Skating on Wasilla Lake; a wayward puppy goes beneath my car; Kalib; full story of the dog that almost killed the rabbit at the corner where the chicken crossed the road and the rooster got shot

I was driving by Wasilla Lake when I noticed some little kids skating, and two bigger ones practicing hockey. So I decided to stop for a few minutes and take some pictures.

This is Shane, one of the older two. He is in the seventh grade and played on a hockey team for four years - in Kansas. After his family moved to Wasilla a few years back, he stopped playing organized hockey, but still enjoys getting out, skating, and knocking a puck around.

This is Shane's older sister, Amy, a freshman at Wasilla High. She plays for the Mat-Su Ravens, a high school team that combines girls from schools throughout the valley, as no single school has enough interested girls to put together a team of it's own.

She is doing a face-off with her brother to see who will get the puck.

And off they go - brother and sister, fighting for the puck. My camera battery was dying and I needed to get back home, so off I went, too.

I should note that they both like Wasilla way better than Kansas. No offense to any Kansans who might read this.

Their mother Lisa watched as they skated. "Oh, yes," she agreed. "We love it here."

This was the first picture that I took when I stepped onto the ice, just before I met Shane and Amy. The man is Gregory and he is photographing his daughter, Korynn - the one who is still on her feet. The one who has fallen to her knees is Korynn's friend, Roslyn, and this is her first time on skates.

It's Korynn's second.

Roslyn climbs back up, takes hold of the walker and skates just a few inches. "I think I can do it without the walker," she says.

Roslynn leaves the walker behind.

She soon falls, but she smiles about it and then gets right back up. Had I stayed longer, I feel confident I would have seen her skating with confidence.

As I neared home, I saw Becky, Danny, their mom and their little dog, Toby. I stopped the car and tried to take a picture through the window, but my camera battery was dead. So I pulled it out of the camera and warmed it up in my hands, to see if I might coax one more shot out of it.

I did. One more shot and then it died again. I had to bring it home and recharge it.

Melanie and Charlie arrived in the early evening and they had Kalib with them. They were baby-sitting him so that Jacob and Lavina could go out with some friends who had returned from Outside for a short visit. Charlie stepped out of the house to get some firewood. As he was loading up his arms he thought he heard someone crunching about beside him. It was a moose.

After Charlie returned with the armload of wood and the moose report, Melanie went to the window and quickly spotted the moose. She called Kalib over to the window to see.

"Moose," she said.

Kalib peered out the window.

"Puppy!" he said, excitedly. It seemed that the poor little kid was confused.

We then had a debate about what to do for dinner. There was really nothing in the house to cook, so we decided to go out and grab something, somewhere. I auto-started the car so it could warm up. After a bit, Charlie went out and strapped Kalib into his car seat.

Then I climbed into the car and waited for everyone to get seated. "Dad!" Lisa suddenly warned. "Don't back up! There's a puppy under the car!"

Sure enough, there was. This little fur ball. And I might have squished it, had not Charlie spotted it and then pointed it out to Lisa.

Now we faced a quandary. What to do? I decided that the puppy should go into the garage until we got back from dinner. So we put the puppy in the garage, but then the cats freaked out. Their main litter boxes are in the garage and I did not want the puppy to scare them away.

Charlie had temporarily traded his car for Jacob and Lavina's Tahoe, as it has a car seat for Kalib. Muzzy rides in that car all the time, so it is already rich in dog odor. Lisa went into the house and came back with a flattened carbboard box. She put it in the back of the Tahoe and then puppy was put in on top of it.

And then we all went off to eat, Melanie's treat, at Señor Taco. Of course, I took pictures and got some good images, but this blog has had many eating pictures lately and so I will not post them.

We probably would have lingered longer at Señor Taco and visited more, but we had to get back to that puppy. I feared that the night was going to be long and miserable - disrupted by the combination of puppy whines and cat paranoia.

After we returned home, I sent Charlie walking one way down Sarah's Way and I walked the other. I knocked upon door after door and then showed whoever answered the picture of the puppy on the LCD of my pocket camera. Nobody knew where this puppy belonged.

I returned down the other side of the street and then walked up Brockton just a short ways and then turned back. Now, there was just one nearby house left to check: the corner house - the one where the chicken crossed the road, the rooster got shot; the one where lives the dog that nearly killed the rabbit.

I did not really want to knock on the door of that house. Shortly after the family that lives there moved in several years ago - long after the drunken ice cream lady had crashed her good humor vehicle on that corner - I walked by to find the woman of the house outside with a beautiful orange cat.

I stopped introduced myself, told her I was a photographer and loved to photograph cats. She was happy to have me photograph her's. I then told her that I photographed not only cats, but all kinds of things, from life in Rural Alaska to what I saw in Wasilla and the neighborhood, children playing, whatever.

She reacted with paranoia. "You can photograph my cat," she said, "but don't you dare photograph my children. That's just weird, that you would photograph children."

After that, if I walked by that house and the children were out playing and they spotted me, they would shout a warning to each other: "It's the camerman! The weirdo!" Then they would flee.

