Escape from Grey Gardens

Hattie is living inside. We've made her a safe haven in the pass-through bathroom with a baby gate for the door to our bedroom so she can see and hear us, and us her. So far she's only roamed around the bedroom a bit with the doors shut so the boys can't get in. On the other side of the pass-through last night I rigged up her crate poking into the TV room so she can join us, sort of, in there. When we take her out we carry her to the door so the boys don't get to her.

Beckett and Scout are not too happy about their new sister. They are curious, but wary, and both have growled at her. We need to let them co-exist separated for a time, see that attention to them isn't diminished by her being here, and we will do the first face-to-face meetings outside on neutral ground, carefully monitored. There must be all kinds of stuff going on in the canine frequencies--we'll just read it as well as we can and take the socialization one day at a time. Patience has always paid off with these dogs, and Hattie is responding to it wonderfully well. The boys are sweet fellas and I know they will accept her eventually.

She's gone from a terrified little yelper under the house who wouldn't let me get near her to an affectionate puppy in less than 2 weeks. Her first bath made her soft and sweet-smelling, and now she wriggles around and comes to greet us, falls asleep with her head in my lap, and generally behaves more and more like a secure puppy every day. I got a 20-foot training lead and have already started some low-key obedience. When she's more adjusted to her surroundings I'll take her to classes. She has yet to have an accident in the house and seems to understand what to do when I take her out. She's starting to respond to her name.

She was so sweet at the vet's, probably too scared to do much but put up with it. We got her shots, blood test, feeding instructions, appointment for spaying in 3 months, etc. She's got a few small problems that come with being a stray, but nothing major: a mild ear infection, coat showing the effects of poor nutrition, needing to be wormed, and of course fleas, but those weren't too bad since we had a couple of freezes recently. Thank goodness she is too young for heartworm, but we got her started on prevention for that right away. The vet gave her this amazing pill that makes the fleas literally stagger off the animal and plop over dead. It works for 48 hours, by which time we had bathed her and applied Advantage. The vet said she was pretty certain her coat would improve with proper nutrition. It already looks a heck of a lot better after her bath.

The best thing is seeing her be curious and puppyish. Yesterday she lay down on the little knoll the house sits on and went to roll over on her back to, then surprised herself by rolling over completely since she was going downhill. She will fetch a stick but gets distracted, as a puppy should. We are exploring the yard and each other. She responds to my voice positively, no sign of that cringing from before, but we still need to move slowly around her.

The vet said from her teeth she was probably 13 weeks, and she weighs 26 pounds. My guess is she'll be a pretty big girl. I adore her.

Saturday was the Spanish Town parade. Gary stayed home with a hurt knee and Hattie, and I rode our float with my friend Ruth. We were vikings. Ruth made this amazing hat with beads, flamingoes, and feathers glued all over it. We decided that as we did not look threatening that we were pacifist vikings. We threw a ton of stuff at people and distributed more at the party that has become a department tradition.

Although I had a great time, there were a few twinges of missing people who've moved on. Thank goodness fresh supplies of wonderful people seem to keep arriving. A few reunions: our friend blogger Josh came for the party from Austin and stayed a few nights at GGLA. He's smart and funny and sweet and eccentric and it was great to see him.

Here's a sense of what Spanish Town is like: motley, campy, political, homemade, funky, fun.

Here's the lawn mower brigade (Krewe of Yazoo) rehearsing. This year their theme was "Senior Mow-ments."

Hattie has gone from fraidy-cat to cuddle-bunny. Her name and demeanor have spawned all sorts of nicknames:

The hat
Hatser
Hattaroonie
Hat trick
Hattie-hoo
Miss Hat
Hatta-hoo
Hat-a-tat
Hattananny
Little Bit
Bitty Boo
Hiddle Hop
Hipty Hop
Hatsetshup (only she's Queen of the Muddy Mississippi, instead of the Blue Nile)

She seems to be completely house-trained, not even one accident. We have been playing ball outside, and she has been learning "Sit," "Stay," and "Come" with the help of hot dog slices. This morning we had a photo shoot. I want a shot of her little dance but she's always coming toward the camera (and mom, holding it) when that happens.

Here's my sweet girl.

As Shirley Jackson once wrote, but she meant it differently, it seems "I have written myself into the house." Since this thing is called "Escape from Grey Gardens," and I still feel it to be that, why do I chew so much virtual space about living here? One escapes something by writing about it? Perhaps one merely tames it.

