First attempt at Windsurfing

The first time you attempt windsurfing, you wonder how it can even be possible. The experienced boarders are racing over gentle waves and medium winds at many miles per hour with sails and boards of varying colors, materials and dimensions, plumes of white water following in their wakes. Men and women of all ages and expertise are out here today shooting past me with such apparent ease that I’m excited that I might be able to learn to do this. Each graceful voyager reaches the endpoint of his or her range and then flips the sail around with one quick arm twist, stepping around the mast on an ocean-slippery and bouncing board to careen along again in the other direction. Many have harnesses attached to the booms from their waists in a classic position - recommended for experienced surfers only.

The variety and conditions of boards, sails, center boards or their absence, as well as the human stances and positions on different areas of the board depending on skill and conditions shows how each person follows different pathways towards differing goals. Some people want high velocity at all costs, while others desire a more controlled ride. Some want the board to fly through the air, others want it to plane over the water with just the rudder or skeg touching. There is a board for every range of skill and pocketbook. Some of the people here bring several boards and sails for different conditions.

I get acquainted with a retired couple who have equipped their trailer specifically for the sport. Sailing together every weekend in the summer, they have sailed for over 15 years. Today their trailer carries a dozen boards and sails for different conditions, several wetsuits, booms, masts, harnesses, helmets and a toolbox filled with accessories and hardware. She likes a short and wide board with a medium sized sail and wears a purple helmet. He won’t go out unless the wind is at least 10 miles per hour, and carries a wind meter to check its speed. He watches her today from a chair on the beach next to a table containing a backgammon board: he says the wind is too light and it’s not exciting enough to sail.

A very slender young lady from Germany brings a beach chair and reads or talks on her cell phone waiting for the right conditions: it’s not windy enough to provide the challenge she prefers today.

I borrowed my to-be-husband’s board and his advice to learn how to windsurf this summer. It was a 20 plus year old board, probably the oldest here this weekend, with a few dings and dents in it but absolutely indestructible, as I found out sailing directly into a buoy with it. The sail and mast were heavier than normal, created before the days of lightweight carbon composites requiring less weight for sail, mast and booms.

It was a good beginning, I thought, after three days of trial and error, and I was really having a lot of fun. I watched a young man being taught by a pro on a newer and more stable board, who sailed better on his first day than I on my third. While they were still in range I learned some tips that helped. For instance, it makes a great difference to the rider the position the hands on the boom takes, and also the distance of the boom from the center of gravity. It was not intuitive, certainly. There were some basic rules and I could learn a lot from a class. But not today.

On my very first day I knew very little, with a partner who was still learning and hadn’t been out on his board since his children were teenagers more than 20 years ago, who could offer only a couple of his gleanings. He also had never had a lesson, but was able to sail around the cove and back, falling off very occasionally. All I wanted was to get up on the board, get the sail up out of the water, and take a few short sails around the cove.

It was a perfect day for a beginner: warm with a relatively steady 8 mile an hour wind and a beach littered with windsurfers and windsurfing gear. I was ready to give it a try.

Imagine small ripples of water on the bay side of the ocean, with no big crashing waves, and the surface almost as calm as a small lake. The wind is blowing so lightly that a flag waves gently on a pole. This is a perfect day for you to learn to windsurf.

You push board and sail away from shore until it’s about thigh deep. Your sail is downwind lying in the water (if it’s a big one) and your boat is upwind. You hop on the boat from upwind. The tiny waves are bouncing the board up and down while you attempt standing on it with the board parallel to the waves. You pull on a knotted cord called an uphaul to raise the mast carrying the sail, which is lying in the ocean in front of you who are now squatting on the board. Smaller sails and more stable boats can start with the sail out of the water but this is an old, heavy sail and board. On a newer, lighter model, you can easily hold the sail straight up over the boat as you walk into the water, and when you’re deep enough to clear the rudder, also known as the skeg, merely step onto the board and sail away. In my case, with a heavy older sail, keeping your knees bent and back straight rather than hunched forward, you pull the uphaul cord slowly up, allowing the water to slide off the submerged sail to lighten it enough to pull it out of the water bit by bit. Your hands grip the furthest knot, then moving through the knots, one by one as the water falls off the sail. You have started out using your legs and leaning backwards to let your body weight pull the sail out of the water, which seems to weigh a ton. By the time it is fully out of the water, it weighs less than twenty pounds, and perhaps ten. Now you straighten it by resting one hand on the sail mast to fully upright, between your feet, with the waves still rolling beneath you, and you are wondering how to possibly keep your balance. Up and down, constantly the waves are moving, carrying you vertically and horizontally towards shore and forward slowly in the direction of the wind. Your tiny steps bring the forward foot slightly backward, keeping the boat balanced with as little turbulence as possible from your motions. Now comes the big moment: it’s time to catch the wind in your sail. You open the sail an inch or two, like opening a fun-house door, worried what you may find when it is fully open. Put your outer hand on the boom at shoulder level several inches from the mast. Remove the other hand from the mast to the boom a few inches from your other hand as you open the sail an inch or two. This is also known as opening the door a crack…

