New Year's? Right. . . .; birding trail status and new b & b;
stickers, junk mail, and kitty hijinks

By Bebe and Sissy Fenstermaker

It's the first of the year. How do I know? Fireworks, black-eyed peas, silly hats, champagne? None of those, thank you, they don't signal it for me. I always know it's New Year's because a runaway dog shows up here on the Ranch. It is terrified and in trouble. It has run for its life to get away from fireworks.
Exploding fireworks strike terror in dogs and all animals. Imagine what any animal must think fireworks are, gunshots aimed directly at them, loud angry shouts at them, rocks, you name it. Anyone with an ounce of kindness would take a dog or any pet inside for that one particular night.
Like the clock striking midnight each New Year, up go lost dog signs all over utility poles and fence posts. (I'll also predict those signs will stay up until July and then blow down and stick on a fence so we are forever reminded of the dog owners' stupidities.)
This year it's a lost German shepherd and a lost "brown bird" dog. I haven't seen the shepherd but let me tell you about the "brown bird" dog. New Year's night I heard a dog wolfing all night long from a new direction. I felt an animal was in trouble. I told the family about it the next day and we heard a bark during the day. We called neighbors but they had not seen a strange dog. We went looking in the direction we had heard the sounds but found no dog. That night and the next were the coldest of the year, down to 18 degrees. The third evening the neighbors were walking their dog along the creek and, hearing a yelp, came across the creek to check. Sure enough, a dog was wound around a little cedar. He had been there for two horrible nights, no water or food, tied up tight against the cedar. He was on a ten-foot cable that was attached to a choke collar. Every time he tried to move he was choked down. Another night would have surely been his ending. The feral hogs would have given him no quarter had they found him. No water and food would have done it, too. After the small yelp the dog stayed silent. That was why we had not heard him. The dog was frightened and very touchy about being handled. He growled and snarled when I tried to approach his head. It seems as though, in addition to his other afflictions, his owner has struck him in the face, an untenable abuse.
How anyone could have tied up an animal to a cable attached to a choke collar is beyond me. The cruelty of that act alone is indefensible. A choke collar is for walking and working with a dog on a leash. A choke collar is never meant for tying a dog. This dog was a young dog going through his first New Year's fireworks. To tie him outside with no sense of protection from the terrifying noises was cruelty beyond comprehension. I'm floored by the insensitivity of this kind of person. How does this kind of people exist? How is it they can't sense how another creature might feel under situations like this? I can say this with conviction, I do not want to know this kind of person. I don't even want to feel I am of the same species as them.
After a good supper, I put the dog in my dog run. I lined the doghouse with feed sacks and put in a thick dog bed. He had to stay there because of his unfriendliness and because he wasn't housebroken. He was assured of a warmer rest than the nights he had already endured. The next morning he got two breakfasts with fresh cooked chicken garnish. He still curled his lip at me. I realized I had to pull out all stops in order to get him into the pickup for the trip to the Boerne Animal Shelter. Slowly he allowed me to reach in and get him by the collar while he munched his second dog treat. He wasn't happy about it but at least his teeth were otherwise occupied. To get him into the pickup I put a treat up on the seat and he jumped in. The trip into town was fine and his spirits picked up as he looked out the window. The poor thing may have thought he was being driven home or out to a bird hunt.
At the shelter the nice women took him in and asked particulars about where he had been found. Sure enough, someone had been calling about him. He is a very well-bred bird dog and had cost someone quite a lot of money. My feeling was the owner didn't want to lose his monetary "investment" but is incapable of investing care, certainly no love, in the dog's treatment. I expressed this to the shelter officials. They also were disgusted with the cable line and said the choke collar was dreadful treatment. I left them to assess his fear of being touched. The shelter gets many runaway dogs at New Year's; they have come to expect it.
I don't, it's unacceptable.

