Holiday Photoshoot, Cursing Included At No Extra Charge

Fall is my favorite season. For one thing, it has an almost perfect holiday: Halloween. There’s no family to visit, you don’t need a date and there’s lots of candy.  Tons actually, because although my neighborhood doesn’t have many kids, I buy enough treats for an invading army.  Mmm, snack-size Snickers!

There is only one downside to this season: Holiday photo shoots. 

It’s my own fault. When I moved to Los Angeles I thought it would be funny to dress up the Keeper the Perfect Dog in goggles and a scarf and position her in my bright red convertible. It was easy to do and the card was a huge hit.

After that, every year I upped the ante. One year the Brittanys wore Santa hats and pulled a red wagon full of toys and other Brittanys. After that came the Halloween costumes. Over the years Murray the Dane was a fireman, Quattro the Brittany wore a yarmulke and Morgan Brittany was a Pilgrim.

I became a victim of my own success. People started looking forward to my cards. A few friends actually saved them. The pressure is enormous.

The pictures inevitably turn out great. How can they miss? My dogs are extremely photogeneic. 

But the process isn’t easy. Friends with an artistic bent serve as photographers. They rarely volunteer more than once. Perfect Keeper was a once-in-a-lifetime model.

While it's amusing to a Great Dane wearing a fireman’s costume, you’re missing angst that goes into getting that picture.  And the many blurry outtakes. Oh, and the cursing. There's always lots of cursing.

You’ve all heard about stars that schedule exactly one hour for a photo shoot and not a second more? Those folks are a cinch compared to working with three or four Brittanys and a few Great Danes.

You can - in theory- reason or bribe people, even rock stars. But there aren’t enough chicken snacks in the universe to coerce a Great Dane puppy into keeping on a set of reindeer ears. Nor is there a costume in creation, that will remain on a Brittany who wants it off.

Also, Brittanys are hunting dogs.  Maximum ADD is part of their DNA. The Danes do whatever the Brirttanys do. You get the picture. It gets dizzying.

Last Sunday I mentioned to my friend Maureen that it was time for the annual photo shoot. She is a former creative director for GM’s ad company and is a graphic designer. She has formidable taste and I promised excellent bourbon as an added enticement. She took the bait.

She became a little wary when she walked into the living room and saw a huge cardboard box labeled ‘Halloween.’ The box was filled with costumes. For the dogs.

Maureen opted to put the Jockey on Jasper, while I dressed Poppy in the Super Girl cape. This was not Dalai’s first rodeo; when she saw the box, she tore into her crate to hide. It didn’t work. The crate takes up half my bedroom and she still hangs out of it. She sighed deeply as I called her out.

Naturally, as I attached the Jester ears to Dalai, Jasper removed the Jockey and Poppy shredded her cape. They’d all outgrown the Jailer outfit, and the Pilgrim didn’t work either. Sadly, the Devil ears were too tight. But eventually we forced costumes on them and all of us tumbled out the door into the rapidly disappearing evening light.

The horses were mildly interested in the goings on until the shouting began.  Then they quietly retreated out of camera range before we could put costumes on them.

Poppy began by sweetly sitting in my lap, pawing at her hat. Soon she took out her frustrations by snarling at Jasper who ignored her, instead rolling around at my feet ensuring that he’d be blurry. Dalai turned toward the horses as if begging for help. No one looked at the camera at the same time.

After about a half an hour, and probably 50 pictures, it started to get dark. Maureen and I both needed a drink.

We took off the costumes and Dalai and Poppy ran to the house.  Jasper grabbed his and zoomed around the yard with it. Maureen and I opened a bottle of Larceny and drank up.

There were about four usable photos. You’ll see them around the holidays. In the meantime, you can see this video of the proceedings  that Maureen took before being overcome by the giggles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QRei9Phwrs&feature=youtu.be

            You are welcome.