Falling off the board several times when attempting this feat, in spectacular splashes, you’ve swallowed the equivalent of a half of a cup of salt water, but you keep getting back on and trying again because you think, if I try harder I will get it right. This results in escalating smaller to larger triumphs, interspersed with swallowing a lot of the ocean from falling backwards and sometimes getting pushed underwater with the sail falling on top of you. Your stomach feels a bit queasy as you regain your stance on the bouncing board again and again to attempt what seems to be impossible. Finally you hang on with the sail up. When the sail catches the wind it pulls the board with you standing and trying to shift your feet back a few inches without rocking the board and falling off. Your concentration and tension sharpen to a point of almost spiritual clarity while you inch both hands further sideways on the boom, leaning back with arms stretched out in the classic seven position, and by some miracle you sail several feet, maybe even a dozen. This is great! The water makes a whooshing sound as the board slices through and over it, a rushing torrent under and over your feet. Exhilaration is short-lived however, because you are so surprised to be actually sailing that you forget to feel with your feet the rolling waves and lose your balance. Or, you are unable to compensate quickly for the variable gusting of the wind whose period of motion is unpredictable. The split second change in wind velocity requires your entire concentration. You will still pitch off easily, because you cannot react quickly enough. It’s too fast a change to adjust your stance adequately. Your muscles have to learn to accommodate these wind gusts second by second, with the sail in any of a number of different positions. If there is any wave action, the complications double with keeping the board from tipping. All the experienced boarders speak of muscle memory to learn this sport. Your muscles, from your arms, through your shoulders, back, legs and feet, are balancing the weight of your entire body on the board in a stable center of gravity, while holding the sail in a position allowing you to move the board in control without falling off.

You fall off and submerge again and again. You look around, ocean water pouring out of your nose. The other surfers are zipping through the water at what looks like a hundred miles an hour. They may offer you useful tips after they’ve seen you a few times. You watch them, listen, try it and believe it. You want to experience that ecstasy of sailing along the water at any speed again so you get back on to try it again.

There’s nothing that comes close to the sensation of sailing through the water. You keep trying until you’re so tired you must stop, and with legs rubbery from overuse, you stagger out of the water to rest, dry off, drink fluids, and browse on a sandwich or two. Watching the surfers zooming along the water seemingly effortlessly, you can’t wait to get out there and try it again.

Like many great discoveries, the first person to try the sport did not know that it was impossible. In the late 1940s Newman Darby found he could steer a conventional 3 meter sailboat by tipping it fore and aft enough to make turns even without a rudder. Several sailboards and 2 1/2 decades later (1964) he designed the first universal joint to go along with a flat bottom sailing scow. Fitted with a universal joint mast, a centerboard, tail fin and kite- shaped free sail, he and his wife Naomi Darby built and designed the first sailboard. Windsurfing was born. In 1968 sailor/engineer Jim Drake and surfer/skier Hoyle Schweitzer filed for the first patent on a design called a Windsurfer, based upon Darby's original ideas and fully crediting him with its invention. The early Windsurfer boards measured 12 feet long and weighed 60 pounds. Today’s models are considerably lighter and shorter, and most don’t have a centerboard. In the 1980s, Darby received a design patent for a one-person sailboat, the Darby 8 SS sidestep hull (from: The Birth of Windsurfing by Newman & Naomi Darby at http://www.computerknowhow.com/darbyweb).

My board was a two decade, obsolete 11’7” long by 2’ 1” wide older boat built in the early days when surfboard shapes were considered hydrodynamic. Unstable when you added a sail, the design changed over the years towards much shorter and wider shapes, with quality controlled material characteristics like density. The current sales brochures contain no long boards like this. Our board did not come with instructions, and we tied the boom, harness lines and sail in place the way they looked like they should go. Over several days of sailing in front of the same folks, we were shown the correct intricacies for tying and placement. It was interesting how the lines holding the sail in place locked down when you threaded them through the machined holes in the boom, and how tightly you could pull when you used a mechanism specifically created to do so. We learned about a tool you can buy to tighten the lines, bringing to the sail a stiffer and more efficient face to catch the wind.

Having sailed six times at the same beach, and talking to several veterans of the sport, I talk with a woman in her early fifties who is an acknowledged expert. She tells me that no matter what bad mood she paddles out there with, the exhilaration of a sail removes it totally from her consciousness. The soft caress of the wind sliding you over the water on the board even on the first day was such a mind-altering experience that I know this must be true. As I plan my weekends in the future to windsurf all summer, checking wind speeds and weather forecasts over the Net, I know I was already converted to the sport that very first day.