If they had friends over and saw me coming, they would shout to their playmates, "That's the cameraman! Watch out! He's a weirdo! Run!" And then, just like when they were playing alone by themselves, they would flee. When the husband would be out in the yard and I would walk, he would glance at me with cold, hard, eyes. He would not return my nod, nor my smile, but would turn away.

When you are a photographer whose pictures of children have been published and enjoyed far and wide, in newspaper, book, and magazine form, including National Geographic, it is quite a thing to be labeled a weirdo because you like to take photographs of children.

Then they got some chickens, including the one that crossed the road, and a rooster. In the summertime, when it never gets dark, that damn rooster would crow all night long. There was no getting a good night's sleep. It just couldn't happen.

I began to get desperate for sleep. I knew I had to talk to them about the rooster - but my experience so far with them did not leave me feeling optimistic about how that conversation would go.

Then, one day, before I could find out, I answered an angry knock upon the door.

It was the woman. "Someone complained about our rooster," she said angrily, "was that you?" It did not prove to be a moment of calm and reasoning.

The rooster crowed on for about three, maybe four weeks after that. Then, one morning, about three or four AM, as I lay awake and aggravated in bed, that rooster was crowing away shrilly as usual. Suddenly, I heard a gunshot.

The rooster never crowed again. No ruckus was ever raised about that gunshot. I do not know, but I had a feeling that it was not taken by a neighbor, but by an occupant of the house who choose a gun and not an axe or a wring of the neck in order to make a statement to the neighborhood, to whoever had complained about the rooster.

I could be wrong. But that was what I suspected. Maybe it was an aggravated neighbor who shot the rooster, but I don't think so. Had it been, I suspect all hell would have broken loose.

Instead, immediately after the gunshot, the neighborhood fell into peace and quiet.

Then, a couple of weeks after I fell, shattered my shoulder, lost it, and got a titantium one instead, I had just turned the corner by that house when I saw the dog that appears in yesterday's post, happily running around a rabbit pen with a single rabbit inside.

I could also see the children at the side of the house, laughing and bouncing off of a trampoline. They were completely unaware of me and of the dog, running around the rabbit pen. Then, somehow, that dog found its way into the pen.

Looking as happy and ecstatic as a dog can look, it grabbed that rabbit, carried it out of the pen, took it across the street and then began to maul it to death.

My shoulder was extremely fragile and I was helpless to intervene. I could not pick up a rock, I could not run and chase the dog off the rabbit.

I shouted at the kids, as loud as I dared. "Your dog is killing your rabbit!" Even the effort of shouting brought added pain to my already hurting shoulder. The kids continued to bounce and laugh. They did not hear me. In sheer delight, the dog continued to maul the rabbit. 

I walked as fast as I could, but that was not fast. "Your dog is killing your rabbit!" I shouted again. The kids bounced on, laughing.

I walked a little closer, shouted again, same result. A little closer... finally the kids heard me, but they did not understand.

They quit bouncing and looked at me. "What?" one of them shouted back at the man who their parents had taught them was a dangerous weirdo. 

"Your dog is killing your rabbit!" Finally, they understood. The girls and younger boy started to scream. The oldest boy, who had been truly vile towards me in the past, charged over, and drove the dog from the rabbit. 

The rabbit was limp and still. It looked dead. The girls and the smaller children were weeping. The mother came out, saw the rabbit and looked at me suspiciously. I told her what had happened. She told the children to gather up the rabbit and they would take it to the vet.

Then, an amazing thing happened. One of the girls walked up to me, looked up into my eyes and said, "thank you, Cameraman." Then, one by one, each child - including the oldest boy who had been so vile toward me, walked up to me and said the same, "Thank you, Cameraman." 

The mother watched, but said nothing. She did not smile. The suspicious look never left her face.

And from that day to this, those children have continued to avoid me. And although the First Amendment to the United States Constitution gives me the right to photograph anyone and anything that I can see in public, I have taken no pictures of those children - even though I have seen wonderful ones, ones that I knew that parents would have treasured.

But it just wasn't worth it.

Yet, the kids and I - we did have that one moment, right after the dog almost killed the rabbit.

I decided to knock on the door, anyway - just in case they had gotten a new puppy.

They hadn't, but when they learned my mission and I showed them the picture of the puppy on my camera, they reacted in a friendly way. The husband told me that he had seen it, running with a big dog that lived on a corner three blocks away, where a tire swing hung from a tree.

So I walked back to the house, got the puppy, Melanie joined us and I drove to that house.

And that's where I took this picture, right after I reunited the puppy, Kuna, with this man, who had been very worried about it. "You little turd!" he said, affectionately, as he tousled Kuna's fur.

If you look closely at Royce's chin, you will see that there is a bit of drool smeared into it. Even so, he has been a little better today than he was last night. Melanie, who had not seen him for two weeks, was pleased with what she saw. "He's definitely gained some weight, Dad," she said.

So maybe the situation is not as grim as it seemed last night. Still, he is light and frail, but Melanie is certain that he is doing better than when she last saw him, before I started giving him his medication, before I began to feed soft food to him.

The two buddies, Kalib and Royce.