* * *

It has been raining for almost an entire month. I'm not complaining about the rain, which has come in slow, misting drifts. I am pretty tired, however, of gray days, loss of horizon, and the enclosed feeling. Slogging through six inches of mud to feed every morning and evening has been no picnic. In fact, things don't look very pretty coated with caliche and wringing wet, not cows, horses, roads, pickups, pants legs, dogs, or shoes. Last Christmastime I had our road worked on so guests wouldn't have to bump over rocks and fall into potholes. In our wisdom the road guy and I picked an old pit nearby to borrow dirt from. We selected well; it was caliche marl. To this day, when driving past the barn in wet weather it takes super-human effort to avoid sliding off the road and into the barn. The stuff grips the tires like glue and oozes in all directions, taking the pickup with it.
Yesterday the sun came out. It also got colder. By midnight I could stand it no longer and put on a coat to go turn the heat lamps on in the chicken house. Flipping on the outside lights at the house, I realized I had to feel my way to the barn and birdhouse. My flashlight was not handy but I would be rewarded for taking no light. The stars were beautiful in the crystal-clear night sky. Turning around to return from the barn, I was given a treat. The two houses and compound yard were aglow in the lamplight, vines trailed the fence, contrasting shapes of trees and shrubs completed the scene. I could have been in England. I could have been in rural Germany. The surrounding star-lit darkness framed a pretty Christmas card I shall not soon forget.
Our friend Eleanor with the mules had decided to get another mule! She is even talking about a fourth one. I am overwhelmed and amazed. I think she's going for a 20-mule team, just like the old TV show. She told me that when he died her great-grandfather owned 100 mules. (I wonder the cause of his death. . . .) I told her the story of my grandmother buying land in Ft. Davis and finding its ownership traced back to her grandfather, Samuel A. Maverick. My uncle, aghast, said to Grandma, "Mama, I hope you aren't planning to buy back everything Mr. Maverick owned in Texas!" Eleanor's great-grandfather and Mr. Maverick were business partners. They seem to have had some traits in common. Their descendants do, too.
Eleanor had come into some luck. She had a dreadful neighbor renting the house closest to her farm. He hunted outside his one acre, he drowned her house in floodlights all night long, and he was verbally abusive whenever confronted with his poaching. To everyone's joy, he moved about two weeks ago. There was some issue of a run-in with the game warden; anyway, he's gone. Eleanor rented the little house and has turned it into a bed and breakfast. It is named The Blue Mule and is ready for occupation. Her husband David has some of his handmade furniture in it and it is charming. Now anyone coming to visit or to do bird watching at the Maverick Ranch has a wonderful place to stay.
The Maverick Ranch - Fromme Farm is officially part of the Heart of Texas Birding Trail. We do bird watching tours by appointment and there are many wintering birds here now in addition to our regulars. We are home to the two endangered birds, the Black-Capped Vireo and the Golden-Cheeked Warbler. We are in the process of creating additional black-capped vireo habitat in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. We are in the book and available.
The Fermata web site for our part of the birding trail is www.worldnaturetrails.com/nature_trails/tx. Look up Maverick Ranch - Fromme Farm, read about us, and come see us.

Bebe Fenstermaker

I don't suppose I'm the only one that hates to deal with those stickers that appear on merchandise and food. They never come off easily. The paper either splits, leaving the sub-layer plus the sticky stuff still stuck to the object, or the paper comes off but the sticky stuff doesn't. Whatever, one can rest assured, the sticky stuff will remain on the object. Yes, I have tried lighter fluid and fingernail polish remover on it and what is left is an area smeared with a gooey, sticky mess. And how about those nasty little tags that are slit about three or four times. I find myself pealing each little piece off and often with the same results as above. However, I believe stickers found on food bother me the most. If the fruit or vegetable has a thin skin I leave the sticker on until I am ready to eat or cook it. Then I just remove the sticker knowing that a like amount of skin goes with it. The sticker will come off thicker-skinned produce fairly well, but not if I get it wet first. I know of one person who when shopping for bananas will remove all those "company" stickers and leave them in a row on the shipping box. Store managers should teach their personnel to identify the various kinds of produce so those sticky things would not be necessary.
Here comes gripe number two. Every week I throw away two sets of the same junk mail. One comes loose, by itself, while the other is stuck in the newspaper. I generally pick the mail up at the post office in the morning, and already on "junk mail day" the two tall wastebaskets are overflowing with the stuff. Every week! The practice occurs all over the country. I am appalled just considering the waste. I wonder if it is recycled to make paper for future junk mail or just tossed out into the landfills. If recycling is not occurring, how many trees are destroyed to make paper for more junk mail? I can readily understand other countries' incredulity of ours, the most technically advanced while at the same time being one of the, if not the most, wasteful.
The kittens, Brassy and Russ, are now cattens, but have regressed back into the terrible twos. On the other hand, have they just become teenagers? Russ has perfected walking like a crab when advancing towards his sister for a confrontation. Brassy has perfected squirting through the door and arriving at Great Auntie Hooter's food dish at the same instant to scarf up any remaining morsel. The other day I caught Russ lying on his back, stretched out and reaching over his head with both front legs, one of which was probing up a drainpipe. I suppose some unsuspecting creature had run up it to escape him. I'm suspicious Brassy, if not both, have acquired a taste for deer pellets. Genevieve ignores or tolerates them hanging around; however, her fawns are skittish of the kittens and move off. The chickens and peacocks are hopeless. They continue to run from them while the guineas usually ignore them.

Sissy Fenstermaker