People & animals can be mutually beneficial

Do you say “Ah-h-h-h-h!" or "Ug-g-g-g-g-h!" at the thought of the “dog days of summer”? 

                                                                                              AccuWeather pic

Much preferring heat and humidity (and a swimming pool) to the perpetual shivers of winter, I’m OK with the sultry days named for Sirius the Dog Star.  When Sirius rose with the sun in July, some ancients believed this added heat to the day.  And so, that high-season weather became known as the dog days of summer.

Such weather can definitely bring out the best in  people.  For instance, “G,” the handyman I know and admire, who drives 2 or all 3 of his rescue dogs with him to a job site.  Once there, he leaves his truck engine running so his pals stay cool in the cab.  He shrugs off his great good deed as if there were no other alternative.

That’s true animal advocacy.

Now consider “S,” a career cat specialist, who, besides her phone-consult time, attends to 8  formerly feral kittens who live temporarily in her large (thank St. Gertrude, patron of cats) bathroom with a mom cat until they find homes; 3 family cats and a 4^th  needing to be isolated.  And did I mention her human family of 4 others? 

That’s all kid stuff to “S.”  After weeks of planning, she has begun to build a catio for Spot, who has feline leukemia, and for other felines’ sake, lives alone in the capacious (thanks again, St. Gertrude!) house.  However, he’ll soon have his own custom-made indoor-outdoor space -- and share it with another cat “S” plans to find with the same diagnosis.

The dog days of summer should be so good for all animals!

(BTW, if you know of other good-for-animals deeds people are performing, please let us know about them via a comment here, and thanks!)

T. rex approaches

Moving even further back than the ancient origins of the dog days of summer, we come to Tyrannosaurus rex, resident of earth 66 million years ago.  The US Postal Service has announced the issue of a set of 4 T. rex first-class stamps at the end of this month.

One image shows T. rex as a fluffy (!) infant; the second, as a hunting juvenile; and the third as a full-grown predator. The fourth shows a T. rex skeleton at the Smithsonian.

As “forever” stamps, always good as first-class postage, the T. rex foursome is both fearsome and colorful.  All the kids you know who are into dinosaurs might love to receive something in the mail with such a stamp.  (“Collect all four!”)

A year-round read

   

I wonder how Sy Montgomery, my latest discovery on the subject of animals, would relate to a T. rex. After all, she has befriended such creatures as tree kangaroos and emus, a giant tarantula and an octopus, besides more predictable animals in our world.  

She writes about all of them in How to be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals, her beautifully written, designed and illustrated book (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018) -- with themes that include the otherness and sameness of people and animals, and how we learn to become empathetic.  

In short, Montgomery says, “Knowing someone who belongs to another species can enlarge your soul in surprising ways.”  

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. . . . For the animal shall not be measured by man.  In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.  They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”  -- Henry Beston in The Outermost House (1928)

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