SHU's VIEWS by JIM CARROLL

- pebbles -

- starfish hunter -

- starfish hunter -

posted 04/10/2008
We love the dogs that live with us. All three of them. Oscar has been around the longest. Almost 14 now, he is a rescued black lab mutt who we call the "Barry White" dog, because he "just wants to feel the love, baby." Then we have our 7-year-old border collie mutt, the also-rescued Tooley. She is queen-bitch, mega-alpha, and don’t you forget it, mere human.

The third is Ro, short for Rory, and more often Ro-Dog. He is the only one we have had since he was a puppy – except that when he was a puppy he was a kitten. Just don’t tell him. Ro-Dog is a marvelously athletic male orange tabby cat who thinks he is a dog, hence the name. Still, he has the hunting gene common to most felines.

I find it sad when he brings in mice of all sizes. I am even more sympathetic and sorrowful when he catches small birds. He seems to be so smooth and sneaky that even the bells he wears don’t give the birds enough warning. Perhaps we’ll have to equip him with a motion-sensor alarm of some sort, though I’m sure that it would make his late night, in-house prowlings pretty obnoxious for the paying tenants.

In his defense, I have to admit that he doesn’t always dispatch and eat his victims. To his credit, he is very open-species-minded when selecting his playmates. To date his repertoire of live friends invited home to play includes mice, rats, voles, moles, numerous birds, (including one really loud and embarrassed blue jay), a bat, and numerous garter snakes. We caught them all with great care and released them back into the woods and wilds, apologizing for our rude child and wishing them better luck next time.

It makes me feel like a bad parent. My sympathies are always with the victims. Well, mostly. I know it’s not right, and I need sensitivity training or "animal political correctness awareness" or something. But I draw the line at snakes. I don’t like snakes in my house. The first time he brought in a snake, I was quietly, but decidedly freaked out. A SNAKE! Right in our HOUSE! At least we thought it was a snake.

One morning Hollie and I awoke about the same time. We usually sit up and look over our feet to see what the weather and the water are looking like. It is a luxury we enjoy and appreciate. Hollie has much better vision than I do. On this particular morning, she issued a sound of some sort of wonder, tinged with a certain amount of disgust.

"Ro-Dog has brought in a SNAKE, and it’s draped over the foot rail of my desk!"

Now, being the modern, progressive man that I am, I reminded her of an applicable bit of logic: "Well, he’s YOUR cat"

Hollie is nothing if not fair, so she crept out of bed and sneaked up on this "snake."

"EEUUUW!" she said, or something near that. "It’s not a snake, it’s a freakin’ STARFISH!"

Well, this was enough to get me out from under the covers, where I had gone just to make sure my hair stayed warm.

"A WHAT?" I asked, wondering if the covers had affected my hearing.

Hollie repeated herself, and began wondering aloud and then asking me if I could tell if it was dead or alive. This is not a simple question with a starfish. A recent death is difficult to detect. It made no attempt to sprint for the door. The one arm clinging - or dangling, hard to say - over the foot rail argued for life.

I bravely picked the starfish up – something which most definitely would NOT have happened in the case of a snake. It was difficult to tell, but I thought the thing might be dead. I figured that either dead or alive, the bay was the best place for a starfish. He could assume his position in the food chain in either condition. So I walked down to the edge of the water and frisbee’d our unwanted guest 15 or 20 feet out into a receding tide, and headed back to the house, smelling the fresh coffee from the front lawn.

Over breakfast, Hollie and I marveled at the effort required for a 7-pound tabby to haul his 1-2 pound treasure home. Assuming he found it on the beach, and that it didn’t slither in by itself, Ro-Dog had to haul his starfish up a flight of eight very steep stairs from the beach, then across approximately 150 feet of front and side yard, and over 30 feet of gravel driveway to the garage.

After maneuvering the starfish through a dog-door to get it into the garage, he then had to climb two more stairs and pass through yet another dog door into the laundry room. Next he had to limbo under a metal baby gate, designed to stop dogs but not cats, and then make his way across 30 feet of ceramic tile hallway and great room, finally reaching the bedroom carpet and Hollie’s desk.

It pretty much boggles the mind. Not to mention that the starfish looked intact and unbloodied after all this jostling. Here I must admit that I don’t know if starfish even HAVE blood, but it is amazing all the same. Ro-Dog’s incredible journey.

The next day I took the dogs, including Ro who was always up for a good dog walk, for a saunter down the beach. About one hundred yards east of our stairs I came upon an apparently dead starfish, caught way above the tide line. It is, admittedly, hard to tell one of these things from another, but after our intimate association of the previous morning I am pretty sure this is "Ro-Dog’s" starfish. Ro feigns indifference and declines to identify.

So once again I determine that the best thing to do is to put it back in the water. Repeating the frisbee tactic of the day before, I wonder just briefly if the shock of hitting the surface from five feet up in the air might have been responsible for his current condition, but realize that I will never know. I let it go because I’ve done the best I can. We finished our walk and returned to the house.

When we found the starfish on the beach, we were over 100 yards from our beach-stairs. The next low tide was not until 2 a.m. the next morning. These facts seemed unimportant until 7:30 a.m. when I sat up, rolled out of bed, and reached for my robe and slippers. My toe hit something cold and squishy on the floor.

I know it is entirely likely that you don’t believe me, but as sad as that is, it really doesn’t change a thing. Ro-Dog’s starfish was back in my room. Not under the desk this time, but right in front of my dresser. Same color, same markings, same absence of activity or personality.

I expected to hear the voice of Rod Serling at any moment: "James Carroll thought the little place on the bay that he shared with his partner and his dogs was on a body of water known as Puget Sound. What he didn’t realize until just this morning was that the gently lapping waves on his beach marked the edge of a strange sea known as the Twilight Zone." Cue the music.