The Phobic Do-Gooder

 A Pause in the Workday 

An office building where I used to work is wrapped in tall, wide windows. One winter day, something hit the glass not 20 feet from where I stood. There was a loud thump, and when I looked, a dark shape fell.

Image, Teece Aronin

I hurried to the window and peered down. On the ground, a sparrow lay on its back, its head submerged in snow. Its little breast rose and fell, rose and fell, and if it hadn't been for that, I would have sworn it was dead. 

I worried that if the bird didn't right itself soon, it would suffocate, but I hesitated to help. I love birds, but I love them from a distance because I'm a little bit phobic about them - fish, too. I think my fear is that they'll flap or flutter in my eyes.  

One of my coworkers came over to see what I was looking at, and because she was famously tenderhearted, I asked, "So, Jean, what are you going to do?"

An Origami Bird

While Jean was off looking for a box and I kept useless watch over the sparrow, one tiny leg sprang up and then the other, as if an origami bird were unfurling in the snow. 

Next, the sparrow flipped right-side-up, blinked, and looked around. It wore a party hat of snow on its head and another, smaller one, atop its beak. 

Suddenly, there was Jean, gingerly traipsing up to the bird, cardboard box in hand. When she got close, the bird took off but fell again. Jean came closer, and this time, when the sparrow took off, it kept going, faster and higher until it was clear that it needed neither Jean nor the box, and certainly not me. It disappeared into the wild, gray yonder.  

I need to get over my phobias before they stop me from helping when there is no Jean around. The fact that something is different from us doesn't mean we don't share the world with it, and it doesn't mean we shouldn't help. 

Besides, maybe some of the things that flap or flutter have a phobia about me. 

The A-Team

The older I get, the simpler I get - and if anyone makes any jokes, they're out of the will while I'm still of sound mind. I blame the A-Team, but more about them in a minute. 

Silas treating the $29 bedspread much nicer than my

heirloom quilt - the little schnook. 

I've always gravitated toward the simple and the quaint but I'm finding that aging and animals have boosted that tendency big time. However, I refuse to allow beasts to completely ruin the House and Garden lifestyle to which I plan to become accustomed. Still, animals can get you simplified REAL fast if that's already your bent. 

Living with the kids and me are Hope, our dog, Kitt, our cat, and Silas, our kitten. Before the fur-clad A-Team (Animal Team) came along, I bought expensive bedspreads. I gave up on that yesterday and picked out a sweet little reversible quilt at a local discount store for $29, and a chair cushion for about five bucks. 

This chair is now squirreled

away in a corner of my

bedroom. Correction: This 
chair now helps make up a
charming little reading nook 
in my bedroom.

Oddly, it seems that cat fights and dog dances atop the bed slowed to a trickle with the new spread. Apparently, the cheaper my decor, the less desire the team feels to mess it up. Maybe they value the simpler things in life too.

I also moved two of my favorite chairs (purchased before Silas' arrival) into my bedroom because he was more likely to wreck them in the living room. 

But on the bright side, I hardly ever had comfortable chairs or a reading nook in the bedroom before, and now I have two - two chairs and two nooks. One single person can never have too many reading nooks in one small bedroom. Sad to say, however, I prefer to read in bed. 

And this is my reading

nook for sunny days when

no lamp is required. 

But the A-Team isn't only Hope, Kitt and Silas. Inspired by a book I bought, All You Can Eat in Three Square Feet, I put in a garden last spring. It became a food bank for every chipmunk, rabbit, squirrel and bird within a five mile radius. Now I have to make another plan - maybe with more container gardening and mesh next year. 

But again, looking on the bright side, outwitting the local fauna helps keep me sharp much as it did for Elmer Fudd. The entire yield of this year's harvest: three tiny radishes, enough lettuce for one small salad, and eight jalapeno peppers. 

But that's okay. I have plenty of dog and cat food, and that's what really matters. 

Sam Spayed, Dog Detective - The Case of the Dead Cat Squawking

It was a sunny day in a city of hisses and growls. An October chill had me turning up the collar of my trench coat. 

