Category Books

Within arm’s reach

Nancy Crowe

It’s impossible for me to watch shows like “Ocean Mysteries” and “Sea Rescue” without feeling torn up over the way we are tearing up our world. The seal with the fishing line tightening around its neck, cutting into the flesh. The pelican with the pouch someone slashed with a knife. And of course the oil-covered fish, birds, and other creatures. The lovely image above was the artist’s response to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The world needs to know this and consider the implications, I remind myself. There is more to learn.

A recent episode dealt with a giant Pacific octopus who’d deposited some 20,000 eggs in her habitat at a marine life center. She would care for these eggs constantly. And that would be her final act, as octopuses die around the same time as their eggs hatch. Paul, the World Cup-match-predicting octopus in Germany, only lived to be two and a half years old, and that was considered a normal octopus lifespan.

This is not human cruelty or carelessness; it’s nature. We can do any number of things to take better care of our earth and help where there is hurt. All we can do about the incredible sadness of things like this is to stay present and keep learning.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22609485-the-soul-of-an-octopusA short time later, I found The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness (Atria Books, 2015) at a bookstore. The book grew out of author Sy Montgomery’s article in Orion magazine about her unique friendship with an octopus named Athena at the New England Aquarium. Octopuses (not octopi, she says) are intelligent creatures who solve problems, change colors according to their health and mood, and recognize the people who care for them.

Most of the book centers around the New England Aquarium and the staff and volunteers who care for a succession of Giant Pacific octopuses there. Montgomery describes her first “handshake” with Athena — octopuses taste with their entire bodies, but their suckers are the most sensitive — as “an exceptionally intimate embrace.” When Athena died suddenly, Montgomery, who felt she was just getting to know this new invertebrate friend, was surprised by her grief.

Other octopuses would cross her path, notably Octavia. “I stroked her head, her arms, her webbing, absorbed in her presence. She seemed equally attentive to me.”  Octavia also mischievously hosed a high school student job-shadowing Montgomery for the day. As Octavia began to age, the aquarium acquired young Kali, an inordinately curious escape artist. Then there was Karma, who arrived with part of her second right arm missing.

Also compelling are the stories of the humans Montgomery works with, including sixteen-year-old volunteer Anna, who has Asperger’s syndrome, a few health problems, and a host of fish tanks at home. “Going behind the scenes at the aquarium changed my life,” she says.

Though I do have reservations about animals such as octopuses being kept in captivity, reputable aquariums serve a valuable purpose. They provide ways to learn about and connect with sea life that would be far less likely or impossible in the wild. This sort of connection translates much more readily to caring and conservation than, say, abstractly hearing over and over again about the importance of conservation. The aquariums that lean more toward amusement parks or other commercial enterprises? Maybe not so much.

Of course, caring comes with a cost, such as feeling torn up inside when animals suffer or natural wonders are trashed. Or grieving over the loss of friends (of any species) whose time on earth seems absurdly short.

Still, we reach out — to hold hands with an octopus, plant a garden, recycle a pop can, or do any other seemingly small thing that keeps the regenerative force of caring alive.

Dog school confidential

Nancy Crowe

51+12AmLdKL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_When 24-year-old Evie answers an online ad to become a dog trainer, she doesn’t know exactly why. She’s never had a pet and has little experience with dogs. But before she even clicks on the ad, “suddenly I felt that I stood in the doorway of a crowded, noisy room, picking up the sound of a whisper no one else seemed to hear.”

That is key to The Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances by Ellen Cooney (Mariner Books, 2014) — learning how to listen in a new way.

The training program is at a mountaintop sanctuary for stray and rescued dogs, and Evie is the lone trainee. There are no classes. There are no instructors. There are only stern innkeeper Mrs. Auberchon, Giant George (a young man with no apparent history or actual age), the older women who run the sanctuary, and a handful of dogs who — accompanied by mysteriously placed case history notes — introduce themselves to Evie, one by one.

Hank is a Lab/pit bull mix left anonymously at a shelter, deemed unadoptable due to aggression. Josie, a small white dog, lived in the lap of luxury until the new baby came along. Her hearing loss was determined to be the result of a recent blow, or several. Tasha is pure Rottweiler; before arriving at the Sanctuary, she was pushed out of a car at a stop sign, adopted twice and returned both times, and barely escaped being adopted by dogfighters.

