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MINNESOTA FOX TALES
gu-gu-guak
It is a traditional rite of passage into new societies or professions to play practical jokes on the initiates; the southern tradition of taking a freshman
into the woods at night and leaving him there alone in the dark, armed with a bat and a bag for the snipe hunt is one particular of the genre.
Printers have
traditionally initiated new apprentices by showing them the apocryphal "type lice" in the type cases.
We are all gullible, as there is more on heaven and earth
than we will ever know, and we know that much. I vividly remember a snowmobile trip with another physician into the wilds outside of Kotzebue, Alaska, which is remote enough. We must have been ten or fifteen m iles outside of that little village, when we came upon a single small dwelling,
with strange horse-like creatures outside. My physician-guide pointed out their strong jaws, and some bones lying about nearby. "These are Siberian ponies," he said. "They have these
strong jaws, because in this climate, with so little else available, they eat meat." I believed him. Only much later did it dawn on me that perhaps...just perhaps...he was pulling my leg. I
still don't know.
Most Alaskan dwellings have bones from earlier hunting expeditions lying around. The more fastidious put the caribou horns and moose racks
on the roof tops, but the odd jaw bone of a seal or walrus might happen to be lying about most anywhere. It is a mistake to imagine that these items have been discarded,
for most of the items in the traditional Yupik or Inuit yard which appear lying about have some later use.
Several years after my introduction to "Siberian ponies" I found myself living in Bethel, Alaska, where I had signed up for a two year stint with the Indian Health Service in one
of those exchanges in which for two years or more, in exile, working as a physician, the IHS will pay a certain amount towards medical school loan payoff.
Bethel, you might not know, is a bush village four hundred miles west of Anchorage, as
the plane flies, which indeed it must, if you are to get to Bethel. The only other practical means of getting there would be by barge, which takes a lot longer. Bethel is the kind of place where the military
awards "hardship" ribbons to its personnel, just for living there.
One physician who spent two years in Bethel as a GMO (general medical
officer) later completed a residency in obstetrics and gynecology and went to work in Anchorage for the Alaska Native Health Service Hospital there. He came back to
Bethel for a specialty clinic, and while he was there, gave a talk to the docs. In his introduction, he referred to his years in Bethel as his "dog years," because he said, " a
year in Bethel is like 7 years anywhere else."
(I know the photos of me before and after Bethel seem to bear that out.) Nevertheless,
once I found myself there, I wondered what to do, in the limited waking hours when I wasn't expected to be at work in the hospital. Dog sledding was my choice for winter
activities, but summer was another story.
When I discovered that several of my colleagues had chosen Bethel because of its bird
watching opportunities, it seemed natural that I would take up the avocation, and immediately set out with my friends, Nina and Calvin, to see what we could see. We
set out cheerfully from their apartment in the hospital complex, and without losing site of the hospital, walking along a boardwalk through wetlands, within an hour we had seen
fifteen species I had never seen before!
We saw black turnstones, which on the tundra looked much like rocks, until they moved,
least sandpipers--I would not know this, as still, all sandpipers look very much alike to me, yellowlegs--probably lesser yellowlegs, but again, being a sandpiper, I wouldn't be
able to tell for sure without my more experienced friends, curlew--a curious bird with a curved beak, which we often saw in flight, whimbrel--a cousin to the curlew, also with a
curved beak, Pacific golden-plover--nearly invisible to the uninitiated, these birds dotted the tundra, where they appeared to be catching mosquitoes, for which I applauded
them, red-necked Phalarope--funny little birds which whirl around in circles, like so many small boats, navigating through the water as if wound up with a key, so that it is hard to take them seriously.
And then, most remarkable of all, Nina pointed out to me a Snipe! The so-called  "Common Snipe," which I had thought
entirely imaginary, was alive and well, and poking around in the mud with its improbably long straight bill, apparently oblivious to our presence on the boardwalk. We were able to watch it until
we tired of it.
