Permit me to add that the childhood lesson I learned regarding the cost of winning the prize was further reinforced by the auditorium being a huge, icy cold barn of a place with seats that felt like they were carved out of stone. It didn’t take long before my siblings—who had been dragged along to share in my triumph—start looking daggers at me. While my parents bore up admirably, when the ordeal finally ended they made no attempt to slow us kids down in our race to freedom.
Read more →If you’re one of those people who tend to think more linearly than I do, you’re probably wondering what the link between ice, mice, and bacteria is. If I added my granddaughter and parasites to the line-up, you might feel even more confused. But there is a certain method behind this madness because, in the natural world, everything’s related one way or another. You can find a BBC article on, as well as a link to, the original study described in the podcast here.
Read more →Shortly before I edited this podcast, I read a short story entitled “Silent Night” by Baynard Kendrick, a once-famous mystery writer whose work has since faded into more or less obscurity. The main character in “Silent Night’ is a blind private investigator who has developed his other senses to compensate for his loss of sight. He solves a nefarious holiday kidnapping by identifying the source of a unique sound on a recorded ransom note that was so familiar to the kidnappers that they overlooked it. The event described in this podcast also points out how easy it is to
Read more →I don’t know why impatience is particularly on my mind lately. Maybe it’s because I sometimes so wish I had a magic wand that I could use to give it to my clients. And yet even as I write that I can’t help laughing. Instantly conferring patience on someone: isn’t that some kind of oxymoron? Fortunately, I don’t have to provide this service because nature has provided us with all kinds of good teachers. It’s just a question of knowing where to look.
Read more →When you think of the best diet for a cat or a dog, what comes to mind? This podcast was the result of a report of a publicity stunt that reminded me that “best” is a relative term at best.
Read more →In addition to the feline-canine frolicking that triggered the phenomenon described in this podcast, Bamboo has added yet another game to his repertoire. I call this the Cleopatra Game because he grabs the edge of a rug with his claws, rolls himself up it it, and waits for the dogs to check it out. When they do, he growls and makes them jump. If they move closer, his paw snakes out and clobbers them. When I come along and unroll him in an attempt to reclaim the rug, occasionally he looks miffed. But more often he ignores me and
Read more →The relativity of normal seems to be a recurrent theme of mine as I gain more knowledge about and experience with animals displaying different behaviors. If I had to guess, I’d say I’ve become more aware of the shrinking definition of normal because the aforementioned knowledge and experience has caused me to expand my own definition of it during that same period. It seems like that should mean something. But I’m not sure what that is.
Read more →Shoveling the ice-covered snow that led to the canine behavior described in this podcast was also an interesting experience. That the compressed snow was heavy goes without saying. More interesting was that I could read the history of the storm in the layers of compressed snow and ice. I couldn’t help but think about how geologists and paleontologists use a similar technique to determine what happened thousands of years ago. Had I wanted to and had the strength to, I could have broken huge slabs of ice off the surface and sent them skidding across the lawn to get
Read more →First, a link to Storypeople, the source of the gift that precipitated this podcast. And a not-very-good-but-you-get-the-idea picture of the gift itself: I don’t know whether it’s a function of age and experience or dementia, but lately it seems to me that in the realm of quality human-animal interactions, a lot of what’s going on reminds me of the old saying, “The hurrider I go, the behinder I get.” Sometimes we ‘re in such a hurry to make changes in our animals as fast as possible, we don’t realize the result actually puts us farther behind. When this is
Read more →This was a tough podcast to edit because there’s a place in it where I speak in a loud voice to illustrate my point. When that part of the recording occurred, I had the same problem I had when I recorded the audio books. My animals are so used to me speaking softly that the volume and tone of my voice caused them to orient toward me immediately with, unfortunately, apprehensive expressions on their furry little faces. How do you communicate to animals that you’re not yelling when they hear you yelling? Or hear what certainly sounds like your
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