Crying Fowl: Ground Zero for Urban Chickens

I used to live, in what the LA Weekly recently dubbed as the most up-and-coming neighborhood in Los Angeles. The overwhelming night sounds were patrol cars and what my less charitable friends call ghetto birds- police helicopters. If the noise didn’t shake you out of bed, the lights beamed in the backyard from the air might. The occasional shout, “Get back in the house” that came from above definitely put a damper on the evenings.

Now that I live in a place that the LA Weekly doesn’t even acknowledge as a part of the city, the nights are considerably more bucolic.  In fact, what I hear most are the neighbors’ dogs and a cacophony of insomniac roosters. It’s lovely.

I didn’t realize when I moved here that my neighborhood was ground zero for urban fowl. My next-door neighbor keeps her hens and rooster in a shed that backs against my barn. When I feed my horses in the morning the sound wakes up her elderly chickens none of whom are too pleased about it. The people across the street have a flock of pet turkeys. If you’ve ever heard a turkey, it doesn’t so much go ‘gobble gobble’ as ‘glurck glurck.’ I never knew that before.

My heart though, belongs to the flock of feral chickens that gather up the street. There are four of them, two hens and two roosters, though the numbers fluctuate a bit. Occasionally there are more roosters, since people apparently ditch them because they are noisy. The flock visits me daily, waddling down the street until they hit my patch of grass, which must be full of bugs and other chicken delicacies. They hang out chortling and stuffing themselves until one of my dogs wakes up and starts barking at them. Then the birds hop around in a huff and bustle their way back up the street.

I would have chickens of my own—purely as pets, I’m a vegetarian—but I have Poppy the Brittany. Brittanys are bird dogs by nature. Their job is to flush and retrieve. Because the closest thing to hunting that I do is choose between brands of tofu dogs at the market, Poppy has to make her own fun. Which she does. She’s a hunter of great magnificence. Thankfully she rids my house of rodents regularly, but when there are no mice inside, she turns to the yard. She has caught and brought me squirrels, crows, pigeons and birds of undetermined breed. Thankfully she’s never brought me a chicken.

I really like chickens and I always ogle the baby chicks for sale at my local feed store. But the reality is that as long as I have Poppy, or any Brittany (I’ve had seven so far) I can’t have my own chickens. So I’m forced to live vicariously through my brother.

He lives on a small farm in Connecticut, and he and Nancy have a lot of birds running around the barnyard. For a while they were losing some regularly to a resident hawk and neighboring coyotes. So as a good sister, I thought I’d give them a present. What could be better than poultry?

I turned to the McMurray Hatchery, a huge poultry supply company based in the Midwest. They have literally dozens of breeds of chickens as well as pheasants, ducks, grouse and just about anything with feathers. After a pleasant hour or two perusing the website, I settled on ‘fancy Top Hat’ chickens. These are the ones that have feathers on their heads that look like Minnie Pearl’s hat. They also have feathers on their feet. What I’m saying is that they are ridiculous looking.  Just perfect for semi-urban farmers like my brother and sister-in-law. The great part is that they are apparently prolific egg producers. It was a win – win.

I ordered the chicks on a Friday to be shipped on the following Monday. When I hadn’t heard from Andy by Tuesday I was panicking a little. Wednesday was a Federal holiday, so I planned to call the hatchery on Thursday. Instead Thursday morning brought a call from Andy. “Why did you mail me a box of dead chicks?” he asked. Apparently McMurray mails its chickens and had neglected to factor in the holiday. By the time Andy heard from the post office the day-old chickens weren’t anymore. It was a chick holocaust.  Four chickens out of 26 survived.

This must happen a lot, because McMurray couldn’t have been more pleasant about the situation. They sent replacements. Most of those lived.

Chickens in general aren’t brainiacs but Top Hats populate the short bus. They lay a lot of eggs, but forget to sit on them and are always rushing into the waiting jaws of death. After several years only half a dozen remain. But they are really pretty.

Maybe it isn’t such a bad thing that Poppy keeps the house poultry-free. I don’t mind being the chicken hold-out in the neighborhood as long as I get my fowl visitors.