The Snipe were indeed common around our little house, a mile from the hospital. At night, during the early summer, once I knew what to listen for, I could hear the
snipe's mating call overhead, a sort of "gu-gu guak, gu-gu guak" repeated over an over. This is the name the Yupiks call them, the gu-gu guak, after their call.
In case you don't believe me, I will tell you that the Common Snipe is listed in "Guide to the Birds of Alaska," by Robert H. Armstrong, Alaska Northwest Books, c. 1995, Genus
and species, Gallinago gallinago.
The Snipe is described as a "Secretive bird, seldom seen except when flushed."
Indeed, without my sharp-eyed guides along, I only very rarely saw it again, but it was comforting that summer to go to sleep to the nightly mating song of the Snipe.
your faithful correspondent,
Dot
(Which is Tod spelled backwards; tod of course, is another word for fox. My husband
advised, when asked, that if I must take a pen name, "Dot" would be more fitting for a girl then "Tod."
© 2001 by Rachel Scott
NEW YORK UNEASY
The Early Days of a Remarkably Good Dog
Rachel wrote about Thurber at the end of the letter about Buck and his death. One thing
she and I both love about Thurber, in addition to his writing and his drawings, is his love of dogs. Our family has a long and complicated history with dogs.  The complications arise because two of the members of our immediate family are
highly allergic to dogs, and prolonged exposure can lead, in their cases, to an allergic reaction, asthma, pneumonia, and pleurisy. Any of these maladies can suddenly manifest
themselves at the height of family festivities, creating the disconcerting need for a trip to the emergency room.
Many years ago, before much was known about allergies, our parents decided that a dog would be the right thing for their three little girls to play with. Our first dog was sold to us as a
"toy fox terrier." I have been scanning dog books for this breed, but haven't spotted too many authorities who recognize a breed with that name.
Whenever I try to point out what Katy, our beloved dog, looked like, the picture is inevitably of a Jack Russell terrier. But Katy was not a pedigreed pooch. We got her from a Kansas farm.
I remember four things about the day we got Katy. The first was that my mother, who herself had been raised on a farm, said "If all they have left is the runt, we're not
going to take it. Runts are no good." I immediately felt sorry for the runts, because God knew I had always been the smallest kid in the class.
The second was that we were stopped on the way to our destination by a passing freight train (not an unusual event in Kansas City) and on one of the linked freight cars
that rumbled past was painted the word "Katy." When we got to the farmhouse where the people lived who had advertised the dogs, we went inside for a moment as the farm wife lead us down the cellar steps.
 The farm wife said: "Sorry, but we have only one left."
"Oh, no," I thought. "Mom's already said no to runts. There goes the puppy."
On the wooden stairs to the cellar stood the mother of the puppy, a full-sized dog. The farm wife pushed past her, and scooped up a little ball of fur out
of box in the darkness. She carried it up the stairs past the mother, who tried to block the farm wife, and the third thing I remember was how the mother dog's uncropped tail was curled in distress between her
legs and her eyes were huge and full of sadness.
"Oh, for goodness sake, get out of the way!" snapped the farm wife impatiently to the mother dog,
and carried the puppy out into the light for us to see. I don't remember much after that, except that the little puppy was mostly white but beautifully marked, with a pretty little brown and black face, one large
asymmetrical black spot on her back, and a little black cropped tail, with the black markings ending neatly where the hindquarters started, as if a careful painter had been there before us.
Mother said nothing more about a runt. Dad and Mom must have paid something for the pup, and Dad had a cardboard box to carry her home in. The mother dog was
out of the cellar by the time we put the pup in our car, and was circling the yard in dismay, her tail still tucked under her body.
The fourth thing I remember was that when we were in the car and driving home, the little puppy cried and cried and kept trying to climb out of the box, and that it was my
job to keep her inside. Daddy said I was doing a good job keeping her in the box, making me feel very proud, and then Daddy, who insisted on historical names for our
pets, said, "Let's call her Klondike Kate." (We already had a calico cat at home named Calamity Jane, and would later have an ill-fated turtle named Annie Oakley.)
