Sunday Morning

~ Live & Learn

I, said a prayer for the deer, as we always do when dispensing with wildlife, like the pileated woodpecker that flew straight into one of the windows on the side of the house and then collapsed dead on the windshield of our car. My God, was that upsetting…

Laurel, for all of her sometimes hard-boiled feelings about the foibles of human beings, had boundless feelings of responsibility for animals, the more innocent, the more boundless the feeling. She regularly escorted bugs out of the house, even the ladybugs that had a tendency to blight the place in fall and spring. She resisted even my vacuuming and releasing when there were dozens of them. Spiders were escorted out. And she had a very practical method for removing bees and wasps that involved an overturned glass and an index card.

~ Rick Moody, The Long Accomplishment: A Memoir of Hope and Struggle in Matrimony (August 6, 2019)

Photo of the artist Laurel Nakadate by Sabine Mirlesse via artspace.com

25 thoughts on “Sunday Morning”

      1. Just back from the garden, my 80′ watering tour finished, dripping from a less than tight ancient garden hose all over the place, as the water is rinning from the hose directly over my shirt, trousers, heavy winter socks (all to prevent me from getting more than 20bites per day) into my garden boots and now my ‘sitting’ is wet too…. You see, I’m VERY close to nature, in every respect.

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          1. heavy protection. I smear an anti-mosquito spray all over my exposed skin, but there are also tons of tiny critters jumping up from the ground, in the grass, falling from bushes and trees – it’s kill for kill out there….

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  4. My French Canadian grandmother used to pick hornets off window screens and put them back outside; my co-saving fate was sealed (though not with stinging bugs!). Did you ever read of why Walt Disney came to animate animals?

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      1. It makes for a good story and I’m sure it factored in greatly, but perhaps even though true it is not the main reason. At 7, bored Walt set out to capture an owl who had landed nearby. He finally grabbed him, but the owl flapped larger than expected wings and tried clawing to get away and it so startled Walt, he threw it to the ground and stomped on it, killing it. There are a number of owls in Disney films! For more trivia, check out Jim Korkus’ “Walt Disney and the owl” toward the bottom.

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