The stages of life
Walking along the lagoon and looking at the immature herons with their snowy white plumage waiting to change to dark, I thought about Loca and how happy she seemed walking in the park on this fall morning. I thought how we have animals at three stages of life. Loca is a puppy who wants to chase just for the chase, she doesn’t care what, or why, or when.
Bam Bam is in the prime of his life, he has not lost the desire to chase, but he does it with the least amount of exertion, positioning himself strategically to be able to bat Arlene or Loca on the head without having to move an inch from his perch.
Arlene loves the sprawled position, preferably near a corner or a piece of furniture to avoid getting stepped on, she has bitemares dreaming of chasing, of past chases, and she sometimes puts the moose in her mouth, a vestige of days gone by.
I noticed as my mind was contemplating these stages that Loca was being so sweet and quiet and I wondered why. Then I spied it. She had snatched a Popeyes chicken wing left behind near a picnic table and I could see the tip in the corner of her mouth. Normally, she will relinquish what she has on command, but this morning she was having none of it, she WANTED that chicken wing and had been savoring it instead of crunching it, knowing that if I heard the bones grind between her teeth I would have snatched it away from her seconds before. I wrestled it out of her mouth and she looked at me with eyes that said, “Why’d you have to go and ruin a good thing?”