Hattie is making me re-appreciate Grey Gardens, LA. For one thing, I am induced to spend much more time outside, with her. She prefers outside strongly and when it is time to come in sits down and will not budge. So far we get her moving by picking her up and carrying her inside, although originally that maneuver was to keep her away from her big brothers (they have still not had direct contact; I think it wisest to proceed slowly, since they have 10-plus years of being a pack of 2 that is being thrown into upheaval). She's going to get too heavy for that, so obedience training will be in order, but I like that she's come out of her shell enough to assert her desires a bit. Watching her play is utter joy; no longer does she need all her energy to survive. We take long walks with her 20 foot lead and she zips around investigating everything. Gary takes her for a run in the back field where I don't go much because something back there makes me get violently allergic, but I love to watch from a distance the little dog at the end of the long leash bounding around with the big man on the other end. All the dogs have now gotten onto the fact that I've been leaving bits of bread around for the winter songbirds, ever since I noticed that there's a lot of bird traffic on the ground under the finch feeders, so we have to stop and let her snarf some crumbs. When we come around the corner by the feeders it disrupts the feeding of huge bunches of birds (not flocks exactly, because they are a mixed bag--what's the word for an assorted group of birds?) and there's something about this sudden upward rush that feels glorious. We have goldfinches, purple finches, house finches, cardinals (the female's orange beak and top-knot always makes me think of a fussy sort of lady wearing too much lipstick), red-winged black birds (who are too big for the finch feeder but try to sit on it anyway, kind of sideways, making the whole thing rock and pissing off the finches), chickadees, doves, painted buntings with their coats of many colors, more kinds I can't think of right now, and my favorite, white-throated sparrow. He doesn't look like much but he makes my favorite song, low and clear and sweet.

For another thing, since we have to maneuver to keep the boys and Hattie separated for a time, I have to open and shut doors more often. That sounds silly, but one of the things I like most about GGLA are the doors in the oldest part of the house--usually its the first thing people remark upon in the front parlor, where they show off best and there are a lot of them: they're like 12 feet tall.

But Hattie is just a joy in and of herself. With her little Hattie dance and with the trust and affection she's decided to give me, she's lifted me out of a funk I didn't really know I was in. It breaks my heart to think of someone driving up the dirt road in the neighboring field, opening the car door, chucking her out, and driving off. I'm pretty sure that's how it went. I can't imagine doing that, and I don't want to imagine it. It doesn't seem to have broken her heart, and that's the main thing. In the evening now we've been putting up her folding dog crate (we call it her Winnebago) in the TV room so all the dogs can co-exist in one room with us while we watch Tivo-ed PBS Jane Austen, but she's still safe and we don't have turf wars. Gradually the boys will adjust.

But see, there, I sat down to write about Antarctica and I didn't get further than the back field of GGLA. And it's about time we re-engaged the ostensible topic of this blog, travel.

I have this obsession with Antarctica. More specifically, with the stories of exploring the continent (yeah, I now, empire and machismo and all that, but I find it very easy to bracket that out while reading). I think it began when I saw the footage from Shackleton's Endurance expedition, packaged in South. But maybe before that. It's so amazing, so remote in time and place, but there it all is: the ship stuck in the ice, the dogs (poor things, all killed eventually), the whole gang I'd read about so much I felt I knew them.

Anyway I read about Antarctic exploration at night, which is sometimes counterintuitive in the winter in a drafty old house under five blankets, but there it is. Shackleton of course, I adore him, but also Amundsen, Cherry-Gerard, Byrd, Mawson, and if I can ever wrench them back out of Gary's hands, Scott's journals are next. I finally got around to a modern narrative, Sara Wheeler's Terra Incognita, last week, and besides being wonderful it fed the left turn my obsession with these stories has taken lately, which is a fantasy of actually going there. She travels exactly the way I'd like to: lots of research on the front end, much of it reading historical narratives (the same books I am clutching over the blankets), extended stays, getting in on the activities (helping out the "beakers," which is Antarctican for the scientists whose labor most of the bases and camps support), great good humor, and the journey changes her--she lets it do that, and writes eloquently about it, but without over-disclosing. She has both candor and tact. I love the end, where she goes home but is so haunted by the experience that she returns (in the Antarctic winter, no less) and makes a camp with a painter from New England, and they figure they are the only artists on the whole freaking huge continent. The left turn came when I saw Heidi Shumann's photo essay in the on-line Times which of course made going to Antarctica, actually going, seem doable. Half of me still says this is crazy, I get cold when it's in the 50s for chrissake, but I can't shake this longing to see it, to be in it. I've been tapping around a bit exploring how possible (expensive, difficult) this will be, but we did make a pact with friends last year to try to go, and I aim to keep my word on this one. So more on this topic in future entries.