AK Animal Crackers 1`Where are They Now?

The narrator enjoys that the freedom of being without Facebook has given them time to start their own radio program at home. They record in their grandkids' room, which is perfect for sound absorption. The narrator used to write a column about nature and now wants to expand on that in their radio show. They share a story about their horses and how they use natural horsemanship techniques. They also talk about their intelligent horse, their fish's survival skills, and their belief that all creatures have skills that surpass humans. They have never been hurt by animals, except for some minor incidents. Animal Crackers. Part 1. January 28, 2024. The best part about being without Facebook is having more time on my hands, so I can do things like start my own radio program and set up a recording studio at home. I am in the smallest room of the house, the first room I remodeled when we moved here to Brookings, the grandkids' room. I so wanted them to visit, even if it was only a couple of weeks every year. I ripped up the linoleum and laid cork floors myself. It is barely large enough for bunk beds and a lot of stuffed toys, and as that turns out, this is perfect for absorbing sound. I can even pull Vincent's comforter from the top bunk over my shoulders as I work from my computer, which is propped on a chunk of hardboard laid over Victoria's bottom bunk headboards. So, I am recording this in my grandkids' soft cave, so to speak, with my mic on the board, my HP in front of me, Audacity turned on, dressed in my robe, at 5 a.m. And, of course, my golden retriever, Kaiya, is quietly laying at my feet on a fluffy round alpaca rug. So now you know the true reason about why I call this segment Animal Crackers, which, although it may not be as original of a name as I first thought, it is in honor of my grandkids, who let me borrow this room 50 weeks of the year, and the creatures we adore, who make life feel so sweet and lovable. I used to write a regular online column called Back to Nature. You can find it on Quora. At the time, my husband Rich and I were caretakers for 150 acres in Bayfield, Colorado, where we got to watch the daily antics of herds of deer and elk, wild turkeys, coyotes, and fox, minks, and black bears, as well as care for our champion-bred horses and golden retrievers. It was a nature's paradise, yet a solitary existence, very peaceful. With plenty of time on my hands, I wrote and answered readers' questions on Back to Nature. That's why I thought to reopen this in our radio format as a lively Q&A section between the serious issues of the day and the closing story. I'm going through my old questions and readers' comments. I will expand my answers and read them to you and try to inspire you, our radio listeners, to submit your own questions and stories that we can read on the radio here at KCIW. Here's one I hope you enjoy. A reader asked, Have you ever discovered something about your pet that shocked you? I answered with an anecdote that happened just a few weeks before. Film crews for Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Studio were filming a segment of Where Are They Now? on our property, and they were shocked by something they witnessed. But Rich and I, so accustomed to our way of living with the animals we enjoy, were not. Our admiration keeps growing out of respect for the animals, not only our pets, but also the furry and feathered visitors that we enjoy seeing every day. My husband Rich and I were influenced by the Pirelli School of Natural Horsemanship. It's a humane way of bonding with your horse, or, as we discovered, any animal you live with, for that matter. The method is taught in the nearby town of Pagosa Springs, where Pat and Linda Pirelli lived. The goal is to create a focus on a true and equal partnership between rider and horse. Part of it is to clue your partner regarding your expectations by using hand signals, whistles, and body language. We have no barbed wire fences that could injure our horses anywhere over our 20-acre meadow parcel. We could not possibly contain them in our Rocky Mountains surrounding us. They are free to wander as they please. We only use a benign white tape secured between flimsy, flexy posts to let them know where the boundary lines are, which, roughly 364 days of the year, they pretty much obey. Raven's Girl is our half-Arab descendant of War Admiral, distant cousin to Seabiscuit. We had her official pedigree framed on the wall, and in it, you can see sweepstakes earnings on her ancestry going all the way back to Man of War. It's kind of humbling, actually, to see that. Her lineage has earned more horse racing prize money than my family did in their human rat-race over the same time period of roughly 80 years. She is, beyond a doubt, the smartest horse we have ever met. She watches everything with keen interest and is the alpha mare of our entire 20-acre valley and the surrounding mountains. I have even observed her, ever curious, nuzzling the drill bit with her lips as my husband was working on her barn. He was drilling loose boards into the siding. As if she was trying to take the drill in her mouth and help him. Or