At my Mom’s funeral last week, there were many lengthy descriptions
of what a nice, sweet person she was, of her love of family, of her love of
parties (she would celebrate pretty much anything as long as it got the
family together) and of her strength.
Mentioned only once or twice was her love of animals.
It wasn’t until everything was over that I realized this was
a bit of an oversight and a lost opportunity.
I’m taking this opportunity to correct that lost one.
Yes, Mom loved animals.
All of them. She fed squirrels on
her porch and that food also attracted birds.
And there was also ‘Mama Dove’ - a mourning dove who decided to nest in a
hanging plant on the back porch. It
would have taken no effort to shoo her away and save the plant. After all, the bird could find someplace else
to lay her eggs. But that was simply not
the way things were done at the home of an animal lover. Mama Dove laid her eggs undisturbed, hatched her clutch, they fledged and
Mama and Papa Dove moved on, leaving the dead plant behind. But they came back for the next couple of
years, taking advantage of the safety of the hanging basket and enjoying the
Erskine hospitality. This hospitality
extended to Mom buying a plant in a hanging basket each year, for the sole
purpose of giving Mama Dove a safe and comfortable nesting place. And this wasn't just any cheap hanging plant. It was carefully and thoughtfully acquired, including criteria such as Mama's comfort. She was that kind of animal lover.
In my 21 years there, our house was without a pet only for a couple of years when
I was a boy, between the time our German Shepherd Fritz died and when we took
in Daisy because Diane’s apartment complex changed its rules and wouldn’t allow
dogs anymore. It wasn’t long after that
before it became a long-term, multi-critter abode with the arrival of Jane’s cat, Christy (which is its own long story involving the sickly little runt-of-the-litter kitten who melted the heart of the crusty old, cat-hating firefighter to win a new forever home).
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| Fritz, in need of a good brushing. |
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| Christy |
Mom imparted that love in her kids and that was clearly
manifested at its strongest in Diane and Jane.
There’s never been a lack of a menagerie in Jane’s residences, nor was
there ever at Diane’s. I guess I also
got a big dose of it. I mean, my first
word was not "Mama" or "Dada," it was "Fritz," the aforementioned German Shepherd. Shelagh and I have always had two dogs, and
for a while we also had two cats (Shelagh’s allergies meant that when Phydeaux
and Spike died, we wouldn’t have cats again).
I don't have a bird feeder, I have a bird feeding station, dubbed ‘Tim’s Diner’, that serves up four
different types of feed to ensure no birdie in our neighborhood goes hungry. This includes the hawks that dine on the slower patrons
of Tim’s Diner (hey, when you get close to nature, you’re going to see it
uncensored). I also put corn on the
ground for our non-avian customers, including, but not limited to, squirrels,
white-tail deer, raccoons, possums, bunnies, and skunks, who in turn, are
fodder for the coyotes that live in farm field behind our house (see previous parenthetical comment).
But Mom was different.
She loved animals as much as anyone. But what was different was that animals were attracted to
her. Not just ‘they all wagged their tails when they met her’ kind of attracted.
We’re talking iron-to-metal, moth-to-flame, swallows-to-San Juan
Capistrano kind of attracted.
Reincarnation of St. Francis of Assisi kind of attracted. Seriously, there wasn’t a stray animal in the south end
of Toledo unable to find its way, somehow, to 568 Colima Drive.
All the cats except Christy were strays who found their own
way to Mom. KC, Boomer, Kitty…each of
them was a tiny little kitten that just showed up on the front porch and wouldn’t
leave.
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| Boomer (L) and KC (R) It should be noted that as long as these two wanted to use this basket, nothing was put in the basket by any humans. This went on for months. |
One day I came home from school and headed into the kitchen where Mom was talking with somebody (Cindy, perhaps). On my way to the kitchen I noticed a small brown dog crashed out behind one of the chairs in the living room. I verbally noted the presence of the little dog and inquired if Mom was aware she had attracted yet another one (she was). Turns out that earlier in the day, this dog was running around the grounds of Burroughs School, the neighborhood elementary school. A boy took him home - likely using the old 'It followed me home' gambit - but wasn’t allowed to keep him. He had to find a home for the mutt or it was going to the pound. The kid was going door-to-door through the neighborhood desperately trying to find a home for the little guy. When he got to our house, the boy was in tears and Mom, of course, couldn’t tell him no. That’s how we got Hershey, a really good little boy and my bestest little buddy.
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| Hershey, who never, ever failed to put on his whipped puppy look whenever a camera was pointed his way. |
Another time, Mom came home from grocery shopping. She asked me to help unload the car since there were a lot of groceries. I went out and leaned in through the open back door to grab a grocery bag, only to find myself face-to-face with a HUGE dog. It looked like a Doberman, but one on steroids. Lots of them. It was the late 70’s and I had never heard of, let alone seen, a Rottweiler. The dog didn’t seem agitated at me, but I didn’t see a wagging tail either (again, I didn’t know of the breed and docking), so I slowly backed out, hoping not to die a gruesome death in or just outside Mom's car (everybody had the same aspirations as a teenager, right?) and headed to the porch. My conversation with Mom went something like this:
Me: Mom, what’s with the big dog in
the car?
Mom: What dog?
Me: The great big dog in the back
seat.
Mom: There’s no dog in the car.
Me: Um, yes. Yes, there is.
It turned out to be a friendly, well-behaved pooch. It went willingly with us to the backyard,
where we put it up until the owners were found, just down the street.
And then there was the dog that invited itself to the
party. Mom was having some type of
Tupperware / Mary Kay party and a dog showed up on the front porch. It wanted in.
It tried to get in. It was insistent that it get in. When conventional means of entrance were
rebuffed, it chewed its way through the screen door, entered the living room
and sat down as if it had an invitation, had made a reservation and was damned if it was
going to be denied participation. This
encounter made the newspaper.
There were many more strays that found their way to
Mom. They were less remarkable, with the
dog showing up, getting put in the backyard, fed and watered, and the owner
located or the dog taken to the shelter (a true last resort). But it happened enough to not be unusual.
Many years ago, a couple of decades ago, in fact, one of my siblings, thinking about all of
these animals finding their way to Mom, declared that 568 Colima Drive should
be known henceforth as Erskine’s Home for Wayward Pets.
And so it was.
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Post Script
While rummaging through my old photos for the pictures above, I found two that, in my opinion, capture the spirit of Mom better than any others possibly could:
Here we have five animals, all former strays, celebrating the birthday of one of them. All the pets and all the humans had a great time doing this. And that, more than anything, was Joe Ann Kathryn Erskine.
