A Life Among Animals (10/25/2026)

One of the earliest photographs of me is one of me lying in my crib having two dogs staring over the rim at me. My parents tell me the story that they entered my bedroom not long after that first photograph was taken and saw a Black Mamba doing the same thing. Black Mambas are one of the most poisonous snake species in Africa. It was standing on its belly looking into the crib. In other words, I grew up with animals. For those of you who don’t know, I was born in the Congo where Black Mambas are common in the region in which I was born.

We had at least eight dogs during the first 24 years of my life and now eight more during our 49-year marriage. I grew up with a large aviary with love birds, we had two parakeets, numerous cats, and a salt-water aquarium. Durning our marriage in addition to the dogs, we had three cats, chickens, goats, a crested crane, an aquarium, and a pet rat. Oh, and we took care of two horses. On top of all that, for almost two years I managed a dairy farm with more than 700 cows. In other words, we are animal people.

I could be James Harriot’s evil twin brother; there are so many animal stories I can tell. One stupid story is about the dairy farm in Uganda. We milked approximately 300 cows, twice a day by hand. I wanted to introduce our young German Shepard Buddha to farm life and took him with me into the pen where the animals are held prior to milking. My wife kept yelling for me not to do it, but I ignored her with all by bravado. We were barely in the pen when a cow charged us. Buddha our dog got out of the way, but I was not that fast or lucky. I ended on the horns of the animal and was thrown into the air and then fell on the ground in a mixture of mud and cow poop. All the milkers were standing there laughing as I, their boss got up off the ground. Thank goodness nothing was hurt, except for my pride.

Neither the Mamba nor the offending cow were really after me. The Mamba was probably curious, or looking warmth with no intention of striking. The cow, however, had good reasons to fear dogs. There was a large pack of wild dogs on the dairy farm in Uganda, which would attack cows. They would lie in waiting for a cow to give birth somewhere in the field and tear the calf apart while it was emerging out of the birth canal. The dogs would also be waiting for the afterbirth. So, it was understandable that she was trying to defend herself against the dog. I was in between, protecting our dog.

Working with animals always teaches you lessons. One of the most important things I learned in life is that, unlike humans, animals don’t kill individuals from the same species just for fun, or even to steal something, get rid of evidence, or just express your hatred or dislike of someone. I am sure we can find the occasional exception, but that is not the point. Inter species fights are territorial, for dominance and procreation. But humans kill each other all kinds of reasons. Humans are cruel. They torture each other, jail each other, you name it. When animals kill each other, it is most likely extra species or between different species. In this case the killing is usually in a predator and prey (food) relationship, or for defense. It seems that we have evolved to a higher level of killing and tend not to eat the result of our human-to-human kill. We still commit a lot of senseless killing.

So, what am I trying to say here, what do I recommend, or what can we do about it? I am not sure there is a correct answer to that question. My brain went there, and my (typing) fingers followed. You know my brain; it can make bizarre jumps, and I like to share them with you. Recently, we were in a group, and we talked about animals and our adventures traveling with ours. “Write a book about it,” they told us. Perhaps we will. For now, consider this a minor installment or a chapter: one animal story with a little philosophical musing on top of it.

Yours truly, with our dog Radar during our recent camping tri[ in Belle Isle State Park.  Radar is probably one of our most challenging dogs, being a mix of Rottweiler, Pitbull, German Shepard, Doberman and some unknow mix.  He is very loyal, loving and very protective.  He is constantly on the lookout and when he's with you always tries to pay attention to you.

Roosters Unite (5/26/2024)

People finally moved into the house two doors down from us, and they have a rooster. While our county allows you to have chickens, roosters are not allowed. They also have ducks, which seems to be illegal as well by our county's ordinance. I do not understand the logic behind all these rules, but why question the wisdom of our county's leadership since they clearly exhibit that they have very little. They spend millions on building a new “law enforcement” building or palace, but do not seem to care one bit about education here in York County, Virginia.

I realize now that this is not what I intended to write about in this essay, but it must be said. My wife and I have been following the saga of our local school board. It seems that members were elected to the board under falls pretexts of being apolitical. However, that changed the minute they were elected, and they started to push an ultra conservative agenda which in the long run would hurt our children. One member used to be a substitute teacher in our school system but was fired for incompetence. Now she knows how to run the entire public school system (or take political revenge?).

Let's get back to the subject at hand: the rooster. It crows or cockle-doddle-does incessantly. This reminds me of the rooster we had in Uganda, we called him “Turkey” or "Turk."  I realize that the name exposes my inert cynicism or playfulness, but our rooster was something else. Being in Uganda my wife had no full-time job to do; we were in our mid-twenties and so we amassed a menagerie of animals. We eventually had two dogs, at least seven chickens, our rooster, at least three goats, and an East African crested crane. We also took care or two horses. Later in Nepal we had a load of chickens, our two dogs and a cat we had brought from Utah. The dogs and cat traveled the world with us and after returning to Europe and the U.S.A., they ended up going to Yemen with us for our next assignment. I do not remember having chickens in Yemen. I guess you could say that we scaled down with age.

But more about Turk, our rooster. Turkey ruled the roost. We relented when some locals wanted to sell us a baby crane. We really did not believe in taming local wildlife, but otherwise it might have become a crane stew or a hyena snack. So, we bought it and raised it. Turk was the boss and quickly established a pecking order with our crane who was at least five time larger than our dominant rooster. The crane and the rooster also had fun with our dogs. The crane easily jumped over our German Sheppard when he charged them, and this became a game. Turk would chase the dogs all over the yard.

The funniest thing with the rooster was his love of opera. You need to know that my wife is a huge opera fan and was, even at the ripe old age of 23. We had a stereo with us, with records and Donna would often put on an opera record. Turkey would run in the house, the minute that the music started playing, and he just stood there still, did not move and listened. When the music was over, he would shake and ruffle his feathers like any good rooster would do and walk out. We always had our home wide open and at times, the horses would come in to beg for a banana, or the kid goats would jump all over the furniture. Uganda wasn't that buggy, although we both got malaria and Donna became quite ill. But I hope you can imagine why the crowing of a rooster two houses from here would take me back to a time almost 46 years ago.

Ladies and Cranes, here is Turkey, our rooster from Uganda

One of my favorite pictures of the time, Donna and Buddha our German Shepard pup.