I never met Dr. Julie Butler but her untimely death at age 62, one more victim of the Covid-19 pandemic, leaves me mourning a stranger. The only African American graduate in the Class of 1989 of Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Butler spent...
Life before Covid-19 was not simple here in the Bay Area. Remember? Earthquakes. Gridlock on roads more pothole than asphalt. Housing costs. Drought. Fires. Let me add something that might have escaped your earlier attention. Rattlesnakes. Here? Yes, afraid so, and as...
Many scientists believe that the Corona virus has come to us as the result of human contact with bats, whether that exposure occurred in so-called “wet markets” where wild animals (including bats) are sold as food and, ironically, as traditional medicines, or from...
Dogs love balls, last week’s topic, might not deserve the front page headline any more than the observation that cats love squeezing into seemingly impossibly small spaces. But why do they do it? I’ve found my cats in the sock drawer, including the sock drawer I swear...
I’ve loved and lived with a whole lot of animals, including a whole lot of dogs, and although I do not have a “type” (having lived with sizes ranging from 9 pounds to 130), there have been five retriever/retriever-mixes in my family. Which means I have a tolerance for...
Confined to our homes for long weeks with eyes glued to our screens, we thrill to the images of wild animals returning to the spaces suddenly devoid of humans and all our busyness. We are drawn to the unexpected otherness of wildness here in our cities and suburbs, to...
