Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall

Book Report: The Inner Life of Animals

Back to my old habits of reading nonfiction about nature, I just finished this book: The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion―Surprising Observations of a Hidden World, by Peter Wohlleben. The author is a caretaker for a forest in Germany, which gives him lots of time to observe the habits of the animals and plants he encounters there. He’s also the author of The HIdden Life of Trees, which has amazing information about how trees feel, communicate, and more. There’s a third volume in the series coming out soon, too.

You’ll either love Wohlleben’s approach to observing the feelings, morals, and behaviors of animals or be a little uncomfortable with it. He uses a lot of scientific evidence to back up his claims (the footnotes are a book unto themselves), but there’s plenty of gut feelings and assertions that an animal felt this way or that way, because it just looked like it to him.

The Problem with Pink (My Feminist Prejudices)

As of last night, my hair is a no longer blue. It’s a rather vibrant shade of pink, or fuschia as Anita prefers. I am currently still startling myself when I see my reflection in the mirror, so this one’s going to take a bit of getting used to. I chose pink because I ran out of the pale blue I wanted to use, and am almost out of extreme blue. Rather than buy anything new (I’m on a spending freeze), I figured I should use up what I have. Pink.

This is the pinkest it’s ever been, since the only other time I used the pink, the base was more purple and I got a nice violet. This is undeniably pink. I want to embrace it, however…

A Year of Carlton the Dogman

Facebook is good for something: This morning it reminded me that I found my precious doggie Carlton a year ago today. Time really flies, doesn’t it? Some of you may know this story, but I’ll share it in Carlton’s honor.

I was such a cute puppy. I deserve honors.

I was really missing having a dog to hang out with when I was in Austin, and I wanted to help out a sad dog, so Mandi, Anita, and I started looking around for a small-ish dog who could go back and forth from Austin to the Hermits’ Rest with me.

My experience at Austin Pets Alive was really sad. The only dog that wasn’t a pit mix was scared to death of people.

We kept watching the Cameron dog pound for likely suspects, when three puppies came in. All three were friendly and sweet, but the white one with blue eyes looked to me like he’d stay smaller. I took him out for a walk, and he was SO friendly. Sandra at the pound (now known as A Touch of Love) was sure he’d be a small dog, and I was smitten by his cuddliness.

I’m Getting RICH

Am I offended that my “live blogging” experiment has been a dismal failure (9 hits so far)? Nah. Nothing attracts readers like sick or injured animals, and I don’t have any more of those (and it is FINE). So, I’m due for another round of low visitor count on the ole blog.

I know I captivate so many of you with images of geometrically pleasing cacti that are about to bloom. It’s part of my very tiny cactus collection. And most of the cacti are very tiny, too.

But it’s OK! I’m making money off my humble posts about nature, books, and domestic animals! I monetized my blog when I finally got to 100 followers (thank you followers, even though many of you are businesses trying to sell something). Mandi has faithfully clicked on many ads. And now I am raking in the WordPress ad cash:

That’s RIGHT! I’ve made FOUR CENTS in genuine US currency. It looks like it will take a while for the total to reach $100 and a check to show up. I’m not quitting my day job.

The view of the wetness from Anita’s balcony. She has plants, mostly her cactus and succulent collection.

Nature content: Another big rain day. That makes a month of large amounts of rain at least once a week.

Bar Blogging

This is an experiment in live blogging. I wrote this all last night, and today I’m just adding links.

Well, Sara asked me and Anita to go with her to see a performance by a lovely young woman from New Zealand (among other places) who goes by the name of Emma G. She’s been following her for three or four years now. Doors open at 7! In East Austin. Dozen Street. Were we ready? Yes.

Well, I’m an old hand at these places, since my son used to play at venues such as this back when he was in the indie rock bands. I knew the featured artist would not be on at 7, so we did not hurry to get there.

Thus, we had plenty of time to have an amazing dinner at Old Thousand. Yep. You should eat there. There were flavors and vegetables I’d never experienced in the many dishes we tried. Even Taiwanese people like the food! It’s Austin-y Chinese. We were not the oldest people in the room!

You can’t forget this peacock. It keeps Austin weird.

I thought maybe Dozen Street (named because it’s on 12th Street!) would be nicer than it was a couple years ago. Nope. But it is funky. Yes. And we ARE the oldest people here.

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Fiona Feeling Better

A couple of folks have asked how Fiona the mini-donkey is doing as she recovers from her two sore feet. Thank you for asking, and she brays her thanks, as well. It may be the cutest bray ever, by the way.

Oh, and I finally figured out how to upload my video of how badly she was limping last weekend.

Anyway, according to Dr. Mandi, she is on the mend. I can’t tell you how glad I am to have a neighbor who used to work on a large horse breeding ranch with so much experience in fixing up foot and leg issues. Mandi said that when she got to working on her, it just all came back to her, and something that might have taken her an hour years ago just took minutes.