I thought of how easy it would have been on one of the new boards with shorter, lighter sails, with a teacher showing me how it’s done. I had learned on a tippy, obsolete long board with a massively heavy sail, little instruction but lots of motivation. I didn’t regret one moment of it, even falling off and swallowing sea water.

Memorial for an Old Warrior

March 30 2006
The vet came today and put our oldest cat, Beardsley to sleep today. Bil said he didn't give up without a fight. It is so sad. The cancer was so far advanced he had very little face left. He would sit on the street in front of our house. People came by and asked if he was okay because his face looked horrifying. A girl called the animal control officer who came by, and spoke to us, then called the girl back to reassure her. Everyone who saw him worried about him. The kids were afraid of him because of how he looked. He sneezed and when he sneezed, blood came out. They would ask us if he was suffering. I said probably not, because I really didn’t know. He was on painkillers and anti-inflammatory in his food. But he wanted to be friendly and would sit out there in the sun and wait to be petted. The children called him Boyfriend. He used to walk them to the school bus stop and wait for them at the end of the day. He would also sit on Military Highway waiting for someone to give him attention. I used to say he was hitch hiking. He went away several times for weeks and months, even a whole summer, and was once adopted, unknown to us, by a military family. I found out when he came home one day after being gone from us for many months. He wore a leather collar containing a cat license around his neck and waist: he had gotten caught under a fence and his skin was ripped down to the muscles in an 8 inch gaping gash, with the tail ward flap of skin seemingly unattached and floating on his viscera. He looked so uncomfortable and in such pain I didn’t even want to touch him. Rushed to the vet who put him to sleep, then cut off the license tag and sewed him back together. They called the license tag holders, who had left the area, as military families often do, who perhaps wondered what had happened to their wonderful cat, who must have appeared in their lives as a vagrant, apparently homeless and bereft of friends or family. They called him Boots. And indeed, he had boots and when he walked he pranced.

When he showed up at my house in 1993 he would woof if he saw someone out on the deck. He must have grown up around dogs. He would follow me wherever I went when I took walks down the street, as if he was taking me for a walk. He had a soft little mew when he was pleased to see you: a most delicate sound coming out of this large tom cat with muscles of steel and a physique like a prize-fighter’s.

He was our friend for approximately 14 years, and I watched him grow as a happy go lucky adolescent into a crusty warrior in his old age. He did not like sharing me with other cats and wanted to be the only one. This jealous cat wandered off, in his search for another home: a cat-free household where he could be the king. When he came home, unsuccessful, he was known as the King. Or, as Bil called him, he was The Beast. This kingly cat deigned to mew softly when he knew he was the center of your attention. If he had to share the limelight, he was known to whack whatever limb was available, catching your skin a good swipe and sometimes drawing blood with a hiss. Other cats would walk around him or suffer the consequences of not getting out of his way.

Recently he became reticent about asserting himself among my multi-cat household. He would still hiss loudly and swipe a paw, but without the rancor necessary to connect and draw blood from one of us or another cat. After coming home from the hospital getting surgery last winter for his nasal cancer, a neighbor’s dog chased him up a tree. See "Even We caused Suffering".

Up until today, all that was left for him to do was to sit on a lap, or lay in the sun hoping someone would be brave enough to stop and pet him. Bil was the only one now who would spend any time with him. While he was sneezed upon Bil held steady as his last and only friend. I’m ashamed to say I could barely stand to allow him to sit on me as he sneezed and blood spattered everything in the area.

We had the vet come to the house to put him to sleep. He wouldn't allow her to come near him, nor either of us to hold him down. It felt like murder, and we finally told her to go, as there was too much fight in him still and he wanted to live. The nasal cancer took a long time to slow him down until finally we knew it was time. I was not there, as I had to go to work, so Bil was left alone to deal with the experience of putting the poor old warrior to sleep.

You were a great cat, Beardsley and you will be missed!

An Earlier Case where We caused suffering

Several years ago our eldest cat Beardsley arrived home the night previous from an operation on his nose for skin cancer. We’d had him since 1993 when he showed up as a kitten in our yard. He was my first cat in Gales Ferry and although I was allergic to him, I loved him dearly. An outdoor cat who hated being indoors, he meowed and fussed, irritably hissing at our other cats and I worried that one would strike back at him with a claw to the freshly operated skin on his nose, before we reluctantly allowed him outside to breathe the crisp winter air and walk in the snow. He was still suffering the effects of anesthesia, but we thought we should allow him to enjoy the air on the deck outside the door. Unfortunately two dogs from several streets over came by that very morning to chase our cats. They were dogs we had seen a few times before, and each time the result was the same: cats running in cat doors, skidding around the corners and running down the cellar. Several cats skidded in through the cat doors and we could see they were panicked so we knew something was going on. I started to run outside as I saw the dogs exuberantly prancing and jumping around an oak tree and Beardsley climbing as rapidly as he could. He climbed over 30 feet, found a crotch in the tree, and hunkered in.

