Dogs and Cats and a Rat's Ass
It's official, I'm a nature geek, always have been and always will be. Show me a bucketful of tadpoles and I'll sit and I'm as happy as a happy thing. Love 'em. Birds are fabulous tweety things, furry beasties are ace too, I think I'm possibly a bit obsessed.
I've tried to instil this love of nature into my kids as best I can, without boring them. From a very young age my daughter was told about how worms are good for soil, about how old banana skins and coffee grains can make plants grow etc. I remember sitting with her and pointing out tiny black and orange caterpillars that were scoffing a weed in our garden. She was fascinated. It is fascinating and I'm so pleased that she shares my enthusiasm.
My son is less so, preferring the beeps and squeaks of computer games to those of real animals. He still has a healthy love and appreciation for our family dog and our kitty - so that makes me happy at least. After all, this is where it all starts isn't it. At home. Maybe the rainforest is burning, maybe the dodo is no more, maybe the frogs are poorly in the tropics, but it doesn't quite register with a six year old does it. However, give them a pet that enjoys being fed and patted, one that needs bathing and relies upon them and I think they understand how much the natural world world relies upon them a little more.
So this is our dawg! Boris. He's a german shepherd pup about a year old, as soft as butter and adorable. I know I'm biased but he is. Does my dog count as 'Nature'? I think he does. I love that we have a big furry animal living in our home, one that wuffs and farts shamelessly when we're watching the tv in the evenings. I really think it's important that kids learn to appreciate and care for animals, so that was one reason we got a dog. The other reason was that my sister got a dog and I went to look at the litter. He was furry, cute, squeaked a bit and we all fell in love with him immediately.
My other pet is Rosie, an overweight, affectionate half British Blue kitty. She is black by the way, definitely not blue. How they got their breed names I will never know! Again, she is cared for and stroked by the kids. They get annoyed when Rosie sneaks onto the table to try and steal their dinner every now and then, but apart from that they have a lot of affection for our cheeky bundle of fluff.
I call Rosie a 'Carrot' sometimes. It's a mixture of the words 'Cat' and 'Parrot.' I think you can see why. She sometimes perches on my shoulder just like you'd imagine a parrot would. So cute.
When I was a kid, we always had dogs, labradors to be precise. At one point we had rabbits too. I reckon this kickstarted my interest in nature. Funnily enough my very first memory is of looking into a muddy puddle outside my grandmas house and wondering if there was anything living in them; I think I must have been about three years old. No doubt someone had said that fish live in water and I automatically assumed that included puddles too.
It's not just animals either. Nothing takes my breath away more than a view of sparkling water and rolling hills. I really struggle to understand how some people just don't feel the same, mind you, it wouldn't do if we were all the same. Sea, sky, hills, muddy paths, rivers, swirling clouds, trees waving branches and leaves at the heavens.....all the the things that make my heart race. Years ago I decided that if I ever come back as a ghost, I want to wander hillsides on a sunny days, blown by the breeze, my toes drifting through the whispering grass. That would be nice. None of this hanging around dank, cold graveyards at midnight, who would want to end up doing that?
This is a beautiful photograph of the town where I'm lucky enough to live. In all truth, it's a slightly grim, small northern town on a hill, not very pretty on a drizzly day, which is what we get most of the time. In this light though, it looks amazing doesn't it. Living in the sticks does mean there's bugger all to do on a Saturday night, but it does mean there's a million and one picturesque places to walk on a Sunday morning with a large puppy. I like it here, which is great, because this is where I have put my roots down.
Which brings me to trees! I have a tattoo of a tree on my shoulder, it's my Tree of Life or Tree of Friends. I once did one of those daft psycho-analytical tests where someone asks you to draw something and then they relate it to your attitude to life. Anyway, a friend asked me to draw a tree - I spent ages outlining the different branches, the individual leaves, the grooves in the bark. Afterwards my friend told me that how you draw a tree is meant to be an indication of how you see your friends and relationships. I know it's rubbish really, but I love the idea of that. Different branches are different parts of life, each leaf is a person. It's my life in miniature I suppose.
So, as you can see nature is important to me, caring for things is what life is about, whether it be animals or people. I'm not perfect and have been known on more than one occasion to squish a wasp to be overly sharp with people who don't deserve it. But I try. If we all gave more than a rats ass about the environment and other people the world would be a better place.
