in it. Outside her former home, Fiona had often rescued bumblebees that had fallen into a rainwater tank. She would let them dry off on her hand, then return them to the heather flowers they loved. She wasn’t afraid of getting stung. That’s why she didn’t hesitate to help one spring morning in 2017, when she found a queen bumblebee lying on the wet grass in her Inverness garden. As the bee crawled onto her hand, Fiona noticed she had no wings. The little creature was very weak, so Fiona took her inside and…

I SAT ON MY PATIO, hung my head and cried. “God, please let me know that Charlie is with you.” My husband had passed away a few days earlier. We’d been married for 47 years. Without him I felt lost. I was thankful to have my three kids at home to help make arrangements, but I longed for comfort from God himself. Just then, a bright yellow butterfly appeared, fluttering its wings across the patio table. I called to my sons in the front yard, but it was too late. My butterfly was gone. “Mom!” my son Glen called to me a few minutes later. “I saw your butterfly—it circled the house three times.” Could it be? My daughter came outside and joined me on the patio. I’d hardly finished…

My husband and I were new empty nesters. Our twins, Annie and Tyler, were leaving home after graduating from college. I was excited for them—and worried. Would they be okay on their own? Had we prepared them for the challenges out there in the world? I was thinking about Annie and Tyler one day while pruning a huge nandina by our back door, when I discovered a nest with one little egg. How sad it didn’t hatch, I thought. The nest was tattered—and abandoned, I assumed—so I moved it to a table. An hour later I noticed a beautiful male cardinal flying back and forth to the bush, chirping, and realized he was looking for his nest. I returned it to the bush and put it between some strong branches.…