that she enjoyed feeling the vibrations of the bit against her sensitive mouth. And boy, are those lips seriously sensitive and multifunctional, like we use our fingers. We feel it is a shame to restrict their mouths, which is why we use an easy-slip rope hackamore to guide gently, not to control. Girl has never had a bit in her mouth. At any rate, whatever it was, nuzzling the drill bit against her lips demonstrates, to me, the trust that's possible between man and horse. Remarkable. Even more so because Girl was a rescue horse from New Mexico, bordering Texas. The former owners needed to get rid of her because she was way too much horse for their 12-year-old daughter. Born the day after 9-1-1, the former owners confessed that, probably due to the commotion about the terrorist attacks, they did not pay attention when the filly was born, and she was not imprinted correctly. When we got her, the training halter that someone managed to get over her as a filly the year before was cutting into her growing face. Bald and striped and dented, Because no one could get near enough to her head to remove it. And she was mad as hell! It took five men and several hours to trick her into the horse trailer, after which they drove another 12 hours and back, just to get her to a new home and a horse whisperer like my husband Rich. Anyway, to get back to my original story about the film crew, with that partnership having been well established over the next 10 years, Rich had no problem getting his Girl and my Tennessee Walker, Buddy, to run back and forth in a meadow for the film crews. First one direction, then, oops, they missed getting the shot, so he signaled the horses to reverse course and run the other way. By pointing and whistling from afar, the same way he does when it's time for them to come home and return to their corrals every day. The film crew smirked and laughed that they wished that the two teenagers that they were also filming, along with their former movie star dad, would take direction as well as our horses did. Our horses responded better to retakes, as many as they needed, to get filming right, back and forth until we were all ready to call it a day. As we headed back, we passed one of our large ponds. The sun was beginning to set. A cameraman liked the angle, with the sun casting glimmers in the water. Rich asked if they would like to get some of the koi to pop up for the filming. Nah, the cameraman laughed and said he wanted it all to look natural, so no, they did not see how we could do it in time. They did not want food messing up the shot. Well, that's what they would normally use to entice them. My husband just shook his head, not to worry, and walked toward the edge of the pond behind the cameraman. A dozen pretty butterfly koi popped up as if on cue and started leading a school of goldfish through the surface in this beautiful, glistening parade over the rippling pond. I overheard mutterings of fish whisperer after that. I have heard people say that fish are stupid, and we know that is not true. We have a fish called Survivor. It's a two-foot-old koi that's in one of our ponds, who is taught all the smaller fish in his pond to hide. We actually have two ponds. One is shallow, and one is deeper. Now, Survivor is the king of the shallow fish pond. He is battle-scarred from being dropped 20 feet from the air by a heron. After seeing him get swooped up, my son yelled at the bird, and the bird dropped the fish. Steve picked him up from the ground, clearly wounded but alive, and returned him to the shallow pond. After several years since that incident, you could watch all day and never see the giant fish in the little pond, not even during feeding times. He would just hide under the water lily pads until he knows the coast is clear. And here's the amazing part. Nor will you see the other 20 to 30 smaller fish who live with him in that pond. You figure that's why they call them schools, right? Someone taught them Survivor skills. Meanwhile, if you go to the deeper pond, the koi and the goldfish will follow. Their leader is an old, ugly coot we call Grandpa. Well, they don't much follow strangers, although they will check you out. They follow me all around to observe my gardening efforts and how I am rearranging their rocks. They want to see what I am up to to protect their turf. They more eagerly approach my husband, who is their regular feeder, as soon as they catch a glimpse of him coming down the hill from the house. So smart they are, from big old horses to the bitty fishies. Years ago, I was lost in the woods on my horse Buddy. And Buddy knew it, although I didn't. He stopped and refused to budge when I insisted that he turn the wrong way. Now, horse sense means more than you may expect. I have come to learn that whenever Buddy challenges my commands, I should give him the rein. He will get me home, and he knows best. My husband and I have come to believe that all creatures, great and small, have some skill that surpasses our human traits. We have always had pets, and our respect has expanded through observation in our certified wildlife habitat. We have never in 20 years been hurt, only helped by animals. Well, except