We were afraid he’d fall since he was still unsteady from the leftover anesthesia in his system. To get him down safely even our extension ladder would not reach him and he was not agile enough to climb down on his own. We brought out a shovel and a ladder to climb to the top of our workshop shed which was conveniently near the tree so we could carry up the long extension ladder to reach Beardsley. Bil shoveled snow and ice off the sloped roof of this 12 foot square shed near the 8 inch diameter tree, and worried about slipping off as it was sloping towards a steep cliff. Off the lower edge of the roof was a 10 foot drop to two feet of snow covered ground, which then fell another 35 feet to the bottom of the cliff. Perching the extension ladder then upon that shed placed its feet close to the lower slope of the shed roof, so a fall could cause great injury.

It was still slippery. We gingerly moved up there together to set the extension ladder on the roof sloping up to the treed cat. The ladder against the 8" round tree was not stable - Bil held the ladder steady so it wouldn’t slip off the tree at the top nor the slick roof at the bottom while I climbed up 20 odd steps, plucked the cat out of the crotch of the tree and carried him down, resting him on the edge of each rung of the ladder step by step down the ladder. This 15-pound cat felt like double the weight - I didn't even think about my fear of heights as we came down, down, down the ladder. Our neighbors next door Gene and Diane watched the drama as it unfolded as Bil grit his teeth and held the ladder from slipping. It was a huge relief and we all cheered as we all saw Beardsley was finally safe!

Beardsley would live for several years after the experience to continue to walk the neighborhood children to the school bus stop as he was a friendly cat and just wanted people to love him. The children had a nickname for him and indeed, he made the rounds in the area. To hear more about Beardsley and his Other life, see Beardsley, Memorial for an Old Warrior.

The owner of the dogs finally appeared and did his best to catch them and return them to his yard. When the dogs returned later that month to play in our yard, our blind cat Turnip was taking his daily walk in our backyard. Normally Turnip would walk around in a large 15-foot circle, then run around it. We loved to watch him run. He looked like a little lamb, kicking up his feet, stretching his legs. Turnip was 8 when we got him from a neighbor moving to Mexico. We’ve had him five years so he’s going on 13. The dog was possibly just playing, but when I saw Turnip’s head in the dog’s mouth, I was infuriated. After chasing the dog away I called Animal Control who contacted the owner of the dogs and he was fined.

This was not their first call on these dogs. Beardsley had a tough time and now Turnip. Other dogs in the area roam and occasionally visit, and they don't cause problems. To say it's a dog's nature to savage cats is not helpful nor accurate. They don't all do it! And if they do, they shouldn't be let loose as there are other creatures around: your dog doesn't own the neighborhood and must be controlled! Animal Control later told us that this breed of dogs needs a lot of room and exercise. Something like huskies. Samoyeds? Can’t remember.

I feel bad about this, but the dogs were causing problems. Dogs deserve to run and have fun but not at the expense of "our" cats, who are on "our" property and just want a quiet life. Like most people! Don’t menace our cats! To this day, we cannot get Turnip outdoors to exercise – he won’t go outdoors without being carried there, and then he is not willing to go far from the door. It’s been several years since the episode. I feel bad for Turnip, who besides being blind will not take enough exercise to stay healthy. And every time I see this man I also feel guilty that I caused him financial hardship, since he now must walk his dogs on a leash to get them their necessary exercise. Now I am causing him and his animals hardship as he can no longer let them run free.
{Update: Turnip passed away in 2011, never again running joyfully in our back yard, forever traumatized.}

Who will help the animals (and people, too) who silently struggle against human ignorance, human malevolence, and human neglect? We've helped a tiny fraction: practically nothing compared to many.  How many more animals suffer and we know nothing about it. It goes on behind closed doors, in your neighbors' back yards, and you know nothing, I know nothing. You are respectful with individuals you see occasionally, knowing nothing about what he/she is really like or how they treat their animals, their children, their spouses. They are like most of us, private people. And either they're kind to animals and people privately or they're horrible. Or they're somewhere in between. Maybe they're ignorant, maybe they're unable to see what's going on. Why is that?

The man we met who was a rabbit owner appeared to be an independent thinker, a trait we often prize highly in others, but which led to his animals suffering, because he wouldn’t accept assistance. He truly believed his  shed design allowed adequate ventilation. However he had not removed the winter storm windows nor installed the screens.

Qualities I thought were important fall short before the higher quality of kindness and caring. My worry is that the animals are still suffering or dead, and that the screens are still uninstalled. A quick death would be better than suffering a slow one in those miserable conditions. I didn’t meet this man but he impressed Bil and the man's neighbors as a nice man, seemingly intelligent, active in the world, and interested in other people. He did not appreciate that his actions were causing suffering. Being neglectful of the animals under his care effectively becomes abuse, even while he is unconscious of it. He claimed he had more than enough friends who would help him and protested to Bil that everything was fine. He wouldn't accept help. Bil called the animal control officer. It's their problem now. While those unhealthy conditions continued, he still never asked them for help. Or he was in denial.

