Bow Knows What He Wants

We have been snowed in for the past couple of days. The amount of snow is not that great. We've seen far more snow this winter, but the temperatures have been unusually low. Bow has been bored.

Yesterday, I made him some tea. You can read more about that in The Feast Before Us.

But today, Bow only asked for water. He did not want tea. And eventually, despite the cold, he asked to go out again. I knew he probably wouldn't really want to step out, but I humored him and took him down the hall to the airlock that leads to the outer pen.

I opened the sliding glass door and unlocked the metal door. Bow looked outside for a moment, and before I knew it, he was closing the glass door by himself. Then he took my key and tried to use it on the door leading inside, back to the warm and snug inner pen.

Bow knows what he wants and how to get it.

Bundling Up

The weather is trending colder again. Today the sliding door to the backyard was frozen shut, and I had to let Brownie out through the garage.

Yesterday, Bow stayed in almost all day. We looked at pictures, read books, and tried to keep ourselves occupied indoors. Bow especially likes looking at children and babies. When he heard me exclaim that So-and-so's little boy was so cute -- as I was going through my Facebook feed -- Bow insisted that I show him, and he looked for a long time with great interest at the picture. "You remember so-and-so," I said. "You knew her when she was a school girl, and now she is all grown up and has a little boy." Bow nodded.

We also looked at other pictures, the kind we have hard copies of. Here is a shot of Bow looking at the big picture of himself and Lawrence that he got for his birthday.

The green blanket got full usage yesterday, sometimes as rug to lie or sit on, sometimes as a blanket to cover Bow up as he napped, and at times it served Bow as a robe.

Bow refuses to wear clothing. He is very stubborn about that, even outside in the snow. But he sometimes seems to reinvent the idea of clothing, in the way he uses his blanket. In the summer he will sometimes tie a blanket round his waist. In the winter, he looks like a robed sage.

Then, just to show he does not take himself all that seriously, Bow will stick out his tongue.

Or he will pout.

But for long periods of time, he looks like a wise patriarch who has all the answers.

Toward the end of the day, Bow asked to go outside. I let him out, and he made a brief but impassioned display. The sound of his voice echoed through the woods behind our house. Then he rushed back inside.

Sometimes you just have to let it all out, express what you need to express, then hurry back to where it is safe and warm and snug.

Grooming Lawrence on a Cold but Beautiful Day

It started with the most gorgeous sunrise that I have ever seen. The pink sky surrounded us in the pens this morning. I could not help but notice, so I rushed outside to take a few pictures.

The sun was rising up through the barren trees in the woods behind our house.

The woods are due east of our house, so that's where the greatest amount of light was shining. But if you looked in the other directions, there were also some spectacular displays of color in the sky.

To the southeast the cloud formation was regal in its display of pink, yellow and purple.

Due south, the colors were more muted and less festive, but dignified in their splendor. See that giant twin cedar in the distance?

To the west it was still somewhat gloomy, and the bare limbs of the oaks reached out to one another with against a pinkish, blue sky.

In the northeast the clouds towered over the woods and the ribbon of our private road.

Today is a Thursday, and Lawrence was just here yesterday. But our generator needs to be repaired, because there is something wrong with its starter, so Lawrence volunteered to sit a while with Bow, as the repairman was in the backyard working on the starter. You can see how dreadfully cold it is by how bundled up the repairman is in this picture.

When I told Bow that Lawrence was coming, at first he remarked that it was the wrong day. But he was happy when Lawrence arrived and did not display at him at all. Since Lawrence had just been here yesterday, he had still not become a stranger. Stay away a whole week, though, and you get an extra long display!

Whenever we have a repair person over, Bow is usually a little excited and agitated. This time was no exception. Bow insisted on going outside to see how the repair job was progressing, and he was out there with no clothing, his teeth chattering, and yet he did not want to go in, and it was hard to persuade him. Bow was afraid he'd miss out on something. I brought out the red shirt to see if Bow would let Lawrence put it on him, but Bow refused. It was only when the repairman went back in for a moment that Lawrence was able to persuade Bow to go back in. After that, they stayed in, even though the repairman went back outside to work on the generator.

To warm up, they walked in circles for a while, and then Bow settled down to a serious grooming session with Lawrence. When Bow starts to groom someone, it could go on for hours. Bow is very intent on his task.

Eventually the repairman had to leave, and so did Lawrence. But Bow and Lawrence certainly had a nice time together this morning, on this cold, but beautiful day.

The Butterfly Behind the Curtain

Today was by and large an uneventful day. It was cold, but not as cold as yesterday. Bow went outside briefly a couple of times, but most of the time we stayed indoors. Bow groomed me.

We took pictures in the sunlight streaming from the windows.

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It was a nice day, and we were both happy. But despite all that sunshine, I was still wearing a jacket indoors.

And Bow spent more time communing with his blanket than he usually does.

Around three o'clock Bow asked for an apple as a snack and I went to the dining room to get one. I noticed a strange fluttering behind the window curtain and went to check it out.

It was odd to see a butterfly in January. I was not expecting that!

I went to give Bow his apple, but returned to see that Leo, in the backyard, was barking at the butterfly in the window.

Normally, when I find an insect in the house, I catch it and let it out. But what would the butterfly do outside? It is still quite cold out, and there are no plants in bloom. 

I decided to leave the butterfly alone and let him stay there. But by the time my daughter came home from school, the butterfly had disappeared. It was not by the window, nor anywhere else to be seen.

So we've had an uneventful, peaceful day. Nothing unusual. Except for one butterfly that appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared.

Just Say No!

It has been very cold. It snowed yesterday, and school was canceled for today.

I built a fire in the fireplace.

The snow did not seem all that uniformly high.

But there were drifts of snow that were quite deep.

This morning, even with the heat on, it seemed a little cold. When Bow asked for a shirt, I took him at his word and brought one out that I thought he might actually like to wear.

At first, I thought that he might like to put the shirt on himself. But when he just stared at me, I decided I would help him. Coaxing did not work. Pretty soon he had me chasing him around the pen. Then finally he took my hand and spelled לא. No is no. I accepted his answer and stopped pestering him.

It's a good thing we have language. There is no need to be coy. When someone makes you an offer of something that you do not want, you can just say no. It's amazing how well that works!

Bow later also told me that a guy does not wear clothes. דוד לא לובש בגדים. As a general rule, I might disagree. But this particular guy stopped wearing clothes the moment he got free run of the pens.

So in the end, Bow asked for his blanket, and he seems happy, even though it is cold and there is not much to do.