The dogs, of course, aren’t the only ones with troubled pasts. Evie knows she requires just as much training and re-socializing as her canine charges. Mrs. Auberchon is a lone wolf and determined to remain so. What they have in common is an uncanny knack for communicating with the dogs. Evie “messages” them. Mrs. Auberchon reads to them.

Some aspects of the novel were puzzling. It’s hard to believe such an unstructured dog training program could exist for very long. The sanctuary staffers barely communicate with Evie and show little warmth or welcome. The canine characters, however, were very genuine, as dogs tend to be.

This story is a reminder that there are no bad dogs, as Barbara Woodhouse famously said in her 1982 book. There are dogs with severe limitations, and sadly, we humans are sometimes ill equipped to respond. My rescue dog, a German shepherd-golden retriever-collie mix, joined the household at about two years old, which in dog years is plenty of time to develop life-altering fears and bad habits. Like pulling at the leash and lunging at other dogs, sometimes injuring the human holding the leash who is trying to restrain her or, at the very least, hold on. Or launching herself toward moving bicycles because they frighten her so badly that attacking them seems to be her only option. After three training classes, there is improvement, but unfortunately not enough for walking her to be safe. However, she has a home, and who knows what learning opportunities may unfold?

Finding peace with doing what we can do for abandoned and abused animals, even when that seems woefully inadequate, is humbling. It reminds us to not give up on ourselves. After studying dog breeds and dog training and reading countless case histories, she writes a case note for herself in the form of a haiku:

Came in as a stray.
Is not completely hopeless.
Please allow to stay.

Elephants, moms, and memories

Nancy Crowe

UnknownAfter starting Jodi Picoult’s novel, “Leaving Time,” I wasn’t sure I wanted to finish it. A reference to an elephant named Mary being tried and hanged for murder in 1916 in Tennessee led me to look it up to see if this really happened. Sadly, it did, and it haunted me.

I was drawn in by the story, though, and couldn’t resist a tale that included a stumbling, self-doubting psychic. So I forged ahead.

Thirteen-year-old Jenna is a solitary soul who reminded me a little of Tatum O’Neal’s character in the movie, “Paper Moon.” Jenna’s mother, Alice, was an elephant researcher with a particular passion for studying how elephants grieve. Her brilliant, mentally ill father, Thomas, ran the New England elephant sanctuary where they lived and worked.

The novel hinges on what happened, or may have happened, on a night when Jenna was  three and Alice disappeared under mysterious circumstances. As a young teen, she’s busy working the missing-persons sites on the Internet and poring over her mother’s old journals, longing for the mother she both remembers and never knew. On the fringes of her life are her grandmother, with whom she lives, and her father, who now calls a psychiatric hospital home. Jenna finally hires jaded private investigator Virgil, who worked on her mother’s case when he was a police officer; and disgraced former celebrity psychic Serenity.

A precocious child, a boozy ex-cop, and a psychic with a past. Cue the cute music, right? The three form an uneasy, unlikely alliance as they try to piece together what happened that night, what led up to it, and who might know. Another sanctuary worker, Nevvie, died — accidentally trampled by an elephant, so the police report said — the night Alice disappeared. Was Alice responsible for Nevvie’s death, or did Alice herself die at the hands of her increasingly unstable husband?

The hardest question is the one Jenna has to face: If her mother is alive, why did she leave Jenna behind? As Virgil and Serenity draw closer to the answer, they increasingly want to protect her from it. Until Jenna takes the case back into her own hands and hops a bus for Tennessee.

And that’s just the humans. The elephants themselves, one named Maura in particular, have their own bonds and losses. Elephants are exemplary mothers; mother and baby elephants are part of a complex social structure. When Maura’s calf dies, Alice — both as a scientist studying elephant grief and as a steward and friend of the elephants — stays with her as they all process what has happened.

Grief is an experience of all creatures great and small. I had two peppered corydoras catfish in my aquarium, and when one died, the other stayed by his body for several hours.

Back to the book. The story resolved in a way I probably should have picked up on earlier — but I’m kind of glad I didn’t. You may find yourself, as I did, going back and reading earlier scenes.