I know Fiona appreciated that her doctoring didn’t take too long, though I think she views it as more “special time” with humans.

Mandi thinks the back hoof is just about healed, though she is going to put Betadyne on it one more time. As for the front foot, it’s improving, though Fiona is still limping a little. We still don’t know how she hurt it.

I’ll protect my little friend! I’m the lead mare!

Yesterday, Mandi said that Spice and Apache protected Fiona when the neighbor puppy, Jess, who is a heeler and likes to chase things, tried to mess with her. Fiona managed to kick at her (a good sign), but after that, Spice was not letting that dog anywhere near, and Apache was doing his best angry stallion imitation, with ears pinned back and eyes ablaze (even though he isn’t a stallion).

It made me happy to see how much our tiny herd is bonded. At first the horses really didn’t like Fiona, but now I see them licking her and being sweet. Ahh.

Book Report: Where the Crawdads Sing

Spoiler: Master Naturalists will LOVE it.
Suna Kendall

Here’s one of those quirky facts about me that I’m not sure where it came from: I strongly resist jumping on the bandwagon of the latest “popular item,” whether it’s music, types of cars, clothing fads (no one has ever seen my bare midriff in public) decorating styles (“a nice, bright white”), and most assuredly, books.

Oh no, everyone’s reading it. It has to be smarmy.

So, when I was first encouraged to read Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens, I resisted. I kept thinking it would be one of those motivational books like The Secret or Chicken Soup for the Soul or that book about the shed…oh, The Shack. I figured, if everyone was reading it, snobby intellectual elitest Suna had probably read all the original source material.

That’s a bit harsh. I admit to not being fond of most books with mass appeal. But, the person who recommended Where the Crawdads Sing to me is also an intellectual elitist, and it’s a novel, so how could I have already read the source material? Oh, I know, it’s probably all formulaic and full of poor attempts at regional accents, with too many big words where small ones will do. Yeah. And it’s in Reese Witherspoon’s book club. Ew…

Donkey Trouble!

Last week the farrier came, and Sara told us he found an abscess on Fiona the mini-donkey’s right rear hoof. He got as much out as he could, but it was large, and he said we’d need to clean it out and put Betadyne or something like that on her to help it heal.

I’d like to point out to you that this should be about ME, because I am pretty and want ALL the attention.

Sara was able to treat her on Monday, and she said it would be okay to wait to treat her until I got back. Unfortunately, I could not get to her until Friday. At that time she was limping on her front foot as well as the back, and Sara and I cleaned out both of her hooves and medicated them. She was very good, so we were hopeful.

Sara went riding Saturday (yesterday) morning while I was at Earth Day, and said Fiona was still limping, but was easy to medicate.

I headed over to check on Fiona and feed the chickens mid-afternoon. It was going to be a quick visit, so I could go to the grocery store, but I was surprised to find Fiona lying down, and not with the horses. That’s not typical for her. Tyler, who’d been mowing, said she’d been down for over an hour.

So, I started making phone calls. I talked to Sara, who said to try to get her up. Then I called Mandi, because she knows way more about equine issues than I do. Bless her, she came over as fast as she could.

A Hugely Successful Earth Day Celebration

Here’s Suna’s Earth Day Celebration Report.

Nature Along the El Camino Real

by Sue Ann Kendall

The 2019 Earth Day Celebration is in the books! It was a great success, too! At least 100 people and two dogs visited the Community Room on Main Street in Rockdale to see the El Camino Real Master Naturalists and their exhibits. We were joined by local Girl Scouts of Central Texas troops and the Little River Basin Master Gardeners, too. (It helps that many of our members are also Master Gardeners.)

Rosie Johnson did a great job decorating the outside of the Community Room in Rockdale.

Many thanks go out to Donna Lewis and the rest of the Earth Day Committee, who put in a lot of effort and planning to make this event successful. There were so many details, but they were all handled very well!

Donna Lewis takes a break to talk to Catherine Johnson during setup.

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Whew! Even Taking a Break Is Work

Fair warning: the reason I wrote nothing in any of my blogs yesterday is that even when I was resting I was doing stuff! Since I’m not at the computer yet, I’ll just summarize and write more later.

Vehicles

Friday was spent driving all over the county with Lee and Mandi looking for a good used car for her, and seeing if we could find a replacement for our huge diesel truck that we could actually use around Cameron.

We found that I like a Chevy Traverse and Lee likes Suburbans, which are still too giant for me. Unfortunately Lee couldn’t get the trade-in he wanted on the truck, so we walked away. But al least I realized that a smaller SUV was okay for me and at least some Chevy vehicles aren’t plasticky.

The drive was worth it, though, because the countryside on the back road to Rockdale was gorgeous.

Continue reading “Whew! Even Taking a Break Is Work”