D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
September 2009
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It's appropriate that author Jeannie Miller's touching goodbye to her dog, Sandulik, should be a winner in this year's contest. After all, readers met the big, lovable dog in Miller's winning entry in our 2005 contest, "Sandulik Has a New Att-i-tude." Why then are we illustrating Sandulik's story with an image of a hummingbird? Read on. |
The Visitor
Next time around for Sandulik, things would be different.
By Jeannie Miller
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For 13 years, I carried myself with elegance. Encased in a fur-covered, full-figured dog's body, I deigned to tolerate those who commented that I resembled a submarine, or remarked that I must have been the poster child for the grossly obese dog, or, when I was dressed in my summer "do," described me as a well-packed bratwurst with four strategically positioned toothpicks. I was quite satisfied with myself: I ate hors d'oeuvres before supper, lounged at my food bowl, established residency in front of the refrigerator in order to send silent commands for the door to open and spill out the contents purely for my consumption, and was present at every distribution of cookies.
I was Sandulik. San-doooo-lik. My person referred to me lovingly as "The Princess," but truth be known, I was "The Queen" and it was good to be the queen, the alpha and the omega. So, if I weighed-in slightly larger than the average dog, it was of no consequence. I hoped, though, that the next time around, things would be different. I hoped I would return as a creature of svelteness, swiftness and veritable weightlessness, a filament of magic on the wind.
I came back as a hummingbird.
I died in my bed on a Thursday night in April. On Saturday morning, my person's good friend Joan arrived on the doorstep with a shepherd's hook and a hummingbird feeder. "This is for Sandulik to visit, now that she's gone," Joan told my person.
"A hummingbird feeder? Why?"
"Just trust me on this," Joan said. "She'll be back."
You should know that in my canine manifestation, I hiked to the top of Hill 80 and McComas Peak. And I did the Continental Trail and climbed Gomez Peak — although I drew the line at that flight of stairs near the top, as the ratio of rise to run wasn't suitable for my physique — and I walked to the Big Tree, and explored out by the Fort Bayard Cemetery. All that and so much more. I waded in Twin Sisters Creek out in Arenas Valley and dipped in Little Cherry Creek.
But when my hips began to betray me, all this earthbound nature discovery slowed to a stall.
Some said that my hips swished. Some said they sashayed. Others chose "swiveled." Describe them as you may, my hips provided my fabulously plumed tail with the perfect platform for its display. When I hiked with my person and her friends, I followed no man's trail. I was very much an "in the moment" being and traveled wherever my nose led me, my hips in full swing.
While all the people hikers were working up sweats, the other dogs running around like lunatics, I strolled. I sniffed the scat, trailed the scent of a rabbit, weaved in and under the fragrant juniper trees, and, in general, savored my surroundings and milieu. As they all overheated and wore themselves out from frenzy, I reclined at my leisure in the shade of a scrub oak and watched the ravens ride the air currents. My person went so far as to attach a bell to my collar so she could hear me when I disappeared from her line of sight, but in truth, my glorious tail floating on those fabulous hips was the true locator beacon, waving elegantly amongst the tall grasses. To the very end, it was my trailing glory.
My person stared through a film of tears at Joan and the gifts she held forward. "She'll come back? You think so?"
"Yes, I do," Joan answered, "and we have to get this up quickly."
The time arrived when my hips could no longer carry me on long hikes nor provide the necessary strength to easily raise my back end from the floor. I accepted these new limitations with grace and dignity; I shifted to short strolls in and out the front door of the house in order to take care of certain necessary functions and to meditate on the ants.
In my new incarnation, wings vibrating at 90 beats per second, I hovered just above and behind the desert willow. I was absorbed in the sensation of my new lightness of being as I watched my person and Joan struggle to drive the shepherd's hook into the ground of the xeriscape, directly in front of the living-room window.
"The wind blows past here like a hurricane. I've watched it lay the sumac and Spanish broom down to the ground," my person explained. "The feet on this hook are going to have to go in a lot farther than this if it's going withstand that kind of beating."
"We have to put it up in front of this window. It's the only place where you can watch it from your big blue recliner."
"Well then, there's got to be another way to do this."
Dying wasn't easy. At first I stopped showing up in the pantry for hors d'oeuvres, a subtle change that my person didn't notice immediately. I slept more than usual and coughed in my sleep. After several weeks of ignoring the call for appetizers, I began refusing kibble, then canned food, then raw meat, even cottage cheese. No amount of coaxing from my person changed my mind. My weight dropped quickly. A visit to the veterinarian's office resulted in a diagnosis of congestive heart failure but a prognosis for a good chance of lasting quite a while. The prescribed medication seemed to help and my appetite returned, perhaps not to its most avid level, but at least I showed up for breakfast and supper.
Within days, however, I no longer went to my food bowl when dinner was served and my person resorted to feeding me by hand. She would place pureed dog food in her palm. Never one to drool or slobber, I would daintily lick it clean. A queen must maintain certain standards of decorum. But I soon lost all interest in the dog food and my person now came to me with offerings of peanut butter on whole wheat bread, cut in tiny squares and folded so I could easily swallow them. I knew I was failing but I continued to smile and wag my luxurious tail in gratitude for all the love and attention. And I did my best to get up and go outside several times a day, although I often needed help lifting my hips from the floor.
It's only recently that my person has become a solver of household fix-it problems. Before her retirement, she never attempted unhinging doors, or plunging sinks, or digging holes in the yard. Her focus prior to leaving the workplace was on the abstract world of cyberspace and software and, as she often lamented, the horrors of surviving middle-management limbo. Now she looks at a peeling door frame, a garden infestation, a stuck window or a stripped screw interface and announces, "I can fix that." And I guess it was in that frame of mind that she figured out how to make the shepherd's hook "hummingbird-feeder worthy."