Kalib, Royce, and Melanie.

Lisa and Royce. See the drop of drool on his chin?

Still, this was a good moment for him. You could call it "a good quality of life" moment.

Comments

[sunnyjane]

Mr. Hess, have you ever thought of taking them a copy of your book as a gift? Perhaps that would convince them that you are not a "weirdo."

It almost sounds like they are in the Witness Protection Program or something and do not want their photos taken for their personal safety.

[Michelle]

When I saw the walker I was like wha? Is Grandma ice skating? What a good idea for beginners, one that this warm clime person did not understand at first. RE: your neighbors, people are just so ridiculously fearful these days. It is sad. Royce looks OK, beautiful cat.

[Rocksee]

Mr. Hess!

I thought it was great that you had some Kansan's on your blog today! I'm from Kansas and they are right.. Alaska is MUCH MUCH better.

I am sorry that those people are so mean to you. If I ever have children, you can come to Fairbanks and photograph them all you want.. you take AMAZING pictures and I'd be honored if I was a parent!

Anyways, hope it's a good day for you today.. and that there are no little grandbabies til Margie gets back.

Rocksee

[debby]

It is a strange and paranoid world we live in, isn't it. Yesterday, my Sunday school class was working on a secret project for our church for Valentine's day. We've had such a good time with it. Another woman only had one child in her class, and so she brought the child in to help with our project, and we told the child that this was a secret. Who knew? Seems that in this day of 'stranger danger' and all, you can't tell a child to keep a secret. It made me sad. Childhood secrets were a big part of the adventure of growing up. Now that has been lost.

[Funny Face]

Neighbors....this is what happens when fear overpowers common sense (wonder what happened in her life to point-blank label you...can't be good). Glad you knocked on their door and practiced Do Good Anyway. Hope someone in your neighborhood or town introduces them to your blog.

..cats and drooling.....
Your post gave me the perfect opportunity to do some research using Google to further educate myself on cat care. It seems like dehydration could become a possible issue.
Still optimistic and hopeful.

Little Turd = Hess family tenderheartedness at its best Thank you!

[Funny Face]

ANYWAY......

"People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.
Love them Anyway.
If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives.
Do good Anyway.
If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed Anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good Anyway.
Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable.
Be honest and transparent Anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build Anyway.
People who really want help may attack you if you help them.
Help them Anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt.
Give the world your best Anyway."

-- Mother Teresa

This quote, which I acquired many years ago from a friend's US Naval Academy commencement, has served me well...just felt like sharing.
(Funny thing is that I just now found out that it was Mother Teresa who said it. Yeah Google.)

[dudleydocker]

Hey, Bill

Do us ALL a favor and get yourself a spare battery or two for the S90. Would hate to miss an amazing picture 'cause your battery died in sub-zero temperatures (not amazing, this is what batteries do). They can be had very reasonably on eBay or even Amazon. Not OEM batteries, but entirely suitable for a backup.....
dd

[Icvillages]

It did make me more angry than sad that your neighbor encouraged her children to disrespect you. I mean, if you were a predator, there'd be notification laws, and you'd probably be a recluse . . .

The way you storytell, such a gift. I imagined you shambling in pain and trying to make your voice strong enough to be heard by snotty kids. You did right, and they grew up a little in that moment in time. Gives me hope, and reminds us that we can't always make labels stick.

Thanks for sharing, day by day. You make Wasilla seem less intimidating to this Native.

[Amy]

What a cute puppy! So Glad it had a happy ending and pup found home safe and sound thanks to you guys. Royce looks good. He is such a handsome orange fellow. Love your blog, check it everyday! Thank you for sharing it with us.

[WhiteStone]

Glad Puppy is home again. And that Royce is still well. And that your battery lasted for that photo. But I think I might like Kansas better, but I'm a female, and most males I know would vote for Alaska. (smile)

[Mikey]

You do have a gift for telling a story. Love this post. Sad that the mother let's her children disrespect you like that. I agree, a gift of a book would be a nice idea.
God Bless you for saving that pup, and going to the trouble of finding his owner. Cute pup!!!
Anxiously awaiting Kalib's newest sibling... can't be long now!!

[dahli22]

Thanks again for the post. This is consistently the most interesting thing I read each day.

[Wasilla, Alaska, by 300]

Sunnyjane - that is a thought, although these books are getting harder to come by and I only have a few copies and must be very careful how I distribute them.

Michelle - When Melanie and Lisa were learning, they pushed street cones around on the ice.

Rocksee - If and when it happens, let me know. I will find my way to Fairbanks.

Debby - it is sad. I find that most people, though, are pretty good about it.

Funny Face - H'mmmm... I have wondered about that. He does drink at will, though. And she would know.

dudley - I have been meaning to get a spare battery. One day, I will.

Icvillages - I'm glad, and I understand. There's actually more Natives in this town then some think and the numbers seem to be growing.

Amy - you are welcome.

Whitestone - Just remember, two out of three of those former Kansans are female.

Mikey - I think you are probably one of the most dedicated dog-savers on the planet.

dahli - You're welcome and thanks for saying so.