Maybe mental illness is way more prevalent than anyone can believe. How do you combat it? How can you open someone's eyes to make them aware if they refuse to see?

You cannot save every one, and you’ll never know the worst, and probably most people wouldn't want to know it. I and many other people believe government spying on ordinary citizens is wrong. But how far should any of us go with our neighbors to prevent suffering like this? If we each reached out to get to know our neighbors, we might prevent some suffering. At the very least, when we see it we can report it. Beardsley, in his later years looked terrible, even after the nasal carcinoma was operated on, as did another of our cats, Teeny a few years ago. We did not keep them indoors: it was their choice. Closing the cat doors would curtail the other cats choice as well, for going out the cat doors. But the other reason is the most important one. Going outside was for them, their passion. These two neutered male cats had the passion or the joie de vivre, to go out and run around outdoors, just like Turnip. Anyone who says animals don't feel emotions hasn't seen the joy we saw in Turnip before his encounter with the dogs.

Do you tell your child who loves to run about outdoors, on his last few months of life, because you know he has incurable cancer, that he can't go outside and play because someone might say, "look at that awful cancer on that kid's nose. How dare they let him go play outside in the sunshine!"

And yes, people did say this, and the Animal Control Officer came over to assess the situation. And rightly so: that is their job, to ascertain what's truly going on. I would want to know if my actions or inaction was causing suffering; we're very glad they are out there, and we're especially glad that other people are noticing and making an effort to report their suspicions.

Part of me believes we all have a right to privacy, after all this is what liberty is all about, isn’t it? Very few of us want to spend our waking hours watching our neighbors' private lives. Unless the higher goal of alleviating suffering takes precedence, we risk becoming interfering busybodies.

Having been extremely charitable to folks I took in as tenants a dozen years back it still irritates me when I think of how much they interfered with my life, stealing things as well as my time and money. Bil also had this problem in his home in Massachusetts. How much time does it take to get to know a person? Do we become nosy and spy on them?  When it happens, what is the goal? Is the quest to enable a higher ideal? The Inner Gestapo, my conscience, violated the rabbit man’s liberty by calling Animal Control. It's become self-righteousness because after all, suffering is wrong, and to allow animals to suffer needlessly is evil. To stop or prevent evil I acted and removed choice from him.

So I’m filled with contradictory impulses. I want to help but I don’t want it to become my life’s purpose. I work 40 hours a week, have household chores to do and a few hours for myself left over. If I really wanted to help I’d volunteer for more things. I treasure my own company and the few hours I have available to me – for my own selfish enjoyment to enjoy life in whatever ways I choose. Then I feel guilty that I'm not doing more.

If you’ve seen the movie Rising Waters about Hurricane Katrina, or been part of a rescue effort, you have seen estimates that 40-90,000 animals died horribly, over a long period of time during the Hurricane and afterwards. Those evacuated were not allowed to take their pets with them to shelters. People evacuated the area and left their pets at home, thinking they’d be home in a few days and could care for them. Instead it was more than a month before most people were allowed back into New Orleans and the vicinity. In the intervening period, it was hell on earth for the thousands of animals who perished, and the few who were rescued. More sadly could have been rescued except for the refusals of the police to allow animal rescuers to assist. That there are people out there actively engaged in preventing rescue, preventing the alleviation of suffering, in counterpoint to those who are aching to help, those who were turned away by the authorities. What is even more alarming is that even the Humane Society refused many volunteers who showed up from assisting in the rescue.

What happened was that the police were told to protect property and since property is more valuable in the legal mind than the lives of the animals, many more died and suffered lingering deaths.

As much as I hate television, in some part TV news removes the veils of privacy from our eyes: we see what the cameraman sees. The documentary was a video, so probably a bit more was seen than mainstream media. Transparency is a goal. Much TV is slanted in one direction or another, however, it's more difficult to lie with a video than with words. Every day more and more cameras operate and make privacy less and less likely.

There's even a book by one of my favorite authors, David Brin, that you can read excerpts from. The Transparant Society, published in 1998, is just as applicable today as it was 20 years ago.
His key concept is that we must not only have rights, but also the power to use them and the ability to detect when they are being abused, and that can only happen in a world that is mostly open, in which most citizens know most of what is going on, most of the time. It is the only condition under which citizens have some chance of catching the violators of their freedom and privacy. Privacy is only possible if freedom (including the freedom to know) is protected first.
Brin thus maintains that privacy is a "contingent right," one that grows out of the more primary rights, e.g. to know and to speak. He admits that such a mostly-open world will seem more irksome and demanding; people will be expected to keep negotiating the tradeoffs between knowing and privacy. It will be tempting to pass laws that restrict the power of surveillance to authorities, entrusting them to protect our privacy—or a comforting illusion of privacy. By contrast, a transparent society destroys that illusion by offering everyone access to the vast majority of information out there. That there is no better power equalizer than knowledge. You can read more about it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society

How Not to Catch Skunks

A volunteer from Animal Welfare League called Bil (my husband) and asked for help getting rid of the plastic cup lid on the neck of a wild skunk that has been coming to eat at her cat food bowl. The skunk was wearing the lid as a collar and it had been on for a couple of months, interfering with it being able to eat. We agreed to help but failed - that skunk never showed up possibly because we arrived after 9 pm.

