Goosed recently?

Don’t chicken out – the results might dog you.

Wouldn’t it be better to farm it out?

Crazy, you say? Undoubtedly.

It’s only logical, if you think about it.

And PhD Tobie Kosanke, former geologist, did – with some interesting results.

Tobie works with an odd crowd.

It’s obvious from her “Notices from the Management to the Inhabitants “

“Dear Nutty Duck Who Sleeps In The Chicken Coop:  Please consider inviting your boyfriend in or staying outside with him. It breaks my heart to watch him waiting there for you every morning, anxiously pacing along the outside of the coop, barely able to contain himself for the moment you emerge. Can’t you take pity on a lovestruck drake? Just a suggestion. The Management.” (By Tobie Kosanke from her recent newsletter.)

Eccentricities aside, Chicks obviously need bras, right?

A little support and chest protection is welcomed for outdoor activities – and it may keep others in the pecking order from bullying a girl. (Who knew?)

Sporting a bra. (Image from Crazy K Farms)

Chicks that may end up in the kitchen can sport aprons to protect them.

Some crowded flocks get vicious. What chick wants the resulting cuts and scratches? That’s just not human. (You do know that cannibalism is not unheard of…although frowned upon.) All the best dressed free range chickens simply cackle over the Kosanke  Aprons.

Pretty in Pink (Image from Crazy K Farms)

Your chick tends to be a little chilly?

Warm her up with an Alaska model made with toasty warm fleece.

For those outdoor types?

Consider adding predator eyes sewn on the apron back to fool the hawks.

Camouflage is always stylish. (Image from Crazy K Farms)

Although Kosanke notes a some chicks tend to freeze when threatened. Some “ squat in place without struggling when being attacked, enabling a predator to easily grab her neck and make a quick kill.”

Whoa! Maybe some self-defense lessons recommended? Or a bodyguard?

Kosanke’s solution was to visit the homeless shelter to fill that job.

Enter Spenser, Tania, Tori, Chester, and Trouble

(That last one’s name might give you paws?)

But they are the Guardians LGDs.

Spencer guarding some SPCA rescued ducks (image from Crazy K Farms)

It’s crazy, all right.

Crazy K Farms

Intriguing enough to attract the attention of  CBS News and the NY Times

But those are a bit catty.

Seriously, do cats really need holsters. Do they have carry permits?

Boutique Kitty Holster (Image from Crazy K Farms)

 RC Cat is not amused.

(See attached cat)

Attached Cat

Just quackers for those chic chicks,

Phil, the Philosopher Mouse of the Hedge

The plan is to retreat inside and work both ends of the leash, to keep things as calm as possible.

So I realize — now I’ve chunked things this way back down — I was too ready to laugh.  Working with Bugs as slowly and attentively as I can each day, trying to acclimatize him by degrees, I see how really bothered he is about the jacket.

A week later, he’s still salamandering — though each day less so.  Still, after about five minutes tops, he just parks himself into a corner with his nose pressed up against something.  It seems reasonable to assume he’s shutting down.  Off goes the jacket for another day.

Except you can just never tell what the next day’s going to bring.  This morning we  finished our slow-and-easy jacket practice — and Bugs began caterwauling again.  I dragged myself away from the computer to see this guy, back again or another family member who looks just like the other guy:

So I first spotted him in the weeds.  I thought what could be the harm in bringing Bugs out  for a meet-and-greet?  Mr. Turtle would know what to do, to protect himself . . . . So I popped Bugs back into the jacket and carried him out.

As I lowered Bugs down, though, he did that jump-straight-in-the-air thing.  Ah.  That was the harm. I’d forgotten about that.

Fortunately he leaped straight into my chest, so all I had to do was wrap my arms around him.  And when I did that, I noticed his heart was pretty much trying to get out of his chest.  So — back inside.

Then I brought Mr. Turtle up to the door.

Here is Mr. Turtle’s response:

Did you know this kind of turtle has a hinge on their chest, so they can do this?  Did you know when they do this, there’s a little “whoof” of air?  Something so cartoon-like about this sound-effect.  Like they’re gasping.

I really wanted him to come out.  I waited a long time, camera in hand.

This was all the further he’d come out:

Can’t say I blame him.  What with Bugs freaking out behind him.  So I put Mr. Turtle back in the weeds, where Bugs couldn’t see him.

But Bugs was still caterwauling.  So I resorted to the nip.

Bugs decides whether he’ll lower himself to the nip freak-out.

Can’t help himself.  Notice the back-leg blur.

The horror!

Going down — but two hours later, still not out.

But I don’t want to keep you “in suspenders,” as my brothers and I used to say.  Here’s a spoiler.  Bugs back at Base Camp, after the learning experience.

“Let’s not do it that way any more, OK ma?”

And now, the experience.  No pictures, because Bean was trying to concentrate.  You can see how well that worked!

Recall Bugs’s perceived friskiness on the leash.  Next time, Teresa suggested, I should sit down instead of trying the “walking on a leash” theory.  That would establish Camp One.  Then Bugs could salamander out in forays, but there’d be an outer containment boundary.

That strategy went off without a hitch.  The next morning I carried him outside in his jacket, sat down, and put him in my lap.  He got tired of that fast (typical response to the Dreaded Lap) and, despite being boneless, still managed to pour himself off Dreaded Lap and onto ground.  Thereafter, the Camp One thinking proceeded as planned and the enterprise was a complete success.

So successful, in fact, that in the evening I thought I’d try it again.

“In the evening,” right?  The first sign that if things did go south, we’d run out of daylight fast.

