The Thought That Counts

Yesterday, I started my Casa Claire chores immediately after I returned from my rounds at around 7 am.

I enjoy my rounds because of my contact with the creatures who share in the bounty of chopped carrots

and dog treats – 9 horses, four sheep (one who is blind), two goats, a really sweet and shy Llama and two dogs named “Dog” and “Wayland” – who all get really excited when they hear me arrive at their respective properties.

I always click my tongue as I approach. And they always come running.

They don’t care how I’m dressed, what I do for a living, what my religious practices may be or who I voted for. They don’t even care that they helped inspire my books. They are excited because they know that every morning this bipedal member of a different species stops by and communally shares a little love and tasty treats with them. I always talk with each of them as I’m dispensing my treats – most will eat from my hand – and I always make sure to tell them that I love them as I wrap up my brief time spent at each stop each morning, because I do.

Each one is a sentient creature who understands love in all of its capacities. They all have distinguishable personalities. They all enjoy life as much as humans do. Maybe more so because theirs seem so much more precarious and out of their control.

It’s how I met Claire. Changed my life forever.

This is another reason why I cannot kill or eat another non-human creature.

Over the eight years I have been doing this, I’ve watched as new members join the party, like this amazing Unigoat,

and I am always deeply affected when one of them has made their Irish exit. Circle of Life. I always say a prayer for the missing. Share my condolences with the survivors. And toss a few extra treats among them as an acknowledgement of the missing face in the crowd. I remember them all.

I’ve only missed a few days over the years when I’ve been traveling, or deathly ill, or when the weather was so treacherous neither man nor beast would chance going out in it.

But once a week – Saturday or Sunday – I need to shop for the ingredients and then spend hours preparing the traveling care packages, along with the chopped daily meals for Claire and Honey (mixtures of celery, carrots and apples), which are then shifted to the fridge in their barn, so I can easily divide them into their bowls each day – along with a second bowl of low sugar feed pellets – while I’m out there scooping shit out of their sleeping quarters of soft wood shavings, maintaining their free access to sufficient hay and topping off their interior water trough.

That’s on top of the ten times a day Claire thunderously bangs on the back door demanding her Wheat Thin Alms for her and Honey, or the twice daily feedings for the Beagle Brothers,

the multiple feedings of the feral cats

(and next-door pilfering dogs, who I watch from my window with a big smile on my face, because I know how much they enjoy thinking they are pulling a fast one on the cats and us).

Then there’s the local honey left out for local bees and wasps during cooler weather

and the daily liquid replenishment of the bird baths and fountains.

I always share the older fruit and bread with the many flocks of crows, robins, magpies, and mourning doves that stop by Casa Claire, and stock bird seed in a bunch of window bird feeders for the tinier species.

The reflective sun off the windows helps keep the bird feeders warm even in the winter.

I’ll even occasionally leave leftovers from our meals out in the high grasses and thickets on our property edge outside our fence lines for the foxes and other feral creatures that pass through during the nights. I figure an easy meal at Casa Claire may keep them from raiding a neighbor’s chicken pen. Anything they don’t consume goes back to the earth very quickly.

And once a month, except during the coldest part of the winter, I empty and scrub out the two large troughs – I literally scoop buckets from the front one under The Old Man and dispense it to all of the other trees out front. I don’t waste any of it. The back trough’s water gets tossed on a green strip of wild vegetation along the closest fenceline by a pile of wood that serves as a rabbit warren.

The bunnies can hide in and eat the vegetation, and slipping through the nearby fence is a great way to avoid pursuing larger predators.

Yesterday was a shit shoveling, food prep and trough day. Age has not made the effort any easier, but I’m blessed that I can still handle the load, even if my back and legs remind me of my folly for days afterwards. And, like me immediately after leaving Anna the barber’s shop,

for five minutes the troughs look spectacular.

And Claire and Honey love drinking from it.

For any of you fine, five readers who have similar troughs, my simple plastic mesh design – garden plastic fencing material and a cord woven along its edges and tied on one end, don’t forget to place some rocks on the mesh along the bottom –

has saved countless tiny creatures – birds and mammals – from drowning when they stop to take a drink especially on the hottest days. Works like a rope ladder on a naval vessel. I’ve watched birds and squirrels scamper below the interior edges of the trough to drink till their heart is content and then fly or scamper away.

Feel free to use it. It can be easily scaled to larger or smaller troughs. If nothing else, it will keep the water from being corrupted by carrion and poisoning what you may consider your domestic stock (which I consider family). I have not had one drowning since I implemented the practice. Pay it forward.

When everything my body could do had been done for the day, I looked at my iPhone and saw that it was 2:34 in the afternoon. A sign from the Universe that I was making progress.

And after a desperately needed shower, I was ready for my recliner.

As I sit here in my comfortable office chair, I can’t imagine having to get up and go out there to do any more chores. The big ones were all done yesterday, so whatever light chores may require my attention will be manageable.

Maybe Lisa and I will go to lunch.

Tomorrow I’ll be back finishing off that final CLE obligation. Good riddance. Then a few days of scientific research and Friday, Samhain, my favorite day of the year, I’ll start that next creative project.

You fine, five readers use the God’s Day excuse and put your feet up. Go leaf peeping. I’m sure you can find someone willing to have brunch and there’s plenty of Sunday football to watch. Go for it and enjoy.

But no matter whatever we get up to, let’s make today a great one.