We bought a zoo...kind of.

I read good advice this week that I will stick to for probably the rest of my life...

"Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else." -C. S. Lewis

Now this seems self-indulgent and maybe it is. But I figure nothing good or interesting ever came of me writing about things I hated.

The zoo is imaginary but everything else is fact. I think its a good compromise.

There are two kinds of things at our zoo: the deer and the trees.

THE ZOO

The  man who formerly owned our zoo was up on the roof when he said he could count up to 200 deer around him.

This classifies as a pretty big zoo I think. Our land borders a nature reserve so at least our animals have lots of room. They can cross the road, they can eat the neighbor's plants for all we care, no one lives there.

We planted 20 aspen trees to border our zoo. It was a solid kind of moment, maybe even something to celebrate--the fact that we have this beautiful zoo.

Once upon a time we had fish too, koi I think? They all froze to death in our shallow pond. We fed them and everything. The trustworthy man said they would "winter" but we saw the whites of their bellies by January, maybe earlier.

We had a mountain robin once that was obsessed with staring at its own reflection in my dad's truck windows. It was like one of those people who develop weird habits like eating laundry detergent or washing their hands a thousand times a day.


I'm making this sound a little like a freak show and maybe it is. But it's the best little freak show zoo that I have ever been a part of.

I was flipping through our neighbor's People Magazine that the mailman fortuitously stuck in our stack and found pictures of this coonhound a photographer adopted from an animal shelter. He taught it to do the simplest, most dumbfounding thing I've ever seen: he taught the dog to balance, on almost anything. See for yourself:

http://maddieonthings.com/

We need one of these for our zoo/freak show to be complete. My birthdays coming up soon, so anyway...

I always thought the deer looked a lot like dogs, with that pleading, tame look in their eye. Then again, I've though that about a alot of wild things that didn't turn out to be so nice. 

This is a zoo, a very real operating zoo that I visit at least once a month because I miss it so much. Even though there are bigger one's with a lot more animals, this one's my favorite.