Whiskers LeMieux playing dead. (Actually

the Aronin's sleeping tabby, Kitt).

Image: Sydney Aronin

And who am I, you ask? I'm Sam Spayed, Dog Detective.

Things were hopping and I don't mean the fleas. The grounds around City Hall were muzzle to muzzle with revelers celebrating Squawktoberfest.

Squawktoberfest is a three-day celebration marking a night in 1692 when a mob of angry villagers flipped their mental kibble and rounded up three ravens rumored to be witches.

"Burn them at the stake!" screamed the mob and the whole time they're yelling, they're dragging those birds into the village square. According to city lore, the birds were roped to stakes by a trouble-making bunch called the Cocker brothers while a gray tabby got busy preparing to set fire to the birds' tail feathers.

Then the ravens did something nobody expected. They hypnotized the tabby and the Cocker brothers into thinking they were the ravens. Those dogs and that cat started squawking like birds then ran around the village square setting each other's tails on fire. 

Meanwhile, the real ravens hypnotized each other into thinking they were axes and chopped through the ropes. The rest of the villagers saw what was happening, screamed and scattered.

When the fur and the feathers stopped flying, the tabby and the Cocker brothers were sporting singed stumps where their tails used to be.

Now my friends, get a load of this: that cat and those pooches are supposed to be the ancestors of the present-day Cocker Spaniel and the present-day Manx cat. Never mind that Cocker Spaniels with stub tails have undergone a procedure called "docking," people fall for that old yarn anyway and it's been the backstory on Squawktoberfest since it started more than 30 years ago.

But wait, folks; it gets better: These days people say that the ghost of that match-happy tabby haunts the town square one night every year during Squawktoberfest. They say they've seen him prowling the steps of City Hall, flapping his arms and squawking. They'll tell you that not only is he doomed to climb those steps one night each year but that he has to do it with his shroud forever hiked up over his nub of a tail. 

Something about this whole ghost tabby nonsense smelled fishy so I set up a stakeout behind a bush at the southeast corner of the City Hall building. By 10 p.m., I was all tucked in nice and warm behind the bush - and the flask of Jack Russells whiskey I'd been sipping from helped keep me toasted - I mean toasty. Since the ghost tabby wasn't due to appear till around midnight, there was plenty of time for old Jack and me to do some serious paling around. But I'd still have to keep my wits about me in case the ghost did show. 

Midnight struck, there was no ghost, Jack was gone, and I had nothing but my hiccups for company. 

Just then I heard something squawking. I looked in the direction of City Hall and there it was: a shadowy feline shape, its gauzy shroud hitched up over its stumpy tail. Its paws were tucked under its armpits as it flapped its arms up and down, more like a chicken than a raven.

I took off at a run and the cat saw me coming. Unfortunately even ghost cats are faster than a dog full of Jack Russells tripping on a trench coat. I threw the coat to the winds and closed in. The cat, in the meantime, hiked up his shroud and ran faster.

I was on that pussy in a New York minute and we fell. Down the steps of City Hall we rolled and when we finally stopped, I was on top. The cat was no ghost and it didn't take long to get the whole story once I twisted his arm, growling at him to cough up that fur-ball called the truth.

"Okay! Okay!" he yelled. "I'll tell you everything!"

Turns out the "ghost" was Whiskers LeMieux, a tough little Manx whose only claim to fame was that he was the founder of Squawktoberfest.

"Aren't you too long in the tooth to be flaunting your rump and your stump?" I asked. He wouldn't stop struggling so I muscled him a little harder.

"You idiot!" hissed LeMieux. "A thing like Squawktoberfest doesn't just run itself! It needs publicity! It needs mystique! It needs  - GHOSTS!"

I didn't appreciate being called an idiot, but Whiskers had a point. Attendance at Squawktoberfest had been lagging until the ghost made its first appearance last year.

I looked around, didn't see a soul and was glad I hadn't blown Whiskers' cover. Face it, drumming up interest in Squawktoberfest by showing folks his backside is pretty harmless in the scheme of things, and Squawktoberfest does have a certain educational merit. 

After all, a flash in the dark can be pretty enlightening.