Merry Month of May?

The month of May has ended up being a bit more busy and stressful than I expected.

A friend from Iowa had planned to visit during May. She’s been wanting to visit for a very long time. However, that plan fell through and I’m not sure if a visit will happen this year. We shall see. At the moment, I think we are over-stressed by visitors.

Whenever our close friend (a different friend) has medical appointments in our area, he often stays overnight with us. He lives about two hours away with his very large dog, which he adopted several months ago. The dog is easy going but changes the dynamics in our household in major ways. I’ll get to that in a moment. Our friend had major surgery in early May. The original plan was that he stay with us a couple days after his surgery and then his daughter, who lives downstate, would drive up to take him home. However, just before the surgery the doctor told him that he wanted him to stay in the area for two weeks afterwards—until his follow up appointment—to make sure he was recovering well. So our friend’s stay was extended. With his pre-surgery appointments and then the two weeks after his surgery, he ended up staying about 3 weeks total.

We were very glad to help our friend. He is more “family” than our biological families. However, we did have a struggle with some boundaries, the most major of which involved the animals. Although his dog Cletus is easy going, our Hannah was starved by her previous owners so she’s very obsessed and protective of her food. We understand her abuse issues, we give her love as well as structure/correction so she’s a loving dog. However, whenever our friend fed Cletus, Hannah fought to get to it because [obviously] it belonged to her. We didn’t let her have it, knowing she’d get protective if she thought it was hers. When our friend accidently left Cletus bowl in the car and—gasp—poured Cletus’ food in her bowl Hannah went ballistic. She ended up attacking our cat, Timmy, who she felt was too close to her bowl at feeding time. This had never happened before. Timmy seems to be ok, but we isolated him and Clara in an unheated hallway/storage room that connects the main part of the house with the garage. There is a pet door between the areas so usually the cats can access both areas, but we shut the door to keep the cats safe until the friend went home and we could work with Hannah—without distraction or chaos—to make sure she re-accepted the cats. (We are still working on it.)

Meanwhile, we asked our friend to please make sure the dogs are fed separately so Hannah doesn’t get aggressive about food. He listened for a few days, but then didn’t, and didn’t listen to our other instructions regarding Hannah and Cletus, which caused Hannah to misbehave, which caused us to correct her, which caused our friend to say, “She’s ok,” except that if her behavior was “ok” we wouldn’t have been correcting her. I think our friend started thinking he needed to train Hannah (because obviously we weren’t doing a good enough job), not realizing that his ignoring our instructions and challenging our correction were what was causing the behavioral problems. We don’t want/need our friend to train our dog; we just need him to follow our instructions. It’s been frustrating and stressful.

Our friend will return for another overnight stay for his second follow-up appointment next week. We are struggling with how to be compassionate and also firmly set necessary boundaries that we absolutely need respected. I’m not looking forward to it. Sigh.

In addition, this year we are watching our son’s cat while he’s off working on his Great Lakes bulk carrier. His normal schedule is to work a month and get 2 weeks off throughout the shipping season. We had Astrid for a month and then JJ retrieved her for his two weeks home. He returns to the ship next week and we will get her back again. Astrid is an “only cat” and she never got used to having other cats around her, especially Clara who kept trying (unsuccessfully) to make friends with her. Astrid hid herself behind a picnic basket on the top shelf in the storage room in what we began calling her “fortress of solitude.” She came out purring whenever we entered the room so we could pet her, but she always hissed at the cats. I was hoping to integrate her into the main part of the house, but we don’t want to risk that with Hannah having behavioral problems. Sigh.

Last week the 8 chicks we ordered arrived at the farm store. We set them up in a cage in the storage room that the cats were in. We had a heat light for them but I think they were still too cold and two of them died—the first chicks we have ever lost. 😥 So we ended up moving the cage into a bathroom where we usually put new chicks. Besides being in the heated part of the house, we have a space heater in there for more warmth. The surviving 6 are doing well.

May had it’s happy moments too. All winter/spring we’ve enjoyed watching a doe and her last year’s triplets on our property. I think our property is their home area because they visit several times every day. This morning the doe gave birth to her new fawn. All morning I’ve watched her defend her fawn, patrolling the area and driving the triplets away from the area–as well as Theo, our outside cat. I think that the doe was waiting for her fawn’s legs to strengthen because after several hours she walked away with her little one following behind.

The doe was out of range of my wildlife camera and I was tempted to reposition it, but I didn’t want to risk her driving me away also so I waited until she and her fawn had gone away before I went out to move the camera. I was able to video them with my phone before they left. I had to set my phone camera to its highest magnification so it’s a little blurry and jiggly, but you can still see them.

Doe with newborn fawn
Fawn following after Mama

We also have a Mama opossum visiting our orchard at night. Her belly appears extremely “swollen,” no doubt because her pouch is filled with young ones. Opossums are very interesting. They are the only marsupials in North America. They give birth to a litter of 1-13 undeveloped young (known as “joeys”) after a gestation period of about 12.5 days. They are blind, hairless, and about the size of a honeybee but they must crawl into the mother’s pouch and attach to a nipple to survive. The joeys remain in the pouch, nursing and growing, for about two months. After two months, they begin to emerge from the pouch and will eventually ride on their mother’s back. They become independent in four months.

There is also a female turkey with a nest nearby. She often wanders browses through our yard. She comes so frequently that I decided to name her: Esmeralda.

Mama Possum

I love watching the wildlife. Some people find delight and reduce stress by traveling, doing art or crafts, playing music, dancing, baking…We find delight and reduce stress by enjoying the beauty around us and observing wildlife. Which is why…

…Our friend lets Cletus roam freely and chuckles that his dog loves to chase wildlife off “his property.” Only our property isn’t his dog’s property. We didn’t make a big issue of it while our friend was recovering from surgery. We just asked him to not let his dog outside if he saw wildlife. However, when he returns next week, I will insist that Cletus not be allowed to roam as freely as before. I don’t want him to chase or threaten the wildlife at any time because we have specifically made our property “wildlife friendly.” I especially don’t want the wildlife threatened at this time of year when they are giving birth and raising their young.

Sigh.