But Bean was preoccupied, not paying enough attention.

So the evening expedition started out fine, as in the morning.  Until a friendly male neighbor decided to drop by.

Bugs flipped.  I do mean flipped, literally.  You’ve seen cats do this?  Jump straight up, three feet or so into the air.

So our nice neighbor backed away and went along about his business.

Five minutes later, though, he walked by again.

This, too, could have been OK.  But as I said, Bean was distracted.  There were several reasons for that, the most salient one being that, as part of the endless construction-project going on next door, this nice neighbor had cut off the water.  With a sinkful of dirty dishes and Bean needing a shower on a hot day, I wanted to know, with a fair degree of urgent asperity, when the water would be back on.

Understandably, empathetically speaking – but extremely regrettably, I transferred my attention to the neighbor –

– and Bugs saw his moment and bolted.  It happened so fast that the leash came right out of my hand.

I was after him the next nanosecond, so fast I actually managed to grab ahold of the leash.  Heaven only knows how.  Like mamas lifting up cars to free their trapped children, I suppose.

But it was not enough.

Here’s the replay, as best I can reconstruct it.

Bugs is sh*t-terrified of the nice male neighbor.  Perhaps he looked like a lion or a hippo or something.  Would Bugs fight?  Even despite 400 pounds of bravado, in the safety of Base Camp territory?  Not hardly.  He’d turn and run, hide, climb a tree.

So that’s what he tried to do.  But:  Bean grabs the leash.  Screeeeech.

OKaaay then.  Further forward motion halted.  So the awful lion must be faced – with tooth and claw if need be.

When Bugs did that turn-about, my hand on the leash instantly transformed from being a stopper to an assist, to help Bugs get free.  As long as he was moving forward, the pressure of the strap against his chest would keep the jacket on.  With the leash pulling over his head, though – thrash out to freedom.

I wish I had on tape just how he did that.  It happened so fast, plus with the stress of the whole thing, my brain couldn’t really track what he did.  But it looked like he sprouted wings, did a back-flip in mid-air, jet-propelled himself out of the jacket, and lifted off into the stratosphere.  A greased-lighting gray-and-white streak into the wild blue yonder.

And there I was, holding a leash and a snazzy little leopard-print cat-shaped – empty – jacket.

Not to worry.  More in the next installment.  Til then, here’s another shot of Bugs safely back in Base Camp.

“I can look at flying feathered objects from in here just fine.”

But first he must pass a tough fear-aversion, virtual-reality exposure therapy regimen.  Teresa of Tellington and I are introducing him, by degrees, into situations that ask him to learn to moderate his intense-fear pattern response.  This includes gradual but increasingly mounting exposure to highly suggestive sound- and scent-triggers like – well, like anything, really, that may be encountered Out There and not In Here.

Bugs is confronting his fear.

That’s the tone that seems to fit Mr. The Bugs.  You know Mr. The Bugs.  The one that’s 400 pounds of fury.

It just doesn’t seem appropriate to say – we’re training Bugs to walk on a leash.

It does seem appropriate, however, to add that I, too, must learn – well, I’m trying to learn, anyway – to tolerate my own confusion, frustration, and impatience in the face of, shall we say, a lack of clarity about what’s going on.

Two mornings ago I was on the phone when Bugs started bouncing off the chandeliers, even more than usual.

A Late Triassic Humvee was parked outside.

A regular prehistoric, yet fully baked, reptilian example of the Great Outdoors.

Over the past couple of days, I’d been introducing Bugs to the harness and leash very very very slowly, like putting it on and taking it off, in the house only, leaving it on for five minutes, inducing him to move forward with treats, all like that.  But at Mr. Turtle’s appearance, Bugs was in such a frenzy, I thought, well OK fella, let’s have at it.  I slapped him into the harness and carried him out the door.  (After making sure Mr. Turtle was safely out of range.)

That went OK, surprisingly enough.  Bugs was fairly amazed – round-eyed, rapid breath- and heart-rate – but he was still reasonably soft.  So I put him down, he salamander’d around a little, and we had an inexpressibly proud moment as he scootched over to feel the real ground under his belly, for the first time in almost two years.

When we got back into the house, I expected him to turn into a cat-puddle and we could get some rest around here.  He did, eventually –

Mr. Bugs studies the Bankruptcy Exemptions Manual.

– but first we had to run through all his usual routines.  Massacre the feather wand, chase-and-hide, ear-scritching, treats treats treats.  It seemed to me like he was saying, “Oh yes.  Now I remember who I am.  That other wide-eyed guy?  Not me!  I am The Bugs!”

So yesterday Teresa came over and we upped the ante.

Here is what I had hoped would happen.

It did, now and then.

Here’s another fun moment.

Mr. Bugs samples the salad greens.

Not all, however, was comme il faut.  Mr. Bugs attempts the Crocodile Death-Roll.

“Get this cursed thing off me!”

But pretty soon Bugs began to get his feet under him.

“This may not be so bad after all.”

Pretty soon, though, Bugs was getting a little friskier than I felt quite comfortable with.

Pretty soon Bugs approached The Jungle To The East.

The Jungle To The East is where The Bolt-Hole is to be found.  You remember the Bolt-Hole.

The Bolt-Hole is where Bugs took refuge that one time, when it took Teresa and me four hours to get him out of there.

So here is where we went, then, like immediately.  Back Inside.

Back to Where All Is Known.

Back to where Bugs and Bean can recover.  Regroup.  Lay in more supplies.  Accept some appearances on the talk-show circuit.  Drum up some more funding.  And get ready to undertake – The Next Expedition.

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