The next day we tried again, at 7 pm.
I sat in our car down the street and Bil sat in the lady's house near the door watching the food bowl through the window. Several skunks come to her porch for cat food. He called me on my cell phone - I had it set on vibrate. After a few buzzes, he hung up. This was the signal. I got out of the car with a long handled crab net and tip toed up to the steps where it was eating kibbles. I stood there on the sidewalk at the bottom of the stairs waiting five or ten minutes until it was done and it started its walk down the stairs.

During this time period I'm waiting there with the net poised and motionless, several cats walk past, one at at time. One even looks at me and meows at me. The skunk freezes in its place by the kibble bowl, then resumes eating. A few minutes later there is a minor cat fight with some cats under a car nearby. A little while after that a neighbor across the street starts yelling, almost screaming at her child or children to stop whatever it is they're doing. Skunky eats away, not in any hurry.

Finally skunky climbs down the four or five stairs to one step from the sidewalk, looks at me, stops and considers me carefully, cautiously, and hesitates for half a minute. Then it hops off that last step and looks suspiciously at me again for a few seconds. Finally, he/she turns his back to me and starts to walk quickly away. It is now far enough away that I can slam down the long handled net over it. I do so. The skunk jumps up! The net come up also off the sidewalk, as I'm not holding the handle but have decided to grab the skunk without considering that the handle and net are now off the ground. The skunk gets out of the net but is slowed down enough so I can fall onto my knees forward and grab the skunk by the lid collar and try to hold its tail down. It sprays my gloves very lightly, but I hold its tail down with left hand. Bil comes down the stairs and cuts the collar off, I put skunky down and it trots away...

Today I have a large bandage on the left knee, and a smaller one on the right knee. THe sidewalk scraped the skin off. The left scrape is oozing, the right one is healing well. I'll know Next Time to wear knee pads and concentrate first on getting the net handle and all down on the sidewalk so the jumping animal can't get away.

Publishing it on WikiHow, here is the link for my technique:

How to Rescue a Skunk from a Container on its Head

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Occasionally an animal is suffering from having wandered into a garbage containing a fast food drink lid or other plastic top which, getting stuck on the creature's neck, interferes with it being able to eat. The animal will starve to death slowly without your help.

Steps

1. Get a helper". It's best to have a helper. It can be done alone, but it is much more difficult.
   
2. Have all equipment ready'.
   
3. Stand perfectly still without wearing anything that makes any sounds like polyester or nylon material.
   
4. Ditch the aftershave or perfume so the skunk can't smell you.
   
5. Wait until it turns its back to you and is walking away. You will have measured the length of the handle of the net, which is probably four to six feet long. When it is almost that distance from you and moving, slam the net down quickly on the skunk.
   
6. Immediately stand on the handle of the net and quickly go down on your knees to grasp the tail of the skunk in one hand, pulling it down towards the ground while with your other hand grasp the lid around the neck.
   
7. Be prepared for a spray - if you don't get the tail down immediately. If you're holding the tail down, it will stop immediately rather than spray itself. However, a tiny amount of spray will be released unless you are very fast. The scent goes away if you leave the gloves outdoors a few days.
   
8. If you are alone, you'll have to put the skunk between your knees to grab the scissors for removal of the lid. This is why it's best to have a helper who will cut the lid off while you hold the skunk with the tail in one hand and the lid in the other.
   
9. Be prepared for the skunk to attempt to wrap itself around your arm. Wear long sleeves and you'll be fine.
   
10. After the skunk's neck is free, simply put the skunk down and watch him run away, free of the terrible encumbrance.
    

Tips

• Skunks have an exceptional sense of sound. They don't see too well, but sense motion. They will walk right onto your feet if you don't move and don't make any sound or have any interesting scents on you. Our fear of them is way out of proportion to what they are capable of, and they really need to feel threatened before they will spray. They would rather run away than spray, when given the choice.
  

Warnings

• Caution: if the skunk shows any signs of rabies such as drooling, etc do not attempt to do this. Skunks rarely bite, but if you get bit you will need rabies series of shots, as the only way to know for sure if it's rabid is to autopsy a dead animal's brain.
  

Things You'll Need

• supple gloves: leather, suede, or rubber.
  