if you count stepping in the wasp nests. Only pain I can recall. Oh, and getting tossed a couple times from spooked horses. As I was typing the original story, I was observing this big black bear lying in a patch of sunlight in our distant meadow. I have watched a bear take a garbage can full of veggie scraps to the edge of our hillsides and plop down to see what I packed inside. Like a kid checking out what mama packed for lunch. I have quit feeding them since then. Even our birds amaze us with their antics and intelligence. Sometimes I go out there on my deck playing Native American flute, and I can watch birds start rustling around, switching branches, coming nearer to hear my song, flying our direction, and then circling as though they wonder if I'm trying to speak a language they can understand. I am trying. I have watched the Stellar Jays devise tricks for getting seeds to fall to the ground by swinging their perches on hummingbird feeders deliberately, and then rushing to the ground to make an easier meal of it. I have watched them try to outsmart the chipmunks, who employ different antics to get at the food in the bird feeders. I have watched a jay drop pebbles into the pond, trying to lure naive goldfish to check it out, like as a food decoy. You can see a video that I have posted on YouTube where I am feeding the Gray Jays at our local ski resort too. It's still on there, I believe. Up from the ski lift, 20 feet high in the air, I stuck out my arm with my mid-palm up. It's filled with granola and breadcrumbs and peanut butter, and they kept up with me, soaring and coming back for more. Well, truthfully, my favorite part of telling stories is hearing listeners' responses. Here are a few comments I got to my story after I first posted it. A man that calls himself Salty Dog wrote to me and said, Yeah, I've used that quit feeding them line too. Black bears are just too interesting not to want to see. Out walking my dog the other day, I noticed that he wasn't following me like he normally does. I turned around, and I saw him sphinx-posed. I like that phrase. Sphinx-posed. Posed like a sphinx, some wise standing guard, on the trail at the Y that I had just passed. He clearly did not want to go down the fork that I had chosen. And this was the same fork that we had gone down three days straight. I started toward him, called him, and he leaped to his feet and led me another way. We went down the other fork, the one that my dog recommended, and I started listening to him after that. He would often express clear preferences, and I believe him. A man called Paul wrote me and said, Years back, I was on a barrowed horse way up on the hills of the farm, and at the end of the day, I would drop my reins and just say, All right, mate, time to go home. The horse immediately pricked his ears up and took me the shortest route back. I did not have to steer him at all. Yep, we call that barn sour, when on the way back a horse will take off and go home without any direction at all. A young man from India, Guru Raj, he calls himself, asked me, Is there any chance you can adopt a 30-year-old Indian boy to come live with you? I promise I'll love the animals and admire them just as much as you do. Absolutely loved the post. Aw, thanks. Jenny Lynn wrote and said, At this point in my life, I have a much higher regard for animals than human beings. I think more and more of us are coming to that conclusion too, Jenny. Ricky Smith had another view. I hope you don't hate me for saying this, but I am not really a fan of nature. I get scared of animals that are bigger than me. I feel like they're going to attack me for no reason. But you have made a place that sounds so amazing that, well, it wouldn't be the life for me, but you make it sound so good that I could be tempted to come for a holiday, if you two are willing. Kiera Byerly wrote me and said, Our cats used to steal little bags of bird seed that our neighbors sometimes hang up in their yard. Our cats would place the bags in strategic locations so they could wait for the birds to show up. They are intelligent, fluffy murderers. Yep, you got that right, Kiera. But that's another story for another day. Natalie LeBlanc commented that, As I read this, I pictured a life that I would hope to live in the not-too-distant future. However, I would have to bring my herd of border collies. I replied that this is a life worth not putting off. And, yes, a team of border collies would make it even more fun. Jayna Victoria Menard wrote me and said, Your appreciation for all the wild things is marvelous. You are my people. I rattle on endlessly about the natural goings-on at my place, since each sighting of a coyote or a steller jay fledgling or a puma attract makes me excited at the most pure and childlike way. If only others could see what we do, the planet might not be in such a mess. Oh, yes, Jayna. I could not agree more. You nailed it, woman. I hope you enjoyed our animal crackers. And if you have stories that you would like to submit and have read on the air, why not send them to my attention? This is Adele at KCIW. Let's see what can happen if we talk to and about the animals together. Bye.