I thought that was a miraculous coincidence, because I had noticed the Katy freight train on the way to see the puppy.
"Yes, yes," I said, "Please, Daddy, I like that name. Let's call her Katy."
Mother was smoking her cigarette and looking out of the window. The suggested name seemed to sit well with her.
Katy was a serendipitous dog in many ways, because whatever odd breed she was, it was apparent that she had some circus performers in her ancestry. Katy could
be taught almost any trick using three Cheerios as a  reinforcer. We started with the
basics: sitting and staying. And then we moved on to teach her to stand on her hind legs and shake hands. We taught her to jump over sticks, and back and forth through hula hoops. Finally, Rachel worked
with Katy and a full-sized step ladder, teaching the terrified animal to climb all the way to the top, and, with a dramatic clap of Rachel's hands, to jump into her arms. In those days, we would put on a circus in
the back yard and sell tickets, and Katy was a star performer.
Katy put up with all of this good-naturedly. In the suburban neighborhood where we lived, people ran
in and out of houses in the summer, and Katy got to be a neighborhood celebrity for her beauty, her good nature, her impressive tricks, and
her obvious intelligence, although people didn't put it that way. The consensus on Katy was that she was "a real cute dog."
Soon the farm wife who sold us Katy found herself pressed for more dogs like her. One of Katy's half sisters was sold to the Frenches, and another half sister was sold to
the Fords, both families with children on the block. But neither dog was as wonderfully satisfactory as Katy, and in fact, had nasty temperaments, barked annoyingly, resisted
house-breaking and couldn't learn to do tricks. Both half-sisters' markings were close to those of Katy, but didn't have the refinement of execution that made Katy so beautiful.
Katy herself was quite unsentimental about her half-sisters, and never seemed to prefer their company over other dogs. The two half-sisters lived uneventful lives with the fa milies that had brought them home, although occasionally I could hear Mrs. French or
Mrs. Ford complaining to my mother about their dog's latest inadequacy. My mother always commiserated, but always made a point of saying, no, no, that hadn't happened with Katy yet.
And then the sad thing happen. Our younger sister kept getting sick and going to the hospital. It was pneumonia, six times over. She became a little broomstick topped with
fine blonde hair. Finally she was referred to a new kind of doctor called an "allergist" who conducted a series of tests that proved that she was allergic to, among other things, dog dandruff and bacon.
Believe it or not, the mail man came to the rescue. While he was walking his route over the years, he had made friends with the little white dog with the one black spot and
the black tail, and the three little girls who were always running and playing with the dog. The mail man had taken a job with the post office because his farm, up around Olathe,
wasn't particularly good land, but he kept it anyway, because he liked living in the country.
He had seen our little sister come to the door on some of the school days she was
home sick, and finally our mother told him that we had to find a home for Katy because of her youngest daughter's health. The mail man jumped at the opportunity.
"Why, I have a farm, and Katy could live there with me, and have lots more room to run around in," he said.
Dad and Mom decided that this was the best offer that they were going to get.  They didn't want to give Katy to the neighbors, because she would always be running home. The adults made their decision and one Saturday, the mail
man arrived with his station wagon, and carried Katy to the back seat. The three of us children watched from the front window. As they drove away, I could see that Katy's cropped tail was tucked down as far between
her rear legs as its length allowed it to go.
Katy lived for quite a while after that, and we got reports about her from the mail man. The most
exciting news was that Katy had caught a rabbit! The mail man even brought Katy back to see us once, but Katy had changed, gotten older and forgotten her tricks. She hadn't forgotten us, though, because when
she saw us, her tail wagged so fast and without stopping until it seemed like it was like a geiger counter of the happiness she had brought to the three children who had loved her.
Your New York Uneasy Correspondent.
© 2001 by Sarah Scott
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