• long handled net, a crabber's net
  
• scissors or snippers to remove the lid
  
• knee pads to prevent skinned knees if on concrete or asphalt
  
• newspaper or plastic bag to wrap gloves in if they get sprayed
  

Related wikiHows

• How to Get a Skunk to Leave
  
• How to Remove Skunk Smell from Animals
  
• How to Approach and Release a Skunk from a Live Trap
  
• How to Care for a Skunk Sprayed Dog
  

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Rescue a Skunk from a Container on its Head. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Why do I frequent on-line FreeCycle groups and never throw it in the garbage

For me it's not just the philosophy of 'waste not want not', or that what I throw out may be something someone wants and/or needs. Do I presume that I should throw away something that has use to another, that, along with the billions of other people sharing the earth and doing the same thing, are drowning in the pollution that our own naivety creates around us. The life of the people, the plants, the animals, all hangs in the balance based on the little things each of us does today.
Our air, our food, and our very lives dependent on an ecosystem, which is assaulted by the byproducts of human life, sending it to a tipping point that may or may not be in our lifetimes to decimate intelligent life on earth? We blindly throw away that empty can or newspaper, not thinking about how many people also blindly throw away their own. How can I justify adding more unnecessary fuel to the incinerator that burns it all up? We even get to breath the results of what we throw away! Then when it rains, we get to eat the residue that falls onto the leaves of our vegetables. The roots are drinking up the residue from the soil, the cows are eating the grass that grows, and we are drinking the milk and eating the potatoes. We don’t think of how lucky we really are that we have so much to eat and drink. This is truly the land of plenty of good food. How good is that food? If it’s not that good, does what we throw away have an effect on it? If you go to the web for your information rather than the television, and research the safety of your food, there is also plenty of information available. Many scientific journals, many researchers, many without a corporation funding them and many without conflicts of interest. There were some studies that the Greenhouse Effect was not real, but if you searched the funding for those studies you found Exxon was the main source of capital. An intelligent perusal like this of what is on the web will net you awareness that the food we eat today is not as safe as we think. The water we drink, even bottled water, has problems. Especially the trihalomethanes problem. Environmental Working Group recently reported on bottled water being filled with poisons like these, estrogens, even painkillers in some bottled waters!
Everything on earth is being recycled. Some of it into the food and water supply. If you’re throwing it away, think carefully about the final result of what you’re doing. Is it worth anything to anybody else? If we all do our part, we can cut down on what gets into our bodies and causes us untold illness, diseases, cancers and early death. The life we save may be our own, our children’s, our children’s children.

THE KIND YOU DON’T BRING HOME TO MOTHER

Few of our cats are the kind that other people want as house pets Turnip is blind, Orangeade is a biter, Tiger is FIV positive, Fluffy and Jack have occasional litter box issues. Others were feral and unwilling to trust human beings. Jack was set to be euthanized after having failed in several placement homes due to neurological and behavioral issues resultant from a car accident and major reconstructive surgery. He has had balance issues and in unfamiliar terrain will fall down. However after two years he knows this house well. He sizes up his jumps onto chairs and shelves carefully, goes up and down stairs with ease and is able to navigate most of the house and yard safely. He even utilizes one of the cat doors - in and out. I've known my husband since September 2000. Both of us are soft hearted and possibly soft headed. We’ve rescued cats since then. I had 13 when I first met Bil but now we have almost 30. They are the cats no one wants - We didn't want to add to our collection, having a neighbor with issues (see Feral Cat News or ask me for the article from the Day) we try exceptionally hard not to take any more cats. There are a lot of sad stories, bad landlords, bad tenants, and sick people both physically and mentally. There are cats who continue to have kittens in a world where the people who have the cats as pets should know better. Many times I see ads from people who want someone else to take the cat(s) that appeared at their house. They just want to remove it. There are welfare groups devoted to help you pay for a neuter spay all over the country with dogs and cats. There are leagues everywhere nationally available to help you trap and neuter and release these cats. They will happily come over your house and do it for you! If everyone availed themselves and took on responsibility to stop the endless cycle of offspring we wouldn’t have so much suffering! Just pick up the darn phone and make some phone calls, it only takes a few minutes! Dogs have similar issues and there are many, many dogs who suffer and die needlessly because we wouldn’t spend a few minutes to make a few phone calls. If we can rescue them we do. If we can’t, we can at least make those few phone calls! Ask for help! We love dogs as well, however we've chosen to care for unwanted cats. There wouldn't be a need for animal resucers to do what they have to do if everyone did their share. Alleviate suffering in one tiny area - these poor unwanted pets. If you can’t afford to neuter/spay the animals in your area, there are groups that will help you everywhere. Call your local veterinarian. Do a tiny bit of research, get the animals neutered/spayed. If you can continue to feed them in your area, do so. Alley Cat Allies has a lot of information, as do other rescue groups, on how the trap/neuter/release program works. Thank you for taking the time to read this far. I hope I’ve convinced you that you can do your part and it’s not hard to do. It will be greatly appreciated!

