Happiness - warm puppy or cool salamander?

Happiness means different things to different people - which may seem obvious, but hey! We tend to think the rest of the world should think like we do. (Everyone should love cats, right? In my world, that is a truth - and nothing could be farther from it!)

As you may have figured out by now, I’m partial to cats - so for me, happiness is a small, furry body that purrs (and leaves fur on my pillow - that part not so much). 

I have a Facebook friend, though, who has a chameleon (lizard to most of us). She also has dogs and a turtle, so she is definitely non-partisan when it comes to the animals in her life. I love reading her posts, because she so obviously loves every single being.

I love every single being, too - I just don’t necessarily want to take care of them. And that’s okay, because if I DID find myself with an animal other than my usual fur ball, it would be welcomed and I have someone to tap for some info on how to care for it. Open, that’s me - just not actively seeking.

The bottom line here is two fold:

1. Every being, and we’re talking ants, voles, moles, prairie dogs, wasps, cats, dogs and horses, just to name a few, deserve to be loved for who they are.

2. There is no excuse to diss anyone or anything because their pet is maybe, a salamander, or a snake, or something equally different. More power to them, I say!

We have an ant hill on our property (several actually, but the one I’m thinking of is right next to the driveway on the way down to the barn), that we would not dream of destroying (the dogs have run through it a few times, but I think they’ve finally learned that running across the ant hill means they’re going to have some pretty cranky passengers on their paws. It’s easier these days to go around). In fact, we put up one of those plastic flags on a metal wire, took a picture, and said the ants were claiming the hill in their name. The ants seemed to enjoy the joke as much as we did. They stay near their hill. We have never had an ant visit the inside of the house (thank you ants).

Respect. Respect for space, respect for life, and respect for their way of life. I’m not a big city kind of girl, so i suspect I’ve never been an ant - or perhaps I was, and decided that much close proximity with other beings was more than I wanted. 

We can coexist happily or unhappily, and we can also ask for what we want. So long as we do it respectfully, our requests are often met. They will generally listen.

We had a hornet’s nest on the corner of a house in Washington. It was in a very inconvenient place, from our perspective. So we talked to the hornets. We told them they were welcome to stay for the rest of the summer, and we would appreciate it if they would clear out in the fall and move their base of operations to an outbuilding, or to one of the hundreds of trees that were on the property. We always treated them with respect. They left us alone - except for one time when I was watering some plants right beneath their nest and accidentally sprinkled a little water upwards - I was turning the hose and it slipped in my hand. They sent down ONE representative - we could have had an angry hive on my butt - ONE representative, who tapped me on the top of the head, and then buzzed back home. “Hey, HUMAN! Remember us? We’re livin’ here - at least for the summer.” I apologized profusely and was much more careful with the hose from that point forward. 

At the end of the summer, the hornets left. We checked the nest, and then took it down. We never saw another hornet’s nest on the house.

Talking (and listening to our animal friends takes confidence, practice, and the belief that they DO hear us (and we hear them). (I can teach you how. Just ask.)

So - Who lives on your property that needs your respect and understanding?