"Nothing ever grows in this," she informed Joan as she dragged the faded Mexican pink clay pot over to the xeriscape and positioned it right in front of the picture window. She shoved the feet of the hook deep into the barren soil that filled the pot, then carried several large rocks from other places in the yard and stacked them around the base of the hook's post.
Joan tried to jiggle the hook. "Solid!" she applauded.
Hidden by the branches of xeriscape's large three-leaf sumac, I buzzed and clicked my approval at their success.
Although food no longer interested me in those final days, I insisted on keeping up appearances of normality, and how I looked and dressed — I had a wardrobe of many scarves — was still of great importance to me. And so it was on the morning of the second Thursday in April that my person announced in song, as was her habit, that it was time to go get my summer "do," my "gorgeousness." I smiled and waved my tail in royal agreement, although inside I was wary. While I loved the results of a visit to my favorite groomer, I was never totally keen on the experience because I had to stand for what seemed to me like interminable periods of time as I was shampooed and sheared. Now more than before, I knew my hips would give out and I'd have to sit down. The groomers would of course help lift me back up, but it would be lifting and sitting, lifting and sitting. Grooming me was a many-houred thing.
When I emerged, I was the model for the perfect canine makeover. My winter fur was gone and my now truly sleek figure was finally revealed. Broad at the shoulders, deep in the chest, slender at the hips. I was down to 75 pounds. My ears were the softest of velvet, my tail fluffed to perfection. So what if I didn't want to eat or drink? A girlish figure is worth a bit of sacrifice, but really all I wanted to do was go to bed and sleep.
One minute I was hovering like a helicopter, the next zipping around the garage and soaring in and out of the telephone lines like nothing I had ever imagined. I flew over the house and sat in the Mexican elder in the backyard. From there I watched my person and Joan attach the feeder to the shepherd's hook.
"There," Joan smiled. "That's all there is to it. Just go inside and wait."
"And she'll come?"
"She'll come."
On Friday, my person knew something had shifted in my condition. She didn't know what exactly, but she gently lifted me into the front seat of the truck and drove me back to the vet. Outside the examination room, thinking that I couldn't hear, the doctor told her that my blood work showed my kidneys were shutting down. "She has maybe a couple of days, maybe a week, at the outside, a month," the vet explained.
"Maybe she'll just go peacefully in her sleep."
"It rarely happens that way."
"How will I know? How will I make the decision?" my person asked.
"Sandulik will let you know. Call me when it's time."
I certainly could have retreated to my soft, round queen-sized bed at this point and no one would have thought less of me, but I had things to do. I had to be sure everything was in its right place before I would be ready to say goodbye. My hips could no longer hold me up for any extended length of time and it was becoming more and more difficult for me to even lift them from the floor. My person stayed close by to help when I wanted to move. I spent long hours in the living room with my people. I lay across my person's feet. I managed to make my way over to the man's chair and requested petting. Outside, I reclined in the sun by the front gate and watched the neighbors build their new patio. I did not eat or drink.
On Saturday, the day after the diagnosis of kidney failure, I plummeted. My internal systems were shutting down. My person, distraught and close to tears, picked up her cell phone and walked into the backyard.
I could hear her. "I think it's time," she was telling the vet.
I rallied and stood up by myself. I walked out the back door with my tail wagging and a spring in my step. "I'm not ready yet," I told her with my eyes and my grin. "I still have things to finish."
That night I woke her several times for attention. My bed was by her side of the big bed and she'd drop her hand down, caress my velvet ears and my tummy; then we'd both drop back to sleep.
Over the next several days, I held court in the yard as my person's sister and my person's friends — my "aunties" — came by to pay their respects. I watched the birds and the ants. I rolled over on my back in the grass and let the sun warm my belly. I accepted all pettings and refused all food and water. My weight dropped to 65 pounds.
On the third Thursday night in April, one week after my visit to the vet and before my person could make that phone call, I gasped my last breath and died in my own bed. I had promised my person that she wouldn't have to make the decision, and a queen always keeps her promise.
I watched Joan wave goodbye and drive away. The bright red feeder shined in the late afternoon sunlight. The scent of spring from the garden and the xeriscape drifted upward into the branches and leaves of the Mexican Elder where I sat. I'd walked this whole yard many times, sniffing the ground for signs that a neighborhood cat had trespassed onto my property, chewed on the long grass under the butterfly bush, roughhoused on the lawn with the large great Dane that was my housemate. I had wonderful memories of my earthbound life, but now I was skyborn.
I waited a few minutes until I was sure that my person would be settled into the big blue recliner in front of the living room window, and then on wings of pure delight, I swooped down from the elder tree and alighted on the feeder. I drank in the sugar nectar and quivered with ecstasy. Kibble was never this sweet. I sipped again, arched my slender neck, looked directly at the window and winked to let her know that I knew she was watching; then, with a song in my heart, I lifted off into the spring evening to ride the wind, weighing virtually nothing.
Late that evening, I zipped by the house and saw her sitting cross-legged on the lawn swing with the phone to her ear.
"Joan! Guess what? We had a visitor!"
She threw back her head and laughed in the way that I remember her doing so often.
"Yes! A visitor to the hummingbird feeder! You were right! Yes! She did!"
Well, of course I did. This is my yard. I am the Queen. I am San-dooo-lik. I am hummingbird. See me soar.
Jeannie Miller has recently become an avid hummingbird observer from the comfort of her big blue recliner. She lives in Silver City.