Bunny and the the contradictions within: the Inner Gestapo

April 2008 - neighbor driving past a farm near us noticed something jump in front of her car. She couldn’t stop in time, and didn't see anything behind her so she kept on driving until arriving on our street, where another neighbor noticed a rabbit stuck in the car’s front grill.
Our neighbors know that Bil is available to help anyone day or night. He will figure out why your furnace won’t turn on and turn it on, why your water won’t turn off and turn it off, why your car won’t start and how to start it. If your dog is having seizures or foaming at the mouth, he’ll help you find the way to the vet. This neighbor came over asking Bil to help her remove the rabbit from the car grill. They gently extricated the little stunned rabbit, brought it to our house and put it a dark room, then called for assistance from wildlife rehabilitators in the area. The bunny was undamaged except for dragging its back leg.
For some people a rabbit is a food animal. Neither of us would consider eating this rabbit. Possibly since it was a holiday weekend, the rehabilitators we called were not available, and a third so we kept him in a seven foot long homemade cage in a bedroom, which was a shelf four feet up on the wall, 24” deep by 28” high that had been recently used and vacated by a-feral cat Tiger who is no longer feral and has the run of the house. The shelf front was a cannibalized animal cage; the back was the room’s wall, which contained a screened window, the floor was leftover ceramic tile from our living room. This is a heavy-duty shelf - our cats today that perch on it so they have a view out the window and a breeze in nice weather use it. We put the rabbit there to protect it from our cats who weren’t really interested in it but we didn’t trust them. Inside was a cotton covered foam cube used previously for cats that it could hide in, which it mostly did for the first few days. We hoped its leg would become less limp but it didn't change appreciably. He recuperated for several weeks and ate domestic rabbit food, grass, dandelions, and chickweed from our front lawn but then appeared restless and began exercised its legs including the injured one by running from one end of the cage to the other. Most of the night, finally, it hopped around exercising its legs. The injured leg wasn't quite right but when he gnawed a hole in the window screen we knew he was not happy to be here. We were just about ready to take him back to the farm area at the time we got the ironing board (see Ironing Board Nellie).

The events surrounding the efforts to speak to a man that knew about rabbits changed my awareness of human personality. Here was a man who was known by his neighbors as a nice person. No one would dream of invading his privacy, least of all Bil and me. That there were extenuating circumstances that led to the discovery of the animals suffering in the sheds on his property is no excuse – the end result was that we did invade it and were on his property uninvited. We didn’t think about it then but I know now that in our efforts to get water for the little cat, we were trespassing. The contradiction involved echoes that of the rescuers of animals in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and surrounding areas where property rights were violated to prevent more suffering (see the DVD Rising Waters about this). At the time we sought water for Nellie, I didn’t see that technically it was breaking the law to be on this man’s property and yet, what was the right thing to do? It made me ashamed to be so afraid of the letter of the law. I’m thinking it's shameful to be afraid to help animals suffering because it’s against the law to trespass on someone’s property. I am in the class of the majority of human beings on this planet –in the same category of the citizens of Germany when they were unwilling to look more deeply into the actions of their police during the Nazi purges. This happens all over the world, where citizens follow generally accepted standards of civilized behavior. We give up the freedoms of the natural man to partake of the benefits of society, which are great and contain the safety to live relatively carefree lives. We’re willing to be controlled in our activities in return for this freedom and in return, we dare not walk outside the boundary lines of the Law.

I can’t tell you the times I’ve thought disparaging things about nosy people. Now in this instance I’ve become a nosy, interfering neighbor.

In my mind, the right to privacy ends when there is suffering involved. Whether it’s conscious or unconscious, there was suffering here. Our contact with the man who had domestic rabbits caused a paradigm shift for me, threatening my ideals of laissez faire: that a man's home is his castle and he deserves unfettered use of his own property. Bil didn't talk to him much about rabbits when they finally met.. The man was a collector of domestic breeds rather than wild rabbits (Is a rabbit a rabbit? We thought so). Collector was the operative word. He did not appear to appreciate an individual rabbit as a living and feeling creature, rather the status attached to the rarity or value of the animal. The issue for us was the suffering of the animals on this man's property, which are by extension his property as well. How humans own and have absolute right over these animals! They’re free to do whatever they see fit, which is frightening because not everyone is aware or concerned about the possible suffering of said animals.

Bil asked again and again every day that week if he could assist him to ventilate the sheds with the other animals. It had been in the 90s and humid all week, and the sheds were hot. All week long Bil pestered him or went over there to try to convince him to just let Bil help him. The man was not welcoming help - in fact he out-right refused it. Bil was upset and finally called the Animal Control officer and informed her of the animals at risk from the high temperatures. It moved from our hands and into those of the animal police, where it remains today.

The ethics involved in reporting someone for neglect demand that we’d already done all we could do. In this case we had.